THE GEOFFREY CHAUCER PAGE

This brief description contains all that is known with any certainty about the release, although it is hard to know whether even this information can be taken as fact -- presented as it is in a document that is a legal instrument (at best a highly formulaic record of the events prompting it) and a copy of a lost original (subject to error on the part of at least two scribes). Yet scholars have long hoped to know even more than these details. Since F. J. Furnivall announced the discovery of the release in 1873,2 speculation about the events that prompted its writing has been continuous and intense. This speculation was further encouraged by the discovery in 1897 of three more records with tangential connections to the release (they are dated within a month of it, and they include two or more of the names important to the case).3 Despite all this effort, however,

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The text of the Chaumpaigne release has come to seem the only certainty about the document we are likely to have, and a great deal of scholarship has focused on this text alone, and, in particular, on the meaning of the phrase "de raptu meo" at the document's center. It is this phrase that raises the troubling possibility that Chaucer was a rapist, and it is this phrase more than any other aspect of the release that has earned it such sustained attention. Linguistic study has provided surprisingly few certainties, however, since several conflicting translations for this phrase have been advanced over the years. At least one scholar has been sure that in medieval Latin the word raptus necessarily meant abduction and contained no connotation of sexual violence at all.5 A group of other scholars has been equally sure that rape or forced coitus is the only acceptable translation of raptus in this period.6 Yet a third group of scholars has thought that the word raptus was so ambiguous in the fourteenth century that it could mean either forced coitus or abduction.7

For all the ink that has been spilled on the subject of the release, there have been surprisingly few attempts to place its language in either the language or practice of the English law in which it arose. F. J. Furnivall quotes a few parallel cases in the "Trial-Forewords" to his edition of the minor poems;8 D. W. Robertson mentions a few more cases in Chaucer's London;9 and P. R. Watts cites several cases in his important study of the release, although he does not quote from many of these, and when he does, he tends to quote them in translation.10 None of these surveys focuses directly on documents from the close rolls, where the Chaumpaigne release is recorded, and none of them presents a clear picture of English legal practice in the plea rolls for this period (the third year of the reign of Richard II). The absence of detailed research on this subject has surely

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The assumption of this essay is that the language of the Chaumpaigne release can be properly understood only in its immediate legal context, and I seek to provide that context by turning to unpublished court documents from the period just before and just after the release's enrollment. Releases contemporary with the Chaumpaigne document are examined in the close rolls first. The criminal rolls in King's Bench for 3 Richard II are also considered carefully and in full in order to show what cases of raptus in this period actually looked like when they were prosecuted (instead of settled out of court by release as Cecily Chaumpaigne seems to have chosen to do). Although a reading of these records cannot speak for the use of raptus everywhere in late-fourteenth-century English law, it does provide a great deal of new material on the subject, and it illustrates the use of this term in more depth than it has been illustrated before. A careful examination of the court records for 3 Richard 11 also turns up another document that names both Cecily Chaumpaigne and Geoffrey Chaucer and refers directly to her release of him. This document, which is presented here for the first time, has some inherent importance as a newly discovered Chaucer life-record. But it will be examined here carefully because it also offers important commentary on the language of the Chaumpaigne release and, specifically, on the phrase "de raptu meo" at the release's center.

A reading of legal records for 3 Richard II is best begun in the most immediate context for the Chaumpaigne release, the close rolls, where that document was itself recorded. In the rolls for the first eight years of the reign of Richard II (June 22, 1377-June 21, 1385)13 the other releases recorded during this period are similar to the Chaumpaigne release in most of the particulars of their language,

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The language of the Chaumpaigne release would require comment, however, even if it did not concern a poet as famous as Geoffrey Chaucer simply by virtue of its use of the phrase "de raptu meo," which cannot be found in any other document in these rolls during any of these eight years. There are in fact only two other records in the close rolls in this period that use some form of the verb rapere, from which the noun raptus is derived, and only one other record in these rolls that actually uses the noun raptus itself. The bulk of the releases during these eight years are so vague in fact that their contents are described in the Calendar of the Close Rolls as "general." These releases do not specify any claim or wrong in their terms of release at all. Where the Chaumpaigne release names a raptus specifically, these other records only refer in broad terms to "all manner of actions, charges, quarrels, suits, and personal claims" ("omnimodas acciones calumpnias querelas sectas et demandas personales").17

