biography of Chaucer is as well documented or understood. All his literary work was composed before his 40th year while he was Provost of St Giles in Edinburgh. Douglas's literary work was composed in a highly polished Middle Scots, often aureate in style. After the Eneados he is not known to have produced any further poetry, despite being at the height of his artistic powers when it was completed in 1513, six weeks before the Battle of Flodden. No more than four of works by him are known to exist; The Palice of Honour, Conscience, his major translation the Eneados, and possibly King Hart. While Provost of St Giles, in 1510 Gavin applied to the Pope for permission to celebrate the marriages of couples who were related within the limits and degrees proscribed by the Church. Gavin argued that these marriages helped to make peace in Scotland, and the long delay in receiving a dispensation from Rome in each case, which was a formality, was inconvenient and unnecessary. Gavin asked to be allowed to conduct ten such marriages over four years. Career during the minority of James V After the Battle of Flodden, during the minority of James V of Scotland, the Douglas family assumed a pivotal role in public affairs. Three weeks after the Battle of Flodden Gavin Douglas, still Provost of St Giles, was admitted a burgess of Edinburgh. His father, the "Great Earl", was then the civil provost of the capital. The Earl died soon afterwards in January 1514 in Wigtownshire, where he had gone as justiciar. As his son had been killed at Flodden, the succession fell to Gavin's nephew, Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus. The marriage of the young Earl of Angus to James IV's widow, Margaret Tudor, on 6 August 1514 did much to identify the Douglases with the English party in Scotland, as against the French party led by the Duke of Albany, and incidentally to determine the political career of his uncle Gavin. During the first weeks of the Queen's sorrow after the battle, Gavin, with one or two colleagues of the council, acted as personal adviser, and it may be taken for granted that he supported the pretensions of the young earl. His own hopes of preferment had been strengthened by the death of many of the higher clergy at Flodden. The first outcome for Gavin from the new family