/
PERSONAL
HISTORY OF LORD BACON.
FROM UNPUBLISHED PAPERS.
HISTOEICAL MEMOIRS
By THE SAME AUTHOR.
JOHN HOWARD : A Memoie.
ROBERT BLAKE : Admiral and General at Sea.
WILLIAM PENN: An Historical Biography. With a Reply to
Lord Macaulay's charges against Perm.
THE LONDON PRISONS : With some account of the most celebrated
persons confined in them.
PERSONAL
HISTORY OF LORD BACON.
FROM UNPUBLISHED PAPERS.
By WILLIAM HEPWORTH DIXON
H
OF THE INNER TEMPLE.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1861.
The right of Translation is reserved.
^
^
*&
LONDON r PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD 6TKEKI,
AKD CHARING CROSS.
CONTENTS.
CHAP TEE I.
The Biographers.
Page
1. Art and nature 1
2. Pope's satire on Bacon 2
3. Can one be good and evil ? 2
4. Traducers of Bacon 2
5. Corruption of Pope's period 3
6. Difference between contemporary libels and modern satires . . 4
7. Hume, Hallam, Lingard, and Macaulay 4
8. Lord Campbell's Life of Bacon 5
9. Importance of a true estimate . . . . . . 6
10. Bacon among bis competitors 6
11. His rise in life slow and late 7
12. Why was his rise deferred ? 7
13. Difficulties of the satirical theory 7
14. The questions proposed for illustration 8
15. Careers of his chief political contemporaries 9
16. His chief legal contemporaries 9
17. True critics judge by the whole , . 10
18. Spedding's edition of Bacon's works 10
CHAPTER II.
Early Years.
1. Picture of Bacon in his youth 12
2. Moral beauty of his early life 13
3. The Bacon household. Lady Ann and her two sons .. .. 14
"4. Bacon at Gray's Inn. In the House of Commons. His early
style 16
Bacon to Wylie, July 11, 1580 16
Burghley's relation to him • . . . . 18
*4. Bacon's early parliament life 18
6. Character of the sessions in which he serves 20
vi CONTENTS.
Page
r^t. His rivals in the House of Commons .. 20
8. His personal appearance at twenty-four 22
9. Session of 1586. Bacon represents Taunton 22
10. Excitement in the country 23
11. Mary Queen of Scots 24
12. Popular demand for her execution 25
13. The forged libels against Elizabeth 26
u!4. Bacon's fame as a member of Parliament 27
15. Session of 1589. Bacon's speech on subsidies 27
16. Anthony comes home. The brothers at Gray's Inn Square. Sir
Nicholas Bacon. Dealings with the Jews .. .. - .. .. 28
17. A Queen's ward 30
Bacon to Lady Ann, Feb. 18,-1592 30
Lady Ann's care of her son. Good advice 31
Lady Ann to Anthony Bacon, May 24, 1592 31
The brothers set up a coach. Lady Ann's objections to it . . 32
18. Session of 1593. Principal members of the Commons. War
and plague. State of London 33
19. Bacon proposes his great law reform 34
20. Check to the Government. Lord Campbell's mistake .. .. 35
21. Burghley's proposal for double subsidies 35
22. Bacon's famous speech and defeat of the Crown 36
23. Bacon defends his speech 38
24. Raleigh proposes a compromise 38
25. Defeat of the Government 39
CHAPTEE III.
The Eael of Essex.
1. A candidate for office. Edward Coke „ .. 41
2. Catherine Carey. Her grandson. Eobert Devereux Earl of
Essex 42
3. Scandals against Queen Elizabeth 43
4. Elizabeth's relation to Essex 44
l^S. Essex and Francis Bacon. Bacon's poverty 45
Bacon to Lady Ann, Apl. 16, 1593 46
6. The brothers in debt. Designs for raising money. Spencer the
miser 47
Bacon to Mr. Spencer, Sep. 19, 1593 47
7. Bacon sick i 48
Bacon to Lady Paulett, Sep. 23, 1593 48
8. Anthony and Francis enter the Earl's service 49
CONTENTS. vn
Page
9. Duns at Gray's Inn 50
Bacon to Lady Ann, Oct. 3,1593 50
Ditto, Nov. 2, J593 .. .. 51
10. Bacon's prospects dashed by Essex 52
Essex to Francis Bacon, Mar. 24, 1594 , 52
11. Bacon's surprise and resolution 53
Bacon to Sir Booert Cecil, May 1, 1594 53
Cecil's good wishes 54
Cecil to Bacon, M ay 1, 1594 54
12. Sickness of his mother .. .. 54
Bacon to Lady Ann, June 9, 1594 55
13. Visit to Gorhambury. Anthony's easy nature 56
Lady Ann to Francis Bacon, Aug. 20, 1594 56
Bad news at court 57
Francis to Anthony Bacon, Aug. 26, 1594 57
Lady Ann cautions her son against the Earl 58
14. The Koman League 59
15. Bacon sick. Lady Ann's consolations .. 59
Lady Ann to Anthony Bacon, June 3, 1595 60
The Queen's bounty to Bacon. She appoints him her Learned
Counsel and gives him the Pitts 60
16. Lady Ann to Anthony Bacon, Aug. 7, 1595 61
17. Sir Walter Baleigh. Bacon's proposed compliment to the
Guiana voyage 62
18. Essex jealous. Burghley and Cecil support Baleigh's voyage. 63
19. Fleming made Solicitor-General 63
20. The error about Twickenham Park 64
21. Essex' patch of meadow 65
22. Elizabeth's munificence to Bacon 66
23. She grants him a reversion of Twickenham Park 67
CHAPTEE IV.
Treason of Sir John Smyth.
1. Bacon's legal employments 69
2. Expedition sails for Cadiz 69
Francis to Anthony Bacon, May 15, 1596 70
Ditto, May 31, 1596 70
3. Essex' superfluous kindness 71
Essex to Egerton, May 27,1596 72
4. Excitement in the country . . 72
5. Sir John Smyth 73
6. Attempt to excite mutiny 75
vin CONTENTS.
Page
7. Bacon one of the commissioners to take his examination. De-
clares the crime high treason 76
8. News from Cadiz 77
9. Discontent of Essex. Cecil Secretary of State. Lady Ann's
warnings to her sons 78
Lady Ann to Anthony Bacon, July 10, 1596 79
Bacon's differences with Essex 80
10. They cease their intercourse. Francis in love. Lady Hatton
and her suitors 81
11. Essex deserts his post. Falls under the sway of Sir Christopher
Blount 82
12. Lady Leicester and her children 83
13. Blount 84
14. Blount's influence. Essex' choice between Bacon and Blount 85
15. Session of 1597. Bacon member for Ipswich 86
16. Great motion on the State of the Country 87
17. Yeomen and the land. Deer and parks 88
18. Jesuits on the land question 89
19. Bacon's proposals „ 90
20. Conference with the Lords 90
21. Essex opposes Bacon's bills 91
22. Success of Bacon's measures 91
23. Grant of Cheltenham and Charlton Kings 92
CHAPTER V.
The Irish Plot.
1. Roman Catholic conspiracy at Essex House 94
2. Plan of the plotters 95
3. Irish insurrection 96
4. Movement of English troops 97
5. Essex gains the command ' 97
6. Coke marries Lady Hatton 98
7. Essex visits Gray's Inn. Bacon's advice rejected 99
8. The Jesuits approve the plot 100
9. Roman Catholics in command - 100
10. Lord Southampton 101
11. Essex confers with O'Neile .. 102
12. Armaments in England. Essex returns .. ■ 103
13. Shakespeare's Richard the Second. Essex arrested .. .. 104
14. Montjoy goes to Dublin. Wood's confession 104
15. Essex deserted by all save Bacon . . . . . . . . . , . . 106
16. Bacon's generosity 107
CONTENTS. ix
Page
17. Bacon ignorant of Essex' real crimes 107
18. Intercedes with the Queen 108
19. Hayward's seditions tract 109
20. Curious conversation of Bacon and Elizabeth 110
21. Bacon's note to Howard 110
22. Essex liberated. The Queen's pledge Ill
CHAPTEE VI.
The Street Fight.
1. The plot renewed 113
2. Catesby, Wright, and Winter 114
3. Proposal to assassinate the Queen 114
4. Valentine Thomas' secret mission 115
Points of Thomas 1 confession 115
The secret kept .. .. 116
5. Attempt on Baleigh . . 117
6. The conspirators resolve to rise 117
7. Send for Phillips to Essex House. Shakespeare's play performed 118
8. The street demonstration 118
9. Elizabeth at Whitehall 119
10. Fight in the city. The conspirators in jail . . .. 119
11. Essex put on trial 120
12. Bacon's speech 121
13. Essex confesses against his accomplices 124
14. Elizabeth's gifts to Bacon 124
Council to Coke, Aug. 6, 1601 125
15. Mysterious escape of Monteagle from justice 126
16. Lord Campbell's judgment of Bacon's conduct 127
17. Contemporary opinions. Double elections for Ipswich and St.
Albans .. 128
CHAPTER VII.
The New Reign.
1. Desire of James for peace with Spain 180
2. Bacon and the new court .. 131
3. The session of 1604. Election of Speaker 132
4. Grievances of the Commons. Union with Scotland .. .. 133
5. Bacon's position in the House 134
6. Lord Campbell's errors 135
7. Alice Barnham .. 136
8. Alice Bar nharns mother and sisters .. .. 137
x CONTENTS.
Page
9. Sir John Pakington 138
10. Westwood Park 140
11. Bacon in love 141
12. The Powder Plot 142
Bacon to Cecil, Nov. 8, 1605 .. 143
13. Bacon's tolerance. Case of Tobie Mathews 143
14. Sir John and the ladies in London 145
15. Differences between Sir John and Bacon. Bacon's political
views 146
16. Cecil consults him on the money bills '.. .. 149
Bacon to Cecil, Feb. 10, 1606 149
17. "Warm debate on subsidies 150
18. Bacon's fears of a division 150
Bacon to Cecil, Mar. 22, 1606 151
Rumour that the King is slain , 152
19. Bacon's speech 152
20. Proposes to Alice. His worldly position and prospects . . 153
21. The wedding feast. Alice's dowry 154
22. A new disappointment. Egerton's suggestion 156
23. The Government in difficulties. Bacon conciliated . . . . 156
24. Fuller's speech against the Scots 158
25. Bacon's reply 159
26. Bacon appointed Solicitor-General 161
CHAPTEE VIII.
Solicttor-Gekekal.
1. Six years of office 162
2. Cecil's riches and prosperity 162
3. Bacon's ceremonial politeness with his cousin 163
Bacon to Cecil, Aug. 24, 1608 • .. 164
Essay on Deformity .. 164
4. The Court of Wales ' 165
5. Sir John Pakington's quarrel with Lord Eure 166
6. Bacon argues against Pakington 167
7. Bacon one of the founders of America 167
8. England and Spain as colonists „ 168
9. Spanish designs against Virginia. Fleet under Gates and
Summers 169
10. The city of Raleigh .. .. 170
11. The Solicitor in opposition .. 171
12. Crown privileges for sale 172
13. Coke against Bacon 172
CONTENTS. xi
14. Bacon's speech on the feudal burthens 173
15. Bargains made and broken 173
16. Death of Cecil. Bacon's answer to James 174
17. Bacon proposed for Secretary of State 175
18. Court of Wards 175
Bacon to Lord Rochester, Nov. 14, 1612 175
Wards and Liveries .. .; 176
19. Ireland .. .. 176
20. Sir Arthur Chichester's government 177
21. Irish members in London. Bacon's advice 178
Bacon to King James, Aug. 13, 1613 179
22. Bacon made Attorney-General. Coke indignant 181
23. A new session. Bacon returned for Cambridge, Ipswich, and
St. Albans. Sits for Cambridge 181
24. Curious debate on these elections. Vast popularity of the
Attorney-General 183
CHAPTEK IX.
St. John and Peacham.
1. Lord Campbell's omissions .. 185
2. Offence of Oliver St. John .. 185
3. St. John sent to the Tower 186
4. His amazing abjectness 187
St. John to the King 188
5. Lord Campbell's mistakes .. 189
6. The case of Peacham 190
7. His infamous character 191
8. Difficulty suggested by Hallam. Peacham libels his bishop 191
9. Condemned by Archbishop Abbott 192
10. Discovery of his political libels 193
11. Peacham's accusation of his patron John Paulett 194
12. Commission of examination 195
13. Question by torture 196
14. Character of the age 198
15. Bacon opposed to judicial torture -.. 198
16. Peacham's condemnation 200
17. Confession 200
18. Macaulay's assertion on the practice of consulting the judges 202
19. The precedent of Legate 203
20. Charge against Paulett abandoned 203
xii CONTENTS.
CHAPTEE X.
Race with Coke.
Page
1. Bacon«&nd Somerset .. .. .. ', 205
2. Character and policy of Somerset 20o
3. The Romanist party at Court. Lacly Somerset. Murder of
Overbury .; ..' 206
4. Publication of 'The Wife.' .. 207
5. Inquiry into the crime. Rise of Villiers 208
6. Trial of the murderers .. .. .. .. 209
7. The Earl and Countess arraigned 210
8. Bacon pleads for clemency 211
9. Bacon's domestic trials. Sir John quarrels with Lady Pakington.
Warrant of search . ., 211
10. Lady Pakington tries to rule Bacon. His defence .. .. 213
Bacon to Lady Pakington, 1616 ... ,. 214
11. Sir William and Sir Thomas Monson 214
12. Bacon's efforts to save them. Coke's animosity 216
Bacon to Coke, Apl. 16, 1616 (?) 216
13. Popular feeling against Sir Thomas 216
14. Fall of Coke .. \ 217
15. Case of Commendams .. 217
16. James' message to Coke through Bacon .. 219
17. His message direct 220
18. The judges on their trial 220
19. Bacon defends himself against Coke .. .. 221
20. Coke condemned by Egerton . . 221
21. Bacon sworn of the Council. Procures the restoration of Dr.
Burgess. .. 222
22. Coke in the Star Chamber 223
23. Lady Hatton deserts him . , . . 224
24. Monson's case referred to Bacon 224
Bacon to the King, Dec. 7,1616 225
Monson pardoned 226
25. Illness of Egerton. Public business .. 226
26. Mysterious tale of Lady Arabella having borne a son. Bacon's
inquiry 227
27. Bacon receives the Seals 229
CONTENTS. xm
CHAPTER XL
Lord Chancellor.
Page
l.RageofCoke 231
2. Story of Ege'rton's later days 232
3 . The gold and silver thread business . . . . . . . . . . 233
4. Egerton opposes the patent to Mompesson 234
5. Buckingham seeks his ruin 234
6. Buckingham loses by the transfer of the Seals to Bacon .. 235
7. Coke's insinuations against Bacon . . . . 235
8. Lady Hatton ..' 236
9. Frances Coke sold to Sir John Villiers. Lady Hatton's opposi-
tion. Escape to Oatlands 236
10. Bacon refuses Lady Buckingham's request for warrants of arrest 238
11. Coke breaks into Withi pole's house. His wife appeals to the
Council 239
12. Coke, threatened with proceedings, submits 240
13. Lord Campbell's errors 241
14. Buckingham's interference 242
15. Marriage of Sir John Villiers and Frances Coke 242
16. Domestic broils of Sir John Pakington. Bacon's delicacy and
consideration 243
Chamberlain to Oarleton, July 5, 1617 24.4
17. Bacon's rise and prosperity 244
18. Suddenness of his fall .. .. .. .. 245
CHAPTER XII.
Fees.
1. Universality of fees 246
2. Fees in Government offices 246
3. Fees on the bench .. 247
4. Fees at the bar 248
5. Fees not an old grievance .. .. .. 249
6. Bills to limit fees rejected by the Commons . . ... . . . . 250
Sir Francis Bacon's speech on fees in 1606 250
7. Desire to change the system . . . . . . 254
8. Lady Buckingham hostile to Bacon. Sir Lionel Cranfield. Sir
James Ley 255
9. Suffolk prosecuted and ruined . . .... 256
10. Sir Henry Yelverton .. 257
11. Prosecuted in Star Chamber 258
Bacon's notes of a speech, Nov. 10, 1620 258
xiv CONTENTS.
Yelverton condemned . 259
12. Montagu becomes Treasurer 259
13. Coventry Attorney 260
14. Character of Cranfield 260
15. His ambition and unscrupulousness .. ..' .. .. ... 261
16. Lady Buckingham's lover, John Williams 262
17. The confederacy against Bacon 263
18. John Churchill 264
19. The new session - .. .. 265
CHAPTEE XIII.
The Accusation.
1. An empty Treasury. Bacon's jest 266
2. Bacon proposes a new parliament. Foreign affairs .. .. 266
3. Agitation in England 268
4. Bacon proposes reform 268
5. Preliminaries of the session 269
Bacon and others to Buckingham, Nov. 29, 1620 269
6. Writs go out. James alarmed by the elections 273
7. Stern character of the new parliament. Eage against Papists 274
8. Coke heads the fanatics 275
9. Bacon's tolerance unpopular 275
10. Coke takes advantage of it 276
11. Inquiry into abuses welcomed by Bacon .. 276
12. Quarrel of Scrope and Berkshire. Bacon offends Lady Buck-
ingham 277
13. Cranfield attacks the Chancery 278
14. Buckingham urges the Commons to demand victims ..- .. 278
15. Aubrey and Egerton's cases brought forward 280
16. Heneage Finch defends Bacon 281
17. Churchill's evidence 282
18. Bacon's confidence 283
19. Bacon sick. His remarks on the accusation. Declaration of
his innocence 283
20. The twenty- two charges 284
21. The case sent up to the Lords 286
22. Ley appointed to preside 287
23. Bacon's self-examination .. .. 287
24. Preliminary vote in the Peers 288
25. Bacon's confession 289
26. Ley delivers sentence 290
CONTENTS. xv
CHAPTER XIV.
After Sentence.
Page
1. Bacon's statement of the case 291
2. End of the movement for reform 291
3. Division of spoil among the confederates. Fall of Montagu 292
4. Bacon's fine remitted 293
5. Busy with his books. His witty sayings. Applies for the
Provostship of Eton 294
Bacon to Conway, Mar. 25, 1623 295
6. Conway supports his suit 295
Bacon to Conway, Mar. 29, 1623 . . 296
Dignity of Bacon's conduct 297
7. Bacon to King James, Mar. 29, 1623 .297
Ditto Conway, Apl. 23, 1623 298
8. Ditto, Sep. 2, 1623 298
Buckingham adverse. Provostship given to Sir Henry Wotton 299
9. Bacon's literary work 299
10. Fall of his enemies. Coke. Misery of Sir John Villiers . . 300
11. Fall of Churchill and Cranfield 301
12. Fall of Williams .. 301
13. Death of Bacon 302
APPENDICES.
I. Letter from Ann Lady Bacon to Lord Burghley . . 305
II. Letters from Lady Bacon to her Son Anthony . . 308
III. Letter from Anne Bacon to her Brothers Francis
and Anthony 332
IV. Letters from Francis Bacon to various Persons .. 333
V. Grants from Queen Elizabeth to Edward Bacon and
Francis Bacon 354
VI. Letter from Anthony Bacon to Francis Bacon . . . . 382
VII. Letters by the Earl of Essex 383
VIII. Extracts from the Privy Council Eegisters . . . . 384
IX. Eeport by Bacon and others to ths Privy Council . . 388
i
FRANCIS BACON,
CHAPTER I.
THE BIOGRAPHEKS.
1. A fine wit has told the world that all men and women, I. 1,
all youths and girls, are true poets, save only those who —
write in verse. In such a saying, as in all good wit, there
lies a core of truth. Men who have kept the poetry of
their lives unshaped by art stand face to face with nature,
seeing the blue sky, the bursting leaf, the hush of noon,
the rising and setting sun, the green glade, the flowing sea,
as these things are ; not as they appear in books, cut off
into lengths of lines, tricked into antithetical phrase,
rounded and closed by rhyme. No false rule of art impels
a man who sees and feels, but who does not mean to
write or paint, to squint at a group of elms, to peer
through his hand at moonlight shimmering on a lake, or
at sunset on the tops of a range of hills ; for such a man
has no thought of how tree, lake, and alp may be described
in verse of five or six feet, or of the lines in which this
or that old painter would have framed them. He comes
fresh to nature, and has an intimate and poetical relation
to her.
B
z FRANCIS BACON.
I. 2. 2. As with nature, so with man. That figure, decked
by Pope —
The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind
■ — over which fools have grinned and rogues have rubbed
their palms for more than a hundred years, has never
yet been recognised by honest hearts. Men who trust
the face of nature, not the point of satire, turn from
this daub as from a false note in song, or from a painted
living face. The young and pure reject satire, and they
do well to reject it ; for satire is the disease of art. The
young and pure will not believe a thing true because it is
made to look false. Taught by heaven, and not by rules,
they judge of character in the mass. Nature abhors anti-
theses ; loving the soft approach of dawn, the slow sprouting
of the seed, and moving by a delicate gradation through her
round of calm and storm, of growth and life. Her forks
never flash from a blue vault, nor do her waves cease to
crest when the wind which whipped them lulls. Gradation
is her law. If she may make a god or devil, she will not
put the two in one. That is the task of art ; but of art
in its lowest stage of depravity and decline.
3. Can you be good and evil, wise and mean ? Gazing
on the girl-like face in Hilyard's miniature, conning the
deep lore of the Essays, toying with the mirth of the
Apophthegms, lingering on the tale of a gay and pure, a
busy and loving life, — how can they who judge by wholes
and not by parts admit that one so eminently wise and
good was also a false friend, a venal judge, a dishonest
man?
4. Yet this comedy of errors has run its course from
Alexander Pope to John Lord Campbell. Strange to say,
THE BIOGRAPHERS. 3
the grave writers have gone nearly as far astray from I. 4.
fact as those bright Parthians who, in choosing their —
shafts, look rather to the feather than the flight. With
them Bacon is, in turn, abject, venal, proud, profuse — un-
grateful for the gifts of Essex, mercenary in his love for
Alice Barnham, callous to the groans of Peacham, servile in
the House of Commons, corrupt on the judicial bench !
5. The lie against nature in the name of Francis Bacon
broke into high literary force with Pope. Before his day
the scandal had only oozed in the slime of Welclen,
Chamberlain, and D'Ewes. Pope picked it, as he might
have picked a rough old flint, from the mud ; fanged it,
poisoned it, set it on his shaft :
Meanest of mankind !
What if it be a lie ? May not a lie kill ?
It was not the only scum which in Pope's day frothed
to the head. What man then believed in nobleness, even
in intellect, unless that intellect were of the lowest type
or served the basest cause ? The sole end of wit was
defamation, the sole end of poetry vice. Of pure genius
there was little, of high virtue less. All glorious charac-
ters, all serious things, if not gone wholly from the minds
of men, lingered in their memories only to be reviled.
When Bacon became the meanest of mankind, Baleigh was
assailed, and Shakespeare driven from the stage. Rowe
was tainting our national drama, St. John undoing our
political philosophy, Hume training his mind through
doubts of God for the task of painting the most manly
passage of arms in all history as our greatest blunder and
our darkest shame. How should Francis Bacon have
escaped his share in this moral wreck?
b 2
4 FRANCIS BACON.
I. 0. 6. No man of rank in letters had yet soiled his fame ;
for the foes who had lived in his own age, who had danced
with him in the Gray's Inn masques, or had bowed to him
as he rode down to the House, — even those who, like
Sir Kobert Cecil and Sir Edward Coke, had most to fear
from his gladiatorial strength, and in the madness of that
fear pursued him with taunts and hate, — had never dreamt
of denying that his virtues and his courage stood fairly in
line with his vast abilities of tongue and pen. They had
called him blind when they could not see, as he could,
all the faces of an object. They had denied to his gra-
titude the strong vitality of his intellectual power. They
had spoken of his vanity, of his presumption, of his dan-
dyism, of his unsound learning and unsafe law ; but
the malice of these rivals had never strayed so far
as to accuse him, to the ears of men who heard
him in the House of Commons and met him at the
tavern or the play, of a radical meanness of heart. Coke
had called him a fool. Cecil had fancied him a dupe.
But neither his rancorous rival at the bar, nor his sordid
cousin at Whitehall, had ever thought him a rascal. That
was the invention of a later time.
The age that took Voltaire to be its guide, found out
that Bacon had been a rogue.
7. Since then he has been the prey of painters and
pasquins ; his offences deepening, darkening, as men have
moved yet farther and farther from the springs of truth.
Hume is comparatively fair to him. Hallam is less fair ;
though he will not, even for the sake of Pope, call Bacon
the meanest of mankind. Lingard paints him with a more
unctuous hate. Macaulay, in turn, is fierce and gay :
his sketch of Kembrandt power: his lights too high,
• LOKD CAMPBELL. 5
his smears too black : noon on the brow, dusk at the I. 7.
heart. Nature never yet made such a man as Macaulay
paints.
8. But of all the sins against Francis Bacon, that of
Lord Campbell is the last and worst. I wish to speak
with respect of so bold and great a man as our present f
Lord Chancellor. He is one who has swept up the
slope of fame by native power of heart and brain ;
in the proud course of his life, from the Temple to the
Peerage, from the Beporters' Gallery to the Woolsack, I
admire the track of a man of genius — brave, circumspect,
tenacious, strong ; one not to be put down, not to be set
aside ; an example to men of letters and men of law. But
the more highly I rank Lord Campbell's genius, the more
I feel drawn to regret his haste. In such a case as the
trial of Bacon's fame he was bound to take pains ; to sift
every lie to its root ; to stay his condemning pen till he
had satisfied his mind that in passing sentence of infamy
he was right, beyond risk of appeal. A statesman and
a law-reformer himself, he ought to have felt more sym-
pathy for the just fame of a statesman and law-reformer
than he has shown. Not that Lord Campbell finds fault
with Bacon where he speaks by his own lights. Indeed,
there he is just. He has no words too warm for Bacon's
reforms as a lawyer, for his plans as a minister, for his
rules as a chancellor. When Lord Campbell knows his
subject at first hand, his praise of his hero rings out clear
and loud. But there is much in the life of Bacon which
he does not know. He has not given himself time to
sift and winnow. Like an easy magistrate on the bench,
he has taken the pleas for facts. That is his fault, and in
such a man it is a very grave fault.
6 FRANCIS BACON.
I. 9. 9. What Hallain left dark and Campbell foul should
— be cleansed as soon as may be from dust and stain. It is
our due. One man only set aside, our interest in Bacon's
fame is greater than in that of any Englishman who ever
lived. We cannot hide his light, we cannot cast him
out. For good, if it be good, for evil, if it must be evil,
his brain has passed into our brain, his soul into our
souls. We are part of him ; he is part of us ; inseparable
as the salt and sea. The life he lived has become our law.
If it be true that the Father of Modern Science was a
rogue and cheat, it is also most true that we have taken a
rogue and cheat to be our god.
10. In front of all detail of fact, a general question
must be put.
Bacon seemed born to power. His kinsmen filled the
highest posts. The sovereign liked him ; for he had the
bloom of cheek, the flame of wit, the weight of sense,
which the great Queen sought in men who stood about
her throne. His powers were ever ready, ever equal.
Masters of eloquence and epigram praised him as one of
them, or one above them, in their peculiar arts. Jonson
tells us he commanded when he spoke, and had his judges
pleased or angry at his will. Kaleigh tells us he combined
the most rare of gifts ; for while Cecil could talk and not
write, Howard write and not talk, he alone could both talk
and write. Nor were these gifts all flash and foam. If no
one at the court could match his tongue of fire, so no one
in the House of Commons could breast him in the race of
work. He put the dunce to flight, the drudge to shame.
If he soared high above rivals in his more passionate
play of speech, he never met a rival in the dull, dry task
of ordinary toil. Kaleigh, Hyde, and Cecil had small
HIS RISE LONG DEFERRED. 7
chance against him in debate ; in committee Yelverton I. 10.
and Coke had none. —
Why was he left behind ?
11. Other men got on, Coke became Attorney-General,
Fleming Solicitor-General. Ealeigh received his knight-
hood, Cecil his knighthood. He alone won no spur,
no place. Time passed. Devereux became a Privy Coun-
cillor. Cobham got the Cinq Ports, Raleigh the patent
of Virginia. Years again raced on. A new king came
in, and still no change. Cecil became an Earl, Howard
an Earl. What kept the greatest of them down? It
was certainly not that he was hard like Popham, or
crazed like Devereux, or gnarled like Coke. A soft voice,
a laughing lip, a melting heart, made him hosts of friends.
No child, no woman, could resist the spell of his sweet
speech, of his tender smile, of his grace without study, his
frankness without guile. Yet where he failed, men the
most sullen and morose got on.
12. Why did he not win his way to place ? He sought
it : never man with more passionate haste ; for his big
brain beat with a victorious consciousness of parts : he
hungered, as for food, to rule and bless mankind. This
question must be met. While men of far lower birth and
claims got posts and honours, solicitorships, judgeships,
embassies, portfolios, how came this strong man to pass
the age of forty-six without gaining power or place ?
Can it have been because he was servile and corrupt ?
13. Rank and pay, the grace of kings, the smiles of
ministers, were in Bacon's days, as in other days before and
since, the wages of men who knew how to sink their views,
to spend their years, to pledge their thought, their love,
8 FRANCIS BACON.
I. 13. their faith, for a yard of ribbon or a loaf of bread. If
— Bacon were a man prostituting glorious gifts and strong
convictions for a beck or nod, a pension or a place, why
did he not rise ? why not grow rich ? If he were a rogue,
he must have sold his virtue for less than Popham, his
intelligence for less than Coke. How, then, could he be
wise ?
Wisest and meanest — there is the rub ! But turn the
case round. How if his virtues, not his vices, kept him
down so long ? How if his honesty, tolerance, magnanimity,
not his heartlessness, his servility, and his corruption,
caused his fall ?
14. Look at the broad facts of the man's life first. Small
facts may be true, broad facts must be true. One day in
a man's course is hard to judge ; a year less hard ; a
whole life not at all hard. It is the same in nature.
"Watch for one night the track of a planet. Can you say
if it move to the right or left? You are not sure. It
seems to go back. It seems to go on. Watch it for a
month, and you find that its path is forward. Is the star
in fault? Not in the least. It is your own base that
moves. Look at any chasm, peak, or scar on the earth's
face : you see the earth jagged, crude, motionless. Take
in the whole orb at once: you find it smooth, round,
beautiful, and swift. In Bacon's own words, a wise man
"will not judge the whole play by one act." Still less by
one scene, one speech, one word, will he judge.
In taking Bacon's course as a whole what do we find ?
A man born to high rank, who seeks incessantly for place,
who is above all men and by universal testimony fit for
power ; yet one who passes the age of forty-six before he
gets a start ; one who, after serving the Crown for more
HIS COMPARATIVE POVERTY. 9
than fourteen years in the highest offices of the most I. 14.
lucrative branch of the public administration, dies a poorer —
man than he was born.
15. Bacon was fifty-two when he became Attorney-
General; fifty-seven when he became Lord Chancellor.
