No More Learning

BAGENHALL. France!
We have once had half of France, and hurl'd our battles
Into the heart of Spain; but England now
Is but a ball chuck'd between France and Spain,
His in whose hand she drops; Harry of Bolingbroke
Had holpen Richard's tottering throne to stand,
Could Harry have foreseen that all our nobles
Would perish on the civil slaughter-field,
And leave the people naked to the crown,
And the crown naked to the people; the crown
Female, too! Sir, no woman's regimen
Can save us. We are fallen, and as I think,
Never to rise again.

STAFFORD. You are too black-blooded.
I'd make a move myself to hinder that:
I know some lusty fellows there in France.

BAGENHALL. You would but make us weaker, Thomas Stafford.
Wyatt was a good soldier, yet he fail'd,
And strengthen'd Philip.

STAFFORD. Did not his last breath
Clear Courtenay and the Princess from the charge
Of being his co-rebels?

BAGENHALL. Ay, but then
What such a one as Wyatt says is nothing:
We have no men among us.
The new Lords
Are quieted with their sop of Abbeylands,
And ev'n before the Queen's face Gardiner buys them
With Philip's gold. All greed, no faith, no courage!
Why, ev'n the haughty prince, Northumberland,
The leader of our Reformation, knelt
And blubber'd like a lad, and on the scaffold
Recanted, and resold himself to Rome.

STAFFORD. I swear you do your country wrong, Sir Ralph.
I know a set of exiles over there,
Dare-devils, that would eat fire and spit it out
At Philip's beard: they pillage Spain already.
The French King winks at it. An hour will come
When they will sweep her from the seas. No men?
Did not Lord Suffolk die like a true man?
Is not Lord William Howard a true man?
Yea, you yourself, altho' you are black-blooded:
And I, by God, believe myself a man.
Ay, even in the church there is a man--
Cranmer.
Fly would he not, when all men bad him fly.
And what a letter he wrote against the Pope!
There's a brave man, if any.