Chaucer's Tomb: The Politics of Reburial

Description: Reburial is always a political act. Richard II had started having his fatihful servants buried in Westminster Abbey, and Chaucer may have become an Abbey tenant in 1399 to be buried there.; When he died, he was buried outside St. Benedict's chapel as Caxton tells us. In 1556, Nicholas Brigham had Chaucer's remains moved to the south transept and had an inscription placed against its east wall.; Pearsall explains the political implications of this removal, especially as "part of this larger programme of counter-reformation, a move to reappropriate England's greatest poet to the traditional faith."