So why do we have Chaucer?
The answer to that is because for some time our book was thought to have been by him. I cannot find out why this was, but it seems that it was rather closely modelled on his work, the "Book of the Duchess", as far as it was a love story set in a paradise garden, and was a story of one person`s life, recounted by another, in a heightened, dream-like state. Perhaps this is why our book has two titles, "The Complaynte of a Lover`s Life" and "The Complaynte of the Black Knight".
We do also know that William Caxton printed Chaucer`s Canterbury tales, in England, in 1478 - and that it was reprinted in 1483. So perhaps it was that people who had not encountered, or imagined the possibility of any other printer, presumed he was the only author, of everything.
I find the reverse of these cards very interesting because they tell us where the signature used on them is actually from - in this case it is "on a bill for the issue of a Commission under the Great Seal to Hugh Swayn to purvey builders materials etc, dated 1389" - which is all explained, with additional information, at the Masonic Encyclopaedia.
Now at the time this set was issued the text tells us that this item was held at the Public Record Office, but, according to something I tried to read at JStor - but my chromebook is too old to be given access - the signature, and many of those documents have now disappeared.
Our original World Tobacco Issues Index tells us that this is a set of many permutations,. The listing of just our section is
4. Nos. 76-100 (25)
Size (A) small (B) large
The entire listing of all the cards will be found as the Card of the Day for 26th June 2023, which is when we featured the first part of the set, numbers one to twenty five cards