Act IV - Page 2

Henceforward. No, my Lord.

HOWARD. Then never read it. The truth is here. Your father was a man Of such colossal kinghood, yet so courteous, Except when wroth, you scarce could meet his eye And hold your own; and were he wroth indeed, You held it less, or not at all. I say, Your father had a will that beat men down; Your father had a brain that beat men down--

POLE. Not me, my Lord.

HOWARD. No, for you were not here; You sit upon this fallen Cranmer's throne; And it would more become you, my Lord Legate, To join a voice, so potent with her Highness, To ours in plea for Cranmer than to stand On naked self-assertion.

MARY. All your voices Are waves on flint. The heretic must burn.

HOWARD. Yet once he saved your Majesty's own life; Stood out against the King in your behalf. At his own peril.

MARY. I know not if he did; And if he did I care not, my Lord Howard. My life is not so happy, no such boon, That I should spare to take a heretic priest's, Who saved it or not saved. Why do you vex me?

PAGET. Yet to save Cranmer were to serve the Church, Your Majesty's I mean; he is effaced, Self-blotted out; so wounded in his honour, He can but creep down into some dark hole Like a hurt beast, and hide himself and die; But if you burn him,--well, your Highness knows The saying, 'Martyr's blood--seed of the Church.'

MARY. Of the true Church; but his is none, nor will be. You are too politic for me, my Lord Paget. And if he have to live so loath'd a life, It were more merciful to burn him now.

THIRLBY. O yet relent. O, Madam, if you knew him As I do, ever gentle, and so gracious, With all his learning--

MARY. Yet a heretic still. His learning makes his burning the more just.

THIRLBY. So worshipt of all those that came across him; The stranger at his hearth, and all his house--

MARY. His children and his concubine, belike.

THIRLBY. To do him any wrong was to beget A kindness from him, for his heart was rich, Of such fine mould, that if you sow'd therein The seed of Hate, it blossom'd Charity.

POLE. 'After his kind it costs him nothing,' there's An old world English adage to the point. These are but natural graces, my good Bishop, Which in the Catholic garden are as flowers, But on the heretic dunghill only weeds.

HOWARD. Such weeds make dunghills gracious.

MARY. Enough, my Lords. It is God's will, the Holy Father's will, And Philip's will, and mine, that he should burn. He is pronounced anathema.

HOWARD. Farewell, Madam, God grant you ampler mercy at your call Than you have shown to Cranmer. [Exeunt LORDS.

POLE. After this, Your Grace will hardly care to overlook This same petition of the foreign exiles For Cranmer's life.

MARY. Make out the writ to-night.

[Exeunt.

SCENE II.--OXFORD. CRANMER IN PRISON.

CRANMER. Last night, I