The son of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer and his wife Philippa Roet, Thomas was linked socially and by family to senior members of the English nobility, though he was himself a commoner.

Thomas Chaucer was a relative by marriage of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, through his aunt Katherine Swynford.

King Henry IV, the son of John of Gaunt by his first marriage to Blanche of Lancaster, was half-brother to Thomas Chaucer's Beaufort first cousins.

He was Chief Butler of England for almost thirty years, first appointed by Richard II, and on 20 March 1399 received a pension of twenty marks a year in exchange for offices granted him by the Duke, paying at the same time five marks for the confirmation of two annuities of charges on the Duchy of Lancaster and also granted by the Duke.

[1] On 23 February 1411 the queen gave him the manor of Woodstock and other estates during her life, and on 15 March the king assigned them to him after her death.

He attended fifteen parliaments as knight of the shire for Oxfordshire (1400–1401, 1402, 1405–1406, 1407, 1409–1410, 1411, 1413, 1414, 1421, 1422, 1425–1426, 1427, 1429, 1430–1431) and was Speaker of the House five times, a feat not surpassed until the 18th century.

He was chosen speaker in the parliament that met at Gloucester in 1407, and on 9 November reminded the king that the accounts of the expenditure of the last subsidy had not been rendered.

He was chosen again in 1410 and in 1411, when, on making his 'protestation' and claiming the usual permission of free speech, he was answered by the king that he might speak as other speakers had done, but that no novelties would be allowed.