John Lydgate

Lore & Background

In his poem The Testament, written towards the end of his life, Lydgate admitted to childhood sins: 'I lied to excuse myself. I stole apples … I made mouths at people like a wanton ape. I gambled at cherry stones. I was late to rise and dirty at meals. I was chief shammer of illness.' He was admitted to the Benedictine monastery of Bury St Edmunds Abbey in 1382, took novice vows soon after, and was ordained as a subdeacon in 1389. Based on a letter from Henry V, Lydgate was a student at Oxford University, probably Gloucester College (now Worcester College), between 1406 and 1408. During this period he wrote his early work, Isopes Fabules, with its broad range of scholastic references. Having literary ambitions—he was an admirer of Geoffrey Chaucer and a friend to his son, Thomas—he sought and obtained patronage at the courts of Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI. His patrons included the mayor and aldermen of London, the chapter of St Paul's Cathedral, Richard de Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick, and Henry V and VI. His main supporter from 1422 was Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. In 1423 Lydgate was made prior of Hatfield Broad Oak, Essex, but soon resigned to concentrate on his travels and writing. His most famous works are his longer moralistic poems: Troy Book (1412–20), a 30,000-line translation of Guido delle Colonne's Historia destructionis Troiae; the Siege of Thebes, translated from a French prose redaction of the Roman de Thebes; and the Fall of Princes (1431–8), the last and longest of his works. In his later years he lived and probably died at Bury St Edmunds Abbey. At some point he returned to the village of his birth and added his signature and a coded message in a graffito onto a wall at St Mary's Church, Lidgate, discovered in 2014.

Reader's Guide

Lydgate's significance lies in his vast poetic output and his role in extending Chaucerian genres into full-scale epics and moral works. His Troy Book, commissioned by Prince Henry (later Henry V), is an amplified translation of the Trojan history of the thirteenth-century Latin writer Guido delle Colonne, deliberately moving beyond Chaucer's Knight's Tale and his Troilus to provide a full-scale epic. The Siege of Thebes (4,716 lines) is a shorter excursion in the same field of chivalric epic. Chaucer's The Monk's Tale gives a hint of what is to come in Lydgate's massive Fall of Princes (36,365 lines), which is also derived, though not directly, from Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum Illustrium. The Man of Law's Tale, with its rhetorical elaboration, is the model for Lydgate's legends of St Edmund (3,693 lines) and St Alban (4,734 lines), both local monastic patrons, as well as for many shorter saints' lives, though not for the richer Life of Our Lady (5,932 lines). Of his more accessible poems, most were written in the first decade of the fifteenth century in a Chaucerian vein: The Complaint of the Black Knight, The Temple of Glas, The Floure of Curtesy, and the allegorical Reason and Sensuality. As he grew older, his poems grew progressively longer, and it is regarding Lydgate's later poetry that Joseph Ritson's harsh characterisation is based: 'A voluminous, prosaick and drivelling monk.' Similarly, one twentieth-century historian has described his verse as 'banal.' At one time, the long allegorical poem The Assembly of Gods was attributed to him, but the work is now considered anonymous. His authorship of London Lickpenny has been thoroughly discredited.

Did You Know?

• Lydgate's poetic output amounts to about 145,000 lines at a conservative count.
• He admitted in his poem The Testament to childhood sins including stealing apples and gambling at cherry stones.
• He was a student at Oxford University, probably Gloucester College, between 1406 and 1408, based on a letter from Henry V.
• Lydgate added his signature and a coded message in a graffito onto a wall at St Mary's Church, Lidgate, discovered in 2014.
• He is credited with the first known usage of the adage 'Needs must' in its fullest form: 'He must nedys go that the deuell dryves' in his The Assembly of Gods.