The concentration on means rather than ends in Chaucer's descriptions of the professional skills of the pilgrims is clearly illustrated by the portraits to be discussed in this chapter – Sergeant of Law, Doctor of Physic, Merchant, and Guildsmen. These pilgrims receive the narrator's enthusiastic admiration for their professional qualifications and capabilities, but the social effects of their sometimes dubious practices are left out of account. What I shall call the ‘omission of the victim’ is a common feature of their portraits, and explains their grouping in this chapter. A concomitant feature is Chaucer's substitution of satire on pompousness and self-importance for the attacks on fraud and malpractice made by other writers. Another characteristic of three of these portraits is the attention paid to the details of professional worklife; Chaucer does not omit the conventional attacks on bribery and fraud in order to describe personal or individual features of the pilgrim, but in favour of presenting his daily occupation and the way in which it determines, and indeed constitutes, his character.

THE SERGEANT OF LAW

The laity are not given such detailed treatment as the clergy in estates satire, but lawyers and doctors were technically clerics, and therefore appear regularly in estates lists. They are not, however, described in much detail; thus the tradition for lawyers is full but remarkably unified.

Before examining this tradition, we should observe how Chaucer, with typical hyperbole, stresses the Sergeant's qualifications as a representative of his estate.