Je ne croy pas ensement:’
and he proceeds to say that he rather believes that Richard is still alive in prison (Archaeologia, xx. p. 408). Adam of Usk (p. 41) says that Richard was brought almost to death by grief and the disappointment of his hopes, but that his death was partly caused by the scantiness of the food supplied to him. The Chronique de la Traïson tells the story about Piers Exton, which was afterwards commonly accepted by historians, but this was certainly not current at the time in England.
462 ff. The epithet ‘pius,’ which Gower attaches to Henry’s name in this passage, means in his mouth ‘merciful,’ and in the margin the ‘pietas’ of the new king is contrasted with the ‘cruelty’ of Richard, the vice to which Gower chiefly attributes his fall. There is no doubt that the execution of Arundel and the murder of Gloucester (or the popular opinion that he had been murdered) produced a very sinister impression, and caused a general feeling of insecurity which was very favourable to Henry’s enterprise. It is true also that Henry showed himself scrupulously moderate at first in his dealings with political opponents. Gower expresses the state of things pretty accurately, when he says below:
‘R. proceres odit et eorum predia rodit,
H. fouet, heredesque suas restaurat in edes;
R. regnum vastat vindex et in omnibus astat,
Mulset terrorem pius H., que reducit amorem.’
486. This is a perilously near approach to the Wycliffite doctrine.
REX CELI Etc. (p. [343])
This piece is here connected by its heading with the Cronica Tripertita, but it occurs also in the Glasgow MS. independently and in the Trentham MS. as a sequel to the poem In Praise of Peace, with the following in place of the present heading, ‘Explicit carmen de pacis commendacione.... Et nunc sequitur epistola, in qua idem Iohannes pro statu et salute dicti domini sui apud altissimum deuocius exorat.’ The poem itself is an adaptation of the original version of Vox Clamantis, vi. cap. 18: see vol. iii. p. 554.