Scene I.—The Castle of Northampton.
King Henry, Queen Eleanor, Richard de Luci,
Cornwall, Fitz-Urse, the Bishop of Lisieux,
Leicester.
K. Hen.
If e'er I truly loved a man 'twas that man;
Nor any loved me better. Many a time,
In years gone by, I marked him on me bend
An eye that, up and down, took measure full—
Sole man was he that looked me full in face—
Of my hid soul, yet ended with a smile,
As though, beyond the ill, it kenned some good
I knew not of myself.
The greater crime that knowing me he mocks me!
A thousand times that man hath heard me swear
That alien none or priest shall share my kingdom.
I'll wear it like the armour on my back;
I'll wield it as a man wields his own members;
I'll walk, its living soul!
De Luci.
Thomas is honest.
K. Hen.
He has me there: the crafty and the keen,
These I outrun.
De Luci.
And not, I think, ambitious.
K. Hen.
He was ambitious till the height was gained:
No step remaining for his climbing foot,
He kneels him down a saint!
Fitz-Urse.
A saint is Becket
That makes his feast with sinners. What a race!
There's one at Exeter that, charged with crime,
Dropped poison in the accuser's cup.
Corn.
And Gilbert
Who scorns to hide the failings of his cloth
Reports some priest at Winchester well known,
Who, leagued with robbers, left his church-door wide:—
They stole the chalice.
Q. Elea.
These be Becket's clients,
Secure from civil courts! Who loves the sin
Will screen the sinner.
K. Hen.
Ay, good queen; you hate him!
Your tongue is sharp against him many a year;
Sharpest, men whisper, since that May long past,
When, young in face, and chancellor not bishop,
He with the pageant of his greatness filled
The broad eye of the world; and certain ladies
Whose gamesome graces lit your court made vow
One night to put his gravity to proof,
And found that they had stained their fame, not his,
Their glamour and their glitter still to him
But gleam of swarming gnats! That night your spy
Found him on bare boards sleeping:
Q. Elea.
John of Oxford
Reports your favourite's gratitude. At feast
He descants on your Highness thus—‘This puppet,
Who sans my aid at Rome in Stephen's time
Had lacked his realm, and twice since then had lost it,
This feather dancing on a nation's crown,
This bubble winking on the Church's cup,
Presumes himself my king!’ How answers Henry?
'Tis thus—‘The violet of humility
Not oft 'mid regal virtues finds a place:
In the heath garland of Plantagenet
Be mine to wear it first!’
John of Oxf.
(entering with a profound obeisance).
May it please your Highness,
A noisy challenge soon will beat your gates:
Southward ten miles from this the primate halts;
There learned he that the royal grooms had filled
That mansion pre-ordained to house his greatness
By providence of his friends;—incensed, he rides
To Canterbury at morn.
K. Hen.
Pernicious upstart!
Whom, groping in the dirt, this hand upraised
And lodged on high to be my shame and plague;
Vile hypocrite wearing religion's mask
And signing with his cross rebellion's way;
To Canterbury let him! He shall wake,
His pride's debauch exhaled, in heavier bonds
Than Odo wore the Conqueror's prelate brother.—
Speak out thy thought, good John!
John of Oxf.
Please it your Highness,
If I might counsel, give the fool his way.
Throughout all England, save alone this city,
Mailed by your peers and splendid with your court,
That man's a king; a pope at Canterbury:
Once here, he's in your power.
K. Hen.
There's much in that.
John of Oxf.
Yield him his house; a street, if he demands it:
A thunder-shower ere long shall drench his plumes:
Methinks I see his knights and chaplains flying—
Q. Eleanor.
Let them not fly to me! No skirt of mine
Shall fence the pigmies!
John of Oxf.
For the Royal Customs,
Name not their name at first: that blow comes last:
I glance at this to guard you from his wiles.
