An Unpublished Latin Quatrain of John Gower in a Lincoln College Manuscript.

The article focuses on the discovery and analysis of an unpublished Latin quatrain by the English poet John Gower (d. 1408) found in Oxford, Lincoln College, MS Lat. 68, a fifteenth-century manuscript primarily concerned with civil law. This four-line poem, addressed to King Henry IV, appears as a shorter, variant version of a related seven-line "Electus Christi" poem incorporated into Gower's larger Latin-English work *In Praise of Peace* (circa 1399). The manuscript's legal context and scribal hands suggest the quatrain may have circulated independently or represent an earlier, simpler form of the poem before its expansion into a more complex poetic composition. Comparative evidence from another fifteenth-century manuscript associated with antiquary William Worcester supports the notion that Gower's "Electus Christi" verses existed in multiple configurations, reflecting either scribal excerpting or the poet's known pattern of lengthening and compounding his Latin verse over time.