been installed at court as a gentleman of the bedchamber, on a stipend
which would now be equal to £250 a year. He seems to have been a
favorite with the court, after he had written his first great poem. It
is singular that in a rude and ignorant age poets should have received
much greater honor than in our enlightened times. Gower was patronized
by the Duke of Gloucester, as Chaucer was by the Duke of Lancaster, and
Petrarch and Boccaccio were in Italy by princes and nobles. Even
learning was held in more reverence in the fourteenth century than it is
in the nineteenth. The scholastic doctor was one of the great
dignitaries of the age, as well as of the schools, and ranked with
bishops and abbots. Wyclif at one time was the most influential man in
the English Church, sitting in Parliament, and sent by the king on
important diplomatic missions. So Chaucer, with less claim, received
valuable offices and land-grants, which made him a wealthy man; and he
was also sent on important missions in the company of nobles. He lived
at the court. His son Thomas married one of the richest heiresses in the
kingdom, and became speaker of the House of Commons; while his daughter
Alice married the Duke of Suffolk, whose grandson was declared by
Richard III. to be his heir, and came near becoming King of England.
Chaucer's wife's sister married the Duke of Lancaster himself; so he was
allied with the royal family, if not by blood, at least by ambitious
marriage connections.

I know of no poet in the history of England who occupied so high a
social position as did Chaucer, or who received so many honors. The poet
of the people was the companion of kings and princes. At one time he had
a reverse of fortune, when his friend and patron, the Duke of Lancaster,
was in disgrace and in voluntary banishment during the minority of
Richard II., against whom he had intrigued, and who afterwards was
dethroned by Henry IV., a son of the Duke of Lancaster. While the Duke