In his final years, Thomas Hoccleve compiled the two manuscripts of his shorter poems now housed at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California: MSS HM 111 and 744. The manuscripts evince a conservative impulse, an effort to preserve a range of material composed over Hoccleve’s lifetime. Of the twenty-nine pieces included therein, only nine survive in other manuscripts from the period. The earliest firmly datable poem in the manuscripts is L’epistre de Cupide, recorded, within the poem, as having been written in May 1402. Another piece, Hoccleve’s translation and adaptation of the ars moriendi chapter from Henry Suso’s Horologium sapientiae, is also found in Hoccleve’s Series, completed between 1421 and 1426. The Huntington holographs follow a trend put in place by Hoccleve’s predecessor Chaucer with his own Canterbury Tales collection: the use of one’s final years to gather up the leaves of a life’s work, offer whatever order is possible, and send them into the world.

The contents themselves are truly various. While thematic connections do sometimes occur – such as between the first six items in HM 744, all religious poems, the first three of which are invocations in turn to God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit – there is no overarching narrative, and little by way of transitions between texts. In the same four-year span that Hoccleve was compiling the Huntington holographs (1422–26), he was also at work on the Durham Series and his Formulary. The latter is a book of forms intended for the use of future scribes in the office of the Privy Seal. The Huntington holographs give a similar impression to the Formulary: they serve as a collection of poetic forms, exhibiting the writer’s expertise in a variety of modes, from petitionary verse to poems of Marian devotion, ars moriendi, Cupid poetry, envoi, autobiographical verse, admonitions against heresy, and dedicatory verses.

The collections also raise the question of how Hoccleve’s poems, long and short, ‘major’ and ‘minor’, work in parallel. Reading Hoccleve’s shorter poems alongside his two longer works presents the reader with an opportunity to consider how a certain rhetorical strategy or narrative approach is reimagined in a different situation, or how a given word, even, can be transplanted from one rhetorical environment into another.

In the last chapter, we witnessed the unexpected entrance that Hoccleve's early poem the Epistle of Cupid makes into the ‘Dialogue’ section of the Series. When calling Hoccleve to account for his earlier works, the Friend summons to mind not Hoccleve's long poem, the Regiment of Princes, but the shorter Epistle, written some two decades earlier, in 1402, and translated from Christine de Pizan's Epistre au dieu d'amours (1399). In this chapter we will examine the Epistle in greater detail, in order to better understand the way in which the Series and the Epistle operate inter-textually, and to consider Hoccleve's use of both poems to explore matters of political and ecclesiastical division, transnational exchange, literary taste, and specific instances of royal willfulness and betrayal.

Our examination of the Epistle will position us to reconsider the role that Hoccleve fashions for himself as a poet. Robert Meyer-Lee has argued that Hoccleve's choice to translate Christine de Pizan's Epistre au dieu d'amours, immediately following Henry IV's failed attempt to lure Christine de Pizan into his court, indicates a bid for favor on Hoccleve's part – a bid that, Meyer-Lee argues, Hoccleve mismanages by eschewing the moral authority of Christine's original, and redirecting the poem towards a more ambiguous and purposefully ‘crafty’ presentation. Rather than consider the poem a demonstration of Hoccleve's own poetic cupidity – his lusting after a position of poetic power and renown – I suggest in this chapter that in the Epistle Hoccleve takes the first step towards presenting the mediating power of poetry: its potential to mediate between otherwise contentious, even dangerous, social positions through the use of allusive language. Hoccleve cultivates, therein, the role of prudent intermediary, ‘middle man’ in the most virtuous sense – a role that he will then expand on, as we will see in the coming chapters, when repositioning the figure of Chaucer in the Regiment of Princes.

In the first section of this chapter, we will examine Hoccleve's use of the language of vice and virtue in the Epistle as a means to coded political commentary. In doing so, we will situate the Epistle within a broader English tradition that uses the ‘Cupid poem’ as a means of allusive commentary on the misuse of royal power.

