Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

It was no surprise that a merchant should feature in Chaucer’s riotous compendium, for the author had lifelong experience of business. His father was a vintner, or wine merchant, and traveled widely in the course of his trades. As a boy Chaucer was raised in Vintry Ward, then London’s most cosmopolitan district, home to Germans, French, Italians, and Flemings, many of them in London for the sole purpose of doing business, and a riverside ward in which merchant ships loaded down with wares from all over the world docked constantly throughout the year.45 As an adult Chaucer served as a customs official for the English crown, and he lived for more than a decade in apartments above the Aldgate, one of the main passages in and out of London’s walls and a busy portal for traders approaching the city from the east.