835 ff. It is difficult to say who is the bad mayor of London to whom allusion is here made. The rival leaders in City politics were Nicholas Brembre and John of Northampton. The former was lord mayor in the years 1377, 1378, and again in 1383 and 1384, when he was elected against his rival (who had held the office in 1381, 1382) in a forcible and unconstitutional manner which evoked many protests. Brembre, who belonged to the Grocers’ company, represented the interests of the greater companies and was of the Court party, a special favourite with the king, while John of Northampton, a draper, engaged himself in bitter controversy with the Fishmongers, who were supported by the Grocers, and was popular with the poorer classes. In the Cronica Tripertita Gower bitterly attacks Brembre (who was executed by sentence of the so-called ‘Merciless Parliament’ in 1388), and we might naturally suppose that he was the person referred to here; but that passage was written before the political events which led to that invective and in all probability not later than 1382, and the references to the low origin of the mayor in question, ll. 845-860, do not agree with the circumstances of Nicholas Brembre. Political passion in the City ran high from the year 1376 onwards, and the person referred to may have been either John of Northampton or one of the other mayors, who had in some way incurred Gower’s dislike: cp. Mirour, 26365 ff.
877. Cp. Conf. Amantis, v. 7626,
‘It floureth, bot it schal not greine
Unto the fruit of rihtwisnesse.’
915 f. Ovid, Tristia, i. 5. 47 f.
922. Cp. Prov. xxv. 15, ‘lingua mollis confringet duritiam,’ and the verses at the beginning of the Confessio Amantis,
‘Ossibus ergo carens que conterit ossa loquelis Absit.’
953 f. Ars Amat. ii. 183 f., but Ovid has ‘Numidasque leones.’
957 f. Rem. Amoris, 447 f. (but ‘ceratas’ for ‘agitatas’).
965 f. Pont. iii. 7. 25 f.