Fiction · 1891
The White Company
Raised in a Hampshire monastery and turned out into the world at twenty by the terms of his late father's will, Alleyne Edricson falls in with a small company of fighting men — the fierce archer Samkin Aylward, the enormous former monk John of Hordle, and their diminutive, mild-mannered but utterly fearless commander, Sir Nigel Loring — and follows them from the English countryside to France and finally to Spain, where the Black Prince's army marches to restore a deposed king to his throne. Alleyne's own growth from a sheltered novice into a knight, and his courtship of Sir Nigel's daughter Maude, run alongside Conan Doyle's re-creation of the White Company itself: the free company of English longbowmen and men-at-arms whose discipline and archery, in an age of chivalric individualism, are already changing how European wars are fought.
Conan Doyle researched the fourteenth century for years before writing The White Company, and considered it, against the wishes of his readers and his publishers alike, his finest work — better, he felt, than anything he wrote about Sherlock Holmes. It was serialised in The Cornhill Magazine through 1891 and published in book form the same year by Smith, Elder & Co.
This Bibliomancer edition presents the complete text.
Contents
- Chapter I — How the Black Sheep Came Forth from the Fold
- Chapter II — How Alleyne Edricson Came Out Into the World
- Chapter III — How Hordle John Cozened the Fuller of Lymington
- Chapter IV — How the Bailiff of Southampton Slew the Two Masterless Men
- Chapter V — How a Strange Company Gathered at the “Pied Merlin.”
- Chapter VI — How Samkin Aylward Wagered His Feather-Bed
- Chapter VII — How the Three Comrades Journeyed Through the Woodlands
- Chapter VIII — The Three Friends
- Chapter IX — How Strange Things Befell in Minstead Wood
- Chapter X — How Hordle John Found a Man Whom He Might Follow
- Chapter XI — How a Young Shepherd Had a Perilous Flock
- Chapter XII — How Alleyne Learned More Than He Could Teach
- Chapter XIII — How the White Company Set Forth to the Wars
- Chapter XIV — How Sir Nigel Sought for a Wayside Venture
- Chapter XV — How the Yellow Cog Sailed Forth from Lepe
- Chapter XVI — How the Yellow Cog Fought the Two Rover Galleys
- Chapter XVII — How the Yellow Cog Crossed the Bar of Gironde
- Chapter XVIII — How Sir Nigel Loring Put a Patch Upon His Eye
- Chapter XIX — How There Was Stir at the Abbey of St. Andrew’s
- Chapter XX — How Alleyne Won His Place in an Honorable Guild
- Chapter XXI — How Agostino Pisano Risked His Head
- Chapter XXII — How the Bowmen Held Wassail at the “Rose de Guienne.”
- Chapter XXIII — How England Held the Lists at Bordeaux
- Chapter XXIV — How a Champion Came Forth from the East
- Chapter XXV — How Sir Nigel Wrote to Twynham Castle
- Chapter XXVI — How the Three Comrades Gained a Mighty Treasure
- Chapter XXVII — How Roger Club-Foot Was Passed Into Paradise
- Chapter XXVIII — How the Comrades Came Over the Marches of France
- Chapter XXIX — How the Blessed Hour of Sight Came to the Lady Tiphaine
- Chapter XXX — How the Brushwood Men Came to the Chateau of Villefranche
- Chapter XXXI — How Five Men Held the Keep of Villefranche
- Chapter XXXII — How the Company Took Counsel Round the Fallen Tree
- Chapter XXXIII — How the Army Made the Passage of Roncesvalles
- Chapter XXXIV — How the Company Made Sport in the Vale of Pampeluna
- Chapter XXXV — How Sir Nigel Hawked at an Eagle
- Chapter XXXVI — How Sir Nigel Took the Patch from His Eye
- Chapter XXXVII — How the White Company Came to Be Disbanded
- Chapter XXXVIII — Of the Home-Coming to Hampshire
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About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
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About the author
1859–1930 · Victorian
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was born in Edinburgh and trained as a physician there before practising in Southsea, where he wrote A Study in Scarlet (1887), the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes. The Holmes stories in the Strand Magazine from 1891 made him famous; he killed the detective in 1893 and revived him in 1901–03. He also wrote historical novels, the Professor Challenger stories (The Lost World, 1912), military histories, and, in his later years, extensively on spiritualism. He was knighted in 1902.
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