The Splendid Spur · Chapters

Chapters explained

Chapter companions for The Splendid Spur by Arthur Quiller-Couch.

Read with companions Book page

Each chapter has a companion in the reader — open a free preview to see notes beside the text.

Chapter 1
Dedication
The author dedicates the book to Edward Gwynne Eardley-Wilmot, expressing the joy of pleasing a friend with one's work and the hope that the tale will find a warm welcome from new readers, while noting that the heart of his friend Q beats under the coat of Jack Marvel.
Chapter 2
The Splendid Spur
The opening chapter introduces Mr. John Marvel, a servant of King Charles I, and sets the stage for his memoirs during the years 1642-1643, hinting at the adventures and conflicts of the English Civil War.
Chapter 3
The Bowling-Green of the Crown
The narrator, a scholar at Trinity College, Oxford, recounts how on November 29, 1642, he fell asleep in Mr. Robert Drury's fencing room and awoke to witness a mysterious man reading in the bowling-green behind the Crown Tavern. He observes the man secretly meeting with a bully from a gaming party, and overhears a plot involving a young gentleman named Anthony. The chapter ends with the narrator slipping away as Mr. Drury returns drunk.
Chapter 4
The Young Man in the Cloak of Amber Satin
Jack Marvel, distracted by the plot he overheard, struggles through a rhetoric lecture and later seeks shelter from a hailstorm in the Pig Market. There he encounters Anthony Killigrew, the young man from the bowling-green, now selling trinkets. After a tense exchange, Jack reveals he knows of the plot against Anthony. They reconcile, and Anthony explains he is a royal messenger carrying a letter from the King to the Army of the West, planning to leave Oxford that night. Jack resolves to accompany him.
Chapter 5
III: I Find Myself in a Tavern Brawl: And Barely Escape
Jack Marvel receives a note from Anthony Killigrew to meet at the Crown tavern, but upon arrival a brawl erupts. Anthony is fatally wounded by Captain Settle and a trooper. Jack throws a tankard at the trooper, grabs a chair, and after Anthony's death, escapes through a window, fleeing the Watch. He runs through Oxford, eventually tripping near Master Timothy Carter's house, where a stranger offers to help him hide.

Free preview

17 more chapter companions sit beside the text in BetterReads — open a free preview to unlock the rest.

17 more companions → free preview

Dedication

The Splendid Spur

The Bowling-Green of the Crown

The Young Man in the Cloak of Amber Satin

III: I Find Myself in a Tavern Brawl: And Barely Escape