Cabinet Portrait Gallery of British Worthies Part 4

"Geoffrey Chaucer, Esquire, of the age of forty and upwards, armed for twenty-seven years, produced on behalf of Sir Richard Scrope, sworn and examined: Asked, whether the arms 'Azure, a bend Or' belonged or ought to belong to the said Sir Richard? Said yes, for he saw him so armed in France, before the town of Retters [apparently the village of Retiers, near Rennes, in Brittany], and Sir Henry Scrope armed in the same arms with a white label, and with a banner; and the said Sir Richard armed in the entire arms 'Azure, with a bend Or,' and so he had seen him armed during the whole expedition, until the said Geoffrey was taken. Asked, how he knew that the said arms appertained to the said Sir Richard? Said that he had heard say from old knights and esquires, that they had been reputed to be their arms, as common fame and the public voice proved; and he also said that they had continued their possession of the said arms; and that all his time he had seen the said arms in banners, gla.s.s, paintings, and vestments, and commonly called the arms of Scrope. Asked, if he had heard anyone say who was the first ancestor of the said Sir Richard who first bore the said arms? Said no, nor had he ever heard otherwise than that they were come of ancient ancestry, and of old gentry, and used the said arms. Asked if he had heard any one say how long a time the ancestors of the said Sir Richard had used the said arms? Said no, but he had heard say that it pa.s.sed the memory of man.

Asked, whether he had ever heard of any interruption or challenge made by Sir Robert Grosvenor, or by his ancestors, or by any one in his name, to the said Sir Richard, or to any of his ancestors? Said no; but he said that he was once in Friday Street, in London, and as he was walking in the street, he saw hanging a new sign made of the said arms, and he asked what inn that was that had hung out these arms of Scrope, and one answered him and said, No Sir, they are not hung out for the arms of Scrope, nor painted there for those arms, but they are painted and put there by a knight of the county of Chester, whom men call Sir Robert Grosvenor; and that was the first time he ever heard speak of Sir Robert Grosvenor, or of his ancestors, or of any other bearing the name of Grosvenor."

Chaucer says he had been armed twenty-seven years; this means, according to the then prevalent mode of speaking of such matters, that in 1359, twenty-seven years before the date of the deposition, 1386, Chaucer had _first_ borne arms. He says also, he was in France, in one of the military expeditions of the time. Now as 1359 is the very year in which Edward took a great army into that country, and as for three years before and for ten years after, there was no other such expedition set on foot, and as when fresh ones were despatched we know the poet was not concerned in them, but was differently engaged--why, on the whole, the inference is irresistible, that it was in Edward's expedition of 1359 that Chaucer first became a soldier.

