1    'Fore God, his grace is bold, to trust these traitors.

2    They shall be apprehended by and by.

3    How smooth and even they do bear themselves!
4    As if allegiance in their bosoms sat,
5    Crowned with faith and constant loyalty.

6    The king hath note of all that they intend,
7    By interception which they dream not of.

8    Nay, but the man that was his bedfellow,
9    Whom he hath dull'd and cloy'd with gracious favours,
10   That he should, for a foreign purse, so sell
11   His sovereign's life to death and treachery.

12   Now sits the wind fair, and we will aboard.
13   My Lord of Cambridge, and my kind Lord of Masham,
14   And you, my gentle knight, give me your thoughts:
15   Think you not that the powers we bear with us
16   Will cut their passage through the force of France,
17   Doing the execution and the act
18   For which we have in head assembled them?

19   No doubt, my liege, if each man do his best.

20   I doubt not that; since we are well persuaded
21   We carry not a heart with us from hence
22   That grows not in a fair consent with ours,
23   Nor leave not one behind that doth not wish
24   Success and conquest to attend on us.

25   Never was monarch better fear'd and loved
26   Than is your majesty: there's not, I think, a subject
27   That sits in heart-grief and uneasiness
28   Under the sweet shade of your government.

29   True: those that were your father's enemies
30   Have steep'd their galls in honey and do serve you
31   With hearts create of duty and of zeal.

32   We therefore have great cause of thankfulness;
33   And shall forget the office of our hand,
34   Sooner than quittance of desert and merit
35   According to the weight and worthiness.

36   So service shall with steeled sinews toil,
37   And labour shall refresh itself with hope,
38   To do your grace incessant services.

39   We judge no less. Uncle of Exeter,
40   Enlarge the man committed yesterday,
41   That rail'd against our person: we consider
42   it was excess of wine that set him on;
43   And on his more advice we pardon him.

44   That's mercy, but too much security:
45   Let him be punish'd, sovereign, lest example
46   Breed, by his sufferance, more of such a kind.

47   O, let us yet be merciful.

48   So may your highness, and yet punish too.

49   Sir,
50   You show great mercy, if you give him life,
51   After the taste of much correction.

52   Alas, your too much love and care of me
53   Are heavy orisons 'gainst this poor wretch!
54   If little faults, proceeding on distemper,
55   Shall not be wink'd at, how shall we stretch our eye
56   When capital crimes, chew'd, swallow'd and digested,
57   Appear before us? We'll yet enlarge that man,
58   Though Cambridge, Scroop and Grey, in their dear care
59   And tender preservation of our person,
60   Would have him punished. And now to our French causes:
61   Who are the late commissioners?

62   I one, my lord:
63   Your highness bade me ask for it to-day.

64   So did you me, my liege.

65   And I, my royal sovereign.

66   Then, Richard Earl of Cambridge, there is yours;
67   There yours, Lord Scroop of Masham; and, sir knight,
68   Grey of Northumberland, this same is yours:
69   Read them; and know, I know your worthiness.
70   My Lord of Westmoreland, and uncle Exeter,
71   We will aboard to night. Why, how now, gentlemen!
72   What see you in those papers that you lose
73   So much complexion? Look ye, how they change!
74   Their cheeks are paper. Why, what read you there
75   That hath so cowarded and chased your blood
76   Out of appearance?

