Scene V.—Palace of the Empress Matilda at Rouen.
The Empress, John of Oxford.
John of Oxf.
Chiefly for pride his enemies arraign him:
Great madam, pride not always is a vice:
His pride is pride a son may well be proud of:
He says, ‘The daughter of earth's wisest king
Was greatest when she put her greatness off;
Is greater now, ruling through this strong arm,
Than if, as once, she from her standard shook
Dominion on the winds.’
Empress.
King Henry's daughter
Should know some policy. I have lived, and reigned,
Done much, borne much, and in these later years
Much striven to win that docile heart which makes
Affliction's fruit, experience, profitable.
My end, they say, draws near. My son well knows it,
And yet he comes not nigh.
John of Oxf.
His Highness grieves
He walked not by your counsel touching Becket,
Who, changed from better promise, plots and schemes
Made blind by lust of power, and greed beside
Of gold which perisheth.
Empress.
It may be so:
Much that I know of Thomas I mislike;
But what I know I know through men that hate him.
Such knowledge I distrust.
Chamberlain
(entering).
May it please your Highness,
A priest from Pontigny.
[John of Salisbury enters, accompanied by a veiled nun.
Empress.
You are come, I think,
Sir, from that abbey where the primate late
Of England, lives recluse?
John of Sal.
Illustrious lady,
The primate hath not ceased to be the primate.
In Oxford, madam, that religious seat
When learning, tested, mounts the grades of merit,
Men say it graduates. Virtue, like learning,
Boasts its degrees of merit, tried and proved:
Its university is wide as earth:
My lord the primate hath proceeded exile;—
The next degree, who knows?
Empress.
I honour, sir,
Your frank, yet grave accost: I honour, too,
What under that I note, a loving zeal
For him you call your friend. Scant friends to me
Your primates and your prelates proved in England:
My father king, they made their oath to me:
My father dead, they crowned revolted Stephen:
And though the usurper's brother, Henry of Winton,
More late my champion proved—that arm of might
Which waved my banner o'er the English realm—
He wrung from me concessions first; and, last,
Condoned his brother's crime and re-enthroned him.
John of Sal.
Madam, that time erroneous, and unblest—
Empress.
Back to our theme. I never loved your primate:
I deemed him for my son a dangerous friend,
Albeit an honest one. His elevation
I strenuously withstood. I saw in Thomas
One that, installed in Canterbury's chair,
Might shake a younger throne. I would your primate
Had let the Royal Customs be, and warred
Against the ill customs of the Church. 'Tis shame
To ordain a clerk in name that lacks a cure,
Whom idleness must needs ensnare in crime;
Scandal—and worse—to screen an erring clerk,
More fearing clamour than the cancer slow
Of inly-wasting sin. Scandal it is
When seven rich benefices load one priest,
Likeliest his soul's damnation.
John of Sal.
Scandals indeed!
And no true friend to Thomas is the man
Who palliates such abuses. For this cause,
Reluctantly he grasped Augustine's staff
Therewith to smite them down. Madam, the men
Who brand them most are those who breed the scandals:
The primate warred on such. The king, to shield them,
Invoked the Royal Customs.
Empress.
Some are old.
John of Sal.
Old by the Norman reckoning, not the Saxon.
Empress.
Sir, sir, I know that cry: my throne it cost me!
Penitent London, with the prodigal's zeal
Had spread to me its arms; rebellion's head
Lay bruised beneath my feet; one common joy
Beamed from the fronts of cleric, noble, serf:
Sir, 'mid this new-born zeal a shout arose—
‘The laws of good King Edward, not the Norman!’
I spurned that cry, and scarce escaped with life;—
Return we to those Customs. Some are old.
John of Sal.
Madam, at heart all sin is old as Cain.
What profit, lady, on the Judgment Day,
If kings that erred can say, ‘By lineal right
That sin to me hereditary came,
And I entailed it on my latest heir!’
Save—save your son!
Empress.
The king advised not with me.
How many are those Customs you condemn?
John of Sal.
