Chaucer and Lydgate

Stow's note in Bodleian Library, MS Fairfax 16, fol. 130r is the first made by an early reader of the connection between John of Gaunt’s wife, Blanche, and the deceased lady in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Book of the Duchess. 

The next manuscript in this part of the exhibit is Trinity College, Cambridge, MS R.3.19. On fol. 156r Stow notes Chaucer's death in 1400. In the third manuscript here, Trinity College, Cambridge, MS R.3.21, on fol. 278v, Stow notes first, that a version of Lydgate's Danse of Death is painted in St. Innocent’s Cloister in Paris, France and, second, that it was painted there by the request of Jankyn Carpenter.