University of Virginia Library

SCENE VI.

An Apartment in the Primate's house at Clarendon.
Enter Becket with a sour stateliness; followed by the Bishop of Norwich, and Gryme.
Becket.
Sign all of ye!—Not even my ink's black cross
Shall sanctify his godless Constitutions!
I am no reed,—to bend at every whiff
Of blustering tyranny!—no supple flagger!
Ye Suffragans infirm!

Norwich.
My gracious lord!
Will you then be the oak, whose testy pride
Lowered not its head, till torn up by the roots?

Becket.
I will,—a stout, stern, soil-bound English oak,
Shelt'ring a lowly church, a pious people,
Which hears the wind's fierce whistle through his boughs
Age after age, and scorns it—as a whistle!—
Had ye but stood like me—by me—behind me—
This storm had puffed its full, and we but waved it
Off, with scarce-raised arms. We had not lost
An acorn!

Norwich.
Please you, sir, our very lives!
Marked you not those grim hatchet-men, that shook
Aloft bright edges through the hall, to show
Where death might drop from?

Becket.
Tut, a trick terrific
To fool old babes into obedience! Me
It fooled nor quelled.

Gryme.
Thrice Sanctimonious! here
Are lords who crave admittance.

Becket.
I'll not see them:
Begging-faced Bishops! paupers for pity's dole!

Gryme.
Your very venerable Grace! I spy
A red broad hat, and leopard crest, among them.

Becket.
O! 'tis the Cardinal and the Uncle of the King:
Let them come in! (Exit Gryme.)
This seems respect at least.

Enter Cardinal Philip, Earl of Cornwall, and the Grand Prior.
Cardinal.
Highest and mightiest Prelate of the realm,
We come, negotiators of Peace, if not
Plenipotential to conclude it, hoping
Your Grace is thereto well disposed.

Becket.
Why not,
Most Eminent? Within me all is calm
As the hushed sea between his ebb and flood,
Balancing when to roll.—Wherefore should I
Love not this halcyon state?—love it not round me,
Well as within me? Can the sea less whelm
When smooth than rough, the headlong who disturb
The stillness of its pure and deepy bosom?
Kings—moonstruck kings! may lash that sea to foam,
But not my mildness. They upon its rage
Their puerile chains will as successless throw
As upon Becket's ire,—if ever roused!

Cornwall.
My lord! my lord! you take too much upon you—

Becket.
My lord! my lord! you take much more to say so!
Who am I but the Sacerdotal King
Of this great state? who you?—a king impossible!

Cardinal.
You do forget your halcyon calm.

Becket.
The ox
Of quietest front sublime, may be yet stung
To anger, by a gadfly! What's your need with me?

Cornwall.
If you are bland again, we would say thus—

Becket.
Cannot his Eminence, the Legate, speak?
'Twere best, methinks, on church affairs. I listen!

Cornwall
(aside).
If this pride fall not, Lucifer's never did!

Cardinal.
Let me, in mine Italian humour, serve
For spokesman, though unwilling, to this mission.—
It ne'er has been the policy of Rome
To play the cat's-paw.

Cornwall
(aside).
No, the lion's rather
Making a prize of all!

Cardinal.
Nor meddle much
With the hot instruments of civil broils,
Except as mediator 'tween those who sway
Such utensils, (you'll pardon, on the feast
Of good St. Hilary, my lepid vein
Which means to soothe, not stir!)—Now, my dear lord,
Let me approach you in that blessed wise
Of Peace-maker. A little hear me, pray:
The Constitutions, called of Clarendon—

Becket.
Not so—they are not passed, wanting my sign!

Cornwall
(aside).
How hushed a sea he is!

Cardinal.
Well then, these Articles
To be called Constitutions with your sign—

Becket.
Never!—What Sixteen Articles which make
The mitre a huge tassel to the crown!
—A bare appendage!—the grave Bishops merely
Chief foot-kissers of the King, not of the Pope,
Sole osculation, sacred and sublime!—
Which make all priests whate'er amenable
Like common subjects to the Common Laws,
And spiritual culprits even mount the block
Where secular caitiffs die! O monstrous! monstrous!
Most despot Articles which make the King
Head of the Church, supreme, unqualified,
Throughout his whole dominions!—'Tis impossible!
Can ne'er in England come to pass such things!

Cardinal.
My lord, you state them with too round a mouth
Of eloquence, too loosely large; at least
As we do understand them.

Cornwall.
They are no more
In substance than those which at Westminster
You gave assent to.

Becket.
Be't so! Why repeat it?
If it were given, 'twas given, and there's an end.

Cornwall.
Pardon me, humbly I beseech your grace,
But that assent was far too vague and general,
So boundless that it bound to nought at all!

Becket.
I'll give none other. That's a word of Fate!

[Retires.
Grand Prior.
O! miserable kingdom!

Becket.
What wouldst have?

Grand Prior.
A patriot's wish! an old man's wish!—peace! peace!

Cornwall.
A good man's thou might'st add—a wise man's too!

