It is this new gladness of a great people which utters itself in the verse of Geoffrey Chaucer.

Chaucer was born about 1340, the son of a London vintner who lived in Thames Street; and it was in London that the bulk of his life was spent.

His family, though not noble, seems to have been of some importance, for from the opening of his career we find Chaucer in close connexion with the Court.

At sixteen he was made page to the wife of Lionel of Clarence; at nineteen he first bore arms in the campaign of 1359.

But he was luckless enough to be made prisoner; and from the time of his release after the treaty of Bretigny he took no further share in the military enterprises of his time.