Act 3, Scene 1

London. The Parliament-house.

[Flourish. Enter King, Exeter, Gloucester, Warwick, Somerset, and Suffolk; the Bishop of Winchester, Richard Plantagenet, and others. Gloucester offers to put up a bill; Winchester snatches it, tears it.]
Bishop of Winchester
1102 Comest thou with deep premeditated lines,
1103 With written pamphlets studiously devised,
1104 Humphrey of Gloucester? If thou canst accuse,
1105 Or aught intend'st to lay unto my charge.
1106 Do it without invention, suddenly;
1107 As I with sudden and extemporal speech
1108 Purpose to answer what thou canst object.
Duke of Gloucester
1109 Presumptuous priest! this place commands my patience,
1110 Or thou shouldst find thou hast dishonor'd me.
1111 Think not, although in writing I preferr'd
1112 The manner of thy vile outrageous crimes,
1113 That therefore I have forged, or am not able
1114 Verbatim to rehearse the method of my pen:
1115 No, prelate; such is thy audacious wickedness,
1116 Thy lewd, pestiferous and dissentious pranks,
1117 As very infants prattle of thy pride.
1118 Thou art a most pernicious usurer,
1119 Froward by nature, enemy to peace;
1120 Lascivious, wanton, more than well beseems
1121 A man of thy profession and degree;
1122 And for thy treachery, what's more manifest
1123 In that thou laid'st a trap to take my life,
1124 As well at London-bridge as at the Tower.
1125 Beside, I fear me, if thy thoughts are sifted
1126 The king, thy sovereign, is not quite exempt
1127 From envious malice of thy swelling heart.
Bishop of Winchester
1128 Gloucester, I do defy thee. Lords, vouchsafe
1129 To give me hearing what I shall reply.
1130 If I were covetous, ambitious, or perverse,
1131 As he will have me, how am I so poor?
1132 Or how haps it I seek not to advance
1133 Or raise myself, but keep my wonted calling?
1134 And for dissension, who preferreth peace
1135 More than I do?—except I be provoked.
1136 No, my good lords, it is not that offends;
1137 It is not that that hath incensed the duke:
1138 It is, because no one should sway but he;
1139 No one but he should be about the king;
1140 And that engenders thunder in his breast,
1141 And makes him roar these accusations forth.
1142 But he shall know I am as good—
Duke of Gloucester
1143 As good!
1144 Thou bastard of my grandfather!
Bishop of Winchester
1145 Aye, lordly sir; for what are you, I pray,
1146 But one imperious in another's throne?
Duke of Gloucester
1147 Am I not protector, saucy priest?
Bishop of Winchester
1148 And am not I a prelate of the church?
Duke of Gloucester
1149 Yes, as an outlaw in a castle keeps
1150 And useth it to patronage his theft.
Bishop of Winchester
1151 Unreverent Gloster!
Duke of Gloucester
1152 Thou art reverent
1153 Touching thy spiritual function, not thy life.
Bishop of Winchester
1154 Rome shall remedy this.
Earl of Warwick
1155 Roam thither, then.
Duke of Somerset
1156 My lord, it were your duty to forbear.
Earl of Warwick
1157 Ay, see the bishop be not overborne.
Duke of Somerset
1158 Methinks my lord should be religious,
1159 And know the office that belongs to such.
Earl of Warwick
1160 Methinks his lordship should be humbler;
1161 It fitteth not a prelate so to plead.
Duke of Somerset
1162 Yes, when his holy state is touch'd so near.
Earl of Warwick
1163 State holy or unhallow'd, what of that?
1164 Is not his grace protector to the king?
[Aside]
Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York
1165 Plantagenet, I see, must hold his tongue,
1166 Lest it be said, 'Speak, sirrah, when you should:
1167 Must your bold verdict enter talk with lords?'
1168 Else would I have a fling at Winchester.
King Henry VI
1169 Uncles of Gloucester and of Winchester,
1170 The special watchmen of our English weal,
1171 I would prevail, if prayers might prevail,
1172 To join your hearts in love and amity.
1173 O, what a scandal is it to our crown,
1174 That two such noble peers as ye should jar!
1175 Believe me, lords, my tender years can tell
1176 Civil dissension is a viperous worm
1177 That gnaws the bowels of the commonwealth.
[A noise within, 'Down with the tawny-coats!' What tumult's this?]