Becket.
Ay, and a fool's as well! The idiot loves
To bask against a sunny wall his days,
With arms like dead boughs hanging, vacant eyes
Fixed on the straw he sees not, and his mouth
Gaping so idly it chops not the mess
Laid 'twixt his teeth: He wishes, and has, peace:
Is that to sample us?

Cornwall.
You are too keen
And subtle a logician to be coped with
By us, my lord. But there are reasoners
Upon the side of these same Articles,
You cannot easily silence.

Becket.
Which be they?

Cornwall.
Three hundred broad-mouthed bugles, whose loud blare
Echoing through each portcullis, will call up
The embodied Baronage of this realm, as one
Mail-clad Colossus.

Becket.
I call down another
More dread—the Angel of the English Church,
With thunders armed,—whose very breath will scorch
Your idol into ashes!

Cardinal.
Brother, perpend!
You bring not king and kingdom under ban
Without the Legate's voice: you are but chorus
To his pre-eminent curse!

Becket.
Ay, but that Legate
May be of other name than Philip then;
Of clime less out-land to us; and of mood
Less that of a good easy man than thine!

Norwich
(to Gryme).
His Legateship had better have continued
To pour some oil on these contentious waves,
And haply smoothen them.

Gryme.
Had he more oil
In his soft tongue than any whale, 'twould not
Have stilled the master-wave at least!

Cornwall.
With us
Are all the bishops—

Becket.
Traitors to God and me!
Who treble-bolt against themselves each blade
Of heaven's already forked fires!—Avaunt!
[To Norwich, who approaches humbly.
Touch not my hem with thy Iscariot kisses!

Cardinal.
He is too much for us—'tis all in vain!

Grand Prior
(falling on his knees to Becket).
Wilt thou spurn my grey hairs?—and from thy hem
Dash these half-childish tears?

Becket.
Richard de Hastings!
Heir of the oldest Norman name renowned!
Grand Prior of the Templars! thou kneel thus,
Sacred with age and station?

Grand Prior.
I am almost
Mere earth already: bowed towards the dust,
To which I moulder inly, by the weight
Of years and ills: 'tis little lowliness
To kneel, where I must lay me down so soon.

Becket.
Prythee, arise—it not beseems thee—

Grand Prior.
Never!
Till thou descend from what beseems not thee!—
I am as fixed in humbleness, as thou
In pride!—The shame of my prostration hang
On thee alone!—My tears, an old man's tears,
Damning as blood, be on thee, and cry up
To piteous heaven for vengeance!

Becket.
Hold!—this hath
The awe of very anathema in its sound,
Though launched by lips unqualified!—Rise, sir!
'Tis as the Patriarch Israel on his knees
Before another Joseph.—I am moved:
That's much.

Grand Prior.
Then say thou grant'st my prayer, good son!

Becket.
I 'll sign these Articles—with a mere clause
For mine own dignity—that they shall stand
As laws of the kingdom, Salvo ordine nostro.

Grand Prior.
That salvo is more worthy of a sophist
Than of a deep philosopher, my son!
Ill Latinists though we barons be, 'tis plain
Those learned words mean—Saving your own Order—
And to sign Articles with such reserve,
Is but to say,—these shall stand laws, when for us,
But when against us, by no means!—'Tis but
To sign in joint-bond for a general debt,
With this provision—such bond shall be binding
On all who have subscribed it—Save ourselves!—
My son, be honester and more politic.

Becket.
Thou too, Grand Prior! join this league?—thou too,
A military Monk, and altar-sworn
To be true soldier of the Church!—Wilt thou
Stab at her thus through me?

Grand Prior.
Alas! I am liker
To fall on my own sword for patriot sorrow,
If now such death were virtue:—I am old,
And feeble, very feeble!—All my strength
Is in my hoary locks!—but I would spend it,
Laying that white appeal before thy feet,
To save the Church and thee from their great foe—

Becket.
Why that's the king!

Grand Prior.
Thyself!—thou 'rt her chief foe,
And thine own likewise!—Suicide prepense,
Parricide of thy Holy Mother the Church!—

Cornwall
(to Norwich).
Truth comes from Heaven, most sure! How it inspires
That weak old man with vigour strange, and sense
So super-natural to his own!

Norwich.
He pauses:
He draws hard breath—he swoons—

Grand Prior.
Both—both shall perish—
Hark! how the King raves!—See those glistening swords!—
The Primate grasps the altar—blood! blood! blood!
Save him!—His brains are on the floor!—O Becket!
Hadst thou but listened when the old man prayed,
This sacrilege had not been!

[Swoons away.
Becket.
Great God! I yield!—
Raise thee, good father! I have signed the scrolls—
Thy prayer is heard!

Grand Prior.
Now lay me i' the tomb—
[He is borne off.
At Battle-Abbey, with mine ancestors—
I 'm a Crusader, let my legs be crossed;
Mark you?—Go tell the king—that—that—I'm dead.

[Scene closes.