And that expedition was one calculated to test most searchingly his possession of the soldier's best quality, fort.i.tude, though not at all calculated to make him enamoured of the vocation. The expedition throughout exhibited to him only the shades of military life, without a glimpse of its suns.h.i.+ne. A more formidable army had never perhaps left the English sh.o.r.es--certainly had never left it to meet so melancholy a fate; it comprised a hundred thousand men, and filled a thousand s.h.i.+ps during the pa.s.sage from coast to coast. And if for a time it seemed as irresistible as it had promised to be, that was because no army came forth to meet it. From Calais Edward moved on through Artois to Picardy; and thence to Rheims, which he besieged with the intention, it is said, of having himself crowned king of France in the cathedral, the usual place of coronation for the sovereigns of the country. But the garrison was brave, the place strong, and the season winter. In the end he raised the siege, and marched into Burgundy, and then, turning towards Paris, he moved forwards till the dismayed Parisians beheld an English army encamped without their walls. The French, however, had learned wisdom from the success with which they had often defended their fortified places, and from the failure that attended their efforts in the open field. So they were not to be drawn outside the walls of the capital, not even by a challenge; and at the same time Edward was quite unable to force his way in; so, hara.s.sed by insufficient supplies of provisions, he presently retreated towards Brittany. Every step of his way was marked by falling horses and men, who died from hunger or the intolerable fatigue to which they were subjected. No wonder that the spirits of the troops sank, and that Edward's own mind was so affected that he became superst.i.tious, and yielded, beneath the terror of a great storm, the peace that not all the miseries of his own subjects, and the infinitely greater miseries they had inflicted on the French people, could wring from him. On the 8th of May, 1360, the treaty of Bretigny was concluded; Bretigny being a village near to Chartres. Of the greater part of the horrors of the expedition Chaucer was an eyewitness and partic.i.p.ator, with the additional pang added that, as he himself tells, he was "taken" prisoner. How long he remained in captivity it is impossible to say; but there is reason to fear that the period may have even extended to five or six years. From 1359-60 to a little before 1366 his history is a blank to us; and the next circ.u.mstance we find related of him looks very like the greetings of his friends and of his sovereign after a prolonged and painful absence. In or before 1366 he received the hand of Philippa Roet, who, on the 12th of September in that year, was granted, by Edward, a pension of ten marks for life, by the name of Philippa Chaucer; and on the 20th of June in the following year, we find her husband holding a post (that of valet) in the king's household, corresponding to hers in the queen's, and enjoying that king's especial favour, as expressed by a grant of twenty marks yearly, in consideration of his former and future services. It is tolerably evident from all this, that it was not through the exertions of his own friend and patron John of Gaunt, or through the existence of any particular private desire to aid him in the minds of the still more influential friends and patrons of his wife, that the poet thus succeeded in establis.h.i.+ng a position for himself in the world. The reward looks as though it were apportioned simply to the amount of the desert; and through all Chaucer's subsequent and highly distinguished career we shall find the same characteristic prevailing in the treatment of him. Or if there be any discrepancy, it is that the rewards on the whole seem to fall short rather than to exceed what might be supposed the legitimate amount. The king's grant to Chaucer was to last for life, or until he should be otherwise provided for. The promise here held out to the poet was not long left unredeemed. In 1370 he was sent abroad on the king's service; and--having been raised to the rank of one of the king's own squires--again in 1372, when he went to Genoa, to treat on the subject of the choice of a port in England where the Genoese might form an establishment. In 1376 a secret mission, and the nature of which still remains secret, was intrusted to him and Sir John Burley. In 1377 he accompanied Sir Thomas Percy on another secret mission to Flanders, and in the same year is supposed to have been concerned in the negotiations for peace with France; all missions of an important nature, and all comprised within the period of the life of Edward. But change of monarchs made no change in this respect; the poet's abilities, character, and services were sufficient to command the respect and attention of Edward's successor. One of the earliest events of the new reign was the appointment of an emba.s.sy to treat of the marriage of Richard II. with the daughter of the king of France: Chaucer was one of the amba.s.sadors. This was in January, 1378, and the poet could scarcely have fulfilled his duty and returned, before he was again despatched, in May of the same year, to Lombardy, to treat with the lord of Milan and the famous free commander Sir John Hawkwood. An interesting circ.u.mstance marks this emba.s.sy. Gower was one of the two representatives who acted for the poet in England during his absence. This is one of the numerous valuable facts that Sir Harris Nicholas has made known for the first time in his (as yet unpublished) 'Life of Chaucer.'

It was in the emba.s.sy to Genoa, of 1372, that Chaucer is supposed to have met Petrarch, and to have heard from him the story of Griselda.

This supposition, the truth of which one would be glad to be satisfied of, rests upon the following evidence:--Chaucer, in the prologue to the Clerk's Tale, makes the clerk say,

"I will you tell a tale, which that I Learned at Padua, of a worthy clerk, As proved by his wordes and his work.

He is now dead and nailed in his chest; I pray to G.o.d so give his soule rest.

Francis Petrarch, the laureate poete, Highte this clerk, whose rhetoric sweet Illumined all Itaille of poetry."

Now Boccaccio was the author, in the Italian language, of the story in question, 'Griselda;' and why did Chaucer, if he is not referring to an actual and highly interesting incident of his own history, make the clerk go out of his way to speak of Petrarch, who only translated, in Latin, Boccaccio's work? No one supposes that Chaucer was ignorant of the existence or nature of the writings of Boccaccio; and the only answer given to G.o.dwin, who put the foregoing question, is, that Chaucer may not have been acquainted with the Italian language, and therefore preferred acknowledging an obligation to Petrarch, whose translation alone had enabled him to become familiar with the tale. It might be so; though it is not very likely. Not only was Chaucer, as we have seen, distinguished in youth for the depth and universality of his attainments, but had been at least twice an amba.s.sador to Italy. The strong probability therefore is, that he did know the language, and was perfectly well acquainted with the 'Decameron' (the exemplar of his own Canterbury Tales) in its mother tongue, but that having met Petrarch, _who was at Arqua near Padua_ at the very time that Chaucer was in the neighbourhood, he could not tell the tale he had then heard, under such remarkable circ.u.mstances, without a pa.s.sing record of them.

