10. A Writer Who Rubbed Some Powerful People the Wrong Way
Nowadays, Chaucer is best known for his literary output. In his day, however, he was also a prominent government official, and a member of the courts of both King Edward III and his successor, King Richard II. Despite such prominence, Chaucer simply vanishes from the historic record after June 5th, 1400, after he signed a receipt for the payment of five pounds. To figure out why, we need to examine the reign of Chaucer’s benefactor, King Richard II. Richard has a bad rap as a tyrannical monarch. However, his reign was a relatively good one for the arts, letters, and even saw some glimmers of religious freedom, or at least tolerance. His reign was certainly good for Chaucer.
That reign ended in 1399, when Richard was deposed by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, who took the crown as King Henry IV, and had his predecessor quietly murdered. The new regime saw the rise of new powerful figures, whose numbers included Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury – England’s most powerful church official. Arundel had not been a fan of Richard II’s religious tolerance, and sought to roll back the religious freedoms of that reign. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales had mocked and depicted the clergy in unflattering terms. That put him in the archbishop’s crosshairs. As seen below, Arundel might have turned to criminal means to do away with a writer he loathed.
