'The Knight', from Rigby and Minnis, eds, Historians on Chaucer

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Chapter 3

The Knight

Stephen H. Rigby*

A ‘worthy’ Knight?

The crusading Knight, the first of the pilgrims to be described in the ‘GeneralPrologue’, provides a particularly good starting point for an historicalanalysis of Chaucer’s text as all three of the main interpretations of thepoet’s moral and social outlook set out in Chapter 1—Chaucer as conser-vative, Chaucer as sceptical or radical, and Chaucer as open-ended—havebeen applied to him. Firstly, for those such as Alcuin Blamires for whomChaucer is conservative in his social attitudes, the Knight is presented to us asan ideal representative of the bellatores whose responsibility, in the traditionaltripartite, estate-based ideology of medieval society, was to defend thecommunity against its foes.1 By contrast, other writers have seen the Knightas a much less admirable character. Terry Jones, for instance, has argued that,

* In writing this chapter, I have benefitted greatly from the comments and advice of RosalindBrown-Grant, Samuel Gibbs, Colin Imber, David Matthews, Alastair Minnis, Robert Nash,Carole Rawcliffe, Nigel Saul, and Craig Taylor. Any errors remain my own responsibility.

1 Alcuin Blamires, ‘Chaucer the Reactionary: Ideology and the General Prologue to theCanterbury Tales’, Review of English Studies, n.s., 51 (2000), pp. 523–39, at 527–8; Stephen H. Rigby,Chaucer in Context: Society, Allegory and Gender (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), p. 29;John H. Pratt, Chaucer and War (Lanham: University of America Press, 2000), pp. 210–11; GeraldMorgan, ‘The Worthiness of Chaucer’s Worthy Knight’, ChR., 44 (2009–10), pp. 115–58. See alsoCharles Moorman, A Knyght There Was: The Evolution of the Knight in Literature (Lexington: Universityof Kentucky Press, 1967), pp. 81, 95.

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far from being an ideal crusader, the Knight was actually a mercenaryadventurer who, rather than fighting for his own country, happily sold hisservices to Muslims in North Africa and Turkey, and who fought against hisfellow Christians in Russia.2 More recently, John Hirsh has claimed thatwhile they might not accept Jones’s argument in its entirety, ‘relatively fewChaucerians’ would now regard the Knight as being presented straightfor-wardly as a noble warrior. Indeed, in a sense, Hirsh offers a more radicalinterpretation than Jones when he argues that Chaucer did not simply depictthe Knight as failing to live up to the chivalric ideals of the day but ratherchallenged the ideological orthodoxy of the time by suggesting that thoseideals themselves were perhaps flawed.3 Finally, in line with Jill Mann’sreading of Chaucer, Winthrop Wetherbee sees the description of the Knightas an illustration of the broader lack of any ‘consistent moral or satiricaldesign’ in the ‘General Prologue’, and as invitation for us to ‘question thestatus of the Knight and his values’ in the context of English society inthe late fourteenth century.4 How far does a knowledge of late-medievalcrusading and, no less importantly, of contemporary attitudes to such ‘holywars’ help us to resolve these debates about the meaning of Chaucer’s text?

Crusading in the later Middle Ages

The description of the Knight in the ‘General Prologue’ seems to ascribe tohim all of the virtues which were conventionally expected of knights inmedieval chivalric treatises, estates literature and courtly romances.5 Just asthe hero of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde is said to possess all the qualitieswhich are pleasing to virtue—‘trouthe and alle gentilesse,/Wisdom, honour,

2 Terry Jones, Chaucer’s Knight: The Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary (revised edition, London: EyreMethuen, 1994), pp. ix–xv, xx–xxii.

3 John C. Hirsh, Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003),pp. 45–8, 54.

4 Jill Mann, Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973),pp. 106–15, 189–201; Winthrop Wetherbee, The Canterbury Tales (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1989), pp. 24–6.

5 Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 9–17; Pratt, Chaucer andWar, pp. 77–83.


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fredom and worthinesse’ (II: 159–61)—so Chaucer’s ‘wys’, ‘worthy’, and‘gentil’ Knight seems to be a paragon of chivalry in loving ‘Trouthe, andhonour, fredom and curteisie’ (I: 43, 46, 68, 72).6 Given this apparentcelebration of his virtues, disagreements about the Knight’s worthinessthen inevitably revolve around the question of whether the praise which islavished upon him in the ‘General Prologue’ is implicitly undermined whenseen in the context of the historical details which are so prominent in hisportrait. After all, as Geoffrey of Vinsauf argued in his Poetria Nova, texts canoften seem to say one thing whilst actually suggesting another, so that thestatement which explicitly asserts that someone is ‘a very good man’ mayalso hint that, in reality, he is ‘very bad’.7 Certainly, if we regard the battles inwhich the Knight has been involved as a series of ‘appalling massacres’involving ‘sadism and pillage’, we will be prompted to question the virtueof a man who seems to ‘kill people for a living’.8 In other words, a centralissue in interpreting this literary text is the historical question of whatoccurred at these battles and—of even greater importance—of what inter-pretive frameworks were available to Chaucer’s contemporaries in order tomake sense of these events.

The Knight, with his record of combat in many crusader-battles, is oftencontrasted with his son, the Squire, who has fought in the Hundred YearsWar (I: 85–6), and is consequently taken as an indication that Chaucersupported the policy of contemporaries such as Philippe de Mezieres whosought peace between France and England and who preferred war against the‘infidel’ to the spilling of Christian blood.9 Despite Christ’s command to ‘loveyour enemies’ (Matthew 5: 43), medieval Christian theologians found littledifficulty in justifying warfare as long as it was waged in the name of alegitimate authority and was carried out in the interests of justice and thecommon good. From the end of the eleventh century, such just wars hadincluded crusades, i.e. holy wars, authorized by the pope on Christ’s’ behalfin which anyone who had taken a vow to bear arms was granted various

6 See the similar list in the ‘Knight’s Tale’, I: pp. 2789–90.7 Ernest Gallo, The Poetria Nova and its Sources in Early Rhetorical Doctrine (The Hague: Mouton,

1971), pp. 96–7.8 Jones, Chaucer’s Knight, pp. 2, 42–4; Hirsh, Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales, p. 46.9 See, for instance, Peter Coss, The Knight in Medieval England, 1000–1400 (Stroud: Alan Sutton,

1993), p. 151; Paul A. Olson, The Canterbury Tales and the Good Society (Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1986), pp. 31–4.


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temporal privileges, such as a moratorium on the repayment of debt, as wellas an indulgence which offered the remission of his sins. Far from being atodds with Christianity, the crusades were presented from the start as an actof Christian charity and love.10 Accordingly, rather than criticizing thoseknights who went off to kill the heathen, fourteenth-century preachers suchas John Bromyard and contemporary estates satires such as The Simonieactually attacked those who were reluctant to take the cross and whopreferred the luxury of life at home to the hardships and dangers ofcrusading.11 Similarly, the hero of a romance such as Sir Isumbras could beshown as proving his virtue by fighting for a Christian king against theSaracens, killing their sultan and many other ‘hethen houndes’.12

At one time, historians tended to regard support for crusading as being indecline from the mid-fourteenth century as the practice of arms becameassociated with patriotism and royal policy rather than with piety.13 Yet, infact, although the fall of Acre in 1291 put an end to campaigns in the HolyLand itself, English knights and nobles continued to fight as crusaderselsewhere, and crusading remained central to the chivalric ideal throughoutthe fourteenth century.14 As late as the 1390s, when Philippe de Mezieres wasseeking support for his Order of the Passion which sought to end the papalschism and the Hundred Years’ War by uniting Christendom in a new

10 Stephen H. Rigby, Wisdom and Chivalry: Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale and Medieval Political Theory(Leiden: Brill, 2013, corrected edition), pp. 186–8; Frederick H. Russell, The Just War in the MiddleAges (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 32–3, 78, 94–5, 113–26, 184, 253–7, 288–9,294–6; Elizabeth Siberry, Criticism of Crusading 1095–1274 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), pp. 209–12;Norman Housley, Contesting the Crusades (Malden: Blackwell, 2006), Chapter 1; Craig Taylor,Chivalry and the Ideals of Knighthood in France during the Hundred Years War (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press), pp. 111–13.

