afterwards duly lamented in his "Monk's Tale":--

O noble, O worthy Pedro, glory of Spain,
Whom fortune held so high in majesty!

As yet the star of the valiant Prince of Wales had not been quenched in
the sickness which was the harbinger of death; and his younger brother,
John of Gaunt, though already known for his bravery in the field (he
commanded the reinforcements sent to Spain in 1367), had scarcely begun to
play the prominent part in politics which he was afterwards to fill. But
his day was at hand, and the anti-clerical tenour of the legislation and
of the administrative changes of these years was in entire harmony with
the policy of which he was to constitute himself the representative. 1365
is the year of the Statute of Provisors, and 1371 that of the dismissal of
William of Wykeham.

John of Gaunt was born in 1340, and was, therefore, probably of much the
same age as Chaucer, and like him now in the prime of life. Nothing could
accordingly be more natural than that a more or less intimate relation
should have formed itself between them. This relation, there is reason to
believe, afterwards ripened on Chaucer's part into one of distinct
political partisanship, of which there could as yet (for the reason given
above) hardly be a question. There was, however, so far as we know,
nothing in Chaucer's tastes and tendencies to render it antecedently
unlikely that he should have been ready to follow the fortunes of a prince
who entered the political arena as an adversary of clerical predominance.
Had Chaucer been a friend of it in principle, he would hardly have devoted
his first efforts as a writer to the translation of the "Roman de la
Rose." In so far, therefore, and in truth it is not very far, as John of
Gaunt may be afterwards said to have been a Wycliffite, the same