BOLINGBROKE          Look what I speak, my life shall prove it true:

That Mowbray hath received eight thousand nobles

In name of lendings for your highness’ soldiers,

The which he hath detained for lewd employments,

Like a false traitor and injurious villain.

Besides I say and will in battle prove,

Or here or elsewhere to the furthest verge

That ever was surveyed by English eye,

That all the treasons for these eighteen years,

Complotted and contrivèd in this land

Fetch from false Mowbray their first head and spring… (1.1.87-97)

And Bolingbroke lets rip. But it’s a slow and perhaps unexpected final run-up, this specific accusation of financial corruption, and theft as a servant. The first line here continues the (mostly) lofty chivalric frame of the encounter so far: I swear on my life, I will fight to the death to prove, that what I speak is true. He embezzled money which was meant for paying soldiers, your soldiers! Thousands of pounds! (A noble—consults notes—is a gold coin worth approximately a third of a pound. This is a huge sum; that it’s given in nobles adds an ironic twist to the grubby corruption.) And Mowbray’s spent it on lewd employments, unspecified; lewd doesn’t have a sexual connotation here, although it will for a modern audience, as if he’d spent it on fast cars and faster women, but the point stands: Mowbray hasn’t done anything grand with this money, he’s frittered it away, spent it on base, perhaps trivial things. He is a false traitor and an injurious villain, that particularly insulting term again. (A true knight would be above dirtying his hands with money, profiteering, backhanders.)

And, moreover (that was just the warm-up), I will prove in battle, either here or elsewhere to the furthest verge that ever was surveyed by English eyes… Nice detail. Bolingbroke picks up Mowbray’s earlier hyperbole, his promise that he would meet him, were I tied to run afoot even to the frozen ridges of the Alps or any other ground inhabitable wherever Englishman durst set his foot, and remakes it. I will hunt him down, I will prove this anywhere—and he denies Mowbray that elevation of the frozen ridges of the Alps; here it’s just the world, its utmost limits. (But both of them are interested in what it means to be English, an English man.) What will he prove? That all the treasons that have been plotted or devised, in England, for the last eighteen years, come back to Mowbray. He’s their ultimate origin, their source, their sponsor. (The specific figure of eighteen years is taken from Holinshed; it’s not explained there, although it might relate to the period from the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 until the period of the play’s action.) Here, eighteen neatly echoes the eight thousand nobles; the specificity is an authenticating detail.

To underscore the point about Mowbray’s treachery and corruption, Bolingbroke uses the metaphor of the fountain. This is an ancient image for government, and in particular for the good government of the prince, deriving ultimately from Plutarch’s Moralia (OK, I wrote a book partly about this; the best known early modern example is probably in 1.1 of Webster’s Duchess of Malfi). In this conceit, those who give the prince bad counsel, or otherwise corrupt him by flattery, are like those who poison the public water supply. A nation, a land, gains its moral character from its prince, and from those who advise him. It’s a loaded image for Bolingbroke to use here, because it potentially glances at Richard even more than Mowbray…