Meantime let this defend my loyalty: By all my hopes, most falsely doth he lie. 

 BOLINGBROKE. Pale trembling coward, there I throw my gage, Disclaiming here the kindred of the King, And lay aside my high blood’s royalty, Which fear, not reverence, makes thee to except. If guilty dread have left thee so much strength As to take up mine honour’s pawn, then stoop. By that and all the rites of knighthood else, Will I make good against thee, arm to arm, What I have spoke or thou canst worst devise. 

 MOWBRAY. I take it up; and by that sword I swear Which gently laid my knighthood on my shoulder, I’ll answer thee in any fair degree Or chivalrous design of knightly trial. And when I mount, alive may I not light If I be traitor or unjustly fight! 

 KING RICHARD. What doth our cousin lay to Mowbray’s charge? It must be great that can inherit us So much as of a thought of ill in him. 

 BOLINGBROKE. Look what I speak, my life shall prove it true: That Mowbray hath received eight thousand nobles In name of lendings for your highness’ soldiers, The which he hath detained for lewd employments, Like a false traitor and injurious villain. Besides I say, and will in battle prove, Or here or elsewhere to the furthest verge That ever was surveyed by English eye, That all the treasons for these eighteen years Complotted and contrived in this land Fetch from false Mowbray their first head and spring. Further I say, and further will maintain Upon his bad life to make all this good, That he did plot the Duke of Gloucester’s death, Suggest his soon-believing adversaries, And consequently, like a traitor coward, Sluiced out his innocent soul through streams of blood, Which blood, like sacrificing Abel’s, cries Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth To me for justice and rough chastisement. And, by the glorious worth of my descent, This arm shall do it, or this life be spent. 

 KING RICHARD. How high a pitch his resolution soars! Thomas of Norfolk, what sayst thou to this? 

 MOWBRAY. O! let my sovereign turn away his face And bid his ears a little while be deaf, Till I have told this slander of his blood How God and good men hate so foul a liar. 

 KING RICHARD. Mowbray, impartial are our eyes and ears. Were he my brother, nay, my kingdom’s heir, As he is but my father’s brother’s son, Now, by my sceptre’s awe I make a vow Such neighbour nearness to our sacred blood Should nothing privilege him nor partialize The unstooping firmness of my upright soul. He is our subject, 

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