The stanza in which Hoccleve first names himself in the Regiment of Princes is notable not only for the way in which Hoccleve associates himself with Chaucer, but also for the way in which the mention of Chaucer brings with it an immediate commendation and blessing. This stanza not only aligns Hoccleve with Chaucer; it conspicuously affirms Chaucer's good standing in the eyes of a figure who has thus far aligned himself with the institutional church, and who has shown a distinct interest in validating Hoccleve's own religious orthodoxy: the old man. Line 1868 – ‘God have his soule, best of any wight!’ – has the air of an off-hand comment, but it speaks well to Hoccleve's main objectives for Chaucer in the Regiment: to align Chaucer clearly with orthodox Christianity to an unprecedented extent, to marry Chaucer's image with the idea of vernacular literary pursuit, and to apotheosize Chaucer – to put him forth within the social life of the poem as literally ‘best of any wight’. The nature of Chaucer's transformation into the ‘best of any wight’ in the Regiment will be the subject of this chapter.

The narrative conceit that Hoccleve uses in the first section of the Regiment, which he later reprises in his Series, appears to have its roots in Chaucer's prologue to the Legend of Good Women. There, Chaucer is called upon by the God of Love to defend his works and, implicitly, to explain his way of life as a maker of verse. In the Series, Hoccleve is quite similarly called upon to defend both his prior works and his reasons for writing the Series itself, but in the Regiment Hoccleve's approach is more personal: the old man who engages Hoccleve in conversation is more interested in examining the details of Hoccleve's person.

Thomas Hoccleve has enjoyed renewed critical attention in recent years, and has been read, in turn, as a Lancastrian spokesman, a failed laureate, and a bureaucrat whose interests in creating autobiographical poetry emerge from intense anonymity in the workplace. This study takes a different approach: it situates Thomas Hoccleve as an individual who cultivates, throughout his works, the role of poetic mediator – ‘intermediary’ in the most virtuous sense, and also in the most explicitly Christian sense – and who uses his poetic works to engage with contemporary religious reform movements and religious debate. The study situates Hoccleve firmly within the context of heresy, orthodox reform, and ecclesiastical controversy – including fervent debate over the role of the Eucharist and religious images, the role and function of priesthood, and the position of laypeople within the church. It positions Hoccleve, furthermore, as a poet less interested in securing earthly fame, and more genuinely interested in creating works that contribute to the spiritual health of English society – from translating the Ars moriendi treatise from Henry Suso's Horologium sapientiae, to writing devotional poems to the Trinity and the Virgin, to using his poems to contemplate Christ's sacrifice and commenting allusively on ecclesiastical wounds, to indicating possible solutions for such wounds and offering emblems of unity in the face of clear division.

This study benefits from the revitalized critical conversation surrounding the effects on poetry of heresy, the church's response to heresy, and orthodox ecclesiastical reform both at home and abroad in the early fifteenth century. The religious turn in medieval studies of the 1990s has given way to contrasting yet invigorating debates over the effects of Archbishop Arundel's Constitutions, the role of the conciliar movement (and the Council of Constance in particular), the purposes and manifestations of ecclesiastical reform in England, and the fate of vernacular religious writing in fifteenthcentury England. These debates have led, in turn, to some re-evaluations of the role that heresy plays in Hoccleve's works – from the relevance of John Badby in the Regiment of Princes, to Hoccleve's poetic address to the Lollard knight John Oldcastle, to valences of ecclesiastical rehabilitation alongside narratives of authorial recovery in the Series.

In this chapter, we will deepen our focus on the role that ecclesiastical discourse plays in Hoccleve's poetry, by focusing specifically on the role of the Eucharist in Hoccleve's works. In doing so, we will approach a clearer definition of how the old man and the Friend operate in Hoccleve's poetry, and will expand on Hoccleve's status as a religious poet – that is, as a vernacular writer with evident interests in the role and function of priesthood, the spiritual health of the institutional church, the treatment of laypeople within the church, and the ability of poetry to act as a conduit for prayer, penance, and devotional reflection. We will also further explore the communal role that the figure of Chaucer plays in Hoccleve's Regiment, and its implications for Hoccleve's own role as a spiritual and literary intermediary.