Earl of Warwick
1178 An uproar, I dare warrant,
1179 Begun through malice of the bishop's men.
[A noise again, 'Stones! stones!' Enter Mayor.]
Mayor of London
1180 O, my good lords, and virtuous Henry,
1181 Pity the city of London, pity us!
1182 The bishop and the Duke of Gloucester's men,
1183 Forbidden late to carry any weapon,
1184 Have fill'd their pockets full of pebble stones,
1185 And banding themselves in contrary parts
1186 Do pelt so fast at one another's pate
1187 That many have their giddy brains knock'd out:
1188 Our windows are broke down in every street,
1189 And we for fear compell'd to shut our shops.
[Enter Serving-men, in skirmish, with bloody pates.]
King Henry VI
1190 We charge you, on allegiance to ourself,
1191 To hold your slaughtering hands and keep the peace.
1192 Pray, uncle Gloucester, mitigate this strife.
First Serving-man
1193 Nay, if we be forbidden stones,
1194 we 'll fall to it with our teeth.
Second Serving-man
1195 Do what ye dare, we are as resolute.
[Skirmish again.]
Duke of Gloucester
1196 You of my household, leave this peevish broil
1197 And set this unaccustom'd fight aside.
Third Serving-man
1198 My lord, we know your grace to be a man
1199 Just and upright; and, for your royal birth,
1200 Inferior to none but to his Majesty:
1201 And ere that we will suffer such a prince,
1202 So kind a father of the commonweal,
1203 To be disgraced by an inkhorn mate,
1204 We and our wives and children all will fight,
1205 And have our bodies slaughter'd by thy foes.
First Serving-man
1206 Aye, and the very parings of our nails
1207 Shall pitch a field when we are dead.
[Begin again.]
Duke of Gloucester
1208 Stay, stay, I say!
1209 And if you love me, as you say you do,
1210 Let me persuade you to forbear awhile.
King Henry VI
1211 O, how this discord doth afflict my soul!
1212 Can you, my Lord of Winchester, behold
1213 My sighs and tears and will not once relent?
1214 Who should be pitiful, if you be not?
1215 Or who should study to prefer a peace,
1216 If holy churchmen take delight in broils?
Earl of Warwick
1217 Yield, my lord protector; yield, Winchester;
1218 Except you mean with obstinate repulse
1219 To slay your sovereign and destroy the realm.
1220 You see what mischief and what murder too
1221 Hath been enacted through your enmity;
1222 Then be at peace, except ye thirst for blood.
Bishop of Winchester
1223 He shall submit, or I will never yield.
Duke of Gloucester
1224 Compassion on the king commands me stoop;
1225 Or I would see his heart out, ere the priest
1226 Should ever get that privilege of me.
Earl of Warwick
1227 Behold, my Lord of Winchester, the duke
1228 Hath banish'd moody discontented fury,
1229 As by his smoothed brows it doth appear:
1230 Why look you still so stem and tragical?
Duke of Gloucester
1231 Here, Winchester, I offer thee my hand.
King Henry VI
1232 Fie, uncle Beaufort! I have heard you preach
1233 That malice was a great and grievous sin;
1234 And will not you maintain the thing you teach,
1235 But prove a chief offender in the same?
Earl of Warwick
1236 Sweet king! the bishop hath a kindly gird.
1237 For shame, my lord of Winchester, relent!
1238 What, shall a child instruct you what to do?
Bishop of Winchester
1239 Well, Duke of Gloucester, I will yield to thee;
1240 Love for thy love and hand for hand I give.
[Aside]
Duke of Gloucester
1241 Aye, but, I fear me, with a hollow heart.—
1242 See here, my friends and loving countrymen;
1243 This token serveth for a flag of truce
1244 Betwixt ourselves and all our followers:
1245 So help me God, as I dissemble not!
[Aside]
Bishop of Winchester
1246 So help me God, as I intend it not!
King Henry VI
1247 O loving uncle, kind Duke of Gloucester,
1248 How joyful am I made by this contract!
1249 Away, my masters! trouble us no more;
1250 But join in friendship, as your lords have done.
First Serving-man
1251 Content: I'll to the surgeon's.
Second Serving-man
1252 And so will I.
Third Serving-man
1253 And I will see what physic the tavern affords.
[Exeunt Serving-men, Mayor, &C.]