For one who had been Elizabeth's young Lord Keeper at
ten, who had been a bencher of Gray's Inn at twenty-six,
Lent Eeader at twenty-eight, this rise in his profession
came late in life ; later than it came to barristers who could
boast of neither his personal force nor his father's official
rank.
Coke was Attorney-General at forty-two. Egerton was
Lord Keeper at forty-six ; Bromley Lord Chancellor at
forty-seven, Hatton at forty-eight.
It was much the same at Court as at the Bar. Youth
was at the prow and beauty at the helm. At twenty-
two Sydney went ambassador to Vienna; at thirty he
went governor to Flushing. At twenty-six Essex was a
Privy-Councillor ; at twenty-nine Commander-in-Chief. At
thirty-two Baleigh received his powers to plant Virginia.
16. Again : if Francis Bacon rose later in life than
Egerton or Coke, even after he had risen to the loftiest
summit of the Bar he won for himself none of the sweets
of office. Alone among the great lawyers of his time he
died poor. Hatton left a prince's wealth. Egerton founded
the noble house of Ellesmere, Montagu that of Man-
chester. Coke was one of the richest men in England.
Popham bequeathed to his children Littlecote and Welling-
ton. Bennet, Hobart, Fleming, each left a great estate.
How explain this rule and this exception ?
Surely they are not explained by the theory that
10 FRANCIS BACON.
I. 16. Bacon's servility held him down, while Coke's servility
sent him up; that Bacon's corruption kept him poor,
while Popham's corruption made him rich !
17. To judge a man's life in mass may not be the way
to please a Cecil or a Coke ; the libidinous statesman
who made love to Lacly Derby, who sold his country for
Spanish gold, who gave power to his infamous mistress
Lady Suffolk to vend her smiles ; or the acrid lawyer who
jibed at Baieigh, who married a jilt for her money, who
gave his daughter for a place. Nor is it the way to
please those painters and lampooners who prefer dash to
truth ; for a man so judged is not to be hit on paper
in a mere smudge of black and white, by dubbing him
wise and mean, sage and cheat, Solomon and Scapin, all
in one.
18. The he, it may be hoped, is about to pass away. An
editor worthy of Bacon has risen to purge his fame. Such
labours as those undertaken by Mr. Spedding demand a
life, and he has not scrupled to devote the best years
of an active and learned manhood to the preliminary
toil. Lord Bacon's Literary, Legal, and Philosophical
Works are already before the world in seven of Mr.
Spedding' s princely volumes, printed and noted with the
most skilful and loving care. Three or four volumes
of Occasional and Personal Works are still to come, for
which we may have to wait as many years. Meanwhile,
the appearance of this new edition has drawn men's
thoughts to the character of Bacon as painted by his foes ;
and the instinct, strong as virtue, to reject the spume of
satire and falsehood, has sprung at the voice of Mr.
Spedding into lusty life. To aid in some small part in
OBJECT OF THE PRESENT WORK.
11
tliis good work of obtaining from men of letters and
science a reconsideration of the evidence on which true
judgment will have to run, the new facts, the new letters,
the new documentary illustrations comprised in this
Keview of the Personal History of Lord Bacon are given
to the world.
I. 18.
12 FRANCIS BACON.
CHAPTEK II.
EAELY YEAES.
II. 1. 1. Sweet to the eye and to the heart is the face of
— Francis Bacon as a child. Born among the courtly glories
1561. f Y or k House, nursed on the green slopes and in the
leafy woods of Gorhanibury ; now playing with the daisies
and forget-me-nots, now with the mace and seals; one
day culling posies with the gardener or coursing after the
pigeons (which he liked, particularly, in a pie), the next
day paying his pretty wee compliments to the Queen;
he grows up into his teens a grave yet sunny boy ; on
this side of his mind in love with nature, on that side
in love with art. Every tale told of him wins on the
imagination : whether he hunts the echo in St. James's
Park, or eyes the juggler and detects his trick, or lisps wise
saws to the Queen and becomes her young Lord Keeper of
ten. Erail in health, as the sons of old men mostly are,
his father's gout and stone, of which he will feel the twinge
and fire to his dying day, only chain him to his garden or
his desk. When thirteen years of age he goes to read books
under Whitgiffc at Cambridge ; when sixteen to read men
under Paulett in France. If he is young, he is still more
sage. A native grace of soul keeps off from him the rust
of the cloister no less than the stain of the world. As
Cambridge fails to dry him into Broughton, Paris and
1. Sir Aniias Paulett's Despatches in the Cott. MSS., Calig. E. vii. 3,
8, 16, 31, 57 ; Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon, Lambeth MSS. 651, fol. 54 ;
Bacon to Lady Paulett, Lambeth MSS. 649, fol. 214.
1577.
PUEITY OF HIS YOUTH. 13
Poictiers fail to melt him into Montjoy. The perils lie II. 1.
escapes are grave ; the three years spent under Whitgift's
hard, cold eye being no less full of intellectual snares
than are the three years spent in the voluptuous court of
Henri Trois, among the dames and courtiers of France, of
moral snares. In the train of Sir Amias Paulett, he rides
at seventeen with that throng of nobles who attend the
King and the Queen-Mother down to Blois, to Tours, to
Poictiers ; mixes with the fair women on whose bright
eyes the Queen relies for her success, even more than on
her regiments and fleets ; glides in and through the hostile
camps, observes the Catholic and Hugonot intrigues, and
sees the great men of either court make love and war.
But Lady Paulett, kind to him as a mother, watches over
his steps with care and love, — a kindness he remembers
and repays to the good lady, and to her kin, in later years.
For him the d'Agelles sing their songs, the Tosseuses twine
their curls in vain.
2. No one lapse is known to have blurred the beauty of
his youth. No rush of mad young blood ever drives him
into brawls. To men of less temper and generosity than
his own — to Devereux and Montjoy, to Percy and Vere,
to Sackville and Bruce — he leaves the glory of Calais
sands and Marylebone Park. If he be weak on the score
of dress and pomp ; if he dote like a young girl on flowers,
on scents, on gay colours, on the trappings of a horse, the
ins and outs of a garden, the furniture of a room ; he
neither drinks nor games, nor runs wild and loose in
love. Armed with the most winning ways, the most
glozing lip at court, he hurts no husband's peace, he drags
no woman's name into the mire. He seeks no victories
2. Sylva Sylvarum, x. 946, 986.
14 FRANCIS BACON.
II. 2. like those of Essex ; he burns no shame like Ealeigh into
the cheek of one he loves. No Lady Kich, as in Sydney's
immortal line, has cause
To blush when he is named.
When the passions fan out in most men, poetry flowers out
in him. Old when a child, he seems to grow younger as he
grows in years. Yet with all his wisdom he is not too wise
to be a dreamer of dreams ; for while busy with his books in
Paris he gives ear to a ghostly intimation of his father's
death. All his pores lie open to external nature. Birds and
flowers delight his eye ; his pulse beats quick at the sight
of a fine horse, a ship in full sail, a soft sweep of country ;
everything holy, innocent, and gay acts on his spirits like
wine on a strong man's blood. Joyous, helpful, swift
to do good, slow to think evil, he leaves on every one
who meets him a sense of friendliness, of peace and
power. The serenity of his spirit keeps his intellect
bright, his affections warm ; and just as he left the halls of
Trinity with his mind unwarped, so he now, when duty
calls him from France, quits the galleries of the Louvre
and St. Cloud with his morals pure.
1579. 3. At the age of eighteen he fronts the world. The
staff of his house being broken, as the dream has told
him, he hies home from France to Lady Bacon's side.
The Lord Keeper was not rich, and his lands have passed
to his son by a former wife. Ann Lady Bacon is left
a young widow with two sons, Anthony and Francis, a
meek, brave heart, and a slender fortune ; a little family
of three persons, who make up in love for each other all
3. Lord Bacon to Burghley, Lansdowne MSS., xliii. 48 ; Lady Bacon to
Anthony Bacon, Lambeth MSS. 648, 649, 650. The portrait of Lady
Bacon by Nathaniel is at Gorhambury.
1579.
LADY ANN BACON. 15
that they lack in pelf. Lady Ann, the Olympia Morata II. 3.
of Elizabeth's court, is one of five sisters, daughters of that
fine old scholar who drugged King Edward with Latin
verse, Sir Anthony Cook of Giddy Hall in Essex ; all the
five pious and learned as so many Muses, but unlike the
Muses all made happy wives ; Mildred by Lord Burghley,
Ann by the late Lord Keeper, Katharine by Sir Henry
Killigrew, Elizabeth first by Sir Thomas Hoby and next by
John Lord Russell, Margaret, the youngest sister of the five,
by Sir Ralph Rowlet. So Francis Bacon claims through his
mother close cousinry with Sir Robert Cecil, with Elizabeth
and Anne Russell, with the witty and licentious race of the
Killigrews, and with the future statesman and diplomatist
Sir Edward Hoby. Lady Ann is deep in Greek and in
divinity ; her translation of Jewell's i Apology ' is praised
by the best critics, and has been printed for public use by
orders from the Archbishop of Canterbury ; yet the good
mother is not more at home with Plato and Gregory than
among her herbs, her game, her stewpans, and her vats
of ale. Nathaniel Bacon, with hearty humour and a
play upon her name and habits, paints a portrait of
her dressed as a cook and standing in a litter of dead
game. She is very pious : in the words of her son " a
Saint of God." Not a Puritan herself, she feels a soft
and womanish sympathy for men who live the gospel
they proclaim; brings up her sons in charity with all
Protestant creeds ; hears the preachers with profit ; and
without any air of patronage or protection towards
them, speaks to her great kinsman, the Lord Treasurer,
the word which spoken in season is quick to save. A
bright, keen, motherly lady ; apt, as good women are, to
give advice. To her, her famous children are always two
little boys, who need to be corrected, physicked, and fed :
1579.
16 FRANCIS BACON.
II. 4. when they are forty years old, and filled with all know-
ledge of men and books, she not only sends them game
from her own larder and strong beer from her own casks,
having no great faith in other people's work, bnt lectures
them on what they shall eat and drink, when they shall
purge or let blood, how far they may ride or walk or
drive in a coach, when they may safely eat supper, and at
what hour in the morning they shall rise from bed.
4. Lady Ann lives at Gorhambury. Anthony is abroad,
now in France, now in Italy, now in Navarre, conning the
languages and manners, the politics and events, of these
famous lands. Francis falls to his terms at Gray's Inn,
seeks the help of his great kinsman Burghley, and finds a
seat in the House of Commons for himself at the age of
twenty-four.
1580. A letter, now first put in type, will show that he has
July 11. fixed his tent at Gray's Inn as early as the summer of
1580, a few months after his nineteenth year. This
note is curious as the earliest known piece of writing from
his hand, and as a sample of his boyish style. Macaulay
dwells on the change from his early to his later manner ; the
statuesque severity of that of his youth compared against
the glow, the imagery, the wit, the licence, and the colour
of that of his later time. At twenty Mino, at forty
he had grown into Eaffaelle. How grave, how cold this
message to Mr. Wylie !
Bacon to Mr. Wylie.
Ik. WYLIE, From Gray's Inn, 11 of July, 1580.
This very afternoon, giving date to these letters of
mine, I received yours by the hands of Mr. Wimbanke,
4. Gray's Inn Keg., cited in Craik's Bacon, i. 12 ; Bacon to Wylie,
July 11, 1580, in Lambeth MSS. 647, fol. 14.
LETTEE TO MR. WYLIE. 17
and to the which I thought convenient not only to make II. 4.
answer, but also therein to make speed, lest, upon supposi- —
tion that the two letters enclosed were, according to their , ?
directions, delivered, you should commit any error, either
in withholding your letters so much the longer when
peradventure they mought be looked for, or in not with-
holding to make mention of these former letters in any
other of a latter despatch. The considerations that moved
me to stay the letters from receipt, whether they be in
respect that I take this course to be needless or insufficient
or likely to lead to more inconvenience otherwise than to
do good, as it is meant in some such, they are that they
prevail with my simple discretion, which you have put in
trust in ordering the matter to persuade me to do as I
have done.
My trust and desire likewise is that you will report (?)
and satisfy yourself upon that which seemeth good to me
herein, being most privy to the circumstances of the
matter, and tendering my brother's orders as I ought, and
not being misaffected to you neither, by those at whom
you glance, while I know whom you mean. I know like-
wise that you mean amiss; for I am able, upon know-
ledge, to acquit them from being toward [in ?] this matter.
For mine own part, truly, Mr. Wylie, I never took it that
your joining in company and travel with my brother pro-
ceeded not only of good will in you, but also of his motion,
and that your mind was always rather by desert than
pretence of friendship to earn thanks than to win them.
Neither would I say this much to you, if I would shrink to
say it in any place where the contrary was inferred : and
in that I rectified my brother of this matter being delivered
unto me for truth. I had this consideration that among
friends more advertisements are profitable than true. My
c
1580.
July.
18 FRANCIS BACON.
II. 4. request to you is, that you will continue and proceed in
your good mind towards my brother's well-doing; and
although he himself can best both judge and consider of it,
yet I dare say withall that his friends will not be unthank-
ful to misconstrue it, but ready to acknowledge it upon
his liking. And as for this matter, as you take no know-
ledge at all of it, I will undertake it upon my knowledge
that it shall be the better choice. Thus betake I you to
the Lord.
Your very friend,
Fe. Bacon.
1585. Though he enters the House of Commons, he finds no
Nov. 23. public work. Not that Burghley pets and lures him only
to chain him fast : the great Protestant minister is a man
too feigh and noble for such a part, nor can Englishmen
afford to soil his fame. Bacon, at least, never dreams that
his uncle plays him false. That he does not push him
with all his might is true : but this may be, not because he
dreads in him a rival to his son, as is often said, so much
as because, being old and timid, fearful of adventure and
speculation, of risking those measures of Beligion and State
in which his name is for ever bound up, he dreads the
daring and original genius of his nephew, apt, he may
think, in his flush of youth and intellectual strength to
dash at success, to fly at the nearest road, to bridle and
ride the popular storm.
5. Kawley, Mallet, Montagu, and Lord Campbell have
each in turn slurred the ten or twelve years in which Bacon
grew from a boy of nineteen into a man of thirty or
thirty-one, though in drama and instruction these years
5. Willis, Notitia Parliamentaria, iii. 101, 113, 121 ; D'Ewes, 337.
1585.
Nov.
RETURNED FOR MIDDLESEX. 19
hold rank among the noblest of his life. The writers set II. 5
him high on the stage for the first time in 1592, when he is
thirty-one. " In the parliaments which met in 1586 and
1588," says Lord Campbell, " he had been returned to the
House of Commons ; but he does not seem to have made
himself prominent by taking any decided part for or
against the Crown."
What is the truth? In 1592 he is returned to parlia-
ment for Middlesex, the most wealthy, liberal, independent
shire in England — the West Biding of the time and of
long succeeding times. He is young, poor, out of place.
He is even out of favour, since his uncle has turned
from the young reformer his powerful face. Having
neither rood of land nor hope of inheritance within the
shire, the squires and freeholders of Middlesex choose him.
Why, and how? Did penniless genius ever start in life
by winning the first constituency in the realm ? Burke
had to woo the electors of Wendover before he dreamt of
Bristol. Pitt began with Appleby, and only at his height
of power won the University of Cambridge. Brougham
had suffered defeat at Liverpool, and had been glad to sit
for Knaresborough, ere he tried to conquer the West
Riding. So with Bacon. Service and success, of which
the writers have never heard, lifted him to the height of
Middlesex. When he rose at Brentford in 1592, he spoke
to freeholders who knew his name and voice, not only as
one of the most youthful, but as one of the most daring
and effective members of a former House.
Bacon had, indeed, served in Parliament prior even
to the sessions of 1586 and 1588. He entered the House of
Commons in 1585, when he was only twenty-four. He
then sat for Melcombe. In the Parliament of 1586 he sat
for Taunton, and in that of 1588 for Liverpool.
c 2
Nov.
20 FRANCIS BACON.
II. 6. 6. These three sessions not stirring! The author of
— Tom Jones has a passage on the advantage of a writer
knowing his subject ; the great humourist should have
told us of the ease and comfort which a writer finds in
not knowing his subject. Will not his soul be more at
peace ? No truth will curb the freedom of his judgment —
no fact interrupt the flow of his style. See how Hallam
hesitates and halts ! He knows too much. Only your blind
horse will leap into the chasm, or wait his death-gore from
a horn of the bull.
A month at books on any subject will not weight
one much. A diplomatist used to say that when he had
been four weeks in London he felt able to write a book
on English life ; when he had been a year, he had doubts
if he yet understood the whole of his theme ; when he
had been ten years, he gave up the book in despair.
Not stirring! Why, the three sessions in which
Bacon served his parliamentary apprenticeship, though
slipped as void and waste by his biographers, abound
in scenes of high and tragic conflict — scenes in which
he played an active and conspicuous part, and which
coloured and shaped for him the course of his political
life. These three sessions had to save the liberties of
England, the faith of nearly half of Europe. They crushed
the Jesuits, they founded the Defence Association, they
sent out Kaleigh to plant new States, they laid Mary on
the bier at Fotheringay, they broke and punished the
Romanist conspiracies, they shattered and dispersed the
Invincible Armada !
7. Nor were these early Parliaments less bright in
composition than brave in deed. On swearing the oaths
6. DEwes, 332, 439 ; Townshend, i. 29.
7. Not. Pari., iii. 99, 107 ; Bacon's Essays, No. 3.
1585.
Nov.
HIS EAKLY POPULAEITY. 21
as member for Melcombe, Bacon takes his seat on the II. 7.
same benches with the chief lights of law and government
— with Hatton and Bromley, Egerton and Walsingham — as
well as near those younger glories of the Court, the poets
and warriors to whom secretaries of state are but as
clerks, with Sir Philip Sydney, Sir Walter Baleigh, Sir
Francis Drake, Sir Charles Blount, and hosts of others
scarcely less renowned than these in love and war.
Yet from the ranks of this group he leaps like fire
into fame. Burke's spring was not so high, Pitt's popularity
was not so wide. At twenty-five he has won the ear of
that fastidious House. Wit so radiant, thought so fresh,
and lore so prompt, had not before, and have never since,
been heard within those famous walls. Yet his hold on the
men of his generation is due less to an intellectual than to
a moral cause. They trust him, for he represents what is
best in each. The slave of Whitgift, the dupe of Brown,
can each give ear to a churchman who seeks reform of
the church, a lawyer eager to amend the law, a friend of
the Crown who pleads against feudal privileges and unpopu-
lar powers. When a colleague proposes some change in the
church which would destroy it, he replies to him : " Sir, the
subject we talk of is the eye of England ; if there be a speck
or two in the eye, we endeavour to take them off; he would
be a strange oculist who would pull out the eye." Of no
sect, he represents in Parliament the patriotic spirit of all
the sects. Not himself a Puritan, he pleads with Hastings
for reform ; not a Roman Catholic, he lifts his voice
against persecution for concerns of faith ; not a courtier, he
votes with Cecil for supplies. In one word, he is English.
To sustain the Queen in her great strife with Spain, to
guard the church from abuse and from destruction, are as
much his objects as to break the bonds of science and lead
1585.
Nov.
22 FEANCIS BACON.
II. 7. inquiry back from clouds to earth. When he strikes at
corruptions in the State, when he resists the usurpations of
the Peers, when he saps the privileges of the Crown, he
speaks in the name of English progress and English
strength. He fights for reform of the law, for increase of
tillage, for union with the Scots, for plantations in Ulster,
for discovery and defence in Virginia, for free Parliaments
and for ample grants, because he sees that increase, union,
freedom, and a rich executive are each and all essential to
the growth and grandeur of the realm.
8. How he appears in outward grace and aspect among
these courtly and martial contemporaries, the miniature
by Hilyard helps us to conceive. Slight in build, rosy
and round in flesh, dight in a sumptuous suit ; the head
well-set, erect, and framed in a thick starched fence of frill ;
a bloom of study and of travel on the fat, girlish face, which
looks far younger than his years ; the hat and feather
tossed aside from the broad white brow, over which crisps
and curls a mane of dark, soft hair; an English nose,
firm, open, straight; mouth delicate and small — a lady's
or a jester's mouth — a thousand pranks and humours,
quibbles, whims, and laughters lurking in its twinkling,
tremulous lines : — such is Francis Bacon at the age of
twenty-four.
1586. 9. No session ever met under darker skies than that of
Oct. 29. 1586. Babington's conspiracy has just exploded ; fleets
are arming in Cadiz bay ; money and men are ready in
Kome, in Naples, in Leghorn, for a crusade against the
8. Hilyard's miniature is in the possession of Adair Hawkins, Esq., of
Great Marlborough Street.
9. Dom. Papers of Queen Eliz., ccxxii. ; Andrese Philopatri ad Elizabeths
Keginse Anglias edictum responsio ; Toulmin's History of Taunton, 365.
1586.
Oct. 29.
MEMBER FOR TAUNTON. 23
heretics ; Parsons is hounding on the Pope, Sixtus hound- II. 9.
ing on Philip ; in the Tagus, at the Groyne, in the cities
of Brabant and Flanders, armaments wait but a word to
cross over into Kent, to seat Mary Queen of Scots on the
throne, to reduce England to a fief of the Church. Eng-
land flushes with heroic pride. London, Dover, Ports-
mouth swarm with soldiers; drums are rolling in every
hamlet, yeomen mustering in the market-places of every
shire. But no part of England burns with more fervent
heat than the western counties, nor in these counties than
the town of Taunton. Taunton is the seat of trade and
manufacture — a Manchester of a milder clime; next to
Bristol the richest town between the Severn and the
Scilly Isles ; next to London the most patriotic town
between the Irish Sea and Dover Straits. In the day
when everything dear to man appears to be at stake, this
populous and enterprising town sends Bacon to West-
minster to speak in its name and give its vote.
10. The writs having gone out while the ruffians who
prated of friendship and sentiment are on trial for their
crimes, the passionate patriotism of the land storms up, too
strong for Burghley to breast, too strong for Elizabeth her-
self to ride. When the Peers and Commoners meet, a cry
goes up to the throne that Mary shall be brought to trial,
and, on proof of her guilt, shall be put to death. In this
stern prayer the burgess for Taunton, tolerant as he is of
mere opinion, joins. The Crown dares not refuse. Menaced
on every side, England can give no answer to the threats of
invasion save an open trial and solemn execution of the
Queen of Scots.
10. State Trials, i. 1127-1162; D'Ewes, 393.
Oct. 29.
24 FRANCIS BACON.
II. 11. 11. What to do with Mary had been a dismal question
— for honest men since the day when she had first sought
1586. re f U g e j n Carlisle from her licentious barons and her faith-
less son. In her room at Chartley, guarded by the old
moat, shut in with her women and her priests, she had
scared the Protestant imagination more than either the
Kaiser in Vienna or the Pope in Eome. Her position
was, indeed, most strange: to-day a prisoner, to-morrow
she might become a queen. She had no need to make a
party, to risk her head, in order to win her game. She
had only to live : certain, as fall will follow spring, of
rising one day from her bed of durance to find the necks
of her enemies beneath her feet. An accident, a crime,
might give her, any hour, the crown. A stumbling jennet,
an unwholesome meal, a prick of Babington's knife, a
snap of Salisbury's dagg, might take away the life which
alone stood between her and the English crown.
Put on trial, her complicity proved, her cousin would
still have spared her life. But the Burghleys, Davisons,
and Pauletts were in no position to treat this profligate
woman with the leonine clemency of the Queen. To
Elizabeth she was, indeed, a danger and a snare ; but to
the Protestant gentleman who loved his religion and his
country, her removal or succession was a question of life
or death. She could neither break Elizabeth on the
wheel nor roast her at the stake ; for, unless a Spanish
force should succeed in seating her on the throne, her day
of evil could not come until the Queen was safe from the
revenge of King and Pope. But what prelate on the
bench, what councillor at the board, what magistrate in
11. Dora. Papers of Eliz;, cxciv. ; D'Ewes, 393-410 ; Davison to Walsing-
ham, Oct. 10, 1586, in the State Paper Office; Burghley to Davison, Nov.
24, 1586, S. P. O.
1586.
Oct. 29.
OUTCRY AGAINST MARY. 25
his shire, would feel his head safe on his spine should II. 11.
the trumpets bray the accession of Mary to the English
throne ? They had seen another Mary. Old men recalled the
day when Latimer perished. Half the citizens of London
could tell how Eogers had gone to heaven in the Smith-
field fires. All England shook with news of the more recent
massacres of Paris— massacres solemnly approved and com-
memorated in Eome as services to God. Men firm in their
own faith, loyal to their own Queen, pretended no pity for
a woman who to Helen's loveliness of person added more
than Helen's dissoluteness of mind. They saw in Mary
a wife who had married three husbands and was eager
to marry more. They saw in her the murderess of
Darnley, the destroyer of the Kirk. They saw in her a
pretender to the English crown, in whose name Sixtus
had resumed the kingdom, and Philip was preparing to
lay it waste. Was such a woman to live and become their
Queen ?
Had Mary refrained from plots, content to bide her
time, the peril of such a future would have been hard to
meet ; but when her complicity in Babington's treason was
proved in court, then Davison urged, and the House of
Commons demanded by petition, that for the security of
life, liberty, and true religion in time to come, the prisoner
of Fotheringay should suffer the just sentence of the law.
12. The Queen holds out. A grand committee, of which Nov. 12.
Bacon is a member, goes into the presence, and the
lords spiritual and temporal, the knight and squire, the
lawyer and goldsmith, kneeling together at her feet,
demand that the national will shall be done — that the
Protestant faith shall be saved. She will not hear them.
12. Nicholas, Life of Davison, 1823 ; D'Ewes, 394-400 ; Camden, Ann. 1586.
1587.
Feb. 8
26 FKANCIS bacon.
II. 12. When the deed is done that makes England free —
done by Davison's command if not by the Queen's — she
casts the courageous minister from power; nor will she
to her dying day consent to see his face or hear his
name. There ought to be no doubt of the sincerity of her
grief.
13. The letters which have been printed in more recent
times, suggesting that Elizabeth, while affecting to with-
hold her consent to Mary's death, instigated Paulett to
commit a private murder, are odious and clumsy literary
forgeries. These letters have been adopted by Lingard,
and have half imposed on the cautious Hallam. Yet
the originals are nowhere to be found, the name of the
pretended discoverer of them is unknown, and they have
never been seen by any competent or reputable man !
The circumstances of their publication suggest forgery for
a political end, while the style and statement of the letters
prove them to be inventions of a later time. The alleged
discovery of these papers, so damaging to the English
Church and so fatal to the Protestant Queen, was made by
partisans of the Papist Pretender in the hottest days of
the Jacobite feud. The dates, the names, the facts ad-
duced, establish the comparatively recent fraud.
The Queen, slow to shed blood, meant to save Mary
from the block, but her people and her parliament, free from
her woman's weakness and her ties of blood, required that
high political justice should be done. Mary was the first and
worst of all their foes ; the princes of Spain and Italy were
her soldiers, the Babingtons and Salisburys of London her
assassins. England could only meet the league of Kaiser,
13. Comp. Hallam, Hist, of Eng., i. 159 n. ; Lingard, viii. 282 ; with a
Note in Charles Knight's Hist, of Eng., hi. 205.
1587.
Feb. 8.
SITS FOR LIVERPOOL. 27
Pope, and King by snatching away their flag. Mary gone, II. 13
the invaders were without a cause, the conspirators without
a cry. Who shall say what might have chanced had Mary
been alive, when the Duke of Medina Sidonia rode off the
Lizard, to excite a rising in the western shires, or even to
divide the loyalty and check the courage of the English
fleet?
14. Bacon's fame as a patriot, as an orator, is in these
transactions formed and fixed. To know him is to be
happy ; to have been at school with him, distinguished.
William Phillippes, wanting a place under Davison for his
son, thinks it enough to remind the great minister that
his boy had been trained with the young member for
Taunton.
15. Years hurry past. The Armada comes and goes. 1589.
While the watch-fires are yet burning on the cliffs, the Feb. 4.
wrecks of a hundred keels yet tossing in the foam from
Devon to Caithness, Parliament meets. Bacon now sits
for Liverpool. Danger is past; the Queen has been
to thank God at St. Paul's, and a merry Christmas
has been kept in hall and cottage, many a spar washed
up from the wrecks of the Spanish fleet crackling in the
festive fires.
14. Phillippes to Davison, Oct. 5, 1586, S. P. O. In citing those State
Papers from which a main portion of the following narrative will he de-
rived, I must express my obligations to Sir John Romilly, Master of the
Rolls, for the facilities which, during many years, he has given to my
researches among the public documents of which he has the legal charge.
My thanks are no less due to Lord Stanley and Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton,
for the courtesy with which, when Secretaries of State, they listened to my
proposals for certain changes in the State Paper Office favourable to
historical students, and for the promptitude with which they consented to
remove restrictions that had made any general and critical study of the
State Papers next to impossible.
15. Not. Pari., iii. 121 ; D'Ewes, 430-439 ; Statutes of the Kealm, 31
Eliz., c. 15.
28 FRANCIS BACON.
II. 15. In this new session Bacon serves on the most important
committees, speaks on the most important bills : now
' standing for the privileges of the House of Commons,
now assaulting the Royal purveyors, now denouncing the
forestallers, regrators, and engrossors. The great debates
of this year occur on subsidies and grants.
Hatton proposes two subsidies and four fifteenths and
tenths ; to which Bacon, whose soul is in the patriotic
tug, agrees : he moves, however, to insert in the bill a
clause explaining that these grants are extraordinary and
exceptional, meant for the war, and only for the war.
To this the Queen objects, as fettering her future acts :
enough for the squires to pronounce their Yea or Nay.
The squires stand firm. Many men support what one man
dares. After much debate, the Crown proposes to lay
the bill, with Bacon's amendments to it, before the Learned
Counsel ; to which the House of Commons, insisting first
that the author of the amendments shall be present at the
sittings of that learned board, consents. Under his soft,
persuasive tact, the interests of the sovereign are recon-
ciled with the interests of her people, and the bill is passed
to the satisfaction of Queen and Commons. Power and
fame now seem to be in his grasp. Elizabeth sends for
him to the palace ; the electors of Middlesex cast their
eyes upon him ; and, when parliament meets again, he will
represent the wealth and courage of that great consti-
tuency. From the session of 1589 dates his firm ascendency
in the House of Commons.
16. Lady Bacon and her sons are poor. Anthony, the
16. Wotton's Baronetage, edited by Johnson and Timber, i. 8 ; Patent
Bolls, 16 Eliz., par. 6, mem. 3 (see App. v. 1) ; Lady Bacon to Anthony
Bacon, Lamb. MSS. 648, 106, 650, 75, 651, 54 ; Lady Bacon to her brothers
Francis and Anthony Bacon, Lamb. MSS. 648, fol. 10.
1591
NICHOLAS BACON. 29
loving and beloved, with whom Francis had been bred at II. 16.