11 Gerald R. Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1961, revisededition), pp. 316, 330–3, 412; The Simonie: A Parallel-Text Edition, eds Dan Ambree and ElizabethUrquhart (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1991), A: pp. 242–52; B: pp. 313–24; C: pp. 283–94.

12 Six Middle English Romances, ed. Maldwyn Mills (London: Everyman, 1973), ll. pp. 482–3.13 John Barnie, War in Medieval Society: Social Values and the Hundred Years War, 1337–99 (London:

Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974), pp. 61, 86–8, 124–5 (but see also 170, n. 91).14 Maurice Keen, ‘Chaucer’s Knight, the English Aristocracy and the Crusade’, in Vincent

J. Scattergood and James W. Sherborne, eds, English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages (London:Duckworth, 1983), pp. 45–61; Elizabeth Porter, ‘Chaucer’s Knight, the Alliterative Morte Arthurand the Medieval Laws of War’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 27 (1983), pp. 57–78, at 73–8; TimothyGuard, Chivalry, Kingship and Crusade: The English Experience in the Fourteenth Century (Woodbridge:Boydell, 2013), pp. 1–4, 14, 17.


The Knight / 45


crusade to recover the Holy Land, those said to be sympathetic to his projectin England included three royal dukes, seven other peers and sixteenknights.15 As part of their peace negotiations at this time, the kings ofEngland and France were planning joint crusades, the first of which wasintended to be led by John of Gaunt and the Duke of Burgundy, with the aimof countering the Ottoman offensive in the Balkans and, eventually, ofliberating the Holy Land. English and French knights also fought side-by-sideon the Duke of Bourbon’s ‘Barbary Crusade’ of 1390.16 The real turning-pointsfor crusading enthusiasm came not in 1291 or during the mid-fourteenthcentury but in 1396, when the Ottoman Turks inflicted a disastrous defeat onthe Christian forces at Nicopolis, and 1410, when the Lithuanians achieved adecisive victory over the Teutonic Order at Tannenburg.17

This is not to say that everyone in Chaucer’s England was in favour ofwaging war in Christ’s name. On the contrary, developing the pacifism ofJohn Wyclif ’s later writings, the ‘Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards’ (1395),condemned all those who incurred the wrath of God by committing acts ofhomicide, including those who hastened to heathen lands ‘to geten hem aname in sleinge of men’.18 Nevertheless, such unqualified pacifism andopposition to crusading seems to have been unusual in the social circles ofwhich Chaucer was a member. For example, whilst Chaucer’s friend JohnGower extolled peace as ‘the beste above alle erthely thinges’ in his ‘In Praise

15 Philippe de Mezieres, Letter to King Richard II: A Plea Made in 1395 for Peace between England andFrance, ed. George W. Coopland (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1975); Adrian Bell,‘English Members of the Order of the Passion: Their Political, Military and Diplomatic Signifi-cance’, in Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Kiril Petrov, eds, Philippe de Mezieres and his Age: Piety andPolitics in the Fourteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 321–46, at 321.

16 John J. N. Palmer, England, France and Christendom, 1377–1399 (London: Routledge and KeganPaul, 1972), pp. 14, 149–50, 180–91, 197–207; Adrian R. Bell,War and the Soldier in the Fourteenth Century(Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1004), p. 28; Guard, Chivalry, Kingship and Crusade, pp. 57–65.

17 Nigel Saul, For Honour and Fame: Chivalry in England, 1066–1500 (London: Bodley Head, 2011),pp. 229–30, 236; Norman Housley, ‘The Crusading Movement, 1274-1700’, in Jonathan Riley-Smith, ed., The Oxford History of the Crusades (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 258–90, at275–6; Christopher Tyerman, England and the Crusades, 1095–1588 (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1988), p. 259; Eric Christiansen, The Northern Crusades (London: Penguin, 1997, revisededition), pp. 228–30.

18 Anthony Kenny, Wyclif (Oxford: Oxford University press, 1985), pp. 97–8; Jones, Chaucer’sKnight, pp. xx–xxi, 35–6; Selections from English Wycliffite Writings, ed. Anne Hudson (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 23–4, 28, 150, 154; Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation:Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), pp. 37, 91, 141, 368–70.




of Peace’, he also allowed that kings were entitled to wage war in order todefend their rights and that knights could bear arms against the Saracens,‘which unto Crist be lothe’.19 Similar attitudes were to be found evenamongst those who were—or who were accused of being—sympathetic tothe heretical doctrines of John Wyclif and the Lollards.20 Thus, althoughChaucer’s friend Sir John Clanvowe denounced the esteem which the worldbestowed on warriors who ‘distroyen and wynnen manye londis’, Clanvowehimself was one of a number of the so-called ‘Lollard knights’ at the court ofRichard II who had gained wealth and honour by fighting in the king’swars.21 Of even greater significance, both Clanvowe and William Neville,another of the Lollard knights, were amongst those English lords, knights,and esquires ‘of the greatest distinction’ who obtained permission fromRichard II to join the ‘Barbary Crusade’ of 1390.22 Of the five other leading‘Lollard knights’, one Lewis Clifford, a close friend of Chaucer, was asupporter of de Mezieres’s Order of the Passion and was present on the‘Barbary Crusade’ of 1390 while another, Sir John Montagu, fought in Prussia

19 John Gower, ‘In Praise of Peace’, ll. pp. 57–63, 192–6, 249–52, in The Complete English Works ofJohn Gower, ed. George C. Macaulay, Volume II, E.E.T.S., e.s., p. 82 (1901); Elizabeth Siberry,‘Criticism of Crusading in Fourteenth-Century England’, in Peter W. Edbury, ed. Crusade andSettlement: Papers Read at the First Conference of the Society of the Study of the Crusades and the Latin Eastand Presented to R.C. Smail (Cardiff: University College Cardiff Press, 1985), pp. 127–34, at 129–30.See also John Gower, ‘Mirour de l’Omme or Speculum Hominis’, in The Complete Works of JohnGower: The French Works, ed. George C. Macaulay (Oxford: Clarendon, 1899), ll. pp. 23593–24180,especially ll. 23893–964, 24157–63; John Gower, ‘Vox Clamantis’, V: p. 1; V: p. 7; VI: pp. 9,13–14, in The Complete Works of John Gower: The Latin Works, ed. George C. Macaulay (Oxford:Clarendon, 1901); John Gower, ‘Confessio Amantis’, VII: pp. 3594–626, in The Complete EnglishWorks of John Gower, ed. George C. Macaulay, two volumes, E.E.T.S., e.s., p. 81 (1900), p. 82(1901).

