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GOWER ON HENRY IVS RULE: THE ENDINGS OF THE CRÓNICA TRIPERTITA AND ITS TEXTS By DAVID R. CARLSON An Alternative Conclusion to the Crónica tripertita (3.478-89) When in late 1399 Henry Bolingbroke (1367-1413) took the English throne as Henry IV from his cousin Richard II (d. 1400), the deposed king's poet John Gower (ca. 1330-1408), who had been long in Henry's favor too, wrote extensively in support of the revolution by which the Lancastrian regime was installed. Aged and probably infirm, Gower had been quiet since finishing with the Confessio amantis in the early thirteen-nineties: "A bok for king Richardes sake" (*24), Gower had called it, written "upon his comandynge " (*54).1 Then came suddenly the substantial body of Gower's Lancastrian apologetics, within a period of a few weeks or months, between late 1399 and early 1400: the some three-hundred line inaugural panegyric, in rhyme royal stanzas, now usually called "In Praise of Peace" — re vera, "ad laudem et memoriam Serenissimi principis domini Regis Henrici quarti"2 — the Lancastrian Carmen saeculare, celebrating Henry's installation, and Gower's last writing in English; possibly some of the shorter Latin verse as well; and, most grand, his account of the revolution's advent in the Crónica tripertita, in three books, 1062 Leonines, covering precisely the chronological span embedded in the official "Record et procès del renunciación du roy Richard, le second apres le conquest, et de lacceptacion de mesme la renunciaci ón, ensemblement oue la deposición de mesme le roy Richard," enrolled in the rolls of parliament in late 1399, on which Gower based his verse enarration .3 Quotations from Gower's writings are from G. C. Macaulay, ed., The Complete Works of John Gower, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1899-1902). Excepting the Modern English verse translations from the Crónica tripertita by A. G. Rigg, other translations are the author's doing. The asterisks indicate lines found in variant manuscripts. See Macaulay, Complete Works, 2:2, note to lines 24-92, and 2:4, note to lines 53 and following. " Complete Works, ed. Macaulay, 3:492. 3 The "Record and Process" is in the Rotuli parliamentorum: ut et petitiones, et placita in parliamenlo, ed. Richard Blyke, John Strachey, et al., 8 vols. (London, 1780-1832), 3:416-24; on the process of its enrollment, see H. G. Richardson. "Richard II's Last Parliament ," English Historical Review 52 (1937): 40-42. Gower's use of it is noted in Gaillard Lapsley. "The Parliamentary Title of Henry IV," English Historical Review 49 (1934): 438-40 and 596-600; see also Paul Strohm, "Saving the Appearances: Chaucer's 'Purse' and the Fabrication of the Lancastrian Claim," in Hochons Arrow: The Social Imagination of 208TRADITIO Gower's apologetic history ends, as is to be expected, with explicit virulent condemnation of the former king and unqualified praise for his killer, now king himself, in four of the five surviving copies (more or less) as follows : CRÓNICA RICARDI, qui sceptra tulit leopardi, Vt patet, est dicta: violenta, grauis, maledicta. Vt speculum mundi, quo lux nequit vlla refundí, Sic vacuus transit, sibi nil nisi culpa remansit. Vnde superbus erat, modo si precoma querat, Eius honor sordet, laus culpat, gloria mordet. Hoc concernentes caueant qui sunt sapientes, Nam male viuentes deus odit in orbe regentes: Est qui peccator, non esse potest dominator; Ricardo teste, finis probat hoc manifeste: Post sua demerita periit sua pompa sopita; Qualis erat vita, crónica stabit ita. (3.478-89) [King Bichard's history (with leopard arms he dressed) Is told: violent, all grave, malevolent the rest. Like mirror to the world he leaves, an empty frame From which no light reflects and all that's left is blame. If now he seeks of pride a final offering, His honor stinks, his praise brings blame, his glory stings. With this in view let each beware who's not a fool: God hates the evildoers when they seek to rule. The man who lives in sin is not equipped to reign, As Bichard testifies; his end makes this quite plain. King Richard got his pay; his pride has gone away...

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