asserts, that his father was a knight; but tho' there is no authority
to support this assertion, yet it is reasonable to suppose that he
was something superior to a common employ. We find one John Chaucer
attending upon Edward III. and Queen Philippa, in their expedition to
Flanders and Cologn, who had the King's protection to go over sea
in the twelfth year of his reign. It is highly probable that
this gentleman was father to our Geoffry, and the supposition is
strengthened by Chaucer's first application, after leaving the
university and inns of law, being to the Court; nor is it unlikely
that the service of the father should recommend the son.

It is universally agreed, that he was born in the second year of the
reign of King Edward III. A.D. 1328. His first studies were in the
university of Cambridge, and when about eighteen years of age he wrote
his Court of Love, but of what college he was is uncertain, there
being no account of him in the records of the University. From
Cambridge he was removed to Oxford in order to compleat his studies,
and after a considerable stay there, and a strict application to the
public lectures of the university, he became (says Leland) "a ready
logician, a smooth rhetorician, a pleasant poet, a great philosopher,
an ingenious mathematician, and a holy divine. That he was a great
master in astronomy, is plain by his discourses of the Astrolabe. That
he was versed in hermetic philosophy (which prevailed much at that
time), appears by his Tale of the Chanons Yeoman: His knowledge in
divinity is evident from his Parson's Tale, and his philosophy from
the Testament of Love." Thus qualified to make a figure in the world,
he left his learned retirement, and travelled into France, Holland,
and other countries, where he spent some of his younger days. Upon his
return he entered himself in the Inner Temple, where he studied the
municipal laws of the land. But he had not long prosecuted that dry