No More Learning

PAGET. You'd not hear that.
He pass'd out smiling, and he walk'd upright;
His eye was like a soldier's, whom the general
He looks to and he leans on as his God,
Hath rated for some backwardness and bidd'n him
Charge one against a thousand, and the man
Hurls his soil'd life against the pikes and dies.

HOWARD. Yet that he might not after all those papers
Of recantation yield again, who knows?

PAGET. Papers of recantation! Think you then
That Cranmer read all papers that he sign'd?
Or sign'd all those they tell us that he sign'd?
Nay, I trow not: and you shall see, my Lord,
That howsoever hero-like the man
Dies in the fire, this Bonner or another
Will in some lying fashion misreport
His ending to the glory of their church.
And you saw Latimer and Ridley die?
Latimer was eighty, was he not? his best
Of life was over then.

HOWARD. His eighty years
Look'd somewhat crooked on him in his frieze;
But after they had stript him to his shroud,
He stood upright, a lad of twenty-one,
And gather'd with his hands the starting flame,
And wash'd his hands and all his face therein,
Until the powder suddenly blew him dead.
Ridley was longer burning; but he died
As manfully and boldly, and, 'fore God,
I know them heretics, but right English ones.
If ever, as heaven grant, we clash with Spain,
Our Ridley-soldiers and our Latimer-sailors
Will teach her something.

PAGET. Your mild Legate Pole
Will tell you that the devil helpt them thro' it.
[_A murmur of the Crowd in the distance_.
Hark, how those Roman wolfdogs howl and bay him!

HOWARD. Might it not be the other side rejoicing
In his brave end?

PAGET. They are too crush'd, too broken,
They can but weep in silence.

HOWARD. Ay, ay, Paget,
They have brought it in large measure on themselves.
Have I not heard them mock the blessed Host
In songs so lewd, the beast might roar his claim
To being in God's image, more than they?
Have I not seen the gamekeeper, the groom.
Gardener, and huntsman, in the parson's place,
The parson from his own spire swung out dead,
And Ignorance crying in the streets, and all men
Regarding her? I say they have drawn the fire
On their own heads: yet, Paget, I do hold
The Catholic, if he have the greater right,
Hath been the crueller.