Cambridge and in France, has now come home. His
health, bad at the best, has broken in the south ; so he
lies for a long time in bed or on a couch at his brother's
rooms in Gray's Inn Square. The two young fellows have
little money and expensive ways. Anthony, as the elder
brother, owns a seat at Redburn, in Hertfordshire, with a
few farms lying round it. Gorhambury, too, will be his
when Lady Bacon dies. But the rents fall far below his
needs, not to speak of the needs of his brother, who is now
prominent at court, a leader in the House of Commons,
and a candidate for the glory of representing in parlia-
ment the metropolitan shire. Their half-brother Sir
Nicholas, who inherits Redgrave and the broad Suffolk
acres left by the Lord Keeper, a man with penurious
habits and a swarm of children, deems his own nine sons
and three daughters burthen enough, without having to
pinch for the offspring of Lady Ann. When he marries
a daughter they may get an invitation to Redgrave ; but
his brotherly hospitalities end with the feast. Nathaniel
may paint their portraits and present them with game
on canvas, but the artist can do nothing to fill their
mouths. Edward has a lease from the Crown of Twicken-
ham Park, a delightful place on the river, of which Francis
makes a home. Lady Ann starves herself at Gorhambury
that she may send to Gray's Inn ale from her cellar,
pigeons from her dovecote, fowls from her farmyard ; gifts
which she seasons with a good deal of motherly love and
not a little of her best motherly advice. The young men
take the love and leave the advice, as young men will.
Like Buckhurst, Herbert, and the race of gay cavaliers,
while waiting for better days and brighter fortunes, they
relieve their wants by help of the Lombards and Jews.
1592.
Feb. 18
30 FEANCIS BACON.
II. 17. 17. Francis looks for an opening to mend their means.
A rich alderman dies, leaving his son a ward. The
guardianship of a Queen's ward is often a profitable toil,
and the care of Hayward's son is in Burghley's gift.
Francis urges Lady Ann to apply to her sister's husband
for this lucrative trust.
Bacon to Lady Bacon.
MADAM, From my Lodgings, Feb. 18, 1591-2.
Alderman Hayward is deceased this night. His
eldest son is fallen ward. My Lord Treasurer doth not
for the most part hastily dispose of wards. It were worth
the obtaining, if it were but in respect of the widow, who
is a gentlewoman much recommended. Your ladyship
hath never had any ward. If, my Lady, it were too early
for my brother to begone with a suit to my Lord before
he had seen his Lordship, and, for me, if I at this time pro-
cure (?) my Lord to be my friend with the Queen, it may
please your ladyship to move my Lord, and to promise to
be thankful to any other my Lord oweth pleasure unto.
There should be no time lost therein. And so I most
humbly take my leave.
Your Ladyship's most obedient son,
Fk. Bacon.
My Lord (Lord Burghley) is a leal friend to him with
the Queen ; a little slow, as his nature is, but honest, sage,
and sure. While waiting for a post, and only that of
Attorney-General or Solicitor-General will serve his turn,
the young barrister fags at his books ; framing in his mind
a magnificent scheme for reducing and codifying the whole
17. Lambeth MSS. 648, fol. 5, 106, 110.
1592.
LADY BACON. 31
body of English law, as well as shaping his more colossal II. 17.
plans for re-constituting the whole round of the sciences.
Like the ways of all deep dreamers, his habits are odd, and
vex Lady Ann's affectionate and methodical heart. The -^ a ^ 24,
boy sits up late of nights? drinks his ale-posset to make
him sleep, starts out of bed ere it is light, or may be, as
the whimsy takes him, lolls and dreams till noon, musing,
says the good lady with loving pity, on — she knows not
wha£ ! Her own round of duty lies in saying her morning
and evening prayers, in hearing nine or ten sermons in the
week, in caring for her kitchen and hen-roost, in physick-
ing herself, her maids, and her tenants, in making the
rascals who would cheat her pay their rent, and in loving
and counselling her two careless boys. Dear, admirable
soul ! How human and how humorous, too, the picture
of this good mother, warm in her affections, scolding for us
our broadbrowed awful Verulam !
Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon.
Gorhambury, 24th May, 1592.
Grace and health. That you increase in amending
I am glad. Grod continue it every way. When you cease
of your prescribed diet, you had need I think to be very
wary both of your sudden change of quantity and of
season of your feeding, specially suppers late or full ; pro-
cure rest in convenient time, it helpeth much to digestion.
I verily think your brother's weak stomach to digest hath
been much caused and confirmed by untimely going to
bed, and then musing, I know not what, when he should
sleep, and then, in consequence, by late rising and long
lying in bed, whereby his men are made slothful and him-
self continually sickly. But my sons haste not to hearken
to their mother's good counsel in time to prevent. The
32 FRANCIS BACON.
II. 17. Lord our heavenly Father heal and bless you both, as His
— sons in Christ Jesus !
I promise you, touching your coach, if it be so to your
y contentation, it was not wisdom to have it seen and known
at the Court. You shall be so much pressed to lend, and
your man for gain so ready to agree, that the discommodity
thereof will be as much as the commodity. I would your
health had been such as you needed not to have provided
a coach but for a wife ; but the will of God be done. You
were best to excuse you by me, that I have desired the
use of it, because, as I feel it too true, my going is almost
spent, and must be fain to be bold with you. It is like
Kobert Bailey and his sons have been to seek some com-
modity of you ; the father hath been but an ill tenant to
the wood, and a wayward payer, and hath forfeited his
bond, which I intend not to let slip ; his son a dissolute
young man, and bom of them crafty. Likewise young
Carpenter may sue to be your man. Be not hasty ; you
shall find such young men proud and bold, and of no ser-
vice, but charge and discredit. Be advised. Overshoot
not yourself undiscreetly. I tell you, plain folk in
appearance will quickly cumber one here, and they will
all seek to abuse your want of experience by so long
absence. Be not hasty, but understand well first your
own state. There w 7 as never less kindness in tenants
commonly than now. Farewell in Christ.
Let not your men see my letters. I write to you, and
not to them.
Your mother,
A. Bacon.
This coach which the two brothers, both of them sick,
both racked with gout and ague, have set up, weighs
1592.
PROMINENT MEMBERS OF THE COMMONS. 33
heavily on her spirits. Again and again she returns to II. 17.
the charge. "I like not your lending it to any lord
or lady. It was not well it was so soon seen at
court. Tell your brother, I counsel you to send it no
more. What had my Lady Shrewsbury to borrow your
coach?"
18. If the post of orator of the House of Commons is 1593.
no easy one to win, it is one more difficult to hold. Wit, Feb. 19,
sense, readiness, repartee, power, patience, mastery of men
and books, are parts of the round of faculties and acquire-
ments for one who is to seize the direction and sway the
votes of an English House of Commons. At thirty-two,
when Bacon, in the session of 1593, takes his seat for
Middlesex, he finds on the benches right and left of him
men the most renowned in English story. Coke is Speaker ;
Cecil leads for the Crown; Kaleigh and Vere sit nigh
him ; Fulk Greville, the friend of Sydney, John Fortescue,
Lawrence Hyde, Henry Yelverton, Edward Dyer, Henry
Montagu, rival speakers and lawyers, are but six of a
conspicuous crowd. The war continues, and events look
grave. Battalions crowd Dunkerque and Calais ; the flag
of Leon and Castile flaps within sight of Dover-pier ;
London stands under arms; troops hurry for Flanders,
Dublin, and Kinsale ; the Sussex foundries cast guns ; and
fort on fort rises along the coast from Margate to Penzance.
Yet the war without is not more harassing than the disease
within. London gasps with plague. No lute or tabor
sounds from the tavern-porch ; no play draws dames and
gallants to the Globe ; no pageant crowds the Thames
18. Not. Pari., iii. 131 ; Council Reg., Jan. 28, July 19, 1593; Mem. of
Men for Ireland, April 6, 1593, S. P. O. ; Elizabeth to Godolplrin, May 9,
1593, S. P. O. ; Mem. by Burghley, May 9, 22, 31, 1593, S. P. O. ; List of m
Parishes in London infested with Plague, Lamb. MSS. 648, fol. 152.
1593.
Feb.
34 FRANCIS BACON.
i
II. 18. with citizens and 'prentice boys. An order from tbe Lord
Mayor puts down all games — tbe bear-bait at Paris Gar-
den, the sports of the inn-yards, the song and jollity of
the ale-clnbs. Yet, in the midst of woe and death, the
recruiting-sergeant beats to arms. Henri the Fourth, who
has mounted the throne of France, pressed by the vic-
torious Spaniards, calls for help, and levies are being
raised for him in London and in places usually exempt
from such a tax.
While yielding the Queen's government support on her
money bills, the feeders of the war, Bacon forces on the
topic of reform, and defeats an extraordinary attempt at
dictation by the ministers of the Crown.
Feb. 26. 19. The House has not sat a week — not yet proved its
returns — before he hints at his scheme for amending and
condensing the whole body of English law. The House
starts up. The tide might have come in from the Thames.
Eeform the code ! Bacon tells a House full of Queen's
counsel, Queen's Serjeants, and utter barristers, that laws
are made to guard the rights of the people, not to feed the
lawyers. The laws should be read by all, known to all.
Put them into shape, inform them with philosophy, reduce
them in bulk, give them into every man's hand. So runs
his speech. A noble thought — a need of every nation
under the sun — a task to be wrought at by him through a
long life — to be then left to successors, who, after revolu-
tions and restorations, commissions and reports, have it still
in hand — undone ! The plan, of which this fragment of a
speech is the root, developed in his Maxims of the Law,
and proposed as part of his great reform in the De Aug-
19. Townskend's Historical Collection, 60 ; Bacon's Works, vii. 313 ;
Les Aphorisnies du Droit, traduits du Latin de Messire FranQois Bacon,
Grand Chancelier d'Angleterre, par J. Baudoin, 1646.
1593.
Feb.
OPPOSES THE GOVERNMENT. 35
mentis, has had more success abroad than it has found at II. 19.
home. It was universally read, and most of all in France.
It was translated by Baudoin, and inscribed to Segrier,
Chancellor of France. In that country it has blossomed
and come to fruit. But a French revolution alone had
power to achieve this vast design against established
things ; and the Code Napoleon is even now, in 1860, the
sole embodiment of Bacon's thought.
20. Ten days later he gives a check to the Government, Mar,
which brings down upon his head those censures of
Burghley and Puckering which are said to have repre-
sented in fact, if not in word, the personal anger of the
Queen. The story of this speech has been so told as to
rob Bacon of all credit for his daring, the ministers of all
reason for their wrath.
Lord Campbell writes, that he votes for the grants pro-
posed by the Crown, but pleads for time in which the
people shall be called to pay them ; that Burghley and
Puckering bully and threaten him ; that he bows to this
storm of indignation a penitential face. Lord Campbell
pictures the young barrister as whining under the lash,
kissing the rod that smites him, pledging the tears in his
eyes that he will never, in that way, offend her Majesty
again !
21. The offence lies deeper than Lord Campbell dreams :
an offence of two parts ; one of which parts has wholly
escaped his sight.
The Government seeks from the House of Commons a
20. Campbell's Lives of the Lord Chancellors, art. 'Bacon,' iii. 15.
21. Inhibitions delivered to Coke from the Queen, Feb. 28, 1593, S. P. O. ;
Message from Coke to the House of Commons, Feb. 28, 1593, S. P. O. ;
Confession of Laton, Feb. 1593, S. P. O.
D 2
1593.
Mar.
36 FRANCIS BACON.
II. 21. very extraordinary grant of money. It is usual to ask for
half a subsidy a year. Half a subsidy is ten per cent. —
two shillings in the pound a year. Burghley proposes to
demand from the burgesses a double rate : one whole sub-
sidy a year ; four shillings in the pound. So high a tax
will not, he knows, be voted by the House, with all its
eagerness for war, unless the whole authority of the
Crown and Government can be brought to bear. He forms
his plans. Drafting such a bill as he hopes may pass, he
sends word to Mr. Speaker Coke that he must beat down,
in the Queen's name, all such noisy members as shall
presume to prate of things in Church and State. No idle
threat, as Bromley and Wentworth find ; ere many days
are gone, Wentworth has talked himself into the Tower,
Bromley into the Fleet.
Burghley now asks the House to confer with the Peers
on a grant for the Queen's service ; and a committee
goes up ; among them, in frill and feather, gown or
sword, Vere, Raleigh, Greville, Hastings, Cecil, Bacon, and
Coke. They hear the Lord-Treasurer's words; and the
next day Cecil reports, in their name, to the Commons, that
the Peers have decided for them what they shall give, and at
what times : three subsidies in three years — four shillings
in the pound each year. For them to hear is to obey.
Knight and squire gaze at each other. Four shillings
in the pound a year ! And the Commons robbed of even
the credit of their own gifts ! Such a speech is resented
as a slur on their patriotism, a curb on their debates.
22. Who rises to warn the minister ? Is it the fiery
Raleigh, the martial Vere ? Where sits the noisy Hastings,
the sagacious Greville, the turbulent Coke ? Not one of
22. D'Ewes, 468-83.
1593.
Mar.
RESENTS INTERFERENCE OF THE PEERS. 37
these flames up. Soldiers who have pushed through II. 22
Parma's Hues, advocates bronzed in cheek, and Puritans
steeled in the fire of controversy, stare and wait. No
marvel either. Not one of these men, in a plain, good
cause, would have shrunk from a threat of Little Ease or
Beauchamp Tower. The difficulty is, to defend their right
of making grants and subsidies without seeming to oppose
a war on which the country has set its soul, and without
showing to the hosts of home and foreign enemies a broken
front. To the bill itself the capital objection is only one
of form. Cecil counts on the heat for battle ; and to fight
for the power of free taxation, against the passionate haste
of the people for clash of pikes and roar of guns, needs
courage of a lofty and peculiar kind. Coke may fear to
offend the Queen, Kaleigh to embolden the King of Spain,
Hastings to vex the musters and the fleet. Bacon
starts up.
A few clear words declare that he does not mean to
touch the grant. No man will grudge the funds to fit out
ships and man the guns. But there he stops. To give is
the prerogative of the people — to dictate what they shall
give is not the duty of the House of Peers. In framing
this bill the Government, he says, has gone beyond its
powers ; and he counsels the Commons, in defence, to
decline any further conferences with the Lords on a
money-bill. From his vest he takes an Answer to the
Lords, which he proposes shall be read, and if approved,
sent up. This Answer is referred to a committee of fifty-
one. The committee cannot agree ; and return their com-
mission to the House. Hot debates ensue. Burghley hides
himself behind the Queen : but even her august and sacred
name appears to have lost its force. Broad lines are drawn,
and the members fall into either camp. The courtiers stand
Mar.
38 FRANCIS BACON.
II. 22. with Cecil for continuing the conferences on the money-
— bill ; the reformers with Bacon for resisting this encroach-
ment on the constitutional laws.
Coke puts the question from the chair — for a con-
ference ; yea, or nay ? A hundred and twenty-eight gen-
tlemen cry Yea. Two hundred and seventeen gentlemen
cry Nay.
23. A raid of Parma's pikes through Kent would
have startled Burghley less than such a vote. It is the
first great check he has ever known ; it stops the whole
machinery of legislation ; it covers himself, his measures,
and his friends with public shame. He scolds his nephew ;
he sets the Lord-Keeper on to scold him. These func-
tionaries threaten him with the Queen's ire; but Bacon
defends what the Knight for Middlesex has said and done.
If words not used by him are put upon him, he will deny
them ; if his words are misunderstood, he will explain
them; but to the sense of his speech he must hold
fast. How can he unsay the truth ? This is his
apology and defence. If her Highness, as they urge, is
angry with him, he shall grieve ; if she commands him
into silence, he must obey; but in thwarting this inva-
sion of popular rights by the House of Peers, he has
done no more than his duty to his Queen, his country,
and his God.
24. Though the progress of the bill is stopped, all sides
agree that the fleet must be manned — the musters armed.
Raleigh starts a compromise. Flushed with his glorious
voyage, red with spoil from the Santa Clara and the
23. Bacon to Burghley and to Puckering, Montagu, xii. 275, Notes E. E.
24. Townshend, 67 ; D Ewes, 488.
RALEIGH'S COMPROMISE. 39
Madre de Dios, the adventurer burns to be again at II. 24.
sea, chasing the Spanish ships, or forcing the rivers of —
Guiana. Every day given to debate, he grudges as lost to 1593 -
victory and revenge. To him, delay is disaster; talk is ar *
treason. Vote the supplies — send out the fleet — dash at
Cadiz or Malaga — sweep the plantations — snap up gal-
leon and carrack — death to the yellow flag ! cries that
impetuous soul. The members warm to his voice. Ke-
solve, he says, to confer with the Lords on the perils of
the realm. Say no more about grants. Listen to what
the Government may have to tell about the Papal bull
and the Spanish fleet. When you have saved the point
of form, vote the money-bill as you list. Well spoken,
Ealeigh ! Not a tongue cries Nay.
25. Set free by this device to discuss their money-bill, April,
the Commons fall to work. Cecil stands to the old plan of
three subsidies, to be paid in three years. Bacon, neither
cowed nor penitent, rises once more to oppose the court ;
not on the amount, which he approves, but on the time,
which is, indeed, the essential point. He asks for six
years in place of three ; in other words, for two shillings in
the pound a year, in place of four. Even for the joy of
smiting Spain, he cannot drain the sources of industry, seize
the craftsman's tools, the farmer's cider-press and milk-
pans. Ealeigh storms upon him. Will he starve the war ?
Cecil smiles and cajoles. But Bacon, who has won the ear
even of this warlike auditory, insists that time shall be
given, and that the grants shall be described as excep-
tional and extraordinary. In the end, against the warmth
25. Lords' Jour., ii. 184; D'Ewes, 493; Townshend, 72; Statutes,
35 Eliz., c, 13.
40 FKANCIS BACON.
II. 25. of Raleigh and the wiles of Cecil, he compels the Govern-
ment to meet his proposal half-way, to extend the period
proposed for the raising of these taxes a year (in other
words, to take three shillings in the pound each year in
place of four), and to insert a clause in the bill declaring
that the money is given solely for the war against Spain.
1593.
April.
CLAIMS TO BE SOLICITOR-GENERAL. 41
CHAPTEK III.
THE EAKL OF ESSEX.
1593.
Sept.
1. Six months after this brush with the Government III. 1
Bacon is a candidate for place. The Rolls are vacant, and
the rise of Egerton must leave the post of Attorney void.
Coke claims to succeed. Some at the bar and on the
bench would prefer Bacon's rise to Coke's : each has his
troop of friends ; and thus, at an early stage, begins that
rivalry between these famous men which is to run through
every phase of their careers, and only end with their
lives. Coke gains his move, as is only just. Bacon's
claim to the place left void by Coke, that of the Solicitor-
General, is much more strong. Born at the bar and
nursed on law, he has served to his profession an appren-
ticeship of fourteen years. If Philosophy has been his
Rachel, Law has been his Leah. A bencher and Reader
of his Inn, he enjoys a good reputation in chambers and in
the courts. The best judges at the bar approve his rise.
Burghley and Cecil cautiously promote his suit, and
Egerton presses it with a noble friendship on all who have
power to help or harm. Yet in the end Thomas Fleming-
gets the post, a man only known to the world for having
stood in Bacon's way, and to the profession for his singular
and disastrous ruling in the case of Bates.
Bacon owes this loss of place to Robert Devereux, Earl
of Essex : out of which cruel disappointment to him
1. Chron. Jurid., 177; Lane's Reports, 22.
1593.
Sept.
42 FRANCIS BACON.
III. 1. springs the charge of ingratitude to a patron — treason to a
friend.
A plain history of events will show that the connexion
of Bacon with Essex was one of politics and business ; that
it brought no advantages to Bacon, and imposed on him
no obligations ; that it ceased by the Earl's own acts ;
that personally and politically Essex separated himself
from Bacon, not Bacon from Essex ; that Bacon, in his
efforts to save Essex while he believed him a true man,
went the extremest lengths of chivalry ; and that, in
acting against him when he proved himself a rebel and a
traitor, he did no more than discharge his necessary duty
to his country and his Queen.
2. One of the nearest friends of Queen Elizabeth had
been Catherine Carey, afterwards Lady Knollys, her cousin
in the first degree of the Boleyn blood. They had been
sisters' children, and had loved each other with more than
sisters' love. Catherine had died young in years, and had
been buried by her sovereign in Westminster Abbey with
regal pomp. Essex was Catherine Carey's grandson ;
in everything but the name he was a grandson to the
childless Queen. This tie of blood the slanderers of her
fame forget to state. Yet Essex and the two Careys were
her only male relations on her mother's side, as James of
Scotland was her sole surviving kinsman of the royal race.
He had been born into her lap and into her heart. She
loved him, too, for his father's sake ; Walter, Earl of
Essex, having been a leal friend to her in those young days
when friends were few and cold. As she seared into age, it
pleased her eye to see the sons of her first stanch peers
2. Craik's Romance of the Peerage, i. 5 ; Council Reg., April 13, 1589,
April 14, 1591, June 21, 1592,
Sept.
ELIZABETH'S LOVE FOR ESSEX. 43
around her throne. She had made Hunsdon chamberlain ; III. 2.
she meant to make Cecil Secretary of State. She had loved —
Sydney for his father's virtues ; she endured Essex in re-
membrance of his father's fate. She had indeed much to bear
with and forgive. More profuse than generous, more rash
than brave, he tried her affection by his petulance and
brawls ; but she clung to the orphan boy with that clannish
pride which she had always felt for her mother's kin. She
loaded him with favours. His jerks and whims, so galling
to the council and the court, amused the Queen as signs of
the Boleyn blood. Her mother had them ; Ins mother
has them. That she ever loved him more than a lady of
sixty years may love her cousin's grandchild is a mon-
strous He. No woman can believe it : no man but a monk
could have dreamt it.
3. Yet this lie against chastity and womanhood has been
repeated from generation to generation for two hundred
and sixty years. It oozed from the pen of Father Parsons.
It darkens the page of Lingard. Like most of the
scandals against her — her jealousy of the wives of Leicester,
of Ealeigh, of Essex even — it came from those wifeless
monks, men of the confessional and the boudoir, who had
spent their nights in gloating with Sanchez through the
material mysteries of love, and in warping the tenderness
and faith of woman into the filthy philosophy of their own
' Disputationes de Sancto Matrimonii Sacramento.' Against
such calumniators the Queen might appeal, like Marie
Antoinette, to every woman's heart. Jealous of Lettice
3. Elizabethse Anglise reginse, hseresim Calvinianam propugnantis, in
catholicos sui regni edictum, quod in alios quoque reipublicse Christianas
principes contumelias continet indignissimas. Promulgatum Londini 29
Nov. 1591. Cum responsione ad singula capita : qua non tanturn saevitia
et impietas tarn iniqui edicti, sed mendacia quoque et fraudes ac imposturse
deteguntur et confutantur. Per D. Andream Philopatriun. 1592.
1593.
Sept.
44 FRANCIS BACON.
III. 3. Knollys, of Bessie Throckmorton, of Frances Sydney!
Elizabeth was indeed vexed with them, but had she not
cause ? Had not each of these courtiers married, not only
without her knowledge as their Queen, but without honesty
or honour? In secret, under circumstances of shame and
guilt, Leicester had wedded her cousin's daughter Lettice.
Would the head of any house be pleased with such a
trick ? Kaleigh had brought to shame a lady of her court,
young, lovely, brave as ever bloomed on a hero's hearth ;
yet the daughter of a disloyal house, of one who had plotted
against the Queen's crown and life. Could any prince
in the world approve of such an act? Essex himself, a
member of her race, a descendant of Edward the Third, had
married, in secret and against her will, a woman of inferior
birth, without beauty, youth, or fortune, a widow, who
took him on her way from the arms of a first husband into
those of a third. What kinswoman would have smiled on
such a match ?
Love for Essex warmer than that of an aged gentle-
woman for a young and dashing kinsman would have been
in her sin against nature not less than sin against nature's
God. The letters of Catherine's grandson to the Queen,
if bright with poetry, playfulness, and compliment,
are, in tone and substance, dutiful and chaste. In the
Queen's letters to him there is not a line she might not
have written to a grandson of her own.
4. She girt him with the fondness and with the fear of
a mother. She never sent him from her side without a
pang ; for she knew that he would knock his head against
stone walls, that he would hurry brave men to a foolish
end. Proud and high though his temper was, he could
4. Lives and Letters of the Devereux Earls of Essex, 2 vols.. 1853, vii.-xiv.
1593.
Sept.
SITUATION OF THE BROTHERS. 45
neither lead others to victory like Kaleigh, nor defend his HI. 4
own face from harm like Montjoy. If he sailed for Cadiz
with Nottingham and Kaleigh to slack his fire, the Queen's
work might be done, and he himself shine the bravest of
the brave. If he went to Eouen alone, he scared the sleep
from her pillow, and wrung the blood from her heart, by
his reckless waste of her veteran troops. She petted him
as a boy hopelessly brave, heroically frail ; but she deemed
him such a fool, though a charming one, that anything he
raved for must be wrong. If he fumed and fretted, put
his head on her footstool, rushed into the country, pouted,
and sulked, and raged, like a great spoiled child, she
would not yield to his caprice. For ever asking something
that he should not have, he would be Master of the Horse ;
he would have the Cinq Ports ; he would command fleets
and camps.
5. In an evil day for Bacon this petulant noble swears he
shall succeed to Coke. Essex and Bacon have been drawn
together, less by the magnetism of character, though the
Earl has a thousand showy and alluring ways, than by
their common wants. Bacon is poor and works for bread.
His brother Anthony is poor and lame. In the rooms at
Gray's Inn they lie sick together, racked with pain and
pestered by duns. Lady Ann does her best : sending
them hogsheads of March beer, with plenty of good advice
and scraps of Greek ; but the most she can do is little,
and neither Greek nor good advice will discharge their
weekly bills.
A letter from Francis to Lady Bacon gives a glimpse
into these troubles — the sickness, the fraternal love, the
worrying debts.
5. Lambeth MSS. 649, fol. 67, 100.
1593.
Sept.
46 FRANCIS BACON.
III. 5. FEANcrs Bacon to Lady Bacon.
From Gray's Inn, April 16, 1593.
My duty most humbly remembered. I assure
myself that your ladyship, as a wise aucl kind mother to
us both, will neither find it strange nor unwise that, ten-
dering first my brother's health, which I know by mine
own experience to depend not a little upon a free mind,
and then his credit, I presume to put your ladyship in
remembrance of your motherly offer to him the same day
you departed, which was that to help him out of debt you
would be content to bestow your whole interest in markes
upon him. The which unless it would please your ladyship
to accomplish out of hand, I have just cause to fear that
my brother will be put to a very shrewde plunge, either to
forfeit his reversion to Harwin (?) or else to undersell it very
much ; for the avoiding of both which great inconveniences
• I see no other remedy than your ladyship surrender in
time, the formal drafte whereof I refer to my brother him-
self, whom I have not any way as yet made acquainted
with this my motion, neither mean to do till I hear from
you. The ground whereof being only a brotherly care
and affection, I hope your ladyship will think and accept
of it accordingly : beseeching you to believe that being so
near and dear part of me as he is, that cannot but be a grief
unto me to see a mind that hath given so sufficient proof
of wit (?) in having brought forth many good thoughts
for the general to be overburdened and cumbered, with a
care of clearing his particular estate. Touching myself,
my diet, I thank God, hitherto hath wrought good effect,
and am advised to continue this whole month, not meddling
with any purgative physic more than I must needs, which
will be but a trifle during my whole diet ; and so I most
humbly take my leave. ^ t>
1593.
Sept.
LETTER TO A MONEY-LENDER. 47
6. No young fellow of Gray's Inn, waiting for the tide to III. 6
flow, is sharper set for funds than the young knight for
Middlesex or his elder brother. Anthony tries to raise his
rents, and some of the men about him — godless rogues, as
Lady Bacon says — propose that he shall let his farms to
the highest bidders. Goodman Grinnell, who has the land
at Barly, pays less than he ought : let him go out and a
better man come in. But Goodman Grinnell speeds with
his long face to Lady Ann. " What ! " cries the good
lady to her son; "turn out the Grinnells! Why, the
Grinnells have lived at Barly these hundred and twenty
years ! " So the brothers have to look elsewhere. Bonds
are coming due. A famous money-lender lives in the
city, Spencer by name, rich as a Jew and close as a
miser ; him they go to, cap in hand, and with honeyed
words. The miser is a good miser, and allows his bond
to lie. Francis writes to him from his brother Edward's
house at Twickenham Park, to which he has removed from
Gray's Inn for the benefit of country air.
Francis Bacon to Mr. Spencer.
GOOD Mr. SPENCER, Twickenham Park, Sept. 19, 1593.
Having understood by my man your kind offer to
send my brother and me our old bond, we both accept the
same with hearty thanks, and pray you to cause a new to
be made for half a year more, which I will both sign
and seal before one Booth, a scrivener, here at Isleworth,
and deliver it him to your use, which you know will be as
good in law as though you were here present. True it is
that I cannot promise that my brother should be here at
that time to join with me, by reason of his daily attendance
in court, by occasion whereof I am to be your sole debtor
6. Lambeth MSS. 649, fol. 109.
48 FRANCIS BACON.
III. 6. in the new bond. As for the mesne profits thereof, you will
— receive them presently. I have given charge to my man
to deliver it. And so with my right hearty commendations
P ' from my brother and myself, with like thanks for your
good will and kindness towards us, which we always shall
be ready to acknowledge when and wherein we may, I
commit you to the protection of the Almighty.
Your assured loving friend,
Fk. Bacon.
One likes to know that this good miser rose to be an
alderman of London, and lived to see his daughter married
to a peer. One dares not say, however, that one would
like to have been Lord Compton, the husband of her
choice, and heir of the miser's enormous hoard.
7. Bacon lies sick the whole summer of 1593, as a
note to his old friend Lady Paulett shows. Her lady-
ship, who had been so kind to him in his younger days
in France, is now a widow ; his good friend Sir Amias
sleeping the great sleep under a splendid tomb in the
chancel of St. Martin's church. Bacon is proud and glad
to do the widow service.
Francis Bacon to Lady Paulett.
MADAM, Twickenham Park, Sept. 23, 1593.
Being not able myself, by reason of my long
languishing infirmity, to render unto your ladyship by a
personal visitation the respect I owe unto your ladyship, I
would not fail to acquit some part of my debt by sending
this bearer, my servant, expressly to know how your lady-
ship doth, which I beseech God may be no worse than I
7. Lambeth MSS. 649, fol. 214.
1593.
CONNEXION WITH ESSEX. 49
wish and have just cause to wish, considering your lady- HI. 7,
ship's ancient and especial kindness towards me. Which if
I have not hitherto acknowledged it hath been only for
want of fit occasions, but no way of dutiful affection, as I e ^ '
hope in time, with God's help, I shall be able to verify by
good effects towards the young gentleman Mr. Blount, your
nephew, or any other that appertains unto your ladyship.
This is, good madam, much less than you deserve and yet
all I can offer, which, notwithstanding, I hope you will
accept, not that it is aught worth of itself, but in respect
of the unfeigned good will from whence it proceedeth. And
so, with my humble and right hearty commendations unto
your good ladyship, I beseech God to bless you with increase
of comfort in mind and body, and admit you to his holy
protection.
