NORFOLK.
One, certes, that promises no element
In such a business.
BUCKINGHAM.
I pray you who, my lord?
NORFOLK.
All this was ordered by the good discretion
Of the right reverend Cardinal of York.
BUCKINGHAM.
The devil speed him! No man’s pie is freed
From his ambitious finger. What had he
To do in these fierce vanities? I wonder
That such a keech can with his very bulk
Take up the rays o’ th’ beneficial sun
And keep it from the earth.
NORFOLK.
Surely, sir,
There’s in him stuff that puts him to these ends;
For, being not propped by ancestry, whose grace
Chalks successors their way, nor called upon
For high feats done to th’ crown; neither allied
To eminent assistants, but spider-like,
Out of his self-drawing web, he gives us note
The force of his own merit makes his way
A gift that heaven gives for him, which buys
A place next to the King.
ABERGAVENNY.
I cannot tell
What heaven hath given him—let some graver eye
Pierce into that—but I can see his pride
Peep through each part of him. Whence has he that?
If not from hell, the devil is a niggard,
Or has given all before, and he begins
A new hell in himself.
BUCKINGHAM.
Why the devil,
Upon this French going-out, took he upon him,
Without the privity o’ th’ King, t’ appoint
Who should attend on him? He makes up the file
Of all the gentry, for the most part such
To whom as great a charge as little honour
He meant to lay upon; and his own letter,
The honourable board of council out,
Must fetch him in he papers.
ABERGAVENNY.
I do know
Kinsmen of mine, three at the least, that have
By this so sickened their estates that never
They shall abound as formerly.
BUCKINGHAM.
O, many
Have broke their backs with laying manors on ’em
For this great journey. What did this vanity
But minister communication of
A most poor issue?
NORFOLK.
Grievingly I think
The peace between the French and us not values
The cost that did conclude it.