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Shall I be flouted thus by dunghill grooms? [Gloucester's men rush at the Tower Gates, and Woodvile the Lieutenant speaks within. Woodv. What noise is this? what traitors have we here?

Glou. Lieutenant, is it you whose voice I hear? Open the gates; here's Gloucester that would

enter.

Woody. Have patience, noble duke; I may not

open;

The Cardinal of Winchester forbids:

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From him I have express commandment That thou nor none of thine shall be let in. Glou. Faint-hearted Woodvile, prizest him 'fore me?

Arrogant Winchester, that haughty prelate, Whom Henry, our late sovereign, ne'er could brook?

Thou art no friend to God or to the king:

Open the gates, or I'll shut thee out shortly. Serving-men. Open the gates unto the lord protector,

Or we 'll burst them open, if that you come not quickly.

Enter to the Protector at the Tower Gates Winchester and his men in tawny coats.

Win. How now, ambitious Humphry! what means

this?

29. "ambitious Humphry"; F. 4, "ambition"; "Humphry," Theobald's emendation; F. 1, "Vmpheir"; Ff. 2, 3, 4, "Umpire.”—I. G.

Glou. Peel'd priest, dost thou command me to be

shut out?

Win. I do, thou most usurping proditor,

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And not protector, of the king or realm. Glou. Stand back, thou manifest conspirator, Thou that contrivedst to murder our dead lord; Thou that givest whores indulgences to sin: I'll canvass thee in thy broad cardinal's hat, If thou proceed in this thy insolence.

Win. Nay, stand thou back; I will not budge a foot:

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This be Damascus, be thou cursed Cain, To slay thy brother Abel, if thou wilt. Glou. I will not slay thee, but I'll drive thee back:

30. "Peel'd," that is, "bald,” alluding to his shaven crown. Piel'd and pild, or pilled are only various ways of spelling peeled.—H. N. H. 34. One of Gloster's charges against the bishop runs thus in Holinshed: "My said lord of Glocester affirmeth, that our sovreigne lord his brother, that was king Henrie the fift, told him on a time, that when, being prince, he was lodged in the palace of Westminster, there was a man spied and taken behind a hanging of the chamber; the which man, being examined upon the cause of his being there at that time, confessed that he was there by the stirring and procuring of my said lord of Winchester, ordeined to have slain the said prince there in his bed.”—H. N. H.

35. "indulgences to sin"; "the public stews were formerly under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Winchester."-Pope.

36. Cannabasser, French, is rendered by Cotgrave, "to canvass, or curiously to examine, search, or sift out, the depth of a matter.” And Skinner says the same word was used for "shaking or beating hemp."-We have seen in a former note that Beaufort was not made a cardinal till 1427, which was two years after the rupture with Gloster.-H. N. H.

40. The allusion here is well explained by a passage in The Travels of Sir John Mandeville: "In that place where Damascus was founded, Kayn sloughe Abel his brother." And Ritson has another of like drift from the Polychronicon: "Damascus is as much as to say shedding of blood; for there Chaym slew Abel, and hid him in the sand."-H. N. H.

Thy scarlet robes as a child's bearing-cloth

I'll use to carry thee out of this place. Win. Do what thou darest; I beard thee to thy face. Glou. What! am I dared and bearded to my face? Draw, men, for all this privileged place; Blue coats to tawny coats. Priest, beware your beard;

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I mean to tug it and to cuff you soundly: Under my feet I stamp thy cardinal's hat: In spite of pope or dignities of church, Here by the cheeks I 'll drag thee up and down. Win. Gloucester, thou wilt answer this before the

pope.

Glou. Winchester goose, I cry, a rope! a rope!

Now beat them hence; why do you let them stay?

Thee I'll chase hence, thou wolf in sheep's array.

Out, tawny coats! out, scarlet hypocrite!

Here Gloucester's men beat out the Cardinal's men, and enter in the hurly-burly the Mayor of London and his Officers.

May. Fie, lords! that you, being supreme magis

trates,

47. It appears from this, that Gloster's servants wore blue coats, and Winchester's tawny. Such was the usual livery of servants in the Poet's time, and long before. Stowe informs us that on a certain occasion the bishop of London "was attended on by a goodly company of gentlemen in tawny coats."-H. N. H.

53. A "Winchester goose" was a particular stage of the disease contracted in the stews; hence Gloster bestows the epithet on the bishop in derision and scorn. A person affected with that disease was likewise so called.-H. N. H.

Cant term for a harlot.-C. H. H.

Thus contumeliously should break the peace! Glou. Peace, mayor! thou know'st little of my wrongs:

Here's Beaufort, that regards nor God nor king,

Hath here distrain'd the Tower to his use. Win. Here's Gloucester, a foe to citizens,

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One that still motions war and never peace,
O'ercharging your free purses with large fines,
That seeks to overthrow religion,

Because he is protector of the realm,

And would have armor here out of the Tower, To crown himself king and suppress the prince. Glou. I will not answer thee with words, but blows. [Here they skirmish again. May. Nought rests for me in this tumultuous

strife

But to make open proclamation:

Come, officer; as loud as e'er thou canst:
Cry.

Off. All manner of men assembled here in arms
this day against God's peace and the king's,
we charge and command you, in his highness'
name, to repair to your several dwelling-
places; and not to wear, handle, or use any
sword, weapon, or dagger, henceforward,
upon pain of death.

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Glou. Cardinal, I'll be no breaker of the law: 80 But we shall meet, and break our minds at large.

61. “distrain'd”—appropriated.-C. H. H.

72. "as e'er thou canst; Cry"; Ff., "as e're thou canst, cry"; Collier MS., "as thou canst cry."—I. G.

Win. Gloucester, we will meet; to thy cost, be sure:

Thy heart-blood I will have for this day's work. May. I'll call for clubs, if you will not away.

This cardinal's more haughty than the devil. Glou. Mayor, farewell: thou dost but what thou mayst.

Win. Abominable Gloucester, guard thy head;

For I intend to have it ere long.

[Exeunt, severally, Gloucester and Winchester with their Serving-men. May. See the coast clear'd, and then we will depart. Good God, these nobles should such stomachs

bear!

I myself fight not once in forty year.

82. "cost," Ff. 2, 3, 4, "deare cost."-I. G.

90

[Exeunt.

88. "it ere long"; so Ff. 1, 2; Ff. 3, 4, "it e're be long"; Capell, "it, ere 't be long"; Collier MS., "it off, ere long"; Orson, "at it.”— I. G.

90. stomachs, warlike spirits. The sentence is elliptical, for "(to think that) these nobles," or the like.-C. H. H.

91. The account of this stormy brawl, as given in the old chronicles, runs substantially thus: The duke being absent a while, the bishop caused the Tower to be garrisoned, and committed to the care of Richard Woodville, with orders "to admit no one more powerful than himself." The duke, at his return, demanding lodgings in the Tower, and being refused, forthwith ordered the mayor to close the gates of the city against the bishop, and to furnish him with five hundred horsemen, that he might visit in safety the young king at Eltham. The next morning the bishop's retainers undertook to burst open the gate on the bridge, and placed archers in the houses on each side of the road, declaring that, as their lord was excluded from the city, so they would keep the duke from leaving it.-H. N. H.

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