In 1390 highwaymen seem to have been particularly active, and the commissioner of roads himself was robbed more than once. Richard Brerelay was indicted for having "with others unknown" robbed Geoffrey Chaucer at Westminster of the sum of £10, on the Tuesday after the Nativity of the Virgin Mary (_i. e._ September 6); and in the same year "near the Fowle Ok" at Hatcham, in Surrey, Chaucer was robbed of a horse worth £10, goods worth 100 shillings, and £20 6_s._ 8_d._ in cash. Some, at least, of this seems to have been public money, for he was granted a royal pardon for the loss of £20 of the King's money taken from him "by some notable robbers." In 1391 he lost his post as Clerk of the Works, but this does not seem to imply any serious loss of the royal favour, for three years later the king granted him a pension of £20 (about £300 of our money) a year for life. During the interval he seems to have got into money difficulties, for no sooner was this grant made than his creditors promptly sued him for debt. In 1398 he received an additional grant of wine--a tun a year for life--and was also promoted to be sole, instead of sub-, forester of North Pemberton. In 1399 the son of his earliest and most powerful patron came to the throne, and Chaucer, who was still struggling with his creditors, addressed an impassioned appeal to him. Already, in 1398, the poet had been threatened with legal proceedings, and although the king had entrusted him with various commissions in the country, he had not dared to leave his house for fear of arrest (Ten Brink, _History of English Literature_, Vol. II, p. 198). No wonder he sang:-- To you, my purse, and to non other wight Compleyne I, for ye be my lady dere! I am so sory, now that ye be light; For certes, but ye make me hevy chere. (_The Complaint of Chaucer to his Empty Purse._ Professor Ten Brink believes this poem to have been addressed to King Richard, but Professor Skeat has no doubt that it was addressed to Henry.) It is consoling to learn that Henry IV added forty marks a year to the pension granted by King Richard, thus bringing Chaucer's income up to £600 or £700 of our money. This new outburst of good fortune promised well for the future, and Chaucer evidently looked forward to a prosperous and comfortable old age, for, on December 24, 1399, he took the lease of a house in the garden of St. Mary's, Westminster, for fifty-four years. He was not, however, to make long use of his new possession, for on October 25, 1400, he died, and his grave was the first to mark the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. One of his later ballades, _Truth_ may well serve as epitaph for the poet whom court life could never corrupt into a courtier, and whose clear sight and sharp wit never led him into bitterness or cynicism:--