Thomas Hoccleve’s Regement of Princes or De…

Thomas Hoccleve’s Regement of Princes or De Regimine Principum, written for Henry V of England shortly before his accession, is an elaborate homily on virtues and vices, adapted from Aegidius de Colonna's work of the same name, from a supposititious epistle of Aristotle known as Secreta secretorum, and a work of Jacques de Cessoles (fl. 1300) translated later by Caxton as The Game and Playe of Chesse.

The Regement survives in forty-three manuscript copies.

It comments much on Henry V's lineage, to cement the House of Lancaster's claim to England's throne.

Its incipit is a poem encompassing about a third of the whole, containing further reminiscences of London tavern and club life in the form of dialogue between the poet and an old man.

Here Hoccleve coins the word "magutavent".

He also remonstrates with Sir John Oldcastle, a leading Lollard, calling on him to "rise up, a manly knight, out of the slough of heresy."