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Title: Queen Mary and Harold

Author: Alfred Lord Tennyson

Release Date: October, 2005 [EBook #9176]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on September 11, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUEEN MARY AND HAROLD ***




Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Tapio Riikonen and Distributed Proofreaders




QUEEN MARY and HAROLD

BY

ALFRED LORD TENNYSON, POET LAUREATE


[Illustration]



CONTENTS

QUEEN MARY: A DRAMA
HAROLD: A DRAMA



QUEEN MARY: A DRAMA.



_DRAMATIS PERSONAE_

QUEEN MARY.
PHILIP, _King of Naples and Sicily, afterwards King of Spain_.
THE PRINCESS ELIZABETH.
REGINALD POLE, _Cardinal and Papal Legate_.
SIMON RENARD, _Spanish Ambassador_.
LE SIEUR DE NOAILLES, _French Ambassador_.
THOMAS CRANMER, _Archbishop of Canterbury_.
SIR NICHOLAS HEATH, _Archbishop of York; Lord Chancellor after Gardiner_.
EDWARD COURTENAY, _Earl of Devon_.
LORD WILLIAM HOWARD, _afterwards Lord Howard, and Lord High Admiral_.
LORD WILLIAMS OF THAME.
LORD PAGET.
LORD PETRE.
STEPHEN GARDINER, _Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor_.
EDMUND BONNER, _Bishop of London_.
THOMAS THIRLBY, _Bishop of Ely_.
SIR THOMAS WYATT     |
SIR THOMAS STAFFORD  |  _Insurrectionary Leaders_.
SIR RALPH BAGENHALL.
SIR ROBERT SOUTHWELL.
SIR HENRY BEDINGFIELD.
SIR WILLIAM CECIL.
SIR THOMAS WHITE, _Lord Mayor of London_.
THE DUKE OF ALVA     |
THE COUNT DE FERIA   | _attending on Philip_.
PETER MARTYR.
FATHER COLE.
FATHER BOURNE.
VILLA GARCIA.
SOTO.
CAPTAIN BRETT     |
ANTHONY KNYVETT   | _Adherents of Wyatt_.
PETERS, _Gentleman of Lord Howard_.
ROGER, _Servant to Noailles_.
WILLIAM, _Servant to Wyatt_.
STEWARD OF HOUSEHOLD _to the Princess Elizabeth_.
OLD NOKES _and_ NOKES.
MARCHIONESS OF EXETER, _Mother of Courtenay_.
LADY CLARENCE          |
LADY MAGDALEN DACRES   | _Ladies in Waiting to the Queen_.
ALICE                  | _to the Princess Elizabeth_.
MAID OF HONOUR         |
JOAN     |
TIB      | _two Country Wives_.

Lords _and other_ Attendants, Members _of the_ Privy Council,
Members _of_ Parliament, Two Gentlemen, Aldermen,
Citizens, Peasants, Ushers, Messengers, Guards, Pages,
Gospellers, Marshalmen, _etc_.



QUEEN MARY.




ACT I.


SCENE I.--ALDGATE RICHLY DECORATED.

CROWD. MARSHALMEN.


MARSHALMAN. Stand back, keep a clear lane! When will her Majesty pass,
sayst thou? why now, even now; wherefore draw back your heads and your
horns before I break them, and make what noise you will with your
tongues, so it be not treason. Long live Queen Mary, the lawful and
legitimate daughter of Harry the Eighth! Shout, knaves!

CITIZENS. Long live Queen Mary!

FIRST CITIZEN. That's a hard word, legitimate; what does it mean?

SECOND CITIZEN. It means a bastard.

THIRD CITIZEN. Nay, it means true-born.

FIRST CITIZEN. Why, didn't the Parliament make her a bastard?

SECOND CITIZEN.  No; it was the Lady Elizabeth.

THIRD CITIZEN. That was after, man; that was after.

FIRST CITIZEN. Then which is the bastard?

SECOND CITIZEN. Troth, they be both bastards by Act of Parliament and
Council.

THIRD CITIZEN. Ay, the Parliament can make every true-born man of us a
bastard. Old Nokes, can't it make thee a bastard? thou shouldst know,
for thou art as white as three Christmasses.

OLD NOKES (_dreamily_). Who's a-passing? King Edward or King Richard?

THIRD CITIZEN. No, old Nokes.

OLD NOKES. It's Harry!

THIRD CITIZEN. It's Queen Mary.

OLD NOKES. The blessed Mary's a-passing!
                                 [_Falls on his knees_.

NOKES. Let father alone, my masters! he's past your questioning.

THIRD CITIZEN. Answer thou for him, then thou'rt no such cockerel
thyself, for thou was born i' the tail end of old Harry the Seventh.

NOKES. Eh! that was afore bastard-making began. I was born true man at
five in the forenoon  i' the tail of old Harry, and so they can't make
me a bastard.

THIRD CITIZEN. But if Parliament can make the Queen a bastard, why, it
follows all the more that they can make thee one, who art fray'd i'
the knees, and out at elbow, and bald o' the back, and bursten at the
toes, and down at heels.

NOKES. I was born of a true man and a ring'd wife, and I can't argue
upon it; but I and my old woman 'ud burn upon it, that would we.

MARSHALMAN. What are you cackling of bastardy under the Queen's own
nose? I'll have you flogg'd and burnt too, by the Rood I will.

FIRST CITIZEN. He swears by the Rood. Whew!

SECOND CITIZEN. Hark! the trumpets.

    [_The Procession passes_, MARY _and_ ELIZABETH _riding
    side by side, and disappears under the gate_.

CITIZENS. Long live Queen Mary! down with all traitors! God save her
Grace; and death to Northumberland!
                            [_Exeunt_.

    _Manent_ TWO GENTLEMEN.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. By God's light a noble creature, right royal!

SECOND GENTLEMAN. She looks comelier than ordinary to-day; but to my
mind the Lady Elizabeth is the more noble and royal.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. I mean the Lady Elizabeth. Did you hear (I have a
daughter in her service who reported it) that she met the Queen at
Wanstead with five hundred horse, and the Queen (tho' some say they be
much divided) took her hand, call'd her sweet sister, and kiss'd not
her alone, but all the ladies of her following.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Ay, that was in her hour of joy; there will be
plenty to sunder and unsister them again: this Gardiner for one, who
is to be made Lord Chancellor, and will pounce like a wild beast out
of his cage to worry Cranmer.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. And furthermore, my daughter said that when there
rose a talk of the late rebellion, she spoke even of Northumberland
pitifully, and of the good Lady Jane as a poor innocent child who had
but obeyed her father; and furthermore, she said that no one in her
time should be burnt for heresy.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Well, sir, I look for happy times.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. There is but one thing against them. I know not if
you know.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. I suppose you touch upon the rumour that Charles,
the master of the world, has offer'd her his son Philip, the Pope and
the Devil. I trust it is but a rumour.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. She is going now to the Tower to loose the prisoners
there, and among them Courtenay, to be made Earl of Devon, of royal
blood, of splendid feature, whom the council and all her people wish
her to marry. May it be so, for we are many of us Catholics, but few
Papists, and the Hot Gospellers will go mad upon it.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. Was she not betroth'd in her babyhood to the Great
Emperor himself?

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Ay, but he's too old.

SECOND GENTLEMAN. And again to her cousin Reginald Pole, now Cardinal;
but I hear that he too is full of aches and broken before his day.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. O, the Pope could dispense with his Cardinalate, and
his achage, and his breakage,  if that were all: will you not follow
the procession?

SECOND GENTLEMAN. No; I have seen enough for this day.

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Well, I shall follow; if I can get near enough I
shall judge with my own eyes whether her Grace incline to this
splendid scion of Plantagenet.

                                       [_Exeunt_.



SCENE II.--A ROOM IN LAMBETH PALACE.


CRANMER. To Strasburg, Antwerp, Frankfort, Zurich, Worms,
Geneva, Basle--our Bishops from their sees
Or fled, they say, or flying--Poinet, Barlow,
Bale, Scory, Coverdale; besides the Deans
Of Christchurch, Durham, Exeter, and Wells--
Ailmer and Bullingham, and hundreds more;
So they report: I shall be left alone.
No: Hooper, Ridley, Latimer will not fly.

    _Enter_ PETER MARTYR.

PETER MARTYR. Fly, Cranmer! were there nothing else, your name
Stands first of those who sign'd the Letters Patent
That gave her royal crown to Lady Jane.

CRANMER.
Stand first it may, but it was written last:
Those that are now her Privy Council, sign'd
Before me: nay, the Judges had pronounced
That our young Edward might bequeath the crown
Of England, putting by his father's will.
Yet I stood out, till Edward sent for me.
The wan boy-king, with his fast-fading eyes
Fixt hard on mine, his frail transparent hand,
Damp with the sweat of death, and griping mine,
Whisper'd me, if I loved him, not to yield
His Church of England to the Papal wolf
And Mary; then I could no more--I sign'd.
Nay, for bare shame of inconsistency,
She cannot pass her traitor council by,
To make me headless.

PETER MARTYR.        That might be forgiven.
I tell you, fly, my Lord. You do not own
The bodily presence in the Eucharist,
Their wafer and perpetual sacrifice:
Your creed will be your death.

CRANMER.                       Step after step,
Thro' many voices crying right and left,
Have I climb'd back into the primal church,
And stand within the porch, and Christ with me:
My flight were such a scandal to the faith,
The downfall of so many simple souls,
I dare not leave my post.

PETER MARTYR.             But you divorced
Queen Catharine and her father; hence, her hate
Will burn till you are burn'd.

CRANMER.                       I cannot help it.
The Canonists and Schoolmen were with me.
'Thou shalt not wed thy brother's wife.'--'Tis written,
'They shall be childless.' True, Mary was born,
But France would not accept her for a bride
As being born from incest; and this wrought
Upon the king; and child by child, you know,
Were momentary sparkles out as quick
Almost as kindled; and he brought his doubts
And fears to me. Peter, I'll swear for him
He _did_ believe the bond incestuous.
But wherefore am I trenching on the time
That should already have seen your steps a mile
From me and Lambeth? God be with you! Go.

PETER MARTYR. Ah, but how fierce a letter you wrote against
Their superstition when they slander'd you
For setting up a mass at Canterbury
To please the Queen.

CRANMER.             It was a wheedling monk
Set up the mass.

PETER MARTYR.    I know it, my good Lord.
But you so bubbled over with hot terms
Of Satan, liars, blasphemy, Antichrist,
She never will forgive you. Fly, my Lord, fly!

CRANMER. I wrote it, and God grant me power to burn!

PETER MARTYR. They have given me a safe conduct: for all that
I dare not stay. I fear, I fear, I see you,
Dear friend, for the last time; farewell, and fly.

CRANMER. Fly and farewell, and let me die the death.
                                       [_Exit_ PETER MARTYR.

    _Enter_ OLD SERVANT.

O, kind and gentle master, the Queen's Officers
Are here in force to take you to the Tower.

CRANMER. Ay, gentle friend, admit them. I will go.
I thank my God it is too late to fly.

                                [_Exeunt_.



SCENE III.--ST. PAUL'S CROSS.

FATHER BOURNE _in the pulpit_. A CROWD. MARCHIONESS OF EXETER,
COURTENAY. _The_ SIEUR DE NOAILLES _and his man_ ROGER _in front
of the stage. Hubbub_.


NOAILLES. Hast thou let fall those papers in the  palace?

ROGER. Ay, sir.

NOAILLES.       'There will be no peace for Mary till
Elizabeth lose her head.'

ROGER.                    Ay, sir.

NOAILLES. And the other, 'Long live Elizabeth the Queen!'

ROGER. Ay, sir; she needs must tread upon them.

NOAILLES.                                       Well.
These beastly swine make such a grunting here,
I cannot catch what Father Bourne is saying.

ROGER. Quiet a moment, my masters; hear what the shaveling has to say
for himself.

CROWD. Hush--hear!

BOURNE.--and so this unhappy land, long divided in itself, and
sever'd from the faith, will return into the one true fold, seeing
that our gracious Virgin Queen hath----

CROWD. No pope! no pope!

ROGER (_to those about him, mimicking_ BOURNE).--hath sent for the
holy legate of the holy father the Pope, Cardinal Pole, to give us all
that holy absolution which----

FIRST CITIZEN. Old Bourne to the life!

SECOND CITIZEN. Holy absolution! holy Inquisition!

THIRD CITIZEN. Down with the Papist!
                                        [_Hubbub_.

BOURNE.--and now that your good bishop,
Bonner, who hath lain so long under bonds for the
faith--
                                        [_Hubbub_.

NOAILLES. Friend Roger, steal thou in among the crowd,
And get the swine to shout Elizabeth.
Yon gray old Gospeller, sour as midwinter,
Begin with him.

ROGER (_goes_). By the mass, old friend, we'll have no pope here while
the Lady Elizabeth lives.

GOSPELLER. Art thou of the true faith, fellow, that swearest by the
mass?

ROGER. Ay, that am I, new converted, but the old leaven sticks to my
tongue yet.

FIRST CITIZEN. He says right; by the mass we'll have no mass here.

VOICES OF THE CROWD. Peace! hear him; let his own words damn the
Papist. From thine own mouth I judge thee--tear him down!

BOURNE.--and since our Gracious Queen, let me call her our second
Virgin Mary, hath begun to re-edify the true temple----,

FIRST CITIZEN. Virgin Mary! we'll have no virgins here--we'll have the
Lady Elizabeth!

    [_Swords are drawn, a knife is hurled and sticks in
    the pulpit. The mob throng to the pulpit stairs_.

MARCHIONESS OF EXETER. Son Courtenay, wilt thou see the holy father
Murdered before thy face? up, son, and save him! They love thee, and
thou canst not come to harm.

COURTENAY (_in the pulpit_). Shame, shame, my masters! are you
English-born, And set yourselves by hundreds against one?

CROWD. A Courtenay! a Courtenay!

    [_A train of Spanish servants crosses at the back of the stage_.

NOAILLES. These birds of passage come before their time:
Stave off the crowd upon the Spaniard there.

ROGER. My masters, yonder's fatter game for you
Than this old gaping gurgoyle: look you there--
The Prince of Spain coming to wed our Queen!
After him, boys! and pelt him from the city.

    [_They seize stones and follow the Spaniards.
    Exeunt on the other side_ MARCHIONESS OF
    EXETER _and_ ATTENDANTS.

NOAILLES (_to_ ROGER).
Stand from me. If Elizabeth lose her head--
That makes for France.
And if her people, anger'd thereupon,
Arise against her and dethrone the Queen--
That makes for France.
And if I breed confusion anyway--
That makes for France.
                       Good-day, my Lord of Devon;
A bold heart yours to beard that raging mob!

COURTENAY. My mother said, Go up; and up I went.
I knew they would not do me any wrong,
For I am mighty popular with them, Noailles.

NOAILLES. You look'd a king.

COURTENAY.                   Why not? I am king's blood.

NOAILLES. And in the whirl of change may come to be one.

COURTENAY. Ah!

NOAILLES. But does your gracious Queen entreat you kinglike?

COURTENAY. 'Fore God, I think she entreats me like a child.

NOAILLES. You've but a dull life in this maiden court, I fear, my
Lord?

COURTENAY. A life of nods and yawns.

