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Love they 4 to live, that love and honour have.

[Exit, borne out by his attendants.

K. Rich. And let them die, that age and sullens have; For both haft thou, and both become the grave.

York. I do beseech your majesty, impute his words

To wayward fickliness and age in him:

He loves you, on my life, and holds you dear

As Harry duke of Hereford, were he here.

K. Rich. Right; you say true: as Hereford's love, so his.

As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is.

Enter NORTHUMBERLAND 5.

North. My liege, old Gaunt commends him to your

majesty.

K. Rich. What says he?

North. Nay, nothing; all is faid :

His tongue is now a stringless instrument;
Words, life, and all, old Lancaster hath spent.

York. Be York the next that must be bankrupt so!

doth he;

Though death be poor, it ends a mortal woe.
K. Rich. The ripest ripe fruit first falls, and so
His time is spent, our pilgrimage must be:
So much for that. - Now for our Irish wars:
We must supplant those rough rug-headed kerns;
Which live like venom, where no venom elfe7,
But only they, hath privilege to live.
And, for these great affairs do ask some charge,
Towards our assistance, we do seize to us
The plate, coin, revenues, and moveables,
Whereof our uncle Gaunt did stand possess'd.

York. How long shall I be patient? Ah, how long
Shall tender duty make me suffer wrong?
Not Gloster's death, nor Hereford's banishment,

4 Love they-] That is, let them love. JOHNSON.

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- Northumberland) was Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland.

- our pilgrimage must be:] i. e. is yet to come.

7

where no venom elfe,] This alludes

WALPOLE.

MASON.

to a tradition that St. Pa

trick freed the kingdom of Ireland from venomous reptiles of every kind. STEEVENS.

Not

;

Not Gaunt's rebukes, nor England's private wrongs,
Nor the prevention of poor Bolingbroke
About his marriage, nor my own disgrace,
Have ever made me four my patient cheek,
Or bend one wrinkle on my fovereign's face.-
I am the last of noble Edward's fons,

Of whom thy father, prince of Wales, was first;
In war was never lion rag'd more fierce,
In peace was never gentle lamb more mild,
Than was that young and princely gentleman;
His face thou hast, for even so look'd he,

Accomplish'd with the number of thy hours";
But, when he frown'd, it was against the French,
And not against his friends: his noble hand
Did win what he did spend, and spent not that
Which his triumphant father's hand had won :
His hands were guilty of no kindred's blood,
But bloody with the enemies of his kin.
O, Richard! York is too far gone with grief,
Or else he never would compare between.
K. Rich. Why, uncle, what's the matter?
York. O, my liege,
Pardon me, if you please; if not, I pleas'd
Not to be pardon'd, am content withal.
Sèek you to feize, and gripe into your hands,
The royalties and rights of banish'd Hereford ?
Is not Gaunt dead? and doth not Hereford live?
Was not Gaunt just? and is not Harry true ?
Did not the one deserve to have an heir ?
Is not his heir a well-deserving son ?
Take Hereford's rights away, and take from time
His charters, and his customary rights;

8 Nor the prevention of poor Bolingbroke

About bis marriage, When the duke of Hereford, after his banishment, went into France, he was honourably entertained at that court, and would have obtained in marriage the only daughter of the duke of Berry, uncle to the French king, had not Richard prevented the match. STEEVENS.

Accomplish'd with the number of thy hours;] i. e. when he was of

thy age. MALONE.

VOL. V.

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Let not to-morrow then ensue to-day;
Be not thyself, for how art thou a king,
But by fair sequence and succession?
Now, afore God, (God forbid, I say true!)
If you do wrongfully seize Hereford's rights,
Call in the letters patents that he hath
By his attornies-general to sue
His livery, and deny his offer'd homage',
You pluck a thousand dangers on your head,
You lose a thousand well-disposed hearts,
And prick my tender patience to those thoughts
Which honour and allegiance cannot think.

K. Rich. Think what you will; we seize into our hands His plate, his goods, his money, and his lands.

York. I'll not be by, the while: My liege, farewel:

What will ensue hereof, there's none can tell;
But by bad courses may be understood,

That their events can never fall out good.

[Exit.

K. Rich. Go, Bushy, to the earl of Wiltshire straight;

Bid him repair to us to Ely-house,

To see this business: To-morrow next

We will for Ireland; and 'tis time, I trow;
And we create, in absence of ourself,

Our uncle York lord-governor of England,
For he is juft, and always lov'd us well.-
Come on, our queen: to-morrow must we part;
Be merry, for our time of stay is short.

[Flourish.

[Exeunt King, Queen, Bus. AUM. GRE. and BAG. North. Well, lords, the duke of Lancaster is dead. Rofs. And living too; for now his fon is duke. Willo. Barely in title, not in revenue.

