you will like, is to be found in Maurice Hewlett’s “New Canterbury Tales.” It is called “The Countess Alys,” and is about the “at-home” England of that day, and not the adventuring prince, who, after all, was not the whole of England,though he lends himself so well to adventure stories that the writers like him for hero.
Richard II was only a baby when he became king, so that his uncles undertook to do the ruling for him, and it was not until he was twenty-four years old that he finally asserted himself, really becoming England’s ruler. But while he was still a child, the fierce revolt of the peasants broke out. There are several books that tell of these events, and of the Black Death that befell at the same time, or somewhat earlier. Henty has one of them, “The March on London” (Scribner’s), which is good, and there is a very exciting and picturesque story also specially written for young people, “Red Dickon the Outlaw,” by Tom Bevan, which was published in 1903, and ought not to be hard to get. Dickon is a thrilling character, and the story manages to make the peasants’ struggles and sufferings and courage very real to you.
A very quaint and touching book that is set in the same period is by William Morris, called “A Dream of John Ball,” John Ball was a peasant of those days who first began to say that all men are equal, and should stand alike before the law. He preached this, at that time, astonishing doctrine all over England, and was the chief incitement to the revolt. In this story a working-man of modern England wakes up to find himself back in the age of Ball, and he has a series of adventures that take him to various parts of the kingdom, The book is short, and is admirably written, giving one unforgetable picture after another of the ways of living, the houses and inns, the people and their talk and their hopes. My copy is an old one, but I think it has been reprinted several times, and I ’m sure you can get it with a little trouble. Don’t miss it, for, aside from its value in this historic series of ours, it is too lovely not to know,
[ suppose most of you have read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s glorious story of “The White Company” that belongs to Richard’s reign, It comes later on, when the peasants have been driven to submission again, and when the wars in France have once more become all-important. It is there that the White Company goes, and besides the English leaders, you meet the great Du Guesclin and others of the French captains. There is some wonderful fighting in this book, which is written with all that charm and vividness Sir Arthur can put into his stories. You won't lay it down unfinished, if you can help it, and it will probably make you sigh for the good old times,” and wish you could put on armor and mount a charger and ride to gallant adventure—even if you happen to be a girl!
A book that shows quite another side of this same period of England’s life is by Annie Nathan Meyer, “Robert Annys, Poor Priest” (MacMillan). This tells how the poor priest was sent out into the world to learn what men and women had to suffer there. It covers the years between 1379-85, just about the same that saw the White Company set out, but ii is a different adventure on which the priest goes. He sees many things, and when he returns to his monastery after his wanderings, his heart is full of loving-kindness for the troubles of mankind, and of wonder and admiration for the goodness and unselfishness he has found.
One remarkable man in the reign of Richard II was Wyclif, and you will get a good account of him, though a short one, in Dean Hodges’s delightful book, “Saints and Heroes up to the Middle Ages.” Wyclif incarnates a lot of the spirit of the fourteenth century, and is one of the great men of all time. Another immortal of the latter half of the age was Chaucer, who gives in his many poems the sunnier and happier side of the life. Many of these poems have been turned into modern English for you young people, and you can’t do better than get a few of his stories, for that is what they are, and see just how things seemed to a great writer of the very time itself.
Then there is Shakspere’s play, “The Life and Death of King Richard II,” which those of you who are old enough to enjoy will find to be a touching presentment of this monarch. The play is set in the last years of the king’s reign, and brings in the great figure of John of Gaunt, brother to the Black Prince, who had long struggled to get the royal power into his own hands, and had ruled the young Richard with an iron hand during his minority. But that is over now,though Richard will soon have new troubles on his head. For the poor king, both by his wise and his wrong acts, had alienated most of his people. Young Bolingbroke, soon to be Henry IV, is on his way to the crown. The play moves swiftly on to the catastrophe, and to the murder of the king in prison—the last of the Plantagenets. The House of Lancaster now takes the throne, and our next group of historic stories will follow the fortunes of England under Henry IV and the gallant Henry V, as fine and brilliant a ruler as ever held scepter, though his time was short, for he died in the heyday of his youth.
