could have been considered a Wycliffite.

Again, this period of Chaucer's life may be called fortunate, because
during it he seems to have enjoyed the only congenial friendships of which
any notice remains to us, The poem of "Troilus and Cressid" is, as was
just noted, dedicated to "the moral Gower and the philosophical Strode."
Ralph Strode was a Dominican of Jedburgh Abbey, a travelled scholar, whose
journeys had carried him as far as the Holy Land, and who was celebrated
as a poet in both the Latin and the English tongue, and as a theologian
and philosopher. In connexion with speculations concerning Chaucer's
relations to Wycliffism it is worth noting that Strode, who after his
return to England was appointed to superintend several new monasteries,
was the author of a series of controversial arguments against Wyclif. The
tradition, according to which he taught one of Chaucer's sons, is
untrustworthy. Of John Gower's life little more is known than of
Chaucer's; he appears to have been a Suffolk man, holding manors in that
county as well as in Essex, but occasionally to have resided in Kent. At
the period of which we are speaking, he may be supposed, besides his
French productions, to have already published his Latin "Vox Clamantis"--a
poem which, beginning with an allegorical narrative of Wat Tyler's
rebellion, passes on to a series of reflexions on the causes of the
movement, conceived in a spirit of indignation against the corruptions of
the Church, but not of sympathy with Wycliffism. This is no doubt the
poem which obtained for Gower the epithet "moral" (i.e. sententious)
applied to him by Chaucer, and afterwards by Dunbar, Hawes, and Shakspere.
Gower's "Vox Clamantis" and other Latin poems (including one "against the
astuteness of the Evil One in the matter of Lollardry") are forgotten; but
his English "Confessio Amantis" has retained its right to a place of
honour in the history of our literature. The most interesting part of
this poem, its "Prologue," has already been cited as of value for our