The other uses of raptus or rapere in the rolls are not at all similar to the language of the Chaumpaigne release. The two entries that use the verb (in the form of the past infinitive, rapuisse) are not parallel to the release in their language, and they may be discounted because they are commissions from the king to justices of the peace (that is, not releases at all).18 The one other document in the rolls that uses the noun raptus -- a release of October 12, 1379, from Alice Edmund of Huntyngdon, also recorded in the rolls of 3 Richard II19 -- does not place any emphasis on this noun at all. In addition to releasing

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In singling out the phrase "de raptu meo" for its focus, recent scholarship on the Chaumpaigne release has been surprisingly to the point, even though this focus seems to have arisen more from discomfort over what raptus might mean than from any understanding of the unusual status of the word in contemporary releases. Moreover, despite the potentially useful direction of this scholarship, its general reliance on the standard Latin dictionaries has made its conclusions inaccurate. So malleable was this word that historical dictionaries are able to provide examples to support all the contradictory definitions advanced over the years. Raptus as well as rapere could mean either "abduction" or "forced coitus" in classical and medieval Latin texts; and since it could mean one or the other, it was sometimes the case that it might be (deliberately or accidentally) so ambiguous as to mean both.20 A broad survey of Roman and medieval law on the Continent shows that the noun and verb were ambiguous in legal Latin as well. James Brundage finds that raptus "in the language of Roman law included forcible abductions as well as forcible sexual relations"21 and that, in Gratian, raptus meant "either abduction of a girl without her parents' consent (even if she was a willing party to the abduction) or intercourse with her against her Will."22 Yet even the more restricted tradition of Continental legal usage is not really germane to the language of the Chaumpaigne release. Understanding the meaning of raptus in English law is further complicated by a clear fluctuation in the law concerning both raptus and a number of related wrongs across the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. For this reason the meaning of raptus in the Chaumpaigne release can only be fairly approached by way of the history of this fluctuation in English law.

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The inheritance of English law in the fourteenth century -- the inheritance, in short, of the Chaumpaigne release -- was so complex because it was the result of a legal tradition that was at once more restrictive in its use of raptus than the Latin of either medieval literature or law as well as more consistently confused than either of those traditions. In the late twelfth century (and for some time after) the definition of raptus in England was actually narrower than in either Roman or Continental law until the end of the thirteenth century. In the treatise called Glanvill (c. 1187-89) raptus was defined as forced coitus ("raptus crimen est quod aliqua mulier imponit viro quo proponit se a viro vi oppressam in pace domini regis"),23 and the Glanvill tradition passed virtually unchanged into the treatise De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae (commonly attributed to Henry Bracton),24 where raptus was even more explicitly defined as rape ("et contra pacem domini regis concubuit cum ea").25 By the end of the thirteenth century, however, two statutes known as Westminster I (1275) and Westminster II (1285) blurred the distinction between forced coitus and abduction considerably. Although neither of these two statutes uses the noun raptus or the verb rapere -- since the pertinent clause in each statute is in Anglo-Norman -- their language directly affected the Latin of subsequent legal records. Westminster I lumped rape and abduction together for the first time ("le roy defend qe nul ravyse ne prengne damysele de deinze age ... ne dame ne damisel ... ne autre femme augre soun"),26 and Westminster II furthered the ensuing confusion by using language that made no distinction at all between these two categories of wrong ("si homme ravise femme espose, damousele, ou autre femme deshormes ... ensement par la ou homme ravise femme, damoysele, dame espose ou autre femme a force").27 In his detailed article on Westminster I and II, J. B. Post traces the host of problems that "the collection of all types of ravishment of women under one simplistic chapter [of each statute]" created both theoretically and in legal practice.28 The most dramatic effect of this conflation, however,

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Overlaying the confusion created by the language of the Westminster statutes was a separate, but parallel, confusion over the procedures by which rape and abduction were brought to law in the fourteenth century. The language of individual suits aside, it was theoretically possible to distinguish cases of abduction from cases of rape simply by the way in which an individual action was pursued. Abduction (or "ravishment of ward" in its most common form) was a trespass, in effect a wrong committed against those who had a material interest in the marriage of a particular ward,30 and trespasses (at least in the royal courts at issue here) were normally pursued through the purchase of a writ which sought financial compensation for the monetary loss incurred from the wrong.31 Rape, on the other hand, was a felony (except during the brief period between Westminster I and II, when it was a trespass), a violent crime against a person that was normally pursued by appeal or indictment in the criminal courts, which sought punishment of the accused by way of compensation for the injury suffered.32 Yet the court records show that this procedural distinction existed only in statutes and registers of writs. As Post has pointed out, "by a procedure apparently imitative of that for ravishment of ward, it became possible, for husbands at least, to bring a trespass suit for damages" when a woman had been raped.33 The result of this development was that "the verdict of a jury in a trespass suit for damages was tantamount to an indictment for felony triable at

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The conflation of the law on rape with the law on abduction was not a deliberate goal of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century English law but, rather, the outgrowth of a developing concern in the courts to prevent women and men from using accusations of rape to manipulate or avoid marriage strictures.35 A telling phrase of Westminster II prevents the settling of a suit for "ravise" on the basis of the victim's later consent ("tut seyt ele assentue apres").36 It had been traditionally possible to satisfy a charge of rape by a marriage between a rapist and his victim if the victim consented to the marriage.37 It seems to have been the case, too, that "women allowed themselves to be abducted in order to affirm their own choice of a husband and force their families to accept the relationship and they allowed themselves to be abducted in order to leave their husbands."38 Such manipulation, if not a common occurrence,39 produced a common anxiety throughout the fourteenth century, judging from the number of cases in both local and royal courts that concern this kind of "ravishment." It was occasionally possible that such manipulation "meant an extension of control by women over their lives,"40 since, properly handled, rape law could introduce a degree of choice into marriages that were otherwise forced. But Westminster I and II were also the beginning of a movement that, by the end of the fourteenth century, effectively transferred the concern of the law from the wrong done to the woman who had been "ravished" to the rights of her family and its interests.41 Although it does not seem to have been the intention behind any particular change in the law, the obsession of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century English law with the problems of controlling marriages ultimately

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The Chaumpaigne release was drafted, then, in a legal context that had blurred the lines between abduction and forced coitus so substantially that any clear, legal distinction between the two wrongs seems to have been all but impossible to make. There were some important exceptions to this general rule. Legal records for the late fourteenth century show that the confusion in both the statutes and legal practice was actually met with a certain amount of resistance on the part of those who wished to see cases of sexual violence tried as rape. On the other hand, most of the records for this period reflect the hopeless confusion created by the language of Westminster I and II. There is an extremely large body of records in which this confusion is insurmountable -- in which it is impossible to know whether rape or abduction is at issue -- and these records are important here, not only because of their prominence in the legal records of the period, but because their language has so often (and so mistakenly) been used to understand the language of the Chaumpaigne release. I will call these records cases of "ravishment" here in order to preserve, at least in part, the ambiguity between sexual violence and abduction that was clearly present in their Latin. The language of these records is extremely homogeneous: all of these cases include the verb rapere (although they do not explicitly claim sexual violence as an issue in their plea), and almost none of them ever use the noun raptus. The occasional substitution of a verb like asportare or ducere for rapere in some of these pleas (such pleas otherwise use exactly the same language as other cases of ravishment) suggests that many of these cases were in fact concerned primarily with abduction and not sexual violence.43 Such a suggestion is further strengthened by the frequency with which these cases couple the verb rapere with abducere or some other verb that explicitly describes abduction as well as the emphasis they often place on the value and quantity of the goods carried off.