Earl of Warwick
1254 Accept this scroll, most gracious sovereign;
1255 Which in the right of Richard Plantagenet.
1256 We do exhibit to your majesty.
Duke of Gloucester
1257 Well urged, my Lord of Warwick: for, sweet prince,
1258 An if your Grace mark every circumstance,
1259 You have great reason to do Richard right:
1260 Especially for those occasions
1261 At Eltham place I told your majesty.
King Henry VI
1262 And those occasions, uncle, were of force;
1263 Therefore, my loving lords, our pleasure is
1264 That Richard be restored to his blood.
Earl of Warwick
1265 Let Richard be restored to his blood;
1266 So shall his father's wrongs be recompensed.
Bishop of Winchester
1267 As will the rest, so willeth Winchester.
King Henry VI
1268 If Richard will be true, not that alone
1269 But all the whole inheritance I give
1270 That doth belong unto the house of York,
1271 From whence you spring by lineal descent.
Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York
1272 Thy humble servant vows obedience
1273 And humble service till the point of death.
King Henry VI
1274 Stoop then and set your knee against my foot;
1275 And, in reguerdon of that duty done,
1276 I girt thee with the valiant sword of York:
1277 Rise, Richard, like a true Plantagenet,
1278 And rise created princely Duke of York.
Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York
1279 And so thrive Richard as thy foes may fall!
1280 And as my duty springs, so perish they
1281 That grudge one thought against your majesty!
All
1282 Welcome, high prince, the mighty Duke of York!
[Aside]
Duke of Somerset
1283 Perish, base prince, ignoble Duke of York!
Duke of Gloucester
1284 Now will it best avail your majesty
1285 To cross the seas and to be crown'd in France:
1286 The presence of a king engenders love
1287 Amongst his subjects and his loyal friends,
1288 As it disanimates his enemies.
King Henry VI
1289 When Gloucester says the word, King Henry goes;
1290 For friendly counsel cuts off many foes.
Duke of Gloucester
1291 Your ships already are in readiness.
[Sennet. Flourish. Exeunt all but Exeter.]
Duke of Exeter
1292 Aye, we may march in England or in France,
1293 Not seeing what is likely to ensue.
1294 This late dissension grown betwixt the peers
1295 Burns under feigned ashes of forged love,
1296 And will at last break out into a flame;
1297 As fest'red members rot but by degree,
1298 Till bones and flesh and sinews fall away,
1299 So will this base and envious discord breed.
1300 And now I fear that fatal prophecy
1301 Which in the time of Henry named the fifth
1302 Was in the mouth of every sucking babe;
1303 That Henry born at Monmouth should win all
1304 And Henry born at Windsor lose all:
1305 Which is so plain, that Exeter doth wish
1306 His days may finish ere that hapless time.
[Exit.]

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Notes

TLN 1102rhetorical device
“deep premeditated lines, With written pamphlets studiously devised”
Winchester mocks Gloucester for arriving with prepared written charges rather than speaking off the cuff, calling the bill he brought 'premeditated lines' and 'written pamphlets' — implying that a man with a truly clear conscience would not need to plan his words so carefully. The taunt is itself a rhetorical move: by framing Gloucester's care as suspicious, Winchester tries to seize the high ground before a word of the charges is heard.
