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Chaucer by Sir Adolphus William Ward
page 99 of 216 (45%)
except that in financial matters it attempted, after the manner of new
brooms, to sweep clean. Soon the attention of Gloucester and his
following was occupied by subjects more absorbing than a branch of reform
fated to be treated fitfully. In this instance the new administration had
as usual demanded its victims--and among their number was Chaucer. For it
can hardly be a mere coincidence that by the beginning of December in this
year, 1386, Chaucer had lost one, and by the middle of the same month the
other, of his comptrollerships. At the same time, it would be
presumptuously unfair to conclude that misconduct of any kind on his part
had been the reason of his removal. The explanation usually given is that
he fell as an adherent of John of Gaunt; perhaps a safer way of putting
the matter would be to say that John of Gaunt was no longer in England to
protect him. Inasmuch as even reforming Governments are occasionally as
anxious about men as they are about measures, Chaucer's posts may have
been wanted for nominees of the Duke of Gloucester and his Council--such
as it is probably no injustice to Masters Adam Yerdely and Henry Gisors
(who respectively succeeded Chaucer in his two offices) to suppose them to
have been. Moreover, it is just possible that Chaucer was the reverse of
a persona grata to Gloucester's faction on account of the Comptroller's
previous official connexion with Sir Nicholas Brembre, who, besides being
hated in the city, had been accused of seeking to compass the deaths of
the Duke and of some of his adherents. In any case, it is noticeable that
four months BEFORE the return to England of the Duke of Lancaster, i.e. in
July, 1389, Chaucer was appointed Clerk of the King's Works at
Westminster, the Tower, and a large number of other royal manors or
tenements, including (from 1390 at all events) St. George's Chapel,
Windsor. In this office he was not ill-paid, receiving two shillings a
day in money, and very possibly perquisites in addition, besides being
allowed to appoint a deputy. Inasmuch as in the summer of the year 1389
King Richard had assumed the reins of government in person, while the
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