3 Henry IV and the Ex Post Facto Construction of a Prophetic John Gower

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Langland’s prophetic reputation remained prominent because sixteenth-century historians and readers fundamentally shaped his persona in light of the Reformation. Although this image still impacts our readings of Piers Plowman in subtle ways, the concept of a proto-Protestant Langland has largely been put to rest in critical circles. Gower, on the other hand, was instrumental in recasting himself as a prophet through proleptic revisions to one of his major works. As a result, the concept of a prophetic Gower who foretold the downfall of Richard II still endures. For the last two centuries, literary and historical criticism has characterized John Gower as a genuine political prophet whose major works foretold the deposition of Richard II in an uncanny way. Setting aside Gower’s supposedly real powers of prophecy reveals a more complex portrait of an author – one whose longstanding attempts to present himself as a vatic vox populi made him into the ideal Lancastrian apologist. Manuscript evidence suggests that Gower revised the Vox clamantis after Richard II was deposed in order to make it appear as if he had presciently foretold the monarch’s demise. Yet manuscript studies have leapt to circuitous narratives to explain Gower’s revisions to the Vox in a way that preserves the longstanding perception of a prophetic Gower. In contrast, manuscript evidence indicates that Gower made no proleptic revisions to the Confessio Amantis. Rather, Henry IV’s supporters promoted earlier recensions of the Confessio Amantis that made it appear as if Gower had predicted the downfall of Richard II well in advance. In this case, viewing the work with the advantage of hindsight, much like sixteenth-century readers would later view the supposed Dissolution prophecy in Piers Plowman, transformed Gower’s voice into a prophetic one that Lancastrians could exploit.1

Prophecy surrounded the coronation of Henry IV more than just about any other English political event. In his Chronicles, Froissart says that when he was twenty-four, an elderly knight interpreted the Brut to him, claiming that Merlin had predicted that the crown would return to the House of Lancaster in the future.2 Froissart’s prophetic story is less an endorsement of the Duke of Lancaster’s rise to the throne than it is a reassurance that God is guiding the fate of the English nation, despite recent monarchical upheavals. Many of the prophecies surrounding Henry’s accession were actually anti-Lancastrian. Hermit William Norham and others had produced prophecies that Richard II remained alive and would return to seize the throne.³ These prophecies vexed Henry so much that he, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Chancellor of England all passed laws requiring the formal interrogation of anyone claiming to have had visions.⁴ Yet, plenty of pro-Lancastrian prophecy circulated as well. For instance, Adam of Usk writes:

Aduentus sui exilii dicti Herffordie, et per mortem sui patris iam Lanc’, ducis, sic duplici ducatu functi, iuxta illud prophecie Brydlintoun ubi uersus,

Bis dux uix ueniet cum trecentis sociatis,
Phi ffalsus fugiat, non succerret nece stratis.

Iste dux Henricus, secundum propheciam Merlyny iuxta propheciam, pullus aquile, quia filius Iohannis; set secundum Bridlintoun merito canis, propter liberatam callariorum leporariis conueniencium, et quia diebus canicularibus uenit, et quia infinitos ceruos, liberatam scilicet regis Ricardi in ceruis excistentem, penitus a regno affugauit.

[The return from exile of the aforesaid [Henry] duke of Hereford – also now through the death of his father, Duke of Lancaster, and thus a duke twice over – fulfilled the prophecy of Bridlington, where the verse reads:

The double duke will come with scarce three hundred men,
Let perjured Philip flee, regardless of the slain.

According to the prophecy of Merlin, this duke Henry is the eaglet, for he was the son of John; following Bridlington, however, he should rather be the dog, because of his livery of linked collars of greyhounds, and because he came in the dog-days, and because he drove utterly from the kingdom countless numbers of harts – the hart being the livery of King Richard.]⁵

Usk appropriates two lines from the lengthy Vaticinium Roberti Bridlington to claim that Henry’s triumph over Richard had been predicted. He appends and reinterprets a prophecy of Merlin to claim that multiple prophets foresaw the event. This not only has the effect of emphasizing that God is in control of England’s fate but also that Henry’s usurpation of his cousin Richard’s throne was not treasonous but providential. Henry would later exploit the trend of prophecy surrounding his new reign by supporting the production of retrospective prophecies predicting it.6 Many of these prophecies are alluded to in chronicles but now lost.⁷ Yet, the most impressive and convincing among them have been hiding in plain sight in the works of John Gower. Gower’s role in this Lancastrian agenda to produce political prophecies has been underestimated, largely because the prophetic portions of the Vox clamantis are told in future tense, rather than past tense, creating the impression of genuine foresight so convincing that it has endured to this day.

Scribe 4’s Lancastrian Emendations to the Vox Clamantis

The most famous example of Gower’s supposed prescience appears in a revision to Book VI of the Vox clamantis. Here, Gower critiques Richard’s role in the Rising of 1381, eerily alluding to his “destiny” to lose his crown:

Rex, puer indoctus, morales negligit actus,

In quibus a puero crescere possit homo:

Sic etenim puerum iuuenilis concio ducit,

Quod nichil expediens, sit nisi velle, sapit.

Que vult ille, volunt iuuenes sibi consociati,

Ille subintrat iter, hiique sequnter eum:

Vanus honor vanos iuuenes facit esse sodales,

Vnde magis vane regia tecta colunt.

Hii puerum regem puerile more subornant,

Pondera virtutum quo minus ipse gerit …

Error ad omne latus pueri consurgit, et ille,

Qui satis est docilis, concipit omne malum:

Nondolus immo iocus, non fraus set Gloria ludi

Sunt pueris, set ei sors stat aborta doli …

Quo Regi puero scripta sequenda fero. (VI.vii.555–80)

[The king, an undisciplined boy, neglects the moral behaviour by which a man might grow up from a boy. Indeed, youthful company so sways the boy that he has a taste for nothing practical, unless it be his whim. The young men associated with him want what he wants; he enters upon a course of action and they follow him. Vainglory makes these youthful comrades vain, for which reason they vainly cultivate the royal quarters more and more. They abet the boy king in his childish behaviour, whereby he wields the authority of virtue the less … Sin springs up on every side of the boy, and he, who is quite easily led, takes to every evil. To boys, it is not wrongdoing but joking, but dishonor but glorious sport; but his destiny does arise out of this wrongdoing … for which reason I offer the following writings for the boy king.]8

This is a revision to the Vox clamantis, which appears in four different manuscripts of the work (Glasgow, University Library, MS Hunterian T.2.17; London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius A.iv; London, British Library, MS Harley 6291; Oxford, All Souls College, MS 98). The original passage, found in all of the other manuscripts, exonerates Richard II rather than scolding him:

Stat puer immunis culpe, set qui puerile

Insturuerent regimen, non sine labe manent:

Sic non rex set consilium sunt causa doloris,

Quo quasi communi murmure plangit humus.

Tempora matura si rex etatis haberet,

Equaret libram que modo iure caret. (VI.vii.555–60)

[The boy is free of blame, but those who have instrumented this boyish reign shall not endure without a fall. So not the king but his council is the cause of our sorrow, for which the land grieves as if with a general murmur. If the king were of mature age, he would set right the scale which now is without justice.]

Since the revised passage is about King Richard II in the present tense, most critics have assumed it to have been written at least prior to 1400, when Richard was still on the throne. Eric Stockton, M.B. Parkes, and others have speculated that the poet added this passage somewhere between 1390 and 1393.⁹

Also in Book VI, Gower had originally offered a prayer for Richard II:

Ipse meum Iuuenem conseruet supplico Regem,

Quem videant sanum prospera Regna senem;

Ipse iuuentutem regat et producat in euum,

Semper et in melius dirigat acta deus.

Consilium nullum te tangere possit iniquum,

Rex nec in hac terra proditor esse tua…

O tibi, Rex, euo detur, fortissimo, nostro

Semper honorata ceptra tenere manu. (VI.xviii.1167–72; 1175–6)

[I pray that he keep my young king, and may his prosperous realms see him a healthy old man. May God Himself guide his youthfulness and prolong it forever, and always direct his actions for the better. May no evil counsel have the power to influence you, O king, and may no betrayer of yours have the power to exist in this land … May it be granted to you, O king, always to hold the honored scepter firmly in your hand during our lifetime.]

The same four manuscripts that had contained the aforementioned revision about Richard as a puer indoctus contain this revision in place of the prayer:

Si rex sit vanus, sit auarus, sitque superbus,

Quo regnum torquet, terra subacta dolet.

Omne quod est regi placitum non expedit illi,

Que sibi iura volunt, absque rigore licent:

Mira potest regis pro tempore ferre potestas,

Vana tamen finis comprobat acta satis …

Nunc … in plebe vox est, quod deficient

Lege dolus iura vendicat esse sua:

Sic bona iusticie fraus compta subintrat, et inde

Inficit occultam lex hodierna fidem. (VI.xviii.1169–74; 1179–82)

[If a king is vain, greedy, and haughty, so that he torments his kingdom, the land subject to him suffers. Everything that is pleasing to a king is not beneficial to him, [but] the things which justice grants him it allows without undue severity. The power of a king can accomplish wonders for a time, but in the end there is nevertheless sufficient proof of his idle deeds … There is a cry nowadays among the people that because the law is failing, wrongdoing claims to be its own justification.]

