Gloucester, and almost to the murder of the Earl of Warwick. Chaucer was
in daily contact with men connected with one faction or the other. What
was his attitude? What party did he follow? I have tried to suppose that
he was a member of the Gloucester or Lancaster faction but I have found
facts such as his retention by Richard as controller of the customs from
1383-4 on, and his subsequent appointment to the clerkship of the works,
that could scarcely have been brought about by Lancastrian influence.
Then I have tried to use as a hypothesis the conception that he was a
partisan of the King. But I have not been able to reconcile with that
idea the fact that he had the grant of the annuity from John of Gaunt,
that Henry IV in the year of his accession granted him an extra annuity
of 40 marks in addition to the L20 which he confirmed to him, and that
in 1395 or 1396 he seems to have been in the employment of either John
of Gaunt or Henry, his son. Consequently it seems to me that Chaucer can
not have been active in politics. At the very time when factional strife
was waging about him he must have kept practically free from both
parties. He seems to have had friends in both camps, though by far the
greater number were in that of the King: Oto de Graunson-a member of
John, of Gaunt's household-and in later years apparently Henry of Derby,
represent the Lancastrian side; on the other hand, Louis Clifford, John
Clanvowe, John Burley--men apparently attached to the Black Prince, his
wife and his son,--Brembre and Philipot with whom he must have been on
fairly good terms, and probably even Thomas Usk, were men strongly
opposed to John Of Gaunt. Too many things connect Chaucer with both
parties to make his identification with either possible. The reasons why
Chaucer did not dabble pronouncedly in politics may have been various--a
clear perception that such was the only safe course for him--an entire
indifference and lack of understanding of politics--or what you will. At
any rate his connection with both parties is certainly in consonance
with the exclusion from his poetry of political matter of the kind which