No More Learning

I say,
Your father had a will that beat men down;
Your father had a brain that beat men down--

POLE. Not me, my Lord.

HOWARD. No, for you were not here;
You sit upon this fallen Cranmer's throne;
And it would more become you, my Lord Legate,
To join a voice, so potent with her Highness,
To ours in plea for Cranmer than to stand
On naked self-assertion.

MARY. All your voices
Are waves on flint. The heretic must burn.

HOWARD. Yet once he saved your Majesty's own life;
Stood out against the King in your behalf.
At his own peril.

MARY. 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.