linked with Chaucer's own.

So far, the new reign, which had opened amidst doubts and difficulties for
the country, had to the faithful servant of the dynasty brought an
increase of royal goodwill. In 1381--after the suppression of the great
rebellion of the villeins--King Richard II had married the princess whose
name for a season linked together the history of two countries the
destinies of which had before that age, as they have since, lain far
asunder. Yet both Bohemia and England, besides the nations which received
from the former the impulses communicated to it by the latter, have reason
to remember Queen Anne the learned and the good; since to her was probably
due in the first instance the intellectual intercourse between her native
and her adopted country. There seems every reason to believe that it was
the approach of this marriage which Chaucer celebrated in one of the
brightest and most jocund marriage-poems ever composed by a laureate's
hand; and if this was so, he cannot but have augmented the favour with
which he was regarded at Court. When, therefore, by May, 1382, his
foreign journeys had come to an end, we do not wonder to find that,
without being called upon to relinquish his former office, he was
appointed in addition to the Comptrollership of the Petty Customs in the
Port of London, of which post he was allowed to execute the duties by
deputy. In November, 1384, he received permission to absent himself from
his old comptrollership for a month, and in February, 1385, was allowed to
appoint a (permanent) deputy for this office also. During the month of
October, 1386, he sat in Parliament at Westminster as one of the Knights
of the Shire for Kent, where we may consequently assume him to have
possessed landed property. His fortunes, therefore, at this period had
clearly risen to their height; and naturally enough his commentators are
anxious to assign to these years the sunniest, as well as some of the most
elaborate, of his literary productions. It is altogether probable that