20 For an introduction to Lollardy, see Stephen H. Rigby, English Society in the Later Middle Ages:Class, Status and Gender (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), pp. 236–9.

21 Sir John Clanvowe. ‘The Two Ways’, in The Works of Sir John Clanvowe, ed. VincentJ. Scattergood (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1975), ll. pp. 481–91; Kenneth B. McFarlane, LancastrianKings and Lollard Knights (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), pp. 177–9. See also the call to disendow thechurch in order to pay for more nobles, knights, and squires to defend the realm in the Lollard‘Disendowment Bill’ (Selections from English Wycliffite Writings, pp. 135–6).

22 The Westminster Chronicle, 1381–1394, eds Leonard C. Hector and Barbara F. Harvey (Oxford:Clarendon, 1982), pp. 432–3, 448–51, 480–1; Guard, Chivalry, Kingship and Crusade, pp. 50–1, 81,132–3, 142. In 1380, Clanvowe and Neville were both amongst the witnesses to Cecily Cham-pain’s release to Chaucer in relation to her raptus (Chaucer Life-Records, pp. 343, 347).


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alongside the Teutonic Order.23 Similarly, while John of Gaunt, Duke ofLancaster, may have been the protector and patron of John Wyclif, he wasalso a keen supporter of crusading which was seen as a matter of ‘highseriousness’ in his circle.24 Like Clanvowe and Gower, Chaucer also seems tohave favoured peace as a matter of principle whilst recognizing that violence,on occasion, was still called for. Thus, even though Chaucer’s ‘The FormerAge’ looked back nostalgically to a lost time of primitive human innocencewhich knew nothing of warfare, homicide, the spear or the edge ofthe sword, his ‘Lak of Stedfastnesse’ nonetheless urged Richard II to restorerighteousness by brandishing his ‘swerd of castigacioun’.25 If Chaucer valuedpeace whilst accepting that warfare was sometimes necessary, the keyquestion issue becomes whether his portrait of the Knight suggests thatthe poet shared the abhorrence of crusading bloodshed found in the ‘TwelveConclusions’ or whether its outlook is more in line with the crusading idealsof men such as Clanvowe, Clifford, Neville, and Montagu.

The Knight in Spain and North Africa

Chaucer’s Knight is said to have been in combat in three theatres of war inwhich English crusaders fought during the poet’s own lifetime: Spain andNorth Africa, the eastern Mediterranean, and the Baltic. In Spain, he servedat ‘Algezir’ in ‘Gernade’ (I: 56–7). The port of Algeciras, in the Muslimkingdom of Granada, was central to the drawn-out struggle for control ofthe Straits of Gibraltar which was fought between Castile, Granada and theMuslim kingdom of Morocco. It finally surrendered to Alfonso XI, king ofCastile, in 1344, after a siege which had lasted for almost two years, at which

23 McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights, pp. 177–83; The Complete Peerage, Volume XI,revised by Geoffrey H. White (London: St Catherine Press, 1949), p. 391; Siberry, ‘Criticism ofCrusading in Fourteenth-Century England’, pp. 128–9; Bell, ‘English Members of the Order ofthe Passion’, pp. 337–8; Westminster Chronicle, pp. 432–3, 448–51, 480–1; Guard, Chivalry, Kingship andCrusade, pp. 59–63, 80–5.

24 Anthony Goodman, John of Gaunt: The Exercise of Princely Power in Fourteenth-Century Europe(Harlow: Longman, 1992), pp. 136, 175, 200–3, 241–2, 247, 274–5.

25 Chaucer, ‘The Former Age’, ll. pp. 19, 23, 39–40, 49, 63; Chaucer, ‘Lak of Stedfastnesse’,l. p. 26.




point Alfonso was congratulated by Edward III on the success of his divinely-backed efforts.26 Alfonso’s papally approved campaign seems to have inspiredwidespread crusading enthusiasm, and support arrived for him from Cata-lonia, Navarre, France, Germany, and England.27 In particular, those presentat Algeciras included Henry of Grosmont, Earl of Derby, who later becamethe first duke of Lancaster, and William Montagu, Earl of Salisbury, both ofwhom played an active military role in the siege. The earls and theirfollowers had been sent there by Edward III on a diplomatic mission togain Castilian support against France, but they are also are described inEnglish royal records as ‘fighting against the enemies of God and Christianity’.The Spanish Cronica del Rey Alfonso el Onceno hails the earls as ‘valiant knights’who arrived with their ‘brave companies’ to fight the Moors ‘for the salvationof their souls’.28 Knighton’s Chronicle, written after 1377 by a canon of LeicesterAbbey loyal to the House of Lancaster, claimed that the ‘noble’ Earl Henryhad twice fought against the ‘infidel’ at Algeciras and that he had acquittedhimself ‘with distinction’.29 It appears that in Chaucer’s own day,the Knight’s participation in this campaign would still have enhanced hisreputation as an honourable and worthy man.

That the Knight has fought in ‘Belmarye’ (I: 57), the area of North Africacontrolled by the Marinid (or Banu Marin) rulers of Morocco, has been seen

26 Jocelyn N. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, 1250–1516, Volume I, 1250–1410: Precarious Balance(Oxford: Clarendon, 1976), pp. 20, 291, 315, 327–9, 343–4; Pratt, Chaucer and War, pp. 99–101; Foedera,III/I, p. 13.

27 Cronica di Giovanni Villani, Volume IV, ed. Francesco G. Dragomanni (Florence: Sanson Coen,1845), pp. 57–8; Chronicon Angliae, ab anno domini 1328 usque ad annum 1388 auctore monachi quodam SanctiAlbani, ed. Edward M. Thompson (London: Rolls Series, 1874), p. 16; Thomae Walsingham, QuodamMonachi S. Albani; Historia Anglicana, Volume I: 1272–1381, ed. Henry T. Riley (London: Rolls Series,1863), p. 262; Philipppe de Mezieres, Le Songe du Vieil Pelerin, ed. George W. Coopland (2 volumes;Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), I: pp. 512–13; Leonard P. Harvey, Islamic Spain: 1250to 1500 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 199; Guard, Chivalry, Kingship and Crusade, 10,pp. 53–5.

28 ‘Cronica del Rey Alfonso el Onceno’, ed. Cayetano Rosell, in Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles, 66(Madrid: M. Rivadeneyra, 1875), pp. 171–392, at 360, 364; Norman Housley, The Later Crusades,1274–1530: From Lyons to Alcazar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 278–82; KennethFowler, The King’s Lieutenant: Henry Grosmont, First Duke of Lancaster, 1310–1361 (London: Elek, 1969),p. 45; Albert S. Cook, ‘The Historical Background of Chaucer’s Knight’, Transactions of theConnecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 20 (1916), pp. 161–240, at 221–8; Foedera, II/II, pp. 343, 1232;Foedera, III/I, 8; CCR 1343–46, p. 226.

29 Knighton’s Chronicle, 1337–1396, ed. Geoffrey H. Martin (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), pp. 46–7.


