The Life Of King Henry The Fifth

1 Enter Exeter, Bedford and Westmorland.
2 BEDFORD.
3 ’Fore God, his Grace is bold, to trust these traitors.
4 EXETER.
5 They shall be apprehended by and by.
6 WESTMORLAND.
7 How smooth and even they do bear themselves!
8 As if allegiance in their bosoms sat
9 Crowned with faith and constant loyalty.
10 BEDFORD.
11 The King hath note of all that they intend,
12 By interception which they dream not of.
13 EXETER.
14 Nay, but the man that was his bed-fellow,
15 Whom he hath dull’d and cloy’d with gracious favours,
16 That he should, for a foreign purse, so sell
17 His sovereign’s life to death and treachery.
18 Trumpets sound. Enter King Henry, Scroop, Cambridge and Grey.
19 KING HENRY.
20 Now sits the wind fair, and we will aboard.
21 My Lord of Cambridge, and my kind Lord of Masham,
22 And you, my gentle knight, give me your thoughts.
23 Think you not that the powers we bear with us
24 Will cut their passage through the force of France,
25 Doing the execution and the act
26 For which we have in head assembled them?
27 SCROOP.
28 No doubt, my liege, if each man do his best.
29 KING HENRY.
30 I doubt not that, since we are well persuaded
31 We carry not a heart with us from hence
32 That grows not in a fair consent with ours,
33 Nor leave not one behind that doth not wish
34 Success and conquest to attend on us.
35 CAMBRIDGE.
36 Never was monarch better fear’d and lov’d
37 Than is your Majesty. There’s not, I think, a subject
38 That sits in heart-grief and uneasiness
39 Under the sweet shade of your government.
40 GREY.
41 True; those that were your father’s enemies
42 Have steep’d their galls in honey, and do serve you
43 With hearts create of duty and of zeal.
44 KING HENRY.
45 We therefore have great cause of thankfulness,
46 And shall forget the office of our hand
47 Sooner than quittance of desert and merit
48 According to the weight and worthiness.
49 SCROOP.
50 So service shall with steeled sinews toil,
51 And labour shall refresh itself with hope,
52 To do your Grace incessant services.
53 KING HENRY.
54 We judge no less. Uncle of Exeter,
55 Enlarge the man committed yesterday,
56 That rail’d against our person. We consider
57 It was excess of wine that set him on,
58 And on his more advice we pardon him.
59 SCROOP.
60 That’s mercy, but too much security.
61 Let him be punish’d, sovereign, lest example
62 Breed, by his sufferance, more of such a kind.
63 KING HENRY.
64 O, let us yet be merciful.
65 CAMBRIDGE.
66 So may your Highness, and yet punish too.
67 GREY.
68 Sir,
69 You show great mercy if you give him life
70 After the taste of much correction.
71 KING HENRY.
72 Alas, your too much love and care of me
73 Are heavy orisons ’gainst this poor wretch!
74 If little faults, proceeding on distemper,
75 Shall not be wink’d at, how shall we stretch our eye
76 When capital crimes, chew’d, swallow’d, and digested,
77 Appear before us? We’ll yet enlarge that man,
78 Though Cambridge, Scroop, and Grey, in their dear care
79 And tender preservation of our person,
80 Would have him punish’d. And now to our French causes.
81 Who are the late commissioners?
82 CAMBRIDGE.
83 I one, my lord.
84 Your Highness bade me ask for it today.
85 SCROOP.
86 So did you me, my liege.
87 GREY.
88 And I, my royal sovereign.
89 KING HENRY.
90 Then, Richard Earl of Cambridge, there is yours;
91 There yours, Lord Scroop of Masham; and, sir knight,
92 Grey of Northumberland, this same is yours.
93 Read them, and know I know your worthiness.
94 My Lord of Westmorland, and uncle Exeter,
95 We will aboard tonight.—Why, how now, gentlemen!
96 What see you in those papers that you lose
97 So much complexion?—Look ye, how they change!
98 Their cheeks are paper.—Why, what read you there,
99 That have so cowarded and chas’d your blood
100 Out of appearance?
101 CAMBRIDGE.
102 I do confess my fault,
103 And do submit me to your Highness’ mercy.
104 GREY, SCROOP.
105 To which we all appeal.
106 KING HENRY.
107 The mercy that was quick in us but late,
108 By your own counsel is suppress’d and kill’d.
109 You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy,
110 For your own reasons turn into your bosoms,
111 As dogs upon their masters, worrying you.
112 See you, my princes and my noble peers,
113 These English monsters! My Lord of Cambridge here,
114 You know how apt our love was to accord
115 To furnish him with an appertinents
116 Belonging to his honour; and this man
117 Hath, for a few light crowns, lightly conspir’d
118 And sworn unto the practices of France
119 To kill us here in Hampton; to the which
120 This knight, no less for bounty bound to us
121 Than Cambridge is, hath likewise sworn. But, O
122 What shall I say to thee, Lord Scroop? thou cruel,
123 Ingrateful, savage, and inhuman creature!