Your ladyship's assured and ready in all kind affection
to do you service,
Fr. Bacon.
8. Essex has need of strength such as these penniless
men of genius have to spare. Francis Bacon has won all
nature for his province. Anthony is a man of many parts ;
gay, supple, secret ; fond of society and of affairs, of good
wines and bright eyes ; at home in cloister and in court ;
easy in morals, tolerant in creed ; hail fellow with the
vagabond and the noble, the King's mistress, the profes-
sional conspirator, the free lance, and the travelling monk.
The two brothers enter into the Earl's service ; Francis as
his lawyer and man of political business, Anthony as his
secretary ; hoping, as many wise men hope, to make him
the court leader of that great patriotic band of which
Baleigh, Drake, and Vere are the fighting chiefs ; the one
8. Lambeth MSS. 649 ; Devereux, i. 277 ; Sydney Papers, i. 360.
E
50 FBANCIS BACON.
III. 8. part for which he is gifted beyond all other men. Under
— their eyes he so far gains in gravity and sense that the
1593 * Queen swears him of her Privy Council, and even trusts
e P ' to his care much of her correspondence abroad. Day and
night their tongues and pens are busy in this work.
Anthony writes the Earl's letters, instructs his spies, drafts
for him despatches to the agents in foreign lands. Francis
shapes for him a plan of conduct at the court, and writes
for him a treatise of advice which should have been the
rule and would have been the salvation of his life.
For all these labours the workmen must be paid.
Oct. 3. 9. Duns weigh on the two brothers. Here are two
notes to Lady Ann, both from Francis, full of the same
sad romance of love and debt. One runs :
Francis Bacon to Lady Bacon.
MADAM, From the Court, Oct. 3, 1593.
I received this afternoon at the Court your letter,
after I had sent back your horse and written to you this
morning. And for my brother's kindness, it is accustomed ;
he never having yet refused his security for me, as I, on
the other side, never made any difficulty to do the like by
him, according to our several occasions. And therefore, if
it be not to his own disfurnishing, which I reckon all one
with mine own want, I shall receive good ease by that
hundred pounds; specially your ladyship of your good-
ness being content it shall be repaid of Mr. Boldroe's debt,
which it pleased you to bestow upon me. And my desire
is, it shall be paid to Knight at Gray's Inn, who shall re-
ceive order from me to pay two fifths [?] (which I wish
had been two hundred) where I owe, and where it presseth
9. Lambeth MSS. 649, fol. 298, 274.
LETTEKS TO LADY BACON. 51
me most. Sir John Fortescue is not yet in Court ; both to III. 9.
him and otherwise I will be mindful of Mr. Downing's —
cause and liberty with the first opportunity. Mr. Nevill,
my cousin, though I be further distant than I expected, c * *
yet I shall have an apt occasion to remember. To my
cousin Kemp I am sending. But that would rest between
your ladyship and myself, as you said. Thus I commend
your ladyship to God's good providence.
Your Ladyship's most obedient,
Fr. Bacon.
Feancis Bacon to Lady Bacon. Nov. 2.
MADAM, Twickenham Park, Nov. 2, 1593.
I most humbly thank your ladyship for your letter
and sending your man Bashawe to visit me, who purposeth
with God's help so soon as possibly I can to do my duty to
your ladyship, but the soonest I doubt will be to-morrow
or next Monday come sennight. My brother, I think, will
go to Saint Albans sooner, with my Lord Keeper, who
hath kindly offered him room in his obscure lodgings there,
as he hath already resigned unto him the use of his cham-
ber in the Court. God forbid that your ladyship should
trouble yourself with any extraordinary care in respect of
our presence, which if we thought should be the least
cause of your discontentment, we would rather absent our-
selves than occasion any way your ladyship disquietness.
As for Sotheram, I have been and shall be always ready
to hear dutifully your ladyship's motherly admonitions
touching him or any other man or matter, and to respect
them as I ought. And so, with remembrance of my humble
duties, I beseech God to bless and preserve your ladyship.
F. B.
e 2
1594.
Mar.
52 FRANCIS BACON.
III. 9. Essex is poor. Dress, dinners, horses, courtesans exhaust
his coffers. If he cannot pay in coin he will pay in place.
His servant Francis Bacon shall be made the Queen's
Solicitor. Essex swears it.
10. Until he swears it all goes well. Burghley supports
his nephew. Egerton and Fortescue urge his suit with
admiring friendship on the Queen. Cecil is warm in bis
behalf ; not alone begging in his own name, but stirring
up friends and making a party at the Court. Every one
at the bar, save only Coke, admits his claim to place.
Essex spoils all. At first the Queen is gracious ; extols
Bacon's eloquence and wit, while doubting if he be deep in
law. It only needs that his nomination shall be made in
the proper way ; because it is the best, not because this or
that lord of her Court may wish it made. This does not
please the Earl. Pledged to make Bacon's fortune, he will
not stoop to see his own debts paid by another hand. The
work must be his own : " Upon me," he says, " must lie the
labour of his establishment ; upon me the disgrace will
light of his refusal."
The Queen gets angry at this selfish pride. When he
talks of Bacon she shuts her ears; but night and day
he hammers at the name; doing his full of mischief;
fretting and sulking till he drives her mad. Never were
good intentions worse bestowed. A brief note from the
Earl to Bacon brings the impatient Queen and her impor-
tunate suitor on the scene : —
The Earl of Essex to Francis Bacon.
SlB, 24 March, 1594.
The Queen did yesternight fly the gift, and I do
wish, if it be no impediment to the cause you do handle
10. tambeth MSS. 649, fol. 37, 60, 197 ; 650, fol. 109.
1594.
Mar. 24.
THE SOLICITORSHIP. 53
to-morrow, you did attend again this afternoon. I will be III. 10
at the Court in the evening, and go with Mr. Vice-Cham-
berlain, so as, if you fail before we come, yet afterwards I
doubt not but he or I shall bring you together. This I
write in haste because I would have no opportunity omitted
in this point of access. I wish to you as to myself, and
rest
Your most affectionate friend,
Essex.
The Queen will not see him. She will not have her
freedom of selection curbed.
11. Bacon is surprised and hurt. His hopes for the May 1.
moment dashed, he perceives no chance of succeeding
even at a better time, unless the Queen can be induced
to leave the Solicitorship for the present void. To this
end he applies to his cousin Cecil. Here is his note :
Francis Bacon to Sir Eobert Cecil.
Gray's Inn, May 1, 1594.
My most honoeable good Cousin,
Your honour in your Avisdom doth well perceive
that my access at this time is grown desperate in regard of
the hard terms that as well the Earl of Essex as Mr. Vice-
Chamberlain, who were to have been the means thereof,
stand in with her in acceding to their occasions. And
therefore I am now only to fall upon that point of delaying
and preserving the matter entire till a better constellation,
which, as it is not hard, as I conceive, considering the proving
business and the instant Progress, &c, so I commend in
special to your honour's care, who in sort assured me
thereof, and upon [whom] now in my lord of Essex'
11. Lambeth MSS. 650, fol. 125.
54 FRANCIS BACON.
III. 11. absence I have only to rely. And if it be needful, I
— humbly pray you to move my Lord your father to lay his
1594. sure k an( j to the same delay. And so I wish you all in-
ivlay 1 . crease f honour.
Your poor kinsman in faithful prayers and duty,
Francis Bacon.
Cecil, who knows that the Earl, and none but the Earl,
stands in the way of his cousin's rise, writes back, on the
same sheet of paper, in the left corner, these words : —
Sir Kobert Cecil to Francis Bacon.
Cousin,
I do think nothing cuts the throat more of your
present access than the Earl's being somewhat troubled at
this time. For the delaying, I think it not hard ; neither
shall there want my best endeavours to make it easy, of
which I hope you shall not need to doubt. By the judg-
ment which I gather of divers circumstances confirming my
opinion, I protest I suffer with you in mind that you are
thus yet gravelled ; but time will founder all your compe-
titors and set you on your feet, or else I have little under-
standing.
12. For the first time in his life Bacon is now a stranger
at the court. Lady Ann lies sick at Gorhambury ; so sick,
that the " good Christian and Saint of God," as her son
affectionately calls her, makes up her soul for death.
Two of her household have been snatched away from her
side by plague or fever. She is down with ague. Bacon
wrestles with her resignation, praying her to use all
helps and comforts that are good for her health, to the end
12. Lambeth MSS. 649, fol. 232; 650, fol. 140.
1594.
June 9.
LADY BACON'S ILLNESS. 55
that she may be spared to her children and her friends, III. 12.
and to that church of God which has so much need of
her. Here is the letter from which these particulars are
derived :
Francis Bacon to Lady Bacon.
June 9, 1594.
My humble duty remembered, I was sorry to under-
stand by Goodman Sotheram that your ladyship did find
any weakness, which I hope was but caused by the season
and weather, which waxeth more hot and faint. I was
not sorry, I assure your ladyship, that you came not up,
in regard that the stirring at this time of year, and the
place where you should lie not being very open nor fresh,
might rather hurt your ladyship than otherwise. And for
anything to be passed to Mr. Trot, such is his kindness, as
he demancleth it not; and therefore, as I am to thank
your ladyship for your willingness, so it shall not be
needful but upon such an occasion as may be without
your trouble, which the rather may be because I purpose,
God willing, to come down, and it be but for a day, to visit
your ladyship, and to do my duty to you. In the mean
time I pray your health, as you have done the part of a
good Christian and Saint of God in the comfortable pre-
paring for your duty. So nevertheless, I pray, deny not
your body the due, nor your children and friends, and
the church of God, which hath use of you, but that you
enter not into further conceit than is cause ; and withal
use all comforts and helps that are good for your health
and strength. In truth I have heard Sir Thomas Scuda-
more often complain, after his quartain had ceased, that
he found such a heaviness and swelling under his ribs
that he thought he was buried under earth all from the
56 FRANCIS BACON.
III. 12. waist ; and therefore that accident no bad incident. Thus
— I commend your ladyship to God's good preservation from
grief.
J une 9 - Your ladyship's most obedient son,
Fk. Bacon.
It may be I shall have occasion, because nothing is yet
done in the choice of a Solicitor, to visit the Court this
vacation, which I have not now done this month's time, in
which respect, because having sent to and fro spoyleth it,
I would be glad of that light bed of stripes which your
ladyship hath, if you have not otherwise disposed it.
Aug 20. 13. The Saint of God is spared to her sons for a little
while. When Francis makes her a visit he finds her weak
with pain, her memory failing like her health, but her
tongue and pen as swift to advise as ever. Anthony's
easy nature, his indulgence of his men, his love of finery
and show and pleasure, wring the poor lady's heart. She
wants to see him marry and amend his ways; but she
talks of a wife in vain to this gay companion of the young
Earls of Essex, Kutland, and Southampton. She would
not mind stripping her house of everything for him, her
pictures, her carpets, and her chairs, if her elder born
would only marry a sober and religious girl. But all
pretty faces are to him the same. When Francis rides
away from Gorhambury, she sends after him a string
of pigeons and a world of pious and tender exhortations
for the good of body and soul.
Lady Bacon to Francis Bacon.
20th Aug. 1594.
I was so full of back-pain when you came hither, that
my memory was very slippery. I forgot to mention of
13. Lambeth MSS. 650, fol. 168, 171, 223.
ADVICE FROM LADY BACON. 57
rents. If you have not, I have not, received Frank's last III. 13.
half-year of Midsummer, the first half so long unpaid. You —
will mar your tenants if you suffer them. Mr. Brocquet '
is suffered by your brother to cosen me and beguile me Au &- 20,
without check. I fear you came too late to London for
your horse : ever regard them. I desire Mr. Trot to
hearken to some honest man, and cook too as he may. If
you can hear of a convenient place I shall be willing if it
so please God ; for Lawson will draw your brother wherever
he chooses, as I really fear, and that with false semblance.
God give you both good health and hearts to serve him truly,
and bless you always with his favour. I send you pigeons
taken this day, and let blood. Look well about you and
yours too. I hear that Eobert Knight is but sickly. I am
sorry for it. I do not write to my Lord-Treasurer, because
you like to stay. Let this letter be unseen. Look very
well to your health; sup not, nor sit up late. Surely I
think your drinking to bedwards hindereth your and your
brother's digestion very much. I never knew any but
sickly that used it, besides being ill for heads and eyes.
Observe well, yet in time. Farewell in Christ.
A. Bacon.
At court affairs look grave. Elizabeth will not have a
man forced on her for selfish ends. She hears bad news
enough to worry the stoutest heart : now a stir among the
Irish rebels, now the threat of a descent from Spain.
Francis writes to Anthony : —
Francis Bacon to Anthony Bacon.
BROTHER, Gray's Inn, Aug. 26, 1594.
My cousin Cook is some four days home, and ap-
pointed towards Italy that day sennight, I pray take care
Aug. 26.
58
FRANCIS BACON.
1594.
Aug. 26
III. 13. for the money to be paid over within four or five days.
The sum you will remember is 150?. I hear nothing from
the Court in mine own business. There hath been a
defeat of some force in Ireland by Macguire which troubleth
the Queen, being unaccustomed to such news ; and there-
upon the opportunity is alleged to be lost to move her.
But there is an answer by the coming in of the Earl of
Tyrone as was expected.
I steal to Twickenham, purposing to return this night,
else I had visited you as I came from the town. Thus in
haste I leave you to God's preservation.
Your entire loving brother,
Fr. Bacon.
Anthony is not now at Gray's Inn Square, having
taken a house in Bishopsgate-street, a fashionable part
of the city, near the famous Bull Inn, where plays are
performed before cits and gentlemen, very much to the
delight of Essex and his jovial crew, but very much, as
Lady Ann conceives, to the peril of her son's soul. The
good mother cannot put old heads on young necks, say
what she will. " I am sorry," she writes to her easy
elder-born, " your brother and you charge yourselves
with superfluous horses ; the wise will laugh at you ;
being but trouble to you both ; besides your debts, long
journeys, and private persons. Earls be earls." There
is the rub. Lady Ann knows, and does not love, these
madcap earls.
By help of Cecil, and the Vice-Chamberlain, Eulke
Greville, Bacon succeeds so far as to get the nomination of
Solicitor put off. For more than a year the situation
undergoes no change.
THE ROMAN LEAGUE. 59
14. The Queen is full of care ; the tug and tempest of III. 14.
her reign being close at hand. The league of Pope and
King, baffled by the swift scene at Fotheringay, broken by
the loss of the Invincible Armada and the victories of
Henri Quatre, has again been formed. Plans for seizing-
Guernsey and Jersey, arming the Ulster insurgents,
throwing troops into Wales, and rousing a London mob,
have been warmly debated in Madrid. Medina Coeli
commands a mighty force at Cadiz. Philip at Madrid,
Cardinal Archduke Albrecht at Brussels, are counting,
pensioning, directing the English exiles, men amongst
whom Wright and Winter, Stanley and Tresham, enjoy
conspicuous favour. Father Parsons, Father Creswell,
and Father Holt, the most bigoted and brazen of the
English Jesuits, busy themselves among the needy and
fanatical desperadoes of foreign courts and camps, every-
where vilifying the land which has cast them out, and
whetting against their Queen the assassin's knife. Nor
do they toil in vain. Two military ruffians, Captain
Eichard Williams and Captain Edward Yorke, offering
to become the Clements — the Kavaillacs — of a more
atrocious crime, cross the sea, and when taken, knife
in hand, and flung into the Tower, confess that they
have come into England commissioned by their spiritual
and military chiefs for murder. They implicate by name
Sir William Stanley and Father Holt.
15. Bacon is sick of heart ; looks wan and thin, as all June 3.
the world takes note. The heady Earl has proved to him
14. J. Cecil to Sir R. Cecil, Mar. 1594, S. P. O. ; Examination of Capt.
Edward Yorke, Aug. 12, 1594, S. P. O. ; Declaration of Henry Yonge,
Aug. 12, 1594, S. P. O. ; Confession of Richard Williams, Aug. 27, 1594,
S. P. O. ; Catalogue of Rebels and Fugitives receiving Pensions from Spain,
Sept. 1594, S. P. O. ; Council Reg., Oct. 29, 1594.
15. Lambeth MSS. 651, fol. 144. Patent Rolls 38 Eliz. par. vi. 25.
60 FKANCIS BACON.
III. 15. a fatal friend. Lady Ann pours on her son these counsels
and consolations.
1595.
June 3.
Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon.
June 3, 1595.
I am sorry your brother with inward secret grief
hindereth his health. Everybody saith he looketh thin
and pale. Let him look to God and confer with Him in
godly exercise of hearing and reading, and continue to be
noted to take care. I had rather ye both, with God's
blessed favour, had very good healths, and were well out
of debt, than any office. Yet though the earl showed
great affection, he marred all with violent courses.
I pray God increase His fear in his heart and a hatred
of sin ; indeed, halting before the Lord and backsliding
are very pernicious. I am heartily sorry to hear how he
[the Earl of Essex] sweareth and gameth unreasonably.
God cannot like it.
I pray show your brother this letter, but to no creature
else. Eemember me and yourself.
Your mother,
A. B.
If the Queen hangs back, and if Burghley hesitates, it is
not from dislike or distrust to Bacon ; but simply because
so grave a nomination as a successor to Coke ought not
to be made as a bounty or a submission to the Earl. The
more they feel that such a post can never be filled in such
a way, the more they strive to let the world see that the
advocate, not the candidate, is in fault.
July 14. At the express suggestion of Burghley and Fortescue, the
Queen appoints Bacon one of her Counsel Learned in the
1595.
July 14.
GRANT FROM THE CROWN. 61
Law, and confers on him, at a nominal rent, a good estate. HI. 1 5
This grant comprises sixty acres, more or less of wood, in
the forest of Zelwood in the county of Somerset, known as
the Pitts ; which Bacon receives from the Crown on a rent
of seven pounds ten shillings a-year, payable at the feasts
of St. Michael the Archangel, and of the Annunciation of
the Virgin.
16. If Elizabeth pauses in her choice of a Solicitor- Aug. 7.
General, her servants see that Bacon's hopes are for the
moment dead. Lady Ann hears this bad news at Gor-
hambury, and writes to console her sons.
Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon.
Aug. 7, 1595.
If Her Majesty have resolved upon the negative for
your brother, as I hear, truly, save for the brust a little, I
am glad of it. God in His time hath better in store I
trust. For considering his kind of health and what cumber
pertains to that office, it is best for him I hope. Let us
all pray the Lord we make us to profit by His fatherly
correction ; doubtless it is His hand, and all for the best,
and love to His children that will seek Him first, and
depend upon His goodness. Godly and wisely love ye,
like brethren, whatsoever happen, and be of good courage
in the Lord, with good hope.
A. B. -
And how does Bacon bear this prospect of defeat?
Merrily, it seems. There is a glimpse of him in his
mother's notes to Anthony : — " With a humble heart before
God, let your brother be of good cheer. Alas ! what excess
16. Lambeth MSS. 651, fol. 211.
62 FRANCIS BACON.
III. 16. of bucks at Gray's Inn ! And to feast it on the Sabbath !
— God forgive and have mercy upon England ! "
loy o.
| Sept. 17. A fleet has gone from Plymouth under Drake. A
fleet more terrible to the Don is arming under Ealeigh.
Drake is a marauder, Ealeigh a statesman. If he can
burn Nombre di Dios and spoil the carracks of Margarita,
Drake will be at peace. Ealeigh, fresh from his romantic
voyage to the Amazon, flushed with the hope of conquest
and discovery, is bent on founding States.
Bacon, who sees in Ealeigh, not alone the nimble wit,
the proud courtier, the dashing seaman, but the leader of
vast horizon, of philosophic thought, would like to keep
Essex on easy terms with him ; the two men holding, as
far as might be, a common course in politics and in war.
Their loves and hates are much the same. Each longs for
war ; a war of books and laws against Eome, a war of pikes
and culverins against Spain. Each in his own person
represents the youth and genius of the time : Essex that
of the nobles, Ealeigh of the gentry. Each of the two
seems to Bacon needful to the other and to the common
cause: the Queen's kinsman to uphold it against timid
counsels at court, the founder of Virginia to maintain
it against Philip's admirals on the Spanish Main. A
frank and loyal union of these two men would give
England the free use of all her arms; in the long run
it would save them both from the block. With tongue
and pen Bacon labours to make peace between them.
He seeks to push the new expedition. In spite of
Ealeigh's pride, which often mars his work, he repeats to
Essex that Ealeigh will be his stanchest and safest friend.
17. Elizabeth to Ealeigh, Nov. 1595, S. P. O. ; Notes of the Supple-
mental part of the Entertainment given at York House, Nov. 17, 1595,
S. P. O.
1595.
Sept.
MASQUE AT YOEK HOUSE. 63
Essex is preparing to receive the Queen at York House HI. 17.
in the Strand with a grand entertainment and a sumptuous
masque ; for which masque Bacon is composing characters
and words. The play being given in Essex's name,
here are the means for a striking and conspicuous com-
pliment to Raleigh. Bacon frames a scene in happy
allusion to the regions of the Amazon and to Raleigh's
voyage.
18. Essex has not the grace to let it stand. The glory Nov.
of Raleigh breaks his rest, for he himself aspires to be all
that Raleigh is — renowned in war even more than in letters
and in courts. He strikes his pen through Bacon's lines,
which drop from the acted scene and from the printed
masque. A contemporary copy of this suppressed part
remains in the State Paper Office : a proof how much,
five years before the Earl rushes into high treason, Bacon
leans to the side of her Majesty's Captain of the Guard.
The opportunity thrown away by Essex, Burghley and
Cecil hug to their hearts. They give, not only their
countenance to Raleigh, but their money to the Guiana
voyage ; Burghley contributing five hundred pounds, Cecil
a new ship, the hull of which alone costs him eight
hundred pounds.
19. The Earl's want of tact and temper is more hurt- Nov. 5,
ful to his friends than to his foes. He does Raleigh no 1595.
great harm ; he causes Bacon the most grievous loss.
Give me this place of the Solicitor — he drums and drums
at the Queen's ear. She says her law officers should be
chosen by herself, and for their good parts, not to please
18. Entertainment given to the Queen at York House, Nov. 17, 1595 ;
Sydney Papers, i. 377.
19. Warrant Book, Nov. 5, 1595.
64
FRANCIS BACON.
III. 19.
1595.
Nov.
the fancy or make good the pledges of a carpet knight.
She will not do a right thing for a bad reason or in a
wrong way. Her courts are crowded with able men. She
is old enongh to choose a servant for herself. As Essex
grows hot, she cools : when he storms upon her and will
not be denied, she turns from the spoiled boy, her nomi-
nation made. Bacon must wait ; Fleming shall be her
man.
20, Lord Campbell says, as writers have said from
the days of Bushel, that the Earl atoned to Bacon for his
failure by a gift of Twickenham Park. It happens,
however, that Twickenham Park was not, and never had
been, the Earl's to give. That lovely seat, which blooms
by the Thames, close under Bichmoncl Bridge, fronting
the old palace, and some of the elms of which stand,
venerable and green, in the days of Victoria, belonged
to the Bacons. In 1574, while Essex was a boy at
Chartley, Twickenham Park, together with More Mead
and Ferry Mead, the adjoining lands, was granted by
the Queen to Edward Bacon on lease. The lease is
enrolled, and a copy of it may be read in one of the
appendices of this book. Francis lived in the house,
as his letters prove, long before Fleming's patent of
Solicitor passed the Seal. It had all the points of
a good country house; a green landscape, wood and
water, pure air, a dry soil, vicinity to the court and to
the town. From his windows he could peer into the
Queen's alleys ; in an hour he could trot up to Whitehall
or Gray's Inn. Every plant that thrives, every flower that
blows, in the south of England, loves the Twickenham soil.
There were cedars in the great park, swans on the river,
20. Rolls, Mar. 3, 16 Eliz., Record Office.
ESSEX'S GIFT OF LAND. 65
singing-birds in the copse ; every sight to engage the eye, III. 20.
every sound to please the ear. —
He loved the house, and lived in it when he could steal 1595.
away from Gray's Inn. It was his house of letters and ov "
philosophy, as the lodging in Gray's Inn Square was his
house of politics and law. In fact, when the Earl ferried
over from Eichmond Palace, he leapt from his barge on to
Bacon's lawn.
21. Unable to pay his debt by a public office, Essex
feels that he ought to pay it in money or in money's worth.
The lawyer has done his work, must be told his fee. But
the Earl has no funds. His debts, his amours, his camp
of servants eat him up. He will pay in a patch of land.
To this Bacon objects : not that he need scruple at taking
wages ; not that the mode of payment is unusual ; not
that the price is beyond his claim. Four years have been
spent in the Earl's service. To pay in land is the fashion
of a time when gold is scarce and soil is cheap. Nor is
the patch too large ; at most it may be worth 12001. or
15001. After Bacon's improvements and the rise of rents,
he sells it to Beynold Nicholas for 1800?. It is less than
the third of a year's income from the Solicitor-General's
place. Bacon's doubts have a deeper source. Knowing
the Earl's fiery temper, and sharing in some degree his
mother's fears, he shrinks from incurring feudal obligations
to one so vain and weak. Hurt by his hesitation, Essex
pouts and sulks ; being, as he truly says, the sole cause of
this loss of place, he will die of vexation if he be not
allowed in some small measure to repair it. Bacon
21. Sir Francis Bacon, his Apologie in certain imputations concerning
the late Earl of Essex, written to his very good Lord the Earl of Devon-
shire, 1604, 13, 16.
1595.
Nov.
66 FRANCIS BACON.
III. 21. submits. Yet even in taking the strip of ground, he betrays
the uneasy sentiment lurking in his heart. " My Lord,"
he says, " I see I must be your homager and hold land of
your gift ; but do you know the manner of doing homage
in law? Always it is with saving of his faith to the
King."
22. What says the Queen ? Writers who laud the gene-
rosity of a man to whom Bacon owed loss of character and
loss of place, denounce the stinginess of a woman to whose
noble and unfailing friendship he owed almost everything
which he possessed on earth. These scribes are hard to
please : they treat Bacon as a rogue whom it is the duty
of honest men to scourge; yet decry the Queen for
laying on the lash. What would they have ? If Bacon
were the rascal they have made him, surely the Queen
would have done well in starving his powers of mis-
chief ! Their reasoning is faulty as their facts. Inquiry at
the Rolls Office would have shown them that, even
while she was naming Fleming for her Solicitor-General,
Elizabeth was Francis Bacon's most warm and munificent
friend.
She long ago gave him a reversion of the Registry of
the Star Chamber ; a post, when he should get it, worth
1600Z. a year. As he could no more spare his jest than
Tully, he said it was like having another man's land near
his house : it improved his prospect, but did not fill his
barn. With woeful lack of humour, Bawley mistook this
truly Baconian laughter for a groan ; and the poor chaplain's
petulant wail misled Montagu into dreaming, contrary to
all the evidence of Bolls and grants, that Elizabeth put the
22. Montagu, xvi., part i. 27.
1595.
Nov.
THE QUEEN'S GRANTS. 67
yoke on Bacon's neck. This blunder of Kawley drove Mon- HI. 22.
tagu to the drollest shifts. Knowing how Bacon cherished
her fame in his heart of hearts, how was the biographer to
reconcile this fable of her stinginess to him with the fact
of his undying gratitude to her ? He hit on the queerest
explanation. Does a father who loves his son spare the
rod ? Are not pangs and stripes good for the soul ? Yes,
the great Queen must have understood the great man;
in mercy to the world, she crossed him at the bar and
starved him at the court ! Macaulay rent and tossed this
amazing theory ; but neither he nor Lord Campbell ever
paused to ask if it were true that Elizabeth left him to
starve.
23. The reversion of the Star Chamber, the grant of
Zelwood Forest, the post of her Counsel learned in the Law,
are but a foretaste of her love. Edward Bacon's lease of
Twickenham Park has just expired ; that lovely home by
the water edge will be his no more. The house has an
importance beyond the beauty of its site; a merit rarer
than the green mead, the leafy wood, the rushing stream,
the whitening swans ; it stands all day in the sovereign's
sight. To live in such a place is to be a daily guest in her
Majesty's mind. The house is good, the park spacious;
within the pales are eighty-seven acres of lawn and pas-
ture, lake and orchard ; beyond the pales five or six acres
of mead and field. It is a home for a prince.
Fourteen years ago the park had been leased to Milo
Dodding for thirty years, commencing from the expiration
of Edward Bacon's term ; but on passing to Fleming the
patent of his place, the gracious Queen makes over to
23. Rot. 38 Eliz., pars vi. 20, Record Office.
F 2
68 FRANCIS BACON.
III. 23. Francis Bacon a reversion of this lease. On the fifth
of November Fleming gets his commission as Solicitor-
G-eneral ; on the seventeenth of November, the day of his
masque at York House, of his proposed compliment to the
Guiana voyage, Bacon's grant of the reversion of Twicken-
ham Park passes under the Privy Seal.
1595.
Nov. 17.
EMPLOYED IN THE QUEEN'S SERVICE. 69
CHAPTEE IV.
TREASON OF SIR JOHN SMYTH.
1. The Queen not only endows Bacon with lands, and with IV. 1.
the reversion of lands and offices, but employs him in —
her legal and political affairs; often in business which
would seem to belong exclusively to the department of ^'
Fleming or of Coke. As her Counsel learned in the Law,
he is engaged in the prosecution of William Kandal. He
is consulted in the more momentous charge against Sir
John Smyth, who stands accused of no less a crime than
that of an attempt, under circumstances of peculiar guilt, j
to provoke a military mutiny and insurrection against the )
Queen.
2. In the spring of 1596 an expedition, meant to an-
ticipate the Eoman league, has been arming in the
Thames. Its destination is unknown, though the few
suspect that a blow will fall on the most prosperous and beau-
tiful of Spanish ports. Kaleigh is still at home ; Keymish
having gone with his fleet of ships to the mouths of the
Amazon. Vere and Effingham are drilling troops. Essex
— martial, if not military — is pouting for command. An-
thony and Francis Bacon busy themselves in collecting-
news for the Queen from foreign spies and foreign Gazettes.
While the Earl of Essex lies at Plymouth, waiting for
1. Egerton, Fleming, and Bacon to the Council, May 3, 1596, S. P. O. ;
Lucas to the Council, June 23, 1596, S. P. O.
2. Lambeth MSS. 657, fol. 29, 30.
70 FEANCIS BACON.
IV. 2. Kaleigh and the rear-guard of his fleet to come round,
— Francis writes to his brother : —
1596.
Francis Bacon to Anthony Bacon.
My very good Brother, May 15, 1596.
I have remembered your salutation to Sir John
Fortescue, and delivered him the Gazette, desiring him to
reserve it to read in his barge. He acknowledgeth it to
be of another sort than the common. I delivered him
account so much of E. Hawkins' letter as contained ad-
vertisements copied out; which is the reason I return the
letter to you now ; the Gazette being gone with him to
the court.
The next words consecutive I have not acquainted him
with, nor any of them. The body is for more apt time.
So, in haste, I wish you comfort as I write.
Your entire loving brother,
Fr. Bacon.
