No More Learning

[_Calling to_ ATTENDANT.
By the river to the Tower.

[_Exeunt_.



SCENE IV. --WHITEHALL. A ROOM IN THE PALACE.
MARY, GARDINER, POLE, PAGET, BONNER, _etc_.


MARY. The King and I, my Lords, now that all traitors
Against our royal state have lost the heads
Wherewith they plotted in their treasonous malice,
Have talk'd together, and are well agreed
That those old statutes touching Lollardism
To bring the heretic to the stake, should be
No longer a dead letter, but requicken'd.

ONE OF THE COUNCIL. Why, what hath fluster'd Gardiner? how he rubs
His forelock!

PAGET. I have changed a word with him
In coming, and may change a word again.

GARDINER.
Madam, your Highness is our sun, the King
And you together our two suns in one;
And so the beams of both may shine upon us,
The faith that seem'd to droop will feel your light,
Lift head, and flourish; yet not light alone,
There must be heat--there must be heat enough
To scorch and wither heresy to the root.
For what saith Christ? 'Compel them to come in. '
And what saith Paul? 'I would they were cut off
That trouble you. ' Let the dead letter live!
Trace it in fire, that all the louts to whom
Their A B C is darkness, clowns and grooms
May read it! so you quash rebellion too,
For heretic and traitor are all one:
Two vipers of one breed--an amphisbaena,
Each end a sting: Let the dead letter burn!

PAGET. Yet there be some disloyal Catholics,
And many heretics loyal; heretic throats
Cried no God-bless-her to the Lady Jane,
But shouted in Queen Mary. So there be
Some traitor-heretic, there is axe and cord.
To take the lives of others that are loyal,
And by the churchman's pitiless doom of fire,
Were but a thankless policy in the crown,
Ay, and against itself; for there are many.

MARY. If we could burn out heresy, my Lord Paget,
We reck not tho' we lost this crown of England--
Ay! tho' it were ten Englands!

GARDINER.