_Bates_. He may show what outward courage he will; but, _I_ believe, as cold a night as 'tis, he could wish himself in the Thames, up to the neck; and so I would he were, and I by him, at all adventures, so we were quit here. _King_. By my troth, I will speak my conscience of the king. I think he would not wish himself anywhere but where he is. _Bates_. Then would he were here alone; so should he be sure to be ransomed, and a many poor men's lives saved. _King_. I dare say you love him not so ill as to wish him here alone; _howsoever you speak this to feel other men's minds_; Methinks I could not die anywhere so contented as in the king's company; _his cause being just, and his quarrel honorable_. _Will. That's more than we know._ _Bates_. Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know enough, if we know we are the king's subjects; if his cause be wrong, our obedience to the _king_ wipes the crime of it out of us. _Will_. But _if the cause be not good_, the _king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make_; when all those legs and arms and heads chopped off in a battle shall join together at the latter day, and cry all--We died at such a place; some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them; some upon the debts they owe; some upon their children rawly left. I am afeared that few die well, that die in battle; for how can they _charitably_ dispose of anything _when blood is their argument_? Now if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were _against all proportion of subjection_. _King_. So, if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise, do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness, by your rule, should be imposed upon his father that sent him: or if a servant, under his master's command, transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers, and die in many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of the servant's damnation.--But this is not so.... There is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrament of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers. But the king pursues this question of the royal responsibility until he arrives at the conclusion that _every subject's_ DUTY is THE KING'S, BUT EVERY SUBJECT'S SOUL IS HIS OWN, until he shows, indeed, that there is but one ultimate sovereignty; one to which the king and his subjects are alike amenable, which pursues them everywhere, with its demands and reckonings,--from whose violated laws there is no escape. _Will_. 'Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill is upon his own head--[no unimportant point in the theology or ethics of that time]--THE KING is not to answer for it. _Bates_. I do not desire the king should answer for me, and yet I determine to fight lustily for him.