The New Murrey and Blue blog

A great deal has been written about Alice Chaucer, Duchess of Suffolk, and her grandfather, Geoffrey Chaucer. Yes, the Geoffrey Chaucer. Alice’s third husband was William de la Pole, who became the 1st Duke of Suffolk, and from them descended the Yorkist lord who perhaps ought to have been King of England. I speak of John de La Pole, Earl of Lincoln, for whom things went disastrously awry against Henry Tudor at the Battle of Stoke Field in 1487.

The de la Poles had risen to a dukedom from being merchants in Hull, But  William was the king’s man, and after the Appellants’ victory at Radcot Bridge in December 1387, he was exiled abroad, but on his way he was murdered at sea.

Alice and William had spent a lot of time at Ewelme in Oxfordshire, where their residence and legacy is the array of magnificent medieval buildings to which Alice put wise and lasting use.

In this link (https://reginajeffers.blog/2018/07/13/the-village-of-ewelme-and-alice-chaucer-duchess-of-suffolk/https://reginajeffers.blog/2018/07/13/the-village-of-ewelme-and-alice-chaucer-duchess-of-suffolk/) you can read all about Alice and her good works. “….The schoolroom, put up by Alice in the 1430s, is still used as a school and is THE OLDEST SCHOOL IN THE STATE SYSTEM STILL HOUSED IN ITS ORIGINAL BUILDING. Most other schools established at that time, notably Eton, founded in 1440 under the Earl of Suffolk’s supervision for Henry VI, became private schools….Next door are the superb cloistered almshouses, designed for 13 poor men and fashioned around a square, flower-filled courtyard. They are still run as almshouses by the Ewelme Trust….”

You can read more about the almshouses here The Ewelme Almshouse Charity : Ewelme Trust, Almshouses Oxfordshire, Almhouses Buckinghamshire (ewelmealmshouses.org) and here Ewelme, Oxfordshire: The medieval almshouses set up by Chaucer’s grand-daughter and still running today – Country Life

The reginajeffers.blog link is full of information about Alice, William and Ewelme, and mentions Geoffrey Chaucer (of course!) but there is some lingering folklore about Geoffrey at Ewelme that doesn’t get a mention. I found it in a book entitled British Folk Tales and Legends: A Sampler, by Katharine M. Briggs. On pages 215/216 is a short account entitled “Folk Memory of Chaucer”, which itself is taken from H. Bett’s English Myths and Traditions, page 106.

It tells of an old Oxfordshire gardener who used to relate how generations of his grandfathers told of “….Mr Chaucer, the king’s poet…” walking past their home, on his way to visit his son’s tomb at Ewelme about ten miles away just off the Oxford road.

His son? Well, the actual wording is as follows: “….Now Thomas Chaucer, the son of the poet, married Matilda, the daughter of Sir John Burgersh, who brought him large estates, amongst them the Manor of Ewelme, in Oxfordshire, where he is buried. There is an altar tomb, with brasses, of Thomas Chaucer and his lady in the church, and also another magnificent altar-tomb, one of the finest in England, of the Duchess of Suffolk, the widow of William de la Pole, and the granddaughter of the poet.. She founded the ancient almshouses in the village. The manor-house or palace of Ewelme was a splendid building, where Margaret of Anjou was confined for several years. It is a fact, by the way, that Henry VIII did spend a honeymoon there with Jane Seymour….”

Now I don’t quite know what to make of this little story. Would a man like Chaucer, who wasn’t rich but wasn’t impoverished either, really walk all those miles to his son’s tomb? Was it perhaps a little akin to some pilgrimages? He certainly has a horse in the illustration below, in which he’s dressed as a pilgrim….Or is the whole thing just a tall tale? I can’t say, but there are details which make me pause to wonder….

Ah, but there’s one rather awkward glitch. Thomas Chaucer outlived his father! So perhaps it’s a tall tale after all.