The old age of Chaucer, like that of too many men of genius, is said to have been stormy, and not unvisited by necessity. We are informed that he went from Woodstock to Donnington Castle, and thence to London, to solicit a continuance of his annuities, in which he found such difficulties as probably hastened his death. It has been said, how could this be? How could a man with lands and a castle be in such necessity? and it has been attributed to the desire of his biographers to excite an undue sympathy for their subject, that they have represented him in his old age as avaricious. Probably, if we knew all the circumstances, the whole would be clear enough. We know so little of Chaucer's real, and especially of his domestic history, that we may pronounce, as falsely as presumptuously, in saying he could not be in need. Who shall say that because Chaucer casually mentions only one son, that he might not have half a dozen? Who shall say what misfortunes may have visited his old age? These were changeable and troublesome times. His biographers have settled his castle and estate on his son Thomas; and if he had other sons to provide for, and his annuities were not paid, these are causes enough for pecuniary difficulty. The general opinion is, that he died October 25th, in the year 1400, being seventy-two years of age. According to Wood, he never repented of his reflections on the clergy of his times, but upbraided himself bitterly with the licentious portions of his writings, often crying out at the approach of death, "Woe, woe is me, that I can not recall and annul those things; but, alas! they are now continued from man to man, and I can not do what I would desire." He was buried in Westminster Abbey, in the great south aisle, but no monument was raised to his memory till a century and a half after his decease, when Nicholas Bingham, a gentleman of Oxford, a poet and great admirer of Chaucer, erected the plain altar, now so well known, having three quatrefoils, and the same number of shields, at the north end of a magnificent recess, formed by four obtuse arched angles. The inscription and figures are now almost obliterated.