No More Learning

MARY. My Lord of Ely, this. After a riot
We hang the leaders, let their following go.
Cranmer is head and father of these heresies,
New learning as they call it; yea, may God
Forget me at most need when I forget
Her foul divorce--my sainted mother--No! --

HOWARD. Ay, ay, but mighty doctors doubted there.
The Pope himself waver'd; and more than one
Row'd in that galley--Gardiner to wit,
Whom truly I deny not to have been
Your faithful friend and trusty councillor.
Hath not your Highness ever read his book.
His tractate upon True Obedience,
Writ by himself and Bonner?

MARY. I will take
Such order with all bad, heretical books
That none shall hold them in his house and live,
Henceforward. No, my Lord.

HOWARD. Then never read it.
The truth is here.
Your father was a man
Of such colossal kinghood, yet so courteous,
Except when wroth, you scarce could meet his eye
And hold your own; and were he wroth indeed,
You held it less, or not at all. 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.