That same Genoese emba.s.sy involved important consequences as regarded the fortunes of the poet. On the 8th of June, 1374, only a few months after his return, Edward conferred upon him the lucrative and distinguished office of comptroller of the customs for wool, &c. But the king had not waited until that time to show what he thought of Chaucer's conduct; he had already conferred upon him a marked testimony of his approbation; and at a time and under circ.u.mstances that make the blood stir, and the imagination busy itself in a thousand vain attempts to picture what might have been from the knowledge of what was. On St.

George's day, the 23rd of April, 1374, when the king would be sitting in high and solemn festival, surrounded by all the chief n.o.bility of the land, and when Chaucer, as one of his own squires, would, as a matter of duty and office, be in attendance on him, Edward conferred upon the poet the grant of a pitcher of wine to be supplied to him daily for life. In the very same year, and after the appointment to the customs, John of Gaunt, as if desiring to show how deeply he sympathised in the poet's prosperity, still further swelled his income by a grant of ten pounds for life. The following year, 1375, brought also its own good gifts, in the shape of two wards.h.i.+ps, granted by Edward; from one of which Chaucer received 104_l._, equivalent, according to G.o.dwin's estimate of the comparative value of money then and now, to about some eighteen hundred pounds of the nineteenth century.

And now for some years the poet's life appears to have rolled on smoothly, usefully, happily. And although it was a condition expressly made by Edward, that the poet should keep the accounts of the comptrollers.h.i.+p with his own hand, and not put off his duties upon a deputy (a wise provision, and fitly made by a king who knew so well how to pay for real services), it is supposed that it was during these busy years that Chaucer produced some of his best miscellaneous poems. The 'Romaunt of the Rose,' a translation from the French work that enjoyed so long a period of popularity, had probably been written long before, in the days when the poet imitated previous writers rather than drew from himself; the dates of the 'Cuckoo and the Nightingale' and some others are unknown; but the 'House of Fame,' a n.o.ble poem, and worthy of its suggestive t.i.tle, bears internal evidence that it was written while its author held the office of comptroller: and some very agreeable information it gives to us of the poet's habits. Jupiter, who addresses the poet personally, tells him he is aware he attends nothing now to tidings of love, nor of nothing else--not even

"of thy very neighebours That dwellen almost at thy doors, Thou hearest neither that nor this _For when thy labour all done is, And hast made all thy reckonings_, Instead of rest, and of new things, Thou goest home to thine house anon, And all so dumbe as a stone Thou sittest at another book, Till fully dazed is thy look, And livest thus as a hermite, Although thine abstinence is lite,"[32] &c.

In the love of good living, here acknowledged, we may see the origin of that goodly bulk upon which Harry Bailley, in the 'Canterbury Tales,'

banters the poet. "Now," he calls out to the pilgrims,

"'Ware yon, sirs, and let this man have place; He in the waist is shapen as well as I: This were a poppet in an arme to embrace For any woman."

Through the same medium the poet describes himself as accustomed to look on the ground, to be "elvish" of countenance, silent, and reserved. We need only add to these traits another, also on the best of authorities--his own--namely, the love of walking, and enjoyment of all the sights and sounds of natural phenomena. In his 'Legend of Good Women' he writes--

"And as for me, though that I can but lite,[33]

On bookes for to read, I me delight, And to them give I faith and full credence And in mine heart have them in reverence, So heartily, that there is game none That from my bookes maketh me to gone; But it be seldom on the holyday, Save certainly when that the month of May Is comen, and that I hear the fowles[34] sing, And that the flowres 'ginnen for to spring, Farewell my book and my devoton."

