Map (or Mapes), Walter (c. 1140–c. 1209)

Welsh cleric and satirist. He was in the service of Henry II, frequently being employed as an itinerant justice in England, and was an envoy to Alexander III of Scotland. His De Nugis Curialium/Courtier's Trifles is a collection of gossip and scandal from royal and ecclesiastical courts, with a scattering of anecdotes, legends, and folklore; it also contains a treatise against marriage used by Chaucer in the ‘Prologue to the Wife of Bath's Tale’.

He was born in Herefordshire, of Welsh descent. After studying in Paris, he returned to England and was made clerk of the royal household. He was with Henry II in Limoges 1173, in Anjou 1183, and was sent to the Lateran Council in Rome 1179. By 1186 he had become chancellor of Lincoln, and in 1197 he was made archdeacon of Oxford.