The Knight / 49


as suggesting that he sometimes fought as a mercenary, as there were nocrusades there area during this period.30 However, it may be significant thatChaucer links this venture with the siege of Algeciras (I: 56–7), as the twoEnglish earls who were present at the siege also ‘accompanied the admiral ofthe Castilian fleet, Egidio Boccanegra, when he descended on the Africancoast with a fleet of galleys to attack the Moorish fleet off Ceuta’ inMorocco.31 In Middle English, ‘riden’ can mean ‘raided’ or ‘sailed’, and oneof these senses may be applicable when the Knight is said to have ‘riden inBelmarye’ (I: 57).32 If so, when Chaucer listed ‘Algezir’ and ‘Belmarye’amongst the Knight’s campaigns, he was referring to events which involvedtwo of the most famous knights of the age.33

The Knight has also fought ‘at Tramyssene/In lystes thries, and ay slaynhis foo’ (I: 62–3). ‘Tramyssene’ is probably the city of Tlemcen, in theZayyanid kingdom of the same name, in what is now western Algeria.34

An initial question is why a Christian knight would have been in Tlemcen inthe first place, given that this was not an area of crusading in the fourteenthcentury. The conflicts which took place here were mainly between theMarinid sultans of ‘Belmarye’ and the Zayyanid rulers of ‘Tramyssene’,although, at various times, Tlemcen was also at war with the Hafsids tothe west, as well as suffering from internal tribal and dynastic conflict. It istherefore perfectly possible that an English knight could have been employedby one Muslim to fight against another in this period.35 Certainly, the rulers

30 Jones, Chaucer’s Knight, pp. ix, 64–8. Bowden claims that ‘Froissart mentions a number ofexpeditions’ to the area (Muriel Bowden, A Commentary on the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales(New York: Macmillan, 1948), pp. 53, 71 n. 46), but none of the references she gives are tocrusades which actually took place (Froissart, Oeuvres, VII: p. 93; IX: p. 429; XIV: p. 433; XVII:p. 424–5).

31 ‘Cronica del Rey Alfonso el Onceno’, p. 370; Fowler, The King’s Lieutenant, p.45.32 M.E.D., ‘ride’, senses 4 and 7, <http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/> (accessed 31 January

2013).33 Fowler, The King’s Lieutenant, p. 105; John Capgrave, Liber de illustribus Henricis, ed. Francis

C. Hingeston (London: Rolls Series, 1858), pp. 161–4.34 Variorum GPIB, p. 75. For alternative identifications of ‘Tramyssene’ see Claire-Eliane Engel,

‘Les croisades du chevalier’, Revue des Sciences Humaines, 30 (1965), pp. 577–85, at 583–4.35 Jones, Chaucer’s Knight, pp. 67–8, 78–9. For the history of the region in this period, see

Nehemia Levtzion, ‘The Western Maghrib and Sudan’, in Roland Oliver, The Cambridge History ofAfrica, Volume 3: From c.1050 to c.1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 331–462 at356–69; Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, A History of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1987), pp. 139–41.




of Tlemcen were happy to hire Christian mercenaries, although these weremainly Catalan rather than English or northern European.36 Fighting onbehalf of a non-Christian lord in this way was not necessarily forbidden toChristian knights. According to John of Salisbury’s Policraticus, ‘it makes nodifference whether a solider serves one of the faithful or an infidel so long ashe serves without impairing or violating his own faith’.37 Thus, Froissartregarded it as perfectly unexceptionable that in 1382 the Muslim king ofGranada should seek to employ English and French knights in his waragainst the kings of ‘Barbary’ and ‘Traneseinnes’, even though only a fewEnglish knights who had been with the Earl of Cambridge in Portugalactually seized this opportunity to ‘seek adventures’.38 Similarly, in 1388Marshal Boucicaut, one of the most famous chivalric figures of the age andhimself a noted crusader who campaigned three times in Prussia and laterfought against the Ottomans at Nicopolis, stayed for three months with theOttoman sultan, Murad I, where he was honoured by the sultan and, inreturn, offered to fight on his behalf against other Saracens.39

Moreover, far from disapproving of the Knight’s presence in ‘Tramyssene’,the ‘General Prologue’ specifies that whilst he was there he ‘foughten foroure feith’ three times in the lists ‘and ay slayn his foo’ (I: 62–3).40 To ‘seek toprove religious truth by force of arms’ as the Knight is said to have done, isnow likely to seem ‘manifestly an absurd idea’.41 Yet contemporaries did notnecessarily share this opinion, as can be seen from a celebrated incidentwhich occurred during the Duke of Bourbon’s ‘Barbary Crusade’ of 1390

36 Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, Volume I, pp. 159, 247–8.37 Ioannis Saresberiensis Episcopi Carnotensis Policratici Recognovit et Prolegomenis, Apparatu Critico, Commen-

tario, Indicibus Instruxit, ed. Clement C. I. Webb (New York: Arno Press, 1979; reprint of OxfordUniversity Press edition of 1909),VI: p. 9; The Statesman’s Book of John of Salisbury, ed. John Dickinson(New York: Russell and Russell, 1963), p. 201. Pratt cites the decretist, Huguccio, who allowedChristians to fight for Muslim lords against other non-Christians, but the cases cited byHugoccio were actually of Christians who were prisoners of Muslims or who were under thejurisdiction of Muslim lords (Pratt, Chaucer and War, p. 146; Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages,121–2, p. 196).

38 Froissart, Oeuvres, IX: p. 492; Froissart, Chronicle, III: pp. 297–8.39 Le livre des fais du bon Messire Jehan le Maingre dit Bouciquat, ed. Denis Lalande (Geneva: Droz,

1985), pp. 61–2.40 Geoffrey. A. Lester, ‘Chaucer’s Knight and the Medieval Tournament’, Neophilogus, 66

(1982), pp. 460–8, at 462–3. For a fictional tournament (although not a duel) in which a Christianknight defeats his Saracen opponents, see ‘Sir Isumbras’, ll. pp. 604–12.

41 Jones, Chaucer’s Knight, pp. 81–2.


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when the Saracens proposed that ten of them should fight against tencrusaders to see whose faith was superior.42 Froissart’s chronicle reportsthat once ten crusaders had been selected, all of the other Christian knightsand esquires who were there regretted that they had been overlooked.Although the Lord of Coucy did oppose the staging of this combat, hisobjections were essentially practical—that it had been agreed without theassent of the duke’s council, that it might be a trap and so on—rather than amatter of religious principle. Indeed, he allowed that, if properly arranged,such an event might redound to the crusaders’ ‘honour and profit’. Simi-larly, while Froissart was critical of the hastily arranged assault on thebesieged city of Mahdia which took place after the ten Saracens had failedto appear, he did not criticize the idea of Christian knights responding to theSaracen challenge in this way.43 Thus, whereas the Knight has engaged inbattle against the ‘infidel’ in defence of Christianity and may have cam-paigned on behalf of Muslims against other Muslims in North Africa (and, aswe shall see, was definitely employed in this capacity by the lord of Palatia(I: 64–6)), he has not fought for Muslim rulers against Christian opponents.Indeed, the ‘General Prologue’ does not name any battles in which he wouldhave confronted his fellow Christians (although he is said to have ‘ridden’ inboth ‘cristendom’ and ‘hethenesse’ (I: 48–9)) and, in particular, he is notdescribed as having served in Italy, the favoured battlefield of mercenaries ofthe day, such as the famous Sir John Hawkwood.44

The Knight and Peter of Cyprus

In addition to fighting in Spain and North Africa, the Knight was at‘Alisaundre’, ‘Lyeys’, and ‘Satalye’ when they were ‘wonne’ (I: 51, 58). Eachof these three ports had been taken by Peter I, King of Cyrpus (1359–69), aruler who, according to Froissart, thought night and day of nothing but

