A sort of naughty persons, lewdly bent,

Under the countenance and confederacy

Of Lady Eleanor, the Protector’s wife,

The ringleader and head of all this rout,

Have practised dangerously against your state,

Dealing with witches and with conjurors,

Whom we have apprehended in the fact,

Raising up wicked spirits from under ground,

Demanding of King Henry’s life and death

And other of your highness’ Privy Council.

And here’s the answer the devil did make to them.

Buckingham gives King Henry the writings

⌈KING HENRY⌉ (reads)

‘First of the King: what shall of him become?

The Duke yet lives that Henry shall depose,

But him outlive and die a violent death.’

God’s will be done in all. Well, to the rest.

(Reads) ‘Tell me what fate awaits the Duke of Suffolk?

By water shall he die, and take his end.’

SUFFOLK [aside]

By water must the Duke of Suffolk die?

It must be so, or else the devil doth lie.

KING HENRY (reads)

‘What shall betide the Duke of Somerset?

Let him shun castles. Safer shall he be

Upon the sandy plains than where castles mounted

stand.’

CARDINAL BEAUFORT (to Gloucester)

And so, my Lord Protector, by this means

Your lady is forthcoming yet at London.

(Aside to Gloucester)

This news, I think, hath turned your weapon’s edge.

᾽“Tis like, my lord, you will not keep your hour.

GLOUCESTER

Ambitious churchman, leave to afflict my heart.

Sorrow and grief have vanquished all my powers,

And, vanquished as I am, I yield to thee

Or to the meanest groom.

KING HENRY

O God, what mischiefs work the wicked ones,

Heaping confusion on their own heads thereby!

QUEEN MARGARET

Gloucester, see here the tainture of thy nest,

And look thyself be faultless, thou wert best.

GLOUCESTER

Madam, for myself, to heaven I do appeal,

How I have loved my King and common weal;

And for my wife, I know not how it stands.

Sorry I am to hear what I have heard.

Noble she is, but if she have forgot

Honour and virtue and conversed with such

As, like to pitch, defile nobility,

I banish her my bed and company,

And give her as a prey to law and shame

That hath dishonoured Gloucester’s honest name.

KING HENRY

Well, for this night we will repose us here;

Tomorrow toward London back again,

To look into this business thoroughly,

And call these foul offenders to their answers,

And poise the cause in justice’ equal scales,

Whose beam stands sure, whose rightful cause

prevails. Flourish. Exeunt

2.2 Enter the Duke of York and the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick

YORK

Now, my good lords of Salisbury and Warwick,

Our simple supper ended, give me leave

In this close walk to satisfy myself

In craving your opinion of my title,

Which is infallible, to England’s crown.

SALISBURY

My lord, I long to hear it out at full.

WARWICK

Sweet York, begin, and if thy claim be good,

The Nevilles are thy subjects to command.

YORK Then thus:

Edward the Third, my lords, had seven sons:

The first, Edward the Black Prince, Prince of Wales;

The second, William of Hatfield; and the third,

Lionel Duke of Clarence; next to whom

Was John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster;

The fifth was Edmund Langley, Duke of York;

The sixth was Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of

Gloucester;

William of Windsor was the seventh and last.

Edward the Black Prince died before his father

And left behind him Richard, his only son,

Who, after Edward the Third’s death, reigned as king

Till Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster,

The eldest son and heir of John of Gaunt,

Crowned by the name of Henry the Fourth,

Seized on the realm, deposed the rightful king,

Sent his poor queen to France from whence she came,

And him to Pomfret; where, as well you know,

Harmless Richard was murdered traitorously.

WARWICK (to Salisbury)

Father, the Duke of York hath told the truth;

Thus got the house of Lancaster the crown.

YORK

Which now they hold by force and not by right;

For Richard, the first son’s heir, being dead,

The issue of the next son should have reigned.

SALISBURY

But William of Hatfield died without an heir.

YORK

The third son, Duke of Clarence, from whose line

I claim the crown, had issue Phillipe, a daughter,

Who married Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March;

Edmund had issue, Roger, Earl of March;

Roger had issue, Edmund, Anne and Eleanor.

SALISBURY

This Edmund, in the reign of Bolingbroke,

As I have read, laid claim unto the crown,

And, but for Owain Glyndwr, had been king,

Who kept him in captivity till he died.

But to the rest.

YORK His eldest sister, Anne,