We lose the better half of our possession;
For all the temporal lands which men devout
By testament have given to the Church

Would they strip from us; being valued thus,
As much as would maintain, to the King's honour,
Full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights,
Six thousand and two hundred good esquires ;
And, to relief of lazars and weak age,

Of indigent faint souls past corporal toil,
A hundred alms-houses right well supplied;
And to the coffers of the King beside,
A thousand pounds by th' year.

Ely. This would drink deep.
Cant.

Thus runs the bill.

'Twould drink the cup and all.

Ely. But what prevention?

Cant. The King is full of grace and fair regard.
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, mortifi'd in him,
Seem'd to die too: yea, at that very moment,
Consideration, like an angel, came

And whipp'd th' offending Adam out of him,
Leaving his body as a paradise

T'envelop and contain celestial spirits.
Never was such a sudden scholar made:

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.

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,

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,
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 honeyed sentences;
So that the art and practic part of life

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;

And never noted in him any study,

Any retirement, any sequestration

From open haunts and popularity.

Ely. The strawberry grows underneath the net

tle,

And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best

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.

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

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 th' exhibiters against us;
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
Than ever at one time the clergy yet
Did to his predecessors part withal.
Ely. How did this offer seem

lord?

receiv'd, my

Cant. With good acceptance of his Majesty; Save, that there was not time enough to hear (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.

Ely. What was th' 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.

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.

SCENE II.

The Same. A Room of State in the Same.

Enter King HENRY, GLOSTER, BEDFORD, EXETER, WARWICK, WESTMORELAND, and Attendants. King Henry. Where is my gracious Lord of Canterbury?

Exeter. Not here in presence.

K. Hen.
Westmoreland.

my liege?

Send for him, good uncle.

Shall we call in th' ambassador,

K. Hen. Not yet, my cousin: we would be resolv'd,

Before we hear him, of some things of weight, That task our thoughts, concerning us and France.

Enter the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Bishop of Ely.

Cant. God and his angels guard your sacred

throne,

And make you long become it!

K. Hen.

Sure, we thank you.

My learned lord, we pray you to proceed,

And justly and religiously unfold,

Why the law Salique, that they have in France,

Or should, or should not, bar us in our claim.

And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord,

That you should fashion, wrest, or bow your read

ing,

Or nicely charge your understanding soul

With opening titles miscreate, whose right
Suits not in native colours with the truth;

For God doth know how many, now in health,

Shall drop their blood in approbation

Of what your reverence shall incite us to.
Therefore, take heed how you impawn our person,
How you awake our sleeping sword of war:
We charge you in the name of God, take heed;
For never two such kingdoms did contend,
Without much fall of blood; whose guiltless drops
Are every one a woe, a sore complaint,

'Gainst him whose wrongs give edge unto the swords
That make such waste in brief mortality.
Under this conjuration, speak, my lord,

For we will hear, note, and believe in heart,
That what you speak is in your conscience wash'd,

As pure as sin with baptism.

Cant. Then hear me, gracious sovereign, and you

peers,

That owe yourselves your lives and services

To this imperial throne. -There is no bar

To make against your Highness' claim to France,
But this, which they produce from Pharamond,
In terram Salicam mulieres ne succedant,
"No woman shall succeed in Salique land."
Which Salique land the French unjustly glose,
To be the realm of France, and Pharamond
The founder of this law and female bar:
Yet their own authors faithfully affirm,
That the land Salique is in Germany,
Between the floods of Sala and of Elbe;

Where Charles the Great, having subdu'd the Sax

ons,

There left behind and settled certain French;

Who, holding in disdain the German women
For some dishonest manners of their life,
Establish'd then this law, to wit, no female

Should be inheritrix in Salique land: