earliest biographers, that he completed his academical studies at Paris--
and equally futile the concomitant fiction that in France "he acquired
much applause by his literary exercises." Finally, we have the tradition
that he was a member of the Inner Temple--which is a conclusion deduced
from a piece of genial scandal as to a record having been seen in that Inn
of a fine imposed upon him for beating a friar in Fleet-street. This
story was early placed by Thynne on the horns of a sufficiently decisive
dilemma: in the days of Chaucer's youth, lawyers had not yet been admitted
into the Temple; and in the days of his maturity he is not very likely to
have been found engaged in battery in a London thoroughfare.

We now desert the region of groundless conjecture, in order with the year
1357 to arrive at a firm though not very broad footing of facts. In this
year, "Geoffrey Chaucer" (whom it would be too great an effort of
scepticism to suppose to have been merely a namesake of the poet) is
mentioned in the Household Book of Elizabeth Countess of Ulster, wife of
Prince Lionel (third son of King Edward III, and afterwards Duke of
Clarence), as a recipient of certain articles of apparel. Two similar
notices of his name occur up to the year 1359. He is hence concluded to
have belonged to Prince Lionel's establishment as squire or page to the
Lady Elizabeth; and it was probably in the Prince's retinue that he took
part in the expedition of King Edward III into France, which began at the
close of the year 1359 with the ineffectual siege of Rheims, and in the
next year, after a futile attempt upon Paris, ended with the compromise of
the Peace of Bretigny. In the course of this campaign Chaucer was taken
prisoner; but he was released without much loss of time, as appears by a
document bearing date March 1st, 1360, in which the king contributes the
sum of 16 pounds for Chaucer's ransom. We may therefore conclude that he
missed the march upon Paris, and the sufferings undergone by the English
army on their road thence to Chartres--the most exciting experiences of an