<SPEECH 1><ACT 1><SCENE 1><1%>
<CANTERBURY>	<1%>
	My lord, I'll tell you; that self bill is urg'd,
	Which in th' eleventh year of the last king's reign
	Was like, and had indeed against us pass'd,
	But that the scambling and unquiet time
	Did push it out of further question.
</CANTERBURY>

<SPEECH 2><ACT 1><SCENE 1><1%>
<CANTERBURY>	<2%>
	It must be thought on. If it pass against us,
	We lose the better half of our possession;
	For all the temporal lands which men devout
	By testament have given to the church
	Would they strip from us; being valu'd thus:
	As much as would maintain, to the king's honour,
	Full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights,
	Six thousand and two hundred good esquires;
	And, to relief of lazars and weak age,
	Of indigent faint souls past corporal toil,
	A hundred almshouses right well supplied;
	And to the coffers of the king beside,
	A thousand pounds by the year. Thus runs the bill.
</CANTERBURY>

<SPEECH 3><ACT 1><SCENE 1><1%>
<CANTERBURY>	<2%>
	'Twould drink the cup and all.
</CANTERBURY>

<SPEECH 4><ACT 1><SCENE 1><1%>
<CANTERBURY>	<2%>
	The king is full of grace and fair regard.
</CANTERBURY>

<SPEECH 5><ACT 1><SCENE 1><1%>
<CANTERBURY>	<2%>
	The courses of his youth promis'd it not.
	The breath no sooner left his father's body
	But that his wildness, mortified in him,
	Seem'd to die too; yea, at that very moment,
	Consideration like an angel came,
	And whipp'd the offending Adam out of him,
	Leaving his body as a paradise,
	To envelop and contain celestial spirits.
	Never was such a sudden scholar made;
	Never came reformation in a flood,
	With such a heady currance, scouring faults;
	Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness
	So soon did lose his seat and all at once
	As in this king.
</CANTERBURY>

<SPEECH 6><ACT 1><SCENE 1><2%>
<CANTERBURY>	<2%>
	Hear him but reason in divinity,
	And, all-admiring, with an inward wish
	You would desire the king were made a prelate:
	Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,
	You would say it hath been all in all his study:
	List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
	A fearful battle render'd you in music:
	Turn him to any cause of policy,
	The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
	Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks,
	The air, a charter'd libertine, is still,
	And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears,
	To steal his sweet and honey'd sentences;
	So that the art and practic part of life
	Must be the mistress to this theoric:
	Which is a wonder how his Grace should glean it,
	Since his addiction was to courses vain;
	His companies unletter'd, rude, and shallow;
	His hours fill'd up with riots, banquets, sports;
	And never noted in him any study,
	Any retirement, any sequestration
	From open haunts and popularity.
</CANTERBURY>

<SPEECH 7><ACT 1><SCENE 1><3%>
<CANTERBURY>	<3%>
	It must be so; for miracles are ceas'd;
	And therefore we must needs admit the means
	How things are perfected.
</CANTERBURY>

<SPEECH 8><ACT 1><SCENE 1><3%>
<CANTERBURY>	<3%>
	He seems indifferent,
	Or rather swaying more upon our part
	Than cherishing the exhibiters against us;
	For I have made an offer to his majesty,
	Upon our spiritual convocation,
	And in regard of causes now in hand,
	Which I have open'd to his Grace at large,
	As touching France, to give a greater sum
	Than ever at one time the clergy yet
	Did to his predecessors part withal.
</CANTERBURY>

<SPEECH 9><ACT 1><SCENE 1><3%>
<CANTERBURY>	<4%>
	With good acceptance of his majesty;
	Save that there was not time enough to hear,—
	As I perceiv'd his Grace would fain have done,—
	The severals and unhidden passages
	Of his true titles to some certain dukedoms,
	And generally to the crown and seat of France,
	Deriv'd from Edward, his great-grandfather.
</CANTERBURY>

<SPEECH 10><ACT 1><SCENE 1><3%>
<CANTERBURY>	<4%>
	The French ambassador upon that instant
	Crav'd audience; and the hour I think is come
	To give him hearing: is it four o'clock?
</CANTERBURY>

<SPEECH 11><ACT 1><SCENE 1><3%>
<CANTERBURY>	<4%>
	Then go we in to know his embassy;
	Which I could with a ready guess declare
	Before the Frenchman speak a word of it.
</CANTERBURY>

<SPEECH 12><ACT 1><SCENE 2><4%>
<CANTERBURY>	<4%>
	God and his angels guard your sacred throne,
	And make you long become it!
</CANTERBURY>