NOAILLES. So you would honour my poor house to-night,
We might enliven you. Divers honest fellows,
The Duke of Suffolk lately freed from prison,
Sir Peter Carew and Sir Thomas Wyatt,
Sir Thomas Stafford, and some more--we play.

COURTENAY. At what?

NOAILLES.           The Game of Chess.

COURTENAY.                             The Game of Chess!
I can play well, and I shall beat you there.

NOAILLES. Ay, but we play with Henry, King of France,
And certain of his court.
His Highness makes his moves across the Channel,
We answer him with ours, and there are messengers
That go between us.

COURTENAY. Why, such a game, sir, were whole years a playing.

NOAILLES. Nay; not so long I trust. That all depends
Upon the skill and swiftness of the players.

COURTENAY. The King is skilful at it?

NOAILLES.                             Very, my Lord.

COURTENAY. And the stakes high?

NOAILLES.         But not beyond your means.

COURTENAY. Well, I'm the first of players, I shall win.

NOAILLES. With our advice and in our company,
And so you well attend to the king's moves,
I think you may.

COURTENAY. When do you meet?

NOAILLES.                    To-night.

COURTENAY (_aside_).
I will be there; the fellow's at his tricks--
Deep--I shall fathom him. (_Aloud_) Good morning,
Noailles.
             [_Exit_ COURTENAY.

NOAILLES. Good-day, my Lord. Strange game of chess! a King
That with her own pawns plays against a Queen,
Whose play is all to find herself a King.
Ay; but this fine blue-blooded Courtenay seems
Too princely for a pawn. Call him a Knight,
That, with an ass's, not a horse's head,
Skips every way, from levity or from fear.
Well, we shall use him somehow, so that Gardiner
And Simon Renard spy not out our game
Too early. Roger, thinkest thou that anyone
Suspected thee to be my man?

ROGER.                       Not one, sir.

NOAILLES. No! the disguise was perfect. Let's away.
                                              [_Exeunt_.



SCENE IV.--LONDON. A ROOM IN THE PALACE.
ELIZABETH. _Enter_ COURTENAY.


COURTENAY. So yet am I,
Unless my friends and mirrors lie to me,
A goodlier-looking fellow than this Philip.
Pah!
The Queen is ill advised: shall I turn traitor?
They've almost talked me into it: yet the word
Affrights me somewhat: to be such a one
As Harry Bolingbroke hath a lure in it.
Good now, my Lady Queen, tho' by your age,
And by your looks you are not worth the having,
Yet by your crown you are.    [_Seeing_ ELIZABETH.
                           The Princess there?
If I tried her and la--she's amorous.
Have we not heard of her in Edward's time,
Her freaks and frolics with the late Lord Admiral?
I do believe she'd yield. I should be still
A party in the state; and then, who knows--

ELIZABETH. What are you musing on, my Lord of Devon?

COURTENAY. Has not the Queen--

ELIZABETH.                    Done what, Sir?

COURTENAY.                                   --made you follow
The Lady Suffolk and the Lady Lennox?--
You,
The heir presumptive.

ELIZABETH.            Why do you ask? you know it.

COURTENAY. You needs must bear it hardly.

ELIZABETH.                                No, indeed!
I am utterly submissive to the Queen.

COURTENAY. Well, I was musing upon that; the Queen
Is both my foe and yours: we should be friends.

ELIZABETH. My Lord, the hatred of another to us
Is no true bond of friendship.

COURTENAY.                     Might it not
Be the rough preface of some closer bond?

ELIZABETH. My Lord, you late were loosed from out the Tower,
Where, like a butterfly in a chrysalis,
You spent your life; that broken, out you flutter
Thro' the new world, go zigzag, now would settle
Upon this flower, now that; but all things here
At court are known; you have solicited
The Queen, and been rejected.

COURTENAY.                    Flower, she!
Half faded! but you, cousin, are fresh and sweet
As the first flower no bee has ever tried.

ELIZABETH. Are you the bee to try me? why, but now
I called you butterfly.

COURTENAY.              You did me wrong,
I love not to be called a butterfly:
Why do you call me butterfly?

ELIZABETH. Why do you go so gay then?

COURTENAY.                            Velvet and gold.
This dress was made me as the Earl of Devon
To take my seat in; looks it not right royal?

ELIZABETH. So royal that the Queen forbad you wearing it.

COURTENAY. I wear it then to spite her.

ELIZABETH.                              My Lord, my Lord;
I see you in the Tower again. Her Majesty
Hears you affect the Prince--prelates kneel to
you.--

COURTENAY. I am the noblest blood in Europe, Madam,
A Courtenay of Devon, and her cousin.

ELIZABETH. She hears you make your boast that after all
She means to wed you. Folly, my good Lord.

COURTENAY. How folly? a great party in the state
Wills me to wed her.

ELIZABETH.          Failing her, my Lord,
Doth not as great a party in the state
Will you to wed me?

COURTENAY.          Even so, fair lady.

ELIZABETH. You know to flatter ladies.

COURTENAY.                             Nay, I meant
True matters of the heart.

ELIZABETH.                 _My_ heart, my Lord,
Is no great party in the state as yet.

COURTENAY. Great, said you? nay, you shall be great. I love you,
Lay my life in your hands. Can you be close?

ELIZABETH. Can you, my Lord?

COURTENAY.                   Close as a miser's casket.
Listen:
The King of France, Noailles the Ambassador,
The Duke of Suffolk and Sir Peter Carew,
Sir Thomas Wyatt, I myself, some others,
Have sworn this Spanish marriage shall not be.
If Mary will not hear us--well--conjecture--
Were I in Devon with my wedded bride,
The people there so worship me--Your ear;
You shall be Queen.

ELIZABETH.          You speak too low, my Lord;
I cannot hear you.

COURTENAY.         I'll repeat it.

ELIZABETH.                         No!
Stand further off, or you may lose your head.

COURTENAY. I have a head to lose for your sweet
sake.

ELIZABETH. Have you, my Lord? Best keep it for your own.
Nay, pout not, cousin.
Not many friends are mine, except indeed
Among the many. I believe you mine;
And so you may continue mine, farewell,
And that at once.

    _Enter_ MARY, _behind_.

MARY. Whispering--leagued together
To bar me from my Philip.

COURTENAY.                Pray--consider--

ELIZABETH (_seeing the_ QUEEN).
Well, that's a noble horse of yours, my Lord.
I trust that he will carry you well to-day,
And heal your headache.

COURTENAY.              You are wild; what headache?
Heartache, perchance; not headache.

ELIZABETH (_aside to_ COURTENAY). Are you blind?

        [COURTENAY _sees the_ QUEEN _and exit. Exit_ MARY.


  _Enter_ LORD WILLIAM HOWARD.

HOWARD. Was that my Lord of Devon? do not you
Be seen in corners with my Lord of Devon.
He hath fallen out of favour with the Queen.
She fears the Lords may side with you and him
Against her marriage; therefore is he dangerous.
And if this Prince of fluff and feather come
To woo you, niece, he is dangerous everyway.

ELIZABETH. Not very dangerous that way, my good uncle.

HOWARD. But your own state is full of danger here.
The disaffected, heretics, reformers,
Look to you as the one to crown their ends.
Mix not yourself with any plot I pray you;
Nay, if by chance you hear of any such,
Speak not thereof--no, not to your best friend,
Lest you should be confounded with it. Still--
Perinde ac cadaver--as the priest says,
You know your Latin--quiet as a dead body.
What was my Lord of Devon telling you?

ELIZABETH. Whether he told me anything or not,
I follow your good counsel, gracious uncle.
Quiet as a dead body.

HOWARD.               You do right well.
I do not care to know; but this I charge you,
Tell Courtenay nothing. The Lord Chancellor
(I count it as a kind of virtue in him,
He hath not many), as a mastiff dog
May love a puppy cur for no more reason
Than that the twain have been tied up together,
Thus Gardiner--for the two were fellow-prisoners
So many years in yon accursed Tower--
Hath taken to this Courtenay. Look to it, niece,
He hath no fence when Gardiner questions him;
All oozes out; yet him--because they know him
The last White Rose, the last Plantagenet
(Nay, there is Cardinal Pole, too), the people
Claim as their natural leader--ay, some say,
That you shall marry him, make him King belike.

ELIZABETH. Do they say so, good uncle?

HOWARD.                                Ay, good niece!
You should be plain and open with me, niece.
You should not play upon me.

ELIZABETH.                   No, good uncle.

    _Enter_ GARDINER.

GARDINER. The Queen would see your Grace upon the moment.

ELIZABETH. Why, my lord Bishop?

GARDINER. I think she means to counsel your withdrawing
To Ashridge, or some other country house.

ELIZABETH. Why, my lord Bishop?

GARDINER. I do but bring the message, know no more.
Your Grace will hear her reasons from herself.

ELIZABETH. 'Tis mine own wish fulfill'd before the word
Was spoken, for in truth I had meant to crave
Permission of her Highness to retire
To Ashridge, and pursue my studies there.

GARDINER. Madam, to have the wish before the word
Is man's good Fairy--and the Queen is yours.
I left her with rich jewels in her hand,
Whereof 'tis like enough she means to make
A farewell present to your Grace.

ELIZABETH.                        My Lord,
I have the jewel of a loyal heart.

GARDINER. I doubt it not, Madam, most loyal.
                                  [_Bows low and exit_.

HOWARD.                                      See,
This comes of parleying with my Lord of Devon.
Well, well, you must obey; and I myself
Believe it will be better for your welfare.
Your time will come.

ELIZABETH.           I think my time will come.
Uncle,
I am of sovereign nature, that I know,
Not to be quell'd; and I have felt within me
Stirrings of some great doom when God's just hour
Peals--but this fierce old Gardiner--his big baldness,
That irritable forelock which he rubs,
His buzzard beak and deep-incavern'd eyes
Half fright me.

HOWARD.         You've a bold heart; keep it so.
He cannot touch you save that you turn traitor;
And so take heed I pray you--you are one
Who love that men should smile upon you, niece.
They'd smile you into treason--some of them.

ELIZABETH. I spy the rock beneath the smiling sea.
But if this Philip, the proud Catholic prince,
And this bald priest, and she that hates me, seek
In that lone house, to practise on my life,
By poison, fire, shot, stab--

HOWARD. They will not, niece.
Mine is the fleet and all the power at sea--
Or will be in a moment. If they dared
To harm you, I would blow this Philip and all
Your trouble to the dogstar and the devil.

ELIZABETH. To the Pleiads, uncle; they have lost
a sister.

HOWARD. But why say that? what have you done
to lose her?
Come, come, I will go with you to the Queen.

                                        [_Exeunt_.



SCENE V.--A ROOM IN THE PALACE.

MARY _with_ PHILIP'S _miniature_. ALICE.


MARY (_kissing the miniature_).
Most goodly, King-like and an Emperor's son,--
A king to be,--is he not noble, girl?

ALICE. Goodly enough, your Grace, and yet, methinks,
I have seen goodlier.

MARY.                 Ay; some waxen doll
Thy baby eyes have rested on, belike;
All red and white, the fashion of our land.
But my good mother came (God rest her soul)
Of Spain, and I am Spanish in myself,
And in my likings.

ALICE.             By your Grace's leave
Your royal mother came of Spain, but took
To the English red and white. Your royal father
(For so they say) was all pure lily and rose
In his youth, and like a lady.

MARY.                          O, just God!
Sweet mother, you had time and cause enough
To sicken of his lilies and his roses.
Cast off, betray'd, defamed, divorced, forlorn!
And then the King--that traitor past forgiveness,
The false archbishop fawning on him, married
The mother of Elizabeth--a heretic
Ev'n as _she_ is; but God hath sent me here
To take such order with all heretics
That it shall be, before I die, as tho'
My father and my brother had not lived.
What wast thou saying of this Lady Jane,
Now in the Tower?

ALICE.            Why, Madam, she was passing
Some chapel down in Essex, and with her
Lady Anne Wharton, and the Lady Anne
Bow'd to the Pyx; but Lady Jane stood up
Stiff as the very backbone of heresy.
And wherefore bow ye not, says Lady Anne,
To him within there who made Heaven and Earth?
I cannot, and I dare not, tell your Grace
What Lady Jane replied.

MARY.                   But I will have it.

ALICE. She said--pray pardon me, and pity her--
She hath harken'd evil counsel--ah! she said,
The baker made him.

MARY.               Monstrous! blasphemous!
She ought to burn. Hence, thou (_Exit_ ALICE). No--being traitor
Her head will fall: shall it? she is but a child.
We do not kill the child for doing that
His father whipt him into doing--a head
So full of grace and beauty! would that mine
Were half as gracious! O, my lord to be,
My love, for thy sake only.
I am eleven years older than he is.
But will he care for that?
No, by the holy Virgin, being noble,
But love me only: then the bastard sprout,
My sister, is far fairer than myself.
Will he be drawn to her?
No, being of the true faith with myself.
Paget is for him--for to wed with Spain
Would treble England--Gardiner is against him;
The Council, people, Parliament against him;
But I will have him! My hard father hated me;
My brother rather hated me than loved;
My sister cowers and hates me. Holy Virgin,
Plead with thy blessed Son; grant me my prayer:
Give me my Philip; and we two will lead
The living waters of the Faith again
Back thro' their widow'd channel here, and watch
The parch'd banks rolling incense, as of old,
To heaven, and kindled with the palms of Christ!

    _Enter_ USHER.

Who waits, sir?

USHER.          Madam, the Lord Chancellor.

MARY. Bid him come in. (_Enter_ GARDINER.)
Good morning, my good Lord.

                               [_Exit_ USHER.

GARDINER. That every morning of your Majesty
May be most good, is every morning's prayer
Of your most loyal subject, Stephen Gardiner.

MARY. Come you to tell me this, my Lord?

GARDINER.                                And more.
Your people have begun to learn your worth.
Your pious wish to pay King Edward's debts,
Your lavish household curb'd, and the remission
Of half that subsidy levied on the people,
Make all tongues praise and all hearts beat for you.
I'd have you yet more loved: the realm is poor,
The exchequer at neap-tide: we might withdraw
Part of our garrison at Calais.

MARY.                           Calais!
Our one point on the main, the gate of France!
I am Queen of England; take mine eyes, mine heart,
But do not lose me Calais.

GARDINER.                  Do not fear it.
Of that hereafter. I say your Grace is loved.
That I may keep you thus, who am your friend
And ever faithful counsellor, might I speak?

MARY. I can forespeak your speaking. Would I marry
Prince Philip, if all England hate him? That is
Your question, and I front it with another:
Is it England, or a party? Now, your answer.

GARDINER. My answer is, I wear beneath my dress
A shirt of mail: my house hath been assaulted,
And when I walk abroad, the populace,
With fingers pointed like so many daggers,
Stab me in fancy, hissing Spain and Philip;
And when I sleep, a hundred men-at-arms
Guard my poor dreams for England. Men would murder me,
Because they think me favourer of this marriage.

MARY. And that were hard upon you, my Lord Chancellor.

GARDINER. But our young Earl of Devon--

MARY.                                  Earl of Devon?
I freed him from the Tower, placed him at Court;
I made him Earl of Devon, and--the fool--
He wrecks his health and wealth on courtesans,
And rolls himself in carrion like a dog.

