Testament of Love, The

   by Thomas Usk

(ca. 1387)

   The Testament of Love is the only surviving work of the London tradesman and political figure Thomas Usk.Usk says at the beginning of the text that it will be concerned with Philosophy and the Law, both of which must accord with Love. The allegory in three books begins with Usk as the speaker, imprisoned, bemoaning his separation from “Margaret,” whom he says he has served faithfully for seven years. He prays to Margaret, who is spoken of as a woman but eventually is revealed to be the “Pearl of great price” of Matthew 13, and perhaps an emblem of divine grace. At this point appears the figure of Love (the personification of divine love), to whom Usk describes his involvement in London politics, apparently to excuse his abandonment of Northampton. But Love, sounding very much like BOETHIUS’s Lady Philosophy, convinces him that earthly fame is transient, and that God is powerful and merciful. Book 2 deals with grace, and here Usk rejects LOLLARDY, having become interested in the heresy, he says, through Northampton. Book 3 is particularly concerned with the Bethink theme of free will and predestination, and also includes a well-known passage praising CHAUCER as the true servant of Love.

   No manuscripts of Usk’s Testament are extant. The text survives only in William Thayne’s 1532 printed edition of the works of Chaucer. For several hundred years the work was attributed to Chaucer, until the great 19th-century scholar Walter Skeat found that the first letters of each section of the poem form the acrostic MARGARET OF VIRTU HAVE MERCI ON THIN USK (that is, “Thine Usk”). The work does owe a great deal to Chaucer, borrowing from TROILUS AND CRISEYDE and from The HOUSE OF FAME, and possibly from his translation of Boethius’s Consolation. Usk also seems to have made use of the C-text ofWilliam LANGLAND’s PIERS PLOWMAN, as well as a treatise on free will and providence by St. ANSELM. Usk’s Testament is an important example of 14th-century English prose, and while it has some particularly effective passages, others are quite obscure for modern readers.