| |
London. An Antechamber in the KING’S Palace. | |
| |
Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY and the BISHOP OF ELY. | |
| Cant. My lord, I’ll tell you; that self bill is urg’d, | |
| Which in th’ eleventh year of the last king’s reign | |
| Was like, and had indeed against us pass’d, | 5 |
| But that the scambling and unquiet time | |
| Did push it out of further question. | |
| Ely. But how, my lord, shall we resist it now? | |
| Cant. It must be thought on. If it pass against us, | |
| We lose the better half of our possession; | 10 |
| For all the temporal lands which men devout | |
| By testament have given to the church | |
| Would they strip from us; being valu’d thus: | |
| As much as would maintain, to the king’s honour, | |
| Full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights, | 15 |
| Six thousand and two hundred good esquires; | |
| And, to relief of lazars and weak age, | |
| Of indigent faint souls past corporal toil, | |
| A hundred almshouses right well supplied; | |
| And to the coffers of the king beside, | 20 |
| A thousand pounds by the year. Thus runs the bill. | |
| Ely. This would drink deep. | |
| Cant. ’Twould drink the cup and all. | |
| Ely. But what prevention? | |
| Cant. The king is full of grace and fair regard. | 25 |
| Ely. And a true lover of the holy church. | |
| Cant. The courses of his youth promis’d it not. | |
| The breath no sooner left his father’s body | |
| But that his wildness, mortified in him, | |
| Seem’d to die too; yea, at that very moment, | 30 |
| Consideration like an angel came, | |
| And whipp’d the offending Adam out of him, | |
| Leaving his body as a paradise, | |
| To envelop and contain celestial spirits. | |
| Never was such a sudden scholar made; | 35 |
| Never came reformation in a flood, | |
| With such a heady currance, scouring faults; | |
| Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness | |
| So soon did lose his seat and all at once | |
| As in this king. | 40 |
| Ely. We are blessed in the change. | |
| Cant. Hear him but reason in divinity, | |
| And, all-admiring, with an inward wish | |
| You would desire the king were made a prelate: | |
| Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs, | 45 |
| You would say it hath been all in all his study: | |
| List his discourse of war, and you shall hear | |
| A fearful battle render’d you in music: | |
| Turn him to any cause of policy, | |
| The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, | 50 |
| Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks, | |
| The air, a charter’d libertine, is still, | |
| And the mute wonder lurketh in men’s ears, | |
| To steal his sweet and honey’d sentences; | |
| So that the art and practic part of life | 55 |
| Must be the mistress to this theoric: | |
| Which is a wonder how his Grace should glean it, | |
| Since his addiction was to courses vain; | |
| His companies unletter’d, rude, and shallow; | |
| His hours fill’d up with riots, banquets, sports; | 60 |
| And never noted in him any study, | |
| Any retirement, any sequestration | |
| From open haunts and popularity. | |
| Ely. The strawberry grows underneath the nettle, | |
| And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best | 65 |
| Neighbour’d by fruit of baser quality: | |
| And so the prince obscur’d his contemplation | |
| Under the veil of wildness; which, no doubt, | |
| Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night, | |
| Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty. | 70 |
| Cant. It must be so; for miracles are ceas’d; | |
| And therefore we must needs admit the means | |
| How things are perfected. | |
| Ely. But, my good lord, | |
| How now for mitigation of this bill | 75 |
| Urg’d by the commons? Doth his majesty | |
| Incline to it, or no? | |
| Cant. He seems indifferent, | |
| Or rather swaying more upon our part | |
| Than cherishing the exhibiters against us; | 80 |
| For I have made an offer to his majesty, | |
| Upon our spiritual convocation, | |
| And in regard of causes now in hand, | |
| Which I have open’d to his Grace at large, | |
| As touching France, to give a greater sum | 85 |
| Than ever at one time the clergy yet | |
| Did to his predecessors part withal. | |
| Ely. How did this offer seem receiv’d, my lord? | |
| Cant. With good acceptance of his majesty; | |
| Save that there was not time enough to hear,— | 90 |
| As I perceiv’d his Grace would fain have done,— | |
| The severals and unhidden passages | |
| Of his true titles to some certain dukedoms, | |
| And generally to the crown and seat of France, | |
| Deriv’d from Edward, his great-grandfather. | 95 |
| Ely. What was the impediment that broke this off? | |
| Cant. The French ambassador upon that instant | |
| Crav’d audience; and the hour I think is come | |
| To give him hearing: is it four o’clock? | |
| Ely. It is. | 100 |
| Cant. Then go we in to know his embassy; | |
| Which I could with a ready guess declare | |
| Before the Frenchman speak a word of it. | |
| Ely. I’ll wait upon you, and I long to hear it. [Exeunt. | |
| |
