Auntrous

Revealingly, Thopas is the only "romance" among the tales that qualifies even vaguely as an adventure story--even starring a "knight auntrous" (909)--and of course it is a merciless parody.

He accepts maistre as a spelling of maistrie (C XI.287) but emends auntres (C XX.14), also acceptable, to auntrous. Most remarkably, in C he systematically replaces all forty-three instances of the feminine singular pronoun he and the one hee with heo which the scribe of X never used.

A couple of accusations from Colchester in 1408 directly concern the passing on of market information to merchants from other parts of the country, in one case by letter, without any implication that the informers had directly benefited from their misdemeanour.(40) In 1433 John Auntrous of Colchester was heavily fined for advising shipmen intending to come to Colchester to go to Maldon instead, presumably because prices there were higher.(41) In 1437 two "Dutchmen" were fined for giving mercantile information to Flemings, and one of them was charged particularly with giving advice about current prices in Colchester.(42) Frequently the passing of information was associated with opportunities for personal gain.