GARDINER. More like a school-boy that hath broken bounds,
Sickening himself with sweets.

MARY.                          I will not hear of him.
Good, then, they will revolt: but I am Tudor,
And shall control them.

GARDINER.               I will help you, Madam,
Even to the utmost. All the church is grateful.
You have ousted the mock priest, repulpited
The shepherd of St. Peter, raised the rood again,
And brought us back the mass. I am all thanks
To God and to your Grace: yet I know well,
Your people, and I go with them so far,
Will brook nor Pope nor Spaniard here to play
The tyrant, or in commonwealth or church.

MARY (_showing the picture).
_Is this the face of one who plays the tyrant?
Peruse it; is it not goodly, ay, and gentle?

GARDINER. Madam, methinks a cold face and a haughty.
And when your Highness talks of Courtenay--
Ay, true--a goodly one. I would his life
Were half as goodly (_aside_).

MARY.               What is that you mutter?

GARDINER. Oh, Madam, take it bluntly; marry Philip,
And be stepmother of a score of sons!
The prince is known in Spain, in Flanders, ha!
For Philip--

MARY.       You offend us; you may leave us.
You see thro' warping glasses.

GARDINER.                      If your Majesty--

MARY. I have sworn upon the body and blood of Christ
I'll none but Philip.

GARDINER.             Hath your Grace so sworn?

MARY. Ay, Simon Renard knows it.

GARDINER.                        News to me!
It then remains for your poor Gardiner,
So you still care to trust him somewhat less
Than Simon Renard, to compose the event
In some such form as least may harm your Grace.

MARY. I'll have the scandal sounded to the mud.
I know it a scandal.

GARDINER. All my hope is now
It may be found a scandal.

MARY. You offend us.

GARDINER (_aside_).
These princes are like children, must be physick'd,
The bitter in the sweet. I have lost mine office,
It may be, thro' mine honesty, like a fool.
                                         [_Exit_.

    _Enter_ USHER.

MARY. Who waits?

USHER. The Ambassador from France, your Grace.

MARY (_sits down_).
Bid him come in. Good morning, Sir de Noailles.

                                      [_Exit_ USHER,

NOAILLES (_entering_).
A happy morning to your Majesty.

MARY. And I should some time have a happy morning;
I have had none yet. What says the King your master?

NOAILLES. Madam, my master hears with much alarm,
That you may marry Philip, Prince of Spain--
Foreseeing, with whate'er unwillingness,
That if this Philip be the titular king
Of England, and at war with him, your Grace
And kingdom will be suck'd into the war,
Ay, tho' you long for peace; wherefore, my master,
If but to prove your Majesty's goodwill,
Would fain have some fresh treaty drawn between you.

MARY. Why some fresh treaty? wherefore should I do it?
Sir, if we marry, we shall still maintain
All former treaties with his Majesty.
Our royal word for that! and your good master,
Pray God he do not be the first to break them,
Must be content with that; and so, farewell.

NOAILLES (_going, returns_).
I would your answer had been other, Madam,
For I foresee dark days.

MARY.                    And so do I, sir;
Your master works against me in the dark.
I do believe he holp Northumberland
Against me.

NOAILLES.   Nay, pure phantasy, your Grace.
Why should he move against you?

MARY.                           Will you hear why?
Mary of Scotland,--for I have not own'd
My sister, and I will not,--after me
Is heir of England; and my royal father,
To make the crown of Scotland one with ours,
Had mark'd her for my brother Edward's bride;
Ay, but your king stole her a babe from Scotland
In order to betroth her to your Dauphin.
See then:
Mary of Scotland, married to your Dauphin,
Would make our England, France;
Mary of England, joining hands with Spain,
Would be too strong for France.
Yea, were there issue born to her, Spain and we,
One crown, might rule the world. There lies your fear.
That is your drift. You play at hide and seek.
Show me your faces!

NOAILLES.           Madam, I am amazed:
French, I must needs wish all good things for France.
That must be pardon'd me; but I protest
Your Grace's policy hath a farther flight
Than mine into the future. We but seek
Some settled ground for peace to stand upon.

MARY. Well, we will leave all this, sir, to our council.
Have you seen Philip ever?

NOAILLES.                  Only once.

MARY. Is this like Philip?

NOAILLES.                  Ay, but nobler-looking.

MARY. Hath he the large ability of the Emperor?

NOAILLES. No, surely.

MARY. I can make allowance for thee,
Thou speakest of the enemy of thy king.

NOAILLES. Make no allowance for the naked truth.
He is every way a lesser man than Charles;
Stone-hard, ice-cold--no dash of daring in him.

MARY. If cold, his life is pure.

NOAILLES.                        Why (_smiling_), no, indeed.

MARY. Sayst thou?

NOAILLES.         A very wanton life indeed (_smiling_).

MARY. Your audience is concluded, sir.

                           [_Exit_ NOAILLES.

                                       You cannot
Learn a man's nature from his natural foe.

    _Enter_ USHER.

Who waits?

USHER.     The Ambassador of Spain, your Grace.
                                           [_Exit_.

    _Enter_ SIMON RENARD.

MARY (_rising to meet him_).
Thou art ever welcome, Simon Renard. Hast thou
Brought me the letter which thine Emperor promised
Long since, a formal offer of the hand Of Philip?

RENARD. Nay, your Grace, it hath not reach'd me.
I know not wherefore--some mischance of flood,
And broken bridge, or spavin'd horse, or wave
And wind at their old battle: he must have written.

MARY. But Philip never writes me one poor word.
Which in his absence had been all my wealth.
Strange in a wooer!

RENARD.             Yet I know the Prince,
So your king-parliament suffer him to land,
Yearns to set foot upon your island shore.

MARY. God change the pebble which his kingly foot
First presses into some more costly stone
Than ever blinded eye. I'll have one mark it
And bring it me. I'll have it burnish'd firelike;
I'll set it round with gold, with pearl, with diamond.
Let the great angel of the church come with him;
Stand on the deck and spread his wings for sail!
God lay the waves and strow the storms at sea,
And here at land among the people! O Renard,
I am much beset, I am almost in despair.
Paget is ours. Gardiner perchance is ours;
But for our heretic Parliament--

RENARD.                         O Madam,
You fly your thoughts like kites. My master, Charles,
Bad you go softly with your heretics here,
Until your throne had ceased to tremble. Then
Spit them like larks for aught I care. Besides,
When Henry broke the carcase of your church
To pieces, there were many wolves among you
Who dragg'd the scatter'd limbs into their den.
The Pope would have you make them render these;
So would your cousin, Cardinal Pole; ill counsel!
These let them keep at present; stir not yet
This matter of the Church lands. At his coming
Your star will rise.

MARY.                My star! a baleful one.
I see but the black night, and hear the wolf.
What star?

RENARD.    Your star will be your princely son,
Heir of this England and the Netherlands!
And if your wolf the while should howl for more,
We'll dust him from a bag of Spanish gold.
I do believe, I have dusted some already,
That, soon or late, your Parliament is ours.

MARY. Why do they talk so foully of your Prince,
Renard?

RENARD. The lot of Princes. To sit high
Is to be lied about.

MARY.                They call him cold,
Haughty, ay, worse.

RENARD.             Why, doubtless, Philip shows
Some of the bearing of your blue blood--still
All within measure--nay, it well becomes him.

MARY. Hath he the large ability of his father?

RENARD. Nay, some believe that he will go beyond him.

MARY. Is this like him?

RENARD.                 Ay, somewhat; but your Philip
Is the most princelike Prince beneath the sun.
This is a daub to Philip.

MARY.                     Of a pure life?

RENARD. As an angel among angels. Yea, by Heaven,
The text--Your Highness knows it, 'Whosoever
Looketh after a woman,' would not graze
The Prince of Spain. You are happy in him there,
Chaste as your Grace!

MARY.                 I am happy in him there.

RENARD. And would be altogether happy, Madam,
So that your sister were but look'd to closer.
You have sent her from the court, but then she goes,
I warrant, not to hear the nightingales,
But hatch you some new treason in the woods.

MARY. We have our spies abroad to catch her tripping,
And then if caught, to the Tower.

RENARD.                           The Tower! the block!
The word has turn'd your Highness pale; the thing
Was no such scarecrow in your father's time.
I have heard, the tongue yet quiver'd with the jest
When the head leapt--so common! I do think
To save your crown that it must come to this.

MARY. No, Renard; it must never come to this.

RENARD. Not yet; but your old Traitors of the Tower--
Why, when you put Northumberland to death,
The sentence having past upon them all,
Spared you the Duke of Suffolk, Guildford Dudley,
Ev'n that young girl who dared to wear your crown?

MARY. Dared? nay, not so; the child obey'd her father.
Spite of her tears her father forced it on her.

RENARD. Good Madam, when the Roman wish'd to reign,
He slew not him alone who wore the purple,
But his assessor in the throne, perchance
A child more innocent than Lady Jane.

MARY. I am English Queen, not Roman Emperor.

RENARD. Yet too much mercy is a want of mercy,
And wastes more life. Stamp out the fire, or this
Will smoulder and re-flame, and burn the throne
Where you should sit with Philip: he will not come
Till she be gone.

MARY.             Indeed, if that were true--
For Philip comes, one hand in mine, and one
Steadying the tremulous pillars of the Church--
But no, no, no. Farewell. I am somewhat faint
With our long talk. Tho' Queen, I am not Queen
Of mine own heart, which every now and then
Beats me half dead: yet stay, this golden chain--
My father on a birthday gave it me,
And I have broken with my father--take
And wear it as memorial of a morning
Which found me full of foolish doubts, and leaves me
As hopeful.

RENARD (_aside_). Whew--the folly of all follies
Is to be love-sick for a shadow. (_Aloud_) Madam,
This chains me to your service, not with gold,
But dearest links of love. Farewell, and trust me,
Philip is yours.
                    [_Exit_.

MARY.            Mine--but not yet all mine.

    _Enter_ USHER.

USHER. Your Council is in Session, please your Majesty.

MARY. Sir, let them sit. I must have time to breathe.
No, say I come. (_Exit_ USHER.) I won by boldness once.
The Emperor counsell'd me to fly to Flanders.
I would not; but a hundred miles I rode,
Sent out my letters, call'd my friends together,
Struck home and won.
And when the Council would not crown me--thought
To bind me first by oaths I could not keep,
And keep with Christ and conscience--was it boldness
Or weakness that won there? when I, their Queen,
Cast myself down upon my knees before them,
And those hard men brake into woman tears,
Ev'n Gardiner, all amazed, and in that passion
Gave me my Crown.

    _Enter_ ALICE.

                  Girl; hast thou ever heard
Slanders against Prince Philip in our Court?

ALICE. What slanders? I, your Grace; no, never.

MARY.                                           Nothing?

ALICE. Never, your Grace.

MARY. See that you neither hear them nor repeat!

ALICE (_aside_).
Good Lord! but I have heard a thousand such.
Ay, and repeated them as often--mum!
Why comes that old fox-Fleming back again?

    _Enter_ RENARD.

RENARD. Madam, I scarce had left your Grace's presence
Before I chanced upon the messenger
Who brings that letter which we waited for--
The formal offer of Prince Philip's hand.
It craves an instant answer, Ay or No.

MARY. An instant Ay or No! the Council sits.
Give it me quick.

ALICE (_stepping before her_).
                  Your Highness is all trembling.

MARY. Make way.    [_Exit into the Council Chamber_.

ALICE.          O, Master Renard, Master Renard,
If you have falsely painted your fine Prince;
Praised, where you should have blamed him, I pray God
No woman ever love you, Master Renard.
It breaks my heart to hear her moan at night
As tho' the nightmare never left her bed.

RENARD. My pretty maiden, tell me, did you ever
Sigh for a beard?

ALICE.            That's not a pretty question.

RENARD. Not prettily put? I mean, my pretty maiden,
A pretty man for such a pretty maiden.

ALICE. My Lord of Devon is a pretty man.
I hate him. Well, but if I have, what then?

RENARD. Then, pretty maiden, you should know that whether
A wind be warm or cold, it serves to fan
A kindled fire.

ALICE.          According to the song.

    His friends would praise him, I believed 'em,
      His foes would blame him, and I scorn'd 'em,
    His friends--as Angels I received 'em,
      His foes--the Devil had suborn'd 'em.

RENARD. Peace, pretty maiden.
I hear them stirring in the Council Chamber.
Lord Paget's 'Ay' is sure--who else? and yet,
They are all too much at odds to close at once
In one full-throated No! Her Highness comes.

    _Enter_ MARY.

ALICE. How deathly pale!--a chair, your Highness
                [_Bringing one to the_ QUEEN.

RENARD. Madam,
The Council?

MARY.        Ay! My Philip is all mine.

                  [_Sinks into chair, half fainting_.




ACT II


SCENE I.--ALINGTON CASTLE.


SIR THOMAS WYATT. I do not hear from Carew or the Duke
Of Suffolk, and till then I should not move.
The Duke hath gone to Leicester; Carew stirs
In Devon: that fine porcelain Courtenay,
Save that he fears he might be crack'd in using,
(I have known a semi-madman in my time
So fancy-ridd'n) should be in Devon too.

    _Enter_ WILLIAM.

News abroad, William?

WILLIAM. None so new, Sir Thomas, and none so old, Sir Thomas. No new
news that Philip comes to wed Mary, no old news that all men hate it.
Old Sir Thomas would have hated it. The bells are ringing at
Maidstone. Doesn't your worship hear?

WYATT. Ay, for the Saints are come to reign again.
Most like it is a Saint's-day. There's no call
As yet for me; so in this pause, before
The mine be fired, it were a pious work
To string my father's sonnets, left about
Like loosely-scatter'd jewels, in fair order,
And head them with a lamer rhyme of mine,
To grace his memory.

WILLIAM. Ay, why not, Sir Thomas? He was a fine courtier, he; Queen
Anne loved him. All the women loved him. I loved him, I was in Spain
with him. I couldn't eat in Spain, I couldn't sleep in Spain. I hate
Spain, Sir Thomas.

WYATT. But thou could'st drink in Spain if I remember.

WILLIAM. Sir Thomas, we may grant the wine. Old Sir Thomas always
granted the wine.

WYATT. Hand me the casket with my father's sonnets.

WILLIAM. Ay--sonnets--a fine courtier of the old Court, old Sir
Thomas.    [_Exit_.

WYATT. Courtier of many courts, he loved the more
His own gray towers, plain life and letter'd peace,
To read and rhyme in solitary fields,
The lark above, the nightingale below,
And answer them in song. The sire begets
Not half his likeness in the son. I fail
Where he was fullest: yet--to write it down.
                                    [_He writes_.

    _Re-enter_ WILLIAM.

WILLIAM. There _is_ news, there _is_ news, and no call for
sonnet-sorting now, nor for sonnet-making either, but ten thousand
men on Penenden Heath all calling after your worship, and your
worship's name heard into Maidstone market, and your worship the first
man in Kent and Christendom, for the Queen's down, and the world's up,
and your worship a-top of it.

WYATT. Inverted Aesop--mountain out of mouse.
Say for ten thousand ten--and pothouse knaves,
Brain-dizzied with a draught of morning ale.

    _Enter_ ANTONY KNYVETT.

WILLIAM. Here's Antony Knyvett.