77   I do confess my fault;
78   And do submit me to your highness' mercy.

79   To which we all appeal.

80   The mercy that was quick in us but late,
81   By your own counsel is suppress'd and kill'd:
82   You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy;
83   For your own reasons turn into your bosoms,
84   As dogs upon their masters, worrying you.
85   See you, my princes, and my noble peers,
86   These English monsters! My Lord of Cambridge here,
87   You know how apt our love was to accord
88   To furnish him with all appertinents
89   Belonging to his honour; and this man
90   Hath, for a few light crowns, lightly conspired,
91   And sworn unto the practises of France,
92   To kill us here in Hampton: to the which
93   This knight, no less for bounty bound to us
94   Than Cambridge is, hath likewise sworn. But, O,
95   What shall I say to thee, Lord Scroop? thou cruel,
96   Ingrateful, savage and inhuman creature!
97   Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels,
98   That knew'st the very bottom of my soul,
99   That almost mightst have coin'd me into gold,
100  Wouldst thou have practised on me for thy use,
101  May it be possible, that foreign hire
102  Could out of thee extract one spark of evil
103  That might annoy my finger? 'tis so strange,
104  That, though the truth of it stands off as gross
105  As black and white, my eye will scarcely see it.
106  Treason and murder ever kept together,
107  As two yoke-devils sworn to either's purpose,
108  Working so grossly in a natural cause,
109  That admiration did not whoop at them:
110  But thou, 'gainst all proportion, didst bring in
111  Wonder to wait on treason and on murder:
112  And whatsoever cunning fiend it was
113  That wrought upon thee so preposterously
114  Hath got the voice in hell for excellence:
115  All other devils that suggest by treasons
116  Do botch and bungle up damnation
117  With patches, colours, and with forms being fetch'd
118  From glistering semblances of piety;
119  But he that temper'd thee bade thee stand up,
120  Gave thee no instance why thou shouldst do treason,
121  Unless to dub thee with the name of traitor.
122  If that same demon that hath gull'd thee thus
123  Should with his lion gait walk the whole world,
124  He might return to vasty Tartar back,
125  And tell the legions 'I can never win
126  A soul so easy as that Englishman's.'
127  O, how hast thou with 'jealousy infected
128  The sweetness of affiance! Show men dutiful?
129  Why, so didst thou: seem they grave and learned?
130  Why, so didst thou: come they of noble family?
131  Why, so didst thou: seem they religious?
132  Why, so didst thou: or are they spare in diet,
133  Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger,
134  Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood,
135  Garnish'd and deck'd in modest complement,
136  Not working with the eye without the ear,
137  And but in purged judgment trusting neither?
138  Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem:
139  And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot,
140  To mark the full-fraught man and best indued
141  With some suspicion. I will weep for thee;
142  For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like
143  Another fall of man. Their faults are open:
144  Arrest them to the answer of the law;
145  And God acquit them of their practises!

146  I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of
147  Richard Earl of Cambridge.
148  I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of
149  Henry Lord Scroop of Masham.
150  I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of
151  Thomas Grey, knight, of Northumberland.

152  Our purposes God justly hath discover'd;
153  And I repent my fault more than my death;
154  Which I beseech your highness to forgive,
155  Although my body pay the price of it.

156  For me, the gold of France did not seduce;
157  Although I did admit it as a motive
158  The sooner to effect what I intended:
159  But God be thanked for prevention;
160  Which I in sufferance heartily will rejoice,
161  Beseeching God and you to pardon me.

162  Never did faithful subject more rejoice
163  At the discovery of most dangerous treason
164  Than I do at this hour joy o'er myself.
165  Prevented from a damned enterprise:
166  My fault, but not my body, pardon, sovereign.

167  God quit you in his mercy! Hear your sentence.
168  You have conspired against our royal person,
169  Join'd with an enemy proclaim'd and from his coffers
170  Received the golden earnest of our death;
171  Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter,
172  His princes and his peers to servitude,
173  His subjects to oppression and contempt
174  And his whole kingdom into desolation.
175  Touching our person seek we no revenge;
176  But we our kingdom's safety must so tender,
177  Whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws
178  We do deliver you. Get you therefore hence,
179  Poor miserable wretches, to your death:
180  The taste whereof, God of his mercy give
181  You patience to endure, and true repentance
182  Of all your dear offences! Bear them hence.
Exeunt CAMBRIDGE, SCROOP and GREY, guarded
183  Now, lords, for France; the enterprise whereof
184  Shall be to you, as us, like glorious.
185  We doubt not of a fair and lucky war,
186  Since God so graciously hath brought to light
187  This dangerous treason lurking in our way
188  To hinder our beginnings. We doubt not now
189  But every rub is smoothed on our way.
190  Then forth, dear countrymen: let us deliver
191  Our puissance into the hand of God,
192  Putting it straight in expedition.
193  Cheerly to sea; the signs of war advance:
194  No king of England, if not king of France.