In the last chapter, I suggested a parallel between the old man's role in the Regiment and the role of Holy Church in Passus I of Piers Plowman. Hoccleve's old man proves unhelpful, however, not just because he expounds on lofty theological concepts of which the narrator has no natural understanding (or ‘kynde knowyng’ (C.1.137)), as in Will's case, but rather because he approaches the layperson as suspicious and potentially dangerous. Will's Holy Church expresses theological truths that, while lofty, are nonetheless potentially helpful; Hoccleve's old man does not even arrive at this point. He refers to Hoccleve as ‘my chyld’ (e.g., 441), and warns him that not following his advice would be an indication of Hoccleve's ‘childissh misreuled conceit’ (195). Such language – as well as the father/son terminology that Hoccleve and the old man use for each other throughout the first section – might seem to align the Regiment with prose spiritual guides such as Book to a Mother, where, in learning the ‘text’ of Christ, the reader becomes like a child learning the ABC, with a view to becoming literate through spiritual ascent. Other late fourteenth-century spiritual guides, such as Life of Soul and Walter Hilton's Mixed Life, use similar language to emphasize collaborative engagement: they focus on a ‘shared search for knowledge’ that can potentially ‘realize shared forms of intellectual authority’. Hoccleve's old man, however, seems less interested in positioning Hoccleve as a fellow traveler, and more interested in verifying his orthodox credentials and reinforcing the hierarchy of the church.

The last chapter introduced us to the figure of Chaucer as he appears in the Regiment, and offered a comparative, international context for Hoccleve's moral version of Chaucer. In this chapter, we will consider the figure of Hoccleve in greater detail, and will explore other English poetic discourses that contribute to Hoccleve's self-presentation. We will situate Hoccleve with respect to extra-Chaucerian, English literary traditions concerned with Christian allegory and ecclesiastical critique, including Piers Plowman and the texts that comprise the Piers Plowman tradition. In doing so, we will indicate how the figure of Hoccleve emerges at a crossroads between historical personal identity and communal scribal identity, and how ‘Hoccleve’ constitutes in itself an intermingling of English poetic voices – an embodied dialogue concerning the possible applications of English poetic discourse. The advertising (and exercise) of the virtue of prudence proves paramount here: we study Hoccleve's use of the virtue throughout his works, and the prudent examples Hoccleve sets for his contemporaries to follow. Hoccleve's prudent examples indicate a means of reforming English literary ‘thought’ in the early fifteenth century: Hoccleve offers himself as a model for readers, a medium for examining and reflecting on personal and literary reformation in a time of ecclesiastical and political turbulence.

Hoccleve's self-naming in the Regiment occurs almost 1,900 lines into the first section of the poem, and it arrives – as we have seen – with the mention of Hoccleve having been ‘acquainted’ with Chaucer. However, Hoccleve's identity evolves, in its unnamed form, across the span of this first section, in the sequence leading up to the poet's meeting with the old man, and throughout his itinerant dialogue; and this identity emerges at a crossroads between what would appear to be real, biographical details specific to Hoccleve – such as the period in which he has worked for the Privy Seal and the information regarding his marriage – and what might be referred to as his communal identity, his position as a scribe working among scribes and administrators in Westminster.

These lines, which begin Thomas Hoccleve's Series, have been described as the opening to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales transposed into a minor key. Rather than beginning his poem amid the ‘shoures soote’ of April, Hoccleve chooses as his starting point the withering leaves of autumn. Chaucer begins his poem eagerly awaiting a pilgrimage, whereas Hoccleve lies in bed ‘vexid’ by a ‘Þu3tful maladie’ (1.21). Far from boasting Chaucer's ‘ful devout corage’ (I.22), Hoccleve bemoans his lack of ‘lust’ and his ‘langour’ (1.25–28). By the end of his prologue, he has reversed the tone of Chaucer's opening entirely. He chooses to ‘braste oute on .e morwe’ not because of, but despite his surroundings (1.35). And, unlike Chaucer, who gears up for a pilgrimage, Hoccleve sits down and begins to write. This instance of writing despite the bleakness of one's surroundings serves as a fitting introduction to the Series – a work that depicts the compromised state of English poesie about two decades after Chaucer's death.

Hoccleve was writing the Series between 1419 and 1426, a period of considerable unrest for the English nation. In 1422 Henry V died, leaving the English throne to his nine-month-old son. Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, struggled with John, duke of Bedford, for the title of Protector, while England continued its war with France and its ongoing battle against heresy. Fresh in the collective English memory was the Council of Constance (1414–18), which saw attempts by delegates from Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and England to reform the Christian Church in ‘head and members’, to end the papal schism, and to censure the heterodox views of heretics such as John Wyclif and Jan Hus. As England was ‘home’ to the Wycliffite heresy, it became a political necessity for Lancastrian spokesmen to stress England's ‘return’ to a simpler and more orthodox Christian faith in order to differentiate between the strong, reform-minded English nation and weak, heterodox interlopers such as Wyclif.

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.