<SPEECH 13><ACT 1><SCENE 2><5%>
<CANTERBURY>	<5%>
	Then hear me, gracious sovereign, and you peers,
	That owe yourselves, your lives, and services
	To this imperial throne. There is no bar
	To make against your highness' claim to France
	But this, which they produce from Pharamond,
	In terram Salicam mulieres ne succedant,
	'No woman shall succeed in Salique land:'
	Which Salique land the French unjustly gloze
	To be the realm of France, and Pharamond
	The founder of this law and female bar.
	Yet their own authors faithfully affirm
	That the land Salique is in Germany,
	Between the floods of Sala and of Elbe;
	Where Charles the Great, having subdu'd the Saxons,
	There left behind and settled certain French;
	Who, holding in disdain the German women
	For some dishonest manners of their life,
	Establish'd then this law; to wit, no female
	Should be inheritrix in Salique land:
	Which Salique, as I said, 'twixt Elbe and Sala,
	Is at this day in Germany call'd Meisen.
	Then doth it well appear the Salique law
	Was not devised for the realm of France;
	Nor did the French possess the Salique land
	Until four hundred one-and-twenty years
	After defunction of King Pharamond,
	Idly suppos'd the founder of this law;
	Who died within the year of our redemption
	Four hundred twenty-six; and Charles the Great
	Subdu'd the Saxons, and did seat the French
	Beyond the river Sala, in the year
	Eight hundred five. Besides, their writers say,
	King Pepin, which deposed Childeric,
	Did, as heir general, being descended
	Of Blithild, which was daughter to King Clothair,
	Make claim and title to the crown of France.
	Hugh Capet also, who usurp'd the crown
	Of Charles the Duke of Loraine, sole heir male
	Of the true line and stock of Charles the Great,
	To find his title with some shows of truth,—
	Though in pure truth, it was corrupt and naught,—
	Convey'd himself as heir to the Lady Lingare,
	Daughter to Charlemain, who was the son
	To Lewis the emperor, and Lewis the son
	Of Charles the Great. Also King Lewis the Tenth,
	Who was sole heir to the usurper Capet,
	Could not keep quiet in his conscience,
	Wearing the crown of France, till satisfied
	That fair Queen Isabel, his grandmother,
	Was lineal of the Lady Ermengare,
	Daughter to Charles the aforesaid Duke of Loraine:
	By the which marriage the line of Charles the Great
	Was re-united to the crown of France.
	So that, as clear as is the summer's sun,
	King Pepin's title, and Hugh Capet's claim,
	King Lewis his satisfaction, all appear
	To hold in right and title of the female:
	So do the kings of France unto this day;
	Howbeit they would hold up this Salique law
	To bar your highness claiming from the female;
	And rather choose to hide them in a net
	Than amply to imbar their crooked titles
	Usurp'd from you and your progenitors.
</CANTERBURY>

<SPEECH 14><ACT 1><SCENE 2><6%>
<CANTERBURY>	<7%>
	The sin upon my head, dread sovereign!
	For in the book of Numbers is it writ:
	'When the son dies, let the inheritance
	Descend unto the daughter.' Gracious lord,
	Stand for your own; unwind your bloody flag;
	Look back into your mighty ancestors:
	Go, my dread lord, to your great-grandsire's tomb,
	From whom you claim; invoke his war-like spirit,
	And your great-uncle's, Edward the Black Prince,
	Who on the French ground play'd a tragedy,
	Making defeat on the full power of France;
	Whiles his most mighty father on a hill
	Stood smiling to behold his lion's whelp
	Forage in blood of French nobility.
	O noble English! that could entertain
	With half their forces the full pride of France,
	And let another half stand laughing by,
	All out of work, and cold for action.
</CANTERBURY>

<SPEECH 15><ACT 1><SCENE 2><7%>
<CANTERBURY>	<8%>
	O! let their bodies follow, my dear liege,
	With blood and sword and fire to win your right;
	In aid whereof we of the spiritualty
	Will raise your highness such a mighty sum
	As never did the clergy at one time
	Bring in to any of your ancestors.
</CANTERBURY>

<SPEECH 16><ACT 1><SCENE 2><8%>
<CANTERBURY>	<8%>
	They of those marches, gracious sovereign,
	Shall be a wall sufficient to defend
	Our inland from the pilfering borderers.
</CANTERBURY>

<SPEECH 17><ACT 1><SCENE 2><8%>
<CANTERBURY>	<9%>
	She hath been then more fear'd than harm'd, my liege;
	For hear her but exampled by herself:
	When all her chivalry hath been in France
	And she a mourning widow of her nobles,
	She hath herself not only well defended,
	But taken and impounded as a stray
	The King of Scots; whom she did send to France,
	To fill King Edward's fame with prisoner kings,
	And make your chronicle as rich with praise
	As is the owse and bottom of the sea
	With sunken wrack and sumless treasuries.
</CANTERBURY>

<SPEECH 18><ACT 1><SCENE 2><9%>
<CANTERBURY>	<9%>
	Therefore doth heaven divide
	The state of man in divers functions,
	Setting endeavour in continual motion;
	To which is fixed, as an aim or butt,
	Obedience: for so work the honey-bees,
	Creatures that by a rule in nature teach
	The act of order to a peopled kingdom.
	They have a king and officers of sorts;
	Where some, like magistrates, correct at home,
	Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad,
	Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
	Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds;
	Which pillage they with merry march bring home
	To the tent-royal of their emperor:
	Who, busied in his majesty, surveys
	The singing masons building roofs of gold,
	The civil citizens kneading up the honey,
	The poor mechanic porters crowding in
	Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate,
	The sad-ey'd justice, with his surly hum,
	Delivering o'er to executors pale
	The lazy yawning drone. I this infer,
	That many things, having full reference
	To one consent, may work contrariously;
	As many arrows, loosed several ways,
	Fly to one mark; as many ways meet in one town;
	As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea;
	As many lines close in the dial's centre;
	So may a thousand actions, once afoot,
	End in one purpose, and be all well borne
	Without defeat. Therefore to France, my liege.
	Divide your happy England into four;
	Whereof take you one quarter into France,
	And you withal shall make all Gallia shake.
	If we, with thrice such powers left at home,
	Cannot defend our own doors from the dog,
	Let us be worried and our nation lose
	The name of hardiness and policy.
</CANTERBURY>

