JoHN GowER seems to have been bom about 1330, and died �n 1408, having been blind for eight or nine ycars before his death. He was a gentleman of ancient famiiy, owning estates in Kent and Suffolk. The piace of his birth is unknown; he is beiieved to have died in the priory of St. Mary Overies, Southwark, in the church of which, now caiied St. Saviour*s, his tomb may still be seen. The earliest of his three principai works, Speculum Meditantis, was in French verse, but it has not come down to posterity, nor is the precise time of its composition known. The second, Vox Clamantis, in Latin eiegiac verse, was written between 1382 and 1384, and commemorates the rising of the conrmons under Wat Tyler in the former year, moralizing upon it and improving the occasion with astonish ing proiixity. The third, Con/essio Amantis, one of the best known of early English poems, was written between 1385 and 1393.
1330 - 1408