The language of all these pleas of ravishment can be represented by the formula for a writ for the "seizure of a wife" which can be found in a register of writs from the early part of the fourteenth century:

Ostensurus quare vi et armis .L. vxorem predicti A. apud B. rapuit et eam cum bonis et catallis predicti .A. ad valenciam tanti abduxit et eam adhuc detinet et alia enormia etc. ad graue etc. et contra formam statuti nostri in huiusmodi casu inde prouisi etc.

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To show why with force and arms he seized .L., wife of the aforesaid .A., at .B., and carried her off together with goods and chattels of the aforesaid .A., to the value of so much, and still keeps her, and (inflicted) other outrages etc. to the heavy etc. and against the form of our statute provided therewith for such a case etc.44

The ambiguity inherent in the language of these ravishment cases in the court records of the fourteenth century, their consistent use of both the verb rapere and the verb abducere, and the sheer weight of their numbers in the rolls have contributed most to the notion that raptus in the Chaumpaigne release referred (or could refer) to abduction. Such cases bulk so large in the legal records of the fourteenth century that a brief examination of almost any collection of documents from the period turns up a great quantity of them.45 There are fifty-nine separate entries using this form (reflecting fifty different actions, since some cases appear in more than one entry) in the coram rege rolls and the controlment rolls for 3 Richard II alone.46 The two cases of ravishment included

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There are cases on the rolls for the fourteenth century that use the noun raptus, although they are much different in kind from cases of ravishment, and substantially fewer in number. It would seem that these cases use this noun because it was not a part of the standard form for ravishment cases and it therefore helped to differentiate their language from the general confusion that surrounded the language of the law on ravishment. Cases of raptus also avoid the standard language of the ravishment pleas ("vi et armis ... rapuit et abduxit"), although they often use conjugated forms of the verb rapere. These cases are further distinguished by their form: where the initiating action for ravishment generally proceeded at the suit of the injured relatives (with the female victim in the accusative case of the document's Latin), the initiating action for cases of raptus proceeded at the suit of the female victim, generally as "appeals" (in the medieval sense of this term).48 We can be sure that most of these cases unequivocally concerned forced coitus because many of them add to their use of the noun raptus an explicit description of the sexual violence at issue (i.e., "concubuit carnaliter contra voluntatem suam"). There are fewer such cases in this category in the rolls: in the coram rege rolls and controlment rolls for 3 Richard II, for example, there are only thirty-two separate entries of this kind (representing twenty-one separate cases) as opposed to the fifty-nine entries or cases of ravishment I have already mentioned.49

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Only three of the entries in the rolls for 3 Richard II link the noun raptus with descriptions of forced coitus, but, because these cases are recorded more than once on these rolls (often by way of duplicate entries in a different series of records), and because these cases continued throughout the year (often by way of failed, but continuing, efforts to bring appellant and appellee together in the court) they account, in the end, for eleven different entries during the regnal year. Two of these rapes are described in entries in the controlment rolls; one of the rapes is described in the coram rege rolls. Since documents of this kind (especially for this particular period) have rarely been printed, and since this language is so important to an understanding of the Chaumpaigne release, I will quote the language from all three of these entries at length (the more important phrases have been italicized):50