Because nearly twenty scribes had revised the four manuscripts of the Vox clamantis containing these two (and two other) updated passages about Richard, G.C. Macaulay made the case that these and other changes to the Vox were made gradually.10 Building on Macaulay’s work, Nigel Saul suggests that the passage referring to Richard as a “puer indoctus” was made in a first round of revisions and that the prayer was revised in a second round, at least eight years before Richard’s deposition.¹¹

Gower’s brazen critique of a not-yet-deposed Richard has led Russell A. Peck to call Gower “a fearless critic of men in high places” and George R. Coffman to refer to him as a “mentor for royalty.”¹² Stockton asserts, “The poet is to be admired for speaking out fearlessly to his sovereign, a man who later ruthlessly exiled or executed several of the most important nobles of the realm.”13 Beyond his willingness to critique, Gower’s prescience is especially notable here, considering that he refers to Richard’s “sors” [fate] as if he can anticipate that this behaviour will lead to Richard’s deposition. Yet, Gower was neither so bold nor so prophetic, as manuscript evidence supports that he added this and other passages in 1400, after Richard was deposed and Henry had taken the crown.

In 1953, Maria Wickert presented an alternate theory that has not yet received its due credit. She argued, “Gower made post eventum corrections within the second recension of the Vox clamantis when he joined the work with the Cronica Tripertita after Richard’s fall, and attempted an organic transition.”¹⁴ Wickert makes this argument based on the fact that the Cronica Tripertita, an extended scathing critique of Richard II, written after Henry IV’s accession to the throne in 1400, can be considered a late addendum to the Vox clamantis rather than a separate work unto itself. As David R. Carlson notes, “Though the Cronica also had separate circulation, it survives predominantly as a kind of coda insinuating itself at the end of the greater Vox clamantis, in four of the five manuscripts that transmit it.”¹⁵ In order to reflect his changes to the Vox clamantis to include the Cronica tripertita, Gower altered the colophon that details his three major works in several of his manuscripts. Earlier versions of the colophon describe the Vox as a work about the Rising of 1381:

Secundus enim liber, sermone latino versibus exametri et pentametri compositus, tractat super illo mirabili euentu qui in Anglia tempore domini Regis Ricardi secondi anno regni sui quarto contigit, quando seruiles rustici impetuose contra nobiles et ingenuos regni insurrexerunt. Innocenciam tamen dicti domini Regis tunc minoris etatis cause indi excusabilem pronuncians, culpas aliunde, ex quibus et non a fortuna talia inter homines contingent enormia euidencius declarant. Titulusque voluminis huius, cuius ordo Septem continent paginas, Vox clamantis nominator.

[The second book, composed in the Latin language in hexameter and pentameter verses, treats of the astounding event which took place in England during the time of King Richard II in the fourth year of his reign, when the lowly peasants violently revolted against the freemen and nobles of the realm. Nevertheless, pronouncing upon the innocence of the said lord the king as excusable in this matter because of his minor age, the book declares the blame, because of which and not through Fortune – such enormities take place among men, clearly lies elsewhere. And the name of this book, which is arranged in seven sections, is called The Voice of One Crying.]

The revised colophon describes the Vox as an entirely different work:

Secundus enim liber sermone Latino metrice compositus tractat de variis infortuniis tempore regis Ricardi secondi in Anglia contingent – ibus: vnde non solum regni proceres et communes tormenta passi sunt, set et ipse crudelissimus rex, suis ex demeritis ab alto corruens, in foueam quam fecit finaliter proiectus est. Nomenque voluminis huius Vox clamantis intitulatur.

[The second book, metrically composed in the Latin language, treats of the various misfortunes occurring in England in the time of King Richard II. Whence, not only did the nobles and commons of the realm suffer torments, but even the most cruel king himself was finally laid low, falling because of his fault from on high into the pit which he had made. And the name of this book is called The Voice of one Crying.]

This revised description of the Vox clamantis is basically a summary of the Cronica tripertita, illustrating that Gower expected the Cronica to be viewed as a part of the Vox. Wickert argues that, since appending a biting critique of Richard II to a work that exonerates and praises him would seem rather contradictory, Gower also changed the small sections on Richard II in Book VI of the Vox.

Scribal activity supports Wickert’s theory that Gower added the revised passages about Richard at the same time that he added the Cronica tripertita to the Vox clamantis in 1400. All four of the manuscripts containing the revised passage about Richard’s corruption also append the Cronica to the Vox (Hunterian T.2.17, Cotton Tiberius A.iv, Harley 6291, and All Souls 98). Those that do not append the Cronica contain the earlier passages on Richard. Based on this observation, another German scholar before Wickert, Karl Meyer, had argued that the revisions to the Vox regarding Richard II were made contemporaneously with the appending of the Cronica Tripertita.16 Macaulay’s introduction to the Vox acknowledges Meyer’s perspective but claims that he “was preoccupied with the theory that the revisions took place altogether after the accession of Henry IV, and failed to note the evidence afforded by the differences of handwriting for the conclusion that the revision was a gradual one, made in accordance with the development of political events.”¹⁷ However, Macaulay mistakes the character of the “differences of handwriting” to which he refers. All four manuscripts containing the revised passages of the Vox clamantis were each originally written by a single scribe and later revised by a complex network of scribes. While Macaulay had assumed these scribes to have been working in a scriptorium, under Gower’s supervision, M.B. Parkes concluded in a later, thorough study of the scribal patterns that they “reflect the activities of a few ‘neighbourhood scribes’ who were employed ad hoc on commissions from Gower’s earliest readers and admirers.”18 Yet, like Macaulay, Parkes still assumes that the revisions to Book VI about Richard and the addition of the Cronica tripertita took place over the course of several years. He postulates that Gower first revised the passage at VI.vii.555–80, referring to Richard as a “puer indoctus” instead of a “puer immunis,” in 1390–1 and calls these Gower’s “first stage revisions.”¹⁹ Parkes suggests that Gower removed the prayers for Richard’s prosperity and added the portion about the “cry nowadays among the people” to VI.xviii.1159 1200 sometime later in 1392–3 in his “second stage revisions.”²⁰ Parkes claims that Gower added his “third stage revisions,” ten lines at VI.vii.545–54 about the pestilence affecting England, sometime in 1396–7, when he may have written a similarly themed poem, Carmen Super Multiplici Viciorum Pestilencia, and that he finally added his “fourth stage revisions,” the sections referring to the Cronica tripertita, in VII.xxv.1469–70 and 1479–81, when he completed the Cronica in 1400.²¹

Parkes’s perception that these revisions occurred in stages is based on the notion that texts by medieval authors often underwent a process of “rolling revision,” and he cites the example of Thomas Aquinas’s revisions to his commentary on Sententiarum III to support this.²² The autograph manuscript shows that Aquinas altered passages of his own commentary to address new issues in theological debate as they came up. Parkes’s comparison between Gower and Aquinas upholds Macaulay’s portrait of an author so thoroughly invested in the status of the monarchy that he was compelled to continually return to the same text to keep it apace with current events. This portrait of Gower is not based on scribal evidence so much as it is based upon a timeline of supposed shifts in Gower’s allegiances produced by Macaulay’s analysis of Gower’s supposed rededication of the Confessio Amantis.²³ Macaulay argued that Gower rededicated the Confessio from Richard II to Henry Duke of Lancaster sometime between 1390 and 1391 and that this was the result of the author’s growing dissatisfaction with Richard. As Peter Nicholson has argued, a political change of heart was not only unlikely for Gower in the relatively calm years of 1390–1 but also not necessary to justify Gower’s rededication of the Confessio, since most of the first recension copies already contain a double-dedication to Richard and Henry.²⁴ In any case, the already debated political motivations behind revisions to the Confessio Amantis are not an accurate way to assess the date(s) when the Vox clamantis was revised. Macaulay’s enduring portrait of a brazenly and presciently Lancastrian Gower is the primary evidence driving Parkes’s perception of an author as deeply invested in the status of the monarchy as Aquinas was in the status of doctrinal controversies.

Although he does not reach this conclusion himself, Parkes’s masterful analysis of scribal revisions strongly suggests that all four of these revisions were made at the same time that the Cronica was appended to the Vox. Parkes notes that one scribe, to whom he refers as Scribe 4, “is the only scribe to appear prominently and repeatedly in five manuscripts” (four containing the Vox and one containing the Confessio). In each of these manuscripts, Scribe 4 made all four of the revisions to the Vox related to Gower’s changing opinions of Richard and copied the Cronica tripertita (although in one case, he merely began the Cronica and let another scribe finish it). Parkes argues that Scribe 4 made these revisions in various stages and supports this by noting “changes in his handwriting and … the colour of the ink,” but conceding that “there is no further evidence to indicate whether or not there was such a delay.”25 Yet, the scribe did not have to wait years to switch ink or handwriting.²⁶ Several practical concerns explain these changes. As Parkes has established, Scribe 4 wrote all four copies of the Cronica Tripertitata found in Glasgow Hunterian T.2.17, Cotton Tiberius A.iv, Harley 6291, and All Souls 98. Each of these copies of the Cronica Tripertita is made in the same script, Bastard Anglicana, and all appear in their own quires of their respective manuscripts, which suggests that Scribe 4 wrote them at roughly the same time, probably just before adding the other revisions about Richard II to the Vox. The Bastard Anglicana script of the appended Cronica differs slightly from the Anglicana Formata script of the rest of the Vox, which was written earlier by different scribes. Therefore, when making revisions to the Vox, Scribe 4 switched scripts to match the original Anglicana Formata, both for aesthetic reasons and perhaps to make it appear as if the passages had always been there. The scribe had other practical reasons for switching ink upon occasion. For instance, in MS Harley 6291, the scribe’s revisions to VI.vii.555–80 f. 103r are in slightly darker ink than his other revisions because the palimpsest on that particular page is still somewhat visible. In any case, the idea that Scribe 4 made all of the revisions at the same time is more plausible than the idea that he uniformly came back to the same four manuscripts every few years to update them to reflect Gower’s opinion of Richard’s kingship. Parkes notes that other revisions to the manuscript, made by numerous scribes, “cannot be related to historical events with any confidence” and typically involve minor instances of rephrasing.27 The fact that so many scribes were involved in the revision of these four manuscripts of the Vox had given Macaulay the impression that the revisions were made over a long period of time, but the fact that the same scribe who made the changes related to Richard also copied the Cronica Tripertita into each of these manuscripts suggests that those changes were made around 1401, after Henry IV had become king.

