byterians+._] You'll join us? Strafford may deserve
the worst:
But this new course is monstrous. Vane, take heart!
This Bill of his Attainder shall not have
One true man's hand to it.

_Vane._ Consider, Pym!
Confront your Bill, your own Bill: what is it?
You cannot catch the Earl on any charge,--
No man will say the law has hold of him
On any charge; and therefore you resolve
To take the general sense on his desert,
As though no law existed, and we met
To found one. You refer to Parliament
To speak its thought upon the abortive mass
Of half-borne-out assertions, dubious hints
Hereafter to be cleared, distortions--ay,
And wild inventions. Every man is saved
The task of fixing any single charge
On Strafford: he has but to see in him
The enemy of England.

_Pym._ A right scruple!
I have heard some called England's enemy
With less consideration.

_Vane._ Pity me!
Indeed you made me think I was your friend!
I who have murdered Strafford, how remove
That memory from me?

_Pym._ I absolve you, Vane.
Take you no care for aught that you have done!

_Vane._ John Hampden, not this Bill! Reject this Bill!
He staggers through the ordeal: let him go,
Strew no fresh fire before him! Plead for us!
When Strafford spoke, your eyes were thick with tears!

_Hampden._ England speaks louder: who are we, to play
The generous pardoner at her expense,
Magnanimously waive advantages,
And, if he conquer us, applaud his skill?

_Vane._ He was your friend.

_Pym._ I have heard that before.

_Fiennes._ And England trusts you.

_Hampden._ Shame be his, who turns
The opportunity of serving her
She trusts him with, to his own mean account--
Who would look nobly frank at her expense!

_Fiennes._ I never thought it could have come to this.

_Pym._ But I have made myself familiar, Fiennes,
With this one thought--have walked, and sat, and slept,
This thought before me. I have done such things,
Being the chosen man that should destroy
The traitor. You have taken up this thought
To play with, for a gentle stimulant,
To give a dignity to idler life
By the dim prospect of emprise to come,
But ever with the softening, sure belief,
That all would end some strange way right at last.

_Fiennes._ Had we made ou