In 1386 the people emphatically marked their approbation of him whom kings had delighted to honour, by electing Chaucer to parliament as a knight of the s.h.i.+re for Kent. But, in all probability, that honour destroyed the poet's peace. Misfortunes began from this time to fall thickly upon him. Within two months after the meeting of parliament he was deprived of the comptrollers.h.i.+p, as well as the comptrollers.h.i.+p of the petty customs, that had been conferred by Richard II. four years before; and we are utterly in the dark as to the cause. Tyrwhitt, G.o.dwin, and others have built up an elaborate hypothesis, as to his connexion with the civic commotion in London in 1384, when John of Northampton stood for the office of mayor in opposition to the court candidate; and which ended, they say, as concerned the poet, in his expatriation to Zealand, in his enduring great sufferings there, in his return to England in 1386, and in his committal to the Tower, until 1389. All these presumptions, founded on various pa.s.sages of the 'Testament of Love,' the right key to which has evidently not yet been found, have been utterly set at rest by Sir Harris Nicholas's discovery of records showing that from 1380 to 1388 Chaucer received his pension regularly as it became due, in London, _with his own hands_. And, indeed, we have only to weigh for a moment the character and doings of the parliament to which he was elected, to satisfy us that there need be no surprise excited at the treatment experienced by Chaucer.

Legislation, in the dictionary of the leading politicians of the day, meant intrigues for the possession of power. The parliament was divided into two parties; one supporting the king, and the king's favourites, De la Pole and De Vere, and the other determined to drive those favourites from power. The opposition was headed by the Duke of Gloucester, a brother of John of Gaunt, and it succeeded; De la Pole was dismissed, impeached, and imprisoned; and, finally, the successful party demanded and obtained from Richard a council for the government of the nation.

There would be little relish then for the advice, little sympathy with the conduct of a man who in his writings was accustomed, whilst bidding the people to obey the king and the law, also to say to their governors--

"Knight, let thy _deedes wors.h.i.+p determine_,"

and

"Go forth, king, and rule thee by sapience;"

and who was in religion a Wickliffite.

In struggles between ambitious n.o.bles and a king who desired to be despotic, a man of independent character might easily give deep offence to those against whom he acted, and without particularly pleasing those who might look upon him generally as their supporter; and that Chaucer appears to have done. He was made the victim of the one, and received no compensating benefits from the other. So, in 1388, he was compelled to sell two of his pensions, which were accordingly a.s.signed to John Scalby. His wife's pension had ceased with the life of her to whom it had been granted. The last payment to Philippa Chaucer took place in June, 1387. She died therefore within a twelvemonth after the events that plunged them both in adversity.

In 1389, Richard, then in his twenty-second year, suddenly dismissed Gloucester, and confided the administration to another uncle, the Duke of York, and to a cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke, the son of John of Gaunt, who during all these changes was on the Continent endeavouring to establish for himself a Spanish sovereignty. Within two months after that change, Chaucer was appointed Clerk of the Works at the king's chief palaces, at a salary of two s.h.i.+llings a day, and in the course of his duties he had to superintend the onerous but honourable and gratifying task of repairing St. George's Chapel, Windsor. But again he was dismissed, after about two years' service; unless, indeed, which is possible rather than probable, that he, in order to carry out his literary views, had himself determined to retire finally from all public employment. He was now sixty-three years old; the "Comedy" over which he had so long pondered, and which was to contain the acc.u.mulated wealth of his genius, wisdom, and experience, was still unwritten, except in parts, and he had evidently long desired to abstract himself from mere worldly avocation. Thus in 1384 he had obtained from Richard a relaxation of Edward's stringent regulation, that he should not nominate a deputy, and in the very year that he ceased to hold his architectural appointments he had caused John Elmhurst to officiate for him. At all events, the years 1393, 1394, 1395, are supposed to have been those of the production of the 'Canterbury Tales' (which are known to have been produced after Jack Straw's insurrection, as that occurrence is mentioned in them), and we see no reason to disturb the supposition.

Woodstock, a royal seat, was, according to tradition, the scene of the poet's labours on this his greatest work, as well as of others of an earlier date. In the scientific treatise addressed by Chaucer to one of his two sons, Lewis, who appears to have died young, there does appear something like evidence that Chaucer was living in the neighbourhood of Oxford when he composed that piece, which contains the date of 1391.

Chaucer there speaks of the astrolabe he has "compounded after the lat.i.tude of Oxford." But there is really so little tangible knowledge concerning the poet's residence either at Woodstock or at Donnington Castle, that it is best to rest content with the fact that tradition does say Chaucer resided at both, and that at Donnington he planted the three oaks known respectively as Chaucer's oak, the king's oak, and the queen's. But then tradition must not be too exacting--must not also ask us to believe that the poet wrote several of his poems beneath the shade of one of the trees he had planted. It must have been a most precocious tree else.

