and adds two footnotes to explain that he is referring in the first place to Windsor and in the second to Greenwich. If the description in the prologue to the _Legend of Good Women_ is not mere poetic fiction, it would seem that the poet had a pleasant country house and garden in his "solitarie wildernesse," and that he cultivated the excellent habit of sleeping out of doors in the summer. Meanwhile his activity found scope in various directions. He had been appointed a Justice of the Peace for Kent in 1381, and in 1386 he entered Parliament as one of the Knights of the Shire for the same county. In August of this year Chaucer's patron, John of Gaunt, went to Spain, and during his absence his brother and rival, Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, succeeded in establishing his ascendancy over the king. Chaucer felt the change at once. He was deprived of both his controllerships, and the money loss must have been considerable. In 1387 his wife died, so that her pension must also have lapsed. Evidently the poet was in straits, for in 1388 he was driven to raising money on his pensions and allowances, making them over to John Scalby of Lincolnshire. His abstinence, as we have seen, was "lyte," and the necessity for retrenchment must have been extremely galling. The fall of Gloucester in 1389 swept away the clouds which had darkened the poet's sky. Once more we find him filling one office after another, and engaged in such useful and prosaic occupations as superintending the repairs done to the banks of the Thames or the erection of scaffolds in Smithfield for the king and queen to view the tournament held there in May 1390. One of his appointments was that of Clerk of the Works to his Majesty, which gave him charge of the fabric of the Tower, Westminster Palace, Windsor Castle, and other royal residences. He was commissioner of the roads between Greenwich and Woolwich, and the post of sub-forester of North Pemberton Park (in Somerset) must have given him ample opportunity for studying The bilder ook, and eek the hardy asshe; The piler elm, the cofre unto careyne;[18] The boxtree piper;[19] holm[20] to whippes lasshe; The sayling firr;[21] the cipres, deth to pleyne;[22] The sheter ew,[23] the asp for shaftes pleyne,[24] if not-- The olyve of pees, and eek the drunken vyne or-- The victor palm. (_Parlement of Foules_, l. 176, etc. The whole passage is taken from Boccaccio's _Teseide_.)