... I knowe not love in dede Ne wot how that he quyteth folk hir hyre,[14] (_Parlement of Foules_, ll. 8, 9.) "Rosemounde"--if she had any real existence--can hardly have felt complimented by the affection of a poet who told her--and the world at large-- Nas never pyk walwed in galauntyne As I in love am walwed and y-wounde.[15] There is no proof one way or the other. We know nothing of his children, except that in 1391 he wrote a treatise on the astrolabe for his little son Lewis, then ten years of age. Gascoigne, a generation after Chaucer's death, speaks of Thomas Chaucer, a well-known man of wealth and position in the early fifteenth century, more than once Speaker of the House of Commons, as Geoffrey's son, but no mention is made of him by Chaucer himself or by any of his contemporaries or immediate successors. John of Gaunt paid a considerable sum of money to place a certain Elizabeth Chaucer in the nunnery of Barking in 1381, but she is usually considered to have been the poet's sister. In 1367 Chaucer himself was granted a pension of twenty marks a year for life, in recognition of his services, and in 1368 (or, according to Mr. G. C. Coulton, 1372) he was promoted to be an Esquire of the royal household. The duties of an esquire seem better suited to a poet than those of a valet: "These Esquires of houshold of old be accustumed winter & summer in afternoons & in eunings to drawe to Lordes Chambres within Court, there to keep honest company after there Cunninge, in talking of Cronicles of Kinges & of others pollicies, & in pipeing or harpinge, songinges or other actes marcealls, to helpe to occupie the Court, & accompanie estraingers till the time require of departing." In 1369 a Geoffrey Chaucer was again with the army in France, but no particular adventures seem to have befallen him. At this time John of Gaunt's influence was paramount at the English court, which may partly account for Chaucer's steady and rapid promotion. In 1370 he was sent abroad on an important mission--the exact nature of which we do not know--and two years later he went to Genoa to arrange which English port should become the headquarters of the Genoese trade. From Genoa he went to Florence, and by November 1373 he was back in England again. When Chaucer went to Italy, Dante had already been dead for over fifty years, but Petrarch and Boccaccio, the other members of that great trilogy of the earlier Renaissance, were both alive. Chaucer makes his clerk declare that he learned the tale of Griselda ... at Padowe of a worthy clerk, * * * * * Fraunceys Petrark, the laureat poete, Highte this clerk, whos rethoryke sweete Enlumined al Itaille of poetrye,[16] (_Clerkes Prologue_, ll. 31-33.)