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        CAMBRIDGE. I do confess my fault,

          And do submit me to your Highness' mercy.

        GREY, SCROOP. To which we all appeal.

        KING HENRY. The mercy that was quick in us but late

         By your own counsel is suppress'd and kill'd.

          You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy;

          For your own reasons turn into your bosoms

          As dogs upon their masters, worrying you.

          See you, my princes and my noble peers,

          These English monsters! My Lord of Cambridge here-

          You know how apt our love was to accord

          To furnish him with an appertinents

          Belonging to his honour; and this man

          Hath, for a few light crowns, lightly conspir'd,

          And sworn unto the practices of France

          To kill us here in Hampton; to the which

          This knight, no less for bounty bound to us

          Than Cambridge is, hath likewise sworn. But, O,

          What shall I say to thee, Lord Scroop, thou cruel,

          Ingrateful, savage, and inhuman creature?

          Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels,

          That knew'st the very bottom of my soul,

          That almost mightst have coin'd me into gold,

          Wouldst thou have practis'd on me for thy use-

          May it be possible that foreign hire

          Could out of thee extract one spark of evil

          That might annoy my finger? 'Tis so strange

          That, though the truth of it stands off as gross

          As black and white, my eye will scarcely see it.

          Treason and murder ever kept together,

          As two yoke-devils sworn to either's purpose,

          Working so grossly in a natural cause

          That admiration did not whoop at them;

          But thou, 'gainst all proportion, didst bring in

          Wonder to wait on treason and on murder;

          And whatsoever cunning fiend it was

          That wrought upon thee so preposterously

          Hath got the voice in hell for excellence;

          And other devils that suggest by treasons

          Do botch and bungle up damnation

          With patches, colours, and with forms, being fetch'd

          From glist'ring semblances of piety;

          But he that temper'd thee bade thee stand up,

          Gave thee no instance why thou shouldst do treason,

          Unless to dub thee with the name of traitor.

          If that same demon that hath gull'd thee thus

          Should with his lion gait walk the whole world,

          He might return to vasty Tartar back,

          And tell the legions 'I can never win

          A soul so easy as that Englishman's.'

          O, how hast thou with jealousy infected

          The sweetness of affiance! Show men dutiful?

          Why, so didst thou. Seem they grave and learned?

          Why, so didst thou. Come they of noble family?

          Why, so didst thou. Seem they religious?

          Why, so didst thou. Or are they spare in diet,

          Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger,

          Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood,

          Garnish'd and deck'd in modest complement,

          Not working with the eye without the ear,

          And but in purged judgment trusting neither?

          Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem;

          And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot

          To mark the full-fraught man and best indued

          With some suspicion. I will weep for thee;

          For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like

          Another fall of man. Their faults are open.

          Arrest them to the answer of the law;

          And God acquit them of their practices!

        EXETER. I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Richard

      Earl

            of Cambridge.

          I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Henry Lord

      Scroop

            of Masham.

          I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Thomas Grey,

            knight, of Northumberland.

        SCROOP. Our purposes God justly hath discover'd,

          And I repent my fault more than my death;

          Which I beseech your Highness to forgive,

          Although my body pay the price of it.

        CAMBRIDGE. For me, the gold of France did not seduce,

          Although I did admit it as a motive

          The sooner to effect what I intended;

          But God be thanked for prevention,

          Which I in sufferance heartily will rejoice,

          Beseeching God and you to pardon me.

        GREY. Never did faithful subject more rejoice

          At the discovery of most dangerous treason

          Than I do at this hour joy o'er myself,

          Prevented from a damned enterprise.

          My fault, but not my body, pardon, sovereign.

        KING HENRY. God quit you in his mercy! Hear your sentence.

          You have conspir'd against our royal person,

          Join'd with an enemy proclaim'd, and from his coffers

          Receiv'd the golden earnest of our death;

          Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter,

          His princes and his peers to servitude,

          His subjects to oppression and contempt,

          And his whole kingdom into desolation.

          Touching our person seek we no revenge;

          But we our kingdom's safety must so tender,

          Whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws

          We do deliver

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