Cromwell

atures subject unto time: To time, who doth abuse the world, And fills it full of hodge-podge bastardy? There's legions now of beggars on the earth, That their original did spring from Kings: And many Monarchs now whose fathers were The riffe-raffe of their age: for Time and Fortune Wears out a noble train to beggary, And from the hunghill minions do advance To state and mark in this admiring world. This is but course, which in the name of Fate Is seen as often as it whirls about: The River Thames, that by our door doth pass, His first beginning is but small and shallow: Yet keeping on his course, grows to a sea. And likewise Wolsey, the wonder of our age, His birth as mean as mine, a Butcher's son, Now who within this land a greater man? Then, Cromwell, cheer thee up, and tell thy soul, That thou maist live to flourish and control.

[Enter Old Cromwell.]

OLD CROMWELL. Tom Cromwell! what, Tom, I say!

CROMWELL. Do you call, sir.

OLD CROMWELL. Here is master Bowser come to know if you have dispatche