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Your pens to lances, and your tongue divine

To a loud trumpet and a point of war?

ARCHBISHOP.

Wherefore do I this? So the question stands.

Briefly to this end: we are all diseas'd

And with our surfeiting and wanton hours

Have brought ourselves into a burning fever,

And we must bleed for it; of which disease

Our late King, Richard, being infected, died.

But, my most noble Lord of Westmoreland,

I take not on me here as a physician;

Nor do I as an enemy to peace

Troop in the throngs of military men;

But rather show awhile like fearful war

To diet rank minds sick of happiness,

And purge th' obstructions which begin to stop

Our very veins of life. Hear me more plainly.

I have in equal balance justly weigh'd

What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer,

And find our griefs heavier than our offences.

We see which way the stream of time doth run

And are enforc'd from our most quiet there

By the rough torrent of occasion;

And have the summary of all our griefs,

When time shall serve, to show in articles;

Which long ere this we offer'd to the King,

And might by no suit gain our audience:

When we are wrong'd, and would unfold our griefs,

We are denied access unto his person,

Even by those men that most have done us wrong.

The dangers of the days but newly gone,

Whose memory is written on the earth

With yet appearing blood, and the examples

Of every minute's instance, present now,

Hath put us in these ill-beseeming arms;

Not to break peace, or any branch of it,

But to establish here a peace indeed,

Concurring both in name and quality.

WESTMORELAND.

When ever yet was your appeal denied;

Wherein have you been galled by the King;

What peer hath been suborn'd to grate on you

That you should seal this lawless bloody book

Of forg'd rebellion with a seal divine,

And consecrate commotion's bitter edge?

ARCHBISHOP.

My brother general, the commonwealth,

To brother horn an household cruelty,

I make my quarrel in particular.

WESTMORELAND.

There is no need of any such redress;

Or if there were, it not belongs to you.

MOWBRAY.

Why not to him in part, and to us all

That feel the bruises of the days before,

And suffer the condition of these times

To lay a heavy and unequal hand

Upon our honours?

WESTMORELAND.

O my good Lord Mowbray,

Construe the times to their necessities,

And you shall say, indeed, it is the time,

And not the King, that doth you injuries.

Yet, for your part, it not appears to me,

Either from the King or in the present time,

That you should have an inch of any ground

To build a grief on. Were you not restor'd

To all the Duke of Norfolk's signiories,

Your noble and right well-rememb'red father's?

MOWBRAY.

What thing, in honour, had my father lost

That need to be reviv'd and breath'd in me?

The King that lov'd him, as the state stood then,

Was force perforce compell'd to banish him,

And then that Henry Bolingbroke and he,

Being mounted and both roused in their seats,

Their neighing coursers daring of the spur,

Their armed staves in charge, their beavers down,

Their eyes of fire sparkling through sights of steel,

And the loud trumpet blowing them together-

Then, then, when there was nothing could have stay'd

My father from the breast of Bolingbroke,

O, when the King did throw his warder down-

His own life hung upon the staff he threw-

Then threw he down himself, and all their lives

That by indictment and by dint of sword

Have since miscarried under Bolingbroke.

WESTMORELAND.

You speak, Lord Mowbray, now you know not what.

The Earl of Hereford was reputed then

In England the most valiant gentleman.

Who knows on whom fortune would then have smil'd?

But if your father had been victor there,

He ne'er had borne it out of Coventry;

For all the country, in a general voice,

Cried hate upon him; and all their prayers and love

Were set on Hereford, whom they doted on,

And bless'd and grac'd indeed more than the King.

But this is mere digression from my purpose.

Here come I from our princely general

To know your