TLN 1109historical topical
“Presumptuous priest”
Gloucester calls Winchester a 'presumptuous priest' because Winchester is a bishop of the Church who has repeatedly overstepped the limits of his clerical office to seize political power — including, Gloucester charges, plotting to seize the King and laying traps to kill Gloucester himself. 'Presumptuous' means arrogantly overreaching one's proper station, and 'priest' is used with contempt to remind the lords that Winchester's primary identity is a churchman, not a secular ruler.
historical Holinshed's Chronicles
TLN 1118archaic vocab
“most pernicious usurer, Froward by nature”
Gloucester charges Winchester with being a 'usurer' — a money-lender who charges interest, which was condemned as a sin in Elizabethan England and explicitly forbidden to clergy by canon law. 'Froward' (rhymes with 'toward') means stubbornly contrary, perverse, and resistant to good counsel — the opposite of a compliant or godly temperament. Together the two charges paint Winchester as corrupt both financially and morally.
TLN 1123historical topical
“thou laid'st a trap to take my life, As well at London-bridge as at the Tower”
Gloucester accuses Winchester of twice plotting to kill him: once at London Bridge and once at the Tower of London. These refer to real incidents in 1425-26 when Beaufort's men and Gloucester's men confronted each other armed at London Bridge, and when Beaufort attempted to seize the Tower (and with it control of the young King) against Gloucester's authority as Lord Protector. Holinshed records both clashes.
historical Holinshed's Chronicles
TLN 1144historical topical
“Thou bastard of my grandfather”
Gloucester calls Winchester a 'bastard' because Henry Beaufort was the illegitimate son of John of Gaunt (Duke of Lancaster) by his mistress Katherine Swynford, before Gaunt married her and Parliament later legitimized the children — but with a specific exclusion barring them from the succession to the throne. Gaunt was Gloucester's grandfather too, making Winchester Gloucester's illegitimate half-uncle. The insult is precise: it attacks Winchester's birth and his barred royal blood in one word.
historical Edward III and his seven sons
TLN 1154wordplay
“Rome shall remedy this”
Winchester threatens to appeal to the Pope in Rome for redress against Gloucester's 'Unreverent' treatment of a churchman. Warwick instantly turns 'Rome' into a verb: 'Roam thither, then' — meaning 'go wander off to Rome if you like.' The pun deflates Winchester's threat by making his dignified ecclesiastical appeal sound like a dismissal ('go roam away'). For a Protestant Elizabethan audience, the jeer at papal authority would have landed with extra pleasure.
TLN 1165historical topical
“Plantagenet, I see, must hold his tongue”
Richard Plantagenet speaks this aside, seething that his attainted birth — his father the Earl of Cambridge was executed for treason against Henry V — bars him from joining the argument as an equal lord. The name 'Plantagenet' is the royal house name, and Richard is claiming kinship with kings while acknowledging he has no current title to speak with. The aside makes clear that his enforced silence is a wound that will later explode.
historical The Wars of the Roseshistorical Edward III and his seven sons
TLN 1176rhetorical device
“Civil dissension is a viperous worm That gnaws the bowels of the commonwealth”
Young King Henry VI uses a metaphor in which civil strife is a poisonous worm eating the body of the state from within — 'the commonwealth' being his standard term for the kingdom regarded as a shared body politic. The image of disease eating the body was a common Elizabethan way of describing political disorder, and 'bowels' meant the inner organs, the vital center. Coming from an innocent child-king, the medical image is also pathetic: he sees the sickness but cannot stop it.
historical The great chain of being (order and degree)
TLN 1183historical topical
“Forbidden late to carry any weapon, Have fill'd their pockets full of pebble stones”
The Mayor explains that because a magistrate had recently ('late') forbidden the rival retinues to carry swords — the 'tawny-coats' of the stage direction being Winchester's men in their livery color — both sides resorted to throwing cobblestones from their pockets. The detail is historically grounded: the 1425 street-fighting between Gloucester and Winchester's servants was a real scandal that the council tried to suppress by banning weapons. Circumventing the ban with stones turns the legal restriction into a dark joke.
historical Holinshed's Chronicles
TLN 1203archaic vocab
“disgraced by an inkhorn mate”
An 'inkhorn mate' is an Elizabethan insult for a petty scholar or clerk — someone whose only power comes from handling ink and paper rather than from noble birth or military valor. 'Mate' could mean companion but also a menial or low fellow. The serving-man is saying: a great prince like Gloucester should not be humiliated by a mere pen-pushing churchman.