KNYVETT. Look you, Master Wyatt,
Tear up that woman's work there.

WYATT.                           No; not these,
Dumb children of my father, that will speak
When I and thou and all rebellions lie
Dead bodies without voice. Song flies you know
For ages.

KNYVETT.  Tut, your sonnet's a flying ant,
Wing'd for a moment.

WYATT.               Well, for mine own work,
                                [_Tearing the paper_.
It lies there in six pieces at your feet;
For all that I can carry it in my head.

KNYVETT. If you can carry your head upon your shoulders.

WYATT. I fear you come to carry it off my shoulders,
And sonnet-making's safer.

KNYVETT.                   Why, good Lord,
Write you as many sonnets as you will.
Ay, but not now; what, have you eyes, ears, brains?
This Philip and the black-faced swarms of Spain,
The hardest, cruellest people in the world,
Come locusting upon us, eat us up,
Confiscate lands, goods, money--Wyatt, Wyatt,
Wake, or the stout old island will become
A rotten limb of Spain. They roar for you
On Penenden Heath, a thousand of them--more--
All arm'd, waiting a leader; there's no glory
Like his who saves his country: and you sit
Sing-songing here; but, if I'm any judge,
By God, you are as poor a poet, Wyatt,
As a good soldier.

WYATT.             You as poor a critic
As an honest friend: you stroke me on one cheek,
Buffet the other. Come, you bluster, Antony!
You know I know all this. I must not move
Until I hear from Carew and the Duke.
I fear the mine is fired before the time.

KNYVETT (_showing a paper_).
But here's some Hebrew. Faith, I half forgot it.
Look; can you make it English? A strange youth
Suddenly thrust it on me, whisper'd, 'Wyatt,'
And whisking round a corner, show'd his back
Before I read his face.

WYATT.                  Ha! Courtenay's cipher.    [_Reads_.
'Sir Peter Carew fled to France: it is thought the Duke will be taken.
I am with you still; but, for appearance sake, stay with the Queen.
Gardiner knows, but the Council are all at odds, and the Queen hath no
force for resistance. Move, if you move, at once.'

Is Peter Carew fled? Is the Duke taken?
Down scabbard, and out sword! and let Rebellion
Roar till throne rock, and crown fall. No; not that;
But we will teach Queen Mary how to reign.
Who are those that shout below there?

KNYVETT. Why, some fifty
That follow'd me from Penenden Heath in hope
To hear you speak.

WYATT.             Open the window, Knyvett;
The mine is fired, and I will speak to them.

Men of Kent; England of England; you that have kept your old customs
upright, while all the rest of England bow'd theirs to the Norman, the
cause that hath brought us together is not the cause of a county or a
shire, but of this England, in whose crown our Kent is the fairest
jewel. Philip shall not wed Mary; and ye have called me to be your
leader. I know Spain. I have been there with my father; I have seen
them in their own land; have marked the haughtiness of their nobles;
the cruelty of their priests. If this man marry our Queen, however
the Council and the Commons may fence round his power with restriction,
he will be King, King of England, my masters; and the Queen, and the
laws, and the people, his slaves. What? shall we have Spain on the
throne and in the parliament; Spain in the pulpit and on the law-bench;
Spain in all the great offices of state; Spain in our ships, in our
forts, in our houses, in our beds?

CROWD. No! no! no Spain!

WILLIAM. No Spain in our beds--that were worse than all. I have been
there with old Sir Thomas, and the beds I know. I hate Spain.

A PEASANT. But, Sir Thomas, must we levy war against the Queen's
Grace?

WYATT. No, my friend; war _for_ the Queen's Grace--to save her from
herself and Philip--war against Spain. And think not we shall be
alone--thousands  will flock to us. The Council, the Court itself, is
on our side. The Lord Chancellor himself is on our side. The King of
France is with us; the King of Denmark is with us; the world is with
us--war  against Spain! And if we move not now, yet it will be known
that we have moved; and if Philip come to be King, O, my God! the
rope, the rack, the thumbscrew, the stake, the fire. If we move not
now, Spain moves, bribes our nobles with her gold, and creeps, creeps
snake-like about our legs till we cannot move at all; and ye know, my
masters, that wherever Spain hath ruled she hath wither'd all beneath
her. Look at the New World--a paradise made hell; the red man, that
good helpless creature, starved, maim'd, flogg'd, flay'd, burn'd,
boil'd, buried alive, worried by dogs; and here, nearer home, the
Netherlands, Sicily, Naples, Lombardy. I say no more--only this, their
lot is yours. Forward to London with me! forward to London! If ye love
your liberties or your skins, forward to London!

CROWD. Forward to London! A Wyatt! a Wyatt!

WYATT. But first to Rochester, to take the guns
From out the vessels lying in the river.
Then on.

A PEASANT. Ay, but I fear we be too few, Sir Thomas.

WYATT. Not many yet. The world as yet, my friend,
Is not half-waked; but every parish tower
Shall clang and clash alarum as we pass,
And pour along the land, and swoll'n and fed
With indraughts and side-currents, in full force
Roll upon London.

CROWD.            A Wyatt! a Wyatt! Forward!

KNYVETT. Wyatt, shall we proclaim Elizabeth?

WYATT. I'll think upon it, Knyvett.

KNYVETT.                            Or Lady Jane?

WYATT. No, poor soul; no.
Ah, gray old castle of Alington, green field
Beside the brimming Medway, it may chance
That I shall never look upon you more.

KNYVETT. Come, now, you're sonnetting again.

WYATT.                                       Not I.
I'll have my head set higher in the state;
Or--if the Lord God will it--on the stake.

                                     [_Exeunt_.



SCENE II.--GUILDHALL.

SIR THOMAS WHITE (The Lord Mayor), LORD WILLIAM HOWARD, SIR RALPH
BAGENHALL, ALDERMEN _and_ CITIZENS.


WHITE. I trust the Queen comes hither with her guards.

HOWARD. Ay, all in arms.

        [_Several of the citizens move hastily out of the hall_.

                         Why do they hurry out there?

WHITE. My Lord, cut out the rotten from your apple,
Your apple eats the better. Let them go.
They go like those old Pharisees in John
Convicted by their conscience, arrant cowards,
Or tamperers with that treason out of Kent.
When will her Grace be here?

HOWARD.                      In some few minutes.
She will address your guilds and companies.
I have striven in vain to raise a man for her.
But help her in this exigency, make
Your city loyal, and be the mightiest man
This day in England.

WHITE.               I am Thomas White.
Few things have fail'd to which I set my will.
I do my most and best.

HOWARD.                You know that after
The Captain Brett, who went with your train bands
To fight with Wyatt, had gone over to him
With all his men, the Queen in that distress
Sent Cornwallis and Hastings to the traitor,
Feigning to treat with him about her marriage--
Know too what Wyatt said.

WHITE.                    He'd sooner be,
While this same marriage question was being argued,
Trusted than trust--the scoundrel--and demanded
Possession of her person and the Tower.

HOWARD. And four of her poor Council too, my Lord,
As hostages.

WHITE.       I know it. What do and say
Your Council at this hour?

HOWARD.                    I will trust you.
We fling ourselves on you, my Lord. The Council,
The Parliament as well, are troubled waters;
And yet like waters of the fen they know not
Which way to flow. All hangs on her address,
And upon you, Lord Mayor.

WHITE.                    How look'd the city
When now you past it? Quiet?

HOWARD.                      Like our Council,
Your city is divided. As we past,
Some hail'd, some hiss'd us. There were citizens
Stood each before his shut-up booth, and look'd
As grim and grave as from a funeral.
And here a knot of ruffians all in rags,
With execrating execrable eyes,
Glared at the citizen. Here was a young mother,
Her face on flame, her red hair all blown back,
She shrilling 'Wyatt,' while the boy she held
Mimick'd and piped her 'Wyatt,' as red as she
In hair and cheek; and almost elbowing her,
So close they stood, another, mute as death,
And white as her own milk; her babe in arms
Had felt the faltering of his mother's heart,
And look'd as bloodless. Here a pious Catholic,
Mumbling and mixing up in his scared prayers
Heaven and earth's Maries; over his bow'd shoulder
Scowl'd that world-hated and world-hating beast,
A haggard Anabaptist. Many such groups.
The names of Wyatt, Elizabeth, Courtenay,
Nay the Queen's right to reign--'fore God, the rogues--
Were freely buzzed among them. So I say
Your city is divided, and I fear
One scruple, this or that way, of success
Would turn it thither. Wherefore now the Queen
In this low pulse and palsy of the state,
Bad me to tell you that she counts on you
And on myself as her two hands; on you,
In your own city, as her right, my Lord,
For you are loyal.

WHITE.             Am I Thomas White?
One word before she comes. Elizabeth--
Her name is much abused among these traitors.
Where is she? She is loved by all of us.
I scarce have heart to mingle in this matter,
If she should be mishandled.

HOWARD.                      No; she shall not.
The Queen had written her word to come to court:
Methought I smelt out Renard in the letter,
And fearing for her, sent a secret missive,
Which told her to be sick. Happily or not,
It found her sick indeed.

WHITE.                    God send her well;
Here comes her Royal Grace.

    _Enter_ GUARDS, MARY _and_ GARDINER. SIR THOMAS
    WHITE _leads her to a raised seat on the dais_.

WHITE. I, the Lord Mayor, and these our companies
And guilds of London, gathered here, beseech
Your Highness to accept our lowliest thanks
For your most princely presence; and we pray
That we, your true and loyal citizens,
From your own royal lips, at once may know
The wherefore of this coming, and so learn
Your royal will, and do it.--I, Lord Mayor
Of London, and our guilds and companies.

MARY. In mine own person am I come to you,
To tell you what indeed ye see and know,
How traitorously these rebels out of Kent
Have made strong head against ourselves and you.
They would not have me wed the Prince of Spain:
That was their pretext--so they spake at first--
But we sent divers of our Council to them,
And by their answers to the question ask'd,
It doth appear this marriage is the least
Of all their quarrel.
They have betrayed the treason of their hearts:
Seek to possess our person, hold our Tower,
Place and displace our councillors, and use
Both us and them according as they will.
Now what I am ye know right well--your Queen;
To whom, when I was wedded to the realm
And the realm's laws (the spousal ring whereof,
Not ever to be laid aside, I wear
Upon this finger), ye did promise full
Allegiance and obedience to the death.
Ye know my father was the rightful heir
Of England, and his right came down to me
Corroborate by your acts of Parliament:
And as ye were most loving unto him,
So doubtless will ye show yourselves to me.
Wherefore, ye will not brook that anyone
Should seize our person, occupy our state,
More specially a traitor so presumptuous
As this same Wyatt, who hath tamper'd with
A public ignorance, and, under colour
Of such a cause as hath no colour, seeks
To bend the laws to his own will, and yield
Full scope to persons rascal and forlorn,
To make free spoil and havock of your goods.
Now as your Prince, I say,
I, that was never mother, cannot tell
How mothers love their children; yet, methinks,
A prince as naturally may love his people
As these their children; and be sure your Queen
So loves you, and so loving, needs must deem
This love by you return'd as heartily;
And thro' this common knot and bond of love,
Doubt not they will be speedily overthrown.
As to this marriage, ye shall understand
We made thereto no treaty of ourselves,
And set no foot theretoward unadvised
Of all our Privy Council; furthermore,
This marriage had the assent of those to whom
The king, my father, did commit his trust;
Who not alone esteem'd it honourable,
But for the wealth and glory of our realm,
And all our loving subjects, most expedient.
As to myself,
I am not so set on wedlock as to choose
But where I list, nor yet so amorous
That I must needs be husbanded; I thank God,
I have lived a virgin, and I noway doubt
But that with God's grace, I can live so still.
Yet if it might please God that I should leave
Some fruit of mine own body after me,
To be your king, ye would rejoice thereat,
And it would be your comfort, as I trust;
And truly, if I either thought or knew
This marriage should bring loss or danger to you,
My subjects, or impair in any way
This royal state of England, I would never
Consent thereto, nor marry while I live;
Moreover, if this marriage should not seem,
Before our own High Court of Parliament,
To be of rich advantage to our realm,
We will refrain, and not alone from this,
Likewise from any other, out of which
Looms the least chance of peril to our realm.
Wherefore be bold, and with your lawful Prince
Stand fast against our enemies and yours,
And fear them not. I fear them not. My Lord,
I leave Lord William Howard in your city,
To guard and keep you whole and safe from all
The spoil and sackage aim'd at by these rebels,
Who mouth and foam against the Prince of Spain.

VOICES. Long live Queen Mary!
                              Down with Wyatt!
                                               The Queen!

WHITE. Three voices from our guilds and companies!
You are shy and proud like Englishmen, my masters,
And will not trust your voices. Understand:
Your lawful Prince hath come to cast herself
On loyal hearts and bosoms, hoped to fall
Into the wide-spread arms of fealty,
And finds you statues. Speak at once--and all!
For whom?
Our sovereign Lady by King Harry's will;
The Queen of England--or the Kentish Squire?
I know you loyal. Speak! in the name of God!
The Queen of England or the rabble of Kent?
The reeking dungfork master of the mace!
Your havings wasted by the scythe and spade--
Your rights and charters hobnail'd into slush--
Your houses fired--your gutters bubbling blood--

ACCLAMATION. No! No! The Queen! the Queen!

WHITE.                                     Your Highness hears
This burst and bass of loyal harmony,
And how we each and all of us abhor
The venomous, bestial, devilish revolt
Of Thomas Wyatt. Hear us now make oath
To raise your Highness thirty thousand men,
And arm and strike as with one hand, and brush
This Wyatt from our shoulders, like a flea
That might have leapt upon us unawares.
Swear with me, noble fellow-citizens, all,
With all your trades, and guilds, and companies.

CITIZENS. We swear!

MARY. We thank your Lordship and your loyal city.
                                  [_Exit_ MARY _attended_.

WHITE. I trust this day, thro' God, I have saved the crown.

FIRST ALDERMAN. Ay, so my Lord of Pembroke in command
Of all her force be safe; but there are doubts.

SECOND ALDERMAN. I hear that Gardiner, coming with the Queen,
And meeting Pembroke, bent to his saddle-bow,
As if to win the man by flattering him.
_Is_ he so safe to fight upon her side?

FIRST ALDERMAN. If not, there's no man safe.

WHITE.                                       Yes, Thomas White.
I am safe enough; no man need flatter me.

SECOND ALDERMAN. Nay, no man need; but did you mark our Queen?
The colour freely play'd into her face,
And the half sight which makes her look so stern,
Seem'd thro' that dim dilated world of hers,
To read our faces; I have never seen her
So queenly or so goodly.

WHITE.                   Courage, sir,
_That_ makes or man or woman look their goodliest.
Die like the torn fox dumb, but never whine
Like that poor heart, Northumberland, at the block.

BAGENHALL. The man had children, and he whined for those.
Methinks most men are but poor-hearted, else
Should we so doat on courage, were it commoner?
The Queen stands up, and speaks for her own self;
And all men cry, She is queenly, she is goodly.
Yet she's no goodlier; tho' my Lord Mayor here,
By his own rule, he hath been so bold to-day,
Should look more goodly than the rest of us.

