It was in the chapel of this river-side palace (about 1360, Edward III.) that our great poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, married Philippa, daughter of a knight of Hainault and sister to a mistress of the Duke’s. He mentions his marriage in his poem of _The Dream_.[193] He says harmoniously-- “On the morrow, When every thought and every sorrow Dislodg’d was out of mine heart, With every woe and every smart, Unto a tent prince and princess Methought brought me and my mistress. * * * * * With ladies, knighten, and squiers, And a great host of ministers, Which tent was church parochial.” Those marriage bells have long since rung, the smoke of that incense has long since risen to heaven, yet we seldom pass the Savoy without thinking how the poet and his fair Philippa went “To holy church’s ordinance, And after that to dine and dance, ... and divers plays.” It was to his great patron--“time-honoured” Lancaster, claimant, through his wife, of the throne of Castile--that Chaucer owed all his court favours, his Genoese embassy, his daily pitcher of wine, his wardship, his controllership, and his annuity of twenty marks. It was in this palace he must have imbibed his attachment to Wickliffe, and his hatred of all proud and hypocritical priests. Buildings seem, like men, to be born under special stars. It was the fate of the Savoy to enjoy a hundred and forty years of splendour, and then to sink into changeless poverty and desolation. It was also its ill fate to be once sacked and once burnt. In 1378, under Richard II., its first punishment overtook it. John Wickliffe, a Yorkshireman, had been appointed rector of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, by the favour of John of Ghent, who was delighted with a speech of Wickliffe in Parliament denying that King John’s tribute to the Pope necessarily bound King Edward III. The Papal bull for Wickliffe’s prosecution did not reach England till the king’s death, but Wickliffe was cited on the 19th of February, 1378, to appear before the Bishop of London at St. Paul’s. In the interval before his appearance he had promised the Parliament, at their request, to prove the legality of its refusal to pay tribute to the Pope.