In book V of the Confessio Amantis Gower surprisingly compares perjury, a serious crime in the king's court, to amatory seduction, a lesser moral offence which ecclesiastical courts ranked in importance well behind rape and adultery. These dissimilar wrongdoings share a motive – ‘coveitise’, which, according to MED, means both ‘immoderate desire for acquiring worldly goods or estate’ and ‘strong sexual desire’ for women. The comparison between lands and women as objects of desire is warranted by men's proprietary interest in their sisters’, wives’ or daughters’ chastity:

The Latin (‘sicut … agros … mulieres’) supports the fusion of sexual and property desire and also the subsequent transformation of ‘cupidus amans’ into ‘periurus’, whose epithet is echoed to emphasize his wrongdoing (‘periuro’). These lines, which introduce the tales of Confessio book V, preface Gower's intriguing contention that seduction and perjury might be legally equivalent. Yet even if one equates the objects of their desire, perjury and seduction are hardly alike: unlike the property thief, the covetous lover (‘cupidus amans’) might escape punishment and even take pride (‘laudanda gloria’) in his sexual conquests. Widespread misogynist views of women as tempting daughters of Eve ensured modest penalties for medieval seducers. Ecclesiastic courts levied small fines, occasionally flogging those perpetrators who were either unwilling to marry their victims or too poor to pay compensation.