My fifthe housbonde – God his soule blesse! –
Which that I took for love, and no richesse,
He som tyme was a clerk of Oxenford.
– Geoffrey Chaucer
The Canterbury Tales, The Wife of Bath’s Prologue. After hearing so much about the gold-digging Alison who married men for money, it is hard to believe that the Wife of Bath took her fifth husband Jankin purely for love, because he certainly had no wealth and was formerly a modest Oxford clerk.