SCENE I. Yorkshire. Gaultree Forest. Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF YORK, MOWBRAY, LORD HASTINGS, and others ARCHBISHOP OF YORK What is this forest call'd? HASTINGS 'Tis Gaultree 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 And fearful melting 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. ARCHBISHOP OF YORK What well-appointed leader fronts us here?
Enter WESTMORELAND MOWBRAY I think it is my Lord of Westmoreland. WESTMORELAND Health and fair greeting from our general, The prince, Lord John and Duke of Lancaster. ARCHBISHOP OF YORK Say on, my Lord of Westmoreland, in peace:
What doth concern your coming? WESTMORELAND 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 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 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 touch'd, Whose learning and good letters peace hath tutor'd, Whose white investments figure innocence, The dove and very blessed spirit of peace, Wherefore do you so ill translate ourself Out of the speech of peace that bears such grace, Into the harsh and boisterous tongue of war;Turning your books to graves, your ink to blood, Your pens to lances and your tongue divine To a 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 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 the 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 there 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, 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. WESTMORELAND 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? ARCHBISHOP OF YORK My brother general, the commonwealth, To brother born an household cruelty, I make my quarrel in particular. WESTMORELAND 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 Upon our honours? WESTMORELAND 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 the 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 signories, Your noble and right well remember'd father's? MOWBRAY 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 compell'd to banish him:
And then that Harry Bolingbroke and he, Being mounted and both roused in their seats, Their neighing coursers daring of the spur, Their armed staves in charge, their beavers down, Their eyes of fire sparking through sights of steel 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, 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. WESTMORELAND You speak, Lord Mowbray, now you know not what.
The Earl of Hereford was reputed then In England the most valiant gentlemen:
Who knows on whom fortune would then have smiled?