BOLINGBROKE                      Welcome, my lords. I wot your love pursues

A banished traitor. All my treasury

Is yet but unfelt thanks, which, more enriched,

Shall be your love and labour’s recompense.

ROSS                                       Your presence makes us rich, most noble lord.

WILLOUGHBY                        And far surmounts our labour to attain it.

BOLINGBROKE                      Evermore thanks—the exchequer of the poor,

Which, till my infant fortune comes to years,

Stands for my bounty.

Enter Berkeley

                                                                        But who comes here?

NORTHUMBERLAND            It is my lord of Berkeley as I guess. (2.3.59-69)

Bolingbroke is doing courtesy and modesty, but also managing expectations. Here are more hitherto powerful men who have thrown their lot in with him, riding at breakneck speed across the country to prove their switch in allegiance—but he must remind them, I wot, I believe, your love pursues a banished traitor. There’s a death sentence on my head. And, moreover, I have no monetary rewards to dispense to my newly loyal followers; all my treasury is yet but unfelt thanks. But yet. This is, he suggests, only a temporary state; he may in due course have an entirely non-metaphorical treasury at his disposal and, when he does, when it’s more enriched with actual cash, lands, offices, he will indeed be able to recompense the love and labour of his supporters. Ross and Willoughby play along: no, not at all, reward’s absolutely the last thing on our minds, it’s your presence that makes us rich, most noble lord, just being here with you! merely seeing you far surmounts our labour to attain it! (Northumberland must be fuming: he’s got competition in the sycophancy stakes.) So Bolingbroke repeats the point, really, he’s not about to start handing out the cash, just evermore thanks, which he terms the exchequer of the poor (like treasury, another rather pointed term; the exchequer is the realm’s, the king’s). Until he comes into his inheritance (although infant fortune suggests both his luck and also something in the future which will be larger than simply his inheritance as Gaunt’s son, Duke of Lancaster), his thanks (as is the case with all poor people) will have to be all the reward he can offer.

Another interruption (thank goodness, Bolingbroke might well be thinking): Berkeley, this time. Potential opposition. It’s his castle. And Northumberland is eager to make the identification.