Whither your highness please, thither I will.
[_Exeunt_ CHESTER _and_ QUEEN.
JOHN. Soldiers, attend the person of our mother.
[_Exeunt_ SOLDIERS.
Noble Fitzwater, now we are alone,
What oft I have desir'd I will entreat,
Touching Matilda, fled with Huntington.
FITZ. Of her what would you touch? Touching her flight,
She is fled hence with Robert, her true knight.
JOHN. Robert is outlaw'd, and Matilda free;
Why through his fault should she exiled be?
She is your comfort, your old[194] age's bliss;
Why should your age so great a comfort miss?
She is all England's beauty, all her pride;
In foreign lands why should that beauty bide?
Call her again, Fitzwater, call again
Guiltless Matilda, beauty's sovereign.
FITZ. I grant, Prince John, Matilda was my joy,
And the fair sun that kept old Winter's frost
From griping dead the marrow of my bones;
And she is gone; yet where she is, God wot:
Aged Fitzwater truly guesseth not.
But where she is, there is kind Huntington;
With my fair daughter is my noble son.
If he may never be recall'd again,
To call Matilda back it is in vain.
JOHN. Living with him, she lives in vicious state,
For Huntington is excommunicate;
And till his debts be paid, by Rome's decree
It is agreed absolv'd he cannot be;
And that can never be: so ne'er a[195] wife,
But a loathed[196] adulterous beggar's life,
Must fair Matilda live.
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