Fourteen days later, the fleet now riding in Plymouth
Sound, he writes again. Anthony, tiring of the Earl's
unprofitable service, wishes to be sent abroad as agent or
ambassador : a post for which he is eminently fit. To his
suit for such a place Francis refers : —
Francis Bacon to Anthony Bacon.
GOOD BROTHER, From the Court, May 31st, 1596.
Yesternight Sir John Fortescue told me you had
not many hours before imparted to the Queen your adver-
tisement, and the Gazettes likewise, which the Queen
desired Mr. H. Stanhope to read all over unto her ; and her
Majesty commandeth they be not made vulgar. The ad-
LETTER TO HIS BROTHER ANTHONY. 71
vertisement her Majesty made estimation of, as concurring IV. 2.
with the other advertisements, and belike concurring also —
with her opinion of the affairs. So he willed me to 15yb -
return to you the Queen's speeches. Other particulars of a ^
any speech from her Majesty of yourself he did not repeat
to me. For my Lord of Essex and the Lord-Treasurer, he
said he was ready and disposed to do his best. But I
seemed to make it only a love-suit, and passed presently
from it, the rather because it was late in the night, and I
was to deal with him on some better occasion after another
manner, as you shall hereafter understand from me. I do
find in the speech of some ladies, and the very fairest of
this court, some additions of reputation as methinks to be
both ; and I doubt not but God hath an operation (?) in it
that will not suffer good endeavours to perish. The Queen
saluted me to-day as she went to supper. I had long
speech with Sir Robert Cecil this morning, who seemed apt
to discourse with me. Yet of your hest not a word (?)
This I write to you in haste, aliud ex alio. I pray you, in
the course of acquainting my Lord, say, where presseth, at
first by me, after from yourself, I am more and more
bound to him. Thus, wishing you good health, I commend
you to God's happiness.
Your entire loving brother,
Fk. Bacon.
3. Against the Queen's sounder sense, Essex gets com-
mand of the land forces told off for a dash at Cadiz. On
the eve of sailing, conscious that, though he may have
meant the best, he has done for Bacon the worst that man
could do, he writes in kindly but superfluous words to
3. Lambeth MSS. 657, 90.
72 FRANCIS BACON.
IV. 3. recommend him to the care of his oldest and sagest friend.
1596.
May.
— Thus, in generous helplessness, he writes to Egerton :•
1596.
Essex to Loed Keeper Egerton.
My VEKY GOOD LOED, May 27, 1596.
I do understand by my good friend Mr. F, B.
how much he is bound to your lordship for your favour.
I do send your lordship my best thanks, and do protest
unto you there is no gentleman in England of whose
good fortune I have been more desirous. I do still retain
the same mind ; but, because my intercession hath rather
hurt him than done him good, I dare not move the
Queen for him. To your lordship I earnestly commend
the care I have of his advancement ; for his parts were
never destined to a private and (if I may so speak) an idle
life. That life I call idle that is not spent in public
business ; for otherwise he will ever give himself worthy
tasks. Your lordship, in performing what I desire, will
oblige us both, and within very short time see such fruit
of your own work as wdll please you well. So, com-
mending your lordship to God's best protection, I rest, at
your lordship's commandment,
Essex.
June. 4. At length they are gone ; Effingham, Ealeigh, Vere,
Montjoy, all the great fighting men, on board ; leaving
England for the moment bare of fleets or troops.. Twelve
days have worn since the ships weighed anchor in Plymouth
Sound, and not one word of news has come to shore. They
may be hundreds of fathoms deep in the Bay of Biscay,
4. Gilbert to Ealeigh, Mar. 16, 1596, S. P. O. ; Gorges to Burghley,
April 12, 1596, S. P. O. ; Proclamation by the Earl of Essex, April 14,
1596, S. P. O. ; Queen Elizabeth to Cobham, June 7, 1596, S. P. O. ;
Council Reg,, June 1 to August 7, 1596.
1596.
June.
DEFENSIVE PREPARATIONS. 73
or lie crushed and strewn under Lisbon rock. Should they IV. 4,
have perished as the Invincible Armada perished ! It is
known that the Twelve Apostles, gigantic Andalusian
war-ships, float in Cadiz bay ; that a fleet of transports
rides at the Groyne ; that a Spanish army of horse and
foot crouches behind the heights of San Sebastian and the
walls of Bilboa ; that a body of victorious troops, flushed
with the assault of Calais, occupies the dunes which look
on Dover cliffs. It is felt that a storm, a repulse, even a
dead calm, may give the signal for a swarm of Pandours
and Walloons to burst into Kent.
Some, in this day of dark suspense, dispute the policy
of having sent the fleet on such a cruise — many blame the
ambition which pulls the weaver from his loom, the hind
from his plough. Every one has to submit to loss of
money or loss of time. The train-bands garrison the city
and protect the Court. Lord Cobham holds the Cinque
Ports. Sir Thomas Lucas puts the men of Colchester
under drill. The bombardiers of Dover, Plymouth, and
Milford Haven stand to their guns. Musters for defence
gather even in the midland and northern shires ; where, at
a call from the Privy Council, yeomen snatch down their
bills and pikes, often rusty and out of date, bills which had
been swung in Bosworth field, bows which had been drawn
at Agincourt. On every village green, and under every
market-cross, drums beat and tabors sound the local force
to arms.
5. Now is the time for friends of Kome to strike. Where June 1 2.
there is much to bear, a man of weak understanding will
5. Elizabeth's Letters Patent to raise troops in Kent, Sussex, Middlesex,
and Surrey, for relief of Calais, April 1596, S. P. O. ; Smyth to Cecil,
Mar. 14, 1600, S. P. O. ; Discourse of the Providence necessary to be had
for the setting up of the Catholic Faith, Aug. 1600, S. P. O.
1596.
June 12
74 FKANCIS BACON.
IV. 5. infer that, despite ambition and pride of race, there must
be fires of discontent ready to flare out. When dis-
content is armed, it may be led to abuse its strength ; so
at least reasons the rich country gentleman, Sir John
Smyth.
Smyth is a Koman Catholic, owner of Baddow and Cog-
geshall, in Essex ; a friend of the great Seymour family ; an
ally of Catherine de' Medici ; a correspondent of the foreign
Jesuits and priests. His life has been one long plot. In
the war now booming, all his love lies beyond the sea.
The doctrine taught by Parsons and Bellarmino, that a
good Boman Catholic must fight and pray for his Church,
even against his native sovereign and his native land, is an
active portion of his creed. Others may wish to maim the
government, may pray for storms to whelm or cannon to
crush the English fleet ; Smyth, alone, is fool enough to
risk his neck by active measures in support of the allies
of his Church. The fighting men gone, he beholds the
Queen, the lords of her Council, all the peers of her
realm, at the mercy, as he thinks, of an armed, uncertain
mob. A march on London, a fight under the windows of
Whitehall, may cause the fleets to hie back to Plymouth,
or the Spaniards to cross the Straits.
Cries are never wanting to a traitor. There is the old,
old feud of poor against rich ; the old, old aversion of local
troops to serve the Crown in its foreign wars. Unhappily
both these feuds are now malignant : that between rich
and poor being embittered by the recent conversion of a
vast extent of plough-land into pasture, by the destruction
of a great number of cottages and holdings, and by the
increase of sheep-walks and of parks for the preservation
of red and fallow deer ; that between the local troops and
the Crown, by reports that the musters have been forced
June 12.
SMYTH'S TKEASON. 75
to go on board the fleet, and that soldiers raised in the IV. 5.
metropolitan shires have been sent by the Government —
into France. 1596 '
The decay of tillage, the increase of sheep and deer,
are for the yeoman class, and for the country of which they
are the thew and sinew, dark events. The yeomen kick
against the goad ; for, not being skilled in science, they
cannot see that they are driven from their farms by the
operations of a natural law. If they have ever heard that,
as wool pays better than rent, their landlords prefer sheep
to men, the news has not reconciled them to the conver-
sion of their old farms into sheep-walks or deer-parks.
Smyth, as a country gentleman, sees this sore, and fancies
he may turn the discontent against the Queen.
6. Like his neighbours, Smyth hands down from his walls
the rusty arms, calling in Frost of Colchester to edge his
swords and string his bows. Thomas Seymour, one of those
weak descendants of Mary Brandon whose blood is too red
for their sovereign's comfort, or their own, joins him in
his freak. With an army of two mounted followers,
Smyth and Seymour ride into the field at Colchester in
which Sir Thomas Lucas, fiercely loyal, drills his troop.
Eeining their steeds in front of the yeoman line, Sir
John cries, Who will go with me? There are traitors
round the Queen who grind the poor into bondmen ;
who send them out of the realm ; who break the laws ; who
weaken the country, who ruin the yeomen. These traitors
have killed nine thousand foot in their foreign wars, and
they will send you out of England to be slain.
6. Examination of John Lucas and others, June 12, 1596, S. P. O. ;
Examination of Frost, June 22, 1596, S. P. O. ; Smyth to Mannocke, June
13, 1596, S. P. O.
1596.
June 12
76 FRANCIS BACON.
IV. 6, " Shall we go with you, Sir John ? " asks a trooper.
" You shall go with a better man than me — than Sir
Thomas Lucas/' shouts Smyth. " Here is a noble man of
the blood royal, brother to Lord Beauchamp ; he shall be
your captain. I myself shall be his assistant. Down
with Burghley ! Who goes with me, hold up his hand."
Not one*. No hand, no cry is raised. Treason that
stops is lost ; and whoever is not with the traitor is against
him. Meshed in a fearful crime, the four horsemen prick
from the field, part in the slob, and hide themselves from
pursuit in the sands of the sea-shore. Smyth seeks a boat
for France ; but the summer morning dawns on him stag-
gering, faint and hopeless on the coast ; when, crazed
with fear, he skulks home to Baddow, where he vainly
hopes to hide his face from the local magistrates, now
hurrying on his track.
June 19. 7. Sent up to London, lodged in the Tower, Smyth con-
fesses his crime. Coke and Fleming receive orders from
the Privy Council to call in Bacon and Waad, a clerk of
the Council, and then to take the evidence, look up the
law, and, if they find the offence treason, prepare articles
of indictment against Smyth. These four commissioners
meet, find the acts at Colchester treason, and report that
the offence is punishable by a special statute.
Bacon, not content, like the Attorney-General and
Solicitor-General, with setting the law in motion to hang
this wretched man, asks himself how a country knight, not
wholly crazed, could ever have dreamt that, on a cry of
" Down with sheep and deer," honest men could be
7. Smyth to the Council, June 19, 1596, S. P. O. ; Council to Coke,
Fleming, Waad, and Bacon, June 27, 1596, S. P. O. ; Smyth's Examina-
tion, June 28, 1596, S. P. O. ; Abstract of Evidence against Sir John
Smyth, July 1596, S. P. O.
NEWS OF A GREAT VICTORY. 77
roused to mutiny against their Queen. To a philosophic IV. 7.
mind the reason of a thing is often of larger interest —
than the thing itself. Is there discontent among the yeo- 1596.
men? If so, is there cause? He makes a wide and ne
sweeping study of this question of Pasturage versus Tillage,
of Deer versus Men, which convinces him of the cruelty
and peril of depopulating hamlets for the benefit of a few
great lords. This study will produce when Parliament
meets again a memorable debate and an extraordinary
change of law.
8. While Coke and Bacon wind out of Smyth's confes- July 16,
sions the threads of his interrupted treason, comes in, wave
on wave, the news of such a victory as only twice or thrice
in a thousand years has stirred our English phlegm. It
comes in first by a Dutch skipper, who puts three men on
the Devonshire coast. The tale they tell is beyond belief :
the city of Cadiz taken, an armada sunk, Porto Santa
Maria wrapt in flame, the Duke of Medina Coeli driven
from his lines, the road from San Lucar to Seville blocked
up with the fugitive population of a great province hurrying
for their lives. Some nine days pass when a Scotch boat
drops into Dartmouth with the same news. A few hours
later still the van of the victorious fleet rides into Ply-
mouth Sound, laden with such spoil, such heaps of plate,
gold, jewels, damasks, silks, hangings, carpets, scarfs, as
living Englishmen have only seen in dreams. To hear
that the fleet was safe would have been joy enough ; this
fiery triumph of our arms, this glow of spoil and conquest,
all but drive men mad.
8. Carey to Cecil, July 16, 1596, S. P. O. ; Report from Cadiz, July 16,
19, 21, 1596, S. P. O. .; Report of the Spoil taken at Cadiz, Aug. 11, 1596,
S. P. O.
1596.
Sept,
78 FBANCIS BACON.
IV. 9. 9. Most mad of all is Essex. The glory obtained by
Raleigh and Effingham chafes his pride ; the elevation
of Cecil in his absence into First Secretary of State dis-
turbs his power. If much remains to him, much is not
enough. A warrior who has pushed through the Puerta de
la Tierra, and seen the loveliest city in the west of Europe
at his feet, should be suffered, he thinks, to enjoy a mono-
poly of power and fame. Yet a senseless country shares
the credit with his rivals, while a forgetful Queen has given
the most active place in her government to his foe. On
every side he is robbed of his due : getting neither his fair
part of the spoil, nor anything like his fair part of the
reputation. So he sulks and pouts ; prints his own account
of the voyage ; finds fault with the generals and admirals ;
tells the sailors of the fleet and the soldiers in the camp
that their success would have been far more prompt, their
prizes far more abundant, had his command of them been
unfettered by such a council of fools and cowards.
But Cecil's rise at home provokes him more than
Ealeigh's success abroad. This case is a repetition of
Bacon's case. Sir Thomas Bodley, that experienced scholar
and diplomatist to whose wealth and taste we owe the
princely library at Oxford, has, like Bacon, been of use to
the Earl. Essex, who pays his debts in offices and grants,
has pledged his word that Bodley shall be Secretary of
State. The Queen has not kept her kinsman's pledge.
On his return from Spain, perceiving that he was
sent away from London to give Cecil an open field, he
begins to sulk and storm. He will not stay at court to
be mocked. He will bury his grief at Wanstead, or rush
9. Lambetli MSS. 658, fol. 21 ; Censures of the Omissions in the Expedi-
tion to Cadiz, 1596 ; Camden's Ann. Eliz., 1596 ; Bacon's Apologie, 19,
20 ; Devereux, i. 380.
1596.
CECIL'S ELEVATION. 79
away to the war, and find peace of heart on the Spanish IV. 9.
pikes !
Lady Ann's quick ear and loving eye perceive the change
that Cecil's elevation, the Earl's discomfiture, must work
at court. Now that her sister's son, who so bitterly hates
the Earl and so sharply resents the connexion of any of
his own able kin with the insolent and brainless peer, has
come to his height of power, she writes to warn Anthony
of the evil days in store for them, now Cecil is greater than
before, and of the need for her sons to walk with wary step.
It is the last letter from her pen, closing, as a good woman's
letters should do, with words of love.
Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon.
July 10, 1596.
Now that Sir Eobert is fully stalled in his long
longed-for secretary's place, I pray God give him a reli-
gious, wise, and an upright heart before God and man. I
promise you, son, in my conjectural opinion, you had more
need now to be more circumspect and advised in your
troublous discoursings and doings and dealings in your
accustomed matter, either with or for yourself or others,
whom you heartily honour, nor without cause. He now
hath great advantage and strength to intercept, prevent,
and to say where he hath been or is in. Son, be it revela-
tion or suspicion, you know what terms he standeth in
towards yourself, and would needs have me tell you so ;
so very vehement he was. Then you are said to be wise,
and to my comfort I willingly think so ; but surely, son,
on the other side, for want of some experience by action
and your tedious unacquaintance of your own country by
continual chamber and bed-keeping, you must need miss
of considerate judgment in your verbal only travailing.
1596.
80 FRANCIS BACON.
IV. 9. If all were scant sound before betwixt the Tiaj; X [Earl of
Essex] and him, friends had need to walk more warily in
his days ; for all affectionate doing he may hurt though
pretending good. The father and son are joined in power
and policy. The Lord ever bless you in Christ. Still I
hearken for Yates; I doubt somebody hindereth his
coming to me. It were small matter to come speak with
me. You know what you have to do in regard touching
the Spaniard. I reck not his displeasure ; God grant he
mar not all at last with Spanish popish subtlety. Alas !
what I wrote touching the poor sum of five pounds to your
brother [Francis], I meant but to let you know plainly.
I would rather nourish than any little way weaken true
brotherly love, as appeareth manifestly to you both. God
forbid but that you should always love heartily, mutually,
and kindly. God commandeth love as brethren, besides
bond of nature. This present time I am brewing but
for hasty and home drinking. In truth, if I should pur-
posely make a tierce somewhat strong for you, I know not
how to have it carried through. It were pity that you
and I both should be disappointed. Burn, burn, in any
wise.
From your mother,
A. B.
Bacon warns the Earl against hasty speeches and
offensive acts. Essex swears the rough way is the only
way with Elizabeth. She may be driven, not led. " My
lord," says Bacon, "these courses are like hot waters;
they may help at a pang, but they will not do for daily
use." Essex seems crazed. Bacon seeks to dissuade him
from this lust of arms ; his proper weapon being a cham-
berlain's stick. In happy phrase he . tells him that this
PROPOSES TO ELIZABETH HATTON. 81
haughty bearing to the Queen, this craving for command IV. 9
in camps, may prove to him the two wings of Icarus —
wings joined on with wax ; wings which may melt as he
soars to the sun.
1596.
Sept.
10. Essex cools to a man whose talk is so very much 1597.
wiser than he wants to hear. They have no scene, June,
no quarrel, no parting ; for there are no sympathies to
wrench, no friendships to dissolve. Essex ceases to seek
advice at Gray's Inn. They now rarely see each other.
Bacon is writing his Essays, fagging at the bar, slipping
into love ; and Essex is still happy to serve him, when he
can do it at anybody's cost but his own.
Francis falls into love. Lord Campbell thinks he only
falls into debt. " He was desperately poor ; he therefore
made a bold attempt to restore his position by matri-
mony." This is surely in Bantam's vein. " When one
doesn't know," asks the cockfighter, " is not it natural to
think the worst ? " The lady that Bacon courts is rich and
of his kin. Elizabeth Hatton, a granddaughter of his
uncle Burghley, niece of his cousin Cecil, has been left a
widow, young, lovely, powerful in her friends and in her
fine estate. The mistress of Hatton House, of Corffe
Castle, of Purbeck Isle, a woman whose lovely hand is
celebrated in Jonson's verse —
" Mistress of a finer table
Hath not history or fable," —
has, of course, crowds of adorers at her feet : among them
men no less renowned than William Earl of Pembroke and
Francis Bacon. The lady, or her kinsman for her, puts
aside their suits. Cecil looks on his fair niece as a thing
10. Essex to Sir Thomas Cecil, June 24, 1597 ; Bankes's Story of Corffe
Castle, 34.
82 FRANCIS BACON.
IV. 10. to be sold for his own gain. Her youth, her beauty, her
— great inheritance are precious in his sight, and the hus-
lo97 - band for such a woman must be to him a strong defender
ne ' or a useful slave.
Essex, on the point of sailing for the Azores, writes to
Sir Thomas and Lady Cecil, saying, if he had a sister to
give away in marriage, he would gladly give her to his
friend. If this y means more than the cheap generosity of
words, it is most fortunate for Francis that Penelope and
Dorothy, the Earl's two sisters, are already in holy bonds.
It would have been bad enough for him to have won Lady
Hatton ; it would have been awful to have stood in the
Ny shoes of Northumberland or Eich.
Oct. 22. 11. During the Earl's absence at the Azores Effingham is
made an earl : an affront to Essex more galling than the
rejection, on his suit, of the services of Bacon and Bodley ;
for this creation robs him, as he thinks, of the glory of
Cadiz fight, and permits a man whom he loathes to
walk before him in the Queen's train and sit above him in
the House of Peers. When he hears of this grant having
passed the Seal, he quits his command without leave,
hurries up to town, and, finding the thing done, insults the
Queen, spurs to Wanstead House, defying at once the
entreaties of the Council to return, and the advice of his
best friends to submit. A dark and ruinous spirit now
stands by his side. Baleigh screens him from blame in his
great failure at the Azores ; pleading for him with the
Queen in almost passionate terms ; but Kaleigh is the lion
in the way of Blount, his new and most confidential friend.
Under the lead of Sir Christopher Blount, Essex parts from
11. Patent of the Earldom of Nottingham, Oct. 22, 1597, S. P. O. ;
Elizabeth to Essex, Oct. 28, 1597, S. P. O. ; Raleigh to Cecil, July 20,
1597, S. P. O. ; Cecil to Essex, July 26, 1597, S. P. O. ; Devereux, i. 467.
1597.
Oct.
THE COUNTESS OF LEICESTER. 83
his old Protestant and patriotic allies, from Bacon and IV. 11.
Raleigh, from Cecil and Grey, turning his eyes and ears
to the blandishments of loose women and the suggestions
of discontented men ; to such wantons as Elizabeth South-
well and Mary Howard, to such plotters as Robert Catesby
and Christopher Wright. A craze is in his blood and in
his brain. "It comes from his mother," sighs the hurt and
angry Queen.
12. As Lettice Knollys, as Countess of Essex, as Countess
of Leicester, as wife of Sir Christopher Blount, this mother
of the Earl has been a barb in Elizabeth's side for thirty
years. Married as a girl to a noble husband, she gave
up his honour to a seducer, and there is reason to
fear she gave her consent to the taking of his life.
While Devereux lived, she deceived the Queen by a
scandalous amour, and after his death by a clandes-
tine marriage, with the Earl of Leicester. While Dudley
lived, she wallowed in licentious love with Christopher
Blount, Ins groom of the horse. When her second
husband expired in agonies at Cornbury, not a gallop
from the place in which Amy Robsart died, she again
mortified the Queen by a secret union with her seducer
Blount.
Her children riot in the same vices. Essex himself,
with his ring of favourites, is not more profligate than his
sister Lady Rich. In early youth Penelope Rich was
the mistress of Sydney, whose stolen love for her is pic-
tured in his most voluptuous verse. Sydney is Astrophel,
Penelope Stella. Since Sydney's death she has lived in
shameless adultery with Lord Montjoy, though her hus-
12. Papers of Mary Queen of Scots, xvi. 7, 15, 16, 17 : Camden's Ann.
Eliz., 632 ; Craik's Komance of the Peerage, i. 5, 338.
' G 2
1597.
Oct.
84 FRANCIS BACON.
IV. 12. band Lord Kick is still alive. Her sister Dorothy, after
wedding one husband secretly and against the canon, has
now married Percy, the wizard Earl of Northumberland,
whom she leads the life of a dog.
Save in the Suffolk branch of the Howards, it would not
be easy to find out of Italian story a group of women so
detestable as the mother and sisters of the Earl.
13. The third husband of Lady Leicester is her match
in licentiousness, more than her match in crime. By birth
a papist, by profession a bravo and a spy, Blount is inca-
pable either of feeling for his wretched wife the manly love
of Essex, or of treating her with the lordly courtesy of Lei-
cester. Brutal and rapacious, he has married her, not for
her bright eyes, now dim with rheum and vice, but for
her jewels, her connexions, and her lands. He cringed to
Leicester, that he might sell the secrets of his cabinet and
enjoy the pleasures of his bed. With the same blank
conscience, he wrings from the widow her ornaments
and goods. Chain, armlet, necklace, money, land, timber,
everything that is hers, wastes from his prodigal palm.
He beats her servants; he thrusts his kinsfolk upon
her ; he snatches the pearl from her neck, the bond
from her strong box. A villain so black would have
driven a novelist or playwright mad. lago, Overreach,
Barabas — all the vile creatures of poetic imagination,
are to him angels of light. What would have been any
other man's worst vice, is Blount's sole virtue — a ruth-
less and unreasoning constancy to his creed. Fear and
shame are to him the idlest of idle words ; and, just as
he would follow the commands of his general, he obeys
the dictation of his priest. As a libertine and as a spy, his
13. Craik's Kom. Peerage, i. 127, 208.
1597.
Oct.
SIE CHKISTOPHER BLOUNT. 85
days have been spent in dodging the assassin or in cheat- IV. 13.
ing the rope. Waite was sent by Leicester to kill the
villain who had defiled his bed ; Blount repaid the courtesy
by prompting or conniving at Leicester's death. Taught
by Cardinal Alien, deep in the Jesuit plots, he has more
than once put his neck so near the block, that a world
which neither loves nor understands him hugs itself in a
belief that he must have bought his safety from arrest
and condemnation by selling to Walsinghain or Cecil the
blood of better and braver men.
14. This bravo has subdued the imperious Countess of
Leicester to his will. She has been to him an easy, if not
an ignoble prey ; for the profligate woman dotes on her
tyrant ; so that she who could barely stoop to the kiss of
Devereux and Dudley, prides herself on the blessing of
being robbed and cuffed by a wretch without grace, accom-
plishments, or parts. When, for his private gain and the
promotion of his faith, it serves Blount's turn to win over
Essex the same brutal ascendency which he has esta-
blished over Lady Leicester, he feels no pang of heart
in turning her tenderness as a mother into the abomin-
able instrument of his guile. His bold, coarse arts are
soon successful with the giddy youth ; who draws closer
and closer to his mother's husband, puts him into places
of trust near his person, listens to his counsels, makes as-
sociates of his male and female friends, gets him a com-
mand in the army, and gives him a seat in the House of
Commons.
14. Devereux, i. 281 ; Council Beg., Mar. 16, 1G00. The frequent recur-
rence of the Privy Council Kegister in these notes reminds me that I
ought to express, and in the warmest manner, my many obligations to
Henry Keeve, Esq., of the Privy Council Office. I owe to his ready and
unvarying kindness an easy access to the sources of some of the most im-
portant facts in this volume.
«
1597.
Oct.
86 FRANCIS BACON.
IV. 14. Bacon and Blount propose to Essex the two courses
most opposed to each other : Bacon the abandonment of
his military pomp, of his opposition to the Queen, and the
acceptance now and for ever of that great part which Lei-
cester had filled for so many years ; Blount the pursuit of
war and glory, so as to dazzle the multitude, overawe the
Queen, find employments for his companions, and consoli-
date his personal power. Bacon would make him chief of
the Protestant nation, Blount of a discontented and disloyal
Koman Catholic sect. One asks him to be grave, discreet,
and self-denying. The other fires his blood with mad-
dening and dramatic hopes. He cleaves to Blount, who
tempts him with the things for which his restless and evil
nature pants. He begins to toy with treason. He admits
Boman Catholics of sullied reputation and suspected
loyalty into his confidence. He even interferes to protect
from justice the traitor Sir John Smyth.
Oct. 24. 15. At the end of those four years for which Bacon
has compelled the Government to accept of subsidies, the
money being spent, writs for a new parliament go out.
Bacon now stands for Ipswich, the family county town and
the aim of his warmest ambition ; having for his colleague
in the representation Michael Stanhope, a grand-nephew of
Lady Ann. His kinsmen muster strong in Westminster.
Anthony sits for Oxford, Nathaniel for Lynn; Henry
Neville, his sister's son, for Liskeard ; Sir Edward Hoby,
his cousin, for Rochester ; Sir Robert Cecil, also his cousin,
for Herts. Benedict Barnham, of Cheapside, whose pretty
little daughter, Alice, Bacon" will years hence make his
wife, is returned for Yarmouth, having represented Mine-
' 15. Mem. of Stages of Bills in Parliament, Oct. 1597, S. P. O. : Willis,
Not. Pari,, iii. 137, 139, 140, 141, 142 ; D'Ewes, 549 ; Towushend, 102.
1597.
MOTION ON THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY. 87
head in the former Parliament. Kaleigh sits for Dorset- IV. 15.
shire ; and Christopher Yelverton, the Speaker nominate,
for Northants. Sir Christopher Blount, by command from
the Earl of Essex, serves for Stafford shire. In this new '
session the member for Ipswich sits, not, as Lord Camp-
bell writes, a burgess prostrate, penitent, under the royal
ban, anxious by his silence and servility to efface the
recollection of his former speech. No voice is raised so
often or so loud as his. Again he speaks for ample
grants ; again he votes with the reforming squires ; again
he wages battle of privilege against the Privy Coun-
cil and the House of Lords. He serves on the Committee
of Monopolies. He seconds Sir Francis Hastings' motion for
amending the penal laws. But the great contest of this
session, the one that makes it memorable in English his-
tory, is fought on a bill of his own, framed on the treason
of Sir John Smyth, and meant to arrest the decay of
tillage, the perishing of the yeomen population from the
English soil.
16. Yelverton chosen Speaker, Bacon rises with a Nov.
motion on the State of the Country. State of the Country
means to him the relation of the people to the land. The
population lives on the soil. Mining is in its cradle,
though the iron ordnance of Sussex and Arden has been
heard on the Bhine and the Theiss ; manufactures are few
and scant, though the dyed wools of Tiverton and Dunster
have begun to find markets on the Elbe and the Scheldt.
To grow corn, to herd cattle, to brew ale and press cider,
to shear sheep, to fell and carry wood, are the main occu-
pations of every English shire. The farms are small and
16. Summary Articles of the Bill for Maintenance of Husbandry, Oct.
1597, S. P. O. ; D'Ewes, 550-53 ; Bacon's History of the Reign of Henry
VH., Works, vi. 94.
1597.
Nov.
88 FRANCIS BACON.
IV. 16. many ; the farmers neither rich nor poor. The breeder of
kine, the grower of herbs and wheat, is a yeoman bom ; not
too proud to put hand to plough, not too pinched to keep
horse and pike. A link between the noble and the pea-
sant, he is of the very thew and marrow of the state ; a
man to stand at your shoulder in the day of work or in the
day of fight. This sturdy class is dropping the plough for
the weaver's shuttle and the tailor's goose ; the rage for en-
closing woods and commons, for impaling parks, for chang-
ing arable land into pasture, for turning holdings for life
into tenancies at will, having driven thousands of yeomen
from fields and downs which their fathers tilled before the
Conqueror came in. Whole districts have been cleared.
Where homesteads smoked and harvests once waved, there
is now, in many parts, a broad green landscape, peopled by
a shepherd and his dog. Where the maypole sprung, and
the village green crowed with frolic, are now a sheepwalk
or a park of deer.
17. The loss of this martial race, the bowmen of Cressy,
the billmen of Boulogne, is a grievous weakness for the
Crown ; thinning the musters for defence, swelling the ma-
terials for mutinies and plots. Nor has this change escaped
the Jesuits, or those who live to watch and thwart the
Jesuits. A paper of instructions for the Eoman Catholic
priests and gentry, On the means of recovering England
to the Holy See, lays stress on the discontent caused by
these enclosures of commons and village greens. Smyth
used this argument at Colchester. The Catholic peers
have not been slow to increase an evil which their party
17. Discourse of the Providence necessary to be had for the setting up
of the Catholic Faith when God shall call the Queen out of this life, Aug.
1600, S. F. O. ; Dr. James to Burghley, May 26, 1597, S. P. O. ; Stilhnan
to Cecil, Jan. 2, 1600, S. P. G.
1597.
Nov.