42 Variorum GPIB, p. 73; Froissart, Oeuvres, XIV: pp. 241–51; Froissart, Chronicle, V: pp. 412–16.43 Froissart, Oeuvres, XIV: pp. 241–51; Froissart, Chronicle, V: pp. 412–16; Taylor, Chivalry and the

Ideals of Knighthood in France during the Hundred Years War, p. 141; Jones, Chaucer’s Knight, pp. 81–2.44 Pratt, Chaucer and War, pp. 150–5. On Hawkwood, see William Caferro, John Hawkwood: An

English Mercenary in Fourteenth-Century Italy (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006).




recovering the Holy Land.45 The capture of Alexandria, in Egypt, in 1365 wasthe most celebrated of these exploits. Peter’s papally-authorized expeditionhad been preceded by a tour of the courts of Europe to rally support for hiscrusade. Edward III had avoided committing himself to joining the campaignin person but, nonetheless, Froissart and other chroniclers reported thatPeter was honourably received by the king and by many English lords, withthe king paying his expenses whilst in England and lavishing many gifts onhim.46 It has been argued that the capture of Alexandria was achieved againstan unsuspecting civilian population, that those involved were mainly motiv-ated by a desire for plunder, that its fall was followed by an ‘appallingmassacre’ of the city’s inhabitants, and that it became ‘notorious for thedisgrace’ which English knights brought upon themselves by refusing to stayand fight in order to hold onto the city. If we adopt this view, Chaucer’sseeming praise of the Knight’s service with King Peter must inevitably be readas ironic.47 Yet, in fact, while Muhammad al-Nuwairı, an inhabitant ofAlexandria, understandably emphasized the merciless slaughter whichaccompanied the fall of the city, this bloodshed was of no concern tocontemporary Christian commentators from the West.48 For example,although Guillaume de Machaut’s La Prise d’Alexandre (c.1369–77) is extremelycritical of those foreign knights whose reluctance to defend Alexandria oncea Muslim relief force had arrived meant that King Peter had been obliged toabandon the city, it nonetheless describes the king and his men bravelyfighting their way ashore and then forcing their way into the city against fargreater Saracen forces. Far from deploring the massacre that then took place,Machaut revels in the detail of how, with heavenly assistance, Christianforces ‘slaughtered, slashed, and killed’ twenty thousand or more of the

45 Froissart, Oeuvres, XI: p. 231; Froissart, Chronicle, IV: p. 271. For Peter’s other motives, see PeterW. Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191–1374 (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1991), p. 171.

46 Froissart, Chronicle, II: pp. 96–7, 100–1; Froissart, Oeuvres, VI: pp. 380–1, 384–6; John Capgrave’sAbbreuiacion of Chronicles, ed. Peter J. Lucas, E.E.T.S., 285 (1983), pp. 174–5; Knighton’s Chronicle,pp. 186–7; Tyerman, England and the Crusades, pp. 290–1.

47 Jones, Chaucer’s Knight, pp. 2, 42–9; Celia M. Lewis, ‘History, Mission and the Crusade in theCanterbury Tales’, ChR., 42 (2007–8), pp. 353–82, at 353. For these events, see George F. Hill,A History of Cyprus, Volume II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), pp. 330–4; Edbury,The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, pp. 164–7.

48 Aziz S. Atiya, The Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (London: Methuen, 1938), pp. 349, 365–7.


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Saracens.49 Similarly, while Philippe de Mezieres saw the decision to leaveAlexandria as a ‘great betrayal of the Catholic faith’, he still continued torefer to the initial capture of the city against such a stout defence as a‘victory’ which had been won by the grace of God, one in which the king hadraised the banner of the faith against its enemies.50 The accounts of thecapture of the city in Leontios Makharias’s Cypriot chronicle and in Froissartare equally enthusiastic about Peter’s divinely sanctioned achievement.51

Furthermore, whilst Peter Thomas, the papal legate present on Peter’scrusade, and Petrarch, the celebrated Italian poet, both criticized the pusil-lanimity of knights from England and north of the Alps for disobeying KingPeter and for refusing to fight to hold onto Alexandria, English commenta-tors saw the decision to leave the city in a different light, interpreting it as amatter of military necessity rather than as a mark of cowardice.52 After all,following Aristotle’s warning against being so excessively brave that onebecomes rash, medieval authors regularly cautioned knights against riskingtheir lives foolishly or engaging in battles that could not be won.53 In linewith such teachings, Thomas Walsingham’s chronicle has the King Peterdecide to depart from Alexandria on the advice of ‘wise counsel’ whenconfronted by a massive throng of ‘Satan’s followers’, while the AnonimalleChronicle reports that the king’s forces reluctantly left only after they hadbeen warned of the imminent arrival of a huge multitude of Saracens whohad resolved that no Christians should be spared.54 Far from suggesting that

49 Guillaume de Machaut, The Capture of Alexandria, eds Janet Shirley and Peter W. Edbury(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), pp. 62–76, 81–6; The Life of Saint Peter Thomas by Philippe de Mezieres,ed. Joachim Smet (Rome: Institutum Carmelitanum, 1954), pp. 128–40; Atiya, The Crusade in theLater Middle Ages, p. 364.

50 Philipppe de Mezieres, Le Songe du Vieil Pelerin, I: pp. 3, 155, 295–8; II: 91, 101, 227, 419, 436;Philippe de Mezieres, ‘La Sustenance de la Chevalerie de la Passion de Jhesu Christ en Francois’,Bulletin of the Faculty of Arts, Alexandria University, 18 (1964), pp. 43–105, at 77.

51 Leontios Mikhairas, Recital Concerning the Sweet Land of Cyprus Entitled “Chronicle”, ed. RichardM. Dawkins (2 volumes; Oxford: Clarendon, 1932), II: pp. 151–5; Jean Froissart, Chroniques, Livre III:Le Manuscrit Saint Vincent de Besancon, ed. Peter F. Ainsworth (Geneva: Droz, 2007), pp. 330–1;Froissart, Chronicle, IV: p. 227. See also Chaucer, ‘Monk’s Tale’, VII: pp. 2391–5.

52 Pratt, Chaucer and War, pp. 120–2. See also Chronicon Moguntinum, ed. Karl Hegel (Hanover:Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1885), p. 14.

53 For references, see Rigby, ‘Worthy but wise? Virtuous and Non-Virtuous Forms of Couragein the Later Middle Ages’, SAC, 35 (2013), pp. 329–71, at 340–2.

