Usk,Thomas

Abstract

Thomas Usk was a writer, politician, lawyer, and scribe who lived and worked in London in the second half of the fourteenth century. Usk had a variety of jobs, including working for the Goldsmiths and as a sheriff's clerk. He was an early reader of Chaucer and Langland. His surviving works comprise his Appeal and his Testament of Love , a prose tract strongly influenced by Boethius and by Troilus and Criseyde . Usk was embroiled in London civic politics; he worked for the controversial mayor John Northampton but became notorious for his betrayal of Northampton and his associates. Eventually, Usk gained royal favor only to become a victim of the Merciless Parliament, when the Lords Appellant turned on Richard II's favorites and supporters. Usk was executed in 1388.