Madam, sixteen are registered. Lo! one:
‘We suffer not appeal to Peter's chair.’
Madam, Christ said to Peter, ‘Strengthen thou
Thy brethren:’ later, ‘Feed My sheep and lambs.’
Shall England's Church, Augustine's child and Rome's,
Be sundered from his aid?
Empress.
Now, God forbid!
John of Sal.
The next: ‘No bishop shall depart the realm
Without the king's consent.’ Such laws in force,
Church councils are no more.
Empress.
That Custom's novel!
John of Sal.
The next: ‘No baron holding from the Crown,
Whate'er his crime, shall feel the Church's censure
Without the king's approval.’ Madam, Christ
Gave to the Church His keys, and bade her use them,
That virgin thus her precinct might remain,
Her feast unstained. The great exempt, the mean,
Must share their license.
Empress.
Sir, that Custom's old,
Yet should be rarely used, nor shield the sinner:
The Church is mistress of her sacraments;
Else were God's temple to a tavern changed,
Or den of thieves.
John of Sal.
The next: ‘When bishoprics
Are vacant, till the king hath willed the election,
Their rents remain with him.’
John of Oxf.
(rising).
May it please your Highness,
Humbly I take my leave.
Empress.
Sir, fare you well!
[John of Oxford departs.
These Customs are in part of recent date;
In part are ancient, and throughout are strained:
My son has erred, enrolling them as laws;
Not thus my father wrought—has erred besides
Requiring from the bishops pledge to keep them:
We kept, till now, rule and exception both;
They housed together in uneasy friendship:
Your primate errs, I think, in nobler sort:
Let him endure the earlier of those Customs,
So they remain unwrit.
John of Sal.
Madam, your words
Are truth and peace.
Empress.
I ever loved truth well;
Alas, not peace! Yet gladly, ere I die
Would I have portion with the peace-makers.
John of Sal.
Madam, speak then those words of peace once more,
But to your son.
Empress.
He listens not to me.
John of Sal.
There is one listening region in his heart:
It hears a whisper low. He loves his children:
There touch him! There I touched him—not in vain.
The Primate had renounced the chancellor's place;
The king's wrath burned: two days I strove to slake it,
The Great Seal lying on the ground before him:
None dared to lift it. Thus I spake at last:
‘Pride is the sin of kings: that pride infects
Their babes; drags down on them their parents’ penance.
Your grand-sire had a son—but one—Prince William:
He from his sire had caught the haughty heart,
And oft in childhood sware, “When I am king
These English boors, harnessed like ox or ass,
Shall cleave the ‘Norman's glebe!’” He ne'er was king!
God's sea-waves o'er him closed.’ While thus I spake
The prince ran by; his father's eye pursued him—
That hour his heart was changed.
Empress.
My son has left me.
Sir, there are sorrows greater than my sire's
Then when he wept his son: Henry's will live,
And to his father be as mine to me.
I must not more detain you, sir. Commend me
Unto my lord the primate.
John of Sal.
Royal lady,
This youthful nun—Idonea is her name,
And something of her history may have reached you—
Is missioned with a message to your ear:
The maid is true: may God protect your Highness!
[John of Salisbury bows low, and departs.
Empress.
I pray you lift your veil: that hand, I think,
Derives from ancient lineage, and like light
Shows on your sable garb.
[Idonea lifts her veil.
There's rest in gazing
Upon a countenance nor by passions marred,
Nor fretted by perplexities of thought.
You are older than you seem. You have known great grief,
Yet mourned nor husband dead nor lover false:
I deem you orphan.
Ido.
I have lost my parents.
Empress.
And recently, I think?
Ido.
My second mother
Expired but few weeks since. She was of those
Exiled of late—the primate's widowed sister;—
In the great storm she died.
Empress.
That churl De Broc
Outstepped his warrant.
Ido.
'Mid celestial choirs
One note is added to her song on earth—
The sweetest! I have heard it in my dreams,
And walked the long day after as on air.
