University of Virginia Library

Scene I.

A room in Whitehall Palace.
Enter Gardiner and Fakenham.
GARDINER.
Strange are the phases of the female mind,
So quick in phantasy, so slow to reason,
Eager, inconsequential. Such is Mary:
With thought as soaring as the eagle's flight,
Swift as the storm-cloud's shadow; and as fleeting!
It is our office, Fakenham, gives this insight:
And to our profit—yea, the Church's profit—
Yea, the wide Kingdom's profit—moulds it.

FAKENHAM.
Wisely
This privilege, built up on circumstance,
Must be employed, and to good ends confined;
Or some rough hand will smite it down.

GARDINER.
Good Abbot,
Are we not wakeful? Gentler confessor
And wiser than art thou, hath never bowed
His ear to royal whisper. It is time
To test this privilege.

FAKENHAM.
Thy purpose, Bishop?

GARDINER.
The Queen must wed: the State—the Church demands it.
'Tis true no dangerous competitor
Is left to shake the throne—for none looks now
To the worthless Exeter. Who else remains?

FAKENHAM.
Why pass the noblest by?—the Cardinal—
Reginald Pole?

GARDINER.
A Pope may not be King.

FAKENHAM.
Are you quite sure that he is Pope?

GARDINER.
Why doubt it?
The scrutiny made sure of his election.
And who hath e'er renounced that noblest crown
Of earth? Besides he hath a loyal heart,
And would not pluck her crown from Mary's brow.

FAKENHAM.
Might he not share it?

GARDINER.
He!—a churchman marry?
You babble.

FAKENHAM.
No, my lord. Pole hath not taken
The irrevocable vow: he is not Priest;
But Cardinal Deacon: and the Holy See
Hath power to absolve.

GARDINER.
True. Cæsar Borgia
Was secularized: he laid aside the purple;
And was a married man, once and again;
Duke of Romagna and Valentinois.
More than the tonsure ladies loved his ringlets.
A pregnant precedent.

FAKENHAM.
If you knew Pole,
As I have known him, you would not sneer thus.

GARDINER.
I meant no sneer. His Eminence, I doubt not,
Pious and shrewd: if worldly, what of that?
The Clergy are but men: if young (and he,
At fifty, for a Prince of the Church, is young)
And lured to greatness by successful love,
Men must slake thirst even at the fountain head.
You were Pole's friend in youth?

FAKENHAM.
I knew him well:
And love him yet.

GARDINER.
Ay, ay. This Pole has friends—
What manner of man was he in Salisbury house,
When playmate of our gracious Queen, his cousin?

FAKENHAM.
I knew him not till after days; a student
In Padua.

GARDINER.
And then?

FAKENHAM.
A nobler presence
Never embodied a more gracious soul:
Ardent, yet thoughtful; in the search of knowledge
Unwearied, yet most temperate in its use.
Whate'er he learned he wore with such an ease,
It seemed incorporated with his substance;
And beamed forth like the light that emanates
From a Saint's brow.

GARDINER.
Well, well—at Padua
You were his choice companion?

FAKENHAM.
No. I marked him
As a far Alp: and loved to watch the sunrise
Dawn on his ample brow. He lived apart,
As well became his doubly glorious lineage;
Grandson of George of Clarence, and last heir
Of Warwick; him who, greater than a King,
Made and unmade our Kings.

GARDINER.
But had he not
A cloudy mood at times?

FAKENHAM.
And that became
His lineage. Then he thought upon his mother,
His grandsire, and those great ancestral woes.

GARDINER.
Speak, as you saw him.

FAKENHAM.
Oft have I watched him sitting
For hours, on some rude promontory's edge,
Wrapt in his mantle, his broad brow sustained
With outspread palm, o'ershadowing his eyes.
And there, as one of Titan birth he lingered
In strange community with nature; mingling
With all around—the boundless sky, the ocean,
The rock, the forest—looking back defiance
Unto the elements: as some lone column
Beneath the shadow of a thunder-cloud.

GARDINER.
Well: as I said before, the throne stands firm;
But fresher blood is needful to transmit it.
Our Queen (Heaven guard her for us) is not strong.
'Twere well we had from her a healthier scion
To feed the kingdom, through forth-coming time,
With fruit of the same stock. The Queen must wed.

FAKENHAM.
Why not with Pole?

GARDINER.
A grave enthusiast
May write a moving book, but scarce rule men.
Yet hear me. He is but an Englishman;
And 'tis an adage older than the hills
That prophets are not honoured in their land.
Trained for the crosier, not the sword, his arm
Is all unequal to the stress of battle.
We must look round elsewhere.

FAKENHAM.
Nor find another
So royally endowed.

GARDINER.
Abstractedly,
Perhaps so. But observe me, England needs
A Prince whose disciplined and numerous spears
Shall fence the throne from miscreant mobs at home
And win respect abroad; a man whose birth
Bespeaks dominion; to whom intellect
Descends as an hereditary fief;
Preeminently Catholic—

FAKENHAM.
You know,
Or had not praised this Wonder so.

GARDINER.
I know him.
And he is Spanish Philip, son of Charles;
That wisest monarch, most devout of Christians,
Potent of captains, fortunate of men.—
(And we should ever sail in Fortune's wake)—

FAKENHAM.
A bigot boy!

GARDINER.
I am astonished! you,
A Priest, a mitred Abbot, to speak thus!
This is the cant of Puritans: avoid it.
It hath the smack of sin. Philip, I grant you,
Is youthful: but his German tutelage
And grave Castilian manners, make him old.

FAKENHAM.
Too young, I still aver, to wed the Queen—
At least to love her.

GARDINER.
Have you got the stamp
Of the said Cardinal, your great ideal,
Upon your metal, that you descant thus
Of love? What part have churchmen, what have statesmen
In leagues of love? What royal marriages?
I say, Prince Philip is a proper man;
Whose progeny will much advance the realm;
Whose piety, inherited, protect
The Church: and this all Christians leal desire.

FAKENHAM.
Does her Grace know your lordship's purposes?

GARDINER.
She hath heard affably my argument.
I pray you not to name the Cardinal,
(Whom doubtless, his grave dignities considered
And sacred calling, she hath long forgotten
As one who might have wooed, perchance have won her)
I mean, good Abbot, name him not, save only
As a high prelate: we will say—the Pope.
Believe me—

FAKENHAM.
You mistake her. She is changed.
Passion and grief have done the work of time,
And sleep in their own ashes. Her strong soul,
Calm as the nether levels of the sea,
The superficial tumults of this world
Trouble no more with clamour. Peace, hard-won,
The peace of faith, the peace of thought, the peace
Of heavenly hope, and earthly hopelessness,
Reign in her spirit. To her country vowed,
She lives for duty only, and affects,
(Wed she or wed she not,) the nation's weal,
Her own not seeking.

GARDINER.
Tumult comes unsought—
Tut, Sir, the nature changes not. Her coldness
Is but exhaustion. Deep is Passion's sleep
While its slow energies regerminate.
I say her mood will change.—Join we the council.

[Exeunt.