Hi @markcarey and welcome to the LE community forum 
Ubuntu 14 is extremely outdated and seems to be suffering from a lack of trust store updates.
This is a known problem and I believe some solutions have been found for it.
You can find help on how to add the new (since 2015) LE root "ISRG Root X1" and also the workaround solution for OpenSSL throughout this site, and also somewhat summarized here: Production Chain Changes - #4 by jillian
If it hasn't been mentioned, nor occurred to you yet, you really should NOT be using such an outdated system connected to the Internet. Please upgrade it ASAP.