“…poet, may have been born in the 1330s or 1340s. Although the date of his death can be fixed, and his tomb still survives in Southwark Cathedral (formerly the priory of St Mary Overie), that of his birth is unknown. In a letter to Archbishop Arundel (c.1400) accompanying his Latin poem the Vox clamantis, Gower describes himself as ‘old’. How old he was is not revealed, but it has been assumed that this and similar references indicate that he was probably over sixty by the turn of the century.…

Gower died in 1408. His will was proved on 24 October. He left bequests to his wife, Agnes, who was one of his executors, to the prior, sub-prior, canons, and servants of St Mary Overie, and to the churches and hospitals of Southwark and the neighbourhood. Among the gifts to the priory was a large book, a martilogium ‘newly composed at my expense’, in which a memorial for him was to be recorded every day. He was buried in the chapel of St John the Baptist. Though his tomb and effigy is still to be seen, it has been moved twice since 1800, and the chapel has now disappeared. The painting and lettering on the tomb have been restored from earlier descriptions (by Thomas Berthelette, who printed the Confessio amantis in 1532, Leland, and Stow). Under his head was the likeness of three books–the Speculum meditantis, the Vox clamantis, and the Confessio amantis. A Latin inscription identified him as an esquire (armiger), a famous poet, and a benefactor. According to Stow he was represented with long curling auburn hair and a small forked beard. This seems likely to have been an idealized recollection of the poet in more youthful days (as perhaps are the pictures of him shooting the arrows of satire against the world that appear in two manuscripts of the Vox clamantis). An explicitly identified portrait (effigies Gower esquier) appears in the duke of Bedford’s psalter-hours (after 1414; BL, Add. MS 4213). It shows him as an elderly, almost bald man with white curling hair and a forked beard (Wright, 191); it may have been done from memory. It is one of a series of ten depictions of him in the initials of this Lancastrian manuscript, and some care seems to have been taken in the placing of them with psalms in a way that could recall the Vox clamantis. The figure is similar to the elderly, balding Amans sometimes depicted in manuscripts of the Confessio amantis, for instance in Bodl. Oxf., MS Bodley 902; in others, however (BL, MS Egerton 1991 provides a good example), the penitent is represented as an elegant and youthful figure. Such portraits are meant probably to be general rather than exact ‘likenesses’.

Gower’s poetic reputation has rested almost exclusively on the Confessio amantis. The number of manuscripts testify to its popularity. Uniquely, it seems, for a Middle English poem it was translated into Portuguese (probably in 1433–8) by Robert Payn, an Englishman in the household of Queen Philippa, the daughter of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, and later a canon at Lisbon, and from that into Castilian prose (after 1428) by Juan de Cuenca. In the fifteenth century Gower’s name is linked with that of Chaucer, and later Lydgate, as one of the ‘masters’ of English poetry. He continued to be praised in the sixteenth century: in Pericles ‘ancient Gower’ is brought back from his ashes to introduce a play based on his story of Apollonius. But his fame did not last, and in spite of Thomas Warton’s full and generous account–‘If Chaucer had not existed, the compositions of John Gower … would alone have been sufficient to rescue the reigns of Edward III and Richard II from the imputation of barbarism’ (Warton, 311)–some nineteenth-century critics simply abused him–he ‘raised tediousness to the precision of science’, according to James Russell Lowell (My Study Windows, 1871). The Macaulay edition laid the foundation for serious study, and gradually modern criticism has done more justice to his poetic excellence. Chaucer’s epithet ‘moral’ was a very exact one. Gower had a coherent and serious view of the need for love and concord and peace, but he was not always solemn: in his Confessio amantis especially he brilliantly combined entertainment with doctrine–‘somwhat of lust, somewhat of lore’ (DNB).

“…Although he played a leading part in civic government and finance for over 20 years, Organ’s early life and background remain obscure. The first known reference to him occurs in April 1361, by which date he had become involved, probably as a trustee, in the conveyance of property in Tottenham, Middlesex. Organ may well have been in business for some time when, in November 1368, Richard Gillingham of Kent entered into a bond for 80 marks with him as a ‘citizen and mercer of London’. His first return to Parliament during the previous spring suggests that he already possessed some influence in the City; and the appearance of his name among the merchants to whom Queen Philippa owed money (in this case almost £22) when she died in 1369 is also a sign of his rising fortunes.

How far Organ prospered as a result of his many years as a collector of customs and subsidies in the port of London is now a matter of conjecture. During the entire reign of Richard II only three customs officials–of whom he was one–were entrusted with the collection of all three of the major imposts raised on goods imported through the capital. His experience, which rivalled that of many a professional administrator, made him tremendously valuable both to the Crown and the London merchants waiting for assignments on the wool custom. It has, indeed, been argued that his confirmation in office was intended to reassure the King’s major creditors in the City: they in turn can only have welcomed the prospect of administrative continuity made possible by the reappointment of a friend and business associate” (History of Parliament).