Long Will

So the summer waned, and Richard's red vengeance began to pale. The people and the King alike sickened of blood. Here and there a man was pardoned. Those two aldermen that bade...

There were a many singers on the hill-top. They twittered in the gorse; they whistled from the old hawthorn tree, amid the white may; they sprang to heaven, shaking off melody i...

The second winter of this pilgrimage was a snowy one, and the North Country was a lonely place. Among those thinly scattered villages Calote and the peddler had fared very ill,...

"Another year, and I 'll be mine own man, lord of mine own manor, which the Earl of March shall render to me; then we 'll be wed," quoth Stephen.

Calote was in the south of England that winter, in Hampshire, and Wiltshire, and Somerset; resting, now a week, now a night only, in town or village or lonely hut. She travelled...

In late September Calote and the peddler, having got as far north as the ancient city of Chester, fell in with a company of bold outlaws that dwelt in a wood some way without th...

Yet the days passed, and 't was mid-June when there came to the door of the house on Cornhill a slender young squire on a slow and sober hack, with a stout and likewise sober ge...

In the dawn of Saturday London streets were all astir. On all the streets and amid the lanes close by Thames the Flemish widows bewailed their dead. On Cheapside and along Cornh...

Calote was in Kent what time word came that the Parliament of Northampton had passed a new poll-tax. It happened on this wise: Wat Tyler went down into Kent to have speech of Jo...

Now Richard was not yet crowned before he--or they that put words in his mouth--had set free Peter de la Mare from Nottingham Castle. And for this there was great rejoicing. Pet...

The second time Calote saw the squire he bore a hooded falcon on his wrist and he rode a little white horse, in the fields beyond Westminster. He sang a pensive lyric in the Fre...

Out of a lonely land of moor and fen and scattered shepherds, Calote came down into the stir and bustle of the eastern counties. Almost, she had come to believe there were no me...

"Falseness and Guile have reigned too long, And Truth hath been set under a lock, And Falseness and Guile reigneth in every stock. No man may Truth come to, But if he sing 'si d...

Throughout that uneasy winter following the death of Edward the Black Prince, Jack Straw and Wat Tyler were much in London. None knew their business, but they hung upon the skir...

"Thou wilt speak with Brother Owyn, wilt thou?" he said to Calote in his toothless voice. "By my troth, I 'll have thee to know, hussy, that this is no household of gadding fria...

On the Sunday when Long Will and Calote were come from the burial of Kitte, they were met at their door by Walworth and certain of the King's officers, who said:--

Now all these things are writ in the Chronicles,--as how the Inns of Court of the Temple was destroyed and records burned, and the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem at Clerken...

On a Wednesday, being the twelfth day of June in that year, which was the fourth year of King Richard II., Wat Tyler and John Ball set up two great banners of Saint George on Bl...

Brother Owyn gazed dreamily into the flashing waters of the burn. His fish-basket was empty; twice he had lost his bait. But if the hunger and thirst of a man be in his soul, 't...

One night, when Long Will was gone forth to copy a writ of law for a city merchant, Calote sat up to wait for him in the moonlight by their door that opened on the lane. Calote...

Stephen's cell was a narrow place, and there was no window but a slit wherefrom arrows only might take flight. Looking forth with face pressed close to the stone, Stephen saw th...

When Parliament was come to an end in Gloucester, and on the night before the day that the court set out for London, Stephen craved a boon of his King.

The bell of Paul's had rung the Angelus an hour past. The gabled shadows of the houses crossed the street slantwise, and betwixt them long pale fingers of evening sunshine brigh...

Long Will sat by the window of the cot on Cornhill, filling in the King's pardons and manumissions. Within the house there was a score and more of labourers and villeins awaitin...

There was High Mass in the choir that day, and she knelt a little way down the nave, beside a pillar. Immediately without the choir there was a knight kneeling. He was a most de...

"And no word o' this matter to King or common man till thou 'rt bid," admonished Wat Tyler when he bade Calote good-by next day. "If thou keep faith, haply I 'll believe thou ar...

On the Thursday the peasants came into London. Mayor Walworth might not choose but yield when he saw how many were against him: aldermen, citizens, and prentices. Wherefore he s...

Now as these two sat silent, the door at the far end of the room, looking on Cornhill, opened, and a man came in and shut it again, and stood in the shadow.

So it came about that the Council bade search if any had not paid the tax, and to compel him. And around and about London there arose a muttering, waxed louder and yet more loud...

The winter days that followed were full of stir and strife, and the devil with the long spoon was ever John of Gaunt. 'T was he set the people agog that day John Wyclif was sent...

Stephen had with him a torch, and he set it in a ring by the wall. It was all the light in that house. Then he sat on the old chest and Calote came to his side. He was very wear...

Langland and the squire made their way to the river by narrow, muddy lanes and unfrequented alleys. The poet, sunk in reverie, sped onward with the free stride of the hill-sheph...

Simon Sudbury's head hung grinning above London Bridge, and young Richard lay at his length, face downward, on the stone floor of his chamber in the Garde Robe, sobbing sick. No...

All the good people, fresh-blessed, came forth into the churchyard with a great pushing and striving. There was a Miracle Play toward, and to stand at the back of five-and-twent...

"Yea, sire!" said Etienne absently; he was looking across, through the open door into the church. In the dim distance there he saw a little kneeling figure, and a gleam of golde...

King Richard stretched himself and yawned, took off his velvet bonnet and thrust his fingers through his long light-brown hair, rubbed his left leg, and looked on his favourite...

Calote slipped out at the back door into a weedy lane full of moonlight. She set her feet ankle-deep in grass and dew. A muck heap cast a shadow from one side to the other of th...