In deep gloom, much we fear, the poet spent the latter hours of his day of life, though not without a sudden lighting up of the horizon ere the close, as if to surround his pa.s.sage into the grave with something of the glory that should attend the sunset of such a life. Sir Harris Nicholas has collected together in his work (to which we must refer for the particulars) facts of the deepest interest, as showing that he was in poverty, sheer unmistakeable poverty, from 1394 to 1398. And yet John of Gaunt had not only returned to England, but had married the sister of the poet's wife, through which marriage therefore Chaucer became connected with the royal family of England. Was the poet too proud to make known the real state of his affairs? In 1398 Richard, with whom sympathy and admiration for Chaucer seem to have been the mere occasionally recurring whim of the moment, did again so far remember the poet as to confer on him another grant of wine, more valuable than the first, to be delivered by the poet's own son, Thomas, who had then risen to the rank of chief butler. In 1399 Richard was deposed, and Bolingbroke became king of England; and within _four_ days the pension of twenty marks that Richard had granted to Chaucer in 1394 (six years after the sale of the two pensions formerly possessed by him) was _doubled_, leaving him, on the whole, the recipient of an income from the crown amply sufficient for all his wants. He now took a lease of a house situated in a garden adjoining Westminster Abbey, and there probably he died, on the 25th of October, 1400. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and it is only fitting that Poets' Corner, like English poetry itself, should date its foundation from Geoffrey Chaucer.

As a poet, he needs no epitaph, but whenever we do--what has been often talked of--rebuild his monument in the Abbey, we need desire no n.o.bler testimony of his character as a man to be inscribed on it, than the ballad with which we conclude, and which was written by him, as the affecting t.i.tle states, when he lay upon his death-bed in "great anguish:"--

"Fly from the press,[35] and dwell with soothfastness,[36]

Suffice unto thy good, though it be small, For h.o.a.rd hath hate, and climbing tickleness; Praise hath env, and weal is blent over all; Savour[37] no more than thee behove shall; Rede[38] well thyself that other folk canst rede And truth thee shall deliver, it is no drede.

Paine thee not each crooked to redress, In trust of her that turneth as a ball, Great rest standeth in little business; Beware also to spurn against a nall,[39]

Strive not as doth a crocke with a wall; Doome thyself that doomest others dede, And truth thee shall deliver, it is no drede.

That[40] thee is sent, receive in buxomness,[41]

The wrestling of this world asketh a fall; Here is no home, here is but wilderness; Forthe pilgrim, forthe beast out of thy stall, Look up on high, and thanke G.o.d of all, Waive thy l.u.s.ts, and let thy ghost[42] thee lead, And truth thee shall deliver, it is no drede."

WILLIAM OF WYKEHAM.

There is an old tradition, perhaps not worthy of much credit, that upon the wall of a tower in Windsor Castle, known as the Winchester Tower, was inscribed "This made Wykeham." The great churchman raised this tower as the architect of Windsor Castle, working under the commands of his patron Edward III. It is further said, that the king being offended at this inscription, its more obvious meaning was dexterously explained away, seeing that it should be interpreted to record that the building of the castle was "the making" of the architect. There are other proud edifices still remaining upon which might be inserted "This made Wykeham" in the most complete sense. No man ever left more permanent traces of his course and character. The founder of Winchester College, and of New College, Oxford,--the builder of the n.o.blest part of Winchester Cathedral,--had a t.i.tle to be called their "maker," with no king or subject to dispute his pretensions. He was one of the very few men who, having raised themselves by their abilities and integrity to riches and honour, worked not sordidly for themselves to heap up treasure, but n.o.bly employed their wealth in works of the highest public utility. The life of such a man is for example. William De Wykeham, or Of Wykeham, was born at Wykeham or Wickham, in Hamps.h.i.+re, in the year 1324, and, as his biographer Bishop Lowth has shown, some time between the 7th of July and the 27th of September. There is reason to believe that he did not take his name from his native village, the same name being borne by several of his relations living in his own day, who do not appear to have been born there. All that is certainly known about his father and mother is that their Christian names were John and Sybil: if his father bore the name of Wykeham, he appears to have also pa.s.sed by that of Long or Longe, and to have had an elder brother who was called Henry Aas.