North. Richly in both, if justice had her right.

Rofs. My heart is great; but it must break with filence,

Ere't be disburden'd with a liberal tongue.

North. Nay, fpeak thy mind; and let him ne'er speak

more,

That speaks thy words again, to do thee harm!

1

- deny kis offer'd bomage,] That is, refuse to admit the homage, by which he is to hold his lands. JOHNSON.

Willo.

Willo. Tends that thou'dst speak, to the duke of

Hereford?

If it be so, out with it boldly, man;

Quick is mine ear, to hear of good towards him.

Rofs. No good at all, that I can do for him;

Unless you call it good, to pity him,

Bereft and gelded of his patrimony.

North. Now, afore heaven, 'tis shame, such wrongs

are borne,

In him a royal prince, and many more
Of noble blood in this declining land.
The king is not himself, but basely led
By flatterers, and what they will inform,
Merely in hate, 'gainst any of us all,
That will the king severely profecute
'Gainst us, our lives, our children, and our heirs.

Rofs. The commons hath he pill'd with grievous taxes,
And quite loft their hearts: the nobles hath he fin'd
For ancient quarrels, and quite loft their hearts.
Willo. And daily new exactions are devis'd;
As-blanks, benevolences, and I wot not what:
But what, o'God's name, doth become of this?
North. Wars have not wasted it, for warr'd he hath not,

But bafely yielded upon compromife

That which his ancestors atchiev'd with blows:
More hath he spent in peace, than they in wars.

Rofs. The earl of Wiltshire hath the realm in farm.
Willo. The king's grown bankrupt, like a broken man.
North. Reproach, and diffolution, hangeth over him.
Rofs. He hath not money for these Irish wars,

His burthenous taxations notwithstanding,
But by the robbing of the banish'd duke.

North. His noble kinsman: -Most degenerate king!

But, lords, we hear this fearful tempest sing,

Yet seek no shelter to avoid the storm:

We see the wind fit fore upon our fails,

And yet we strike not2, but fecurely perish 3.

Rofs.

2 And yet we strike not, To frike the fails, is, to contraff them

when there is too much wind. JOHNSON.

3-but securely perish.] We perish by too great confidence in VOL. V.

our

D2

:

fecerity,

:

Rofs. We fee the very wreck that we must suffer,
And unavoided is the danger now
For fuffering fo the causes of our wreck.

North. Not fo; even through the hollow eyes of death,

I fpy life peering; but I dare not say,

How near the tidings of our comfort is.

Willo. Nay, let us share thy thoughts, as thou dost ours.

Ross. Be confident to fpeak, Northumberland:

We three are but thyself; and, speaking so,

Thy words are but as thoughts; therefore, be bold.

North. Then thus: - I have from Port le Blanc, a bay

In Britany, receiv'd intelligence,

That Harry Hereford, Reignold lord Cobham,

[The fon of Richard earl of Arundel,]

That late broke from the duke of Exeter 5,

His

fecurity. The word is used in the same sense in the Merry Wives of Windfor:

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Though Ford be a fecure fool, &c. MALONE.

4 And unavoided is the danger-] Unavoided is, I believe, here used for unavoidable. MALONE.

5 The fon of Richard earl of Arundel,

That late broke from the duke of Exeter,] For the infertion of the line included within crotchets, I am answerable; it not being found in the old copies. Mr. Steevens observed, that "all the perfons enumerated in Holinshed's account of those embarked with Bolingbroke are here mentioned with great exactness, except Thomas Arundell, sonne and heire to the late Earle of Arundell, beheaded at the Tower-hill. And yet this nobleman is the perfon to whom alone that circumstance relates of having broke from the Duke of Exeter." From hence he very justly inferred, that a line must have been loft, "in which the name of this Thomas Arundel had originally a place."

The paflages in Holinshed relative to this matter run thus: "Aboute the fame time the Earl of Arundell's fonne, named Thomas, rubich was kept in the Duke of Exeter's house, escaped out of the realme, by means of one William Scot," &c. "Duke Henry, -chiefly through the earnest perfuafion of Thomas Arundell, late Archbishoppe of Canterburie, (who, as before you have heard, had been removed from his fea, and banished the realme by King Richardes means,) got him downe to Britaine :and when all his provifion was made ready, he tooke the fea, together with the faid Archbishop of Canterburie, and his nephew Thomas Arundell, sonne and heyre to the late Earle of Arundell, beheaded on Tower-hill. There were also with him Reginalde Lord Cobham, Sir Thomas Erpingham," &c.

There cannot, therefore, I think, be the smallest doubt, that a line

was

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