In this study, I have put forward the idea that Hoccleve positions himself as a poetic mediator in his works – as an individual capable of mediating between otherwise disunited or contentious subjects, and also as the medium through which the figure of Chaucer is transformed and re-presented in the Regiment. Reading Hoccleve in this context allows us to see him as a middleman in the most virtuous sense: it presents a case not for Hoccleve attempting to ‘usurp’ Chaucer, or betraying an anxiety of influence over his literary father, but rather as a poet who toils to animate Chaucer as a moral authority. It is instructive, too, to read Hoccleve's late ‘collected poems’ manuscripts in this light: they might be seen as a compilation of poetic forms from which others might work, from the ‘Cupid’ poem to the envoi, from poems of Marian devotion to poems for political occasions, from rhyme royal to roundels. This would put these manuscripts in the same category as Hoccleve's Formulary, which he was compiling in the same period, and in which Hoccleve compiled exemplary Privy Seal documents – or forms – from which future colleagues could work. Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes and the Series, similarly, serve on one level as meditations on Hoccleve's poetic limits and as demonstrations of how Hoccleve transcends these limits: they teach even as they preach. I have discussed both longer works in this context, and I have indicated how Hoccleve, in the Regiment, aligns his image of Chaucer with his more prudent, and more collegial, poetics – a poetics that warns its readers to practice prudence and discretion, and that uses careful and allusive language as a means to political and ecclesiastical commentary.

Among the first individuals to use Hocclevian poetry in his writing was George Ashby (d. 1475), who served for most of his career as a Signet clerk under Queen Margaret. Ashby was imprisoned for his affiliation with the Lancastrians during the War of the Roses, and his Complaint of a Prisoner in the Fleet 1463 – written during his imprisonment – echoes Hoccleve's Series on a number of levels.