Notwithstanding all this cloud of uncertainty, the belief will always prevail that Donnington was the residence of Chaucer. Evelyn tells us that there was an oak in the Park which tradition asserted to have been planted by Chaucer, and which was still called Chaucer's Oak. As his house at Woodstock is gone, so his castle here is a mere ruin. It is generally supposed to be at Woodstock that he wrote his Canterbury Tales, where he, also, is said to have written his Treatise on the Astrolabe, for the use of his son Lewis; yet if, as asserted, he was upward of sixty when he commenced the Canterbury Tales, he may have been in possession also of Donnington during part of the time that he was writing his great poem. But every thing concerning these particulars is wrapped in the mists of five hundred years. The only branch of his family that he mentions by name is his son _Lowis_. The very name of his wife is a secret. "Historians," says Tyrwhitt, "though they own themselves totally ignorant of the Christian name of his wife, are all agreed that her surname was _Rouet_, the same with that of her father and eldest sister, Catharine Swynford." How _Rouet_ and _Swynford_ can be the same surname, Tyrwhitt does not tell us. Spite of this, the commentators have pored into the list of nine _Dunicellæ_ of the Queen Philippa, to whom the king had granted annuities, and finding no _Rouet_ there, have been resolved to fix, as the future wife of Chaucer, one Philippa Pykard, whom they did find. These are all rash peerings into the dark. As no damsel of the name of Rouet was found, the natural conclusion is that she was already married to Chaucer.