Arch.

'Tis well done.
My friends and brethren in these great affairs,
I must acquaint you that I have received
New-dated letters from Northumberland;
Their cold intent, tenour, and substance, thus :
Here doth he wish his person, with such powers
As might hold sortance with his quality,
The which he could not levy; whereupon
He is retired, to ripe his growing fortunes,
To Scotland ; and concludes in hearty prayers
That your attempts may overlive the hazard
And fearful meeting of their opposite.

Mowb. Thus do the hopes we have in him touch ground, And dash themselves to pieces.

Enter a Messenger.
Hast.

Now, what news?
Mess. West of this forest, scarcely off a mile,
In goodly form comes on the enemy;
And, by the ground they hide, I judge their number
Upon or near the rate of thirty thousand.

Mowb. The just proportion that we gave them out.
Let us sway on, and face them in the field.

Arch. What well-appointed 2 leader fronts us here?
Mowb. I think it is my Lord of Westmoreland.

Enter WESTMORELAND.
West. Health and fair greeting from our general,
The Prince, Lord John and Duke of Lancaster.

Arch. Say on, my Lord of Westmoreland, in peace,
What doth concern your coming.

Then, my lord, Unto your Grace do I in chief address The substance of my speech. If that rebellion Came like itself, in base and abject routs, Led on by heady youth, guarded with rags, And countenanced by boys and beggary,I say, if damn'd commotion so appear'd, In his true, native, and most proper shape, You, reverend father, and these noble lords, Had not been here, to dress the ugly form Of bare and bloody insurrection With your fair honours. You, Lord Archbishop,Whose see is by a civil peace maintain’d; Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touch'd; Whose learning and good letters peace hath tutor'd; Whose white investments 4 figure innocence, The dove and very blessed spirit of peace, Wherefore do you so ill translate yourself Out of the speech of peace, that bears such grace, Into the harsh and boisterous tongue of war; Turning your books to greaves, your ink to blood, Your pens to lances, and your tongue divine To a loud trumpet and a point of war ? 6

Arch. Wherefore do I this ? so the question stands.
Briefly to this end : We are all diseased;
And with our surfeiting and wanton hours
Have brought ourselves into a burning fever,
And we must bleed for it: of which disease
Our late King, Richard, being infected, died.
But, my most noble Lord of Westmoreland,
I take not on me here as a physician;
Nor do I, as an enemy to peace,
Troop in the throngs of military men;
But, rather, show awhile like fearful war,
To diet rank minds sick of happiness,
And purge th' obstructions which begin to stop
Our very

veins of life. Hear me more plainly.
I have in equal balance justly weigh'd
What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer,
And find our griefs heavier than our offences.
We see which way the stream of time doth run,
And are enforced from our most quiet sphere
By the rough torrent of occasion ;
And have the summary of all our griefs,
When time shall serve, to show in articles ;
Which long ere this we offer'd to the King,
And might by no suit gain our audience :
When we are wrong'd, and would unfold our griefs,
We are denied access unto his person
Even by those men that most have done us wrong.
The dangers of the days but newly gone,
Whose memory is written on the earth
With yet-appearing blood, and the examples
Of every minute's instance, present now,
Have put us in these ill-beseeming arms;

7 " Examples of every minute's instance" probably means examples which every minute supplies or instances,

Not to break peace, or any branch of it,
But to establish here a peace indeed,
Concurring both in name and quality.

West. When ever yet was your appeal denied ;
Wherein have you been galled by the King ;
What
peer

hath been suborn’d to grate on you;
That you should seal this lawless bloody book
Of forged rebellion with a seal divine,
And consecrate commotion's bitter edge ?

Arch. My burden general is the commonwealth ;
To brother born an household cruelty,
I make my quarrel in particular. 8

West. There is no need of any such redress;
Or, if there were, it not belongs to you.

Mowb. Why not to him in part, and to us all
That feel the bruises of the days before,
And suffer the condition of these times
To lay a heavy and unequal hand
Upon our honours ?
West.

O, my good Lord Mowbray,
Construe the times to their necessities,
And you shall say indeed, it is the time,
And not the King, that doth you injuries.
Yet, for your part, it not appears to me,
Either from th' King, or in the present time,
That you should have an inch of any ground
To build a grief on: were you not restored
To all the Duke of Norfolk's signiories,

8 Here burden general of course refers to the public grievances which the speaker has just been recounting, and for the redress of which he claims to be in arms. Then, besides this, he has a private or particular cause of quarrel in the wounding of his household affections by the cruelty inflicted on his own brother. So, in the preceding play, i. 3, we have Worcester speaking of the Archbishop as “ bearing hard his brother's death at Bristol, the Lord Scroop.” See Critical Notes.

Your noble and right-well-remember'd father's ?

Mowb. What thing, in honour, had my father lost, That need to be revived and breathed in me? The King, that loved him, as the State stood then Was, force perforce,9 compell’d to banish him : And when that Henry Bolingbroke and he Being mounted and both roused in their seats, Their neighing coursers daring of the spur, Their armed staves in charge, 10 their beavers down,11 Their eyes of fire sparkling through sights of steel,12 And the loud trumpet blowing them together; Then, then, when there was nothing could have stay'd My father from the breast of Bolingbroke, O, when the King did throw his warder down,13 His own life hung upon the staff he threw : Then threw he down himself, and all their lives That by indictment and by dint of sword Have since miscarried under Bolingbroke. West. You speak, Lord Mowbray, now you know not