Act IScene I
London. An ante-chamber in the King’s palace
Enter the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely.
Canterbury
My lord, I’ll tell you, that self bill is urg’dWhich in the eleventh year of the last king’s reignWas like, and had indeed against us passedBut that the scambling and unquiet timeDid push it out of farther question.
Ely
But how, my lord, shall we resist it now?
Canterbury
It must be thought on. If it pass against us,We lose the better half of our possession:For all the temporal lands, which men devoutBy testament have given to the Church,Would they strip from us; being valu’d thus:As much as would maintain, to the King’s honour,Full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights,Six thousand and two hundred good esquires;And, to relief of lazars and weak age,Of indigent faint souls past corporal toil,A hundred almshouses right well supplied;And to the coffers of the King beside,A thousand pounds by th’ year. Thus runs the bill.
Ely
This would drink deep.
Canterbury
’Twould drink the cup and all.
Ely
But what prevention?
Canterbury
The King is full of grace and fair regard.
Ely
And a true lover of the holy Church.
Canterbury
The courses of his youth promis’d it not.The breath no sooner left his father’s bodyBut that his wildness, mortified in him,Seemed to die too; yea, at that very momentConsideration like an angel cameAnd whipped th’ offending Adam out of him,Leaving his body as a paradiseT’ envelope and contain celestial spirits.Never was such a sudden scholar made,Never came reformation in a floodWith such a heady currance scouring faults,Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulnessSo soon did lose his seat, and all at once,As in this king.
Ely
We are blessed in the change.
Canterbury
Hear him but reason in divinityAnd, all-admiring, with an inward wishYou would desire the King were made a prelate;Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,You would say it hath been all in all his study;List his discourse of war, and you shall hearA fearful battle rendered you in music;Turn him to any cause of policy,The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks,The air, a chartered libertine, is still,And the mute wonder lurketh in men’s earsTo steal his sweet and honeyed sentences;So that the art and practic part of lifeMust be the mistress to this theoric:Which is a wonder how his Grace should glean it,Since his addiction was to courses vain,His companies unlettered, rude, and shallow,His hours filled up with riots, banquets, sports,And never noted in him any study,Any retirement, any sequestrationFrom open haunts and popularity.
Ely
The strawberry grows underneath the nettle,And wholesome berries thrive and ripen bestNeighboured by fruit of baser quality;And so the Prince obscured his contemplationUnder the veil of wildness, which, no doubt,Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night,Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.
Canterbury
It must be so, for miracles are ceased,And therefore we must needs admit the meansHow things are perfected.
Ely
But, my good lord,How now for mitigation of this billUrged by the Commons? Doth his MajestyIncline to it, or no?
Canterbury
He seems indifferent,Or rather swaying more upon our partThan cherishing th’ exhibitors against us;For I have made an offer to his Majesty,Upon our spiritual convocationAnd in regard of causes now in hand,Which I have opened to his Grace at large,As touching France, to give a greater sumThan ever at one time the clergy yetDid to his predecessors part withal.
Ely
How did this offer seem received, my lord?
Canterbury
With good acceptance of his Majesty;Save that there was not time enough to hear,As I perceived his Grace would fain have done,The severals and unhidden passagesOf his true titles to some certain dukedoms,And generally to the crown and seat of France,Derived from Edward, his great-grandfather.
Ely
What was th’ impediment that broke this off?
Canterbury
The French ambassador upon that instantCraved audience; and the hour, I think, is comeTo give him hearing. Is it four o’clock?
Ely
It is.
Canterbury
Then go we in, to know his embassy,Which I could with a ready guess declareBefore the Frenchman speak a word of it.
Ely
I’ll wait upon you, and I long to hear it.
Exeunt.