Imatges de pàgina
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This knight, no less for bounty bound to us
Than Cambridge is, hath likewise sworn. But, O!
What shall I say to thee, lord Scroop? thou cruel,
Ingrateful, savage, and inhuman creature!
Thou, that didst bear the key of all my counsels,
That knew'st the very bottom of my soul,

That almost mightst have coin'd me into gold,
Wouldst thou have practised on me for thy use?
May it be possible, that foreign hire

Could out of thee extract one spark of evil,
That might annoy my finger? 'tis so strange,
That, though the truth of it stands off as gross
As black from white, my eye will scarcely see it.
Treason and murder ever kept together,
As two yoke-devils sworn to either's purpose,
Working so grossly in a natural cause,
That admiration did not whoop1 at them :
But thou, 'gainst all proportion, didst bring in
Wonder to wait on treason and on murder:
And whatsoever cunning fiend it was,
That wrought upon thee so preposterously,
Hath got the voice in hell for excellence;
And other devils, that suggest by treasons,
Do botch and bungle up damnation

With patches, colors, and with forms, being fetch'd

From glistering semblances of piety:

But he, that temper'd thee, bade thee stand up,

1 Uttered no exclamation of surprise,
2 Rendered thee pliable to his will,

Gave thee no instance why thou shouldst do

treason,

Unless to dub thee with the name of traitor.

If that same dæmon, that hath gull'd thee thus,
Should with his lion gait walk the whole world,
He might return to vasty Tartar 1 back,
And tell the legions, I can never win
A soul so easy as that Englishman's.
O, how hast thou with jealousy infected

The sweetness of affiance! Show men dutiful?

Why, so didst thou: Seem they grave and learned ?

Why, so didst thou:

Why, so didst thou:

Come they of noble family?
Seem they religious?

Why, so didst thou: Or are they spare in diet;
Free from gross passion, or of mirth, or anger;
Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood;
Garnish'd and deck'd in modest complement; ?
Not working with the eye without the ear,
And, but in purged judgment, trusting neither?
Such, and so finely bolted,3 didst thou seem :
And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot,
To mark the full-fraught man, and best indued,
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!

1 Tartarus.
Sifted, refined.

2 Accomplishment.

• Endowed.

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 discover'd;
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;
Although I did admit it as a motive

The sooner to effect what I intended:
But God be thanked for prevention;
Which I in sufferance heartily will rejoice,
Beseeching God and you to pardon me.

Grey. Never did faithful subject more rejoice
At the discovery of most dangerous treason,
Than I do at this hour joy o'er myself,
Prevented from a damned enterprise.

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,

Join'd with an enemy proclaim'd, and from his coffers

Received the golden earnest of our death;

Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter,
His princes and his peers to servitude,

His subjects to oppression and contempt,

And his whole kingdom unto desolation.

A

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