Scribe 4’s hand is also in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Fairfax 3, which contains the Confessio Amantis. The version contained in Fairfax 3 had formerly been a first recension version of the work, dedicated to Richard II. Scribe 4, along with Scribe 5, revised the prologue, colophon, and final lines of the poem, to rededicate it to the newly crowned Henry instead of Richard.²⁸ Fairfax 3 is widely recognized to have been revised upon Henry’s accession to the throne, as it addresses Henry as King rather than Duke. Scribe 4 may not have worked on Fairfax 3 at precisely the same time that he made the emendations to the Vox clamantis about Richard’s kingship. However, Fairfax 3 is considered to be the exemplary text for Gower’s revised colophon (the one to which Wickert refers), which recasts the Vox clamantis as a text that criticizes Richard II. It seems likely that, around the time that Scribe 4 was revising the Vox to be critical of Richard II (including the addition of the Cronica to the end of the poem), he and Scribe 5 were also making alterations to the Confessio in Fairfax 3 to promote Henry, and, in the colophon, characterize the Vox as a text critical of Richard II (because their own work had just made it so).

Retrospectively Prophesying Richard II’s Deposal through the Vox Populi

Beyond the artistic unity that Wickert suggests motivated the changes to these manuscripts, changing the passage would have also bolstered Lancastrian efforts to mitigate Henry’s usurpation by making Richard’s fall seem providential and deserved. Henry’s father, John of Gaunt, was involved in a campaign to forge chronicles proving his son to be the legitimate heir, thus justifying Richard’s deposition by claiming that he was never supposed to be king.²⁹ Paul Strohm has detailed John of Gaunt’s attempts to produce convincing causes for Richard’s deposition, including “perjuries, sacrileges, sodomies, insanity, the impoverishment of his subjects and their reduction to servitude, and the feebleness of his rule.”³⁰ In 1399, Henry’s family produced The Record and Process of the Renunciation and Deposition of Richard II, an official account of the purported flaws of Richard’s reign that led to his fall from power. This was distributed to monasteries for inclusion in chronicles. One of the Lancastrians’ alternate or supplementary strategies for claiming legitimacy was the retrospective use of prophecy. Strohm notes that “Henry IV’s accession was accompanied by a blizzard of prophecy, most newly generated, but all presented as matter already known, the pertinence of which is suddenly recollected under incentive of emergent events.”31 David R. Carlson has convincingly argued that Gower’s Cronica Tripertita was based on The Record and Process.³² Gower’s revisions to the Vox clamantis accompanying the Cronica allow it to function in the same way as these retrospectively produced prophecies.

These revisions draw heavily on the same rhetoric that Lancastrians used against Richard during Henry’s accession to the throne. Most notably, Gower emphasizes Richard’s youth more in his revisions than in his original passage, despite the fact that even by 1390, when Macaulay and others have proposed that Gower made the revisions, Richard would have been twenty-three years old. As Wickert observes, the earlier passage uses the terms “puer,” “puerilis,” “iuvenis,” and “iuvenilis” five times, but the later passage uses them twelve times.³³ Christopher Fletcher has argued that this emphasis on Richard’s youth echoes the language of Archbishop Thomas Arundel’s sermon, Vir dominabitur populo, to the assembly that opposed the king. In this sermon, the archbishop contrasted the puer, Richard, with the vir, Henry, in order to justify Henry’s accession to the throne.³⁴ The All Souls College MS 98, a manuscript containing the Vox clamantis with the revised portions about Richard in Book VI along with the Cronica Tripertita at the end, contains a dedicatory “Epistle to Arundel.” Although Parkes has discredited Macaulay’s assumption that the manuscript was made for Archbishop Thomas Arundel, the work may have been added to the manuscript for an admirer of Arundel who was also a Lancastrian supporter.³⁵ After 1401, Gower would have had every incentive to remove a passage praying that Richard “always hold the honored scepter firmly in [his] hand during our lifetime,” since it explicitly wishes for the opposite of the Lancastrian usurpation. His prayer that “no betrayer of yours have the power to exist in this land” could also be seen as a condemnation of Henry, who had been exiled before coming back to England to seize the throne.

The Vox clamantis was a natural fit for Lancastrian retrospective prophecy because Gower already presents his authorial persona as a modern apocalyptic prophet in the manner of John of Patmos or Daniel. First of all, Gower writes the Visio Anglie at the beginning of the Vox clamantis as if he had dreamed of the Rising of 1381 before it had happened. Similarly, Carlson has noted that Gower repeatedly writes in the Cronica Tripertita as if he is speaking of events as they are happening instead of reflecting on them long after they have passed.36 Gower pretends to have composed the Cronica in 1397 even though he clearly did so after 1400, and he addresses Henry as a duke instead of as a king to maintain this fiction.³⁷ Because Gower obviously wrote of his “dream” after the Rising, most audiences of the Vox clamantis have not considered his implied prescience to be a serious claim from Gower, but he was certainly cultivating the persona of an author who could anticipate future events. Before describing his dream in the Visio Anglie, Gower likens himself to John of Patmos through his invocation: “Insula quem Pathmos suscepit in Apocalipsi, / Cuius ego nomen gesto, gubernet opus” (I.Prol.57–8). [May the one whom the Isle of Patmos received in the Apocalypse, and whose name I bear, guide this work] and similarly compares himself to the apocalyptic prophet, Daniel, in his testimony that “Ex Daniele patet quid sompnia significarunt” (I.Prol.8). [What dreams may mean is clear from Daniel]. Gower’s reference to these prophets within the prologue highlights the fact that his subsequent apocalyptic vision, like those of John and Daniel, consists of elaborate descriptions of various beasts and speculates on the coming of the Antichrist. In this way, as Alastair Minnis has observed, Gower “invites comparison between his mode of stylistic and didactic procedures and the procedures found by exegetes in prophetic works of great authority.”³⁸ Gower solidifies his connection to Daniel by including his interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s statue in Book VII. Gower compares himself to biblical prophets who call for reform in apocalyptic times, highlighting his social role as a poet. When reframed to include predictions of Richard’s downfall, the apocalyptic tone is inextricably linked with the young king’s supposed degeneracy.

Gower’s voice is all the more suited to predicting Richard’s demise because he roots his prophetic abilities in his connection to the vox populi. In the Vox, Gower overtly conflates divine inspiration with public sentiment, declaring:

Hos ego compegi versus, quos fuderat in me

Spiritus in sompnis: nox erat illa grauis.

Hec set vt auctor ego non scripsi metra libello,

Que tamen audiui trado legenda tibi:

Non tumor ex capite proprio me scribere fecit

Ista, set vt voces plebis in aure dabant. (VII.xxv.1142–8)

[I have compiled these verses, which a spirit uttered within me during my sleep. That was a hard night. But I, as an author, have not set down these lines in a book; rather, I am passing on what things I hear for you to read. It is not that a swelled head made me write them, but that the voice of the people put them in my ear.]

He presents his ability to hear the voice of the public as the result of having been spiritually elected for the task. Likewise, he insinuates that the voice of the people is itself holy. Anne Middleton has characterized Langland’s and Gower’s work as “public poetry,” noting that “in describing their mode of address, the poets most often refer to the general or common voice.”39 Middleton distinguishes public poetry from prophecy, observing, “It is [the public poet’s] task to find the common voice and to speak for all, but to claim no privileged position, no special revelation from God or the Muses, no transcendent status for the result, and little in the way of special gifts beyond a good ear.”⁴⁰ Yet, claiming to be the voice of the public is also a way of claiming prophetic authority. The Gregorian Reform of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, which clarified that kings were lay rather than priestly rulers, had a profound influence on the ways in which state authority represented itself.⁴¹ In the absence of clear divine sanction, kings invoked the authority of “the people,” which was already dominant in the rhetoric of historical Roman law.⁴² Wherein “the people” had, to a large degree, symbolically supplanted the divinely sanctioned legal authority of the king, claiming to be the voice of the people was much like claiming to be a prophet, the voice of God.

Gower’s invocation of the vox populi is similar to rhetoric used to oust Edward II and, eventually, Richard II. Thomas Walsingham reports that after the English parliament had deposed Edward II, the Archbishop of Canterbury articulated the increasing power of the Commons over the monarchy as God’s very own intention by preaching on the text Vox populi, vox Dei at Edward III’s coronation.⁴³ Regardless of whether “the public” had actually demanded the deposition of a king, the notion of popular sovereignty could still be exploited to justify it. Henry Knighton describes how Richard II had threatened to join with the king of France in opposition to his political opponents during the Parliament of 1386 before members of the parliament asserted, “extunc licitum est eis cum communi assensu et consensu populi regni ipsum regem de regali solio abrogare, et propinquiorem aliquem de stirpe regia loco eius in regni solio sublimare.” [Then it would be lawful with common assent and agreement of the people of the realm to put down the king from his royal seat, and raise another of the royal lineage in his place.]⁴⁴ Regardless of whether anyone in parliament truly said this, Knighton was a notable Lancastrian, apt to use the language that John of Gaunt would have preferred him use to assert the limits of Richard’s powers. The vox populi was a concept that the Lancastrians used to justify Richard’s deposal, and its pervasive presence in the Vox clamantis allows Gower’s small revised portions of Book VI appear to be not only the prophetic warnings of a divinely inspired poet but the prescient clamor of the public at large.

The Lancastrian emendations simplify Gower’s complex perspective on the public voice within the Vox clamantis. Gower’s usage of the vox populi was originally less overtly political and more philosophical. Despite Gower’s repeated affirmations of and appeals to the vox populi, his narrative voice is also extremely sceptical of it. In Book II, Gower begins by separating himself from the masses declaring that most people are noticing that the world is in moral decline, yet, “Se tamen inmunes cause communiter omnes / Dicunt, vt si quis non foret inde reus / Accusant etenim fortunam iam variatam” (II.i.43–5) [All men commonly say that they have nothing to do with the cause, as if no one were responsible for things. In fact they now blame fickle Fortune]. Gower, on the other hand, addresses Fortune with scepticism: “Det quamuis variam popularis vox tibi famam, / Attamen ore meo te nichil esse puto. / Quicquid agant alii, non possum credere sorti, / Saltem dumque deus sit super omne potens” (II.ii.85–8). [Whatever different reputation the voice of the people may give you, in my opinion I still reckon you as nothing. Whatever other people do, I cannot believe in fate, at least as long as God is omnipotent]. In this way, Gower places himself at odds with the people for whom he claims to speak, making his relationship to the public more complex than mere representation. As Lynn Staley has observed of Margery Kempe’s literary influences, “From sermons, pageants, and devotional writing, Kempe would have known that this crowd was typically characterized as malicious, gossipy, literal-minded, and conformist.”45 Although Gower hardly presents himself as being as much in conflict with “the crowd” as Kempe does, he does emphasize the need for individual faith. Gower continues to speak of Fortune “quod dicunt” (II.iv.gloss) [according to what people say] about her powers and then weighs in with his own contrary opinion that “Set sibi quisque suam sortem facit, et sibi casum / Ut libet incurrit, et sibit fata creat” (II.iv.203–4). [Each man fashions his own destiny and opposes chance as he pleases and creates his fate.] In this way, Gower explores the importance of personal redemption in the midst of collective degeneracy. The vox populi may be correct in diagnosing the ills of the world, but it neglects to diagnose the self in order to remedy them. Gower’s narrative voice, inspired by the vox populi, comes to represent the public realizing its own flaws through a process of self-discovery. Gower extends this fallibility to himself, asking his audience, “Rem non personam, mentem non corpus in ista sucipe materia, sum miser ipse quia” (II.Prol.13–14) [Embrace the matter, not the man, and the spirit, not the bodily form in this material, for I myself am a poor fellow]. In pointing out the public’s eagerness to embrace Fortuna, Gower demonstrates himself to be both a part of and separate from public opinion. He is capable of gleaning its truths while also tempering its misguided suppositions.

Gower’s complex relationship with the vox populi becomes simplified in the revised portions of Book VI (which I argue were added at the same time as the Cronica Tripertita). His generalized advice on kingship is transformed into a dire warning when coupled with this exclamation:

Talia vox populi conclamat vbique moderni

In dubio positi pre grauitate mali:

Sic ego condoleo super hiis que tedia cerno

Quo Regi puero scripta sequenda fero. (VI.vii.577–80)

[Everywhere the voice of the people of today, who are placed in doubt in the face of the enormity of evil, cries out about such things. I accordingly grieve even more than they over the disgusting things which I see, for which reason I offer the following writings for the boy king.]

In this revised version, this is a public voice, unanimously fearful of Richard’s reign. In Gower’s original passage, Gower turns his critique onto the public itself, complaining, “Ad commune vocum non est modo lingua locuta / Immo petit proprii commoda quisque lucri” (VI.vii.549–50). [No tongue now speaks for the common good, but instead each man seizes upon the opportunities for his own profit.] Gower has transformed a passage, critical of a lack of unified voices, to a passage of united voices, denouncing the king. All of the ensuing advice, standard for kingly instruction, becomes exceptionally dire when addressed to the already deposed Richard and issuing from the mouth of a prescient public.

Political Prophecies Added by Scribe 4

The revisions by Gower added to the Vox clamantis by Scribe 4 are not only critical of Richard but intentionally worded to sound as if Gower had prophetically foretold Richard’s downfall. Gower made efforts to make himself appear to have had genuine foresight of the events of 1399–1400. These efforts are echoed in the poems also added by Scribe 4 to two of the four updated versions of the Vox clamantis, especially “H. aquile pullus.”46 The poem reads as follows:

H. aquile pullus, quo nunquam gracior ullus,

Hostes confregit, que tirannica colla subegit.

H. aquile cepit oleum, quo regna recepit;

Sic veteri iuncta stipiti nova stirps redit uncta.

[H. son of the eagle, than whom no one is ever more graceful,

Has broken his enemies, and subjugated tyrannical necks.

H. the eagle has captured the oil, by which he has received the rule of the realm;

Thus the new stock returns, anointed and joined to the old stem.]⁴⁷

Here, Gower is referring to the “Prophecy of the Eagle,” an excerpt from the Merlin prophecies in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae, also cited in the Chronicon de Adae de Usk AD 1377–1421.⁴⁸ Within the prophecy, “H,” the eagle, travels across the sea to depose the white king. Several circulating excerpts of Merlin’s prophecies had presented Henry as the eagle because his father was John of Gaunt, whose namesake, John the Evangelist, was traditionally represented as an eagle.⁴⁹ Also, Edward III’s badge featured an eagle, and he was Henry’s grandfather.⁵⁰ Furthermore, in describing “H. the eagle [who] captured the oil, by which he had received the rule of the realm,” Gower is referring to the “Holy Oil of St. Thomas.” The Virgin Mary supposedly visited Becket during his exile in France and gave him the oil that was intended to anoint the future king who would reunite England and Aquitaine. Richard had allegedly found the oil himself but not in time for his own anointing, so it passed to Henry.⁵¹ In this way, the prophecy highlights that Henry, rather than Richard, was chosen by the Virgin to be king. In declaring at the end, “The new stock returns, anointed and joined to the old stem,” Gower also invokes the “Vision of Edward the Confessor,” allegedly delivered to the king by two holy men in Normandy:

If a green tree is cut in the middle and the part lopped off is moved three jugera from the stem, when the part moved away shall of its own accord and without the aid of any human hand unite itself to the trunk and begin to flourish and bear fruit, then for the first time can a respite from such great evils be hoped for.⁵²

Since the eleventh century, the prophecy was interpreted to apply to a variety of political situations, but Gower is using it here to imply that the House of Lancaster, temporarily cut off from the line of inheritance, has now properly rejoined itself to the royal family tree.53 All of these prophecies aided in Lancastrian efforts to legitimate Henry’s claim to his usurped throne by implying that Richard’s deposition was divinely decreed – that it could not have happened any other way. Scribe 4 also writes two psalms after “H. aquile pullus” in MS Hunterian T.2.17, and MS Harley 6291: 88:23 and 40:3.⁵⁴ Psalm 88:23 reads, “The enemy shall have no advantage over him: nor the son of iniquity have power to hurt him,” while Psalm 40:3 says, “The Lord preserve him and give him life, and make him blessed upon the earth: and deliver him not up to the will of his enemies.”⁵⁵ Both psalms state that God’s favoured ones will have victory over their enemies, implying that God gave Henry the strength to defeat Richard. Alluding to all of these prophecies, Gower cites none of their sources, instead writing them in his own voice, as if he had predicted these events. His use of “H.” instead of “Henry” echoes the letter signifiers of the Sibyl’s prophecies, and it remains ambiguous enough to seem like a prediction. Even though the poem was almost certainly written after Henry’s coronation, when details such as the oil with which he was anointed were made public, Gower’s narrative voice makes it (probably by design) unclear when he originally composed it. Critics have always reasonably assumed that Gower wrote this poem after Henry’s accession to the throne, but they have not done so for the similarly prophetic claims added to the Vox clamantis in the same manuscripts by the same scribe. This is an inconsistent perspective that is not borne out by manuscript evidence.

