An English diplomat, soldier and poet. He was born to a Marcher family originally of Welsh extraction. He himself was probably of mixed Anglo-Welsh origin. He held lands that lay in the present-day Radnorshire district of Powys and in Herefordshire. He was a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer. He was one of the "Lollard knights" (with supposedly heretical views) at the court of King Richard II. Clanvowe's best-known work was The Boke of Cupide, God of Love, or The Cuckoo and the Nightingale, a 14th-century debate poem influenced by Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls. He is believed to be the father of Sir Thomas Clanvowe.