INCREASE OF PASTURE. 89
treats as a means of future good to the Church. Dr. IV. 17.
James, the Dean of Durham, has had to warn Burghley
of the consequences • of this waste of tillage and popu-
lation in the two shires of Durham and Northumber-
land ; shires in which two or three Koman Catholic earls
own nearly all the soil. The yeomen have embraced the
national faith, while most of the old nobility cling to the
foreign creed ; and a fanatic like Percy or Seymour may
often find a legal form of persecution in the pretence of
converting his arable land into pasture, or of forming a
new park. But if this rage for enclosure is sometimes
abused into a means of sectarian spite, it is very far from
being confined to the Eoman Catholic lords. From Dur-
ham to Devon the tenants are chased from their farms
that sheep may feed and deer disport. Ire fills and
inflames the yeomen's veins. In every park wall they see
a menace, in every doe the substitute of a man. They
throw down the pales and ensnare the deer. A youth of
Stratford-upon-Avon kills his buck in Charlcote Park.
A crowd from Enfield scours the preserves of Hatfield
Chace. Every spark becomes his own Eobin Hood, and
cheap haunches of venison smoke on the tables of Cheap-
side and Paternoster Bow. To snare deer is, in all the
popular comedies and songs, an heroic protest, not at all a
crime.
18. Unlike the Jesuits and the Jesuitized peers, whose
purpose it may be to thin the fibre and relax the power of
England in the field, Bacon seeks to arrest this evil in its
germ. Placed by his birth between the nobles and the
commons, he shares neither the pride of the superior nor
18. Discourse of Providence necessary to be had for the setting up of
the Catholic Faith, Aug. 1600, S. P. O.
1597.
Nov.
90 FRANCIS BACON.
IV. 18. the envy of the inferior rank. His genius, too, is singu-
larly free from taint of sect or class. He is wholly English.
His glory is to reconcile classes through reform, to
strengthen the Crown by justice. Concord, tolerance, loy-
alty at home ; sway, extension, trade abroad ; these are the
points at which he aims. Not so the Jesuits. They have
begun to despair of aid from Spain ; after the wreck of the
Armada, the sack of Cadiz, they fear lest England may
be found too strong for subjection to Rome by either
foreign guile or foreign steel. They turn their eyes, there-
fore, to the men with sore hearts and brawny arms, and,
taking note of the discontent among the yeomen, begin
to count with confidence on the approaching days of civil
war.
19. Bacon's plan for staying the decline of population is
to convert this new grass-land into arable, to put these
new parks under the plough. A committee of the House
of Commons, named to consider this plan, votes in its
favour, when the House commissions its author to frame
and introduce his bill. He brings in two bills : one for
the Increase of Tillage and Husbandry ; one for the In-
crease of People. These bills provide that no more land
shall be cleared without special reason and a special licence.
They provide that all land turned into pasture since the
Queen's accession, no less a period than forty years, shall
be taken from the deer and sheep within eighteen months,
and restored to the yeoman and the plough.
20. If the Commons pass these bills at once, the Peers
receive them with amazement. Ask the Shrewsburys,
19. Summary Articles of the Bill for Maintenance of Husbandry, Oct.
1597, S. P. O. ; Breviate of a Bill entitled ''An Act for the Increase of
People for the Service and Defence of the Realm,' Dec. 20, 1597, S. P. O.
20. Lords' Jour., ii. 212, 217.
1597.
Nov.
BILL FOR MAINTENANCE OF HUSBANDRY. 91
Worcesters, and Northumberlands to dispark their chaces IV. 20
and restore the plough ! As well ask Kegan for the hun-
dred knights. At once they name a committee of Peers
to oppose the two bills ; which committee calls to its aid
the legal dexterity of Chief Justice Popham and Attorney-
General Coke.
21. Though the foreign enemy is at the gate and every Dec.
true man at his post, Vere in the Low Countries, Raleigh
and Montjoy at Plymouth, Essex still sulks and pouts at
Wanstead. In vain the Lord Treasurer coaxes. In vain
the Earl's friends remonstrate with him on the wickedness
of dividing or distracting his country at such a time. In
vain they beg him to put aside his wrongs, if he has any
wrongs, until the danger of a fresh invasion from Spain,
of a fresh massacre in Ireland, shall have passed away.
The Queen declares herself hurt more by this desertion
than by his failures when at sea. But nothing moves
him until Bacon's patriotic bills come up before the Peers,
when he hastens to town, and, receiving the nomination
of Earl Marshal, takes his seat in the House of Lords.
As he had not been named to the hostile committee, he
begs that his name may be added to the list.
For this committee Coke draws up thirty-one legal ob-
jections to Bacon's bills. Thus armed to contest his logic
and deny his law, the Peers send Black Rod down to
request a conference with the Lower House.
22. Aware of these hostile preparations in the other 1598.
House, the Commons, ere entering into conference, wish Jan.
21. Burghley to Essex, Nov. 9, 19, 30, 1597, S. P. O. ; Remonstrance
with Essex, Nov. 16, 1597, S. P. O. ; Howard, Montjoy, and Raleigh to
the Council, Nov. 9, 1597, S. P. O. ; Hunsdon to Essex, Nov. 1597, S. P. O.
22. Lords' Jour., ii. 217 ; Statutes 39 Elizabethse, c. 1 and 2.
1598.
Jan.
92 FKANCIS BACON.
IY. 22. to have a copy of Coke's thirty-one legal objections to their
bills. The Lords refuse to give it. But Bacon will not
bend ; if the Commons are to meet objections, they
must know what these objections are. No copy, no con-
ference ! After much debate the Peers consent to give
their written answer to the bills when the gentlemen of
the Commons shall come up to confer.
Conference now meets, the burgesses employing Bacon
as their champion, the barons employing Coke. After
day on day of talk, after many proposals and some amend-
ments, Coke gives way, and the worsted Peers accept the
Feb. two bills with some slight modifications of title and clause.
The bills did not pass, says Lord Campbell.
They are in the Statute Book, 39 of Elizabeth, 1
and 2.
Feb. 27. 23. No love for enclosures which thin her hamlets of
their strength prevents the Queen from receiving most gra-
ciously and rewarding most nobly this momentous service
to her crown. Bacon knows her well. A law case having
been referred to some of the judges and counsel, she inquires
his mind on the course she is pursuing. " Madam," says he,
" my mind is known : I am against all enclosures, and espe-
cially against enclosed justice." Only two weeks after sign-
ing her name to his bill for replacing the yeoman on the soil
from which he has been driven, she sets her hand to the
grant of a third estate. This act of her princely grace
confers on Bacon the rectory and church at Cheltenham,
together with the chapel at Charlton Kings, in the lovely
valley nestling under Cleve and Leckhampton hills; a
valley not yet famed for those mineral springs, those shady
walks, those pretty spas and gardens, which in the days of
23. Kesuscitatio. 40 ; Patent Eolls, 40 Elizabethan, Pars iii. 26,
1598.
Feb. 27.
FURTHER GRANT FROM THE QUEEN. 93
Victoria have transformed Lansdowne and Pittville into IV. 23.
suburbs of delight ; yet rich in the voluptuous charms of
nature, blessed with a prodigal fertility of corn and fruit,
of kine and sheep. The rectory, the chapelry, are noble
gifts. With them are granted all the land, houses, mea-
dows, pastures, gardens, rents — all services — all views of
frankpledge, courts leet, fines, heriots, mortuaries, and re-
liefs — all tithes of fruit and grain — all profits, all royalties
— save only the usual crown rights reserved on crown lands,
with a fee to the Archdeacon of Gloucester, and an obliga-
tion to support two priests and two deacons — on the pay-
ment of a nominal rent of seventy-five pounds a year.
94 FEAN01S BACON.
CHAPTER V.
THE IRISH PLOT.
V. 1. 1. Under the eyes of Blount, Essex parts more and more
— from the good cause and from those who love it. His
1598. horses are not now seen in Gray's Inn Square. The
e P ' correspondence with Anthony Bacon drops. The barges
which float to Essex Stairs bring other company than
the Veres and Baleighs, the Cecils, Nottinghams, and
Greys. To sup with bold, bad men ; to listen when he
ought to strike; to waste his manhood on the frail
Southwells and Howards, have become the feverish
habits of his life. Sir Charles Danvers, Sir Charles and
Sir Jocelyn Percy, Sir William Constable, Captain John
Lee — all discontented and disloyal Roman Catholics —
are now his household and familiar friends. The young
apostate Lord Monteagle sits at his board ; though merely,
as is guessed from what comes after, in the shameful
character of Cecil's tool and spy. But in rear of Danvers
and Percy, Constable and Lee, wicked and dangerous as
these men are, lurks a crowd of ruffians at whose side
they seem respectable. Tresham is seen at Essex House.
Catesby sits at the Earl's table. All the slums and jails
of London stir with a new life. As a Privy Councillor,
Essex can send into the prisons and fetch their inmates to
his private house. Light breaks into the cells of Bride-
1. Lodge's Illustrations, ii. 545; Devereux, i. 475; Birch's Memoirs of
Queen Elizabeth, ii. 70 ; Vaughan to Cecil, Jan. 29, 1598, S. P. O. ;
Vaughan to Hesketh, Jan. 29, 1598, S. P. O. ; Council Reg., Mar. 16,
1600.
THE IEISH PLOT. 95
well and the Fleet. Sir John Smyth is liberated on bond : V. 1,
Essex himself coming forward as the traitor's friend and —
surety. Father Thomas Wright, a Jesuit agent, deep in 1598.
the secrets, high in the confidence, of the Courts of Ronie Sept.
and Madrid, who has been for many months in trouble, at
first confined in Dean Goodman's house, but of late trans-
ferred to a common jail, steals after dusk from the Bride-
well to Essex House for secret interviews with the Earl
and Blount. Nor is the bustle limited to the London
taverns and the London jails. The cloughs of Lancashire,
the ridges and heaths of Wales, send up to London the
most restless of their recusants and priests. Vaughan, the
Bishop of Chester, notes a mysterious change in that
Papist district, and warns the head of the Government
that he must look for sudden storms. The recusants of
his diocese, he says, refuse to pay their usual fines, defy
the clergy and magistrates, and talk of the support which
they expect from new and powerful friends. When
pressed too hard, instead of bowing to the laws as they
have been wont to do, they jump to horse and spur away.
2. The gang of Papist conspirators who now begin to
gather into force round the Earl of Essex, propose to
themselves not only to escape from fine and imprison-
ment, but to dethrone the Queen, to restore the faggot
to Smithfield and the mass to St. Paul's. They hope to
effect this change by a military surprise and a secret
understanding with the Pope. Essex tells the Jesuit
Father Wright, in their midnight meetings, that he could
become a Koman Catholic, were it not that the Koman
Catholics have always been against him. Wright assures
2. Examination of Thomas Wright, July 24, 1600, S. P. 0. ; Abstract of
Evidence against the Earl of Essex [July 22, 1600], S. P. O.
1598.
Sept.
96 FEANCIS BACON.
V. 2. him that the Koman Catholics will now be his best friends.
The plotters lay down their plans. To surprise the Queen
they must have the command of an armed force ; Raleigh
must be killed ; a military faction formed, an army raised,
and the places of trust secured to the principal leaders in
the plot.
Oct. 3. As the Queen will trust Essex with no more regiments
for Rouen, no more ships for Spain, he begs for a command
against the Irish kernes. Ireland is ablaze. That Hugh
O'Neile, son of the bastard of Dundalk, who owes to the
policy and generosity of Queen Elizabeth his life, his edu-
cation, his nobility, even his ascendency in his sept, has
turned on his benefactress : laying down his earldom of
Tyrone ; assuming the sovereign and rebellious style of
The O'Neile ; raising the unkempt, unclothed Ulster
savages ; and filling the valleys from Inishowen to Mona-
ghan and Down with the tumult of war. Fires burn on the
hill-tops. Churches are profaned, innocent homesteads
razed. The Galloglass, mounted on his brisk marron,
pricks through the country, spearing his enemies, driving
off their kine. A horde of ferocious kernes, shaggy and ill-
fed, their arms a skean and pike, their dress a blanket or a
shirt, plunge into the houses of English gentlemen, wreaking
such woe and shame on the Protestant settlers as pen of
man refuses to describe. An English force keeps front to the
rebellious horde, but the fire darts out in a hundred places.
Connaught kindles into insurrection; Munster defies the
Saxon ; Ulster presses on the Pale ; Spanish ships stand
off the coast ; Spanish regiments are forming at Ghent
and at the Groyne. A day may bring the Basques, the
3. Irish Correspondence, 1595-98, S. P. O. ; Annals of the Four Masters,
591-645 ; Council Keg., Oct. 29, 1595, July 19, 1598.
TKOOPS LEVIED FOR IRELAND. 97
Walloons, and Pandours to Kinsale. Drogheda is in danger. V. 3.
Dublin itself is not safe. —
1598.
4. Shakespeare gives the English passion voice : 0°*-
" Now for our Irish wars !
We must supplant these rough, rug-headed kernes,
Which live like venom where no venom else,
But only they, hath privilege to live ! "
So cries the English king in that new play of Kichard
the Second, which is now drawing crowds of citizens and
courtiers to the Globe. Troops are being raised and fines
imposed for this new war ; the recusants who will not
fight for their country against their creed — such men as
Tresham, Talbot, Eookwood, and Throckmorton — being
mulcted in heavy rates. The force is of imposing strength.
Two thousand veterans come home from the camp of Vere,
their ranks filled up by a levy of youngsters from the
loom and plough. In all, some twenty thousand horse
and foot are on the march.
Who shall conduct them to the coasts of Down, the
passes of the Foyle ?
5. Essex asserts his claim. Those who would see the
fire of the insurrection stamped under foot propose to send
out Kaleigh, Sydney, or Montjoy. But events at Court
disturb the preparations against O'Neile. The great Lord
Burghley dies, leaving vacant the Treasury and the Court
of Wards. Essex, as usual, wants them both ; and Cecil,
4. Shakespeare's Richard II., editions of 1597 and 1598 ; Oainden, Ann.
Eliz., 1598 ; Chamberlain to Carleton, May 4, 17, 30, 1598, S. P. O. ;
Council Reg., July 19, Dec. 22, 1598.
5. Chamberlain to Carleton, May 30, Aug. 30, Nov. 8, 1598, S. P. O. ;
Lytton to Carleton, Aug. 29, 1598, S. P. O. ; Mathews to Carleton, Sept,
15, 1598, S. P. O.
H
Oct.
98 FRANCIS BACON.
Y. 5. who thinks that offices held by his father ought to descend
— upon himself, becomes, as he has been before, a secret and
_^ powerful advocate for his rival's nomination to a distant
post. For a time the Queen will hear of no such a thing ;
yet, as Ealeigh will not go, and Yere is in the field, Essex,
with an underground and treacherous aid from Cecil,
gains his suit.
6. Cecil's beautiful young niece still wears her widow's
weeds : a prize with which he may either bribe an enemy or
fix a friend. She has rejected Pembroke as well as Bacon.
To the surprise of her gay and youthful suitors, she allows
her uncle Cecil to buy with her hand the unscrupulous arts
and venomous tongue of Coke. A first wife, who brought
him love and money, not yet cold in her grave, the grisly
old bear of an Attorney-General marries this dainty and
wilful dame. How she is persuaded to such a match no
soul can tell. Old, grim, penurious, every way opposite to
herself and to everything that she seems to like, he has
neither the wit that wins nor the fame that fills a lady's ear.
Wags whisper that she hopes to be able to break his heart.
He, too, is rich. She has got one fortune through Sir Wil-
liam Hatton, why not a second fortune through Sir Edward
Coke ? Her kinsman's motives are, no one doubts, coarse.
He has need for such an instrument as Coke : close, supple,
learned, grinding, cold to his dependants, cringing to his
superiors. Nor is he disappointed in the match. On
Coke's marriage into the Cecil house, though the wife
whom he vows to love rejects his name and destroys his
peace, he becomes to Cecil and to Cecil's faction a brutal
and obsequious slave.
6. Autobiographical Notes of Coke in Harl. MSS. 6687, transcribed by
Jolrn Bruce for the Collectanea Top, et Gen., vi. 108.
1599.
Mar. 8.
PLAN FOR CALMING IRELAND, U9
7. At a private meeting of the Privy Council held at V. 7.
Essex House, only Cecil, Fortescue, and Buckhurst present,
a commission for the lord-lieutenancy is drawn. Essex
has had no speech with Bacon for eighteen months. Their
ways now lie apart. In the conferences on his bills for
restoring tillage and increasing population they stood
in hostile ranks ; yet, on the eve of his fatal voyage to
Ireland, Essex rides once more, and for the last time now,
to Gray's Inn Square. Had he come to seek counsel, no
man could have given him safer. More than any one alive
— more than Chichester or Montjoy — Bacon sees through
the Irish question. Sure that Ulster will not be calmed
by the sword and the rope, that no dash from Cork to
Coleraine will make a savage sept, ruled by a Brehon law,
prefer husbandry to theft, his plan is to clear the forests,
to drain the bogs, to lay out roads, to build ports and
havens, to plant new towns. His hope lies in the plough,
not in the sword.
" We must supplant these rough, rug-headed kernes."
He would have the great officers of the Queen's govern-
ment and army live in the country, build in it their
houses, as Sir Arthur Chichester, whom Cecil has sent from
Flanders to Dublin, afterwards builds his house on the
Lough of Belfast. But a man like the Earl of Essex, living
only in the air of courts and the light of camps, has
neither temper, hardihood, nor patience for such a work.
Bacon tells him to give up an enterprise in which he can
neither serve his country nor secure himself from shame
and loss. Essex has not come to learn. With soul cor-
7. Council Reg., Mar. 8, 1599 ; Bacon's Remains, 39, 48 ; Certain
Considerations touching the Plantation in Ireland, 1606 ; Bacon's Apo-
logie, 23 ; Essex to Cecil, Mar. 29, 1599, Add. MSS. 4160.
H 2
100 FRANCIS BACON.
V. 7. rupted by disloyalty, lie turns his back on the one honest
— voice which even yet might have saved his fortune and his
fame from wreck.
Mar.
8. Father Wright consults Cresswell and Parsons, the
experienced chiefs of the English conspiracy in Madrid
and Eome, on these bold and perilous plots. The Jesuit
Fathers, doubtful if it be not sin and folly to shed Catholic
blood to raise Essex to a throne, urge him through Wright
to adopt the Infanta's claim in preference to his own ; a
course to which Essex, when pressed by Wright, most
sternly demurs, as becomes a descendant of John of Gaunt.
Philip and Clement, less deep in guile than the Jesuits,
agree to recognise, and if need be to aid, a rebellion of
the Earl and his partizans against the Queen, on this un-
derstanding: that Essex, when king, shall become recon-
ciled to the Church, shall leave Ireland to be ruled by
O'Neile as viceroy, shall abandon the Protestant Nether-
landers, shall yield up Kaleigh's conquests and plantations
in America, and shall recognise the rights of Spain to an
exclusive possession of both the Indies. It is understood
that the Irish army is to effect this plot, of which all the
details are to be settled with O'Neile.
April. 9. Twenty thousand men march to the coast and cross
the sea. Lee, Danvers, Percy have all commands in this
force. Constable, broken for bad conduct, is restored by
Essex to his rank. Father Wright begs hard to be taken
with them ; but, although a Privy Councillor may fetch a
prisoner to his house, a lord-lieutenant of Ireland has no
8. Abstract of the Evidence against Essex [July 22, 1600], S. P. O. ;
Examination of Wright, July 24, 1600, S. P. O.
9. Council Reg., Mar. 11, April 2, 1599 ; Essex to Cecil, Add. MSS.
4160 ; Abstract of Evidence against Essex, July 22, 1600, S. P. O.
1599.
April.
ESSEX LORD-DEPUTY. 101
power to empty the London jails. All that he can do for V. 9
Wright is to get him removed from Bridewell to the
Clink.
From the hour of his quitting Whitehall Essex assumes
the powers of a sovereign prince. On his way to the
coast he sends back Lord Montjoy. Montjoy is his friend ;
the yet nearer friend of his sister Lady Eich. For love of
her, Montjoy has joined in opposition to Ealeigh on the
right hand, to Cecil on the left ; but neither friendship for
Essex, nor love for Lady Eich, would draw a man so firm
in faith, so loyal to the Crown, to league with a gang
of Papists against the Queen. Essex sends him back.
From Drayton Bassett, where Blount and Lady Leicester
live, Essex has the effrontery to write for leave to appoint
Blount his Marshal of the Camp. A marshal of the camp
is the second in command, the first in activity and influence ;
to put such a fellow as Blount in such a place, the Queen
indignantly demurs. There is Sir Henry Brounker, an
officer of talent and experience : let him be our marshal.
Essex pouts and sulks : " If she grant me not this favour,"
he writes to Cecil, "I am maimed of my right arm."
Cecil takes care he shall have his way.
10. When he lands in Dublin he casts to the four winds May.
his commission and instructions. One of his first and
most insolent acts is to appoint the young Earl of South-
ampton his Master of the Horse. This friend and patron
of Shakespeare is not a Papist, not an ally of Blount.
He is a patriot, though not a wise one; a Protestant,
though not a zealous one. Heady, amorous, quarrelsome,
10. Cecil to Southampton, Sept. 3, 1598, S. P. O. ; Council to Essex,
June 10, 1599, S. P. O. ; Elizabeth to Essex, July 19, 1599, S. P. O. ;
Devereux, i. 474.
1599.
102 FRANCIS BACON.
V. 10. swift to go right or wrong as his passions tempt him, he
has vexed and grieved the Qneen by falling madly and
licentiously in love with Mistress Vernon, one of her beau-
±day. t ^ maids of honour, and filling her court with the fame
of his amours. In this offence against modesty he has
been abetted by the young lady's first cousin Lord Essex,
himself too frail as regards the passions, and too familiar
with his mother's vices and his sister's infidelities to feel
the shame brought on his kin by a scandal which after all
may end in marriage. Sent away from London, South-
ampton had returned in secret, and had married the lady
without her sovereign's knowledge. For these offences he
had been ordered into free custody. Breaking his gage of
honour, he has stolen away to Dublin, where the Earl,
in place of sending back the Queen's fugitive, gives him
the welcome which a prince at war might give to a
deserting general from the hostile camp.
Aug. 11. Every one knows the issue of this Irish campaign :
a lost summer, a corrupted army, a traitorous truce. In-
stead of smiting O'Neile, Lee arranges an interview on the
Lagan, at which the English and Irish rebels discuss their
terms and enter into league. Blount hails his fellows in
the Celtic camp. Like the Irish traitors, he abhors the
Protestant Queen, not only as the most powerful enemy of
their church, but as an insolent sovereign who has spared
their lives. They propose to carry out the Papal scheme,
giving England to Essex, Ireland to O'Neile. The Des-
monds and Fitzmaurices, not less than the O'Donnels and
O'Kanes, are privy to a league in wMch the Celts drive
a bargain with their allies ; for while the Boman Catholics
11. Annals of the Four Masters, 646-654; Blount's Confessions, State
Trials, i. 1415.
ESSEX RETURNS TO ENGLAND. 103
are to get the whole of Ireland to themselves, they claim V. 11.
immunities in England equal to those of the rival creed. —
They are to enjoy on the Thames, not alone freedom of '
conscience, but street processions of the host and public
performance of the mass.
12. Essex breaks up his camp at Drogheda ; hurries to Sept.
Dublin, Blount at his side, Danvers, Constable, Lee at his
heels; crosses the sea, leaving Ireland without an army
or a government; the English settlers aghast at this
desertion, the Ulster rebels elate with joy. At Milford
Haven they receive intelligence which breaks down all
their plans. The country rings with arms. While they
have been conspiring with O'Neile, the Privy Council,
under guise of preparing to repel an expected landing of
the Spaniards, have drawn out the musters, set the train-
bands in motion, filled the city with chosen troops. Wags
have mocked and jested over this invisible Armada ; but
Essex lands at Milford Haven to find his road to London
barred by a truly formidable force. Nottingham covers
the capital with a camp of six thousand horse and foot.
Twenty-five thousand men answer to the roll in Kent and
Essex. Under such a change of affairs, even Blount
dissuades a march on London. The road is long ; halber-
diers cannot fly, like Imogen, on the wings of love ; and
the very maddest of the plotters knows that the Protestant
gentlemen of Gloucester, Wilts, and Berks will not stare
idly on wnile gangs of mutinous troopers, led by Papist
captains, march past to dethrone their Queen. With the
whole army of Drogheda at their backs, they could not
12. Annals of the Four Masters, 655 ; Blount's Confessions, State
Trials, i. 1415 ; Bacon's Notes to Camden, Works, vi. 359 ; Memorandum
of Precautionary Measures, Aug. 1599, S. P. O. ; List of Army in Kent
and Essex, Aug. 1599, S. P. O.
1599.
104 FRANCIS BACON.
V. 12. force their way through six or eight warlike shires. Better,
says Blount, prick on alone. A chance remains that by
dash and swiftness Essex may surprise the Queen, put his
friends in power, and return to Dublin to mature his plans.
Sept. 28. To horse, to horse ! No pause in the ride till he flings
himself, splashed and faint, at his sovereign's feet.
Oct. 13. Lee, Danvers, Constable, Davis, spur into London.
News-writers stare at the swarms of captains and com-
manders from the Irish camp which suddenly hustle
through the taverns of Paternoster Eow and fill the pit of
the theatre, where Butland and Southampton are daily
seen, and where Shakespeare's company, in the great
play of Eichard II., have for more than a year been
feeding the public eye with pictures of the deposition of
kings. But the plotters have met their mates. The
Earl is in charge. From the presence of his Queen he
has passed into custody ; when a solemn act of the Privy
Council having declared him unfit to discharge the duties
of Earl Marshal, Privy Councillor, and Master of the Ord-
1600. nance, a writ from the Star-Chamber cites him to answer
Feb. f° r hi s suspicious dealings with O'JSTeile. This citation he
disobeys. After a brief confinement in the house of Lord
Keeper Egerton, he is placed in permanent free custody
in his own great mansion in the Strand.
14. The Council hastens to repair the evil done in
Dublin. Montjoy goes over as Lord Deputy. Stern letters
13. Rowland White, Oct. 3, 11, 1599, in Sydney Papers, ii. 130, 132 ;
Devereux' Lives of the Earls of Essex, ii. 76-117 ; Speeches in the Star
Chamber on Essex's Expedition to Ireland, Nov. 1599, S. P. O. : Essex to
Eliz., Feb. 11, 22, 1600, S. P. O.
14. Wood's Confessions, Jan. 20, 1599-1600, S. P. O. ; Council Peg.,
Feb. 2, 1600.
1600.
Feb.
ESSEX IN CUSTODY. 105
recal the Lords Justices and magistrates of Ireland to V. 14.
their duty. Threads of the great conspiracy soon
appear. Among the witnesses agaiust Essex, Thomas
Wood, a nephew of Lord Fitzmaurice, makes this de-
claration :
He saith that, happening to be with the Lord Fitz-
maurice, Baron of Lixnaw, at his house of Lixnaw, between
Michaelmas and Allhallowtide, the said Baron walking
abroad with the said Wood asked him what force the Earl
of Essex was of in England. He answered he could not
tell, but said he was well beloved of the commonalty.
Then said the Baron that the Earl was gone for England,
and had discharged many of the companies of Ireland ;
and that if her Majesty were dead he should be King of
England and O'Neile to be Viceroy of Ireland ; and
whensoever he should have occasion and could send for
them, he would send him eight thousand men out of
Ireland. The said Wood asked the Baron how he knew
that, and he answered that the Earl of Desmond sent him
word so.
Thomas Wood.
This statement, wholly in the handwriting of Wood, re-
mains in the State Paper Office.
Below it Cecil has written :
This confession and declaration was made before us
whose names are underwritten this 20th of January, 1599
(1600) ; and after being charged of us severally and jointly
to declare nothing but truth upon his soul and conscience,
as he would answer it at the latter day, he hath both pro-
tested this to be true that he hath written, and that he is
a Christian and would not say an untruth in this kind for
106 FRANCIS BACON.
V. 14. all the good in the world ; and for proof thereof hath again
— set his hand in our presence.
1600. Thomas Wood.
Feb. T. Buckhukst.
Nottingham.
Kobeet Cecil.
j. foetescue.
Mar. 15. The world parts suddenly from the fallen man. Those
who know or suspect the depth of his guilt shun him as one
who is lost past hope ; those who see no more than his
disgrace fall off from a losing cause. Cecil spurns his
advances ; when the old Countess of Leicester begs
of him to save her son, Cecil answers her that his
fate is with a higher power. Babington, Bishop of
Worcester, glances at him cautiously in a Court ser-
mon ; but when sent for by the angry Queen he
denies that he pointed to the Earl. Save his cousin
Lady Scrope, and his sisters Lady Bich and the Countess
of Northumberland, not one of his confederates or com-
panions dares to speak for him a word. Blount slinks
with his wife to Drayton Bassett. Southampton goes
abroad to fight Lord Gray, breaking his parole for the
second time; an offence for which the council, though
loth to strike the amiable and misled young gentleman,
strips him of his company of horse. Lee makes no sign.
Danvers and Constable hide their heads. These Bobadils
of Drogheda and Milford skulk about the kens of New-
gate Street and Carter Lane ; and only a group of women,
kin to the Queen, who gloom about the court in black,
find courage for even tears and weeds.
15. Chamberlain to Carleton, Feb. 22, Mar. 5, 1600, S. P. O. ; Cecil to
Countess of Leicester, Mar. 21, 1600, S. P. O. ; Sydney Papers, ii. 132, 213 ;
Council Keg., Aug. 3, 17, 1600.
INTERCEDES FOR ESSEX. 107
Yea ; there is one. In this dead silence of despair, one V. 15
voice alone dares to breath the Earl's name, to whisper in
the royal ear excuses for his fault, to plead with that leonine
heart for the mercy which becomes a monarch better than
his crown.
1600.
Mar.
16. Any man save Francis Bacon would have left the April.
Earl to his fate. The connexion has been to him waste of
character and waste of time. The hope of making Essex
chief of the national party has come to nought and their
intercourse has ceased. To Bacon, and to all his kin, the
Earl has brought anxiety, grief, and shame. The loss of
rank and power is the least part of his loss ; that loving
and beloved brother, to whom the Essays are so tenderly
inscribed, has now sunk past hope, the victim of his com-
panion's riot and evil ways. Despite the warnings of the
Saint of God, though Anthony and Essex had both pro-
mised her to amend their ways, they have run from bad to
worse, until one is about to sink into political crime, the
other into a premature grave.
17. The prospects, the affections of Bacon and Essex now June,
lie apart, distant as the temperate and the torrid zones.
For two whole years they have met but once ; to part less
near in opinions than before. All that Bacon foresaw
from the Irish expedition has come to pass. The voyage
has failed. More than the visible failure Bacon does not
know ; nothing of the interviews with Wright ; nothing of
the understanding with the Jesuits ; nothing of the Pope's
approval ; nothing of the compact with O'Neile. Cecil
keeps these formidable secrets close, sharing them, if with
16. Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon, various dates, in Lambeth MSS.
