No More Learning

I know not if he did;
And if he did I care not, my Lord Howard.
My life is not so happy, no such boon,
That I should spare to take a heretic priest's,
Who saved it or not saved. Why do you vex me?

PAGET. Yet to save Cranmer were to serve the Church,
Your Majesty's I mean; he is effaced,
Self-blotted out; so wounded in his honour,
He can but creep down into some dark hole
Like a hurt beast, and hide himself and die;
But if you burn him,--well, your Highness knows
The saying, 'Martyr's blood--seed of the Church. '

MARY. Of the true Church; but his is none, nor will be.
You are too politic for me, my Lord Paget.
And if he have to live so loath'd a life,
It were more merciful to burn him now.

THIRLBY. O yet relent. O, Madam, if you knew him
As I do, ever gentle, and so gracious,
With all his learning--

MARY. Yet a heretic still.
His learning makes his burning the more just.

THIRLBY.
So worshipt of all those that came across him;
The stranger at his hearth, and all his house--

MARY. His children and his concubine, belike.

THIRLBY. To do him any wrong was to beget
A kindness from him, for his heart was rich,
Of such fine mould, that if you sow'd therein
The seed of Hate, it blossom'd Charity.

POLE. 'After his kind it costs him nothing,' there's
An old world English adage to the point.
These are but natural graces, my good Bishop,
Which in the Catholic garden are as flowers,
But on the heretic dunghill only weeds.

HOWARD. Such weeds make dunghills gracious.

MARY. Enough, my Lords.
It is God's will, the Holy Father's will,
And Philip's will, and mine, that he should burn.
He is pronounced anathema.

HOWARD. Farewell, Madam,
God grant you ampler mercy at your call
Than you have shown to Cranmer.
[_Exeunt_ LORDS.