253. For thogh a wydwe hadde noght a sho, etc. Flügel compares Jack Upland's Reply:

"Thi tong likkith the chesefat

And the garner also,

And the pore wedowes porse

Though she have bot a penny."

[Also Gower's Mirour de l'Omme, 21373 sqq., where the Friar 'la maile prent s'il n'ait denier,' takes a halfpenny if he cannot get a penny.]

254. So plesaunt was his In Principio: so pleasant was his reading of the opening verses of the Gospel of S. John, to which a magical value was attached. [As early as 1022 a council held at Seligstadt, near Mainz, forbade lay-folk in general and matrons especially from hearing the Gospel In Principio erat Verbum (John i. 1-14) daily, because of the superstitions connected with it. Gerald of Wales (d. 1222) mentions how the clergy of his day used to say additional Gospels at Low Mass for the sake of obtaining offerings from people who attached special value to some one of them, and he mentions the beginning of S. John as considered especially powerful for driving away ghosts. Unfortunately in the fourteenth century an Indulgence of a year and forty days (see note on the Pardoner) was granted to those who heard or recited this Gospel and at the same time kissed something. This is alluded to in a northern poem of the latter part of the fourteenth century called The Manner ond Mode of the Masse:

"Yit prei ur ladi as I gow telle

That ye foryete not the godspelle

For thing [cp. 1. 276] that may bi-falle.
Tak a good entent ther-to

Hit is the In Principio

In Latin that men calle.

A yere and forti dayes atte lest
For Verbum caro factum est

To pardoun haue ye schalle.

Mon or wommon schal haue this

That kneles doun the eorthe to kis;

For-thi think on hit, alle."

In the fifteenth century the priest was directed to say this Gospel after Mass, but it is clear that in the meantime the friars had begun the practice of saying it, not only in church, but in private houses. In 1401 the author of Jack Upland tells the friars : Ye win more by yere with In Principio than with all the rules that ever your patrones made," and the custom continued, since Tindale in his Answer to Sir Thomas More (1530) alludes to "the limitours saying of In Principio from house to house." (See A Paper on the Usage of a Second Gospel at Mass,' by E. G. C. Atchley, Transactions of the St. Paul's Ecclesiological Society, Vol. IV., 1900.)]

I

256. His purchas was wel bettre than his rente. The proceeds of his begging were much greater than the rent or 'ferme' (see note to 1. 252) he paid to his convent, i.e. he made a considerable profit for himself.

258. In love-dayes ther koude he muchel helpe. Lovedays were days appointed for the settlement of disputes by arbitration. [Dr. Skeat gives a reference to a good illustrative quotation, Paston Letters, 341: Friar Brackley to John Paston, 'Lord Skalys hathe made a lofeday with the prior and Heydon in alle materys except the matere of Snarying &c. And the seyd pryor spake maysterly to the jurrorys and told hem and [i.e. if] they had dred God and hurt of here sowlys, they wold haf some instruccyon of the one party as wele as of the other. But they were so bold they were not aferd,' etc. Dr. Flügel quotes from Wyclif censure of priests for meddling at lovedays and maintaining the wrong cause there, and of 'grete men' who 'meyntenen debatis at louedaies and who so may be strengere wil haue his wille don.'] The Friar helped at lovedays either by bringing influence to bear on jurors, or by himself acting as umpire.

261. But he was lyk a maister, or a pope: the degree of Master or Doctor not only required a long course of study, but also a lavish expense in feasting and presents. This made those who could afford to take it rank as very dignified persons indeed.

263. That rounded as a belle out of the presse: Dr. Skeat explains 'presse' as 'the mould in which a bell is cast.' But a press and a mould are surely quite different things. The meaning seems to be that the cope was flat enough when it was in the clothes-press, but when taken out of press and put on the portly friar it immediately became as round as a bell.

THE MERCHANT.

The Ellesmere picture of the Merchant shows him in his 'motteleye' dress of red, lined with blue, and embroidered with blue and white flowers,-perhaps rather a gayer dress, and with more fashionable boots than Chaucer intended. From the mention of Middelburgh (see quotation from Prof. Hales in note to l. 277) it is probable that he was a Merchant of the Staple, and engaged not merely in inland but in foreign trade. The Staple was a government organization, dating probably from the reign of Edward I., which fixed the town or towns in which the staple' products of England, such as wool, hides, and tin, might be sold to foreigners, so as to facilitate the collection of customs. When Chaucer was writing the foreign staple was at Middelburgh, and the Merchant would have to transport his goods thither, and desired that the sea should be well guarded that they might go in safety. Until the reign of Edward III. the most important merchants in England were foreigners, but in his reign there were many English merchants of great wealth.

