Ye haled this tonsured devil into your courts;
But since your canon will not let you take
Life for a life, ye but degraded him
Where I had hang'd him. What doth hard murder care
For degradation? and that made me muse,
Being bounden by my coronation oath
To do men justice. Look to it, your own selves!
Say that a cleric murder'd an archbishop,
What could ye do? Degrade, imprison him--
Not death for death.
JOHN OF OXFORD.
But I, my liege, could swear,
To death for death.

HENRY.
And, looking thro' my reign,
I found a hundred ghastly murders done
By men, the scum and offal of the Church;
Then, glancing thro' the story of this realm,
I came on certain wholesome usages,
Lost in desuetude, of my grandsire's day,
Good royal customs--had them written fair
For John of Oxford here to read to you.
JOHN OF OXFORD.
And I can easily swear to these as being
The King's will and God's will and justice; yet
I could but read a part to-day, because----

FITZURSE.
Because my lord of Canterbury----