Y’are very welcome both; some stools boy,
And reach a Table; Gentlemen o’th’ Sword,
Pray sit without more complement; be gone child. 
I have been curious in the searching of you,
Because I understand you wise and valiant persons.

1.

  We understand our selves Sir.

Bes.

  Nay Gentlemen, and dear friends o’th’ Sword,
  No complement I pray, but to the cause
  I hang upon, which in few, is my honour.

2.

  You cannot hang too much Sir, for your honour,
  But to your cause.

Bes.

  Be wise, and speak truth, my first doubt is,
  My beating by my Prince.

1.

  Stay there a little Sir, do you doubt a beating? 
  Or have you had a beating by your Prince?

Bes.

  Gentlemen o’th’ Sword, my Prince has beaten me.

2.

  Brother, what think you of this case?

1.

  If he has beaten him, the case is clear.

2.

  If he have beaten him, I grant the case;
  But how? we cannot be too subtil in this business,
  I say, but how?

Bes.

  Even with his Royal hand.

1.

  Was it a blow of love, or indignation?

Bes.

  ’Twas twenty blows of indignation, Gentlemen,
  Besides two blows o’th face.

2.

  Those blows o’th’ face have made a new cause on’t,
  The rest were but an horrible rudeness.

1.

Two blows o’th’ face, and given by a worse man, I must confess, as the Sword-men say, had turn’d the business:  Mark me brother, by a worse man; but being by his Prince, had they been ten, and those ten drawn teeth, besides the hazard of his nose for ever; all this had been but favours:  this is my flat opinion, which I’le die in.

2.

The King may do much Captain, believe it; for had he crackt your Scull through, like a bottle, or broke a Rib or two with tossing of you, yet you had lost no honour:  This is strange you may imagine, but this is truth now Captain.

Bes.

  I will be glad to embrace it Gentlemen;
  But how far may he strike me?

1.

There is another:  a new cause rising from the time and distance, in which I will deliver my opinion:  he may strike, beat, or cause to be beaten:  for these are natural to man:  your Prince, I say, may beat you, so far forth as his dominion reacheth, that’s for the distance; the time, ten miles a day, I take it.

2.

  Brother, you err, ’tis fifteen miles a day,
  His stage is ten, his beatings are fifteen.

Bes.

  ’Tis the longest, but we subjects must—­