CHAUCER'S LONDON.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlPv4NHe3bw¶

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• Thames Street may have also been the location of Geoffrey Chaucer’s residence. He is believed to have lived at or near 177 Upper Thames Street, though it is a point of contention among many Chaucer experts.

The London of Chaucer's time (the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II.) was a scattered town, spotted as thick with gardens as a common meadow is with daisies. Hovels stood cheek by jowl with stately monasteries, and the fortified mansions in the narrow City lanes were surrounded by citizens' stalls and shops.

 Westminster Palace, out in the suburbs among fields and marshes, was joined to the City walls by that long straggling street of bishops' and nobles' palaces, called the Strand.

 The Tower and the Savoy were still royal residences. In all the West-end beyond Charing Cross, and in all the north of London beyond Clerkenwell and Holborn, cows and horses grazed, milkmaids sang, and ploughmen whistled. 

There was danger in St. John's Wood and Tyburn Fields, and robbers on Hampstead Heath. The heron could be found in Marylebone pastures, and moorhens in the brooks round Paddington. 

Priestly processions were to be seen in Cheapside, where the great cumbrous signs, blazoned with all known and many unknown animals, hung above the open stalls, where the staid merchants and saucy 'prentices shouted the praises of their goods. 

The countless church-bells rang ceaselessly, to summon the pious to prayers. Among the street crowds the monks and men-at-arms were numerous, and were conspicuous by their robes and by their armour.

But of many of those people who paced in Watling Street, or who rode up Cornhill, we have imperishable pictures, true to the life, and rich coloured as Titian's, by Chaucer, in those "Canterbury Tales" he is supposed to have written about 1385 in advanced life, and in his peaceful retirement at Woodstock. 

The pilgrims he paints in his immortal bundle of tales are no ideal creatures, but such real flesh and blood as Shakespeare drew and Hogarth engraved. He drew the people of his age as genius most delights to do; and the fame he gained arose chiefly from the fidelity of the figures with which he filled his wonderful portrait-gallery.

QUESTIONS. Some you have to research

1. What is the Savoy now?

2. Whats his connection with the Bard and Hogarth?

3. What happened to the Tabard?

4. Did Chaucer have a job?

5.Was he old when he wrote The Canterbury Tales?

6. What happened in Tyburn Fields?

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