Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-p2v8j Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2024-05-17T00:20:52.622Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Kirk's Life Records of Thomas Chaucer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Albert C. Baugh
Albert C. Baugh*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

As all Chaucer scholars know, it was the intention of the Chaucer Society to follow the Life Records of Chaucer with a similar volume on Thomas Chaucer. This intention was referred to as early as 1901, at the close of R.E.G. Kirk's Forewords to the former compilation; and for many years the work was announced in the list of future volumes to be published by the Society. As the years passed and the expected work failed to appear, it was naturally assumed that the project had been abandoned, perhaps after Kirk's death in 1908. So that when Professor Ruud published his monograph a few years ago he voiced the common sentiment when he said “we cannot now expect from the Chaucer Society the volume, long promised, of the life records of Thomas Chaucer.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , June 1932 , pp. 461 - 515
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1932

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Ruud, Martin B., Thomas Chaucer. Univ. of Minnesota Studies in Language and Literature, No. 9. Minneapolis, 1926.

2 Professor Ruud has found numerous documents not known to Kirk.

3 I hope I have succeeded in avoiding duplication, but the absence of an index or list of documents in the study mentioned makes checking difficult.

4 After some hesitation, I have retained a half-dozen documents giving the results of inquisitions in connection with various subsidies, although they are printed in Feudal Aids, because taken in conjunction with the many other records of Thomas Chaucer's properties and income here gathered together, they help to complete a picture not elsewhere to be obtained of his position as a landed proprietor.

5 Nos. 1, 26, 39, 42, 45, 49, 50, 64, 69, 72, 78, 80, 89, 97, 109. The references to Thomas Chaucer in the Stonor Letters, when not a part of Kirk's collection, have not been included.

6 See acknowledgments to Nos. 5, 8, 51.

7 I include this item because it is the earliest actual record of a Thomas Chaucer yet found (the grant by John of Gaunt being known only in a later citation) and seems hitherto to have escaped notice, possibly because of the spelling of the name.

8 Another long entry about David Brounfeld and his remarks occurs on m. 5 of this roll. The above reference was given me by Professor J. Leslie Hotson (for whom it was found by Miss N. M. O'Farrell). Dr. Hotson has also given me the reference to an item on m. 16 of the same roll in which John Newlond is accused of theft ‘coram Willelmo Beek locutenente Thome Chaucere senascall honoris Walyngford.‘

9 This reference was given me by Professor H. L. Gray, of Bryn Mawr College.

10 Dated according to the Exchequer year.

11 This document raises the question again of the identification of Thomas Chaucer and the Thomas Chaucer, vintner, whose name occurs in the Hustings Rolls. To this question I hope to return later.

12 Here Margaret is placed first.

13 I am indebted for this reference to Professor J. Leslie Hotson, for whom it was found by Miss N. M. O'Farrell.

14 These names are interlined here, but not in the later clauses.

15 Cf. No. 67.

16 See Inquis. p.m., 8 Hen. VI., No. 32.

17 The title Sir is omitted. Variant spellings are grouped under the commonest or the modern form.