Carlisle the Prophet

Marry. God forbid!
Worst in this royal presence may I speak,
Yet best beseeming me to speak the truth.
Would God that any in this noble presence
Were enough noble to be upright judge
Of noble Richard! then true noblesse would
Learn him forbearance from so foul a wrong.
What subject can give sentence on his king?
And who sits here that is not Richard's subject?
Thieves are not judged but they are by to hear,
Although apparent guilt be seen in them;
And shall the figure of God's majesty,
His captain, steward, deputy-elect,
Anointed, crowned, planted many years,
Be judged by subject and inferior breath,
And he himself not present? O, forfend it, God,
That in a Christian climate souls refined
Should show so heinous, black, obscene a deed!
I speak to subjects, and a subject speaks,
Stirr'd up by God, thus boldly for his king:
My Lord of Hereford here, whom you call king,
Is a foul traitor to proud Hereford's king:
And if you crown him, let me prophesy:
The blood of English shall manure the ground,
And future ages groan for this foul act....
(IV.i.114-138)

At the moment that Bolingbroke is about to ascend the throne, Carlisle interrupts and tries to make plain to all concerned what a wicked thing it is to depose a king. In fact, Carlisle cannot find enough words to describe how wrong it is. It is "so foul a wrong"; "so heinous, black, obscene a deed"; Hereford is a "foul traitor" and crowning him would be a "foul act." As Carlisle understands it, it is morally wrong to depose a King, no matter what his guilt. "What subject can give sentence on his king?"

Why is it so wrong? For the same reason that Gaunt thought it was wrong. As Carlisle puts it, the king is "the figure of God's majesty, His captain, steward, deputy elect, anointed, crowned, planted many years." To rise up against the king is to rise up against God.

So wrong is this act that its consequences will be nothing less than catastrophic. Carlise speaks as a prophet and prophesies the bloody civil war that later generations will call the War of the Roses. These events do, in fact, follow this action and are the subject of the plays that cover the period 1399-1485 (Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 and 2, Henry V, Henry VI parts 1,2, and 3, and Richard III). Carlisle is a true prophet and this suggests that his understanding of the deposition of Richard is the true one, as Shakespeare understands it: no matter what the king's crimes, it is always wrong to depose a king.

(After Richard surrenders his crown, the abbot remarks how sad a scene it was. Carlisle responds by repeating his prophecy: "The woe's to come. The children yet unborn shall feel this day as sharp to them as thorn" (IV.i.22-23).)