124 Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels,
125 That knew’st the very bottom of my soul,
126 That almost mightst have coin’d me into gold,
127 Wouldst thou have practis’d on me for thy use,—
128 May it be possible that foreign hire
129 Could out of thee extract one spark of evil
130 That might annoy my finger? ’Tis so strange,
131 That, though the truth of it stands off as gross
132 As black and white, my eye will scarcely see it.
133 Treason and murder ever kept together,
134 As two yoke-devils sworn to either’s purpose,
135 Working so grossly in a natural cause
136 That admiration did not whoop at them;
137 But thou, ’gainst all proportion, didst bring in
138 Wonder to wait on treason and on murder;
139 And whatsoever cunning fiend it was
140 That wrought upon thee so preposterously
141 Hath got the voice in hell for excellence;
142 And other devils that suggest by treasons
143 Do botch and bungle up damnation
144 With patches, colours, and with forms being fetch’d
145 From glist’ring semblances of piety.
146 But he that temper’d thee bade thee stand up,
147 Gave thee no instance why thou shouldst do treason,
148 Unless to dub thee with the name of traitor.
149 If that same demon that hath gull’d thee thus
150 Should with his lion gait walk the whole world,
151 He might return to vasty Tartar back,
152 And tell the legions, “I can never win
153 A soul so easy as that Englishman’s.”
154 O, how hast thou with jealousy infected
155 The sweetness of affiance! Show men dutiful?
156 Why, so didst thou. Seem they grave and learned?
157 Why, so didst thou. Come they of noble family?
158 Why, so didst thou. Seem they religious?
159 Why, so didst thou. Or are they spare in diet,
160 Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger,
161 Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood,
162 Garnish’d and deck’d in modest complement,
163 Not working with the eye without the ear,
164 And but in purged judgement trusting neither?
165 Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem.
166 And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot
167 To mark the full-fraught man and best indued
168 With some suspicion. I will weep for thee;
169 For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like
170 Another fall of man. Their faults are open.
171 Arrest them to the answer of the law;
172 And God acquit them of their practices!
173 EXETER.
174 I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Richard Earl of
175 Cambridge.
176 I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Henry Lord Scroop of
177 Masham.
178 I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Thomas Grey, knight, of
179 Northumberland.
180 SCROOP.
181 Our purposes God justly hath discover’d,
182 And I repent my fault more than my death,
183 Which I beseech your Highness to forgive,
184 Although my body pay the price of it.
185 CAMBRIDGE.
186 For me, the gold of France did not seduce,
187 Although I did admit it as a motive
188 The sooner to effect what I intended.
189 But God be thanked for prevention,
190 Which I in sufferance heartily will rejoice,
191 Beseeching God and you to pardon me.
192 GREY.
193 Never did faithful subject more rejoice
194 At the discovery of most dangerous treason
195 Than I do at this hour joy o’er myself,
196 Prevented from a damned enterprise.
197 My fault, but not my body, pardon, sovereign.
198 KING HENRY.
199 God quit you in his mercy! Hear your sentence.
200 You have conspir’d against our royal person,
201 Join’d with an enemy proclaim’d, and from his coffers
202 Received the golden earnest of our death;
203 Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter,
204 His princes and his peers to servitude,
205 His subjects to oppression and contempt,
206 And his whole kingdom into desolation.
207 Touching our person seek we no revenge;
208 But we our kingdom’s safety must so tender,
209 Whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws
210 We do deliver you. Get you therefore hence,
211 Poor miserable wretches, to your death,
212 The taste whereof God of his mercy give
213 You patience to endure, and true repentance
214 Of all your dear offences! Bear them hence.
215 [_Exeunt Cambridge, Scroop and Grey, guarded._]
216 Now, lords, for France; the enterprise whereof
217 Shall be to you, as us, like glorious.
218 We doubt not of a fair and lucky war,
219 Since God so graciously hath brought to light
220 This dangerous treason lurking in our way
221 To hinder our beginnings. We doubt not now
222 But every rub is smoothed on our way.
223 Then forth, dear countrymen! Let us deliver
224 Our puissance into the hand of God,
225 Putting it straight in expedition.
226 Cheerly to sea! The signs of war advance!
227 No king of England, if not king of France!
228 [_Flourish. Exeunt._]