649, 650 ; Devereux, i. 406.
17. Council to Yelverton, Coke, Fleming, and Bacon, Nov. 9, 1600,
S. P. O. ; Council Reg., Feb. 2, 28, July 6, Sept. 29, Dec. 24, 1600.
1600.
June.
108 FEANCIS BACON.
V. 17. any one, only with his creature and dependant Coke. In
other business of the Crown, in admiralty affairs, revenue
affairs, in debts, in grants, and fines, above all in arbitra-
tions, Bacon is now constantly employed by the Crown.
Instructions from the Privy Council run to Yelverton,
Coke, Fleming, and Bacon. In cases of dispute, as in
those of Blundel, of Perrim, of Trachey, he is often em-
ployed alone. But in taking the confessions, in confront-
ing the spies and prisoners of the Irish plot, he has no
share. Yet, knowing no more of it than all men know,
why should he risk his future to save a man who has
covered him with misfortunes, who has sought his advice
to cast it in his teeth ?
18. Bacon is not the man to ask. Seeing the Earl crushed
without being charged, supposing him free from crime, he
carries his plea of clemency to the throne. Often in the
Queen's closet on public duty, he seizes every opening for
this plea. Never had such an offender such an advocate.
Gaily, gravely, in speech, in song, he besets the royal ear.
He kneels to her Majesty at Nonesuch ; he coaxes her at
Twickenham Park. When she ferries to his lodge, he
presents her with a sonnet on mercy ; when she calls him
to the palace, he reads to her letters purporting to come
from the penitent Earl. What Babington dares not hint
from the pulpit, Bacon dares to urge in the private
chamber. Wit, eloquence, persuasion of the rarest power,
he lavishes on this ungrateful cause. At times the Queen
seems shaken in her mood ; but she knows her kinsman
better than his advocate knows him. Spain still threatens
a descent ; and Ireland rocks with the tumult of civil war.
18. Abstract of Evidence against Essex, July 22, 1600, S. P. O. ;
Shakespeare's Kicharci II., editions of 1598 and 1608.
1600.
June.
SHAKESPEAEE'S 'KICHAKD THE SECOND.' 109
Those scenes of Shakespeare's play disturb her dreams. V. 18
This play has had a long and splendid run, not less from
its glorious agony of dramatic passion than from the open
countenance lent to it by the Earl, who, before his
voyage, was a constant auditor at the Globe, and by his
noble companions Kutland and Southampton. The great
parliamentary scene, the deposition of Eichard, not in the
printed book, was probably not in the early play ; yet the
representation of a royal murder and a successful usurpation
on the public stage is an event to be applied by the ground-
lings in a pernicious and disloyal sense. Tongues whisper
to the Queen that this play is part of a great plot, to teach
her subjects how to murder kings. They tell her she is
Eichard ; Essex, Bolingbroke. These warnings sink into her
soul. When Lambard, Keeper of the Eecords, waits upon
her at the palace, she exclaims to him, " I am Eichard,
know you not that ? "
19. Nor does the play by Shakespeare stand alone. One
of the Earl's friends publishes on this story of the deposi-
tion of Eichard a singular and mendacious tract, which,
under ancient names and dates, gives a false and disloyal
account of things and persons in his own age : the childless
sovereign ; the association of defence ; the heavy burthen
of taxation ; the levy of double subsidies ; the prosecution
of an Irish war, ending in general discontent ; the out-
break of blood ; the solemn deposition and final murder of
the princeo The book has no name on the title-page —
that of John Hayward signs the dedication. Bolingbroke
is made the hero of the tale ; and that even the grossly
19. Hayward's First Part of the Life of Henry IV., 1599 ; Papers con-
cerning the History of Henry IV., the Letter Apologetical written by
Dr. Hayward, 1599, S. P. O.
110 FKANCIS BACON.
Y. 19. stupid may not miss its meaning, this lump of sedition is
dedicated to the Earl. In one place it openly affirms the
i Ann
existence of a title to the throne superior to that of the
June, r, ,
Queen !
20. This proves too much for Elizabeth. Packing the
scribe in jail, she sends for Bacon to draw up articles
against him.
Had she sent for Coke !
To Bacon's tenderness of human life the poor scribbler,
Hayward, owes his subsequent length of days and author-
ship of other books. " There is treason in it," says the
Queen ; as indeed there is. " Treason, your Grace ? "
replies Bacon ; " not treason, Madam, but felony, much
felony." " Ha ! " gasps her Highness, willing to hang a
rogue for one crime as for another : " Eelony — where ? "
" Where, Madam ? Everywhere : the whole book is a
theft from Cornelius Tacitus." A light of laughter breaks
the cloud. "But," says her darkening Highness, "Hay-
ward is a fool ; some one else has writ the book ; make
him confess it ; put him to the rack."
" Nay, Madam," pleads the advocate of mercy ; " rack
not his body — rack his style. Give him paper and pens,
with help of books ; bid him carry on his tale. By com-
paring the two parts, I will tell you if he be the true
man."
July. 21. Aware how strong are Bacon's views on political
crime, some of the conspirators, conscious of their own
guilty thoughts, dread lest in these frequent passages with
the Queen he may be taking part against their lord. Fear
20. Bacon's Apologie, 36 ; Bacon's Eemains, 42 ; Matters wherewith
Dr. Hayward was charged, and Dr. Hayward's Confession, 1599, S. P. O.
21. Bacon's Apologie, 47 ; Birch, 459 ; Montagu, xii. 168.
IMPEOVEMENT IN ESSEX'S AFFAIES. Ill
gives suspicion wing. Among themselves they whisper y. 21.
that in the royal presence he has pronounced the offence —
treason. The true offence is treason; but Bacon has not 1600.
called it such, for he has no knowledge of its darker facts. 1'
He therefore meets and spurns the misrepresentation of
his words. In a note to Lord Henry Howard, one of the
Koman Catholic friends of Essex, he writes with honest
heat : " I thank God my wit serveth me not to deliver any
opinion to the Queen which my stomach serveth me not
to maintain ; one and the same conscience guiding and
fortifying me. The untruth of this fable God and my
sovereign can witness, and there I leave it. . . . For
my Lord of Essex, I am not servile to him, having regard
to my superior duty. I have been much bound unto him ;
on the other side, I have spent more time and more thoughts
about his welldoing than ever I did about mine own. I
pray God you his friends amongst you be in the right."
22. Affairs grow brighter for the Earl. Good news
come in from Dublin and the Hague ; news that Desmond
has been taken, and Wexford pacified by Montjoy ; that
Vere and Nassau have fought a battle and gained a victory
on Nieuport sands. The Queen's heart opens. When the
Earl now begs for freedom, she more than ever inclines to
hear his prayer. Cecil gets alarmed ; putting Wright and
Hayward under stern examination, he frames from their
confessions an indictment against Essex, which, if half of
it were proved, would assuredly send him to the block.
But an advocate, stronger than, Cecil, stands beside the
Queen ; who, in season, as well as out of season, in the
22. Essex to Eliz., June 21, 1600, S. P. O. ; Chamberlain to Carleton,
July 1, 26, 1600, S. P. O. ; Confession of D. Hayward, July 11, 1600,
S. P. O. ; Abstract of Evidence against Essex, July 22, 1600 ; Examina-
tion of Thomas Wright, July 24, 1600, S. P. O. ; Bacon's Apologie, 41, 57.
112 FKANCIS BACON.
V. 22. midst of a dispute on law, in the turn of an anecdote, in a
— casual laugh or sigh, searches and finds a way to her heart.
One day she asks Mm about his brother's gout. Anthony's
u ^' gout is sometimes better, sometimes worse. " I tell you
how it is, Bacon," says her sagacious Majesty ; " these
physicians give you the same physic to draw and to cure ;
so they first do you good, and then do you harm." " Good
God, madam!" cries Bacon, "how wisely you speak of
physic to the body ! consider of physic to the mind. In
the case of my Lord of Essex, your princely word is, that
you mean to reform his mind, not to ruin his fortune.
Have you not drawn the humour ? Is it not time to apply
the cure?" Another day she tells him the Earl has
written to her most dutifully, that she felt moved by his
protestations ; but that, when she came to the end, it was
all to procure from her a patent of sweet wines ! " How
your Majesty construes ! " says Bacon ; " as if duty and
desire could not stand together ! Iron clings to the load-
stone from its nature. A vine creeps to the pole that it
may twine." " Speak to your business," says the Queen ;
"speak for yourself: for the Earl not a word."
Yet drop by drop the daily oil softens her heart. At length
the Earl is set at large ; though as one to whom much has
been pardoned ; one who shall never again command armies,
or even approach the Court. Elizabeth will see her kins-
man's face no more. Shall he go back to the Irish camp ?
" When I send Essex back into Ireland," says the Queen,
" I will marry you — you, Mr. Bacon. Claim it of me."
PARTISANS OF ESSEX. 113
CHAPTEE VI.
THE STREET FIGHT.
1600.
Oct.
1. When free to plot, Essex, in the secresy of his own VI. 1
house, and in open breach of loyalty and honour, renews the
intrigue with Rome. Blount returns from Drayton Bassett
to crowd Barns Elms and Essex House, the Earl's head-
quarters in and near London, with the most desperate of
his Papist gangs. Mad at their loss of time, they pro-
pose to do without an army what they failed to do with
one. Enough, they say, to raise a troop, to kill Baleigh
and Nottingham, to seize the Queen by force, and summon
a parliament of their own. Essex shall be swept to the
throne by a street fight and an act of assassination. Yet,
if they still pretend to believe him more popular than
Elizabeth, they dare not trust his chances and their own
safety to an English crowd. Seeking to gain strength
elsewhere, they open a deceptive intercourse with James,
incite O'Neile to resist by promises of speedy help, raise
a band of their sturdy partisans in Wales. One English-
man holding office, Sheriff Smith, of London, probably a
Roman Catholic, alone listens to their schemes. The
Earls of Rutland and Southampton sit at the board ; Rut-
land bound, like Southampton, by a pair of bright eyes to
follow the Earl's fortunes, being deeply in love with Eliza-
beth Sydney, daughter of Lady Essex by her first husband
Sir Philip ; neither of them sharing his insane ambition
1. Nottingham to Montjoy, Goodman, ii. 14 ; Jardine's Criminal
Trials, i. 342 ; Chamberlain to Carleton, Oct. 10, 1600, S. P. O.
1600.
Oct.
114 FKANCIS BACON.
VI. 1. or suspecting his murderous thoughts. The partners of
his secret soul are those Papists, old and new, who have
been and will be the terror and shame of England for
twenty years. Blount and Danvers, Davis, Percy, and
Monteagle are not the worst. Prom kens like the Hart's
Horn and the Shipwreck Tavern, haunts of the vilest
refuse of a great city, the spawn of hells and stews, the
vomit of Italian cloisters and Belgian camps, Blount, long
familiar with the agents of disorder, unkennels, in the
Earl's name, a pack of needy ruffians eager for any
service which seems to promise pay to their greed or
licence to their lust.
2. These miscreants are wholly Papists. Four of the
five monsters who, some years later, dig the mine in
Vineyard House, Robert Catesby, John Wright, Christopher
Wright, and Thomas Winter, answer to this call of Blount ;
while the fifth, Thomas Percy, is with them in the per-
sons of his more reputable kinsmen Jocelyn and Charles.
Nearly all their most guilty associates of the Powder Plot,
Throckmorton, Lyttleton, and Grant, join with them ; as
also Ogle, Baynham, Whitelocke, and Downhall, the dregs
and waste of a dozen Roman Catholic plots.
3. They mean to kill the Queen — a palace murder if
she resist them, a Pomfret murder if she yield. Raleigh
and Cecil are to share the fate of Bushy and Green. Is
Essex more squeamish than Bolingbroke ? Is Blount less
bold than Piers of Exton ? Though they advance towards
their goal under cover of a design to free the Queen from
enemies who hold her in thrall, the confession of Blount
2. List of Prisoners I in the Compter and the Poultry, Feb. 8, 1601,
S. P. O. ; Lodge, ii. 545.
3. State Trials, i. 1415.
Oct.
VALENTINE THOMAS'S CONFESSION. 115
on the scaffold removes all doubt of a deliberate plan to VI. 3.
assassinate her if she stand in their way. " I know and —
must confess," said the impenitent ruffian, "if we had ^
failed in our end, we should even have drawn blood from
herself." Nor is this design of dethronement and assas-
sination a last resource of men at bay. The plan was
formed two years before. It lay at the door of all Father
Wright's suggestions, inspired the publication of Hay-
ward's tract, controlled the understanding with O'Neile,
gave colour to the correspondence with King James.
4. At the moment when this faction had been struggling
to secure the Irish command, Bacon had been engaged
with Coke and others in probing a mysterious crime. A
Scot of many names and characters — Thomas Anderson,
Thomas Alderson, Valentine Thomas, a servant, a soldier,
a gentleman — giving no good account of his journey to
London, had been brought into the Tower. Bread and
water, Bacon and Coke, had brought him to his knees.
He confessed that he had been employed by the King of
Scots to kill the Lord Treasurer Burghley and her
Majesty the Queen. Here is the confession, solemnly
attested :
Collection of the Principal Points in Valentine Thomas's
Confession concerning the Practice against Her Majesty's
Person. Subscribed by himself the 20th of December,
1598.
Valentine Thomas, otherwise called Thomas Alderson or
Anderson, confesseth that his access to the King of Scotts
was principally procured by one John Stewart of the
4. Scottish Papers of Elizabeth, lxii. 28, 46, 50, 52, 54 ; lxiii. 13, 15, 22,
29, 31, 45.
i 2
1600.
116 FRANCIS BACON.
VI. 4. Buttery, who keepeth the King's door, and that he re-
paired to the King at sundry times and in sundry places ;
and amongst divers speeches of many things concerning
the state of England and her Majesty's person, the King
fell one day into some speech of the Lord Treasurer,
whom he wished Valentine Thomas to kill, as having ever
been his enemy about the Queen, which fact when Valen-
tine undertook to execute, after some speeches how it
might best be done, the King further replied, " Nay, I
must have you do another thing for me, and all is one ;
for it is all but blood. You shall take an occasion to
deliver a petition to the Queen in manner as you shall
think good, and so may you come near to stab her." And
Valentine told the King that it was a dangerous piece of
work, but he would do it, so the King would reward him
thereafter, and the King said, "You shall have enough."
And after this, Valentine took his leave of the King, and
said he was to go to Glasgow for a time to his kinsman's
wedding : and the King said " Go, as you say, to Glasgow,
and then come again, when you hear that Sorleboy is
come." And so he left the King, and the Laird Arkin-
glasse came to the King.
[Signed] Valentyne Thomas.
[Attested by] John Peyton.
Edw. Coke.
Tho. Flemyng.
Fe. Bacon.
Wm. VVakd.
The Government has kept this story secret. The
Queen, indeed, professes to believe it false, and she is
wise to do so. James stands beyond her reach ; her courts
cannot punish him; after her death he must be King.
1600.
ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE RALEIGH. 117
To prove him an assassin is to make of him, and of all who VI. 4.
support his claims, the most ruthless of her foes. James,
knowing of Thomas's arrest, is anxious to be spared the
disgrace of a public trial ; yet the knowledge that such a
crime has been contemplated helps to nerve the hand
of every one who loves his Queen — the visible embodiment
of English virtue and English strength.
5. If only the Papists share the heart of Blount, still, 1601.
where he fancies that either private love or lust of spoil Jan-
will tempt a man to arm, he throws his line. From
Lancashire, from Norfolk, and from Devon, friends of the
conspirators prick to town. Among them comes Sir Fer-
dinando Gorges, governor of Plymouth, a brave and loyal
gentleman akin to Sir Walter Kaleigh, who, seeing him
drawn into a dangerous plot, sends to warn him. Blount,
now ready for the blow that is to make him father-in-law
to a king, persuades Gorges to invite the Captain of the
Queen's Guard to come and speak with him at Essex
House. Kaleigh jumps into his barge. At Essex-stairs
the plotters beg him to land ; but finding the fox too wise
to trust his life in such hands, Blount, throwing off the
mask, sends an armed boat in chase of him, which, failing
to catch its prey, fires four pieces into his barge.
6. The blood of the conspirators mounts with this Feb. 6.
attempt at assassination. On Sunday they will rise :
the pretext to be spread through the streets and lanes
being that Ealeigh has formed a plot to murder the
Earl. The parts in the play are all given out. While
5. Declaration of the Practice of trie Earl of Essex, 1601 ; Gorges'
Answer to certain Imputations, quoted in Cayley, i. 337 ; State Trials, i,
1424.
6. Jardine's Criminal Trials, i. 320.
1601.
Feb.
118 FKANC1S BACON.
VI. 6. Smith secures the city in their rear, a force will march
from Essex House and seize the avenues of Whitehall.
Blount is to keep the palace-gates, Davis the hall, Danvers
the entrance of the presence-chamber, while Essex him-
self, pushing into the royal closet, is to force the aged
Queen, sword in hand, to yield.
7. To fan the courage of their crew, and prepare the
citizens for news of a royal deposition, the chiefs of the
insurrection think good to revive for a night their
favourite play. They send for Augustine Phillips, man-
ager of the Blackfriars theatre, to Essex House. Mont-
eagle, Percy, and two or three more — among them Cuffe
and Meyrick, gentlemen whose names and faces he does
not recognise — receive him ; and Lord Monteagle, speak-
ing for the rest, tells him they want to have played the
next day Shakespeare's deposition of Bichard the Second.
Phillips objects that the play is stale, that a new one is
running, and that the company will lose money by a
change. Monteagle meets his objections. The theatre
shall not lose ; a host of gentlemen from Essex House will
fill the galleries ; if there is fear of loss, here are forty
shillings to make it up.
Feb. 7. Phillips takes the money ; and King Bichard is duly
deposed for them and put to death.
Feb. 8. 8. ISText morning, after the play, when the conspira-
tors are about to rise, Egerton, Popham, and Knollys
knock at the gates of Essex House. This visit of the
Lord Keeper, the Lord Chief Justice, and the Queen's
Chamberlain, disconcerts their plans. They meant to
7. Examination of Augustine Phillips, Feb. 18, 1601, S. P. O. This
examination lias been printed by Mr. Collier, but with an error in the
names.
8. Council Reg., Feb. 14, 1601 ; State Trials, i. 1333-1409,
1601.
Feb. 8.
ENDEAVOUR TO RAISE THE CITY. 119
begin by a street tumult and a march on Whitehall, VI. 8
under cover of a design to punish Ealeigh and restore
the Queen to her freedom of choice. The arrival of
these great officers of State compels them either to lay
down their arms and submit to the law, or to rush into the
city, raising the cry of war against the Queen. Mad as
the action seems, they choose to strike. Putting the
Ministers under guard, the Papist rabble, Blount, Catesby,
Tresham, Danvers, Davis, Wright, Grant, Lyttleton,
Baynham, and their fellows, tear past Temple-bar, yelling
to the astonished citizens to arm and follow the young
Earl.
9. The Queen sits in her palace superbly calm. Baleigh
himself has scarcely her nerve of steel. Told at dinner
that her faithless kinsman is in arms against her, she eats
her meal, no more disturbed than by a tumult on the
stage. When, some minutes later, comes in news that
London has risen for the Earl, she proudly puts aside the
lie : " He who placed me in this seat will preserve me
in it."
10. Essex is no more Bolingbroke than Elizabeth Bichard.
It is Sunday morning, and the people crowd the streets ;
some making holiday, more on their way to church. Yet,
though the Earl rides past them, not a man from Temple
Bar to Cheap arms to follow this descendant of John of
Gaunt. As the Papists wheel into the city, the inhabitants
shut their gates. Halberds and lances soon gleam out
from city doors ; not to guard the Earl, but to defend reli-
gion and the Queen ; so that, when the baffled insurgents,
9. Birch, ii. 468 ; Jardine's Criminal Trials, i. 309.
10. Lodge's illustrations, ii. 545 ; List of Prisoners in the Poultry and
the Compter, Feb. 8, 1601, S. P. O. ; Council Reg., Feb. 14, 1601.
1601.
Felb. 8
120 FBANCIS BACON.
VI. 10. pressed from the upper lanes about Guildhall, beat a re-
treat towards St. Paul's, they find the gorge of Ludgate
and the long line of approaches to Essex House blocked
up with pikes. Deceived in the promises of Smith, the
despairing band fall back on Ludgate Hill, where Levison,
with a party of soldiers, guards the pass. Blount sounds
a charge. Some fall, some turn, some cut their way
through. Seeing his old adversary Waite in the ranks
before him, Blount rushes upon him, and, though faint
with wounds, chops the assassin down. It is the last pang
of joy before he yields.
The game is now up. All London is against them in
an hour, as England will be in a week. The gangs dis-
perse. Some crawl into alehouse- vaults ; some leap into
boats, and drop with the tide ; but every honest man's hand
is against them, and at sundown most of the leaders are
safe in jail. In less than forty-eight hours from the first
rebellious shout near Temple-bar, Ogle and Throckmorton
are in the Gatehouse ; Baynham, Lyttleton, and Percy in
the Fleet ; Smith and Constable in the Poultry ; Blount
in Mr. ISTewsom's house in Paul's Churchyard, when his
wounds allow, to be carried to the Tower ; Whitelocke
in the Marshalsea ; Catesby in the house of Sheriff Gamble ;
Grant and the two Wrights in the White Lion ; Danvers,
Essex, Lee, Southampton, and Monteagle in the Tower.
Feb. 19. 11. Swift justice is the only mercy they can now hope
from man.
Never has criminal fairer trial, less partial judges, than
the Earl. His peers, the companions of his youth, the
connexions of his blood, are summoned by a special
message from the Crown. The most odious facts against
11. Council Keg., Feb. 13, 1601; Jardine, i. 376.
1601.
Feb. II
TRIAL OF ESSEX. 121
him are withheld ; the Government wishing to spare his VI. 11
memory, though they cannot in honour, and dare not in
policy, spare his life. They shrink from proclaiming to
the world that a kinsman of the Queen has been in
treacherous intercourse with Jesuits and the Pope. Not
a word is said on the trial about his midnight interviews
with Father Wright ; not a word about his complicity in
the publication of Hay ward's tract. Only the obvious facts
are proved, but these suffice. From the hour of his rising
his fate has been sealed. That girlish romance of the
ring, that still more girlish tale of Elizabeth's weakness
and change of mind, are idle mirage of the brain. Cam-
den, indeed, speaks of her hesitancy ; but Camden wrote
after the Queen's death, when it had become fashionable
at court to speak well of the Earl. Jardine was the first
to remark that this rumour of her changes and hesitations
is unsupported by any one passage in the State Papers.
In fact, Elizabeth never in her life showed less weakness
than in the case of her rebellious kinsman. For a crime
like his there was no mercy but the grave. v
12. Called by the Privy Council to bear his part in this
great drama, Bacon no more shirks his duty at the bar
than Levison shirked his duty at Ludgate Hill, or Kaleigh
his duty at Charing Cross. As her Counsel Learned in the
Law, he has no ^more choice or hesitation about his duty
of defence than her Captain of the Guard. Raleigh and
Bacon have each tried to save the Earl as long as he
remained an honest man ; but England is their first love,
and by her faith, her freedom, and her Queen they must
stand or fall.
12. Council to Bacon, Feb. 18, 1601, S. P. O. ; Abstract of Evidence
against Essex, July 22, 1600, S. P. O. ; Jardine, i. 316-321, 351, 360.
122 FKANCIS BACON.
VI. 12. Never is stern and holy duty done more gently on a
— criminal than by Bacon on this trial. He aggravates
1601. nothing. If he condemns the action, he refrains from
' needless condemnation of the man. Here is his speech
(set down, though it has already appeared in print, that
the reader may have the whole case before his eyes with-
out trouble of turning to another book) :
" My Lord, I expected not that the matter of defence
would have been excused this day ; to defend is lawful, but
to rebel in defence is not lawful ; therefore what my Lord
of Essex hath here delivered, in my conceit, seemetb to be
simile prodigio. I speak not to simple men, but to pru-
dent, grave, and wise peers, who can draw up out of the
circumstances the things themselves. And this I must
needs say, it is evident that my Lord of Essex had planted
a pretence in his heart against the Government, and
now, under colour of excuse, he layeth the cause upon his
particular enemies. My Lord of Essex, I cannot resemble
your proceedings more rightly than to one Pisistratus, in
Athens, who, coming into the city with the purpose to
procure the subversion of the kingdom and wanting aid
for the accomplishing his aspiring desires, and as the
surest means to win the hearts of the citizens unto him, he
entered the city, having cut his body with a knife, to the
end they might conjecture he had been in danger of his
life. Even so your Lordship gave out in the streets that
your life was sought by the Lord Cobham and Sir Walter
Raleigh, by this means persuading yourselves, if the city
had undertaken your cause, all would have gone well on
your side. But the imprisoning the Queen's councillors,
what reference had that fact to my Lord Cobham, Sir
Walter Ealeigh, or the rest? You allege the matter to
1601.
Feb. 19.
SPEECHES ON ESSEX'S TRIAL. 123
have been resolved on a sudden. No, you were three VI. 12
months in the deliberation thereof. Oh ! my Lord, strive
with yourself and strip off all excuses ; the persons whom
you aimed at, if you rightly understand it, are your best
friends. All that you have said, or can say, in answer to
these matters, are but shadows. It were your best course
to confess and not to justify."
What a contrast to the style of Coke ! Later in the day,
after hours of prevarication on the part of Essex, Bacon
speaks again, in a warmer tone, but without a particle of
rancour in his words :
" My Lord, I have never yet seen, in any case, such
favour shown to any prisoner;, so many digressions, such
delivering of evidence by fractions, and so silly a defence
of such great and notorious treasons. Your Lordships may
see how weakly my Lord of Essex hath shadowed his pur-
pose, and how slenderly he hath answered the objections
against him. But admit the case that the Earl's intent
were, as he would have it, to go as a suppliant to her
Majesty, shall petitioners be armed and guarded ? Neither
is it a mere point of law, as my Lord of Southampton
would have it believed, that condemns them of treason,
but it is apparent in common sense ; to consult, to exe-
cute, to run together in numbers, in doublets and hose,
armed with weapons, what colour of excuse can be alleged
for this ? And all this persisted in after being warned by
messengers sent from her Majesty's own person. Will any
man be so simple as to take this to be less than treason ?
But, my Lord, doubting that too much variety of matter
may occasion forgetfulness, I will only trouble your Lord-
ship's remembrance with this point, rightly comparing this
rebellion of my Lord of Essex to the Duke of Guise's, that
1601.
Feb. 19.
124 FRANCIS BACON.
VI. 12. came upon the barricadoes at Paris in bis doublet and
hose, attended upon but with eight gentlemen ; but bis
confidence in the city was even such as my Lord's was ;
and when he had delivered himself so far into the shallow
of his own conceit, and could not accomplish what he
expected, the King taking arms against him, he was glad
to yield himself, thinking to colour his pretexts and his
practices I y alleging the occasion thereof to be a private
quarrel."
Defence there is none : the peers condemn him to death.
Mar. 13. After trial and condemnation, when the Garter is
plucked from his knee and the George from his breast, the
Earl's pride and courage give way. He closes a turbulent
and licentious life by confessing against his companions,
still untried, more than the law-officers of the Crown could
have proved against them ; and, despicable to relate, most
of all against the two men who have been his closest asso-
ciates — Blount and Cuffe. His confessions in the face of
death deprive these prisoners of the last faint hope of
grace. They go, with Meyrick and Danvers, to the
gallows or to the block. But the anger of the Queen
being stayed, the rest of the gang — Catesby, Tresham,
Grant, Winter, Baynham, and their tribe — escape, some
with imprisonment, some with mulct, for future villanies.
At the end of twelve or fifteen weeks the last of the con-
spirators leaves the Tower.
Aug. 6. 14. Their fines reward service for which no other salaries
are paid. The Queen, who in the fictions of biographers
and historians is for ever starving Bacon for the good of
13. Council Reg., Feb. 24, 1602 ; Jardine's ' Criminal Trials,' i. 366-372 ;
State Trials, i. 1412, 1414.
14. Council Reg., Aug. 6, 1601.
AWAKDS FROM REBELS' FORFEITS. 125
his soul, now makes over to him, in actual fact, a con- yi. 14.
siderable share of Catesby's fine. The manner of this —
grant of twelve hundred pounds is not less gracious than 1601.
the gift itself. It is not made in the usual way, from the &•
Lord Treasurer's office, but as a public act of the Privy
Council and the Queen.
A council meets at Greenwich Palace, Egerton in the
chair. Around him sit Lord Buckhurst, the delightful
poet; Nottingham, the great commander; the Earls of
Shrewsbury and Worcester ; Knollys, Fortescue, and Cecil.
These councillors draft a letter to Coke, which stands
among the many interesting letters in the Privy Council
register :
A Letter to Edward Coke, Esq., Her Majesty's
Attorney-General.
Aug. 6, 1601.
Forasmuch as her Majesty is pleased to bestow par-
ticular reward upon divers of her servants, to be taken out
of such fines as have grown unto her by the offences of
several persons, we have thought good to let you know
particularly who they be that are at this time to receive
several portions in that kind, to the intent that you may
cause some such assurances to be passed over, as the
person may be assured to receive those portions as are
allotted to them according to her Majesty's gracious plea-
sure, in this sort following. When there is an assurance
passed to her Majesty's use of certain lands, for the pay-
ment of two thousand at several days by Francis Tresham,
her Majesty is pleased that Mr. Lieutenant of the Tower
shall receive the sum of a thousand five hundred pounds,
assigned him out of that ; the other five hundred remaining
to be disposed at her Majesty's pleasure. Next, you shall
1601.
Aug. (
126 FKANCIS BACON.
VI. 14. understand that she is likewise pleased to divide the fine
of Mr. Catesby between Mr. Francis Bacon, Sir Arthur
Gorges, and Captain Carpenter, at Ostend, in this sort
following, for which you are likewise to prepare some such
assurance to be passed from the Queen as the person may
receive those sums, every one pro rata, out of every portion
as it is assigned to be paid at several times, namely, to
Mr. Bacon the sum of a thousand two hundred pounds ; to
Sir Arthur Gorges a thousand two hundred pounds ; and
to Captain Carpenter the rest; for doing whereof these
presents shall be your warrant.
Thomas Egeeton.
Buckhuest.
Nottingham.
Shrewsbury,
Worcester.
Knollys.
Bobeet Cecil.
John. Fortescue.
Fancy Coke's delight in passing an assurance for twelve
hundred pounds to Francis Bacon !
15. One actor in the drama which has shaken London
slips mysteriously from public view. Flung into the
Tower with Essex and Danvers, as of equal guilt, Lord
Monteagle is neither put with them on trial for his life,
nor, in the various public investigations, are the damning
facts of his having sent for Augustine Phillips and of
having paid the Globe comedians to play the deposition
of Richard II. on the very eve of the rising, allowed
to escape Coke's lips in a public court. That Phillips
was sent for to Essex House, and was there paid money
15. Phillips' Examination, Feb. 18, 1601, S. P. 0. ; State Trials, i. 1445.
HIS PART AGAINST ESSEX. 127
to change the play at the Blackfriars theatre, are facts VI. 15.
too grave for the prosecution to conceal ; but when Coke
rose, with the comedian's evidence in his hand, he dropped
the name of Lord Monteagle from the sworn depositions, S '
inserting that of Meyrick in its place ! Meyrick is hanged,
Monteagle only fined.