As a result of Gower’s all-too convincing retrospective prophecy, the bulk of Gower scholarship has upheld his revisions to the Vox clamantis as genuinely prophetic. After Macaulay dismissed Karl Meyer’s arguments for post-1400 revisions in his edition, The Complete Works of John Gower, E.W. Stockton similarly overlooked Maria Wickert’s theories in the notes of his 1962 translation of the poem, despite citing her work, Studien zu John Gower (1953), several times. Stockton maintains that Gower’s revision to Book VI was “seemingly an accurate premonition of the Great revolt [against Richard] which followed, rather than hindsight.”⁵⁶ Given that Macaulay’s edition and Stockton’s translation of the Vox have remained the standard ones to this day, and given that Parkes’s otherwise exhaustive and instructive analysis of the scribal contributions repeats their suppositions, the assumption that the work was revised in 1393 remains pervasive in literary and historical criticism.⁵⁷ Referring to Gower’s address to Richard as an “undisciplined boy,” R.F. Yeager asserts, “This sounds more like a description of a teen-ager who has frustrated his councilors by refusing good advice over time. Combined with other revisions to Book VI, rendered perhaps as late as 1393, these lines indicate a span of years between the first and final versions of the Vox, with the poet’s changed assessment of Richard’s rule intervening.”58 Drawing from conclusions first reached by Judith Ferster, Diane Watt refers to the insolent nature of Gower’s “1393 revisions to the Vox clamantis” and suggests that in the Confessio Amantis Gower “is more constrained by the fact that he is writing in English rather than Latin.”⁵⁹ In this case, Ferster and Watt look to language, rather than an alternate revision date, to solve the problem of why Gower could be so scathing in his critique of the still-enthroned Richard in one work, the Vox clamantis, and yet so subtle in a later work, the Confessio Amantis. In his 1997 biography of Richard II, Nigel Saul writes:

Gower’s major poems became steadily more critical of the king in the course of the 1390s. Gower’s early work had been relatively sympathetic to Richard. In the first version of the Vox clamantis, written before 1381, the poet had grieved at the decay of the realm, but held Richard himself free of blame. In an epistle in Book 6 he addressed the monarch in terms of affection and hope and implicitly blamed misgovernment on the lords and council. By the time he revised the Vox, in about 1386, his attitude had changed. Richard was criticized for following youthful counsel and for failing to impose self-discipline; and in a new epistle Gower warned the king that “his royal majesty would be venerated only so long as he ruled honourably.”⁶⁰

If we believe that Gower revised the Vox in 1386, we are believing that the poet was able to predict Richard’s demise with a shocking amount of accuracy. Yet, this seems to have actually propelled the belief that these portions of the Vox were revised earlier. This is how powerful Gower’s prophetic reputation is, and he primarily gained this reputation from Reinhold Pauli’s dramatic interpretation of the poet’s revisions to the dedications of the Confessio Amantis.

The Strategic Abundance of First Recension Manuscripts of the Confessio Amantis⁶¹

Gower dedicated the Confessio Amantis to Richard II in 1390 and then famously rededicated it to Henry, Duke of Lancaster, in 1392. Most critics have assumed that this rededication signaled Gower’s growing frustrations with Richard and his hopes that Henry would eventually become king. If this assumption were true, Gower would indeed seem to be a prophet – predicting a political upheaval that would not occur for another seven years. Much literary criticism has been overt in lauding Gower’s prophetic powers. Peter Nicholson remarks, “There is no arguing with the belief in Gower’s prescience, though one may wonder, if the poet actually had this gift, why he ever expressed his loyalty to Richard at all.”62 In his Introduction to the most recent TEAMS edition of the Confessio amantis, Russell A. Peck explains, “In response to Richard’s heavy-handed treatment of Henry by exiling him and confiscating his estates, Gower, like many others in England, turned against Richard. The king’s irresponsible behaviour seemed to annihilate the peace and accord Gower so desired. It was as if the events of time were once again demonstrating the wisdom of Gower’s prophetic vision.”⁶³

Yet, the assumption that Gower’s rededication of the Confessio was due to his political foresight is the result of Reinhold Pauli’s erroneous observations about the poem’s various dedications. Published in 1857, Pauli’s was the first edition of the Confessio since Thomas Berthelette’s in 1532. Pauli’s introductory essay posited a new political theory surrounding the dedications of the Confessio, arguing, “It is not possible that both dedications [one to Richard and the other to Henry] could have been written at the same time; for, if we consider the political situation in those days, only a very abject mind would have made simultaneously two such opposite declarations.”⁶⁴ What is especially misguided about Pauli’s perspective is that even some of the first recension copies of the Confessio, containing a dedication to Richard, also contain a two-line dedication to Henry earl of Derby at the end of the poem, so, as Macaulay says in his 1901 edition of the Confessio, “It is not quite accurate to say that the dedication was afterwards changed, but rather that this dedication was made more prominent and introduced into the text of the poem, while at the same time the personal reference to the king [Richard II] in the Prologue was suppressed.”⁶⁵ Due to his assumption that Gower’s dedications could not be written at the same time, Pauli then posits:

Gower, who was a close observer of the political events of his days, saw how the young king, after attaining his majority, attempted in the years 1386 and 1387 in conjunction with his favourite the young duke of Ireland, to annihilate the opposition headed by the duke of Gloucester and the earls of Arundel, Warwick, Nottingham, and Derby. He perceived that the king from dispositions and inclination was hurrying himself and the affairs of his realm to ultimate destruction and ruin. He therefore changed his politics early in the reign of Richard II, altered the dedication of his English work in 1392–3, received in the year next following a collar from Henry of Lancaster, and looked upon him ever afterwards as the final restorer of peace and order.66

Macaulay corrects Pauli’s erroneous assertion, pointing out, “The suggestion that the expressions of loyalty and the praises of Richard as a ruler which we find in the first epilogue are properly to be called inconsistent with a dedication of the poem to Henry of Lancaster, his cousin and counsellor, is plausible only in the light of later events, which could not be foreseen by the poet.”⁶⁷ Macaulay goes on to emphasize, “It is certain that at this time the poet can have had no definite idea that his hero [Henry IV] would become a candidate for the throne.”⁶⁸ Yet, just as Pauli does, Macaulay still attributes the removal of the dedication to Richard in the second recension to Gower’s growing dissatisfaction with the monarch.

Knowing that the poem still contained the double dedication as late as 1390, Macaulay did not have the more famous events of 1387 to which to attribute Gower’s supposed change of heart, as Pauli once did. Therefore, Macaulay simply suggests, “something may have come to his knowledge in the course of the year 1390–91 which shook his faith.”⁶⁹ Like Pauli, Macaulay attributes Gower’s foresight to his understanding of human nature but also implies that support for Henry’s kingship had been growing for some time: “Whatever feeling there may have been on the side of the earl of Derby would doubtless reflect itself in the minds of his friends and supporters, and something of this kind may have deepened into certitude the suspicions which Gower no doubt already had in his heart of the ultimate intentions of Richard II.”⁷⁰ Macaulay’s assumption of Gower’s early endorsement of Henry as king is based not only on Gower’s perspicacious mind but also on Richard’s supposedly obvious tyranny. In fact, Macaulay implies that Gower could not sense Richard’s malignity before 1390 only because “Richard’s dissimulation … was deep enough to deceive all parties.”⁷¹ Macaulay amends Pauli’s theory to account for the manuscript evidence disproving it in respect to the first recension’s dual dedication, yet he repeats the rest of the logic behind Pauli’s theory about Gower’s instinct that Henry would someday be king in the distant future and that Richard’s own malevolence would do him in.

Peter Nicholson has, like Macaulay, noted that the first recension of the Confessio contains a dedication to Richard in the prologue and a shorter one to Henry at the end, which suggests that there was no political inconsistency in addressing the poem to both men long before their conflict. Nicholson then carries this logic out to suggest that the apparent shift in patronage seen in the second and third recensions was not likely due to a turn in political allegiance, since those changes in the text took place in 1392–3, when Henry “had little prospect of succeeding to the throne.”72 Despite Nicholson’s very important clarification, Gower’s prophetic reputation persists. While Gower manipulated his own prophetic reputation in revisions to the Vox clamantis, the retrospective impression of Gower’s prophecy in the Confessio Amantis is significantly magnified by the inference of later readers, who had access to manuscripts of the work corresponding to all three recensions of the text and had assumed that Gower’s supposed rededication meant something about his political opinions.

To such readers, it has been surprising that the vast majority of surviving manuscripts of the Confessio produced after Henry’s coronation in 1400 correspond to the first recension, dedicated to Richard II. Regardless of when Gower’s political opinions of Richard shifted, the poet was a notable Lancastrian apologist by the time of Richard’s deposition in 1399, composing In Praise of Peace (1400), the Cronica tripertita (1400), and Cinquante ballades (1399–1400) in celebration of the new King Henry. Yet, of the forty-eight complete surviving manuscripts of the Confessio, thirty-one are dedicated to Richard.⁷³ Furthermore, all thirty-one of the surviving copies dedicated to Richard were produced after Henry’s coronation in 1400.⁷⁴ Gower’s biographer, John Fisher, remarks that, “Just how or why so many [copies] of this early, politically embarrassing version should have been produced after Richard’s deposition remains a question.”⁷⁵

Yet, keeping the original dedication to the former king Richard may have actually enhanced the work’s value to Lancastrians. Just as he does in the Mirour de l’Omme and the Vox clamantis, Gower claims prophetic authority as the conduit of the vox populi in the Confessio. Because Gower emphasizes his connection to the prophet Daniel as well, Gower’s position as the vox populi in the Confessio is especially suited to that of a kingly adviser. Gower himself was most likely aiming at a much broader audience. As James Simpson has noted, Gower takes a cue from Alan de Lille’s Anticlaudianus in representing politics as “a pivotal science for the soul’s understanding of itself.”⁷⁶ Gower addresses his advice to the king as model reader in order to address the morality of his entire country. However, when the king addressed has been deposed, he cannot function as the representative of a larger audience but instead becomes a prominent cautionary tale. When the Confessio is dedicated to the deposed Richard, Gower’s persona takes on a genuinely prophetic aspect, especially in the portions of the text where Gower likens himself to prophets who warned kings of deposition. Hindsight encourages readers to assume that Gower was earlier warning Richard about the very flaws that would lead to his downfall. Gower’s seemingly prescient declamations vindicate Henry Bolingbroke’s usurpation by suggesting that Richard’s deposition was both deserved and fated.

