ubmitting his Troilus and Cressida to his censure.
Stow in his Survey of London seems to be of opinion that he was no
knight, but only an esquire; however, it is certain he was descended
of a knightly family, at Sittenham in Yorkshire. He received his
education in London, and studied the law, but being possessed of a
great fortune, he dedicated himself more to pleasure and poetry than
the bar; tho' he seems not to have made any proficiency in poetry, for
his works are rather cool translations, than originals, and are quite
destitute of poetical fire. Bale makes him Equitem Auratum & Poetam
Laureatum, but Winstanly says that he was neither laureated nor
bederated, but only rosated, having a chaplet of four roses about his
head in his monumental stone erected in St. Mary Overy's, Southwark:
He was held in great esteem by King Richard II, to whom he dedicates a
book called Confessio Amantis. That he was a man of no honour appears
by his behaviour when the revolution under Henry IV happened in
England. He was under the highest obligations to Richard II; he had
been preferred, patronized and honoured by him, yet no sooner did that
unhappy prince (who owed his misfortunes in a great measure to his
generosity and easiness of nature) fall a sacrifice to the policy of
Henry and the rage of rebellion, but he worshiped the Rising Sun,
he joined his interest with the new king, and tho' he was then
stone-blind, and, as might naturally be imagined, too old to desire
either riches or power, yet he was capable of the grossest flattery
to the reigning prince, and like an ungrateful monster insulted the
memory of his murdered sovereign and generous patron. He survived
Chaucer two years; Winstanly says, that in his old age he was made a
judge, possibly in consequence of his adulation to Henry IV. His death
happened in the year 1402, and as he is said to have been born some
years before Chaucer, so he must have been near fourscore years of
age: He was buried in St. Mary Overy's in Southwark, in the chapel of
St. John, where he founded a chauntry, and left money for a mass to be
daily sung for him, as also an obit within the church to be kept on
Friday after the feast of St. Gregory. He lies under a tomb of stone,
with his image also of stone over him, the hair of his head auburn,
long to his shoulders, but curling up, and a small forked beard;
on his head a chaplet like a coronet of roses; an habit of purple,
damasked down to his feet, and