The story of Chaucer being a member of the Temple, and while there beating the Friar in Fleet Street, is also thought now to be merely legendary. There is no absolute reason for supposing that he was the Chaucer whose name appeared upon the records.

Chaucer's Life, by T. Speght: prefixed to the Black

It seemeth that both of these learned men [Gower and Chaucer] were of the Inner Temple; for not many years since Master Buckley did see a record in Letter Folio the same house where Geoffrey Chaucer was fined two

of 1598.

shillings for beating a Franciscan Friar in Fleet Street.

Chaucer is believed to have been married in the chapel of the Savoy Palace, and to have written certain of his poems in the Palace itself. It stood on the north bank of the Thames, west of Somerset House; and the last remnants of it were removed on the building of the approach to Waterloo Bridge. Its name is retained in Savoy Hill, Savoy Chapel, and Savoy Street, Strand. The present Savoy Chapel was built a century after Chaucer's death, the church in which he was married having stood on the site of the Admiralty Department of Somerset House.

6

Henry Thomas Riley, in his Memorials of London and London Life in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries,' published in 1868, and compiled from the Early Archives of the City of London,' quotes in full the 'Lease to Geoffrey Chaucer of the dwelling house at Aldgate 48 Edward III. A. D. 1374,' as follows:

-:

To all persons to whom this present writing indented shall come: Adam de Bevry, Mayor, the Aldermen and Commonalty of the City of London, Greeting: Know ye that we, with unanimous will and assent, have granted and released by these presents unto Geoffrey Chaucer, the whole of the dwelling house above the gate of Aldgate, with the rooms built over, and a certain cellar beneath the same Gate, on the south side of that Gate, and the appurtenances thereof; to have and to hold the whole of the

house aforesaid, with the rooms so built over and the said cellar and the appurtenances thereof, unto the aforesaid Geoffrey, for the whole life of him the same Geoffrey.

This gate was taken down in 1606; and another, built upon the same spot, was also removed entirely one hundred and fifty years later. Its site, by comparison with contemporary maps and plans, would seem to have been across the present Aldgate, about one hundred feet west of Houndsditch and the Minories, say half-way between Houndsditch and Duke Street on the north side, and between the Minories and Jewry Street on the south; probably at the junction of the parishes of St. Botolph Aldgate and St. Katherine Cree, marked on the house numbered 2 Aldgate in 1885.

Tradition also says that Chaucer wrote his 'Testament of Love' in the Tower, that he spent some of the later years of his life in Thames Street, and that he died in the immediate neighborhood of Westminster Abbey, where, in the Poets' Corner, all that is mortal of him lies.

Memorials of

Geoffrey Chaucer, 'the first illuminer of the English language,' had the lease for a tenement adjoining the White Rose Tavern, which abutted upon the Old Lady Chapel of the M. E. C. Abbey, at a yearly rent of 53s. 4d. from Christmas Walcott's A. D. 1399, for fifty-three years. Here probably he Westmindied, on October 25, 1400. This house, the tavern, and St. Mary's Chapel were demolished in 1502, to give place to the gorgeous Mausoleum of King Henry VII.

ster, p. 219.

Westminster

There is still preserved a lease granted to him by the keeper of the Lady Chapel, which makes over to him a tenement in the garden attached to that building on the ground now Dean covered by the enlarged Chapel of Henry VII. In Stanley's this house he died, October 25th, in the last year of Abbey, the fourteenth century. . . . Probably from the cir- chap. iv. cumstances of his dying so close at hand, combined with the royal favor still continued by Henry IV., he was brought to the

Abbey, and buried, where the functionaries of the monastery were beginning to be interred, at the entrance of St. Benedict's Chapel. There was nothing to mark the grave except a plain slab, which was sawn up when Dryden's monument was erected. . . . It was not until the reign of Edward VI. [1551] that the present tomb, to which apparently the poet's ashes were removed, was raised near the grave by Nicholas Brigham, himself a poet, who was buried close beside, with his daughter Rachel. The inscription closes with the echo of the poet's own expiring counsel Ærumnarum requies mors.' Originally the back of the tomb contained a portrait of Chaucer.

Chaucer's association with the Tabard Inn is well known. In the Canterbury Tales' he says it

"Befel that in that season on a day,
At Southwark at the Tabard as I lay
Ready to wenden on my pilgrimage
To Canterbury with devoute courage
At night we came into that hostelry.'

The original Tabard, known to Chaucer, was taken down early in the seventeenth century. According to Stow (1598), it was amongst the most ancient of the many inns for receipt of travellers in Southwark. It was situated immediately opposite what was at that time known as St. Margaret's Hill. On its site was built a second Tabard, which stood until 1874, and was by many later-day pilgrims believed to be the original. 'The Talbot Inn' was painted above its gateway, and there was also a sign bearing the following inscription: This is the Inne where Sir Jeffry Chaucer and the nine and twenty pilgrims lay, in their journey to Canterbury, Anno 1383.' The latest Tabard, at No. 85 High Street, Borough, on the corner of Talbot Inn Yard, is of no interest in itself, except as marking the site and perpetuating the name of one of the most famous of old London hostelries.