Wim Lindeboom and Joel Fredell have seen the version of the Confessio dedicated to Richard as such a rebuke that each has proposed that Gower actually wrote it last, after Richard had already been deposed.77 Critiquing Macaulay’s idea of three recensions of the Confessio, Lindeboom suggests that Gower’s “second recension” replacement of praise of Richard with a lamentation on the state of England would have seemed like “little less than a public slap in the royal countenance.”⁷⁸ Yet, this is said from the perspective of someone who has read all of the versions of the Confessio, knows that Richard would be deposed, and knows that Gower would go on to support Henry. Furthermore, this is said from the perspective of someone who has read Gower criticism that speaks of Gower as having foretold Richard’s downfall. Had Gower himself revised the Confessio to be more damning of Richard, one might expect the kind of sharp criticism found in Book VI of the Vox rather than an expression of general concern for England. Gower did not need to revise the Confessio for it to appear to be prophetic or a condemnation of Richard, just as Langland did not have to revise prophecies in Piers Plowman for future audiences to see it as a prophetic condemnation of the Catholic Church. Later scribes merely had to copy the first recension – the one that took a very different tenor after Richard’s deposition.

Peter Nicholson has suggested that the large number of first recension copies of the Confessio illustrates that, even before Gower’s death in 1408, production of the Confessio “was already in the hands of the booksellers” who might not have been obliged or able to copy a version dedicated to Henry.⁷⁹ Building on this supposition, Kate Harris has concluded that “it has to be assumed that the first recension text was most readily available to professional copyists.”⁸⁰ Nicholson’s and Harris’s explanations, however, do not take into account the “standard” manuscript format of the Confessio noticed by Derek Pearsall. Pearsall has pointed out that nearly all of the twenty-eight Confessio manuscripts produced before 1430 contain the same number of parchment leaves, the same number of columns and lines, and the same two miniatures, along with similar decorations.⁸¹ They are also mostly manuscripts containing only the Confessio. Pearsall has concluded that these fairly uniform manuscripts were produced by a “close-knit” circle of London scribes.82 The scribes appear to have had access to all three versions of the text even as they reproduced a much larger number of first recension manuscripts. Pearsall explains that twelve of these manuscripts correspond most closely to one another and “form the nucleus” of the twenty-eight manuscripts in the “standard” layout.⁸³ Of these twelve manuscripts, produced at the same time (between 1415 and 1430), six contain the first recension text, four contain the second recension text, and two contain the third.⁸⁴

The earliest of these manuscripts, MS Huntington/Stafford and MS Fairfax 3, are second- and third-recension versions of the text, respectively, and Pearsall observes that they were “both copied from exemplars prepared probably under Gower’s direct supervision … providing excellent texts of the poem and excellent models of the manner in which it was to be set out.”⁸⁵ Despite the fact that these eleven similar manuscripts appear to have been based on the layout of second- and third-recension versions of the poem, the scribes produced several more first-recension copies. This phenomenon is exacerbated in the other “standard” or “classic” Confessio manuscripts produced in the first quarter of the fifteenth century. Out of all twenty-eight, twenty of them are first-recension manuscripts. It is possible, as Harris suggested, that first-recension versions were easier to come by than third-recession versions at some point, but if so, it appears to have been by the design of those initially responsible for having many more of the first-recension manuscripts made. Furthermore, scribes making several of the first-recension manuscripts had steady access to the second-recension version of the poem. For instance, Scribe D of Cambridge Trinity R.3.2 prepared seven “standard” manuscripts of the Confessio in the early fifteenth century. Four of them are first-recension manuscripts (Egerton 1991, Columbia Plimpton 265, Christ Church 148, Corpus Christi College 67), and three of them are second-recension manuscripts (Bodley 294, Princeton Taylor 5, and Cambridge Trinity R.3.2).⁸⁶

Pearsall proposes that these early, uniform manuscripts of the Confessio were likely part of “a production programme or even campaign.”⁸⁷ Considering the prominence given to dedications to Henry in the three third-recension versions produced in this manner, Pearsall speculates that this may have been a politically motivated campaign, spearheaded by Lancastrians. If there was a centralized political campaign to copy the Confessio in large numbers, as Pearsall compellingly posits, the much-larger number of first-recension copies produced by such an effort needs explanation. A hitherto unexplored explanation is that this was the version of the poem that the royal family wished to be in circulation after 1400.⁸⁸ It was certainly the version that the Lancasters favoured in their personal collections. Three of Henry IV’s sons and his sister, Phillipa, owned manuscripts of the Confessio. One of these sons, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, owned a second-recension version that was dedicated to both Richard and Henry, but Thomas, Duke of Clarence; John, Duke of Bedford; and Queen Phillipa all owned first-recension versions that were dedicated to Richard II alone.89 Furthermore, when the Confessio was translated into Portuguese and Castilian, it was translated from first-recension versions addressed to Richard. The translator of the Portuguese version was Robert Payne, a member of Queen Phillipa’s court.⁹⁰ As R. Wayne Hamm has observed, “The coincidence of the Confessio‘s being rendered into both Portuguese and Castilian at the very time that the thrones of Portugal and Castile were occupied by Lancastrian relatives is too remarkable to be ignored.”⁹¹ Phillipa married King Joāo I of Portugal in 1387, and his other sister, Catherine, married Henry III of Castille in 1388. Perplexed by the question of why translations almost certainly commissioned by Henry’s immediate family would be based on the version of the poem dedicated to Richard II, P.E. Russell speculates that the Confessio was translated either before Henry’s usurpation in 1399 or after Phillipa’s death in 1415. This is unlikely since Payne, the translator, was a member of Phillipa’s court around 1402, making that the probable date of translation.⁹² We must conclude that the Lancastrians preferred to translate the version of the Confessio addressed to Richard II for political reasons.

Promoting a version of the Confessio that retrospectively looks as if it was prophetically warning Richard would be in line with Lancastrian efforts to mitigate Henry’s usurpation. Pearsall has noted that in the Confessio there is “no sense that Gower is acting as a hired man, a Lancastrian propagandist,” yet Gower’s intentions may have had little to do with the way in which the work came to be used by the Lancastrians.⁹³ After 1399, the first recension of the Confessio appeared to be the genuine version of what the Lancastrians had been attempting to fabricate: a prediction of Richard’s self-inflicted demise. Furthermore, it was written by a highly regarded poet nearly a decade before Henry rose to power. Lancastrians could promote such a work for its literary merits while also subtly defending Henry’s accession. When read as a warning addressed to the now-deposed Richard, portions of the Confessio had the potential to function as the Record and Process or trumped-up Lancastrian prophecies did – as proof of Richard’s degeneracy and Henry’s legitimacy.

In the Confessio, Gower likens himself to Daniel of the Old Testament, who prophetically warns kings while also warning England of apocalyptic times to come. As Russell Peck has observed, several factors make the story of Daniel especially prominent in the prologue of the Confessio: Gower had used the same story in the last book of the Vox clamantis; the dream that Daniel interprets is depicted in the first of two illuminations that appear in the early manuscripts; and Gower returns to another story of Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams in Book I of the Confessio in a way that builds on the first.94 In featuring Daniel in the prologue, Gower nods to his status as the author of the Vox and gestures to the interpretive role that he plays within the Confessio. While most prophets such as Micaiah or Samuel hear the voice of God directly, Daniel understands God’s voice by analysing dreams. It is Nebuchadnezzar, the dreamer, who is God’s passive conduit or vessel. Daniel’s skill at interpreting the king’s visions is analogous to Gower’s skill at deriving moral truths from the various stories that he recounts in the Confessio. These are truths that Gower speaks both as a conduit for common wisdom, the vox populi, and as a learned reader and composer of stories. David R. Carlson has noted Gower’s efforts to appeal to Edward III, Richard II, and Henry IV as a kind of poetic advisor and potential propagandist.⁹⁵ Through his prophetic role as both Daniel and vox populi, Gower could advise Richard while also demonstrating his utility as a royal spokesperson. As a prophet who understands stories, Daniel is not too far afield from Arion, Gower’s other implied subject position in the Prologue. Elliot Kendall has reasoned that, in simultaneously likening himself to the admonishing prophet, Daniel, and the restorative poet, Arion, Gower does not merely predict a calamitous end for England but gestures to the possibility of penance and transformation.⁹⁶ Yet, in Book I, Daniel himself takes on a restorative role, which is consistent with the role of Arion.

Daniel warns Nebuchadnezzar that his dream of a tree hewn down means that the king will go mad. Gower describes how Daniel implored Nebuchadnezzar, “Amende thee, this wolde I rede … For so thou myth thi pes pourchace / With godd, and stoned in good acord” (I.2934, 2938–9), but Nebuchadnezzar “let it passe out of his mynde” (I.2951) until he suffered for seven years as Daniel predicted, finally returning to human form when he asked God for forgiveness.⁹⁷ Peck has argued that while the story of Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the statue primarily stresses an apocalyptic message, the story of the dream of the tree stresses the possibility for the country and the individual to reform.⁹⁸ While Gower likely included the story for purposes of general instruction on the importance of repentance, a fifteenth-century Lancastrian audience could read this as a veiled prediction of Richard’s imminent downfall. Just as Daniel warned King Nebuchadnezzar to “amende thee” lest God strike him down like the tree in his dreams, Gower appears to have been warning King Richard II to amend himself – a warning which, unlike Nebuchadnezzar, Richard did not heed. As Judith Ferster has argued, the Fürstenspiegel (a work in which a poet addresses a ruler) commonly praises the king to whom it is dedicated but also disciplines him with public reminders of his obligations.99 Although the degree to which the Confessio might qualify as Fürstenspiegel is debatable, Gower surely intended these stories at least partly as warnings to Richard. Strohm has remarked that, unlike his Lancastrian usurper, Richard was amenable to poems that admonished him, since they gave him the appearance of being well advised.¹⁰⁰ Joel Fredell has even considered that Lancastrian audiences would have wanted to remove the Confessio’s dedications to Henry, lest they appear to be condemning the monarch.¹⁰¹ Yet, addressed to Richard or Henry during their reigns, Gower’s admonishments would have hardly seemed unduly chastising, especially given how well established the Fürstenspiegel had become as a genre. The intensity with which Gower’s advice condemns Richard and predicts his downfall is greatly magnified by the events of history. While Gower’s prophetic tone in the Vox may be, as Peck argues, more apocalyptic than that of the Confessio, the Confessio appears to be personally apocalyptic for Richard II when read after 1399.