54 Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, I: pp. 301–2; The Anonimalle Chronicle, 1333 to 1381 (Manchester:Manchester University Press, 1970), pp. 51–3; John H. Pratt, ‘Was Chaucer’s Knight Really




English knights were being disgraced by these events, the Anonimalle Chronicletakes care to name some of those who were supposedly in King Peter’s army(the years 1360–9 being a period of truce in the Hundred Years’ War) andnotes the abundance of jewels, treasure, and spices which were to be hadthere.55 Certainly, Nicholas Sabraham showed no sense of shame at havingbeen present at Alexandria when he, like Chaucer, testified in the Court ofChivalry in favour of the Scropes’ right to bear their traditional family armsin the famous Scrope-Grosvenor controversy in the Court of Chivalry. HereSabraham claimed to have seen these arms borne by Stephen Scrope whenthey had both disembarked at Alexandria as part of a force drawn ‘from allChristian countries’, Stephen himself having been knighted by King Peterimmediately on their arrival.56 The continuations of Higden’s Polychroniconalso note how a number of brave English knights and esquires helped to killmany pagans at Alexandria until the arrival of an ‘infinite’ number ofSaracens obliged them to leave, although they did still manage to burndown a great part of the city and carry away much of its wealth as witness totheir ‘victory’.57

Space does not permit a detailed discussion here of the Knight’s presenceat King Peter’s capture of ‘Satalye’ (I: 58), that is Antalya, on the south coastof Turkey, in 1361.58 Suffice to say that, far from objecting to the ‘familiarblood-bath’ which it involved, both Guillaume de Machaut and Froissart sawthe killing of ‘fair women, Turks, children, Saracens, [and] young girls’ by fire

AMercenary?’, ChR., 22 (1987–8), pp. 8–27, at 12; Anthony Luttrell, ‘English Levantine Crusaders,1363-1367’, Renaissance Studies, 2 (1988), pp. 143–53, at 148–50.

55 Anonimalle Chronicle, pp. 51, 170.56 The Controversy between Sir Richard Scrope and Sir Robert Grosvenor in the Court of Chivalry, AD

MCCCLXXXV–MCCXC, Volume II, ed. Sir N. Harris Nicolas (London, 1832), pp. 130, 323–4,411; Adrian R. Bell, ‘The Solider “Hadde He Riden, No Man Ferre” ’, in Adrian R. Bell, AnneCurry and David Simpkin, The Soldier Experience in the Fourteenth Century (Woodbridge: Boydell Press2011), pp. 209–18, at 210–11, 218.

57 Chronicon Ranulphi Higden, Monachi Cestrensis, Volume 8, ed. Joseph R. Lumby (London: RollsSeries, 1882), pp. 365, 437; Chronicon Angliae, p. 56; John Capgrave’s Abbreuiacion of Chronicles, p. 175;Guard, Chivalry, Kingship and Crusade, pp. 40–8. For the right of crusaders to pillage the property ofnon-believers, see Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages, pp. 94–5, 255.

58 Chroniques d’Amadi et de Strambaldi, Seconde Partie: Chronique de Strambaldi, ed. Rene de Mas Latrie(Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1893), pp. 46–7; Housley, The Later Crusades, pp. 39, 193; Hill, A Historyof Cyprus, Volume II, pp. 321–2; Elizabeth A. Zachariadou, Trade and Crusade: Venetian Crete and theEmirates of Menteshe and Aydin (1300–1415) (Venice: Bentia, 1983), p. 67; Pratt, Chaucer and War,pp. 113–14.


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as part of Peter’s admirable project of destroying ‘God’s enemies’.59 Philippede Mezieres and Leontios Makhairas were equally enthusiastic about thisvictory.60 Nor did they regard Peter’s assault on ‘Lyes’ (I: 58), that is Ayas ormodern-day Yumurtalik, in Armenia, in 1367, in which the Knight alsoparticipated, as a ‘worthless fiasco’ or failure.61 On the contrary, Philippe deMezieres acclaimed the taking of this ‘great city’ as another of the ‘triumphs’under the banner of Christ by which King Peter had made himself feared bythe Muslims.62 Similarly, Machaut hailed the destruction wrought by Peteras he fought his way along the coast from Tripoli to Ayas, burning housesand killing everyone whom he could find. He depicted the king bravelyfighting his way ashore at Ayas, but eventually, when his tired, hungry, andinjured men were unable to take the strongly defended castle, as having tomake do with laying waste to adjacent town until ‘all its wealth would nothave bought a little trout’.63 English knights certainly took part in thisengagement, including Humphrey de Bohun, the Earl of Hereford (thefather-in-law of Henry Bolingbroke), and Sir William Scrope.64

Perhaps the most problematic lines in the ‘General Prologue’ for thosecritics who see the Knight as being presented to us as an ideal figure are thosewhich inform us that this ‘worthy knyght’ has not only done battle along-side the crusading King Peter of Cyprus but has also fought under the bannerof the ‘lord of Palatye/Agayn another hethen in Turkeye’ (I: 65–6).65 Palatia,

59 Jones, Chaucer’s Knight, p. 70; Machaut, The Capture of Alexandria, pp. 30–1; Froissart, Chronicle, II:p. 90; Froissart, Oeuvres, VI: p. 362.

60 Philippe de Mezieres, Le Songe du Vieil Pelerin, I: pp. 1, 155, 295–6; II: pp. 91, 227; The Life of SaintPeter Thomas, pp. 96–7; Philippe de Mezieres, ‘La Sustenance de la Chevalerie’, p. 54; Makharias,Recital Concerning the Sweet Land of Cyprus, p. 107.

61 Jones, Chaucer’s Knight, pp. 70–2; Pratt, Chaucer and War, pp. 122–4.62 Philippe de Mezieres, Le Songe du Vieil Pelerin, I: pp. 1, 155, 295–6; Philippe de Mezieres, ‘La

Sustenance de la Chevalerie’, p. 54; Froissart, Chronicle, II: p. 227; Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus andthe Crusades, p. 163.

63 Machaut, The Taking of Alexandria, pp. 50–4; Makhairas, Recital Concerning the Sweet Land of Cyprus,pp. 193–5.

64 Hill, The History of Cyprus, Volume II, pp. 353–4; Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades,p. 162; Machaut, The Taking of Alexandria, p. 147; The Controversy between Sir Richard Scrope and Sir RobertGrosvenor, pp. 105–7, 376.

65 Charles Mitchell, ‘The Worthiness of Chaucer’s Knight’, Modern Language Quarterly, 25 (1964),pp. 66–75, at 69; Jones, Chaucer’s Knight, pp. 87–9; David Aers, Chaucer (Brighton: Harvester, 1986),p. 19; John A. Burrow, ‘The Imparfit Knight’, Times Literary Supplement, no. 4012 (15 February, 1980),p. 163.




which is now Balat in Anatolia, was a port whose lord, the Emir of Menteshe,was known to Westerners as the ‘dominus Palatie’.66 It is not clear preciselywhen an English knight might plausibly be said to have fought for the emir.One possibility is during the civil war which broke out following the death ofIbrahim Beg, the Emir of Menteshe, around 1356–7.67 An alternative date is1389–90, when a campaign by Bayezid I saw Menteshe and the neighbouringemirate of Aydin annexed by the Ottoman sultan.68 It has sometimes beenclaimed that the Knight served with the lord of Palatia because the latter hadformed an alliance with Peter of Cyprus.69 In fact, although the emir didconclude a treaty with King Peter in 1365, this pact obliged him to pay tributeto the king for the safeguarding of his territories, and there is no evidencethat he actually engaged in any joint military ventures with Peter againstother Muslims.70

Does the Knight’s willingness to be employed by the lord of Palatia meanthat he is being criticized in the ‘General Prologue’? Firstly, if we believe thatthe Knight, with his crusading record, stands in contrast to his son, the

66 Zachariadou, Trade and Crusade, 4, pp. 108–9; Hamilton A. R. Gibb et al., eds, The Encyclopaediaof Islam: New Edition, Volume I (Leiden: Brill, 1960), pp. 987–8, 1017–19. Thus Palatia was not, as hasbeen claimed, in conflict with Menteshe but was actually part of it (Stephan Vander Elst, ‘”Tu espelerin en la sainte cite”: Chaucer’s Knight and Philippe de Mezieres’, Studies in Philology, 106 (2009),pp. 379–401, at 391–02; Jones, Chaucer’s Knight, pp. 87–9).