Cornub' Cavendissh

Henricus Yeuelcombe attachiatus fuit ad respondendum Isabelle que fuit uxor Johannis Mann simul cum Wilielmo fratre predicti Henrici et Laurencio Drewe filio Drugonis de Wryngeworth de raptu et pace domini et nuper Regis Anglie avi domini Regis nunc fracta unde eum appellat. Et sunt plegii de prosequendo scilicet Johannes de Whalesbrewe et Oto Godrigan. Et unde eadem Isabella in propria persona sua instanter appellat predictum Henricum de eo quod ubi ipsa fuit in pace dei et dicti domini et nuper Regis Anglie avi etc. apud Bedenek in comitatu Cornubie die mercurii proximo post festum sancte Katherine virginis anno regni dicti avi domini Regis nunc quinquagesimo hora ignitegii, ibi venit predictus Henricus simul etc. felonice ut felo domini regis insidiando et insultu premeditate contra pacem dicti avi domini Regis nunc die anno hora villa et comitatu predictis et predictus Henricus dictam Isabellam ibidem cepit et abinde usque Stanerton in comitatu Devon duxit et ibidem cum ea contra voluntatem suam carnaliter concubuit scilicet die lune proximo post festum sancte Katherine predictum anno superdicto. Et sic eadem Isabella sub custodia eiusdem Henrici vi et armis detenta fuit a die mercurii predicta usque ad vicesimum diem Februarii anno regni Regis Ricardi secundi primo quo die ipsa euasit et sic ipsam felonice rapuit. Et predicti Willeimus et Laurencius quos predicta Isabella appellaret si presentes fuissent die et anno supradicto fuerunt presentes auxiliantes consiliantes et abbettantes predicto Henrico ad feloniam prcdictam faciendam. Et quamcito idem Henricus feloniam predictam de raptu fecerat fugierit predictaque Isabella ipsum recenter insecuta fuit de villa in villam usque ad quattuor villatas propinquiores et ulterius quousque etc. Et si predictus Henricus feloniam predictam de raptu velit dedicere

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predicta Isabella hec parata est versus cum probare prout curia [vult] etc. (KB 27/475 m. 61) London'

Alias scilicet termino sancte Trinitatis anno regni nunc secundo rotulo lxv inter communia placita irrotulatur sic: Rogerus Snowe Brewere attachiatus fuit ad respondendum Amicie Serle de raptu et pace domini Regis fracta unde eum appellat. Et sunt plegii de prosequendo scilicet Johannes Lesnes et Nicholaus Sutton'. Et unde eadem Amicia in propria persona sua instanter appellat predictum Rogerum de eo quod ubi ipsa fuit in pace dei et domini Regis nunc apud London' in parochia sancti Bartholomei extra Aldrichegate in Warda de Aldrichegate die dominica proximo ante festum sancti Johannis Baptiste anno regni Regis Ricardi secundi secundo hora meridiana, ibi venit predictus Rogerus felonice ut felo domini Regis insidiando et insultu premeditato contra pacem domini Regis coronam et dignitatem suam die anno hora parochia et Warda predictis et cum predicta Amicia contra voluntatem suam camaliter concubuit in quadam domo mansionis Johannis de Lesnes et ipsam de pura virginitate sua felonice rapuit sicut eadem Amicia cum appellat. Et quamcito idem Rogerus feloniam predictam de raptu fecerat fugit predictaque Amicia ipsum recenter insecuta fuit de Warda in Wardam usque ad quattuor Wardas propinquiores et ulterius etc. Et si predictus Rogerus feloniam predictam de raptu velit dedicere, predicta hec parata est versus cum probare prout curia [vult] etc. (KB 29/32 m. 31d) London'

Alias scilicet termino sancte Trinitatis anno regni nunc secundo rotulo xxxj inter communia placita irrotulatur sic: Johannes filius Roberti Baral de Bristoll skynnere attachiatus fuit ad respondendum Agnete Marchal de raptu et pace domini Regis fracta unde cum appellat. Et sunt plegii de prosequendo scilicet Willelmus Brampton' et Johannes Edon'. Et unde eadem Agnes in propria persona sua instanter appellat predictum Johannem de eo quod ubi ipsa fuit in pace dei et domini Regis nunc apud London' in parochia sancti Martini Orgar in Warda de Bruggestret die martis proximo ante festum Ascensionis domini anno regni Regis Ricardi secundi post conquestum secundo hora sexta, ibi venit predictus Johannes felonice ut felo domini Regis insidiando et insultu premeditato contra pacem domini Regis coronam et dignitatem suam die anno hora parochia et Warda predictis et cum ipsa Agnete contra voluntatem suam carnaliter concubuit et sic ipsam felonice rapuit. Et quamcito idem Johannes feloniam predictam de raptu fecerat fugit predictaque Agnes ipsum resecuta fuit de parochia in parochiam et de Warda in Wardam usque ad quattuor Wardas propinquiores et ulterius etc. Et si predictus Johannes feloniam predictam de raptu velit dedicere, predicta Agnes hec parata est versus cum probare prout curia [vult] etc. (KB 29/32 m. 1)