Portions of the Confessio in which Gower does not take on an overt prophetic persona become prophetic after 1399; they seemingly attribute Richard’s deposition to the king’s inability to heed proper advice (including Gower’s). This provides even more coherence between Gower’s prophetic authorial voice in the Prologue and Book VII (the latter being mediated through the voice of the narrator Genius, who is in turn repeating the words of Aristotle). In Book VII of the Confessio, the section dedicated to governance, Gower includes a few exempla that allude to the threat of deposition that kings face when they do not listen to the proper advisors or prophets. Calls for English monarchs to listen to proper counsel date as far back as Grosseteste’s On Tyranny (1250), which had argued that kings ought to submit themselves to council-appointed royal ministers. The Second Barons’ War of the 1260s may have been inspired by Grossetest’s rhetoric, continuing the struggle between popular and royal sovereignty that had raged since the signing of Magna Carta.¹⁰² Much of Gower’s advice about heeding proper counsel and avoiding deposition is fairly conventional. However, when the warnings are addressed to an already-deposed king, they have the potential to look eerily prescient. This is especially the case because of the stories and examples that Gower employs. Anne F. Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs have suggested that while the French monarchs accepted collections of straightforward models for princes, like Giles of Rome’s De regimine principum (c. 1380), “the English may have preferred the lessons of mirrors put into a more palatable form by a poet: Gower’s Confessio Amantis or Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes, both of which gilded the pill with extensive stories to illustrate each point.”103 While the stories may have made the advice contained in the Confessio easier for Richard to swallow, so to speak, they are also potentially more poisonous to his memory. Many of Gower’s examples, drawn from the Old Testament book of Kings, present kings whose downfalls are foretold by prophets and ordained by God. Thus, when addressed to an already-deposed king, the stories themselves seem to predict his downfall and imply that it was divinely sanctioned.

A portion of Book VII describes how, after the death of Solomon, the people of Israel came to the new young king, Rehoboam, and asked that he lower their taxes. After consulting “wise knyhts olde” (VII.4067), who tell him to listen to the people, Rehoboam consults men who “yonge were and nothing wise” (VII.4077). These men tell him to threaten the people into subordination. The people desert him and choose another king. The story is suited to Richard’s reign because it involves two prominent charges leveled at him – that he raised taxes too often and that he failed to listen to the appropriate counselors. Nigel Saul reports that when Richard’s Lord Chancellor, Michael de la Pole, came to the House of Commons in 1386 to raise taxes in support of the war with France, “Instead of addressing the issues worrying the commons, he dwelt fancifully on the chimera of a royally led expedition: the king, he said, had resolved to cross the Channel in person … to do this, however, he was obliged to ask his subjects for ‘sufficient aid’ (i.e. a tax).”¹⁰⁴ The Chancellor’s miscalculated appeal to his audience led to the “Wonderful Parliament” of 1386, in which the lords and commons demanded de la Pole’s impeachment and censured Richard both for the proposed tax increase and for his poor choice of advisors. This charge of poor advisors continued when the so-called Lords Appellant prosecuted five of Richard II’s close associates in the “Merciless Parliament” of 1387.

Lancastrians used the established complaint about Richard’s unwillingness to heed proper counsel to justify the king’s deposition. When the first parliament met under the newly crowned Henry IV, Lord Cobham gave a speech denouncing Richard’s “worthless and evil counsellors,” and Archbishop Arundel gave another, pondering “in what state this same honourable realm … would have been, if it had been placed under good and just government and ruled by wise and suitable counsel.”¹⁰⁵ The Record and Process of the Renunciation and Deposition of Richard II, the official Latin version of the deposition distributed by the Lancastrians, blamed Richard’s trust in “personis indignis” (unworthy persons) for his political demise.106 The Lancastrian chronicler, Thomas Walsingham, writes of friars and doctors of theology who were thrown into jail during Richard’s reign “because they went about preaching the evils of the king’s government and the wickedness of his advisers. Those who were foremost among his counsellors were, according to common opinion, the worst of men.”¹⁰⁷

Complaints that Richard listened only to youthful advisors seem to have developed mostly after Henry’s usurpation. Richard the Redeless accuses the former king, “The chevyteyns cheef that ye chesse evere, / Weren all to yonge of yeris to yeme swyche a rewme” (88–9).¹⁰⁸ What appear to be Gower’s later modifications to Vox clamantis also point to Richard’s folly in listening to young advisors.¹⁰⁹ He laments, “Sic etenim puerum iuuenilis concio ducit, / Quod nichil expediens, sit nisi velle, sapit. / Que vult ille” (VI.557–8). (Indeed, youthful company so sways the boy that he has a taste for nothing practical, unless it be his whim.)¹¹⁰ However, as R.H. Jones has pointed out, in fact few of Richard’s advisors were truly young, and many were advanced in age.¹¹¹ The charges of youthful advisors play into a larger narrative of Lancastrian writings that, as Christopher Fletcher puts it, “attacked Richard II as a boy not a man … ascribing to him the faults of youth, at his deposition at the age of 32.”¹¹² This is the tactic of the Lancastrian chronicler Adam of Usk when he declares, “This Richard, with his youthful councilors, may well be likened to Rehoboam, son of Solomon, who lost the kingdom of Israel because he followed the advice of young men.”¹¹³ The comparison to Rehoboam reinforces two important messages: first, that Richard was responsible for his own fall from power because he had failed to listen to older, wiser advisors, and second, that a divine impulse was at work in the passing of the crown from one king to another in England, just as it was in Israel. The example of Rehoboam sends a compelling message in Adam of Usk’s Chronicle. This message is intensified in Gower’s use of the story in the Confessio because Gower had written his admonishments long before the deposition happened. Gesturing to the possibility of deposition – a possibility relevant to all royalty – was not an especially radical move on Gower’s part. Complaints of listening to the wrong advice had been used to justify the deposition of Richard’s great-grandfather, Edward II, whom the Archbishop John Stratford had compared to Rehoboam in a widely circulated letter.¹¹⁴ Gower may have been reminding Richard to learn from history. Ironically, Gower could not have foreseen the ways in which this story of youthful royal advisors would make him appear to be prescient.

After the deposition, Gower’s unintentionally prophetic warning melded particularly well with Lancastrian sensibilities through the modern touches that Gower had added. Gower gave the story of Rehoboam a contemporary flavor by describing Israel as “a Parlement” (VII.4031), who “avised were of on assent” (VII.4032) and spoke to Rehoboam “with comun vois” (VII.4034) before they removed him from office. As Ferster points out, similar language of unanimity and “common voice” appears in Gower’s retelling of Livy’s stories of two Roman royals who raped innocent women (Lucrece and Virginia) and were dethroned as a result by the will of the people.115 J.H. Burns explains that in the deposition of Edward II in 1327 and Richard in 1399, barons “sought to prove that the people as a whole had co-operated in, agreed to and acclaimed the depositions.”¹¹⁶ This authority of the public has its origins in treatises like pseudo-Aquinas’s On Kingship (c. 1270), which claims that tyranny can only be overthrown “by public authority,” since it is the community that appoints the king and has a contract with him.¹¹⁷ As John Watts has demonstrated, a great number of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century rebellions and depositions invoked the authority of the public because, “If government was for the populus, and if the fisc and the crown were, in a sense public property, then groups capable of speaking for the people or public could claim to represent the interests of the realm – even against the king.”¹¹⁸ Henry IV would have almost certainly approved of a tale of a poorly advised king deposed at the unanimous request of his own people. After all, this was the narrative of Richard’s fall from power that the Lancastrians were encouraging the public to embrace.

The prophetic perspective of Gower’s voice is intensified in Book VII by several stories of prophets who warned kings. Gower did not originally include these prophetic figures to foretell the future. His goal was to inspire proper government. The prophetic advisor is a paradoxical figure. He or she warns the king, implying the king’s free will to change the situation that is leading him to ruin. Yet, after the king’s demise, the prophet’s presence raises the question of whether the king’s fall was decreed all along. Gower alters the stories of Old Testament prophets to emphasize the agency of the kings whom they advise. It is only after Richard was actually deposed that Gower’s prophets highlight the fated nature of their kings’ depositions as much as the free will that could have prevented them.

