Act 5, Scene 6

Windsor. An Apartment in the Castle.

[Flourish. Enter BOLINGBROKE and YORK, with Lords and Attendants.]
Henry Bolingbroke
2750 Kind uncle York, the latest news we hear
2751 Is that the rebels have consum'd with fire
2752 Our town of Cicester in Gloucestershire;
2753 But whether they be ta'en or slain we hear not.
[Enter NORTHUMBERLAND.]
Henry Bolingbroke
2754 Welcome, my lord. What is the news?
Earl of Northumberland
2755 First, to thy sacred state wish I all happiness.
2756 The next news is: I have to London sent
2757 The heads of Salisbury, Spencer, Blunt, and Kent.
2758 The manner of their taking may appear
2759 At large discoursed in this paper here.
Henry Bolingbroke
2760 We thank thee, gentle Percy, for thy pains;
2761 And to thy worth will add right worthy gains.
[Enter FITZWATER.]
Lord Fitzwater
2762 My lord, I have from Oxford sent to London
2763 The heads of Brocas and Sir Bennet Seely,
2764 Two of the dangerous consorted traitors
2765 That sought at Oxford thy dire overthrow.
Henry Bolingbroke
2766 Thy pains, Fitzwater, shall not be forgot;
2767 Right noble is thy merit, well I wot.
[Enter HENRY PERCY, With the BISHOP OF CARLISLE.]
Henry Percy (Hotspur)
2768 The grand conspirator, Abbot of Westminster,
2769 With clog of conscience and sour melancholy,
2770 Hath yielded up his body to the grave;
2771 But here is Carlisle living, to abide
2772 Thy kingly doom, and sentence of his pride.
Henry Bolingbroke
2773 Carlisle, this is your doom:
2774 Choose out some secret place, some reverend room,
2775 More than thou hast, and with it joy thy life;
2776 So as thou livest in peace, die free from strife;
2777 For though mine enemy thou hast ever been,
2778 High sparks of honour in thee have I seen.
[Enter EXTON, with attendants, hearing a coffin.]
Sir Pierce of Exton
2779 Great king, within this coffin I present
2780 Thy buried fear: herein all breathless lies
2781 The mightiest of thy greatest enemies,
2782 Richard of Bordeaux, by me hither brought.
Henry Bolingbroke
2783 Exton, I thank thee not; for thou hast wrought
2784 A deed of slander with thy fatal hand
2785 Upon my head and all this famous land.
Sir Pierce of Exton
2786 From your own mouth, my lord, did I this deed.
Henry Bolingbroke
2787 They love not poison that do poison need,
2788 Nor do I thee: though I did wish him dead,
2789 I hate the murderer, love him murdered.
2790 The guilt of conscience take thou for thy labour,
2791 But neither my good word nor princely favour:
2792 With Cain go wander thorough shade of night,
2793 And never show thy head by day nor light.
2794 Lords, I protest my soul is full of woe,
2795 That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow:
2796 Come, mourn with me for what I do lament,
2797 And put on sullen black incontinent.
2798 I'll make a voyage to the Holy Land,
2799 To wash this blood off from my guilty hand.
2800 March sadly after; grace my mournings here,
2801 In weeping after this untimely bier.
[Exeunt]

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Notes

TLN 2757historical topical
“heads of Salisbury, Spencer, Blunt, and Kent”
Displaying the severed heads of traitors on London Bridge or the city gates was a standard punishment in medieval England. Northumberland and Fitzwater each report that they have cut off the heads of the rebel leaders and shipped them to the capital as proof of execution and a public warning. The four named men — the Earl of Salisbury, Thomas Spencer, Sir Thomas Blunt, and the Earl of Kent — were among the conspirators who plotted at Oxford to kill the newly crowned Henry IV.
historical Holinshed's Chronicles
TLN 2769archaic vocab
“clog of conscience and sour melancholy”
A 'clog' was a heavy block of wood tied to an animal's leg to stop it straying — and so, by extension, any deadening burden. Henry Percy reports that the Abbot of Westminster, chief plotter of the conspiracy to restore Richard, did not face execution: he died first, weighed down by guilt and by 'melancholy,' the Elizabethan medical term for a black, brooding despair thought to be caused by an excess of black bile in the body. In effect, his conscience killed him before the king could.
TLN 2787rhetorical device
“They love not poison that do poison need”
Bolingbroke dismisses Exton with a maxim built on paradox: a man who needs poison to do his dirty work does not thereby love or welcome the poisoner. The line is a formal aphorism — a compressed, generalizing statement used to close off argument — and its next sentence turns the paradox back on itself: 'though I did wish him dead, / I hate the murderer, love him murdered.' He simultaneously claims the wish and disowns the act, using the distinction between willing an end and willing the means to separate himself from the crime.
TLN 2792biblical allusion
“With Cain go wander thorough shade of night”
After Cain murdered his brother Abel, God cursed him to wander the earth as a fugitive, marked so that no one would kill him but also unable to settle or find rest. Bolingbroke sentences Exton to exactly this fate: not death, but the worse punishment of restless, homeless exile. The allusion also touches on Bolingbroke's own guilt — Richard, like Abel, was his kinsman, killed at his indirect command, and the play has already drawn parallels between fratricidal murder and the Cain story earlier.
biblical Cain and Abel: the first murder
TLN 2798historical topical
“voyage to the Holy Land, / To wash this blood off from my guilty hand”
Bolingbroke vows to go on crusade to Jerusalem — 'the Holy Land' — to atone for Richard's death. Crusade was the standard form of royal penance for blood-guilt in the Middle Ages: a military pilgrimage to recover or defend the Christian holy sites in Palestine. The hand-washing image echoes the story of Pontius Pilate, who washed his hands at Christ's condemnation as a public denial of guilt — an irony already used in this play when Richard accused his deposers of being 'Pilates' in 4.1.
biblical Pilate washing his handshistorical Holinshed's Chronicles