Is in the very May-morn of his youth,

Ripe for exploits and mighty enterprises.

EXETER

Your brother kings and monarchs of the earth

Do all expect that you should rouse yourself

As did the former lions of your blood.

WESTMORLAND

They know your grace hath cause; and means and

might,

So hath your highness. Never king of England

Had nobles richer and more loyal subjects,

Whose hearts have left their bodies here in England

And lie pavilioned in the fields of France.

CANTERBURY

O let their bodies follow, my dear liege,

With blood and sword and fire, to win your right.

In aid whereof, we of the spiritualty

Will raise your highness such a mighty sum

As never did the clergy at one time

Bring in to any of your ancestors.

KING HARRY

We must not only arm t’invade the French,

But lay down our proportions to defend

Against the Scot, who will make raid upon us

With all advantages.

CANTERBURY

They of those marches, gracious sovereign,

Shall be a wall sufficient to defend

Our inland from the pilfering borderers.

KING HARRY

We do not mean the coursing snatchers only,

But fear the main intendment of the Scot,

Who hath been still a giddy neighbour to us.

For you shall read that my great-grandfather

Never unmasked his power unto France

But that the Scot on his unfurnished kingdom

Came pouring like the tide into a breach

With ample and brim fullness of his force

Galling the gleaned land with hot assays,

Girding with grievous siege castles and towns,

That England, being empty of defence,

Hath shook and trembled at the bruit thereof.

CANTERBURY

She hath been then more feared than harmed, my

liege. 155

For hear her but exampled by herself:

When all her chivalry hath been in France

And she a mourning widow of her nobles,

She hath herself not only well defended

But taken and impounded as a stray

The King of Scots, whom she did send to France

To fill King Edward’s fame with prisoner kings

And make your chronicle as rich with praise

As is the ooze and bottom of the sea

With sunken wrack and sumless treasuries.

⌈A LORD⌉

But there’s a saying very old and true:

‘If that you will France win, Then with Scotland first begin.’

For once the eagle England being in prey,

To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot

Comes sneaking, and so sucks her princely eggs,

Playing the mouse in absence of the cat,

To ’tame and havoc more than she can eat.

EXETER

It follows then the cat must stay at home.

Yet that is but a crushed necessity,

Since we have locks to safeguard necessaries

And pretty traps to catch the petty thieves.

While that the armed hand doth fight abroad,

Th’advisèd head defends itself at home.

For government, though high and low and lower,

Put into parts, doth keep in one consent,

Congreeing in a full and natural close,

Like music.

CANTERBURY True. Therefore doth heaven divide

The state of man in divers functions,

Setting endeavour in continual motion;

To which is fixed, as an aim or butt,

Obedience. For so work the honey-bees,

Creatures that by a rule in nature teach

The act of order to a peopled kingdom.

They have a king, and officers of sorts,

Where some like magistrates correct at home;

Others like merchants venture trade abroad;

Others like soldiers, armed in their stings,

Make boot upon the summer’s velvet buds,

Which pillage they with merry march bring home

To the tent royal of their emperor,

Who busied in his majesty surveys

The singing masons building roofs of gold,

The civil citizens lading up the honey,

The poor mechanic porters crowding in

Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate,

The sad-eyed justice with his surly hum

Delivering o’er to executors pale

The lazy yawning drone. I this infer:

That many things, having full reference

To one consent, may work contrariously.

As many arrows, loosed several ways,

Fly to one mark, as many ways meet in one town,

As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea,

As many lines close in the dial’s centre,

So may a thousand actions once afoot

End in one purpose, and be all well borne

Without defect. Therefore to France, my liege.

Divide your happy England into four,

Whereof take you one quarter into France,

And you withal shall make all Gallia shake.

If we with thrice such powers left at home

Cannot defend our own doors from the dog,

Let us be worried, and our nation lose

The name of hardiness and policy.