Chaucer's Official Life

We have the names of the esquires of the king's household in two lists of 1368 and 1369, in the Chaucer Life Records. In the study of the careers of these esquires the most difficult problem is to determine the families from which they were derived. Had they come from great families, of course, it would not have been hard to trace their pedigrees. But a long search through county histories and books of genealogy, has revealed the families of only a few, and those few in every case come from an unimportant line. It is clear then that they never were representatives of highly important families.