WHITE. Goodly? I feel most goodly heart and hand,
And strong to throw ten Wyatts and all Kent.
Ha! ha! sir; but you jest; I love it: a jest
In time of danger shows the pulses even.
Be merry! yet, Sir Ralph, you look but sad.
I dare avouch you'd stand up for yourself,
Tho' all the world should bay like winter wolves.

BAGENHALL. Who knows? the man is proven by the hour.

WHITE. The man should make the hour, not this the man;
And Thomas White will prove this Thomas Wyatt,
And he will prove an Iden to this Cade,
And he will play the Walworth to this Wat;
Come, sirs, we prate; hence all--gather your men--
Myself must bustle. Wyatt comes to Southwark;
I'll have the drawbridge hewn into the Thames,
And see the citizens arm'd. Good day; good day.
                                       [_Exit_ WHITE.

BAGENHALL. One of much outdoor bluster.

HOWARD.                                 For all that,
Most honest, brave, and skilful; and his wealth
A fountain of perennial alms--his fault
So thoroughly to believe in his own self.

BAGENHALL. Yet thoroughly to believe in one's own self,
So one's own self be thorough, were to do
Great things, my Lord.

HOWARD.                It may be.

BAGENHALL.                        I have heard
One of your Council fleer and jeer at him.

HOWARD. The nursery-cocker'd child will jeer at aught
That may seem strange beyond his nursery.
The statesman that shall jeer and fleer at men,
Makes enemies for himself and for his king;
And if he jeer not seeing the true man
Behind his folly, he is thrice the fool;
And if he see the man and still will jeer,
He is child and fool, and traitor to the State.
Who is he? let me shun him.

BAGENHALL.                    Nay, my Lord,
He is damn'd enough already.

HOWARD.                      I must set
The guard at Ludgate. Fare you well, Sir Ralph.

BAGENHALL. 'Who knows?' I am for England. But who knows,
That knows the Queen, the Spaniard, and the Pope,
Whether I be for Wyatt, or the Queen?

                                [_Exeunt_.



SCENE III.--LONDON BRIDGE.


    _Enter_ SIR THOMAS WYATT _and_ BRETT.

WYATT. Brett, when the Duke of Norfolk moved against us
Thou cried'st 'A Wyatt!' and flying to our side
Left his all bare, for which I love thee, Brett.
Have for thine asking aught that I can give,
For thro' thine help we are come to London Bridge;
But how to cross it balks me. I fear we cannot.

BRETT. Nay, hardly, save by boat, swimming, or wings.

WYATT. Last night I climb'd into the gate-house, Brett,
And scared the gray old porter and his wife.
And then I crept along the gloom and saw
They had hewn the drawbridge down into the river.
It roll'd as black as death; and that same tide
Which, coming with our coming, seem'd to smile
And sparkle like our fortune as thou saidest,
Ran sunless down, and moan'd against the piers.
But o'er the chasm I saw Lord William Howard
By torchlight, and his guard; four guns gaped at me,
Black, silent mouths: had Howard spied me there
And made them speak, as well he might have done,
Their voice had left me none to tell you this.
What shall we do?

BRETT.            On somehow. To go back
Were to lose all.

WYATT.            On over London Bridge
We cannot: stay we cannot; there is ordnance
On the White Tower and on the Devil's Tower,
And pointed full at Southwark; we must round
By Kingston Bridge.

BRETT.              Ten miles about.

WYATT.                               Ev'n so.
But I have notice from our partisans
Within the city that they will stand by us
If Ludgate can be reach'd by dawn to-morrow.

    _Enter one of_ WYATT'S MEN.

MAN. Sir Thomas, I've found this paper; pray
your worship read it; I know not my letters; the old
priests taught me nothing.

WYATT (_reads_). 'Whosoever will apprehend the traitor Thomas Wyatt
shall have a hundred pounds for reward.'

MAN. Is that it? That's a big lot of money.

WYATT. Ay, ay, my friend; not read it? 'tis not written
Half plain enough. Give me a piece of paper!
                                 [_Writes 'THOMAS WYATT' large_.
There, any man can read that.    [_Sticks it in his cap_.

BRETT. But that's foolhardy.

WYATT. No! boldness, which will give my followers boldness.

    _Enter_ MAN _with a prisoner_.

MAN. We found him, your worship, a plundering o' Bishop Winchester's
house; he says he's a poor gentleman.

WYATT. Gentleman! a thief! Go hang him. Shall we make
Those that we come to serve our sharpest foes?

BRETT. Sir Thomas--

WYATT.             Hang him, I say.

BRETT. Wyatt, but now you promised me a boon.

WYATT. Ay, and I warrant this fine fellow's life.

BRETT. Ev'n so; he was my neighbour once in Kent.
He's poor enough, has drunk and gambled out
All that he had, and gentleman he was.
We have been glad together; let him live.

WYATT. He has gambled for his life, and lost, he hangs.
No, no, my word's my word. Take thy poor gentleman!
Gamble thyself at once out of my sight,
Or I will dig thee with my dagger. Away!
Women and children!

    _Enter a Crowd of_ WOMEN _and_ CHILDREN.

FIRST WOMAN. O Sir Thomas, Sir Thomas, pray you go away, Sir Thomas,
or you'll make the White Tower a black 'un for us this blessed day.
He'll be the death on us; and you'll set the Divil's Tower a-spitting,
and he'll smash all our bits o' things worse than Philip o' Spain.

SECOND WOMAN. Don't ye now go to think that we be for Philip o' Spain.

THIRD WOMAN. No, we know that ye be come to kill the Queen, and we'll
pray for you all on our bended knees. But o' God's mercy don't ye kill
the Queen here, Sir Thomas; look ye, here's little Dickon, and little
Robin, and little Jenny--though she's but a side-cousin--and all on
our knees, we pray you to kill the Queen further off, Sir Thomas.

WYATT. My friends, I have not come to kill the Queen
Or here or there: I come to save you all,
And I'll go further off.

CROWD. Thanks, Sir Thomas, we be beholden to you, and we'll pray for
you on our bended knees till our lives' end.

WYATT. Be happy, I am your friend. To Kingston, forward!

                                      [_Exeunt_.



SCENE IV.--ROOM IN THE GATEHOUSE OF WESTMINSTER PALACE.

MARY, ALICE, GARDINER, RENARD, LADIES.


GARDINER. Their cry is, Philip never shall be king.

MARY. Lord Pembroke in command of all our force
Will front their cry and shatter them into dust.

ALICE. Was not Lord Pembroke with Northumberland?
O madam, if this Pembroke should be false?

MARY. No, girl; most brave and loyal, brave and loyal.
His breaking with Northumberland broke Northumberland.
At the park gate he hovers with our guards.
These Kentish ploughmen cannot break the guards.

    _Enter_ MESSENGER.

MESSENGER. Wyatt, your Grace, hath broken thro' the guards
And gone to Ludgate.

GARDINER.            Madam, I much fear
That all is lost; but we can save your Grace.
The river still is free. I do beseech you,
There yet is time, take boat and pass to Windsor.

MARY. I pass to Windsor and I lose my crown.

GARDINER. Pass, then, I pray your Highness, to the Tower.

MARY. I shall but be their prisoner in the Tower.

CRIES _without_. The traitor! treason! Pembroke!

LADIES.                                          Treason! treason!

MARY. Peace.
False to Northumberland, is he false to me?
Bear witness, Renard, that I live and die
The true and faithful bride of Philip--A sound
Of feet and voices thickening hither--blows--
Hark, there is battle at the palace gates,
And I will out upon the gallery.

LADIES. No, no, your Grace; see there the arrows flying.

MARY. I am Harry's daughter, Tudor, and not fear.
                                  [_Goes out on the gallery_.
The guards are all driven in, skulk into corners
Like rabbits to their holes. A gracious guard
Truly; shame on them! they have shut the gates!

    _Enter_ SIR ROBERT SOUTHWELL.

SOUTHWELL. The porter, please your Grace, hath shut the gates
On friend and foe. Your gentlemen-at-arms,
If this be not your Grace's order, cry
To have the gates set wide again, and they
With their good battleaxes will do you right
Against all traitors.

MARY. They are the flower of England; set the gates wide.

                                          [_Exit_ SOUTHWELL.

    _Enter_ COURTENAY.

COURTENAY. All lost, all lost, all yielded! A barge, a barge!
The Queen must to the Tower.

MARY.                        Whence come you, sir?

COURTENAY. From Charing Cross; the rebels broke us there,
And I sped hither with what haste I might
To save my royal cousin.

MARY.                    Where is Pembroke?

COURTENAY. I left him somewhere in the thick of it.

MARY. Left him and fled; and thou that would'st be King,
And hast nor heart nor honour. I myself
Will down into the battle and there bide
The upshot of my quarrel, or die with those
That are no cowards and no Courtenays.

COURTENAY. I do not love your Grace should call me coward.

    _Enter another_ MESSENGER.

MESSENGER. Over, your Grace, all crush'd; the brave Lord William
Thrust him from Ludgate, and the traitor flying
To Temple Bar, there by Sir Maurice Berkeley
Was taken prisoner.

MARY.               To the Tower with _him_!

MESSENGER. 'Tis said he told Sir Maurice there was one
Cognisant of this, and party thereunto,
My Lord of Devon.

MARY.             To the Tower with _him_!

COURTENAY. O la, the Tower, the Tower, always the Tower,
I shall grow into it--I shall be the Tower.

MARY. Your Lordship may not have so long to wait. Remove him!

COURTENAY. La, to whistle out my life,
And carve my coat upon the walls again!
                             [_Exit_ COURTENAY _guarded_.

MESSENGER. Also this Wyatt did confess the Princess
Cognisant thereof, and party thereunto.

MARY. What? whom--whom did you say?

MESSENGER.                          Elizabeth,
Your Royal sister.

MARY.              To the Tower with _her_!
My foes are at my feet and I am Queen.

              [GARDINER _and her_ LADIES _kneel to her_.

GARDINER (_rising_).
There let them lie, your foot-stool! (_Aside_.) Can I strike
Elizabeth?--not now and save the life
Of Devon: if I save him, he and his
Are bound to me--may strike hereafter. (_Aloud_.) Madam,
What Wyatt said, or what they said he said,
Cries of the moment and the street--

MARY. He said it.

GARDINER. Your courts of justice will determine that.

RENARD (_advancing_).
I trust by this your Highness will allow
Some spice of wisdom in my telling you,
When last we talk'd, that Philip would not come
Till Guildford Dudley and the Duke of Suffolk,
And Lady Jane had left us.

MARY.                      They shall die.

RENARD. And your so loving sister?

MARY.                              She shall die.
My foes are at my feet, and Philip King.

                                    [_Exeunt_.




ACT III.



SCENE I.--THE CONDUIT IN GRACECHURCH,

_Painted with the Nine Worthies, among them King Henry VIII. holding a
book, on it inscribed_ 'Verbum Dei'.


    _Enter_ SIR RALPH BAGENHALL _and_ SIR THOMAS STAFFORD.

BAGENHALL. A hundred here and hundreds hang'd in Kent.
The tigress had unsheath'd her nails at last,
And Renard and the Chancellor sharpen'd them.
In every London street a gibbet stood.
They are down to-day. Here by this house was one;
The traitor husband dangled at the door,
And when the traitor wife came out for bread
To still the petty treason therewithin,
Her cap would brush his heels.

STAFFORD.                      It is Sir Ralph,
And muttering to himself as heretofore.
Sir, see you aught up yonder?

BAGENHALL.                    I miss something.
The tree that only bears dead fruit is gone.

STAFFORD. What tree, sir?

BAGENHALL.                Well, the tree in Virgil, sir,
That bears not its own apples.

STAFFORD.                      What! the gallows?

BAGENHALL. Sir, this dead fruit was ripening overmuch,
And had to be removed lest living Spain
Should sicken at dead England.

STAFFORD.                      Not so dead,
But that a shock may rouse her.

BAGENHALL.                      I believe
Sir Thomas Stafford?

STAFFORD.            I am ill disguised.

BAGENHALL. Well, are you not in peril here?

STAFFORD.                                   I think so.
I came to feel the pulse of England, whether
It beats hard at this marriage. Did you see it?

BAGENHALL. Stafford, I am a sad man and a serious.
Far liefer had I in my country hall
Been reading some old book, with mine old hound
Couch'd at my hearth, and mine old flask of wine
Beside me, than have seen it: yet I saw it.

STAFFORD. Good, was it splendid?

BAGENHALL.                       Ay, if Dukes, and Earls,
And Counts, and sixty Spanish cavaliers,
Some six or seven Bishops, diamonds, pearls,
That royal commonplace too, cloth of gold,
Could make it so.

STAFFORD.         And what was Mary's dress?

BAGENHALL. Good faith, I was too sorry for the woman
To mark the dress. She wore red shoes!

STAFFORD.                              Red shoes!

BAGENHALL. Scarlet, as if her feet were wash'd in blood,
As if she had waded in it.

STAFFORD.                  Were your eyes
So bashful that you look'd no higher?

BAGENHALL.                            A diamond,
And Philip's gift, as proof of Philip's love,
Who hath not any for any,--tho' a true one,
Blazed false upon her heart.

STAFFORD.                    But this proud Prince--

BAGENHALL. Nay, he is King, you know, the King of Naples.
The father ceded Naples, that the son
Being a King, might wed a Queen--O he
Flamed in brocade--white satin his trunk-hose,
Inwrought with silver,--on his neck a collar,
Gold, thick with diamonds; hanging down from this
The Golden Fleece--and round his knee, misplaced,
Our English Garter, studded with great emeralds,
Rubies, I know not what. Have you had enough
Of all this gear?

STAFFORD. Ay, since you hate the telling it.
How look'd the Queen?

BAGENHALL.            No fairer for her jewels.
And I could see that as the new-made couple
Came from the Minster, moving side by side
Beneath one canopy, ever and anon
She cast on him a vassal smile of love,
Which Philip with a glance of some distaste,
Or so methought, return'd. I may be wrong, sir.
This marriage will not hold.

STAFFORD.                    I think with you.
The King of France will help to break it.

BAGENHALL.                                France!
We have once had half of France, and hurl'd our battles
Into the heart of Spain; but England now
Is but a ball chuck'd between France and Spain,
His in whose hand she drops; Harry of Bolingbroke
Had holpen Richard's tottering throne to stand,
Could Harry have foreseen that all our nobles
Would perish on the civil slaughter-field,
And leave the people naked to the crown,
And the crown naked to the people; the crown
Female, too! Sir, no woman's regimen
Can save us. We are fallen, and as I think,
Never to rise again.

STAFFORD.            You are too black-blooded.
I'd make a move myself to hinder that:
I know some lusty fellows there in France.

BAGENHALL. You would but make us weaker, Thomas Stafford.
Wyatt was a good soldier, yet he fail'd,
And strengthen'd Philip.

STAFFORD.                Did not his last breath
Clear Courtenay and the Princess from the charge
Of being his co-rebels?

BAGENHALL.              Ay, but then
What such a one as Wyatt says is nothing:
We have no men among us. The new Lords
Are quieted with their sop of Abbeylands,
And ev'n before the Queen's face Gardiner buys them
With Philip's gold. All greed, no faith, no courage!
Why, ev'n the haughty prince, Northumberland,
The leader of our Reformation, knelt
And blubber'd like a lad, and on the scaffold
Recanted, and resold himself to Rome.