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The other entries concerning these three rape cases in 3 Richard II demonstrate the consistency with which raptus was reserved for describing forced coitus in these rolls. The four other records concerning the Yeuelcombe/Mann case,51 the two others concerning the Snowe/Serie case,52 and the two others concerning the Baral/Marchal case53 use raptus and no other term to describe the wrong in question. The noun raptus is also used consistently outside of the records of 3 Richard II in published records where sexual violence was also clearly at issue. Such a case is recorded in the coram rege roll for Easter 1320: it refers to the wrong in question as raptus and describes it in exactly the same terms as the cases just quoted ("contra voluntatem suam concubuit felonice ut felo domini Regis").54 Another such case occurs in the Easter rolls of 1366, in which a man is sought "ad raptum, abduxionem et detentionem" and the language of the case itself describes a rape ("carnaliter concubuit ... rapuit seu abduxit").55 A case of 1386 also uses the phrase "concubuit carnaliter contra pacem" and, also, the noun raptus (as "raptum") by way of cross-reference.56 The implication of such a consistent use of raptus in cases that clearly concern rape is that the noun is also used to mean rape in those cases where the wrong is not carefully spelled out (the eighteen other cases in the records for 3 Richard II, for example). This supposition is supported by the fact that these cases follow the form of rape cases (as appeals from the victim) and not that of ravishment cases (as actions brought by the victim's family).

There are some uses of raptus in fourteenth-century legal records in cases that otherwise follow the form of ravishment pleas (which in the absence of the noun raptus would be as ambiguous as these pleas). There are two such cases in the rolls for 3 Richard II. These cases -- like all other ravishment cases -- were initiated by third parties and not the victim herself, and they use the phrase "vi et armis ... rapuit et eam cum bonis et catallis ... abduxit" at their center. Unlike most ravishment cases, however, these cases use the phrase "de raptu predicto" instead of "de transgressions predicta" or "de felonia predicta" to refer to the wrong of the suit.57 The form raptum (in the phrase "venit et defendit vim, injuriam, raptum") also appears in a number of early ravishment cases in

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There are also a number of records in the general form of pleas of ravishment that explicitly describe sexual violence (usually with the phrase found in the appeals of 3 Richard 11, "concubuit carnaliter contra voluntatem suam") but that omit the noun raptus altogether.60 These cases, along with the cases of ravishment just discussed (in which the noun raptus is used for cross-reference), seem to hover in a penumbra somewhere between cases of abduction and cases of rape. The hybrid language of these records makes clear just how difficult it would be to make a distinction between cases of abduction and cases of rape that held for every instance. The obsession in Chaucer criticism with making just such a distinction often loses sight of the fact that abduction in practice may easily shade over into something that is hardly to be distinguished from sexual assault: both wrongs involve physical coercion, and this coercion even if it involves no overt sexual component may be implicitly threatening in clearly sexual terms. Sexual coercion in actions that ostensibly involved "mere" abduction could hardly have been unusual.61 That there was such a persistent gray

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Further light may be cast on the use of the word raptus in fourteenth-century legal usage by a document in the coram rege rolls for 3 Richard II that I mentioned at the start of this essay. It relates directly to the Chaumpaigne release, and it appears in exactly that place in the rolls where the prosecution of any rape committed against Cecily Chaumpaigne was likely to have appeared. For all that the Public Record Office has been combed for documents relating to Chaucer's life, this particular record has never come to light before. Because its language has a great deal to tell us about the language of the Chaumpaigne release, I will quote it in full here in a diplomatic transcription:

[Margin: Scriptum]

Memorandum quod Cecilia Chaumpaigne filia quondam Willelmi Chaumpaigne & Agnetis uxoris eius die lune proximo ante festum pentecostes isto eodem termino coram domino Rege in propria persona sua venit & profert hic in curia quoddam scriptum quod cognoscit esse factum suum & pec<i>t illud irrotulari & irrotulatur in hec verba -- Noverint universi per presentes me Ceciliam Chaumpaigne filiam quondam Willelmi Chaumpaigne & Agnetis uxoris eius remisisse relaxasse & omnino pro me & heredibus meis imperpetuum quietum clamasse Galfrido Chaucer armigero omnimodas acciones tam de feloniis transgressionibus compotis debitis quam aliis accionibus quibuscumque quas erga dictum Galfridum unquam habui habeo seu quovismodo habere potero a principio mundi usque in diem confeccionis presencium In cuius rei testimonium presentibus sigillum meum apposui Hiis testibus domino Willelmo de Beauchamp' tunc camerario domini Regis domino Johanne Clanvowe domino Willelmo de Nevylle militibus & aliis Datum Londonie primo die maij anno regni Regis Ricardi secundi post conquestum tercio.62 Be it remembered that Cecily Chaumpaigne, daughter of the late William Chaumpaigne and Agnes his wife, on the Monday, next before the feast of Pentecost in this same term comes before the lord king in her own person and proffers here in court a certain writing which she acknowledges to be her own deed, and asks that it be enrolled, and it is enrolled in these words: Let all men know by (these) presents that I Cecily Chaumpaigne, daughter of the late William Chaumpaigne and Agnes his wife, have remitted, released, and quitclaimed in perpetuity entirely for myself and my heirs to Geoffrey Chaucer, esquire, all manner of actions both concerning felonies, trespasses, accounts, debts and any other actions whatsoever that I ever have had, do have, or shall have been able to have against the said Geoffrey from the beginning of

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the world until the day of the making of (these) presents. In testimony of which I have placed my seal on (these) presents. With these witnesses: Sir William Beauchamp, then chamberlain of the lord king, Sir John Clanvowe, Sir William Neville, knights, and others. Given at London, the first day of May in the third year of the reign of Richard the second after the Conquest.

This memorandum purports to record the language of the Chaumpaigne release, but its language serves to remind us that the original document is now in fact lost to us. Although I have generally discussed the Chaumpaigne release throughout this essay as if it were the very words copied onto the close rolls, the original release itself was presumably written -- and certainly signed and sealed -- on May 1, 1380, when it probably passed for good into Chaucer's possession, and then, ultimately, into oblivion. Before it disappeared, however, the release was recopied three days later (on May 4, 1380) onto the membranes of the close rolls (to form the record I have been discussing throughout this essay). The release was then brought into the Court of King's Bench and recopied in the form of a memorandum three days after that (on May 7, 1380).64 It is important to establish the shape of this extended chronology for it bears directly on the differences that exist between the language of the release as it appears in the close rolls and that language as it appears in the memorandum. Some of these differences are peripheral and insignificant: the introductory remarks in both documents differ -- necessarily -- in their description of the circumstances surrounding the individual enrollments, and the list of witnesses in the release is truncated from the five in the close rolls to three in the memorandum. The more important difference between the two versions of the release's language, however, is the absence of the phrase "de raptu meo" from the language of the memorandum. Instead of recording a release for "all manner of actions relating to my rape or any other thing or cause (omnimodas acciones tam de raptu meo tam de aliqua alia re vel causa)" as the close roll record does, the memorandum shows Cecily Chaumpaigne releasing Chaucer from "all manner of actions both concerning felonies, trespasses, accounts, debts and any other actions whatsoever (omnimodas acciones tam de feloniis transgressionibus cornpotis debitis quam aiiis accionibus quibuscumque)." The mechanism for this

