ARCHBISHOP OF YORK What is this forest called?

HASTINGS

’Tis Gaultres Forest, an’t shall please your grace.

ARCHBISHOP OF YORK

Here stand, my lords, and send discoverers forth

To know the numbers of our enemies.

HASTINGS

We have sent forth already.

ARCHBISHOP OF YORK ’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, tenor, 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 15

And fearful meeting of their opposite.

MOWBRAY

Thus do the hopes we have in him touch ground

And dash themselves to pieces.

Enter a Messenger

HASTINGS Now, what news?

MESSENGER

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.

MOWBRAY

The just proportion that we gave them out.

Let us sway on, and face them in the field.

Enter the Earl of Westmorland

ARCHBISHOP OF YORK

What well-appointed leader fronts us here?

MOWBRAY

I think it is my lord of Westmorland.

WESTMORLAND

Health and fair greeting from our general,

The Prince, Lord John and Duke of Lancaster.

ARCHBISHOP OF YORK

Say on, my lord of Westmorland, in peace,

What doth concern your coming.

WESTMORLAND 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 bloody youth, guarded with rags,

And countenanced by boys and beggary;

I say, if damned commotion so appeared

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 base and bloody insurrection

With your fair honours. You, Lord Archbishop,

Whose see is by a civil peace maintained,

Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touched,

Whose learning and good letters peace hath tutored,

Whose white investments 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 boist’rous tongue of war,

Turning your books to graves, your ink to blood,

Your pens to lances, and your tongue divine

To a loud trumpet and a point of war?

ARCHBISHOP OF YORK

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 Westmorland,

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 a while 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 weighed

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 shore

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 offered to the King,

And might by no suit gain our audience.

When we are wronged, 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, 80

Whose memory is written on the earth

With yet appearing blood, and the examples

Of every minute’s instance, present now,

Hath put us in these ill-beseeming arms,

Not to break peace, or any branch of it,

But to establish here a peace indeed,

Concurring both in name and quality.

WESTMORLAND

Whenever yet was your appeal denied?

Wherein have you been gallèd by the King?

What peer hath been suborned to grate on you,

That you should seal this lawless bloody book

Of forged rebellion with a seal divine?

ARCHBISHOP OF YORK

My brother general, the commonwealth

I make my quarrel in particular.

WESTMORLAND

There is no need of any such redress;

Or if there were, it not belongs to you.

MOWBRAY

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