If it be true, as Bishop Alcock of Ely affirms, that Lydgate wrote a poem on the loss of France and Gascony, it seems necessary to suppose that he lived two years longer, and thus indications point to the year 1451, or thereabouts, as the date of his death.
Lydgate had a consuming passion for literature, and it was probably that he might indulge this taste more fully that in 1 434 he retired from the priorate of Hatfield Broadoak (or Hatfield Regis), to which he had been appointed in June 1423.
Lydgate is a most voluminous writer.
For a couple of centuries Lydgate's reputation equalled, if it did not surpass, that of his master.
It must be conceded as no small merit in Lydgate that, in an age of experiment he should have succeeded so often in hitting the right word.