issued) could not have been a very burdensome one. Yet even the
provision that Chaucer write the records with his own hand was not--in
the opinion of the officials of the Record Office--held to even as early
as 1381. The reason for this judgment is that the preserved records are
written in a decidedly good Chancery hand, a style of writing which only
a professional Chancery clerk is supposed to have been master of.
[Footnote: See Tales of the Canterbury Pilgrims, Stokes & Co., Intro.,
by Furnivall, p. X note.] Consequently either Chaucer must have been a
regular Chancery clerk, or he employed a clerk to write up the records.
If he did the latter--as seems most likely--it is hard to see what work
of importance can have been left to himself. Why then should he care for
a permanent deputy? If we look at the circumstances of his life in 1385,
we may discover a possible reason. In that year, he first appears
prominently in connection with Kent. The sequence of events is:

February, 1385--deputy appointed.
October, 1385-Justice of the Peace in Kent.
June, 1386--Justice of the Peace in Kent.
August, 1386--Member of Parliament for Kent.

He must have been out of London at latest some time early in 1385, and
he may have been occupied with the purchase and management of whatever
land he possessed in Kent, and with the politics of that county.
Consequently, he may have desired to have a recognized deputy in the
office who would relieve him of all official responsibility. One can see
no reason why he should have felt particularly grateful for the grant of
this merely technical freedom.

Furthermore we can have no knowledge, with our present information
alone, of why Chaucer ceased to be controller at the end of 1386. I have