K. Hen. I doubt not that; since we are well per suaded, We carry not a heart with us from hence, That grows not in a fair consent1 with ours; Cam. Never was monarch better feared, and loved, Than is your majesty; there's not, I think, a subject, That sits in heart-grief and uneasiness Under the sweet shade of your government. Grey. Even those, that were your father's enemies, Have steeped their galls in honey; and do serve you With hearts create of duty and of zeal. K. Hen. We therefore have great cause of thankfulness; And shall forget the office of our hand, Sooner than quittance of desert and merit, Scroop. So service shall with steeled sinews toil; K. Hen. We judge no less.-Uncle of Exeter, 2 Scroop. That's mercy, but too much security. Let him be punished, sovereign; lest example Breed, by his sufferance, more of such a kind. K. Hen. O, let us yet be merciful. Cam. So may your highness, and yet punish too. Grey. Sir, you show great mercy, if you give him life, After the taste of much correction. K. Hen. Alas, your too much love and care of me Are heavy orisons 'gainst this poor wretch. If little faults, proceeding on distemper,3 Shall not be winked at, how shall we stretch our eye, 1 "Consent" is accord, agreement. 2 i. e. his better consideration, or more circumspect behavior. When capital crimes, chewed, swallowed, and digested, Appear before us?-We'll yet enlarge that man, Though Cambridge, Scroop, and Grey,-in their dear care And tender preservation of our person, Would have him punished. And now to our French causes. Who are the late1 commissioners? Cam. I one, my lord; Your highness bade me ask for it to-day. Grey. And me, my royal sovereign. K. Hen. Then, Richard, earl of Cambridge, there is yours; There yours, lord Scroop of Masham ;—and, sir knight, So much complexion ?-Look ye, how they change! Cam. I do confess my fault; And do submit me to your highness' mercy. K. Hen. The mercy, that was quick in us but late, By your own counsel is suppressed and killed. You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy; See you, my princes, and my noble peers, These English monsters!-My lord of Cambridge here,— You know how apt our love was to accord Belonging to his honor; and this man 1 i. e. those lately appointed. Hath, for a few light crowns, lightly conspired, 2 Could out of thee extract one spark of evil, With patches, colors, and with forms being fetched But he, that tempered thee, bade thee stand up, If that same demon, that hath gulled thee thus, And tell the legions-I can never win 1 i. e. plainly, evidently. 2 "Did not whoop at them;" that they excited no exclamation of surprise. 3 i. e. Tartarus, the fabled place of future punishment. A soul so easy as that Englishman's. Why, so didst thou. Why, so didst thou. Show men dutiful? Seem they grave and learned? Come they of noble family? Seem they religious? Or are they spare in diet; Free from gross passion, or of mirth, or anger; Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood; Garnished and decked in modest complement;1 Not working with the eye, without the ear, And, but in purged judgment, trusting neither? Such, and so finely bolted,2 didst thou seem: And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot, To mark the full-fraught man, and best endued, With some suspicion. I will weep for thee; For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like Another fall of man.-Their faults are open; Arrest them to the answer of the law;And God acquit them of their practices! Exe. I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Richard earl of Cambridge. I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Henry lord Scroop of Masham. I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Thomas Grey, knight of Northumberland. Scroop. Our purposes God justly hath discovered; And I repent my fault more than my death; Which I beseech your highness to forgive, Although my body pay the price of it. Cam. For me, the gold of France did not seduce;3 1 "Complement" has here the same meaning as in Love's Labor's Lost, Act i. Sc. 1. Bullokar defines it, “ Court ship [i. e. courtiership], fulness, perfection, fine behavior." The gradual change of this word, to its meaning of ceremonious words, may be traced in Blount's Glossography. 2 Bolted is the same as sifted, and has, consequently, the meaning of refined. diverse write 66 3 "For me, the gold of France did not seduce." that Richard earle of Cambridge did not conspire with the lord Scroope, &c. for the murthering of king Henrie, to please the French king withall, but onlie to the intent to exalt the crowne to his brother-in-law Edmund earle of Marche, as heir to Lionel duke of Clarence, who being for diverse Although I did admit it as a motive, Grey. Never did faithful subject more rejoice My fault, but not my body, pardon, sovereign. K. Hen. God quit you in his mercy! Hear your sentence. You have conspired against our royal person, Joined with an enemy proclaimed, and from his coffers Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter, [Exeunt conspirators, guarded. secret impediments not able to have issue, the earl of Cambridge was sure that the crowne should come to him by his wife, and to his children of her begotten. And therefore (as was thought) he rather confessed himselfe for neede of money to be corrupted by the French king, lest the earl of Marche should have tasted of the same cuppe that he had drunken, and what should have come to his own children he much doubted," &c.— Holinshed. 1 i. e. "at which prevention, in suffering, I will heartily rejoice." |