No More Learning

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 father married my good mother,--
For fear of Spain.

_Enter_ LADY.

LADY. O Lord! your Grace, your Grace,
I feel so happy: it seems that we shall fly
These bald, blank fields, and dance into the sun
That shines on princes.

ELIZABETH. Yet, a moment since,
I wish'd myself the milkmaid singing here,
To kiss and cuff among the birds and flowers--
A right rough life and healthful.

LADY. But the wench
Hath her own troubles; she is weeping now;
For the wrong Robin took her at her word.
Then the cow kick'd, and all her milk was spilt.
Your Highness such a milkmaid?

ELIZABETH. I had kept
My Robins and my cows in sweeter order
Had I been such.

LADY (_slyly_). And had your Grace a Robin?

ELIZABETH. Come, come, you are chill here; you want the sun
That shines at court; make ready for the journey.
Pray God, we 'scape the sunstroke. Ready at once.

[_Exeunt_.



SCENE VI. --LONDON. A ROOM IN THE PALACE.

LORD PETRE _and_ LORD WILLIAM HOWARD.


PETRE. You cannot see the Queen. Renard denied her,
Ev'n now to me.

HOWARD. Their Flemish go-between
And all-in-all. I came to thank her Majesty
For freeing my friend Bagenhall from the Tower;
A grace to me! Mercy, that herb-of-grace,
Flowers now but seldom.

PETRE. Only now perhaps.
Because the Queen hath been three days in tears
For Philip's going--like the wild hedge-rose
Of a soft winter, possible, not probable,
However you have prov'n it.

HOWARD. I must see her.

_Enter_ RENARD.

RENARD. My Lords, you cannot see her Majesty.

HOWARD. Why then the King! for I would have him bring it
Home to the leisure wisdom of his Queen,
Before he go, that since these statutes past,
Gardiner out-Gardiners Gardiner in his heat,
Bonner cannot out-Bonner his own self--
Beast! --but they play with fire as children do,
And burn the house. I know that these are breeding
A fierce resolve and fixt heart-hate in men
Against the King, the Queen, the Holy Father,
The faith itself. Can I not see him?

RENARD. Not now.
And in all this, my Lord, her Majesty
Is flint of flint, you may strike fire from her,
Not hope to melt her. I will give your message.

[_Exeunt_ PETRE _and_ HOWARD.

_Enter_ PHILIP _(musing)_

PHILIP. She will not have Prince Philibert of Savoy,
I talk'd with her in vain--says she will live
And die true maid--a goodly creature too.
Would _she_ had been the Queen! yet she must have him;
She troubles England: that she breathes in England
Is life and lungs to every rebel birth
That passes out of embryo.
Simon Renard!
This Howard, whom they fear, what was he saying?

RENARD. What your imperial father said, my liege,
To deal with heresy gentlier. Gardiner burns,
And Bonner burns; and it would seem this people
Care more for our brief life in their wet land,
Than yours in happier Spain. I told my Lord
He should not vex her Highness; she would say
These are the means God works with, that His church
May flourish.

PHILIP. Ay, sir, but in statesmanship
To strike too soon is oft to miss the blow.
Thou knowest I bad my chaplain, Castro, preach
Against these burnings.

RENARD. And the Emperor
Approved you, and when last he wrote, declared
His comfort in your Grace that you were bland
And affable to men of all estates,
In hope to charm them from their hate of Spain.