Chapter 9 - John Gower’s Legal Advocacy and ‘In Praise of Peace’

Summary

In his second and final English poem, known to us as ‘In Praise of Peace’, John Gower declares to King Henry IV, ‘Mi liege lord, tak hiede of that Y seie’ (‘Praise’, line 82); he thereby presents himself as the king's adviser, a role in all of Gower's poems identified as the ‘most significant’ by George Coffman. Subsequent essays by Paul Strohm, Frank Grady and Michael Livingston have shown how ‘In Praise of Peace’ confirms this advisory role by presenting Gower as an insider able to repeat the official Lancastrian argument justifying Henry's claim to the English throne but also able to demonstrate an uncomfortable awareness of internal contradictions in the Lancastrian claims, especially the problem inherent in claiming that military conquest justified removing a legitimate king from power. Gower's English verses sidestep this problematic justification, instead crediting Henry's ascent to his noble blood, God's choice and the desire of the English people, echoing an argument devised by Henry's propagandists. Once the first stanzas establish his bona fides as a loyal Lancastrian, Gower then makes ‘his voice all the more essential’, as Michael Livingston argues, by helping Henry ‘better understand and implement God's will’: that ‘the best rule is that which leads to peace’, a direction contrary to the new king's policy. That is, Gower attempts to combine in the poem both the Lancastrian propaganda and a criticism of the regime. As these readings show, the poem demonstrates the delicacy of finding ‘a place from which, and the voice in which, to speak’. What role, the poem asks, allows the poet to be heard by those he would scold? Because the voice of royal adviser so pervades ‘In Praise of Peace’, Gower's readers have generally not looked beyond that role. In doing so, readers have encountered textual self-contradictions seemingly explained only by authorial waffling, a characteristic not generally associated with the poet's voice.