ABSTRACT
In the autobiographical introduction to this poem Hoccleve (ca. 1368–ca. 1437) expresses his weariness with the French-English wars and laments the financial insecurity of his annuity, which he finds inadequate as a reward for all his years of service as clerk at the Office of the Privy Seal. He decides to prepare a treatise on the duties of princes, which he will submit to Prince Hal, crowned Henry V in 1413, but he regrets that Chaucer and Gower are no longer alive to inspire him. Freely adapting Jacobus de Cessolis’s Moralized Chess to this purpose, he advocates dignity, truth, justice, lawfulness, pity, mercy, patience, chastity, magnanimity, generosity (which should guarantee the payment of Hoccleve’s annuity), prudence (on which Chaucer has given good advice), and peacefulness (which should lead Henry to marry Catherine of Valois—as he did, in 1420—and to bring peace between England and France).