STAFFORD. I swear you do your country wrong, Sir Ralph.
I know a set of exiles over there,
Dare-devils, that would eat fire and spit it out
At Philip's beard: they pillage Spain already.
The French King winks at it. An hour will come
When they will sweep her from the seas. No men?
Did not Lord Suffolk die like a true man?
Is not Lord William Howard a true man?
Yea, you yourself, altho' you are black-blooded:
And I, by God, believe myself a man.
Ay, even in the church there is a man--
Cranmer.
Fly would he not, when all men bad him fly.
And what a letter he wrote against the Pope!
There's a brave man, if any.

BAGENHALL.                   Ay; if it hold.

CROWD (_coming on_).
God save their Graces!

STAFFORD.              Bagenhall, I see
The Tudor green and white. (_Trumpets_.) They are coming now.
And here's a crowd as thick as herring-shoals.

BAGENHALL. Be limpets to this pillar, or we are torn
Down the strong wave of brawlers.

CROWD. God save their Graces!

        [_Procession of Trumpeters, Javelin-men, etc.; then
        Spanish and Flemish Nobles intermingled_.

STAFFORD. Worth seeing, Bagenhall! These black dog-Dons
Garb themselves bravely. Who's the long-face there,
Looks very Spain of very Spain?

BAGENHALL.                      The Duke
Of Alva, an iron soldier.

STAFFORD.                 And the Dutchman,
Now laughing at some jest?

BAGENHALL.                 William of Orange,
William the Silent.

STAFFORD.           Why do they call him so?

BAGENHALL. He keeps, they say, some secret that may cost
Philip his life.

STAFFORD.        But then he looks so merry.

BAGENHALL. I cannot tell you why they call him so.

    [_The_ KING _and_ QUEEN _pass, attended by Peers of
    the Realm, Officers of State, etc. Cannon shot off_.

CROWD. Philip and Mary, Philip and Mary!
Long live the King and Queen, Philip and Mary!

STAFFORD. They smile as if content with one another.

BAGENHALL. A smile abroad is oft a scowl at home.

                  [KING _and_ QUEEN _pass on. Procession_.

FIRST CITIZEN. I thought this Philip had been one of those black
devils of Spain, but he hath a yellow beard.

SECOND CITIZEN. Not red like Iscariot's.

FIRST CITIZEN. Like a carrot's, as thou say'st, and English carrot's
better than Spanish licorice; but I thought he was a beast.

THIRD CITIZEN. Certain I had heard that every Spaniard carries a tail
like a devil under his trunk-hose.

TAILOR. Ay, but see what trunk-hoses! Lord! they be fine; I never
stitch'd none such. They make amends for the tails.

FOURTH CITIZEN. Tut! every Spanish priest will tell you that all
English heretics have tails.

FIFTH CITIZEN. Death and the Devil--if he find I have one--

FOURTH CITIZEN. Lo! thou hast call'd them up! here they come--a pale
horse for Death and Gardiner for the Devil.

    _Enter_ GARDINER _(turning back from the procession)_.

GARDINER. Knave, wilt thou wear thy cap before the Queen?

MAN. My Lord, I stand so squeezed among the crowd
I cannot lift my hands unto my head.

GARDINER. Knock off his cap there, some of you about him!
See there be others that can use their hands.
Thou art one of Wyatt's men?

MAN.                         No, my Lord, no.

GARDINER. Thy name, thou knave?

MAN.                            I am nobody, my Lord.

GARDINER (_shouting_).
God's passion! knave, thy name?

MAN.                            I have ears to hear.

GARDINER. Ay, rascal, if I leave thee ears to hear.
Find out his name and bring it me (_to_ ATTENDANT).

ATTENDANT.                        Ay, my Lord.

GARDINER. Knave, thou shalt lose thine ears and find thy tongue,
And shalt be thankful if I leave thee that.
                         [_Coming before the Conduit_.
The conduit painted--the nine worthies--ay!
But then what's here? King Harry with a scroll.
Ha--Verbum Dei--verbum--word of God!
God's passion! do you know the knave that painted it?

ATTENDANT. I do, my Lord.

GARDINER.                 Tell him to paint it out,
And put some fresh device in lieu of it--
A pair of gloves, a pair of gloves, sir; ha?
There is no heresy there.

ATTENDANT.                I will, my Lord;
The man shall paint a pair of gloves. I am sure
(Knowing the man) he wrought it ignorantly,
And not from any malice.

GARDINER.                Word of God
In English! over this the brainless loons
That cannot spell Esaias from St. Paul,
Make themselves drunk and mad, fly out and flare
Into rebellions. I'll have their bibles burnt.
The bible is the priest's. Ay! fellow, what!
Stand staring at me! shout, you gaping rogue!

MAN. I have, my Lord, shouted till I am hoarse.

GARDINER. What hast thou shouted, knave?

MAN.                                     Long live Queen Mary!

GARDINER. Knave, there be two. There be both King and Queen,
Philip and Mary. Shout!

MAN.                    Nay, but, my Lord,
The Queen comes first, Mary and Philip.

GARDINER.                               Shout, then,
Mary and Philip!

MAN.             Mary and Philip!

GARDINER.                         Now,
Thou hast shouted for thy pleasure, shout for mine!
Philip and Mary!

MAN.             Must it be so, my Lord?

GARDINER. Ay, knave.

MAN.                 Philip and Mary!

GARDINER.                             I distrust thee.
Thine is a half voice and a lean assent.
What is thy name?

MAN.              Sanders.

GARDINER.                  What else?

MAN.                                  Zerubbabel.

GARDINER. Where dost thou live?

MAN.                            In Cornhill.

GARDINER.                                    Where, knave, where?

MAN. Sign of the Talbot.

GARDINER.                Come to me to-morrow.--
Rascal!--this land is like a hill of fire,
One crater opens when another shuts.
But so I get the laws against the heretic,
Spite of Lord Paget and Lord William Howard,
And others of our Parliament, revived,
I will show fire on my side--stake and fire--
Sharp work and short. The knaves are easily cow'd.
Follow their Majesties.
                           [_Exit. The crowd following_.

BAGENHALL.              As proud as Becket.

STAFFORD. You would not have him murder'd as Becket was?

BAGENHALL. No--murder fathers murder: but I say
There is no man--there was one woman with us--
It was a sin to love her married, dead
I cannot choose but love her.

STAFFORD.                     Lady Jane?

CROWD (_going off_).
God save their Graces!

STAFFORD.              Did you see her die?

BAGENHALL. No, no; her innocent blood had blinded me.
You call me too black-blooded--true enough
Her dark dead blood is in my heart with mine.
If ever I cry out against the Pope
Her dark dead blood that ever moves with mine
Will stir the living tongue and make the cry.

STAFFORD. Yet doubtless you can tell me how she died?

BAGENHALL. Seventeen--and knew eight languages--in music
Peerless--her needle perfect, and her learning
Beyond the churchmen; yet so meek, so modest,
So wife-like humble to the trivial boy
Mismatch'd with her for policy! I have heard
She would not take a last farewell of him,
She fear'd it might unman him for his end.
She could not be unmann'd--no, nor outwoman'd--
Seventeen--a rose of grace!
Girl never breathed to rival such a rose;
Rose never blew that equall'd such a bud.

STAFFORD.                                 Pray you go on.

BAGENHALL. She came upon the scaffold,
And said she was condemn'd to die for treason;
She had but follow'd the device of those
Her nearest kin: she thought they knew the laws.
But for herself, she knew but little law,
And nothing of the titles to the crown;
She had no desire for that, and wrung her hands,
And trusted God would save her thro' the blood
Of Jesus Christ alone.

STAFFORD.              Pray you go on.

BAGENHALL. Then knelt and said the Misere Mei--
But all in English, mark you; rose again,
And, when the headsman pray'd to be forgiven,
Said, 'You will give me my true crown at last,
But do it quickly;' then all wept but she,
Who changed not colour when she saw the block,
But ask'd him, childlike: 'Will you take it off
Before I lay me down?' 'No, madam,' he said,
Gasping; and when her innocent eyes were bound,
She, with her poor blind hands feeling--'where is it?
Where is it?'--You must fancy that which follow'd,
If you have heart to do it!

CROWD (_in the distance_).
                            God save their Graces!

STAFFORD. Their Graces, our disgraces! God confound them!
Why, she's grown bloodier! when I last was here,
This was against her conscience--would be murder!

BAGENHALL. The 'Thou shall do no murder,' which God's hand
Wrote on her conscience, Mary rubb'd out pale--
She could not make it white--and over that,
Traced in the blackest text of Hell--'Thou shall!'
And sign'd it--Mary!

STAFFORD.            Philip and the Pope
Must have sign'd too. I hear this Legate's coming
To bring us absolution from the Pope.
The Lords and Commons will bow down before him--
You are of the house? what will you do, Sir Ralph?

BAGENHALL. And why should I be bolder than the rest,
Or honester than all?

STAFFORD.             But, sir, if I--
And oversea they say this state of yours
Hath no more mortice than a tower of cards;
And that a puff would do it--then if I
And others made that move I touch'd upon,
Back'd by the power of France, and landing here,
Came with a sudden splendour, shout, and show,
And dazzled men and deafen'd by some bright
Loud venture, and the people so unquiet--
And I the race of murder'd Buckingham--
Not for myself, but for the kingdom--Sir,
I trust that you would fight along with us.

BAGENHALL. No; you would fling your lives into the gulf.

STAFFORD. But if this Philip, as he's like to do,
Left Mary a wife-widow here alone,
Set up a viceroy, sent his myriads hither
To seize upon the forts and fleet, and make us
A Spanish province; would you not fight then?

BAGENHALL. I think I should fight then.

STAFFORD.                               I am sure of it.
Hist! there's the face coming on here of one
Who knows me. I must leave you. Fare you well,
You'll hear of me again.

BAGENHALL.               Upon the scaffold.

                                      [_Exeunt_.



SCENE II.--ROOM IN WHITEHALL PALACE.

MARY. _Enter_ PHILIP _and_ CARDINAL POLE.


POLE. Ave Maria, gratia plena, Benedicta tu in mulieribus.

MARY. Loyal and royal cousin, humblest thanks.
Had you a pleasant voyage up the river?

POLE. We had your royal barge, and that same chair,
Or rather throne of purple, on the deck.
Our silver cross sparkled before the prow,
The ripples twinkled at their diamond-dance,
The boats that follow'd, were as glowing-gay
As regal gardens; and your flocks of swans,
As fair and white as angels; and your shores
Wore in mine eyes the green of Paradise.
My foreign friends, who dream'd us blanketed
In ever-closing fog, were much amazed
To find as fair a sun as might have flash'd
Upon their lake of Garda, fire the Thames;
Our voyage by sea was all but miracle;
And here the river flowing from the sea,
Not toward it (for they thought not of our tides),
Seem'd as a happy miracle to make glide--
In quiet--home your banish'd countryman.

MARY. We heard that you were sick in Flanders, cousin.

POLE. A dizziness.

MARY.              And how came you round again?

POLE. The scarlet thread of Rahab saved her life;
And mine, a little letting of the blood.

MARY. Well? now?

POLE.            Ay, cousin, as the heathen giant
Had but to touch the ground, his force return'd--
Thus, after twenty years of banishment,
Feeling my native land beneath my foot,
I said thereto: 'Ah, native land of mine,
Thou art much beholden to this foot of mine,
That hastes with full commission from the Pope
To absolve thee from thy guilt of heresy.
Thou hast disgraced me and attainted me,
And mark'd me ev'n as Cain, and I return
As Peter, but to bless thee: make me well.'
Methinks the good land heard me, for to-day
My heart beats twenty, when I see you, cousin.
Ah, gentle cousin, since your Herod's death,
How oft hath Peter knock'd at Mary's gate!
And Mary would have risen and let him in,
But, Mary, there were those within the house
Who would not have it.

MARY.                  True, good cousin Pole;
And there were also those without the house
Who would not have it.

POLE.                  I believe so, cousin.
State-policy and church-policy are conjoint,
But Janus-faces looking diverse ways.
I fear the Emperor much misvalued me.
But all is well; 'twas ev'n the will of God,
Who, waiting till the time had ripen'd, now,
Makes me his mouth of holy greeting. 'Hail,
Daughter of God, and saver of the faith.
Sit benedictus fructus ventris tui!'

MARY. Ah, heaven!

POLE.             Unwell, your Grace?

MARY.                                 No, cousin, happy--
Happy to see you; never yet so happy
Since I was crown'd.

POLE.                Sweet cousin, you forget
That long low minster where you gave your hand
To this great Catholic King.

PHILIP.                      Well said, Lord Legate.

MARY. Nay, not well said; I thought of you, my liege,
Ev'n as I spoke.

PHILIP.          Ay, Madam; my Lord Paget
Waits to present our Council to the Legate.
Sit down here, all; Madam, between us you.

POLE. Lo, now you are enclosed with boards of cedar,
Our little sister of the Song of Songs!
You are doubly fenced and shielded sitting here
Between the two most high-set thrones on earth,
The Emperor's highness happily symboll'd by
The King your husband, the Pope's Holiness
By mine own self.

MARY.             True, cousin, I am happy.
When will you that we summon both our houses
To take this absolution from your lips,
And be regather'd to the Papal fold?

POLE. In Britain's calendar the brightest day
Beheld our rough forefathers break their Gods,
And clasp the faith in Christ; but after that
Might not St. Andrew's be her happiest day?

MARY. Then these shall meet upon St. Andrew's day.

    _Enter_ PAGET, _who presents the Council. Dumb show_.

POLE. I am an old man wearied with my journey,
Ev'n with my joy. Permit me to withdraw.
To Lambeth?

PHILIP.     Ay, Lambeth has ousted Cranmer.
It was not meet the heretic swine should live
In Lambeth.

MARY.       There or anywhere, or at all.

PHILIP. We have had it swept and garnish'd after him.

POLE. Not for the seven devils to enter in?

PHILIP. No, for we trust they parted in the swine.

POLE. True, and I am the Angel of the Pope.
Farewell, your Graces.

PHILIP.                Nay, not here--to me;
I will go with you to the waterside.

POLE. Not be my Charon to the counter side?

PHILIP. No, my Lord Legate, the Lord Chancellor goes.

POLE. And unto no dead world; but Lambeth palace,
Henceforth a centre of the living faith.

                        [_Exeunt_ PHILIP, POLE, PAGET, _etc_.

    _Manet_ MARY.

MARY. He hath awaked! he hath awaked!
He stirs within the darkness!
Oh, Philip, husband! now thy love to mine
Will cling more close, and those bleak manners thaw,
That make me shamed and tongue-tied in my love.
The second Prince of Peace--
The great unborn defender of the Faith,
Who will avenge me of mine enemies--
He comes, and my star rises.
The stormy Wyatts and Northumberlands,
The proud ambitions of Elizabeth,
And all her fieriest partisans--are pale
Before my star!
The light of this new learning wanes and dies:
The ghosts of Luther and Zuinglius fade
Into the deathless hell which is their doom
Before my star!
His sceptre shall go forth from Ind to Ind!
His sword shall hew the heretic peoples down!
His faith shall clothe the world that will be his,
Like universal air and sunshine! Open,
Ye everlasting gates! The King is here!--
My star, my son!