He swears that with a triple fraud his feet
Were snared that day when, sore against his will,
At Clarendon he bowed before them. First—
K. Hen.
Be brief, good John!
John of Oxf.
Tax first, my lord, the primate
With unparticipated crimes; his only;
His special forfeit, his unshared offence;
Then shall his bishops leave him. One thing more:
See that he 'scape not! nail him to this isle!
If once he stand on Christendom's broad ground
With feet unchained, the might of Christendom
Will rise into his arm. Who wields that might
Hurls the three-bolted thunder from the clouds
And rules the orb of earth.
De Tracy
(entering).
My liege, two priests,
Sent by my lord the primate.
K. Hen.
Bid them enter.
[Herbert of Bosham and Llewellen enter.
Sirs, ere ye speak, the boon ye claim is yours:
A humbler company hath filled, I hear,
The primate's house. Return, and let him know
Their boldness is rebuked.
[He turns away. Herbert and Llewellen bow low and depart.
And now to business.
My lords, there hath been question here and there
Of benefices, and the right to fill them;
We find the Church o'er-fleshed with lands and tithes;
She staggers 'neath their weight. To stay that evil
We will that presentations from this hour
Be deemed his appanage who holds the fief.
Nobles and Courtiers.
Our swords shall guard it! Henry and our right!
K. Hen.
My Lord Justiciary alone is silent.
De Luci.
My liege, the Royal Customs were our theme:
I deem the royal claim doubtful in part;
More doubtful yet this claim to presentations:
The law must solve that knot. The law declared,
Nor swayed by spiritual threat or civil
I will enforce that law.
K. Hen.
My lords, farewell!
[All depart, except John of Oxford.
Come hither, John! I know it now: alone
He rules his realm whose hand, unquestioned, turns
That inmost, central wheel which turns all others.
Lisieux himself this day was mine but half—
Henceforth all bishops must be my creation.
John of Oxf.
A nomination from the royal lips
Meets but a coy resistance.
K. Hen.
That's sophistic:
The power that's indirect is incomplete.
Those monks who ratified my choice of Becket,
Had you been named, not he, had spurned my choice.
We want new laws. The king must make his prelates;
The chapters—say their delegates rather—met
Not in their minsters but his royal chapel,
Must ratify his choice.
John of Oxf.
That time will come;
But they the deed who fear not, fear the shame
And will not sin i' the sun. Leave all to me.
Break, where you can, the courage of those bishops;
Divide them, each from each; keep vacant long
The sees. At last your stiffest will consent
To that which haply, urged this day, might shake
Its gloss from Lisieux's silk. When comes that hour
Your Highness shall not miss it.
K. Hen.
Look to that!
[King Henry departs.
John of Oxf.
(alone).
Yes, yes! 'Tis I must look to that, and all things:
The rest but talk: what's done is done by me!
What marvel? Blind they are, these kings and nobles;
While those who see—the cleric race—are mad,
And differ but in manner of their madness.
First, there's the Church's champion, like this Becket,
Who wins from her small thanks; he might have had
My aid; he spurned it. Comes the prelate next
Who softly struts, a spiritual king,
In miniver and gold like Winton's Henry;
Then he that, all too proud for pomps extern,
Grows thin with feeding on his self-conceit
And sours with glances at his neighbour's gain;
He who out-fasts the Church's fasts; out-watches
Her vigils; never coveted her thrones
Till wholesomer men possessed them. Gilbert, Gilbert!
A saint wert thou! What hindered thee from running?
Let Satan answer that! The king is mine;
That flame-eyed queen he hates will drive him on
With none to guide him. I am scarce ambitious;
But I was born beneath a politic star,
Was trained to walk in labyrinthine ways,
And needs must use my natural faculties.
The game!—'tis that I love! O Gilbert, Gilbert!
Save that that faith ascetic once thy boast,
Though dead by day, yet, spectre of itself,
Still leans by night a nightmare o'er thy bed,
How fair a game were thine!
