RENARD. Ay, my liege,
I saw the covers laying.
PHILIP. Let us have it.
[Exeunt.
SCENE I.—A ROOM IN THE PALACE.
MARY, CARDINAL POLE.
MARY. What have you there?
POLE. So please your Majesty,
A long petition from the foreign exiles
To spare the life of Cranmer. Bishop Thirlby,
And my Lord Paget and Lord William Howard,
Crave, in the same cause, hearing of your Grace.
Hath he not written himself—infatuated—
To sue you for his life?
MARY. His life? Oh, no;
Not sued for that—he knows it were in vain.
But so much of the anti-papal leaven
Works in him yet, he hath pray’d me not to sully
Mine own prerogative, and degrade the realm
By seeking justice at a stranger’s hand
Against my natural subject. King and Queen,
To whom he owes his loyalty after God,
Shall these accuse him to a foreign prince?
Death would not grieve him more. I cannot be
True to this realm of England and the Pope
Together, says the heretic.
POLE. And there errs;
As he hath ever err’d thro’ vanity.
A secular kingdom is but as the body
Lacking a soul; and in itself a beast.
The Holy Father in a secular kingdom
Is as the soul descending out of heaven
Into a body generate.
MARY. Write to him, then.
POLE. I will.
MARY. And sharply, Pole.
POLE. Here come the
Cranmerites!
Enter THIRLBY, LORD
PAGET, LORD WILLIAM HOWARD.
HOWARD. Health to your Grace! Good morrow,
my Lord Cardinal;
We make our humble prayer unto your Grace
That Cranmer may withdraw to foreign parts,
Or into private life within the realm.
In several bills and declarations, Madam,
He hath recanted all his heresies.
PAGET. Ay, ay; if Bonner have not forged the
bills. [Aside.
MARY. Did not More die, and Fisher? he must burn.
HOWARD. He hath recanted, Madam.
MARY. The better for
him.
He burns in Purgatory, not in Hell.
HOWARD. Ay, ay, your Grace; but it was never
seen
That any one recanting thus at full,
As Cranmer hath, came to the fire on earth.
MARY. It will be seen now, then.
THIRLBY. O Madam, Madam!
I thus implore you, low upon my knees,
To reach the hand of mercy to my friend.
I have err’d with him; with him I have recanted.
What human reason is there why my friend
Should meet with lesser mercy than myself?
MARY. My Lord of Ely, this. After a riot
We hang the leaders, let their following go.
Cranmer is head and father of these heresies,
New learning as they call it; yea, may God
Forget me at most need when I forget
Her foul divorce—my sainted mother—No!—
