Leland’s statements were copied by Bale and so became public property. They did not, however, long pass unchallenged. Thynne in his _Animadversions_ acutely criticises the suggestion of Yorkshire origin, on the ground of the difference of arms:--‘Bale hath much mistaken it, as he hath done infinite things in that book, being for the most part the collections of Leland. For in truth the arms of Sir John Gower being argent, on a cheveron azure three leopards’ heads or, do prove that he came of a contrary house to the Gowers of Stytenham in Yorkshire, who bare barruly of argent and gules, a cross paty flory sable. Which difference of arms seemeth a difference of families, unless you can prove that being of one family they altered their arms upon some just occasion.’ The arms to which Thynne refers as those of Gower the poet are those which are to be seen upon his tomb[6]; and the argument is undoubtedly sound. Thynne proceeds to criticise Speght’s statement that Chaucer and Gower were both lawyers of the Inner Temple: ‘You say, It seemeth that these learned men were of the Inner Temple, for that many years since Master Buckley did see a record in the same house, where Geffrey Chaucer was fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan Friar in Fleet Street. This is a hard collection to prove Gower of the Inner Temple, although he studied the law, for thus you frame your argument: Mr. Buckley found a record in the Temple that Chaucer was fined for beating the friar; ergo Gower and Chaucer were of the Temple.’ A ‘hard collection’ it may be, but no harder than many others that have been made by biographers, and Leland’s ‘vir equestris ordinis[7]’ must certainly go the way of his other statements, being sufficiently refuted, as Stow remarks, by the ‘Armiger’ of Gower’s epitaph. Leland in calling him a knight was probably misled by the gilt collar of SS upon his recumbent effigy, and Fuller afterwards, on the strength of the same decoration, fancifully revives the old theory that he was a judge, and is copied of course by succeeding writers[8]. On the whole it may be doubted whether there is anything but guesswork in the statements made by Leland about our author, except so far as they are derived from his writings or from his tomb.