Or aught intend'st to lay unto my charge,
Do it without invention, suddenly.

Glos. Presumptuous priest! this place commands
my patience.

Win.

What are you, I pray,

But one imperious in another's throne?

Glos. Am I not Lord Protector, saucy priest?
Win. And am not I a prelate of the church?
King. Uncles of Gloster and of Winchester,
The special watchmen of our English weal,
O, what a scandal is it to our crown

That two such noble peers as ye should jar!

The king's lecture was broken into by a noise as of a mob; angry cries resound in the street, and the Mayor of London enters the chamber with the announcement that:

The bishop's and the Duke of Gloster's men,
Forbidden late to carry any weapon,

Have filled their pockets full of pebble-stones.
Do pelt so fast at one another's pate

That many have their giddy brains knocked out:
Our windows are broke down in every street
And we, for fear, compelled to shut our shops.
King. O, how this discord doth afflict my soul !
Warwick. My lord protector, yield; yield, Win-
chester;

Except you mean by obstinate repulse

To slay your sovereign, and destroy the realm.

Win. He shall submit or I will never yield.

Glos. Here, Winchester, I offer thee my hand.

Richard Plantagenet calling upon his friends to pluck a white rose.

King Henry VI-First Part, Act II, Scene iv.

King. Fie, uncle Beaufort! I have heard you preach That malice was a great and grievous sin; And will you not maintain the thing you teach? .

War. For shame, my Lord of Winchester, relent! What, shall a child instruct you what to do?

Win. Well, Duke of Gloster, I will yield to thee.

This was a very hollow truce and gave quiet only to the present disturbance. Before the council adjourned Warwick presented a paper which set forth the claim of Richard Plantagenet to be created Duke of York. The king granted the petition, and also transferred to Richard the whole inheritance of the House of York:

From whence you spring by lineal descent.

This admission carried a load of meaning. Of the sons of Edward III, York was older than Lancaster. Henry VI proved to be the last of the Lancastrians, though this York never reached the throne. Here is planted the thorny bush on which grew the red and the white rose.

A case was being argued in the Temple hall and a sharp dispute sprang up between Somerset and that Plantagenet just introduced. When the parties to the quarrel and their friends had passed to the garden, the discussion was continued:

Plan. Let him that is a true-born gentleman,

And stands upon the honor of his birth,
If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,

From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.

Som. Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer,

But dare maintain the party of the truth,
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.
War. I love no colors; and, without all color
Of base insinuating flattery,

I pluck this white rose with Plantagenet.

Suf. I pluck this red rose with young Somerset. Vernon. I pluck this pale and maiden blossom here Giving my verdict on the white rose side.

Som. Prick not your finger as you pluck it off, Lest, bleeding, you do paint the white rose red, And fall on my side so.

Lawyer. (To Som.) Unless my study and my books
be false,

The argument you held was wrong in you:
In sign whereof, I pluck a white rose too.

Plan. Now, Somerset, where is your argument?

Som. Here in my scabbard; meditating that

Shall die your white rose in a bloody red.

Plan. Meantime, your cheeks do counterfeit our

roses;

For pale they look with fear,

and so, in excellent English, continued this firing of verbal missiles—an exciting sport, but dangerous between debaters with hot blood in their veins and sharp swords at their sides.

CROWNED KING OF FRANCE.

This event in Henry's life has been alluded to already, and the Duke of Bedford's purpose in showing at Paris the little son of the Princess Catherine of France—that is, the ex-queen Catherine of Eng