READING CHAUCER IN NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD, IN THE 1630s: THE COMMENDATORY VERSES TO FRANCIS KYNASTON'S "AMORUM TROILI ET CRESEIDÆ"

Kynaston would reconvert this form into English in his last work, the rhyme-royal romance Leoline and Sydanus (London, 1642; repr. 1646), set, perhaps significantly, in ancient Britain.9 A fascination with England's medieval past is revealed elsewhere in Kynaston's writings, notably in his manuscript history of the English parliament, in which he sought to limit the antiquity and quash the power of parliaments, and affirm crown prerogative.10 The dedicatee of Book One of the published version of Kynaston's Amorum Troili was Patrick Young, the Royal Librarian, one of the prominent Scottish scholarly family of that name.