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There is not much that understanding the nature of memoranda generally will do to help us understand why the language of this particular record should differ from the language of the close rolls entry. A wide variety of legal proceedings can be found in this category of documents in the coram rege rolls, although they generally record more informal matters than the suits that make up the bulk of the enrolled records. A number of these memoranda are to be found in G. 0. Sayles's Select Cases in the Court of King's Bench, but the only thing that these examples seem to have in common is their very disunity. There are memoranda concerning a false accusation brought in by a man who turned out to be an impostor,65 the arrest of a man who was wandering around court impersonating a notary,66 and even the contents of a missing membrane in the rolls.67 There are also memoranda concerning perfectly routine matters: a writ of novel disseisin,68 a writ of trespass,69 as well as a coroner's report on an inquisition into a murder.70 In Sayles's collection there is only one document of the form of the Chaumpaigne memorandum -- that is, a quitclaim or deed of release -- but this case concerns a complicated series of events in which the deed in question is actually ripped up (thus initiating the legal proceedings recorded in the memorandum).71 Memoranda are, in short, a category of record into which almost any event in the court can be summarily dumped. My reading of the coram rege rolls for 3 Richard II did not include a systematic search for memoranda, but I did note there three other quitclaims in the form of the Chaumpaigne document. These documents differ from it and from each other only in their description of the object or right they are releasing: two are simple quitclaims for the title to a tenement ("iuro titulo ... in omnibus terrae et tenemento meo"),72 and a third is a general release that makes specific reference to actions relating to the death of the releasor's husband ("appellum et sectam . . . usque eas de morte predicta Johannis ... et omnimodas acciones querelas appella et sectas quascumque").73 The fact that the reenrollment of the Chaumpaigne release is a memorandum tells us little in the end. What is more, even though the memorandum is itself a new witness to the Chaumpaigne release, it actually tells us less about that document than the close rolls record that has been known for over one hundred years.

Yet it seems possible that the memorandum was designed to say less in precisely

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If the change made in the language of the memorandum could not have been an accident, then it was a deliberate revision, a revision, moreover, that had as its main effect the elimination of the noun raptus from the language of the release. As we have seen, raptus in fourteenth-century English law meant forced coitus. From a modern vantage it is difficult of course to measure the opprobrium that attached to rape in fourteenth-century England, and it would take a study much more thorough than this one to come to some understanding of general attitudes toward sexual violence in this period. But the parallels between the omissions in the language of the memorandum and more recent writing on the life of Chaucer are instructive here. When writing about the release and the events that might have prompted it, modern scholars have shrunk from even mentioning either the noun raptus or "rape," its modern English translation; they have repeatedly tried to protect Chaucer's reputation from any association with so repugnant a crime as rape by simply avoiding that wrong's mention.74 Like the writer of the memorandum, these writers have preferred to introduce or discuss the Chaumpaigne release under cover of a wide range of neutral phrases: the euphemisms they have used include "strange case,"75 "escapade,"76

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Why anyone would want to eliminate the phrase "de raptu meo" from the memorandum if two other documents containing that language were in existence (that is, the original release and the close rolls record) is harder to explain. Yet if specific language was at issue (and not, as it seems, the legal rights conferred by the document itself), then it would make perfect sense to alter the language of the release in King's Bench and to leave it alone in the close rolls. The memorandum was much more likely to be read than any other version of the release. The rolls of the Court of King's Bench were well produced, in a careful hand, and they were frequently and easily consulted. They are, in fact, still easy to look through because their membranes are stitched together at one end so that they can be turned like pages. The close rolls, on the other hand, are often casually written (the Chaumpaigne entry is in a slanting, rushed hand), and they are bound in cumbersome rolls with all their membranes stitched end to end. These rolls are difficult and time-consuming to open (it can be a project of fifteen minutes just to open them to the Chaumpaigne release), and it is likely that whatever was written on them was only seldom (if ever) read.

We will never know of course with any certainty why the change in the language of the memorandum was made, just as we will never know with certainty why the Chaumpaigne release was drafted. In fact, for all its own newness, the memorandum offers us precious little new information about the Chaumpaigne release itself and virtually nothing new about the events which prompted any version of the release, let alone the original. Yet the memorandum does tell us a great deal more about the language of the release than we have known, and it speaks directly to the implications of the phrase "de raptu meo" that have troubled Chaucerians for so long. The memorandum makes clear that this phrase seemed just as inflammatory to Chaucer's contemporaries as it has seemed to

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