A strain to shame us keep you to yourselves;

Of Geoffrey's book, or him of Malleor's,

one

Touch'd by the adulterous finger of a time That hover'd between war and wantonness,

withal

Third Citizen. Ay, the Parliament can make every true-born man of us a bastard. Old Nokes, can't it make thee a bastard? thou shouldst know, for thou art as white as three Christmasses.

Old Nokes (dreamily). Who's a-passing? King Edward or King Richard? Third Citizen. No, old Nokes. Old Nokes. It's Harry! Third Citizen. It's Queen Mary. Old Nokes. The blessed Mary's apassing! [Falls on his knees.

Nokes. Let father alone, my masters! he's past your questioning.

Third Citizen. Answer thou for him, then! thou'rt no such cockerel thyself, for thou was born i' the tail end of old Harry the Seventh.

Nokes. Eh that was afore bastardmaking began. I was born true man at five in the forenoon i' the tail of old Harry, and so they can't make me a bastard.

Third Citizen. But if Parliament can make the Queen a bastard, why, it follows all the more that they can make thee one, who art fray'd i' the knees, and out at elbow, and bald o' the back, and bursten at the toes, and down at heels.

Nokes. I was born of a true man and a ring'd wife, and I can't argue upon it; but I and my old woman 'ud burn upon it, that would we.

Marshalman. What are you cackling of bastardy under the Queen's own nose? I'll have you flogg'd and burnt too, by the Rood I will.

[The Procession passes, Mary and Elizabeth riding side by side, and disappears under the gate. Citizens. Long live Queen Mary! down with all traitors! God save her Grace; and death to Northumberland ! [Exeunt.

Manent Two Gentlemen. First Gentleman. By God's light a noble creature, right royal!

Second Gentleman. She looks comelier than ordinary to-day; but to my mind the Lady Elizabeth is the more noble and royal.

First Gentleman. I mean the Lady Elizabeth. Did you hear (I have a daughter in her service who reported it) that she met the Queen at Wanstead with five hundred horse, and the Queen (tho' some say they be much divided) took her hand, call'd her sweet sister, and kiss'd not her alone, but all the ladies of her following.

Second Gentleman. Ay, that was in her hour of joy; there will be plenty to sunder and unsister them again: this Gardiner for one, who is to be made Lord Chancellor, and will pounce like a wild beast out of his cage to worry Cranmer.

First Gentleman. And furthermore, my daughter said that when there rose a talk of the late rebellion, she spoke even of Northumberland pitifully, and of the good Lady Jane as a poor innocent child who had but obeyed her father; and furthermore, she said that no one in her time should be burnt for heresy.

Second Gentleman. for happy times.

First Gentleman. thing against them. know.

Well, sir, I look

There is but one I know not if you

to the Tower to loose the prisoners there, and among them Courtenay, to be made Earl of Devon, of royal blood, of splendid feature, whom the council and all her people wish her to marry. May it be so, for we are many of us Catholics, but few Papists, and the Hot Gospellers will go mad upon it.

Second Gentleman. Was she not betroth'd in her babyhood to the Great Emperor himself?

First Gentleman. Ay, but he's too old.

Second Gentleman. And again to her cousin Reginald Pole, now Cardinal; but I hear that he too is full of aches and broken before his day.

First Gentleman. O, the Pope could dispense with his Cardinalate, and his achage, and his breakage, if that were all : will you not follow the procession? Second Gentleman. enough for this day.

No; I have seen

First Gentleman. Well, I shall follow; if I can get near enough I shall judge with my own eyes whether her Grace incline to this splendid scion of Plantagenet. [Exeunt.

SCENE II.

A ROOM IN LAMBETH PALACE.

Cranmer. To Strasburg, Antwerp, Frankfort, Zurich, Worms,

Those that are now her Privy Council, sign'd

Before me nay, the Judges had pronounced

That our young Edward might bequeath the crown

Of England, putting by his father's will. Yet I stood out, till Edward sent for me. The wan boy-king, with his fast-fading eyes Fixt hard on mine, his frail transparent hand,

Damp with the sweat of death, and griping mine,

Whisper'd me, if I loved him, not to yield
His Church of England to the Papal wolf
And Mary; then I could no more -I
sign'd.

Nay, for bare shame of inconsistency,
She cannot pass her traitor council by,
To make me headless.

Peter Martyr. That might be forgiven.
I tell you, fly, my Lord. You do not own
The bodily presence in the Eucharist,
Their wafer and perpetual sacrifice :
Your creed will be your death.

Cranmer.

Step after step,

Thro' many voices crying right and left, Have I climb'd back into the primal church,

a mile

From me and Lambeth? God be with

you! Go.

Peter Martyr. Ah, but how fierce a letter you wrote against

Their superstition when they slander'd you

For setting up a mass at Canterbury
To please the Queen.

Cranmer. It was a wheedling monk Set up the mass.

Peter Martyr. Lord.

himself. Crowd. Bourne.

Hush-hear!

and so this unhappy land, long divided in itself, and sever'd from the faith, will return into the one true fold, seeing that our gracious Virgin Queen hath

Crowd. No pope! no pope!

Roger (to those about him, mimicking Bourne). -hath sent for the holy legate of the holy father the Pope, Cardinal Pole, to give us all that holy absolution which

First Citizen. Old Bourne to the life!
Second Citizen. Holy absolution! holy
Inquisition !

Third Citizen. Down with the Papist ! [Hubbub. Bourne. -and now that your good bishop, Bonner, who hath lain so long under bonds for the faith- [Hubbub. Noailles. Friend Roger, steal thou in among the crowd,

And get the swine to shout Elizabeth.