[Pedro Paulo Gaião]

"Contributions for Ransoms Made by the King, 12 January to 7 July 1360"

Sir William de Graunson, knight of Burgundy £20
Richard Stury, King's Esquire £50
George, Valettus of Countess of Ulster £10

John Parker, Valettus of Queen Isaballa £9 12 s
John de York, king's carter and his seven fellows £12
Richard de Barton and William de Pull., poultry purveyors £10
John de Champain, chaplain £8
Geoffrey Chaucer £16
. . .
Geoffrey Hacking and Thomas de Staines, valetti of the Queen £16
Richard Dulle, archer 40s
John Smart, master of the smiths £4

Source: http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special...e-ran.html

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Some thoughts about the source: considering all the persons ransomed were somehow related to the King, I don't know if those prices were inflated by this fact, or whether they reflect the general prices for rank or something like that: Chaucer wasn't a knight for sure by the time he was captured in the Siege of Rheims, but I'm not sure if he remained Lady Burke's pageant or was already a esquire. Even though, £16 is more than the base-wealth of an English knight (£15, with the extra one being a painfull adding).

Anyways, his ransom is almost the same of Sir Willian de Graunson, a Savoyard knight. The prices for the archer is also interesting, for I hardly believe an archer would have 40s. Ian Heath's once said a royal vallet at war received 6d a day (the same as an armati). I guess a Queen's vallet was under the same conditions of a valetti regis.

Then, I have questions: when a knight or noble was capture, the ransom asked was the whole amount of wealth/lands he was associated to? Does that mean someone who was ransomed once literally faded into poverty? I know Saint Louis IX ransom at Egypt had the cost years of Crown's wealthy, but I consider this to be an exception situation.

Archibald Douglas' ransom was 700 merks, while his royal pension for being the Keeper of Edinburgh Castle worth 200 merks anually (he also had profits from his fiefs).

[Anthony Clipsom]

I'm not sure where to find comparative information.

Remy Ambuhl has shown that the documents surviving from the Agincourt campaign about the royal share of ransoms owed show a cluster of cases around the ransoms of £10, £15 and £20. He speculates these may be standardised estimates for the lower ranks of prisoners to speed up the process. A slightly higher range of lesser character ransoms has been collected for the battle of Poitiers, the lowest price for an esquire was £50, with this also being the highest rate for varlets and other servants.

William de Graunison's ransom seems low for a knight and perhaps represents a contribution toward, rather than a whole ransom.

[Pedro Paulo Gaião]

[Randall Moffett]

Richard sturmy sounds familiar. He might be I'm the family as the king's admiral. I thought he was knighted so I don't think it is him but let me check

RPM

[Graham Shearlaw]

[Henry R. Gower]

Of course the all time record is probably King Richard The Lionheart's ransom in he 12th Century of 100,000 pounds sterling, exacted by the German Emperor, due to Richard's misfortune in his itinerary, when captured by the Austrian Archduke on his way home from Crusade. I always thought that was the origin of the expression: "A King's Ransom." The sum is even more magnified when it is appreciated that here was some inflation in prices from Richard's time to Chaucer's. The inflation is illustrated by an exhibit of contemporary coins in the British Museum, entitled "how much was a cow worth ?" It kept taking more and more silver pennies to buy a cow from William 1 to Henry VIII.

[Anthony Clipsom]

The treaty of Bretigny set the ransom of Jean II at 3 million ecus, equivalent to £500,000 . Ransoming a king wasn't cheap. But then these huge "political" ransoms were a long way outside the ongoing ransom trade that affected Chaucer.