Langland was taken by the leaders of the Peasants' Rising as the great prophet of their movement, but he himself stood outside the political circle. He complained of the evils that were everywhere rampant, but he did not wish to set himself against the Government; as Dr. Skeat says: 'His Richard the Redeles is a tender and touching remonstrance to the King, Richard II.' Thomas Hoccleve and John Gower were Londoners,--the former a clerk in the Privy Seal Office and the latter probably a city merchant. Hoccleve is supposed to have taken his name from the village of Hockliffe, Bedfordshire, on the Roman Road, 4-1/2 miles south of Woburn, and 3-1/2 east of Leighton Buzzard. He intended at first to become a priest, but instead he entered the Privy Seal Office in 1308, when he was nineteen or twenty years of age. He complained of the drudgery of copying, and seems to have been always ready to shirk his work. Dr. Furnivall's side-notes to the autobiographical portion of the _Regement of Princes_ show what the complaints are like: 'A copier must always work mind, eye and hand together. He can't talk to other folk, or sing, but must give all his wits to his work. Workmen talk, sing, and lark. We labour in silence, stoop and stare on the sheepskin. Our copying hurts our stomachs, our backs and our eyes. Anyone who has copied for twenty years like I have suffers for it in every bit of his body. It's nearly done for me. Had I always lived in poverty, I shouldn't feel it so much now, but the change is strange. God keep me from poverty. I'd sooner die than live miserably.' As there were many copyists employed in London, we must hope that they were not all so weary of their work as the poet was. He lived at Chester Inn, which stood on part of the site of the present Somerset House. 'At Chestre ynne, right fast be the Stronde.' His daily occupation took him to Westminster, where the Privy Seal Office was situated, and as the Strand was but a poor road we may suppose that he went from home to office in a boat. He went frequently to Paul's Head Tavern, in St. Paul's Churchyard, where he made love to the waitresses and others. He also belonged to a dining club, called the Temple Club, 'the court of good company.' Often after dinner, instead of going back to the office, he took his pleasure on the Thames, being flattered by the watermen, who fought amongst themselves for his patronage, and called him master, because he paid them well. He was a good Churchman, and denounced the Lollard Rising in St. Giles's Fields in January 1414 in good set terms.