1. Regarding the date of composition of Troilus and Criseyde, see Lee Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History, p. 156 n149; and Paul Strohm, Social Chaucer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 207 n41. Donald R. Howard notes that on October 12, 1385, Chaucer was appointed one of the justices of the peace for Kent, and served under Simon Burley (Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World [New York: Dutton, 1987], pp. 383–84). Burley, who fell victim to the purge of Richard’s favorites by the Lords Appellant, had earlier been Richard’s tutor and allegedly first brought Robert de Vere into the young king’s company; see the Westminster Chronicle, ed. Hector and Harvey, pp. 276–77Given his proximity to Burley, Chaucer would have been well positioned to hear of criticism directed at Robert de Vere. Strohm maintains that Chaucer would have known the other favorites as well, particularly Nicholas Brembre, who was “Chaucer’s immediate superior throughout most of… [his] term as controller [i.e. 1382–86]” (Social Chaucer, p. 28). For a thorough discussion of Chaucer’s circle of acquaintances, see Strohm, Social Chaucer, pp. 24–46.
2. Derek Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer: A Critical Biography (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992), p. 203. It was at this parliament that Richard’s chancellor, Michael de la Pole, was impeached.
3. Patterson recognizes that “[t]he 1380s were a time of disputed sovereignty, conspiratorial factionalism, and disastrous militarism—all issues upon which Troilus and Criseyde reflects…. [Yet] [d]eriving from and speaking to the unhappy world of the 1380s, the Troilus refuses to offer any clear message” (Chaucer and the Subject of History, pp. 162 and 163). For a general survey of Chaucer’s political position during the last fifteen years of his life, see S. Sanderlin, “Chaucer and Ricardian Politics,” Chaucer Review 22 (1988): 171–84.
4. John Clark observes that the association between England and Troy goes back at least as far as Geoffrey of Monmouth who established the connection between London and Trinovantum, the legendary Trojan settlement on the banks of the Thames (“Trinovantum—Evolution of a Legend,” Journal of Medieval History 7 [1981]: 143 [135–51]). This connection also surfaces in literature of the fourteenth century such as St. Erkenwald, Gower’s Vox Clamantis, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In addition, the fact that England was faced with invasion by the French, particularly in 1385 and 1386, also adds to the topicality of the Trojan story. For a discussion of the invasion panic during these years, see John Barnie, War in Medieval Society: Social Values and the Hundred Years War 1337–99 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974), pp. 43–48. On the connections between Troy and London/England in the 1380s, see also Craig A. Berry, “The King’s Business: Negotiating Chivalry in Troilus and Criseyde,” Chaucer Review 26 (1992): 240–41 [236–65]. On the political context of Troilus and Criseyde and Chaucer’s possible message, see D.W. Robertson Jr., “The Probable Date and Purpose of Chaucer’s Troilus,” Medievalia et Humanistica 13 (1985): 143–71.
5. About the same time that Chaucer was composing Troilus and Criseyde John Trevisa was translating Ranulf Higden’s mid-fourteenth-century Polychronicon into English. Higden/Trevisa’s observation of Edward’s relationship with Gaveston, like comments found in the earlier chronicles, highlights the negatively viewed excessive love between them: “[Edward] loved strongliche oon of his queresters, and dede him grete reverence, and worschipped and made hym greete and riche. Of þus doynge fel vilenye to þe lovyer, yvel speche and bacbitynge to þe love” (Ranulf Higden, Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden monachi Cestrensis, ed. Joseph Rawson Lumby, vol. 8 [1857; repr. Wiesbaden: Kraus, 1964], p. 298). Trevisa’s English translation is printed alongside Higden’s Latin text. Although I am not suggesting that Chaucer was aware of Trevisa’s project or that he had read Higden’s original text—which he might well have, given its enormous popularity—it does indicate that Edward and Gaveston’s relationship was still “in the air” in the 1380s.