Not now she sings alone the peace of heaven,
The bliss of saints; she sings their joy not less
Who share on earth the Saviour's crown of thorns.
What other joy like that of sacrifice?
Without it love were nought! In death she lay
A lovely shape that seemed to smile in sleep,
And placid as the snowy fields around.
Her brother raised this crucifix from her breast
And bade me bear it to you. ‘Let her wear it
In death,’ he said, ‘and it will bring her peace;
And, wearing it, let her win back her son,
Who walks in ways of death.’
Empress.
Flatterers, not friends,
Are now my son's advisers. I could wish
That late-born hatred 'twixt him and the primate
Changed to old love.
Ido.
O lady, deem it not!
The primate hate your son! How many a time
Have I not heard him praise the king's high heart;
His wit at years when others chase their follies;
His prescient thought; his knowledge won from all,
Drawn in with every breath; his wind-like swiftness,
Now here, now there; persistence iron-nerved,
Pliant at need, but with resilience still
Back-springing to a purpose of that height
Which makes ambition virtue. Shake from him
But two fierce passions which convulse his spirit—
Anger was one, he did not name the other—
No prince there reigns like him.
Empress.
The heart of Thomas
Was ever large; that know I well.
Ido.
Full oft
I have heard him cast the royal horposcope:
‘Let him be England's king, a child of England!
If all the world beside were his for realm
The solid centre's there; his home be England!
Let him sun out its virtues with his love;
Strike off its bonds; unite its rival races;
Restore old usages; replant the poor
In those huge forests now the hunter's spoil;
Be loved at English hearths, from those fair cliffs
England's white girdle, to her mountain thrones;
His name be honoured in her fields and farms,
And minsters gathering, as the parent bird
Gathers its young, the growing cities round them,
Honoured by all her brave, industrious sons,
So Christian-like in manners and in mind,
So grave in deeds, and yet so merry-hearted,
And in their plainness kind.’
Empress.
My son's ambition
Hath wider scope than England. Pass that by:
Who hopes so much for him must love him truly.
I hope; but fear. In Thomas he had found
At least an honest friend, and fearless friend,
A counsellor by private aims untainted.
Ido.
A mother's counsel—
Empress.
He revered it once:
That queen of his hath slain his reverence;
That woman with five realms and fifty devils,
Who witched him to her love. She loved him never;
And with her strident voice and angry eyes
Scared from her soon his heart. A faithfuller husband
Had been obsequious less. A wife! a wife!
You on whose brow virginity is throned
Are liker to a wife than Eleanor!
In that obdurate will, and lawless humour,
And shallow heart, despite all marriage bonds
Wifehood's true spirit had been impossible
Even had she loved him well! A married mistress
Let such be called. Prop me this pillow, child,
And put from you that wildered, frightened look.
My father—him I loved the most on earth;—
If wars I moved, if these thin fingers clutched
The sceptre all too tight, 'twas for this cause,
Because his hand had held it!
Ido.
Gracious lady—
Empress.
Come near, and lay your lily cheek near mine,
But touch not mine, or yours will catch its fever.
Fix now your eyes on yonder winding Seine,
Seen 'twixt the crowded city towers. Mark there
How yon unladen barks run down the river:—
So lightly issues forth our youth's emprise
Full-sailed to shores unknown. Mark next how slowly
Those barges cargo-burthened mount the stream
With painful toil, and oars that keep not time:—
Thus—youth gone by—fortunes fulfilled oppress us;
The tide against us works.
O what a beaming shape was he in boyhood!
The sun declines, methinks. Where lodge you, child?
Ido.
I know not, madam.
Empress.
Rest in yonder convent:
I built it, and they love me. Ere you sleep
Give me a prayer. Our faith remains; our prayer
Grows cold with age—at least the prayer of princes.
Maid, I have heard your name; seen you ere now,
But know not where. The Pope hath sent me missives,
Praying mine intercession with my son;—
He hath it; but in limits. Child, farewell!
[Idonea kneels, kisses the Empress' hand, and withdraws.
