Chapter I: Front Matter

Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy guide,
In thy most need to go by thy side.

This is No. 328 of Everyman's Library. A list of authors and their works in this series will be found at the end of this volume. The publishers will be pleased to send freely to all applicants a separate, annotated list of the Library.

J. M. DENT & SONS LIMITED
10-13 BEDFORD STREET LONDON W.C.2

E. P. DUTTON & CO. INC.
286-302 FOURTH AVENUE
NEW YORK

EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY

EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS

FICTION

LONG WILL

BY FLORENCE CONVERSE

_All rights reserved_

_Made in Great Britain
at The Temple Press Letchworth
and decorated by Eric Ravilious
for
J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.
Aldine House Bedford St. London_

_First Published in this Edition 1908_

_Reprinted 1911, 1917, 1919, 1923, 1926
1929, 1933_

EDITOR'S NOTE

This story forms a very tempting by-way into the old English life and the contemporary literature which gave us Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_ and Langland's _Vision of Piers Plowman_. It deals with those poets and with many figures of the fourteenth century whose names still ring like proverbs in the twentieth--Wat Tyler and Jack Straw, John Wycliff, John of Gaunt, and Richard II.--and it summons them to real life in that antique looking-glass of history which is romance. It begins in its prologue very near the evil day of the Black Death, when the fourteenth century had about half run its course; and in its epilogue it brings us to the year when the two poets died, barely surviving the century they had expressed in its gaiety and its great trouble, as no other century has ever been interpreted. To read the story without wishing to read Chaucer and _Piers Plowman_ is impossible, and if a book may be judged by its art in provoking a new interest in other and older books, then this is one of an uncommon quality. First published in 1903, it has already won a critical audience, and it goes out now in a second edition to appeal to a still wider public here and in America.

_April 1908._

To ..........

_Lo, here is felawschipe:
One fayth to holde,
One truth to speake,
One wrong to wreke,
One loving-cuppe to syppe,
And to dippe
In one disshe faithfullich,
As lamkins of one folde.
Either for other to suffre alle thing.
One songe to sing
In swete accord and maken melodye.
Right-so thou and I good-fellowes be:
Now God us thee!_

"Why I move this matere is moste for the pore,
For in her lyknesse owre lord ofte hath ben y-knowe."

_The Vision Concerning Piers Plowman._
B. PASSUS XI.

Contents

PROLOGUE
PAGE

I. _The Lark and the Cuckoo_ 3

II. _The Hills_ 11

III. _Kingdoms Not of This World_ 17

PART I. The Malcontents

I. _The Miracle_ 27

II. _The Rose of Love_ 31

III. _They That Mourn_ 39

IV. _A Vow_ 46

V. _A Disciple_ 48

VI. _Food for Thought_ 61

VII. _A Progress to Westminster_ 65

VIII. _An Embassage_ 75

IX. _The King's Secret_ 80

X. _Plot and Counterplot_ 94

XI. _Midsummer Eve_ 107

XII. _Sanctuary_ 114

XIII. _The Man o' Words_ 121

PART II. The Pilgrimage

I. _In the Cloisters_ 131

II. _In Malvern Chase_ 137

III. _By a Burn's Side_ 147

IV. _A Boon_ 156

V. _The Adventure in Devon_ 164

VI. _The Adventure in Cheshire_ 180

VII. _The Adventure in Yorkshire_ 196

VIII. _The Believers_ 217

IX. _The Adventure in Kent_ 228

X. _The Poets Sing to Richard_ 242

PART III. The Rising

I. _The Beginning_ 265

II. _Blackheath_ 271

III. _In the City_ 280

IV. _In the Tower_ 286

V. _Mile End_ 296

VI. _Free Men_ 307

VII. _Reaction_ 315

VIII. _The Friday Night_ 319

IX. _Smithfield_ 324

X. _The Old Fetters_ 338

XI. _The Prisoner_ 349

XII. _Y-Robed in Russet_ 358

EPILOGUE 369