Glover, who, in his 'Visitation of Yorkshire,' describes Gower as
married to a lady named Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Edward Sadbowrughe,
Baron of the Exchequer, by whom he had five sons and three daughters,
must both fall to the ground. According to the will, Gower's wife's name
was Agnes, and he leaves to her L100 in legacy, besides his valuable
goods and the rents accruing from his aforesaid manors of Multon, in
Suffolk, and Southwell, in Nottinghamshire. His body was, according
to his own direction, buried in the monastery of St Mary Overies, in
Southwark, (afterwards the church of St Saviour,) where a monument, and
an effigies, too, were erected, with the roses of a knight girdling the
brow of one who was unquestionably a true, if not a great poet.

In Warton's 'History of English Poetry,' and in the 'Illustrations of
the Lives and Writings of Gower and Chaucer' by Mr Todd, there will be
found ample and curious details about MS. poems by Gower, such as fifty
sonnets in French; a 'Panegyrick on Henry IV.,' half in Latin and half
in English, a short elegiac poem on the same subject, &c.; besides a
large work, entitled 'Speculum Meditantis,' a poem in French of a moral
cast; and 'Vox Clamantis,' consisting of seven books of Latin elegiacs,
and chiefly filled with a metrical account of the insurrections of the
Commons in the reign of Richard II. In the dedication of this latter
work to Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, Gower speaks of his blindness
and his age. He says, 'Hanc epistolam subscriptam corde devoto misit
_senex et cecus_ Johannes Gower reverendissimo in Christo patri ac
domino suo precipuo domino Thome de Arundell, Cantuar. Archiepoe.' &c.
Warton proves that the 'Vox Clamantis' was written in the year 1397, by
a line in the Bodleian manuscript of the poem, 'Hos ego _bis deno_
Ricardo regis in anno.' Richard II. began, it is well known, to reign in
the year 1377, when ten years of age, and, of course, the year 1397 was
the twentieth of his reign. It follows from this, that for eleven years