67 Zachariadou, Trade and Crusade, p. 111; Cronica di Matteo Villani, Volume II, ed. FrancesoG. Dragomanni (Florence: Sansone Coen, 1846), p. 341; The Encyclopaedia of Islam: New Edition,Volume I, pp. 1018–19. There is nothing in Chaucer’s text to indicate that the Knight had servedthe emir in 1371–4 (Pratt, Chaucer and War, pp. 124–5).

68 Zachariadou, Trade and Crusade, pp. 76–7; The Encyclopaedia of Islam: New Edition, Volume I,pp. 987–8, 1017–19.

69 John M. Manly, ‘A Knight Ther Was’, Transactions of the American Philological Association, 38(1907), pp. 89–107, at 99–100; Bowden, A Commentary on the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, p. 58;Pratt, ‘Was Chaucer’s Knight Really a Mercenary?’, pp. 17–18; Pratt, Chaucer and War, p. 124;Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, ed. Jill Mann (London: Penguin, 2005), p. 801. Anotherpossibility is that, as a passage in Froissart may suggest, the lord of Palatia in 1385 was actually aChristian (Manly, ‘A Knight Ther Was’, p. 100; Froissart, Chronicle, IV: pp. 228–31; Froissart,Oeuvres, XI: pp. 233–7). However, it seems extremely unlikely that this was the case, as Mentesheseems to have remained under the rule of a Muslim emir throughout this period (Zachariadou,Trade and Crusade, pp. 111–12).

70 The Life of Saint Peter Thomas, p. 127; Chronique de Strambaldi, p. 66; Rene de Mas Latrie, ‘Desrelations politiques et commerciales de l’Asie Mineure avec l’ule de Cypre sous le regne desprinces de la maison de Lusginan, Part II’, Bibliotheque de l’Ecole des Chartes, second series, volume I(1844), pp. 485–521, at 502; Cook, ‘The Historical Background of Chaucer’s Knight’, p. 235; Jones,Chaucer’s Knight, p. 89.


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Squire, who has been involved in the Hundred Years’ War, (see above, p. 000) AQ1

then the seemingly pointed comment that he has fought for one ‘hethen’against another would actually emphasize the fact that, to his credit, he hasnever fought in a war between Christians. Secondly, as we have seen (above,p. 000 AQ2), being employed as a mercenary, or even fighting for a non-Christianlord, were perfectly acceptable forms of service for a knight, provided, as wasthe case with Chaucer’s Knight, that he did not fight against his own lord oron the side of Muslims against Christians. Those Christians who shed theblood of their co-religionists, particularly when employed as mercenaries inthe Italian wars rather than fighting for their own king, were often criticized,but there is no suggestion in the ‘General Prologue’ that the Knight has beenguilty of such behaviour.

The Knight and the Teutonic Order

The Knight’s battle honours also include having ‘reysed’ (that is beeninvolved in raiding expeditions) in ‘Lettow’ (I: 54), which means that hehas been on crusade alongside the Military Order of Teutonic Knights againstthe pagan Lithuanians. Since the time of the Second Crusade (1147), the popehad authorized crusades by the German nobility against the pagan Slavs,with the Military Order of Teutonic Knights, the rulers of Prussia from 1226,eventually taking the lead in these campaigns. After 1245, the Order’s warsagainst the Slavs were, in effect, ‘eternal crusades’, as it had obtained the rightto issue crusading indulgences to those fighting on its behalf without theneed for specific papal authorization. From 1283, the Order’s energies weredirected against the Lithuanians, against whom there was some fighting invirtually every year until 1406.71 Philippe de Mezieres was a great admirer ofthe Teutonic Knights and held up their piety and zeal in fighting the‘idolatrous’ Lithuanians as a model not only for the other military ordersbut for all Christian princes.72 English knights were regularly to be found

71 Christiansen, The Northern Crusades, pp. 53, 71, 83, 138–76; Tyerman, Fighting for Christendom,pp. 74–5.

72 Philippe de Mezieres, Le Songe du Vieil Pelerin, I: pp. 235, 241.




campaigning alongside the Teutonic Order in the fourteenth century,especially during periods of truce in the Hundred Years’ War.73

The ‘General Prologue’ does not specify when Chaucer’s Knight sawaction in ‘Lettow’ but its reference to his arrival on the pilgrimage straight‘from his viage’ (I: 77) has often been understood to refer to a recent returnfrom the Baltic. Certainly if, as has been suggested, Chaucer was writing the‘General Prologue’ in the years between 1388 and 1392, this was a period ofparticular English interest in crusading in the Baltic.74 In 1391, for instance,the Duke of Gloucester and the Earl of Stafford set off for Prussia only to bedriven back to the English coast by storms, while in the same year the LordsDespenser, Clifford, Fitzwalter, Beaumont, and Bourgchier all took retinuesthere.75 Best known of all, in 1390, Henry Bolingbroke, the Earl of Derby,who was the future Henry IV, followed the example of his grandfather,Henry of Grosmont, in crusading with the Teutonic Order.76 Bolingbrokeand his men fought against the Lithuanians at the River Vilia and were alsoinvolved in a five-week siege of Vilnius.77 English contemporaries were full ofpraise for Bolingbroke’s efforts, despite the fact that his opponent, Jagiello,the king of Poland-Lithuania, had actually been baptized as a Catholicin 1386. Chroniclers applauded the ‘particularly great courage’ shown byBolingbroke and his men in killing hundreds of the ‘best soldiers’ of theLithuanian army and in being the first to raise a standard on the walls ofVilnius.78 Amongst Bolingbroke’s retinue was Sir Peter Bukton, the probable

73 Tyerman, England and the Crusades, pp. 266–76; Pratt, Chaucer and War, pp. 105–12, 125–9; Bell, ‘TheSolider “Hadde He Riden, No Man Ferre” ’, pp. 210–11; Guard, Chivalry, Kingship and Crusade, pp. 73–89.

74 Riverside Chaucer, p. xxv.75 Tyerman, England and the Crusades, p. 270; Westminster Chronicle, pp. 474–9.76 Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer, p. 223. Whether Grosmont actually joined a ‘reyse’ is not

clear. See Ian Mortimer, The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England’s Self-Made King, (London: Vintage,2008), p. 97.

77 Tyerman, England and the Crusades, p. 271; Mortimer, The Fears of Henry IV, pp. 89–97, 104–15;The St Albans Chronicle: The Chronicle Maiora of Thomas Walsingham, Volume I, eds John Taylor, WendyR. Childs, and Leslie Watkiss (Oxford: Clarendon, 2003), p. 912; Francis R. H. Du Boulay, ‘Henryof Derby’s Expeditions to Prussia, 1390–1 and 1392’, in Francis R. H. Du Boulauy and CarolineM. Barron, eds, The Reign of Richard II: Essays in Honour of May McKisack (London: Athlone, 1971),pp. 153–72; Expeditions to Prussia and the Holy Land Made by the Earl of Derby in the Years 1390–1 and 1392–3,ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith, Camden Society, n.s. 52 (1894), passim.