Lowth thus sensibly remarks upon this obscurity of the name of so distinguished a man:--"If we consider the uncertain state of family-names at the time of the birth of Wykeham, we shall not think it strange that there should be such doubt with regard to the surname of his family; or even if it should appear that he had properly no family-name at all. Surnames were introduced into England by the Normans at the Conquest: 'But certain it is,' says Camden, 'that as the better sort, even from the Conquest, by little and little, took surnames; so they were not settled among the common people fully until about the time of Edward the Second.'"

The parents of Wykeham are held to have been poor, but of creditable descent and reputable character. When their son became a dignitary of the church, he employed a seal with heraldic bearings and a quaint motto; but it is believed that these honours were not hereditary. Lowth holds that his relations were of the common people, and adds, "I am even inclined to think that he himself disclaimed all farther pretensions.

The celebrated motto which he added to his arms (of which probably he might have received a grant when he began to rise in the world) I imagine was intended by him to intimate something of this kind: _Manners makyth Man_: the true meaning of which, as he designed it, I presume to be, though it has commonly been understood otherwise, that a man's real worth is to be estimated not from the outward and accidental advantages of birth, rank, and fortune, but from the endowments of his mind and his moral qualifications. In this sense it bears a proper relation to his arms, and contains a just apology for those ensigns of his newly acquired dignity. Conscious to himself that his claim to honour is unexceptionable, as founded upon truth and reason, he in a manner makes his appeal to the world; alleging that neither high birth, to which he makes no pretensions, nor high station, upon which he does not value himself, but

"'Virtue alone is true n.o.bility.'"

He was put to school at Winchester, not by his father, who had not the means, but by some wealthy patron, who is traditionally said to have been Nicholas Uvedale, lord of the manor of Wykeham and governor of Winchester Castle. The tradition further a.s.serts that, after leaving school, he became secretary to Uvedale; and that he was secretary to the constable of Winchester Castle is stated in a written account compiled in his own time. Afterwards he is said to have been recommended by Uvedale to Edyngton, bishop of Winchester, and then by those two friends to have been made known to King Edward III. There seems to be no reason for supposing that he ever studied at Oxford, as has been affirmed by some of the later writers of his life. It is evident, indeed, that he had not had a university education, and that he never pretended to any skill in the favourite scholastic learning of his age. His strength lay in his natural genius, in his knowledge of mankind and talent for business; and probably the only art or science he had much cultivated was architecture.

He is said in an ancient contemporary account to have been brought to court when he was no more than three or four and twenty, which would be about the year 1348; but the earliest office which there is the evidence of records for his having held, is that of clerk of all the king's works in his manors of Henle and Yesthampsted, his patent for which is dated 10th of May, 1356. On the 30th of October in the same year he was made surveyor of the king's works at the castle and in the park of Windsor.

It is affirmed by a contemporary writer to have been at his instigation that King Edward pulled down and rebuilt great part of Windsor Castle.

Wykeham had the sole superintendence of the work. Queenborough Castle, in the Isle of Sheppy, was also built under his direction.

The king now began to reward him bountifully. He had probably taken deacon's orders at an early age; Lowth finds him designated 'clericus,'

or clerk, in 1352. It was not, however, till the 5th of December, 1361, that he was admitted to the order of acolyte: he was ordained sub-deacon on the 12th of March, 1362, and priest on the 12th of June following.

Meanwhile his first ecclesiastical preferment, the rectory of Pulham in Norfolk, had been conferred upon him by the king's presentation on the 30th of November, 1357. On the 1st of March, 1359, he was presented by the king to the prebend of Flixton, in the church of Lichfield. On the 16th of April following he had a grant of 200_l._ a year from the crown, over and above all his former appointments, till he should get quiet possession of the church of Pulham, his induction into which living had been opposed by the court of Rome. On the 10th of July in the same year, he was appointed chief warden and surveyor of the king's castles of Windsor, Leeds, Dovor, and Hadham, and of the manors of Old and New Windsor, Wichemer, and sundry other castles and manors, with the parks belonging to them. On the 5th of May, 1360, he received the king's grant of the deanery of the royal free chapel or collegiate church of St.

