In 1386 the people emphatically marked their approbation of him whom kings had delighted to honour, by electing Chaucer to parliament as a knight of the shire for Kent. But, in all probability, that honour destroyed the poet's peace. Misfortunes began from this time to fall thickly upon him. Within two months after the meeting of parliament he was deprived of the comptrollership, as well as the comptrollership of the petty customs, that had been conferred by Richard II. four years before; and we are utterly in the dark as to the cause. Tyrwhitt, Godwin, and others have built up an elaborate hypothesis, as to his connexion with the civic commotion in London in 1384, when John of Northampton stood for the office of mayor in opposition to the court candidate; and which ended, they say, as concerned the poet, in his expatriation to Zealand, in his enduring great sufferings there, in his return to England in 1386, and in his committal to the Tower, until 1389. All these presumptions, founded on various passages of the 'Testament of Love,' the right key to which has evidently not yet been found, have been utterly set at rest by Sir Harris Nicholas's discovery of records showing that from 1380 to 1388 Chaucer received his pension regularly as it became due, in London, _with his own hands_. And, indeed, we have only to weigh for a moment the character and doings of the parliament to which he was elected, to satisfy us that there need be no surprise excited at the treatment experienced by Chaucer. Legislation, in the dictionary of the leading politicians of the day, meant intrigues for the possession of power. The parliament was divided into two parties; one supporting the king, and the king's favourites, De la Pole and De Vere, and the other determined to drive those favourites from power. The opposition was headed by the Duke of Gloucester, a brother of John of Gaunt, and it succeeded; De la Pole was dismissed, impeached, and imprisoned; and, finally, the successful party demanded and obtained from Richard a council for the government of the nation. There would be little relish then for the advice, little sympathy with the conduct of a man who in his writings was accustomed, whilst bidding the people to obey the king and the law, also to say to their governors-- "Knight, let thy _deedes worship détermine_," and "Go forth, king, and rule thee by sapience;" and who was in religion a Wickliffite.