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Chaucer’s House at Woodstock

If walls could talk

What stories are inside these warm Cotswold stones?

Did Chaucer use the front door?


Did he use the side door?


Did he use the garden gate?


Or the service entry?

Comments: 11

  • July 8, 2013
    reply

    This was not the house of the poet, but of his son, Sir Thomas. The house has been so extensively rebuilt, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries, that I doubt any of the original is visible.

  • July 8, 2013
    reply

    A quick search reveals details of the changes.

    http://gohistoric.com/places/chaucers-house-woodstock

  • July 8, 2013
    reply

    My pleasure. I lived in Oxford for 20 years, and I am a historian. I tend to know things and, if I don’t, I find out.

  • July 10, 2013
    reply

    I am in darkest Indiana.

    I can not tell you much about Sir Thomas de la More, MP for Oxfordshire several times. He was a loyal follower of Edward II. He was the patron of Geoffrey le Baker, who appears to have taken some material for his chronicle of Edward’s reign from Sir Thomas.

    Sir Thomas was present at the abdication. Baker writes —
    You, noble knight, Sir Thomas de la More, with your wisdom and distinguished presence, being in attendance on the bishop of Winchester, were an ornament to the company; I am but the interpreter, as it were, of what you saw and wrote down in French.

    The bishop in question was Sir Thomas’s relation and patron, John Stratford, later Archbishop of Canterbury.

  • July 10, 2013
    reply

    Which duke would that be? There weren’t many dukes around, and none come to mind as having any relationship with the early generations of the Churchill family.

  • July 11, 2013
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    See page 135

    http://books.google.com/books?id=mKTQAAAAMAAJ

    He was at Christ Church, not Magdalen. The title was an Irish one, so he was not a member of the House of Lords, in all probability. He had no notable kin. Totally undistinguished family. The Irish estate and its grand house were sold in the 1920s, as the creditors were pressing.

    The wife died at Shipston-on-Stour, a village with no resident gentry, as far as I know. The manor was owned by the Dean and Chapter of Worcester. Why was she there? Being nursed at the rectory? Who was the rector, I wonder.

      • July 11, 2013
        reply

        According to the death notice in one of the monthly magazines, she died as the dowager Viscountess. There is no mention of any second marriage in such excellent works of fiction as Debrett’s Peerage. Unfortunately, the family was too utterly obscure for any of them to rate an entry in the Dictionary of National Biography.

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