Martin-le-Grand, London. In October, 1360, he attended upon the king at Calais, probably in quality of public notary, when the treaty of Bretigny was solemnly confirmed by the oaths of Edward and King John of France. Numerous additional preferments in the church were heaped upon him in the course of the next three years. By June, 1363, moreover he had been appointed to the office of warden and justiciary of the king's forests on this side Trent. On the 14th of March, 1364, he had by royal grant an a.s.signment of twenty s.h.i.+llings a-day out of the exchequer. On the 11th of May, 1364, he was made keeper of the privy seal, and soon after he is styled secretary to the king, or what we should now call princ.i.p.al secretary of state. In May, 1365, he was commissioned by the king, with the chancellor, the treasurer, and the Earl of Arundel, to treat of the ransom of the King of Scotland (David II., taken at the battle of Nevil's Cross in 1346), and the prolonging of the truce with the Scots. And not long after this he is designated, in a paper printed in the 'Faedera,' chief of the privy council and governor of the great council, which phrases, however, Lowth supposes do not express t.i.tles of office, but only the great influence and authority which he had in those a.s.semblies. "There are several other preferments, both ecclesiastical and civil," adds Lowth, "which he is said to have held; but I do not mention them, because the authorities produced for them are such as I cannot entirely depend upon. And, as to his ecclesiastical benefices already mentioned, the practice of exchanging them was then so common, that 'tis hard to determine precisely which of them he held altogether at any one time." There is extant, however, an account given in by himself on occasion of the bull of Pope Urban V. against pluralities, of the entire number and value of his church benefices, as the matter stood in the year 1366; and from this statement, in which Wykeham calls himself "Sir William of Wykeham, clerk, archdeacon of Lincoln, and secretary of our lord the ill.u.s.trious King of England, and keeper of his privy seal, it appears that the total produce of those which he had held when the account was demanded, was 873_l._ 6_s._ 8_d._, and of those of which he remained in possession when it was given in, 842_l._"

Froissart, speaking of the English court at this period, says, "At this time reigned a priest called William of Wykeham. This William of Wykeham was so much in favour with the King of England, that everything was done by him, and nothing was done without him."

Upon the death of William de Edyngton, on the 8th of October, 1366, Wykeham was immediately, upon the king's earnest recommendation, elected by the prior and convent of Winchester to succeed him as bishop of that see. He was not consecrated till the 10th of October in the year following; but this delay, till an adjustment was effected of the conflicting pretensions of the royal authority and the court of Rome, was evidently occasioned, as Lowth has shown, only by a contention between the king and the pope as to which of them should have the largest share in Wykeham's promotion. Meanwhile he had been appointed by the king lord high chancellor of England; he was confirmed in that office on the 17th of September, 1367.

He continued chancellor till the 14th of March, 1371, when he delivered back to the king both the great and the privy seals, on the change of ministry made in compliance with a pet.i.tion presented shortly before by the Lords and Commons, complaining of the mischiefs which had resulted from the government of the kingdom having for a long time been in the hands of men of the church, and praying that secular men only might be appointed to the princ.i.p.al offices both in the king's courts and household. There is no appearance, however, of this complaint being specially directed against any part of the conduct of the Bishop of Winchester, who a.s.sisted at the ceremony of const.i.tuting his successor in the chancellors.h.i.+p, and seems to have for years after this continued to retain both the favour of the king and the goodwill of the parliament, and even to have remained in habits of intimate and confidential connexion with the Duke of Lancaster, to whose influence the removal of the clergy from the offices of state is said to have been owing.

With reference to the complaint that men of the church filled high civil offices, Lowth observes, "The truth of the matter seems to be, that the laity in general looked with an evil eye upon the clergy, who had of late filled for the most part the great posts of honour and profit in the state; which, as it was obvious to remark, neither lay within their province nor were suitable to their function and character. The practice, however improper in itself and liable to objection, yet seems to have taken its rise from the necessity of the times: the men of abilities had for a long time been chiefly employed abroad in the wars; this was the most open road to riches and honours, and every one was pus.h.i.+ng forward in it. Besides, it was not at any time easy to find among the laity persons properly qualified, in point of knowledge and letters, to fill with sufficiency some of the highest offices. We see the king was now obliged to have recourse to the lawyers: they gave as little satisfaction as the churchmen had done; and in a few years it was found necessary to discharge them, and to call in the churchmen again."

At the period of Wykeham's election to the see of Winchester, the bishops of that diocese had no fewer than twelve different castles or palaces, all furnished and maintained as places of residence. Wykeham's first undertaking after he found himself in possession of the see was to set about a thorough repair of these episcopal houses.