Chaucer's would not have ranked with these.

He was in debt, we are told, and he seems to have made his profits (see note to 1. 278) by questionable means.

275. Sownynge alway thencrees of his wynnyng. 'Sownynge,' sounding, tending to. The Merchant gave his 'resons' or opinions, on English policy, and these were always affected by his idea as to what would be good for trade and so conduce to the increase of his own profits. His talk was thus the opposite of the Clerk's whose speech was 'sownynge in moral vertu" (1. 307).

276. He wolde the see were kept for any thing. He desired that no matter what might happen ('for anything') the sea should be guarded. This keeping of the sea was the king's duty, 'the old subsidy of tonnage and poundage,' as Tyrwhitt notes, being granted him for this purpose. But the royal ships did not always suffice, for in 1378 a Scotch pirate did such harm to English commerce that one of the rich London merchants, John Philipot, hired ships at his own expense and cleared the sea.

277. Bitwixe Middelburgh and Orewelle. Middleburgh is in the isle of Walcheren, nearly opposite the mouth of the Orwell on the Dutch coast. Prof. J. W. Hales, in his Folia Litteraria (Seeley, 1893, p. 100) writes: "We are told of the Merchant that he thought it of prime moment that the passage from Harwich to Middelburgh

should be swept clear of pirates. Why Middelburgh? The answer to this query proves that the Prologue must have been written not before 1384 and not later than 1388. In 1384 the wool staple was removed from Calais and established at Middelburgh; in 1388 it was fixed once more at Calais (see Craik's History of British Commerce, i. 123). The said wool staple led a somewhat nomad life in the fourteenth century: it was at different times established at Bruges and Antwerp, not to mention various towns in England, but its only sojourn at Middelburgh was that in the years 1384-8; and so only just at that time could the Merchant's words have their full significance.

278. Wel koude he in eschaunge sheeldes selle: Prof. Flügel notes that by selling at a profit the French crowns (called 'sheeldes,' from having a shield on one side of them) which he received for his goods the Merchant was breaking a statute of Edward III. which forbade anyone to make a profit on exchange, except the royal money changers (25 Edward III., Stat. 5. c. 12). Nowadays the rate of exchange between coins of different countries varies primarily with the balance of trade, but in Chaucer's time there were other variations due to the constant tampering with the coinage, and these variations would offer increased chances of profit. The real insinuation, however, appears to be that under colour of 'exchange' the Merchant made bargains which involved usury. Flügel quotes from an Ordinance against Usurers of 38 Edward III. (Liber Albus, ed. Riley, p. 319): "certain persons who... maintain the false and abominable contract of usury, under cover and colour of good and lawful trading; which kind of contract, the more subtly to deceive the people, they call 'exchange' or 'chevisance"" (cf. 1. 282).

284. I noot how men hym calle. Chaucer's parade of his ignorance of the Merchant's name is supposed to suggest something of a courtier's contempt for 'city-people.' We may find another reason for his not giving a name in the suspicions he casts on the Merchant's dealings.

THE CLERK.

The term Clerk was applied to any ecclesiastical student, and though Chaucer's Clerk had long applied himself to Logic, the principal subject in the Arts course at all medieval universities, we may think of him as a young man, since twelve or thirteen was the usual age for boys to go to the university. He was still in need of his friends' help to pursue his studies (1. 299), perhaps with a view to taking up the long course in Theology, but had probably taken his bachelor's degree in Arts at Oxford, and perhaps been abroad, according to the peripatetic habits of the day, to learn from foreign teachers. If we were to take the prologue to his Tale of Grisilde literally we should have to say that he had been at Padua, where there was a famous university with many foreign students, since he

tells us that he had there met Petrarch. But this was more probably a piece of Chaucer's own experience, and some writers have founded on it a theory that in the character of the Clerk he is really describing himself. For this there is very little to be said, for Chaucer, though he could appreciate the Clerk's unworldliness, was certainly not a man of the same stamp, and would probably have preferred many books to those of Aristotle and his philosophie,' not to men

tion that he was not an ecclesiastic but a very busy servant of the Crown, the very thing he praises his Clerk for not being. The Ellesmere picture of the Clerk is one of the least successful. Justice is done to the leanness of the horse, but that is all. We may be sure that the Clerk would not have carried his precious books about with him in this promiscuous fashion, and the violet garment he is wearing can hardly be a 'courtepy.'

دو

285. Oxenford, "Oxford, as if 'the ford of the oxen' (A.S. Oxnaford); and it has not been proved that this etymology is wrong (Skeat's note).

291. For he hadde geten hym yet no benefice: Dr. Flügel suggests that the Clerk did not wish for a benefice, because the work