Lydgate lived and wrote in an age concerned with talk. In fifteenth-century England, speech was regulated, censored, monitored, and deployed more selfconsciously than ever; anxieties regarding speech coexisted with an awareness of its powers. This was apparent at every level of medieval English society, and especially in the political arena. From the moment that Henry of Bolingbroke usurped the throne in 1399, the Lancastrian kings were compelled to assert their legitimacy, and during the early years of Henry VI's reign they also had to reinforce an infant-king's claim to the French throne. The first half of the fifteenth century in England was consequently a period of constant struggle against the forces of unbridled speech and swift rumour, as the Lancastrian kings and their supporters strove to control their political fates by controlling the manner in which their subjects wrote and spoke about them.

Much has been made of the Lancastrians’ frustration with and promulgation of politically motivated rumours. For the most part, scholars have depicted writers who, like Lydgate, put their skills to work for these rulers as ideologically complicit in the political motives and manoeuvrings of their patrons.

These studies tend to be charged with a certain disappointment, as though, by composing texts in support of their patrons, these poets were demonstrating support for the underhanded activities of an (admittedly) illegitimate regime. But the fact of the Lancastrians’ doubtful legitimacy should not prevent us from seeing their public relations efforts as anything better or worse than activity necessary for political survival.