Geoffrey Chaucer
Lyons was a lifelong friend of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer and Chaucer’s father, a fellow vintner. Lyons employed Geoffrey as his deputy or Comptroller: although Lyons consistently engaged in vast fraud, on an unprecedented scale, of which Geoffrey Chaucer were necessarily aware, Geoffrey Chaucer repeatedly certified to the Exchequer, in 1374 and 1375, that no fraud was being committed by Lyons. Lyons was also a lifelong friend of John of Gaunt.