Dressed in their own usurped authority,
Sharpen their tongues on Henrietta's fame ?
It is enough! Thou lovest me no more!

KING.

Oh Henrietta! (They talk apart.)

COTTINGTON (to LAUD).

Money we have none:

(Weeps.)

And all the expedients of my Lord of Strafford Will scarcely meet the arrears.

LAUD.

Without delay

341

An army must be sent into the north; Followed by a Commission of the Church, With amplest power to quench in fire and

blood,

And tears and terror, and the pity of hell,
The intenser wrath of Heresy. God will give
Victory; and victory over Scotland give
The lion England tamed into our hands.
That will lend power, and power bring gold.

COTTINGTON.

Meanwhile

We must begin first where your Grace leaves

off.

Gold must give power, or...

LAUD.

I am not averse 350

From the assembling of a parliament.

Strong actions and smooth words might teach

them soon

The lesson to obey. And are they not

A bubble fashioned by the monarch's mouth,

The birth of one light breath? If they serve no

purpose,

A word dissolves them.

STRAFFORD.

The engine of parliaments

Might be deferred until I can bring over
The Irish regiments: they will serve to assure
The issue of the war against the Scots.
And, this game won-which if lost, all is lost-
Gather these chosen leaders of the rebels,
And call them, if you will, a parliament.

KING.

361

Oh be our feet still tardy to shed blood,
Guilty though it may be! I would still spare
The stubborn country of my birth, and ward
From countenances which I loved in youth
The wrathful Church's lacerating hand.

(TO LAUD) Have you o'erlooked the other articles?

Re-enter ARCHY.

LAUD.

370

Hazlerig, Hampden, Pym, young Harry Vane,
Cromwell, and other rebels of less note,
Intend to sail with the next favouring wind
For the Plantations.

ARCHY.

Where they think to found

A commonwealth like Gonzalo's in the play,
Gynæcocœnic and pantisocratic.

KING.

What's that, sirrah?

ARCHY.

New devil's politics.

Hell is the pattern of all commonwealths:
Lucifer was the first republican.

Will you hear Merlin's prophecy, how three posts

"In one brainless skull, when the whitethorn is full,

Shall sail round the world, and come back

When, in spite of the Church,

They will hear homilies of whatever length
Or form they please.

COTTINGTON.

So please your Majesty to sign this order

For their detention.

ARCHY.

If your Majesty were tormented night and day by fever, gout, rheumatism, and stone, and asthma, &c., and you found these diseases had secretly entered into a conspiracy to abandon you, should you think it necessary to lay an embargo on the port by which they meant to dispeople your unquiet kingdom of man?

KING.

394

If fear were made for kings, the Fool mocks

wisely; But in this case. . (writing) Here, my lord, take

the warrant,

And see it duly executed forthwith.-

That imp of malice and mockery shall be punished.

[Exeunt all but KING, QUEEN, and ARCHY.

ARCHY.

Aye, I am the physician of whom Plato prophesied, who was to be accused by the confectioner before a jury of children, who found him guilty without waiting for the summing-up, and hanged him without benefit of clergy. Thus Baby Charles, and the Twelfth-night Queen of Hearts, and the overgrown schoolboy Cottington, and that little urchin Laud-who would reduce a verdict of "guilty, death," by famine, if it were impregnable by composition-all impannelled against poor Archy for presenting them bitter physic the last day of the holidays.

410

QUEEN.

Is the rain over, sirrah?

KING.

When it rains

And the sun shines, 'twill rain again to-morrow: And therefore never smile till you've done

crying.

ARCHY.

But 'tis all over now: like the April anger of woman, the gentle sky has wept itself serene.

QUEEN.

What news abroad? how looks the world this morning?

ARCHY.

Gloriously as a grave covered with virgin flowers. There's a rainbow in the sky. Let your Majesty look at it, for

"A rainbow in the morning
Is the shepherd's warning;"

420

and the flocks of which you are the pastor are scattered among the mountain-tops, where every drop of water is a flake of snow, and the breath of May pierces like a January blast.

KING.

The sheep have mistaken the wolf for their shepherd, my poor boy; and the shepherd, the wolves for their watch-dogs.

QUEEN.

429

But the rainbow was a good sign, Archy: it says that the waters of the deluge are gone, and can return no more.

ARCHY.

Aye, the salt-water one: but that of tears and blood must yet come down, and that of fire follow, if there be any truth in lies.--The rainbow hung over the city with all its shops, and churches, from north to south, like a bridge of congregated lightning pieced by the masonry of heaven-like a balance in which the angel that distributes the coming hour was weighing that heavy one whose poise is now felt in the lightest hearts, before it bows the proudest heads under the meanest feet.

QUEEN.

Who taught you this trash, sirrah?

ARCHY.

443

A torn leaf out of an old book trampled in the dirt. But for the rainbow. It moved as the sun moved, and . . . until the top of the Tower. . . of a cloud through its left-hand tip, and Lambeth Palace look as dark as a rock before the other. Methought I saw a crown