For instance, Gower significantly alters the story of Micaiah so that King Ahab’s fall is due to a correctable personal failing, his love of flattery. Ahab asks the prophets in his kingdom if he will win the battle against Ramoth Galaad; all respond with flattering affirmations except Micaiah, who tells Ahab that he overheard the voice of God plotting with a spirit to deceive Ahab by sending false messages to his prophets. Ahab has Micaiah thrown in prison and goes on to lose the battle, in which he is slain. Ferster has argued that, given that God himself sends false prophets in this story, Gower questions the king–counselor relationship, illustrating that “the whole enterprise of getting advice from counselors seems futile.”119 Yet Gower alters the biblical story in such a way that Ahab is most at fault for his unwillingness to listen to Micaiah. In Gower’s version, Ahab always had a bad habit of supporting flatterers: “Bot who that couthe glose softe / And flatre, suche he sette alofte / In gret astat and made hem riche” (VII.2531–3). Furthermore, Gower adds the detail that Ahab taught his court to ignore the truth: “Bot thei that spieken words liche / To trouthe and wolde it noght forbere, / For hem was non astat to bere, / The court of suche tok non hiede” (VII.2534–7). Gower’s false prophets are not so much deceived by God as motivated by reward. Gower describes the primary false prophet, Sedecias, as “a flatour” (VII.2572) when detailing his assertion that Ahab would be victorious. Gower also adds the detail that Josaphat, King of Judah “was in gret doute, / And hield fantosme al that he herde” (VII.2588–9). In the original biblical passage, Josaphat hears and believes Sedecias’s prophecy as Ahab does (1 Kings 22:29), but Gower makes him a discerning foil to Ahab. Gower’s Ahab is biased against Micaiah because Ahab “liketh nevere yit to sein / A goodly word to mi pleasance” (VII.2599). Gower’s Micaiah describes how God specifically plans to send Ahab a “flaterende prophecie” (VII.2652), not just a false one. Thus, God punishes Ahab’s habit of rewarding flatterers with the precise instrument of his folly, giving him one last chance by also sending a true prophet. Because Ahab is predisposed to ignore Micaiah’s unflattering words, the king dies. The Old Testament story of Micaiah merely illustrates that God will thwart those who are not his chosen rulers. Gower creatively alters the story to convey the advice given in various models for princes about the dangers of cultivating flatterers. A love of flattery was a common charge against the deposed Richard. In 1399 in Westminster Hall, Thomas Arundel preached a sermon contrasting the boy, Richard, with the man, Henry. Christopher Fletcher describes how Arundel “argued that Richard had a taste for, or understood (sapit), only pleasing things and flattery. The child hated the one who reveals truth. This was how Richard had ruled, having no taste for wisdom. Henry, on the other hand, held like a man to truth.”¹²⁰ Because Lancastrian supporters took pains to characterize Richard as the very sort of tyrant portrayed in models for princes, it is all too easy in retrospect to see Richard in the role of Gower’s Ahab, the king who preferred flattery.

Nowhere is the implication that the fallen kings of Book VII are foreshadowing the fall of Richard more flattering to Henry IV than in Gower’s recounting of the story of the fall of Saul and rise of David, predicted by Samuel (1 Samuel 15: 24–6). Gower uses the story of Saul in a section devoted to the importance of pursuing battle when necessary. Saul refused to listen to Samuel’s warnings of God’s orders to kill Agag because “Agag made gret behest / Of rancoun which he wold give” (VII.3832–3). As a result, “Himself, both fro his regalie / He schal be put for everemo, / Noght he, bot ek his heir also, / That it schal nevere come ayein” (VII.3842–5). Gower offers the story as a warning to kings against excessive mercy to their political enemies, describing the penalty as removal from the throne and the end of the royal line.121 The secondary message of listening to the proper advisors in war is obviously present here as well, since Saul failed to listen to Samuel. Saul was deposed by God, and his divinely appointed replacement was David, whom Gower describes as an ideal king. Reading this section of kingly advice in retrospect, it is easy to see Henry as King David, father of the new house of kings, sent to replace the ruler whom God overthrew. Gower falls into the role of Samuel, who warned Saul to no avail, ultimately anointing David as king. Perhaps Gower knew all along that the role of Samuel was potentially his. Part of his warning to Richard is not to make himself yet another example of a king who was warned but did not listen. Regardless of Gower’s intentions or actual expectations of the future, his voice in Book VII became a much more prophetic one by warning Richard of the possibilities of deposition.

Gower’s examples of kings’ failures to heed prophetic advice comprise only a small portion of the Confessio and even of Book VII, so what appear to be Lancastrian efforts to reproduce the poem are not solely attributable to the prophetic content of the Confessio, given the literary merit of the work. Nevertheless, it is easy to see why the version dedicated to Richard would be the version that they wanted audiences to read. The sections of the Confessio dedicated to the discussion of kingship are rather prominent. Gower’s encounter with Richard on the Thames in the first recension remains one of the most iconic scenes of the Confessio, perhaps seconded only by Daniel’s explication of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. The dedication to Richard is memorable, and the portions of the text on kingship, when addressed to the former king, emphasize the very shortcomings of his reign that the Lancastrians would have wanted to underscore. Gower’s claims to prophetic powers come from his ability to understand public sentiment and interpret complex patterns. The idea that he could have foreseen Richard’s downfall takes on a character that is both practical and supernatural.

The Ethics of Gower’s Decision

After Henry’s coronation, Gower cultivated a poetic voice that was more emphatically prophetic and critical of Richard II, and this included revising the Vox clamantis. The savviness of Gower’s decision to support Henry has rarely been up for debate, but its ethicality has been a point of contention for centuries. On the one hand, editors like Pauli and Macaulay attributed Gower’s removal of the Ricardian prologue to his morally righteous distaste for Richard. On the other hand, Chaucerian scholars have a history of viewing Richard sympathetically and seeing Gower as a sort of traitorous foil to his colleague. In his introduction to the 1721 edition of The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, John Urry contrasts Chaucer with Gower, arguing:

But the respect [Chaucer] retained for his former Master Richard, and the Gratitude for the Favours he had received from him, kept him from trampling upon his Memory, and barely flattering the new King; as most of his Cotemporaries did, and particular Gower, who, notwithstanding the obligations he had to Rich. II. Yet when old, blind, and past any hopes of honour or advantage, unless the view of keeping what he enjoyed, basely insulted the Memory of his murdered Master, and as ignominiously flattered his Murderer.122

The early eighteenth-century antiquarian and Chaucerian biographer, Thomas Hearne, writes that Gower’s Cronica Tripertita “is very violent against that goodnatured, but very unfortunate Prince (Richard II).”¹²³ Based on the misattribution of Thomas Usk’s Testament of Love to Chaucer, Urry and Hearne were under the impression that Chaucer was a Ricardian who had been threatened when Henry took the throne.¹²⁴ To subsequent critics who have perceived Chaucer as a steadfast supporter of Richard, Gower was a not only a traitor to the former king but to his fellow poet and friend. In his nineteenth-century adaptation of Chaucer’s works for children, Charles Cowden-Clarke writes:

We do not find … that [Chaucer] chuckled over the reverses and miseries of his late and generous, if weak, benefactor [Richard]; yet this execrable baseness attaches to the memory of our poet’s friend, Gower, who, with the callous selfishness that not unfrequently accompanies a blind old age, spurned the fallen patron through whose munificence he had enjoyed a larger share of favour than had fallen to the lot of Chaucer himself. We may conceive how that generous and noble soul must have revolted at such miserable ingratitude in a brother-poet and friend.125

Because Chaucer’s early biographers have exaggerated the poet’s connections to Richard himself, they also often imagined that he was particularly distraught at the king’s deposal and perhaps even in danger in the court of the new King Henry. Within this tradition, Terry Jones has even gone so far as to suggest that the Archbishop Arundel had Chaucer murdered.¹²⁶ The division in opinions of Gower’s allegiance to Henry seem to be based upon opinions of Richard’s character – a difficult thing to assess. Lancastrians clearly went out of their way to depict Henry’s predecessor as a tyrant, but the existence of this smear campaign does not mean that Richard was, in actuality, an excellent monarch. To Gower’s defenders, his prescience absolves him of any potential wrongdoing. It creates a biography of a man who did not merely turn on Richard II when he fell from power but instead boldly stood against him when it was exceptionally brave to do so. The retrospectively produced prophetic subject position makes Gower appear to be not only wise but constant.

The Persistence of Gower’s Prophetic Reputation

Despite the fact that no conclusive manuscript evidence supports the idea that Gower predicted Richard II’s fall from power, the poet has remained a prophet in contemporary criticism for a cluster of interrelated reasons. First, both Gower and the Lancastrians were promoting this perception of the poet. Second, Gower’s prophetic reputation has a cumulative effect. For instance, Parkes has based his perceptions of when Gower altered the Vox upon Macaulay’s interpretations of when Gower revised the Confessio. Third, there remain very few editions of Gower’s works, and the most prominent of those that do exist have been edited by people championing the perspective of a prophetic Gower. Fourth, the nature of Richard II’s rule is still debated among historians, largely because we cannot tell which parts of history have been obscured by Lancastrian propaganda. Gower is often conscribed into this debate as either a witness to Richard’s tyranny or an opportunistic traitor and foil for the supposedly loyal Ricardian poet, Chaucer. Fifth, the “red herring” recension of the Confessio that Gower happened to have originally dedicated to both Richard and Henry has served as a source of confusion for later scholars attempting to understand the circumstances surrounding its composition. Sixth, because Gower’s works are either not in English or prohibitively long, they are rarely granted a prominent place on the syllabi of most English courses. Those who study and teach Gower’s works cannot make the case for his importance solely from canonical relevance and often turn to the justification of his historical and political relevance. Gower is important, much criticism tells us, because he had an uncanny talent for diagnosing problems in his country’s general populace and leadership. Finally, audiences of any period rarely expect authors to be as crafty as Gower appears to have been in his prophetic self-fashioning. Gower’s efforts to depict himself as a sage authority have cemented his reputation as a keen political observer but overshadowed his other literary accomplishments. Perhaps in reconsidering Gower the prophet, literary studies will find more ways to recover Gower the poet.