78 Du Boulay, ‘Henry of Derby’s Expeditions to Prussia’, p. 158; Walsingham, The St AlbansChronicle, I: pp. 902–3; Westminster Chronicle, pp. 440–9; Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 536–7; Capgrave, Liberde illustribus Henricis, p. 99; John Capgrave’s Abbreuiacion of Chronicles, p. 199.


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addressee of Chaucer’s ‘Envoy a Bukton’, who also returned to Prussia withBolingbroke in 1392.79 Also present on this later expedition was Othe deGranson, who was at this time one of the ‘four evangelists’ of Philippe deMezieres’s Order of the Passion, whom Chaucer described in his ‘Complaintof Venus’ as the ‘flour’ of French poets.80

Whilst the Knight was in Prussia, he is said to have ‘the borde bigonne/Aboven all nacions’ (I: 52–3). To ‘begin the board’ meant to be given theplace of honour at table.81 These lines could refer to the occasional formal‘Tables of Honour’ held by the Teutonic Knights, such as that at Konigsbergin 1377, when Conrad of Krey ‘began the board with the approval of everyone, for this he had well deserved by his deeds as a noble knight in many aland’. However, given that the Knight is said to have occupied this position‘ful ofte tyme’ (I: 52), a more general sense of having been honoured for hisbravery seems more likely.82 To be exalted in this way could be read as a signthat the Knight has taken a vainglorious delight in worldly reputation,which would be at odds with the piety and humility we might expect of acrusader-knight.83 However, in practice, medieval theologians and poetswere easily able to reconcile honour with Christian ethics by arguing that,while an excessive love of earthly honour and glory would indeed bevainglorious, the opposite extreme—insufficiently caring for the good opin-ion of one’s fellows—was also a vice if it made men reluctant to performvirtuous deeds deserving of praise and honour. Since it was seen as laudablethat that those who contributed to the common good should be accordedhonour, praise, and worship, it comes as no surprise that Chaucer’s Knighthas been ‘evere honoured for his worthynesse’ (I: 50).84

The Knight is said not only to have ‘reysed’ in Lithuania but also in ‘Ruce’(I: 54). If we understand this to mean that he has fought in Russia it may

79 Ernest P. Kuhl, ‘Chaucer’s “My Maistre Bukton” ’, PMLA, 38 (1923), pp. 115–32, at 119, 126;Expeditions to Prussia and the Holy Land Made by the Earl of Derby, pp. xliii, li, xcii, 35, 26, 133, 138, 201.

80 Philippe de Mezieres, Letter to King Richard II, xxxiv; Expeditions to Prussia and the Holy Land Made bythe Earl of Derby, pp. li, lxv, lxix, lxx, 158, 179, 226, 246, 259, 264, 309–10; Chaucer, ‘The Complaint ofVenus’, l. p. 82.

81 Albert S. Cook, ‘Beginning the Board in Prussia’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 14(1915), pp. 375–88, at 375–6.

82 Cook, ‘Beginning the Board in Prussia’, pp. 380, 387–8; Variorum GPIB, pp. 63–4.83 Jones, Chaucer’s Knight, pp. 54–6.84 For references, see Rigby, Wisdom and Chivalry, pp. 58–62; and Rigby, ‘Worthy but Wise?’,

pp. 354–61.




seem to imply that he was an unprincipled mercenary who was willing tofight against other Christians, even, perhaps, on the side of the MuslimTartars.85 One problem with this interpretation is that the OrthodoxRussians were not necessarily seen in the West as fellow Christians butcould sometimes be presented as schismatics. In 1351, for instance, ClementVI issued a papal bull calling for all ‘true believers’ to support King Magnus ofSweden in a crusade against the ‘bestial savagery’ of the ‘Russian enemies ofthe true faith’.86 A second and even more fundamental problem is that‘Ruce’ may not mean Russia but may denote Rossenia, a district of Samo-githia in Lithuania in which most English crusading expeditions saw action,including that of Bolingbroke in 1390–1.87 If ‘Ruce’ does refer to Rosseniathen, by the standards of many of Chaucer’s contemporaries, campaigningthere was far from, being dishonourable. For instance, Peter Suchenwirt, a latefourteenth-century German herald, lovingly described the ‘adventures’ whichDuke Albert of Austria undertook in Rossenia when fighting in honour of ‘thevirtuous Maid, God’s Mother’, with the duke and his companions being said tohave ravaged and killed, burning the land until it was covered in thicksmoke.88 Once more, what might seem discreditable or shameful to us todaymight be judged as noble and praiseworthy in the fourteenth century.

Identifying irony

Given that the Chaucer’s description of the Knight has been read as both apaean to crusading chivalry and as a critique of its practice and ideals, it istempting to conclude that the text of the ‘General Prologue’ must be open-ended, and that no clear judgement—positive or negative—upon theKnight’s worthiness is possible. Yet, when read in the context of the enthu-siasm for crusading voiced in fourteenth-century England and, in particular,

85 Jones, Chaucer’s Knight, pp. ix–x, 56–60; Burrow, ‘The Imparfit Knight’, p. 163.86 Christiansen, The Northern Crusades, pp. 195–8.87 William Urban, ‘When Was Chaucer’s Knight in “Ruce”?’, ChR., 18 (1983–4), pp. 347–53, at

349–51.88 Cook, ‘Beginning the Board in Prussia’, pp. 378–86. See also Le livre des fais du bon Messire Jehan

le Maingre dit Bouciquat, pp. 40–2, 74–7.


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of Chaucer’s associations with men such as Gaunt, Bolingbroke, the Scropes,Bukton, Granson, Clanvowe, and Clifford, the Knight becomes a lessambiguous figure, one who can be seen, alongside the Parson and thePloughman, as one of the straightforward estate-ideals depicted amongstthe pilgrims. However, while the pious Parson and hard-working Ploughmanremain rather abstract and stereotypical representatives of their estates, theKnight is a far more individualized and historically-specific character, hencethe many speculative and inconclusive attempts to present his career ashaving been based on some real-life model of the time.

It would, of course, be extremely satisfying to those of us who have littlesympathy for feudal landlords or for killing in the name of religion if it couldbe shown that the praise seemingly lavished upon Knight in the ‘GeneralPrologue’ was actually meant as irony. The detection of irony in a textusually involves identifying an inconsistency which signals the presence of adouble meaning, as when the Friar claims, in direct contradiction with theideals of his order, that it is not fitting for a ‘worthy’ man like himself toassociate with lepers and beggars (I: 240–8). Here, by contrast, it has beenargued that the ‘General Prologue’ reveals no such inconsistencies betweenthe events of the Knight’s lengthy, far-flung, and bloody military career andthe beliefs prevalent in Chaucer’s day about what constituted honourablebehaviour for a Christian warrior. As a result, the portrait of the Knight isbest read not as a satire which explicitly praises his deeds whilst implicitlycriticizing them but as a genuine tribute to his chivalric qualities.89 When theKnight’s virtue is understood in this way, it comes as no surprise that heshould go on to tell a tale whose hero, Duke Theseus, like its narrator, isnotable for his ‘wysdom’ and ‘chivalrie’ (I: 865), and who, as Lord of Athens,hails from the city which was seen in the Middle Ages as the birthplace of thechivalric ethic which the Knight himself personifies.90

89 The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, eds Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach and OliverBerghof (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), II.xxxi.40.

90 For the morality of the ‘Knight’s Tale’, see Rigby, Wisdom and Chivalry, passim.




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'The Knight', from Rigby and Minnis, eds, Historians on Chaucer

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