There is a doubtful tradition that Chaucer was intended for a lawyer, and was a member of the Middle Temple (a large building in London, where a great many lawyers live still), and here, as they say, he was once fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan friar in Fleet Street. If this be true, it must have been rather a severe beating; for two shillings was a far larger sum than it is now--equal to about sixteen shillings of our money. Chaucer was sometimes angry with the friars at later times in life, and deals them some hard hits in his writings with a relish possibly founded on personal experience of some disagreeable friar. At any rate, Chaucer never got fond of the friars, and thought they were often bad and mischievous men, who did not always _act_ up to what they _said_. This is called _hypocrisy_, and is so evil a thing that Chaucer was quite right to be angry with people who were hypocrites. IV. Fleet Street still exists, though it was much less crowded with people in Chaucer’s day than now. Indeed, the whole of London was very different from our London; and, oh, so much prettier! The streets within the London wall were probably thickly populated, and not over-healthy; but outside the wall, streets such as Fleet Street were more like the streets of some of our suburbs, or rather some foreign towns--the houses irregular, with curious pointed roofs, here and there divided by little gardens, and even green fields. I dare say, when Chaucer walked in the streets, the birds sang over his head, and the hawthorn and primrose bloomed where now the black smoke and dust would soon kill most green things. Thames Street was where Chaucer long lived in London, but, at one time in his life at least, it is certain that he occupied a tenement at Aldgate, which formed part of an old prison; and it is probable that at another he lived in the beautiful Savoy Palace with John of Gaunt, whilst his wife was maid of honour. In 1393, Chaucer was living at Greenwich, near which he had work in 1390--poor and asking his friend Scogan to intercede for him “where it would fructify;” and at the end of his life he had a house in Westminster, said to be nearly on the same spot on which Henry VII.’s Chapel now stands, and close to the Abbey where he is buried.