Grey of Northumberland, this same is yours.

Read them, and know I know your worthiness.—

My lord of Westmorland, and Uncle Exeter,

We will aboard tonight.—Why, how now, gentlemen?

What see you in those papers, that you lose

So much complexion?—Look ye how they change:

Their cheeks are paper.—Why, what read you there

That have so cowarded and chased your blood

Out of appearance?

CAMBRIDGE I do confess my fault,

And do submit me to your highness’ mercy.

GREY and SCROPE To which we all appeal.

KING HARRY

The mercy that was quick in us but late

By your own counsel is suppressed and killed.

You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy,

For your own reasons turn into your bosoms,

As dogs upon their masters, worrying you.—

See you, my princes and my noble peers,

These English monsters? My lord of Cambridge here,

You know how apt our love was to accord

To furnish him with all appurtenants

Belonging to his honour; and this vile man

Hath for a few light crowns lightly conspired

And sworn unto the practices of France

To kill us here in Hampton. To the which

This knight, no less for bounty bound to us

Than Cambridge is, hath likewise sworn. But O

What shall I say to thee, Lord Scrope, thou cruel,

Ingrateful, savage, and inhuman creature?

Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels,

That knew‘st the very bottom of my soul,

That almost mightst ha’ coined me into gold

Wouldst thou ha’ practised on me for thy use:

May it be possible that foreign hire

Could out of thee extract one spark of evil

That might annoy my finger? ’Tis so strange

That though the truth of it stands off as gross

As black on white, my eye will scarcely see it.

Treason and murder ever kept together,

As two yoke-devils sworn to either’s purpose,

Working so grossly in a natural cause

That admiration did not whoop at them;

But thou, ‘gainst all proportion, didst bring in

Wonder to wait on treason and on murder.

And whatsoever cunning fiend it was

That wrought upon thee so preposterously

Hath got the voice in hell for excellence.

And other devils that suggest by treasons

Do botch and bungle up damnation

With patches, colours, and with forms, being fetched

From glist’ring semblances of piety;

But he that tempered thee, bade thee stand up,

Gave thee no instance why thou shouldst do treason,

Unless to dub thee with the name of traitor.

If that same demon that hath gulled thee thus

Should with his lion gait walk the whole world,

He might return to vasty Tartar back

And tell the legions, ‘I can never win

A soul so easy as that Englishman’s.’

O how hast thou with jealousy infected

The sweetness of affiance. Show men dutiful?

Why so didst thou. Seem they grave and learned?

Why so didst thou. Come they of noble family?

Why so didst thou. Seem they religious?

Why so didst thou. Or are they spare in diet,

Free from gross passion, or of mirth or anger,

Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood,

Garnished and decked in modest complement,

Not working with the eye without the ear,

And but in purged judgement trusting neither?

Such, and so finely boulted, didst thou seem.

And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot

To mark the full-fraught man, and best endowed,

With some suspicion. I will weep for thee,

For this revolt of thine methinks is like

Another fall of man.—Their faults are open.

Arrest them to the answer of the law,

And God acquit them of their practices.

EXETER I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Richard, Earl of Cambridge.—I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Henry, Lord Scrope of Masham.—I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Thomas Grey, knight, of Northumberland.

SCROPE

Our purposes God justly hath discovered,

And I repent my fault more than my death,

Which I beseech your highness to forgive

Although my body pay the price of it.

CAMBRIDGE

For me, the gold of France did not seduce,

Although I did admit it as a motive

The sooner to effect what I intended.

But God be thankèd for prevention,

Which heartily in sufferance will rejoice,

Beseeching God and you to pardon me.

GREY

Never did faithful subject more rejoice

At the discovery of most dangerous treason

Than I do at this hour joy o’er myself,

Prevented from a damned enterprise.

My fault, but not my body, pardon, sovereign.

KING HARRY

God ’quit you in his mercy. Hear your sentence.

You have conspired against our royal person,

Joined with an enemy proclaimed and fixed,