    _Enter_ PHILIP, DUKE OF ALVA, _etc_.

                 Oh, Philip, come with me;
Good news have I to tell you, news to make
Both of us happy--ay, the Kingdom too.
Nay come with me--one moment!

PHILIP (_to_ ALVA).           More than that:
There was one here of late--William the Silent
They call him--he is free enough in talk,
But tells me nothing. You will be, we trust,
Sometime the viceroy of those provinces--
He must deserve his surname better.

ALVA.                               Ay, sir;
Inherit the Great Silence.

PHILIP.                    True; the provinces
Are hard to rule and must be hardly ruled;
Most fruitful, yet, indeed, an empty rind,
All hollow'd out with stinging heresies;
And for their heresies, Alva, they will fight;
You must break them or they break you.

ALVA (_proudly_).                      The first.

PHILIP. Good!
Well, Madam, this new happiness of mine?

                                    [_Exeunt_.

    _Enter_ THREE PAGES.

FIRST PAGE. News, mates! a miracle, a miracle! news!
The bells must ring; Te Deums must be sung;
The Queen hath felt the motion of her babe!

SECOND PAGE. Ay; but see here!

FIRST PAGE.                    See what?

SECOND PAGE.                             This paper, Dickon.
I found it fluttering at the palace gates:--
'The Queen of England is delivered of a dead dog!'

THIRD PAGE. These are the things that madden her. Fie upon it!

FIRST PAGE. Ay; but I hear she hath a dropsy, lad,
Or a high-dropsy, as the doctors call it.

THIRD PAGE. Fie on her dropsy, so she have a dropsy!
I know that she was ever sweet to me.

FIRST PAGE. For thou and thine are Roman to the core.

THIRD PAGE. So thou and thine must be. Take heed!

FIRST PAGE.                                       Not I,
And whether this flash of news be false or true,
So the wine run, and there be revelry,
Content am I. Let all the steeples clash,
Till the sun dance, as upon Easter Day.

                                    [_Exeunt_.



SCENE III.--GREAT HALL IN WHITEHALL.

_At the far end a dais. On this three chairs, two under one canopy
for_ MARY _and_ PHILIP, _another on the right of these for_ POLE.
_Under the dais on_ POLE'S _side, ranged along the wall, sit all the
Spiritual Peers, and along the wall opposite, all the Temporal. The
Commons on cross benches in front, a line of approach to the dais
between them. In the foreground_, SIR RALPH BAGENHALL _and other
Members of the Commons_.


FIRST MEMBER. St. Andrew's day; sit close, sit close, we are friends.
Is reconciled the word? the Pope again?
It must be thus; and yet, cocksbody! how strange
That Gardiner, once so one with all of us
Against this foreign marriage, should have yielded
So utterly!--strange! but stranger still that he,
So fierce against the Headship of the Pope,
Should play the second actor in this pageant
That brings him in; such a cameleon he!

SECOND MEMBER. This Gardiner turn'd his coat in Henry's time;
The serpent that hath slough'd will slough again.

THIRD MEMBER. Tut, then we all are serpents.

SECOND MEMBER. Speak for yourself.

THIRD MEMBER. Ay, and for Gardiner! being English citizen,
How should he bear a bridegroom out of Spain?
The Queen would have him! being English churchman
How should he bear the headship of the Pope?
The Queen would have it! Statesmen that are wise
Shape a necessity, as a sculptor clay,
To their own model.

SECOND MEMBER. Statesmen that are wise
Take truth herself for model. What say you?
                          [_To_ SIR RALPH BAGENHALL.

BAGENHALL. We talk and talk.

FIRST MEMBER. Ay, and what use to talk?
Philip's no sudden alien--the Queen's husband,
He's here, and king, or will be--yet cocksbody!
So hated here! I watch'd a hive of late;
My seven-years' friend was with me, my young boy;
Out crept a wasp, with half the swarm behind.
'Philip!' says he. I had to cuff the rogue
For infant treason.

THIRD MEMBER.       But they say that bees,
If any creeping life invade their hive
Too gross to be thrust out, will build him round,
And bind him in from harming of their combs.
And Philip by these articles is bound
From stirring hand or foot to wrong the realm.

SECOND MEMBER. By bonds of beeswax, like your creeping thing;
But your wise bees had stung him first to death.

THIRD MEMBER. Hush, hush!
You wrong the Chancellor: the clauses added
To that same treaty which the emperor sent us
Were mainly Gardiner's: that no foreigner
Hold office in the household, fleet, forts, army;
That if the Queen should die without a child,
The bond between the kingdoms be dissolved;
That Philip should not mix us any way
With his French wars--

SECOND MEMBER. Ay, ay, but what security,
Good sir, for this, if Philip----

THIRD MEMBER. Peace--the Queen, Philip, and Pole.
                                   [_All rise, and stand_.

    _Enter_ MARY, PHILIP, _and_ POLE.

    [GARDINER _conducts them to the three chairs of state_.
    PHILIP _sits on the_ QUEEN'S _left_, POLE _on her right_.

GARDINER. Our short-lived sun, before his winter plunge,
Laughs at the last red leaf, and Andrew's Day.

MARY. Should not this day be held in after years
More solemn than of old?

PHILIP.                  Madam, my wish
Echoes your Majesty's.

POLE.                  It shall be so.

GARDINER. Mine echoes both your Graces'; (_aside_) but the Pope--
Can we not have the Catholic church as well
Without as with the Italian? if we cannot,
Why then the Pope.
                   My lords of the upper house,
And ye, my masters, of the lower house,
Do ye stand fast by that which ye resolved?

VOICES. We do.

GARDINER. And be you all one mind to supplicate
The Legate here for pardon, and acknowledge
The primacy of the Pope?

VOICES.                  We are all one mind.

GARDINER. Then must I play the vassal to this Pole.    [_Aside_.

    [_He draws a paper from under his robes and
    presents it to the_ KING _and_ QUEEN, _who look
    through it and return it to him; then ascends
    a tribune, and reads_.

We, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal,
And Commons here in Parliament assembled,
Presenting the whole body of this realm
Of England, and dominions of the same,
Do make most humble suit unto your Majesties,
In our own name and that of all the state,
That by your gracious means and intercession
Our supplication be exhibited
To the Lord Cardinal Pole, sent here as Legate
From our most Holy Father Julius, Pope,
And from the Apostolic see of Rome;
And do declare our penitence and grief
For our long schism and disobedience,
Either in making laws and ordinances
Against the Holy Father's primacy,
Or else by doing or by speaking aught
Which might impugn or prejudice the same;
By this our supplication promising,
As well for our own selves as all the realm,
That now we be and ever shall be quick,
Under and with your Majesties' authorities,
To do to the utmost all that in us lies
Towards the abrogation and repeal
Of all such laws and ordinances made;
Whereon we humbly pray your Majesties,
As persons undefiled with our offence,
So to set forth this humble suit of ours
That we the rather by your intercession
May from the Apostolic see obtain,
Thro' this most reverend Father, absolution,
And full release from danger of all censures
Of Holy Church that we be fall'n into,
So that we may, as children penitent,
Be once again received into the bosom
And unity of Universal Church;
And that this noble realm thro' after years
May in this unity and obedience
Unto the holy see and reigning Pope
Serve God and both your Majesties.

VOICES. Amen.
                 [_All sit.

    [He again presents the petition to the_ KING _and_
    QUEEN, _who hand it reverentially to_ POLE.

POLE (_sitting_). This is the loveliest day that ever smiled
On England. All her breath should, incenselike,
Rise to the heavens in grateful praise of Him
Who now recalls her to His ancient fold.
Lo! once again God to this realm hath given
A token of His more especial Grace;
For as this people were the first of all
The islands call'd into the dawning church
Out of the dead, deep night of heathendom,
So now are these the first whom God hath given
Grace to repent and sorrow for their schism;
And if your penitence be not mockery,
Oh how the blessed angels who rejoice
Over one saved do triumph at this hour
In the reborn salvation of a land
So noble.    [_A pause_.
          For ourselves we do protest
That our commission is to heal, not harm;
We come not to condemn, but reconcile;
We come not to compel, but call again;
We come not to destroy, but edify;
Nor yet to question things already done;
These are forgiven--matters of the past--
And range with jetsam and with offal thrown
Into the blind sea of forgetfulness.    [_A pause_.
Ye have reversed the attainder laid on us
By him who sack'd the house of God; and we,
Amplier than any field on our poor earth
Can render thanks in fruit for being sown,
Do here and now repay you sixty-fold,
A hundred, yea, a thousand thousand-fold,
With heaven for earth.

    [_Rising and stretching forth his hands. All kneel but_
    SIR RALPH BAGENHALL, _who rises and remains standing_.

                       The Lord who hath redeem'd us
With His own blood, and wash'd us from our sins,
To purchase for Himself a stainless bride;
He, whom the Father hath appointed Head
Of all his church, He by His mercy absolve you!    [_A pause_.
And we by that authority Apostolic,
Given unto us, his Legate, by the Pope,
Our Lord and Holy Father, Julius,
God's Vicar and Vicegerent upon earth,
Do here absolve you and deliver you
And every one of you, and all the realm
And its dominions from all heresy,
All schism, and from all and every censure,
Judgment, and pain accruing thereupon;
And also we restore you to the bosom
And unity of Universal Church.
                         [_Turning to_ GARDINER.
Our letters of commission will declare this plainlier.

    [QUEEN _heard sobbing. Cries of_ Amen! Amen! _Some of the
    Members embrace one another. All but_ SIR RALPH BAGENHALL
    _pass out into the neighboring chapel, whence is heard
    the Te Deum_.

BAGENHALL. We strove against the papacy from the first,
In William's time, in our first Edward's time,
And in my master Henry's time; but now,
The unity of Universal Church,
Mary would have it; and this Gardiner follows;
The unity of Universal Hell,
Philip would have it; and this Gardiner follows!
A Parliament of imitative apes!
Sheep at the gap which Gardiner takes, who not
Believes the Pope, nor any of them believe--
These spaniel-Spaniard English of the time,
Who rub their fawning noses in the dust,
For that is Philip's gold-dust, and adore
This Vicar of their Vicar. Would I had been
Born Spaniard! I had held my head up then.
I am ashamed that I am Bagenhall,
English.

    _Enter_ OFFICER.

OFFICER. Sir Ralph Bagenhall!

BAGENHALL.                    What of that?

OFFICER. You were the one sole man in either house
Who stood upright when both the houses fell.

BAGENHALL. The houses fell!

OFFICER.                    I mean the houses knelt
Before the Legate.

BAGENHALL.         Do not scrimp your phrase,
But stretch it wider; say when England fell.

OFFICER. I say you were the one sole man who stood.

BAGENHALL. I am the one sole man in either house,
Perchance in England, loves her like a son.

OFFICER. Well, you one man, because you stood upright,
Her Grace the Queen commands you to the Tower.

BAGENHALL. As traitor, or as heretic, or for what?

OFFICER. If any man in any way would be
The one man, he shall be so to his cost.

BAGENHALL. What! will she have my head?

OFFICER.                                A round fine likelier.
Your pardon.    [_Calling to_ ATTENDANT.
             By the river to the Tower.

                                    [_Exeunt_.



SCENE IV.--WHITEHALL. A ROOM IN THE PALACE.
MARY, GARDINER, POLE, PAGET, BONNER, _etc_.


MARY. The King and I, my Lords, now that all traitors
Against our royal state have lost the heads
Wherewith they plotted in their treasonous malice,
Have talk'd together, and are well agreed
That those old statutes touching Lollardism
To bring the heretic to the stake, should be
No longer a dead letter, but requicken'd.

ONE OF THE COUNCIL. Why, what hath fluster'd Gardiner? how he rubs
His forelock!

PAGET.        I have changed a word with him
In coming, and may change a word again.

GARDINER. Madam, your Highness is our sun, the King
And you together our two suns in one;
And so the beams of both may shine upon us,
The faith that seem'd to droop will feel your light,
Lift head, and flourish; yet not light alone,
There must be heat--there must be heat enough
To scorch and wither heresy to the root.
For what saith Christ? 'Compel them to come in.'
And what saith Paul? 'I would they were cut off
That trouble you.' Let the dead letter live!
Trace it in fire, that all the louts to whom
Their A B C is darkness, clowns and grooms
May read it! so you quash rebellion too,
For heretic and traitor are all one:
Two vipers of one breed--an amphisbaena,
Each end a sting: Let the dead letter burn!

PAGET. Yet there be some disloyal Catholics,
And many heretics loyal; heretic throats
Cried no God-bless-her to the Lady Jane,
But shouted in Queen Mary. So there be
Some traitor-heretic, there is axe and cord.
To take the lives of others that are loyal,
And by the churchman's pitiless doom of fire,
Were but a thankless policy in the crown,
Ay, and against itself; for there are many.

MARY. If we could burn out heresy, my Lord Paget,
We reck not tho' we lost this crown of England--
Ay! tho' it were ten Englands!

GARDINER.                      Right, your Grace.
Paget, you are all for this poor life of ours,
And care but little for the life to be.

PAGET. I have some time, for curiousness, my Lord
Watch'd children playing at _their_ life to be,
And cruel at it, killing helpless flies;
Such is our time--all times for aught I know.

GARDINER. We kill the heretics that sting the soul--
They, with right reason, flies that prick the flesh.

PAGET. They had not reach'd right reason; little children!
They kill'd but for their pleasure and the power
They felt in killing.

GARDINER.            A spice of Satan, ha!
Why, good! what then? granted!--we are fallen creatures;
Look to your Bible, Paget! we are fallen.

PAGET. I am but of the laity, my Lord Bishop,
And may not read your Bible, yet I found
One day, a wholesome scripture, 'Little children,
Love one another.'

GARDINER.          Did you find a scripture,
'I come not to bring peace but a sword'? The sword
Is in her Grace's hand to smite with. Paget,
You stand up here to fight for heresy,
You are more than guess'd at as a heretic,
And on the steep-up track of the true faith
Your lapses are far seen.

PAGET.                    The faultless Gardiner!

MARY. You brawl beyond the question; speak, Lord Legate!

POLE. Indeed, I cannot follow with your Grace:
Rather would say--the shepherd doth not kill
The sheep that wander from his flock, but sends
His careful dog to bring them to the fold.
Look to the Netherlands, wherein have been
Such holocausts of heresy! to what end?
For yet the faith is not established there.

GARDINER. The end's not come.

POLE. No--nor this way will come,
Seeing there lie two ways to every end,
A better and a worse--the worse is here
To persecute, because to persecute
Makes a faith hated, and is furthermore
No perfect witness of a perfect faith
In him who persecutes: when men are tost
On tides of strange opinion, and not sure
Of their own selves, they are wroth with their own selves,
And thence with others; then, who lights the faggot?
Not the full faith, no, but the lurking doubt.
Old Rome, that first made martyrs in the Church,
Trembled for her own gods, for these were trembling--
But when did our Rome tremble?

PAGET.                         Did she not
In Henry's time and Edward's?

POLE.                         What, my Lord!
The Church on Peter's rock? never! I have seen
A pine in Italy that cast its shadow
Athwart a cataract; firm stood the pine--
The cataract shook the shadow. To my mind,
The cataract typed the headlong plunge and fall
Of heresy to the pit: the pine was Rome.
You see, my Lords,
It was the shadow of the Church that trembled;
Your church was but the shadow of a church,
Wanting the Papal mitre.