TLN 1206rhetorical device
“very parings of our nails Shall pitch a field when we are dead”
The serving-man boasts that even the nail-clippings left behind after they die will 'pitch a field' — lay out a battlefield and fight — in Gloucester's cause. It is an extravagant hyperbole of loyalty: not just their bodies but every scrap of themselves belongs to their lord's service. 'Pitch a field' means to set up and engage in a pitched battle.
TLN 1236archaic vocab
“bishop hath a kindly gird”
Warwick says the King has given Winchester 'a kindly gird' — meaning a well-placed taunt or sharp jibe. 'Gird' in this sense means a cutting remark or sarcasm. Warwick is commenting that the young King, by reminding Winchester that he preaches against malice yet practices it, has scored a pointed hit. The word is archaic and survives only in this figurative sense.
TLN 1241rhetorical device
“fear me, with a hollow heart”
In back-to-back asides, Gloucester and Winchester each swear the handshake is genuine 'So help me God' — but both are lying. The pairing of the same oath in two contradictory asides is Shakespeare's formal device for exposing the reconciliation as performance: the audience hears both sworn in the identical words, one of 'dissemble not,' the other of 'intend it not.' The hollow handshake is the emblem of a peace that will not hold.
TLN 1264historical topical
“Richard be restored to his blood”
To 'restore to his blood' means to reverse the legal attainder — the act of parliamentary condemnation — imposed on Richard's father, the Earl of Cambridge, who was executed in 1415. Attainder stripped the condemned and his heirs of all noble title, lands, and legal standing; 'blood' here means the legal right to hold noble rank and inherit property that flowed through birth. Henry VI's act gives Richard back his Plantagenet rights and will immediately create him Duke of York.
historical Edward III and his seven sonshistorical The Wars of the Roses
TLN 1275archaic vocab
“in reguerdon of that duty done, I girt thee with the valiant sword of York”
'Reguerdon' is an archaic legal-ceremonial term meaning a reward or recompense given in return for service rendered. The King uses it here in the formal act of creating Richard Duke of York: kneeling Richard swears 'humble service till the point of death'; Henry girds him with the sword of the dukedom as a recompense ('in reguerdon') for that oath. The sword-girding is the central gesture of the investiture — the physical transfer of the duchy.
TLN 1283historical topical
“Perish, base prince, ignoble Duke of York”
Somerset curses the newly created Duke of York in a private aside, giving the audience its first direct signal that the two men are already enemies. While everyone else greets the new duke with 'Welcome, high prince,' Somerset calls him 'base' and 'ignoble' — a Lancastrian response to what he sees as the rehabilitation of a rival claimant. This single line plants the Somerset-York enmity that will grow into the Wars of the Roses.
historical The Wars of the Roses
TLN 1295rhetorical device
“Burns under feigned ashes of forged love, And will at last break out into a flame; As fest'red members rot but by degree”
Exeter, left alone on stage as a choric commentator, compares the reconciliation just performed to embers smoldering under fake ash — the fire is still burning, it is just hidden. He then extends the metaphor into a medical image: a wound ('fest'red' means infected, filled with pus) that rots 'but by degree' — slowly, step by step — until bone, flesh, and sinew all fall away. Both images predict the same outcome: the peace is surface only, and the civil war will destroy England from within.
historical The fall of princes (de casibus tragedy)
TLN 1300historical topical
“that fatal prophecy Which in the time of Henry named the fifth Was in the mouth of every sucking babe; That Henry born at Monmouth should win all And Henry born at Windsor lose all”
Exeter recalls a prophecy, current in Henry V's time, that 'Henry born at Monmouth' (Henry V, born in Monmouth, Wales in 1387) would win all, and 'Henry born at Windsor' (Henry VI, born at Windsor Castle in 1421) would lose all. Henry V died young in 1422 leaving an infant on the throne; what his father feared is now visibly coming true. The prophecy frames the entire arc of the play — the winning hero is dead, the losing king is a child, and his losses have already begun.
historical Holinshed's Chronicleshistorical The fall of princes (de casibus tragedy)