John Gower at one time lived at Southwark, and in St. Saviour’s Church his tomb still stands. One day, in the year 1390, when he had taken boat on the Thames, he accidentally met the King (Richard II.) in his tapestried barge. The river was the silent highway for all Londoners, also the royal road from Westminster to the Tower, and from thence to Greenwich. Brilliant scenes were to be seen on the river, which joined all parts of the town in one. Here all classes were brought together—the gentry and the working-classes—and Court pageants were constantly being enacted.
When Richard saw Gower he commanded him to come into the royal barge, and then charged him to write some new thing which he might read. The poet obeyed the command, and produced the Confessio Amantis, with a Prologue, in which occur these lines:—
‘In our engglish, I thenke make
A bok for King Richardes sake,
To whom belongeth my ligeance
With al myn hertes obeissance
In al that evere a liege man
Unto his King may doon or can,
So perforth I me recomande
To him which al me may comande,
Preyende unto the hihe regne
Which causeth every king to regne
That his corone longe stoude.
I thenke and have it understoude,
As it bifel upon a tyde,
As thing which scholde tho betyde,—
Under the toun of newe Troye,
Which tok of Brut his ferst joye,
In Temse whan it was flowende
As I be bote cam rowende,
So as fortune hir tyme sette,
My liege lord par chaunce I mette;
And so befel, as I cam nyh,
Out of my bot, whan he me syh,
He bad me come in to his barge.
And whan I was with him at large,
Amonges othre thinges seid
He hath this charge upon me leid,
And bad me doo my besynesse
That to his hihe worthinesse
Som newe thing I scholde boke,
That he himself it mihte loke
After the forme of my writynge.
And thus upon his comandynge
Myn herte is wel the more glad
To write so as he me bad;
And eek my fere as wel the lasse
That non envye schal compasse
Without a resonable wite
To pyne and blame that I write.’
As time went on Gower lost faith in Richard. The personal reference to the King was suppressed, and instead of
‘A bok for King Richardes sake,’
he wrote
The original picture is of all the more interest, because Gower’s verse is not usually allusive to the characteristics of London life.
John Lydgate was a countryman and monk of Bury, born at Lydgate, near Newmarket, about 1370, as he himself tells us in the Tale of Princes. He was not in sympathy with the doings of the city, but his London Lickpenny is an invaluable record of London life in his day; in which are related the adventures of a poor Kentishman who comes to London in search of justice, but cannot find it for lack of money.
First he went to Westminster Hall, and visited successively the different courts of law—the King’s Bench and the Common Pleas, and then to the Rolls, ‘before the clerks of the Chancerie.’