GARDINER (_muttering_).  Here be tropes.

POLE. And tropes are good to clothe a naked truth,
And make it look more seemly.

GARDINER.                     Tropes again!

POLE. You are hard to please. Then without tropes, my Lord,
An overmuch severeness, I repeat,
When faith is wavering makes the waverer pass
Into more settled hatred of the doctrines
Of those who rule, which hatred by and by
Involves the ruler (thus there springs to light
That Centaur of a monstrous Commonweal,
The traitor-heretic) then tho' some may quail,
Yet others are that dare the stake and fire,
And their strong torment bravely borne, begets
An admiration and an indignation,
And hot desire to imitate; so the plague
Of schism spreads; were there but three or four
Of these misleaders, yet I would not say
Burn! and we cannot burn whole towns; they are many,
As my Lord Paget says.

GARDINER.              Yet my Lord Cardinal--

POLE. I am your Legate; please you let me finish.
Methinks that under our Queen's regimen
We might go softlier than with crimson rowel
And streaming lash. When Herod-Henry first
Began to batter at your English Church,
This was the cause, and hence the judgment on her.
She seethed with such adulteries, and the lives
Of many among your churchmen were so foul
That heaven wept and earth blush'd. I would advise
That we should thoroughly cleanse the Church within
Before these bitter statutes be requicken'd.
So after that when she once more is seen
White as the light, the spotless bride of Christ,
Like Christ himself on Tabor, possibly
The Lutheran may be won to her again;
Till when, my Lords, I counsel tolerance.

GARDINER. What, if a mad dog bit your hand, my Lord,
Would you not chop the bitten finger off,
Lest your whole body should madden with the poison?
I would not, were I Queen, tolerate the heretic,
No, not an hour. The ruler of a land
Is bounden by his power and place to see
His people be not poison'd. Tolerate them!
Why? do they tolerate you? Nay, many of them
Would burn--have burnt each other; call they not
The one true faith, a loathsome idol-worship?
Beware, Lord Legate, of a heavier crime
Than heresy is itself; beware, I say,
Lest men accuse you of indifference
To all faiths, all religion; for you know
Right well that you yourself have been supposed
Tainted with Lutheranism in Italy.

POLE (_angered_). But you, my Lord, beyond all supposition,
In clear and open day were congruent
With that vile Cranmer in the accursed lie
Of good Queen Catherine's divorce--the spring
Of all those evils that have flow'd upon us;
For you yourself have truckled to the tyrant,
And done your best to bastardise our Queen,
For which God's righteous judgment fell upon you
In your five years of imprisonment, my Lord,
Under young Edward. Who so bolster'd up
The gross King's headship of the Church, or more
Denied the Holy Father!

GARDINER.               Ha! what! eh?
But you, my Lord, a polish'd gentleman,
A bookman, flying from the heat and tussle,
You lived among your vines and oranges,
In your soft Italy yonder! You were sent for.
You were appeal'd to, but you still preferr'd
Your learned leisure. As for what I did
I suffer'd and repented. You, Lord Legate
And Cardinal-Deacon, have not now to learn
That ev'n St. Peter in his time of fear
Denied his Master, ay, and thrice, my Lord.

POLE. But not for five-and-twenty years, my Lord.

GARDINER. Ha! good! it seems then I was summon'd hither
But to be mock'd and baited. Speak, friend Bonner,
And tell this learned Legate he lacks zeal.
The Church's evil is not as the King's,
Cannot be heal'd by stroking. The mad bite
Must have the cautery--tell him--and at once.
What would'st thou do hadst thou his power, thou
That layest so long in heretic bonds with me;
Would'st thou not burn and blast them root and branch?

BONNER. Ay, after you, my Lord.

GARDINER.                       Nay, God's passion, before me! speak'

BONNER. I am on fire until I see them flame.

GARDINER. Ay, the psalm-singing weavers, cobblers, scum--
But this most noble prince Plantagenet,
Our good Queen's cousin--dallying over seas
Even when his brother's, nay, his noble mother's,
Head fell--

POLE.      Peace, madman!
Thou stirrest up a grief thou canst not fathom.
Thou Christian Bishop, thou Lord Chancellor
Of England! no more rein upon thine anger
Than any child! Thou mak'st me much ashamed
That I was for a moment wroth at thee.

MARY. I come for counsel and ye give me feuds,
Like dogs that set to watch their master's gate,
Fall, when the thief is ev'n within the walls,
To worrying one another. My Lord Chancellor,
You have an old trick of offending us;
And but that you are art and part with us
In purging heresy, well we might, for this
Your violence and much roughness to the Legate,
Have shut you from our counsels. Cousin Pole,
You are fresh from brighter lands. Retire with me.
His Highness and myself (so you allow us)
Will let you learn in peace and privacy
What power this cooler sun of England hath
In breeding godless vermin. And pray Heaven
That you may see according to our sight.
Come, cousin.
                 [_Exeunt_ QUEEN _and_ POLE, _etc_.

GARDINER. Pole has the Plantagenet face,
But not the force made them our mightiest kings.
Fine eyes--but melancholy, irresolute--
A fine beard, Bonner, a very full fine beard.
But a weak mouth, an indeterminate--ha?

BONNER. Well, a weak mouth, perchance.

GARDINER.                              And not like thine
To gorge a heretic whole, roasted or raw.

BONNER. I'd do my best, my Lord; but yet the Legate
Is here as Pope and Master of the Church,
And if he go not with you--

GARDINER.                  Tut, Master Bishop,
Our bashful Legate, saw'st not how he flush'd?
Touch him upon his old heretical talk,
He'll burn a diocese to prove his orthodoxy.
And let him call me truckler. In those times,
Thou knowest we had to dodge, or duck, or die;
I kept my head for use of Holy Church;
And see you, we shall have to dodge again,
And let the Pope trample our rights, and plunge
His foreign fist into our island Church
To plump the leaner pouch of Italy.
For a time, for a time.
Why? that these statutes may be put in force,
And that his fan may thoroughly purge his floor.

BONNER. So then you hold the Pope--

GARDINER.                          I hold the Pope!
What do I hold him? what do I hold the Pope?
Come, come, the morsel stuck--this Cardinal's fault--
I have gulpt it down. I am wholly for the Pope,
Utterly and altogether for the Pope,
The Eternal Peter of the changeless chair,
Crown'd slave of slaves, and mitred king of kings,
God upon earth! what more? what would you have?
Hence, let's be gone.

    _Enter_ USHER.

USHER.                Well that you be not gone,
My Lord. The Queen, most wroth at first with you,
Is now content to grant you full forgiveness,
So that you crave full pardon of the Legate.
I am sent to fetch you.

GARDINER.               Doth Pole yield, sir, ha!
Did you hear 'em? were you by?

USHER.                         I cannot tell you,
His bearing is so courtly-delicate;
And yet methinks he falters: their two Graces
Do so dear-cousin and royal-cousin him,
So press on him the duty which as Legate
He owes himself, and with such royal smiles--

GARDINER. Smiles that burn men. Bonner, it will be carried.
He falters, ha? 'fore God, we change and change;
Men now are bow'd and old, the doctors tell you,
At three-score years; then if we change at all
We needs must do it quickly; it is an age
Of brief life, and brief purpose, and brief patience,
As I have shown to-day. I am sorry for it
If Pole be like to turn. Our old friend Cranmer,
Your more especial love, hath turn'd so often,
He knows not where he stands, which, if this pass,
We two shall have to teach him; let 'em look to it,
Cranmer and Hooper, Ridley and Latimer,
Rogers and Ferrar, for their time is come,
Their hour is hard at hand, their 'dies Irae'
Their 'dies Illa,' which will test their sect.
I feel it but a duty--you will find in it
Pleasure as well as duty, worthy Bonner,--
To test their sect. Sir, I attend the Queen
To crave most humble pardon--of her most
Royal, Infallible, Papal Legate-cousin.

                                  [_Exeunt_.



SCENE V.--WOODSTOCK.

ELIZABETH, LADY IN WAITING.


ELIZABETH. So they have sent poor Courtenay over sea.

LADY. And banish'd us to Woodstock, and the fields.
The colours of our Queen are green and white,
These fields are only green, they make me gape.

ELIZABETH. There's whitethorn, girl.

  LADY. Ay, for an hour in May.
But court is always May, buds out in masques,
Breaks into feather'd merriments, and flowers
In silken pageants. Why do they keep us here?
Why still suspect your Grace?

ELIZABETH.                    Hard upon both.
    [_Writes on the window with a diamond_.

    Much suspected, of me
    Nothing proven can be.
          Quoth Elizabeth, prisoner.

LADY. What hath your Highness written?

ELIZABETH.                             A true rhyme.

LADY. Cut with a diamond; so to last like truth.

ELIZABETH. Ay, if truth last.

LADY.                         But truth, they say, will out,
So it must last. It is not like a word,
That comes and goes in uttering.

ELIZABETH.                       Truth, a word!
The very Truth and very Word are one.
But truth of story, which I glanced at, girl,
Is like a word that comes from olden days,
And passes thro' the peoples: every tongue
Alters it passing, till it spells and speaks
Quite other than at first.

LADY.                      I do not follow.

ELIZABETH. How many names in the long sweep of time
That so foreshortens greatness, may but hang
On the chance mention of some fool that once
Brake bread with us, perhaps: and my poor chronicle
Is but of glass. Sir Henry Bedingfield
May split it for a spite.

LADY.                     God grant it last,
And witness to your Grace's innocence,
Till doomsday melt it.

ELIZABETH.             Or a second fire,
Like that which lately crackled underfoot
And in this very chamber, fuse the glass,
And char us back again into the dust
We spring from. Never peacock against rain
Scream'd as you did for water.

LADY.                          And I got it.
I woke Sir Henry--and he's true to you
I read his honest horror in his eyes.

ELIZABETH. Or true to you?

LADY.                      Sir Henry Bedingfield!
I will have no man true to me, your Grace,
But one that pares his nails; to me? the clown!

ELIZABETH. Out, girl! you wrong a noble gentleman.

LADY. For, like his cloak, his manners want the nap
And gloss of court; but of this fire he says.
Nay swears, it was no wicked wilfulness,
Only a natural chance.

ELIZABETH.             A chance--perchance
One of those wicked wilfuls that men make,
Nor shame to call it nature. Nay, I know
They hunt my blood. Save for my daily range
Among the pleasant fields of Holy Writ
I might despair. But there hath some one come;
The house is all in movement. Hence, and see.

                                     [_Exit_ LADY.

MILKMAID (_singing without_).

    Shame upon you, Robin,
        Shame upon you now!
    Kiss me would you? with my hands
        Milking the cow?
        Daisies grow again,
        Kingcups blow again,
    And you came and kiss'd me milking the cow.

    Robin came behind me,
        Kiss'd me well I vow;
    Cuff him could I? with my hands
        Milking the cow?
        Swallows fly again,
        Cuckoos cry again,
    And you came and kiss'd me milking the cow.

    Come, Robin, Robin,
        Come and kiss me now;
    Help it can I? with my hands
        Milking the cow?
        Ringdoves coo again,
        All things woo again.
    Come behind and kiss me milking the cow!

ELIZABETH. Right honest and red-cheek'd; Robin was violent,
And she was crafty--a sweet violence,
And a sweet craft. I would I were a milkmaid,
To sing, love, marry, churn, brew, bake, and die,
Then have my simple headstone by the church,
And all things lived and ended honestly.
I could not if I would. I am Harry's daughter:
Gardiner would have my head. They are not sweet,
The violence and the craft that do divide
The world of nature; what is weak must lie;
The lion needs but roar to guard his young;
The lapwing lies, says 'here' when they are there.
Threaten the child; 'I'll scourge you if you did it:'
What weapon hath the child, save his soft tongue,
To say 'I did not?' and my rod's the block.
I never lay my head upon the pillow
But that I think, 'Wilt thou lie there to-morrow?'
How oft the falling axe, that never fell,
Hath shock'd me back into the daylight truth
That it may fall to-day! Those damp, black, dead
Nights in the Tower; dead--with the fear of death
Too dead ev'n for a death-watch! Toll of a bell,
Stroke of a clock, the scurrying of a rat
Affrighted me, and then delighted me,
For there was life--And there was life in death--
The little murder'd princes, in a pale light,
Rose hand in hand, and whisper'd, 'come away!
The civil wars are gone for evermore:
Thou last of all the Tudors, come away!
With us is peace!' The last? It was a dream;
I must not dream, not wink, but watch. She has gone,
Maid Marian to her Robin--by and by
Both happy! a fox may filch a hen by night,
And make a morning outcry in the yard;
But there's no Renard here to 'catch her tripping.'
Catch me who can; yet, sometime I have wish'd
That I were caught, and kill'd away at once
Out of the flutter. The gray rogue, Gardiner,
Went on his knees, and pray'd me to confess
In Wyatt's business, and to cast myself
Upon the good Queen's mercy; ay, when, my Lord?
God save the Queen! My jailor--

    _Enter_ SIR HENRY BEDINGFIELD.

BEDINGFIELD. One, whose bolts,
That jail you from free life, bar you from death.
There haunt some Papist ruffians hereabout
Would murder you.

ELIZABETH.        I thank you heartily, sir,
But I am royal, tho' your prisoner,
And God hath blest or cursed me with a nose--
Your boots are from the horses.

BEDINGFIELD.                    Ay, my Lady.
When next there comes a missive from the Queen
It shall be all my study for one hour
To rose and lavender my horsiness,
Before I dare to glance upon your Grace.

ELIZABETH. A missive from the Queen: last time she wrote,
I had like to have lost my life: it takes my breath:
O God, sir, do you look upon your boots,
Are you so small a man? Help me: what think you,
Is it life or death.

BEDINGFIELD.         I thought not on my boots;
The devil take all boots were ever made
Since man went barefoot. See, I lay it here,
For I will come no nearer to your Grace;

    [_Laying down the letter_.

And, whether it bring you bitter news or sweet,
And God hath given your Grace a nose, or not,
I'll help you, if I may.

ELIZABETH.               Your pardon, then;
It is the heat and narrowness of the cage
That makes the captive testy; with free wing
The world were all one Araby. Leave me now,
Will you, companion to myself, sir?

BEDINGFIELD.                        Will I?
With most exceeding willingness, I will;
You know I never come till I be call'd.
                                    [_Exit_.

ELIZABETH. It lies there folded: is there venom in it?
A snake--and if I touch it, it may sting.
Come, come, the worst!
Best wisdom is to know the worst at once.    [_Reads:_

'It is the King's wish, that you should wed Prince Philibert of Savoy.
You are to come to Court on the instant; and think of this in your
coming.    'MARY THE QUEEN.'

Think I have many thoughts;
I think there may be birdlime here for me;
I think they fain would have me from the realm;
I think the Queen may never bear a child;
I think that I may be some time the Queen,
Then, Queen indeed: no foreign prince or priest
Should fill my throne, myself upon the steps.
I think I will not marry anyone,
Specially not this landless Philibert
Of Savoy; but, if Philip menace me,
I think that I will play with Philibert,
As once the Holy Father did with mine,
Before my fath