receiving any assistance from England, his apartments were let, and the money received for rent was never acccounted for to him; nor could he recover any from those who owed it him, they being of opinion it was impossible for him ever to return to his own country. The government still pursuing their resentment against him and his friends, they were obliged to leave Zealand, and Chaucer being unable to bear longer the calamities of poverty and exile, and finding no security wherever he fled, chose rather to throw himself upon the laws of his country, than perish abroad by hunger and oppression. He had not long returned till he was arrested by order of the king, and confined in the tower of London. The court sometimes flattered him with the return of the royal favour if he would impeach his accomplices, and sometimes threatened him with immediate destruction; their threats and promises he along while disregarded, but recollecting the ingratitude of his old friends, and the miseries he had already suffered, he at last made a confession, and according to the custom of trials at that time, offered to prove the truth of it by combat. What the consequence of this discovery was to his accomplices, is uncertain, it no doubt exposed him to their resentment, and procured him the name of a traytor; but the king, who regarded him as one beloved by his grandfather, was pleased to pardon him. Thus fallen from a heighth of greatness, our poet retired to bemoan the fickleness of fortune, and then wrote his Testament of Love, in which are many pathetic exclamations concerning the vicissitude of human things, which he then bitterly experienced. But as he had formerly been the favourite of fortune, when dignities were multiplied thick upon him, so his miseries now succeeded with an equal swiftness; he was not only discarded by his majesty, unpensioned, and abandoned, but he lost the favour of the duke of Lancaster, as the influence of his wife's sister with that prince was now much lessened. The duke being dejected with the troubles in which he was involved, began to reflect on his vicious course of life, and particularly his keeping that lady as his concubine; which produced a resolution of putting her out of his house, and he made a vow to that purpose. Chaucer, thus reduced, and weary of the perpetual turmoils at court, retired to Woodstock, to enjoy a studious quiet; where he wrote his excellent treatise of the Astrolabe; but notwithstanding the severe treatment of the government, he still retained his loyalty, and strictly enjoined his son to pray for the king. As the pious resolutions of some people are often the consequence of a present evil, so at the return of prosperity they are soon dissipated. This proved the case with the duke of Lancaster: his party again gathered strength, his interest began to rise; upon which he took again his mistress to his bosom, and not content with heaping favours, honours, and titles upon her, he made her his wife, procured