Cecil must have his reasons for this strange suppression,
this cruel substitution : reasons which become clear from
Monteagle's share in the more terrible drama of the Powder
Plot.
16. Lord Campbell writes, and many others have written,
as though it would have been right for Bacon to have shirked
his part in this great act of justice. Yet this can hardly be
his serious meaning. To put Bacon in the wrong, the
objector must prove Essex to have been acting in his right.
This, it may be safely asserted, they can never do. If all
writers must agree that England was justified in crushing
with swift, stern hand this peculiarly hideous and unnatural
plot, by what path of reasoning can we come to a conclu-
sion that one of the Queen's Counsellors, called to his duty
by the Crown, was not right ?
In Bacon's place, we must assume that Lord Campbell
would have done his duty as Bacon did. There is no
second course for honest men. Bring the case down.
Lord Campbell has had many clients : men who have paid
him fees far larger than the patch of meadow tossed to
Bacon by the Earl. Imagine events arming the papal
powers once more against England ; hostile fleets off the
coast ; O'Donnel or M'Mahon at the head of a successful
host in Connaught ; Zouaves swarming in Cork ; our
colonies menaced with fire and sword ; a gang of ruffians,
16. Campbell's ' Lives of the Chancellors,' iii. 37, 39.
1601.
Aug.
128 FKANCIS BACON.
VI. 16. spawn of the stews and prisons, abroad in London; the
Queen's cousin of Hanover plotting with all those rebels
and fanatics against her crown and life ; a foreign league
resolving to put down our free constitution and our Pro-
testant faith ; imagine, under all these circumstances of
alarm, one of Lord Campbell's former clients, a man for
whose personal character he felt no respect and whose
political conduct he held in abhorrence, joining with John
Mitchell, Dr. Cullen, and the disbanded remnants of the
Pope's brigade in open rebellion against the law, in rousing
the dregs of the city, in shedding innocent blood at Charing
Cross ; would not Lord Campbell, under such provocations,
do his duty as a lawyer and as a man ?
This was Bacon's case. He owed nothing to Essex that
could have tempted even a weak man to take the wrong
side instead of the right side. He owed allegiance to
his country and to truth. He was as much the Queen's
officer, armed with her commission, bound to obey her
commands, as her Captain of the Guard. He had no part in
the Earl's crime, and utterly abhorred his means, his asso-
ciates, and his ends. To have done more than he did in
the conduct of this bad drama might have been noble
and patriotic ; to have done less would have been to act
like a weak girl, not like a great man.
Oct. 17. That the bearing of Francis Bacon throughout
these mournful events is just and noble, is the public
verdict of his time. Lord Campbell talks of his fall in
popularity. " For some time after Essex's execution
Bacon was looked upon with great aversion." But, in
truth, he never loses for a day the hearts of his coun-
trymen. Of this the proofs are incontestable. While the
17. Campbell's ' Bacon,' iii. 43 ; Willis, ' Not. Pari.,' 149.
Oct.
RETURNED FOR IPSWICH AND ST. ALBANS. 129
spirits of men are yet warm with remembrance of the VI. 17.
scenes at Tyburn and on Tower Hill, writs travel down —
into the shires for a new Parliament. Now, therefore,
comes the proof how far he has fallen. If he be
thought of with aversion, as Lord Campbell says, here
are the means, the opportunities, and the scenery for
a condign revenge. The scot and lot men of Elizabeth
are not nice. A. candidate cross to the moods of squire and
freeman often finds himself burned in straw, pelted with
foul eggs, or drummed by humorous rogues from the county
town. Do the friends of Lord Essex rise on his adversaries ?
Is the drum beaten against Raleigh, or the stone flung
at Bacon? Just the reverse. The world has not been
with the rebellious Earl ; and those who have struck down
the papist plot are foremost in the ranks of the new Parlia-
ment. Four years ago Bacon had been chosen to represent
Ipswich, and the chief town of Suffolk again ratifies its
choice. But his public acts have won for him a second
constituency in St. Albans. Such a double return— always
rare in the House of Commons — is the highest compli-
ment that could have been paid to the purity and popu-
larity of his political life.
130 FRANCIS BACON.
I
CHAPTEK VII.
THE NEW KEIGN.
VII. 1. 2. Nok is Bacon's popularity a tide at the ebb. The
-i fi0 o Queen dies. A King conies in who knows not Joseph, nor
Arcril ^ e P rnic ipl es °f Joseph. James has secretly promised
peace to Spain. A man of weak nerve and small quick
brain, fond of his ease, a friend of dogmatic controversies
and a stranger to religion, he can neither tolerate nor
understand the passionate fervour of the realm for this
foreign war. By war he sees that he may offend the Jesuits
and the Pope, men who can put poison into his wine or
sharpen against him an assassin's knife. What are the Dutch
to him, that he should offend for them the masters of a
hundred legions and twenty secret fraternities? Why,
these Dutch are in arms against lawful kings ! England,
it is true, has undertaken their defence, and, in league
with Henri Quatre, she has for many years past com-
manded in their towns and camps. But the treaties of
Elizabeth, he says, are not his treaties, nor can he hold
himself bound by the acts of a woman and a fool.
But the desertion of a cause which every man between
the four seas possessing high spirit and sound faith feels to
be his own, is not the act of a day. A path must be pre-
pared. The eager spirits must be dispersed or stunned, the
great fighting-men must be crushed or bribed. Cecil adopts
this policy of peace, which suits his genius and secures to
himself the foremost place. Nottingham is won by a youth-
1. King's MSS. 123 ; Harl. MSS. 532.
1603.
Nov.
UNDER A CLOUD AT COURT. 131
ful bride, and Vere is recalled from the Flemish camp. A VII. 1.
master-work of political art sends Gray and Kaleigh to
the Tower. At the same time Bacon is thrust aside, dis-
credited to the new sovereign, his usual access to the
throne refused, and his proffered services of tongue and
pen disdained.
2. At court he is under a cloud. The patron of Essex, 1604.
the employer of Valentine Thomas, takes into his grace Jan.
all those who shared in the Earl's affections and in his
crime. Southampton is restored in blood. Lady Rich
and the Countess of Northumberland appear at court.
Lady Rich's lover, Montjoy, becomes an earl. Rutland gets
the reversion of a royal park, Monteagle a grant of land.
Among those old partizans of Essex, who now keep the gates
of Whitehall and dispose of offices and grants, Bacon is
undoubtedly unpopular : less, however, for his past speech
against the Earl than for his present defence of the dead
Queen. In James's ear the name of Elizabeth is rank ;
on Bacon's tongue and pen her virtues live and her glories
speak. When no man but himself dares breathe her name
in the court of her successor, he composes that magnificent
prose elegy, In felicem Memoriam Elizabethse, which he
himself esteems the most precious of all his works. The
cloud is at Whitehall or at Hampton Court, not at Ipswich
or St. Albans. To the country his name is dear as ever.
When writs go out for the first Parliament of the new
reign (one purpose of which is to restore the friends of
Devereux in estate and blood), though the King and court
bear hard against him, Ipswich and St. Albans send him to
2. Grant Book of James the First, 2, 3, S. P. O. ; Doquets of James the
First, Nov. 13, 1604, S. P. 0. ; Warrant Book of James the First, 4,
S. P. O ; In felicem memoriam Elizabethse, Bacon's Works, vi. 283 ; Willis,
Not. Pari., 160.
K 2
1604.
Feb.
132 FKANCIS BACON.
VII. 2. London once again by a double return. Nor is this all.
So soon as the burgesses meet in Westminster, he becomes
again, what he has been before in every session for twenty
years, their chief. Some go so far as to use his name for
Speaker of the House ; a fact unknown to Lord Campbell ;
yet worth a word in reference to the report of his lying at
that very moment under public ban.
Mar. 27. 3. By ancient usage the Crown appointed the Speaker
to be chosen by the House. A leave to elect came down,
weighted with a particular recommendation ; and, like a
dean and chapter in the election of a bishop, the squires and
burgesses were expected to adopt the royal choice. A time
has now come for trying what force remains in these feudal
forms. Some members think this leave to elect a Speaker
should be taken in its open sense : that the House should
choose its officers, causing these old pretensions of the Crown
to cease. When, therefore, the court proposes Sir Edward
Phellippes, a buzz and hum of opposition rises. Why not
have a Speaker of their own ? Hastings, Neville, Bacon,
each is named. Hastings is a Puritan, Neville an oppo-
nent of the court. That each of these men should be
deemed fit instruments of opposition to the Crown is sus-
ceptible of easy explanation. But Bacon is neither a
Puritan nor an enemy of the court. He differs from the
Puritans on some of their principles, particularly on their
intolerance for errors of faith ; and he supports the King
against many of their most obstinate prejudices, particu-
larly their repugnance to a union with the Scots. Yet the
gentlemen who live with him and serve with him, who
dine at the same tables, laugh over the same jests, and
3. Com. Jour., i. 141 ; Bacon's Essays, No. 3 ; Bacon's Speech on the
Naturalization of the Scots, State Trials, ii. 575.
SERVICE ON COMMITTEES. 133
sometimes, it is likely, suffer from his wit, believe he VII. 3.
may be played, in a good cause, even against the King. —
These gentlemen have not discovered that Bacon is a 1604 '
corrupt and obsequious rogue. ar *
4. If the House of Commons, not yet strong enough to April,
give battle to the Crown on such a field as the choice of
Speaker, accepts the nomination of Phellippes, it puts
Bacon forward as its man of confidence, electing him on
the Standing Committee of Privileges, on the Committee
of Grievances, of which he is named reporter, on the Com-
mittee for Conference on the Kestraint of Speech, on the
Committee for Union with Scotland ; in all, on twenty-nine
committees. All through the session he speaks with a
boldness, an ability, a frequency unrivalled in the House
of Commons before his day or since. The topics are great
and various: abuses in the taverns, the laws against
witchcraft, the licence of purveyors, the election of mem-
bers, the sin of adultery, the increase of drunkenness, the
sale of Crown offices and lands. Two topics stand out from
the rest with almost solid brightness of historical outline.
These are the Grievances and the Union.
On the first he has the disadvantage of differing from
the Crown; on the second from a majority of those
country gentlemen with whom he usually speaks and
votes. James will not hear of the List of Grievances,
nor will the burgesses vote his Bill of Union with
the Scots. Each side has its personal feeling and its
narrow view. With a deeper wisdom and a larger pa-
triotism, Bacon, while he sees with the King that these
claims to suspend the penal laws, to grant private mono-
polies, to command personal service, to sign away heiresses
4. Com. Joiir., i. 142-253 ; Lords' Jour., ii. 206, 309.
134 FKANCIS BACON.
VII. 4. in marriage, to supply his kitchen from the poulterer's
basket and his cellars from the vintner's store at his own
price, are each and all incontestably historical, founded in
custom older in date than the oldest statute in the book,
sees also with the complaining citizen or squire that
time, by its slow but devouring sap, has hollowed the
ground on which these regal privileges stand, so that
they have no longer a safe foundation on which to
rest, and seeks to improve the old ways before improve-
ment is too late. But James is deaf. To take from him
the right to reward a barber with a wine patent, to
compel the young noble to hold his reins or feed his
dogs, to match his favourites of the bedchamber with the
daughters of English earls, to fetch in ale from Black-
friars and fish from Billingsgate wharf, to grant leave to
his groom, or the darling of his groom, to vend pardons
for rape and arson, burglary and murder, would, iu his
opinion, be to rob him of the most princely attributes of
his high rank.
5. Some among the Commons are not less weak than
James. When they see him break his word, turn his back
on the List of Grievances, nip in the flower their hopes of
a Church reform, begin a secret correspondence with the
Cardinal Archduke and with the Pope, they set them-
selves to oppose his policy even in the few particulars on
which his policy is just and sound. In a union with the
Scots Bacon finds a measure of defence against Spain. A
dull squire sees in it only an opening for the rush into
• London of savages with red beards, bare legs, and scurvy
tongues.
5. Abstract by Bacon of Objections in the House of Commons, April 25,
1604, S. P. O. ; Speech on the Union, April 25, 1604, S. P. O.
INTRODUCES THE BILL OF UNION. 135
Waiving his own wrongs for the public good, Bacon VII. 5.
draws for the King the draft of a Bill of Union, which he
introduces into the House of Commons in a splendid
speech, opening to the view of knight and squire apolitical "
scene, in which he pictures to their minds the contending
nationalities and hostile creeds of Europe, striving, by his
bold, persuasive eloquence, to lure them into pondering
less on the ancient feud of Saxon and Scot, more on the
permament safety of the English faith and power. With
all the lights of fancy, all the subtleties of logic, he meets
on one side the obstinacy of his colleagues, on the other
side the perverseness of his prince. Each, however, holds
to his own. The Grievances are not heard, the Bill of
Union does not pass.
6. While Bacon is making these splendid displays of July,
political wisdom and personal independence in the House
of Commons, Lord Campbell fancies him slinking and
skulking under public odium !
Lord Campbell takes everything on trust. When
Bacon got his knighthood, Lord Campbell says he was
"infinitely gratified by being permitted to kneel down
with three hundred others." Now, Bacon's letters to Cecil
on the knighthood are not only in print, but are known to
every one who reads. In place of being infinitely gra-
tified, Bacon protests against the shame of being com-
pelled to kneel down with Peter and John. So again with
his marriage to Alice Barnham. Lord Campbell makes
merry over his mercenary love and his match of conveni-
ence. Yet from his own text, and from the pages of
Montagu, it is certain that he knows nothing whatever of
this love or of this match ; neither who Alice Barnham
6. Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, iii. 49.
1604.
July.
136 FRANCIS BACON.
V II. 6. was? nor the circumstances of her parents ; neither when
she became Bacon's wife, nor the amount of jointure which
she brought home to her lord. He imagines that Alice
became Lady Bacon in 1603, shortly after July 3rd. He
says she was rich.
In all that relates to Alice Barnham the writers of
Bacon's life have been as much at fault as though she had
been first the love and then the wife of Ward the Kover
or Steer the Leveller, in place of being, as she was, lady
to a man who framed the New Philosophy and held
the Great Seal. Yet some of the facts about her birth,
the associations of her early years, the members of her
family, the circumstances of her love, courtship, marriage,
and wedded life, may still be recovered from the manu-
script mounds of the Bodleian, the State Paper Office, and
the library of Westwood Park.
Aug. 7. More than a year ago, in writing to his cousin Cecil,
Bacon mentioned his having found a handsome maiden to
his mind. She loved him and he loved her. But her
mother, a widow and again a wife, having made two good
matches for herself, has set her heart on making great
alliances for her girls. In part to please her, still more
to glorify his bride, Bacon Avaits and toils that he may lay
at her feet a settled fortune and a more splendid name.
The family into which — when he can steal an hour from
the courts of law and the pursuits of science — he goes
a-courting, and in which he is now an accepted lover,
consists of four girls, their pretty mother, and a bold,
7. Bacon to Cecil, July 3, 1603; Notes on the Pakington Family in
Wotton's Baronetage, ed. by Kimber and Johnson, i. 180. Wotton's
account was derived from a MS. History of Sir John Pakington written
by the Rev. Mr. Tomkins, a Prebendary of Worcester, preserved in
"Wotton's time at Westwood Park. The MS. is now lost.
COURTS ALICE BARNHAM. 137
handsome, heady stepfather of fifty-six : a group of persons VII. 7.
notable from their private stories, and of romantic interest —
from their loves and feuds with the philosopher, and from 1604 -
the part they must have had in shaping his views of the u ^*
felicities and infelicities of domestic life.
8. The four young girls are the orphan daughters of
Benedict Barnham, merchant of Cheapside and alderman
of his ward ; an honest fellow, who gave his wife a good
lift in the world, and left his children to take their
chance of rising among men who, with all their sins, are
never blind to the merits of women blessed with youth,
loveliness, and wealth. Alice is the first to fall in love ;
but the three hoydens who now romp around her, and
perhaps get many a hug and kiss from her famous lover,
will soon be in their turns followed for their bright eyes
and brighter gold. Elizabeth will marry Mervin Touchet,
Earl of Castlehaven, that miserable wretch who, when his
first young wife, the hoyden of to-day, is in her grave, will
expiate on the block the foulest crime ever charged against
an English peer. The two little things now playing at
Alice's knee will become, in due time, Lady Constable
and Lady Soames.
The mother of these girls was a daughter of Hum-
phrey Smith, of Cheapside, silkman to the Queen. Eager,
lovely, and aspiring, she won the alderman of her ward
— an admirable city match ; but she meant and means
to rise yet higher in the world, and heaven has given
her the strength to fight her way. Of the four husbands
whom she has made, or has still to make, the happiest of
their sex, each is to be in his turn a loftier one than
8. Wotton, i. 180-186 ; Nasli's History of Worcestershire, i. 352 ; Collins'
Peerage, art. ' Audley.'
138 FKANCIS BACON.
•VII. 8. the last. She has buried a citizen. She will, in turn,
— bury her knight. She will then marry a baron, and, on
his death, an earl.^ Barnham was her early choice.
■*' When he left her with the four girls and a great
estate, Sir John Pakington, of Hampton Lovet, ancestor
of that Worcestershire baronet who is said to have sat
to Addison for the portrait of Sir Koger de Coverley,
proffered to console her with his hearty affection and his
good old name. The widow was not perverse. If she
wept for the dear alderman of Cheapside, it was in a
coach emblazoned with the mullets and wheatsheafs, and
with a handsome and jovial knight at her side.
9. Sir John has been a father to the four girls ; for if
rough and ready, apt to quarrel and quick to strike, he has
a gentle and manly heart. A gentleman with due pride
in his long line and his broad lands, in his length of leg
and width of chest, he is known at Christchurch and
on Eichmond-green as Lusty Pakington; and the good
old Queen, who liked to see a man a Man, made him,
for his brave looks, a Knight of the Bath. A great swim-
mer, an adroit swordsman, few who can help it ever care to
wait the shock of his hasty temper or his vigorous thrust.
The great man of his country-side, he sends his buck
for the judges' table at assizes, and has his name put
first on every commission from the Crown, whether the
shire is called to raise forces against Spain, build light-
houses in the Bristol Channel, or provide for the wants of
sick and disabled troops ; but when orders from the Crown
9. Council Keg., Aug. 24, 1600, June 6, Oct. 13, 1601 ; Wotton, i. 180 ;
The Camden Society's Miscellany, iv. 50. There is a portrait of Sir John
at Westwood Park. My impressions of him are mainly derived from a
multitude of private papers preserved at Westwood, free access to which I
owe to the obliging courtesies of the Eight Hon. Sir John Pakington,
Bart., his descendant and successor.
SIR JOHN PAKINGTON. 139
oppose his own particular humour, as they sometimes VII. 9.
do, he quietly puts them in the fire. The Privy Council —
has to be rather plain and rough with the jovial knight.
Once he laid a wager to swim against three stout gal- &•
lants from Westminster to London-bridge ; but the Queen
forbade the match, lest some of the fools should get
drowned. He has a passion for building and digging on a
princely scale. He buys a whole forest of trees for his
salt-pits aud for the great house which he is building at
Westwood Park, and he sinks a great farm of a hundred
acres under water that he may have room to swim and
fish. Debt catches the generous spendthrift in its claws ;
and that which could not force him into meanness, lures
him, at the age of fifty, into love. When maddened by
duns, he swore to be free of such rogues, even if he had to
give up London, and live on bread and verjuice. News
that Sir John was going to forsake the town, to sell
horses and dogs, and, for the time to come, live on his
own estate, shoot in the woods round Hampton Lovet, and
stick to the sessions of Worcester, as his father and grand-
father had done before him, soon got wing ; when sixty
stout gentlemen and yeomen of the shire, his friends
and tenants, seated in their own saddles, pricked up to
London, and waited for him at the palace-gates while he
went in to bid the Queen adieu. Sorry to miss so fine a
gentleman from her court, Elizabeth gave him an estate in
Suffolk, worth from eight to nine hundred pounds a year, of
traitor's land. Off he spurred to take possession ; but, on
gaining the door of his new house, he found there a mourn-
ing lady with her children in despair. In place of kicking
them out into the street, he ran away himself, nor ever rested
in his bed till he got the Queen to take back her gift and
bestow it on the weeping lady and her little brood. When
140 FRANCIS BACON.
YII. 9. a good friend in the city whispered in his ear the name
1604 °^ w ^ ow Barnham, the great affectionate fellow, wanting
Aug; ^° *^£ an( ^ k uu *d, an( ^ having no objection to four pretty
girls to romp with him and love him, as they were sure to
do, dashed into Cheapside, told his bashful little tale,
and the young widow, wooed for the second time in her
life, said Yes.
10. A brood of PaMngtons has joined the brood of
Barnhams — Mary, Ann, and John their names. Mary will
live to become Lady Brook; Ann first to become Lady
Ferrars, then Countess of Chesterfield ; Jack will be the
first baronet of his line ; and his son, Jack also, will be
the famous cavalier who sacrificed so much for Charles
the First, and who married Lady Dorothy, the friend of
Hammond, and the reputed author of ' The Whole Duty
of Man.'
The Barnhams and Pakingtons keep house together;
in summer-time at Hampton Lovet, among the oaks and
apple-trees ; in term and sessions, when the world rides
up to town, they hire a lodging in the Strand, over against
the door of the Savoy church. Their home is in Worces-
tershire : a big stone house, in a wooded dell, close by
Hampton-brook, and at the foot of Hornsgrove-hill : a
pile with flanking wings, a trim parterre in front, and
five huge lanterns on the roof, from which nothing
can be seen save the square plain tower of the village
church, the clasping zone of wood, and now and then a
curl of ascending smoke from the Droitwich salt-pans.
Near a mile from Hampton Lovet lie the ruins of an
ancient abbey, which may possibly have been the scene
10. I derive these details from the Westwood MSS., the stained glasses
of Hampton Lovet church, and personal inspection of the localities, with
the valuable aid of Sir John and Lady Pakmgton.
HAMPTON LOVET. 141
of Sir Roger's ghost. A chain of ponds, alive with fish VII. 10.
and fed by natural springs, drips past the ruin, and beyond —
these slants a bright green grassy upland, bare of wood,
from the top of which, a level table-land, the eye sweeps
lovingly over wood and water, hill and hamlet and
orchard; near it the village spires of Ombersley and
Hampton ; far away the cathedral towers of Worcester ; and
in the distance, over leagues of country, powdered in May
with the pink and white of innumerable apple-trees, in
autumn warm with the ruddy glow of the ploughed red
land, the bold purple ridge of the Malvern hills. On
this plateau, high above the low-lying woods, Sir John
has begun to build a big house and dig a big lake — a
house of rough red brick, with a grand hall and a state-
room above it, panelled, carved, and tapestried : a house
like himself, thoroughly genuine and English, in which he
is to die, and his descendants are to live. His new lake,
close by his house, is the wonder and bugbear of the
shire. ^
11. Between this proud mother and this burly knight
the course of Bacon's love for Alice has no great hope of
running smooth. Lady Pakington adores great people ;
thinking more of Sir Francis Bacon as a friend and
favourite of the Lord Chancellor than she would have
thought of him had he already published the Great
Instauration. Lady Egerton condescends to keep her
in good humour while the man of genius waits and
labours for a better time.
He has still to wait, even for that rise in his profession Oct. 28.
which is incontestably his due. On the death of Sir
11. Bacon to Egerton, in Tanner MSS. 251, fol. 38 b ; Doquets, Aug. 18,
Oct. 28, 1604, S. P. O.
142 FKANCIS BACON.
VII. 11. William Peryam, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, and the
third husband of his sister Elizabeth Bacon, Fleming
becomes Chief Baron, yet the Solicitorship, vacant once
more, is given over his head to Sir John Doderidge,
Serjeant of the coif.
1604.
Oct. 28.
1605. 12. A brief reference in the charge against William
Nov. Talbot, a phrase here and there in his Essays, have told
the world what Bacon thought of the Powder Plot. It
has not been known that he had any part, slight or serious,
in repressing this foul conspiracy, the natural sequel of
the Essex plot.
The new facts are found in an unpublished letter from
Bacon to CeciL
Nov. 8. The crime of Essex, the royal patronage of the conspira-
tors, have borne their fruit in the Westminster mine. It is
the eighth of November, four days after the strange disco-
very made by Lord Monteagle. Eawkes is in the Tower.
Catesby, Percy, Christopher and John Wright are riding
through the midland shires, flinging away cloaks and scarfs,
the country at their heels. The fight is not yet won. Jesuits
peer from the slums of Whitefriars, and many who have
come to. town for the fifth of November still lurk among
the sheds of Drury-lane. True citizens keep watch and
ward, lest, maddened by defeat, some desperate villain
should commit midnight murder or scatter midnight fire.
John Drake, serving-man to Reynolds, a gentleman
living in pleasant Holborn, hears a fellow named Beard
declare that the plot was a brave plot, and that he, for one,
regrets it has failed. Drake runs to his master, and
Beynolds repeats to the Principal of Staple Inn the sus-
12. Bacon to Cecil, Nov. 8, 1605, S. P. O. ; Examination of John Drake,
Nov. 8, 1605, S. P. 0.
1605.
Nov. 8.
HIS TOLERATION. 143
picious words his servant has overheard. The Principal VUL 12
sees that here is no case for a city Dogberry : Beard must
be a Papist, may be a plotter. Away he posts with the
ancients of his Inn to Bacon's rooms in Gray's Inn Square.
The words are bad. but general — may mean little, may
mean much. The knave should certainly be caught and
questioned. Bacon sends the examination of Drake to
Cecil, with the following note : —
Bacon to Cecil.
It mat please youb Lordship, Xov. s, i605.
• I send an examination of one who was brought to
me by the principal and ancients of Staple Inn. touching
the words of one Beard, suspected for a Papist and prac-
tiser, — being general words, but bad, and I thought not
good to neglect anything at such a time ; so with signi-
fication of humble duty, I remain, at your Lordship's
honourable commands, most hurnblv.
F. Bacon.
13. Even the atrocious plot of Fawkes and Garnet.
though its success would have been death to him. as to *- Ta11 -
so many more, does not sour Bacon into a persecutor. He
classes their crime with the massacres of Paris : but while
the bigots find in these monstrous aberrations a plea for
hanging and embowelling Eoman Catholics who have
taken no part in them, he finds, as wise and tolerant men
see in them now after a lapse of two hundred and sixty
vears, an argument against arming any one sect of men
with the persecutor's sword. The traitor he gives up to the
13. Mathews to Carleton, July. 1606, S. P.O.; Ap. to Salisbury's Ori-
ginal Papers relating to Enbens, 341, 343: Bacon's Essays, ed. of 1625,
No. 3; Mathews to Bacon, April 14, July 16, 1616, Lambeth MSS. 936.
Jan.
144 FRANCIS BACON.
VII. 13. law ; the heretic is to him a brother who has lost his way.
— In the noblest and most original of his Essays, penned in
1606. ^e p r j me f ki s intellectual powers, he especially explains
and defends this principle of toleration. But the doctrine of
his book had been previously exercised as a virtue in his
life. The lapse of Tobie Mathews from the English Church
to Kome puts his tolerant philosophy to the proof. Born on
the steps of the episcopal bench, his grandfather a bishop,
his father a bishop, four of his uncles bishops, all his con-
nexions in the Church, the fall of this young man makes a
noise in England loud as the apostacy of Spalatro makes
in Borne. The Puritans would cut him off branch and
bole. When he comes from Italy to London, having given
up all his old delights, cards, wenches, wine, and oaths,
some, who are not themselves saints, would fling him into
the Tower and leave him there to die, as Spalatro, venturing
into Borne, is sent to perish in the dungeons of St. An-
gelo. James is bitterly incensed against him, looking on
his fall as that of a column of his church ; his father drives
him from his heart with a curse ; yet, when his whole kin
spit on him and cast him forth, Bacon, strong in his sym-
pathy for a scholar and a man who has lost his way, takes
this outcast and regenerate pervert to his house. Though
he fights against his friend's new doctrines, he never will
consent, with the less tolerant world, to hunt him down for
a change in his speculative views, which every eye can
see has made him a better and a happier man. The philo-
sopher may not be always able, by any sacrifice of name
and credit, to shield this enthusiast from the rage of sects,
but he comforts him when in jail, procures leave for him
to return from exile, softens towards him the heart of his
father, and obtains for him indulgences which probably
save his life.
SIR JOHN PAKINGTON. 145
14. In the session which meets after the plot Bacon VII. 14.
plays a most active and brilliant part. The whole world —
has come to town : some to see that the King is safe, some
to see the traitors hang. Among others have come up
Sir John and Lady Pakington, together with the young-
ladies from Westwood Park.
Sir John has left behind him for a few weeks his brine-
pits, his great pool, his herds of deer, his new house in the
wood, his petty squabbles with the neighbouring squires,
and penned himself and the young ladies in a lodging of
the Strand, not only that he may see the opening of par-
liament and hear the news, but that he may fight his way
through two or three of his ugly scrapes. In digging his
huge pond in Westwood Park, he has put under water some
part of an old road, never doubting his power to do what
he saw good on his own estate, the more so that he has
given a turn to the road more convenient for himself and
for every one else. A neighbour, between whom and Sir
John no love is lost, seeing the flaw in this easy mode of
making things straight, procures from the Crown an order
to remove the pond and restore the King's ancient high-
way. This news he sends to Westwood, saying, with a
politeness which the hot old gentleman reads for insult,
that, though he has such an order in his hands, he shall
not use it so long as the knight shall be pleased to live
with him on friendly terms. Scorning to owe his pleasures
to such a fellow, Sir John breaks down his banks, and,
the pool lying high, the waters race and crash through
the orchards, strewing the fields with dead fish for a
mile or more, and discolouring the Severn as far off as
14. Carleton to Chamberlain, May 11, 1600, S. P. O. ; Wotton, i. 184 ;
Heath's Preface to Bacon's Speech on the Jurisdiction of the Marches, vii.
509 ; Dom, Papers James I., x. 86.
146 FRANCIS BACON.
VII. 14. Worcester for a week. Having let out his pool, he has
1606 come to answer for himself, and seek power to fill it
Yeb with water and fish once more.
A yet more serious quarrel with Lord Zouch has helped
to bring him up to town. As President of the Council of
Wales and the Welsh Marches, Lord Zouch has for a long-
time claimed a certain jurisdiction over the four border
shires of Gloucester, Hereford, Salop, and Worcester; a
claim which the shires deny and resist, with loud speeches
from the gentry, met by threats of force on the part of Zouch,
tumultuous riding, signing, and protesting, ending for a
day hi solemn appeals from the four shires to the House
of Commons, and from the angry Council of Wales to the
King. Sir Herbert Crofts, Knight of the shire for Here-
ford, has the cause against Zouch in hand. Sir John, who
is Sheriff of Worcester, but not a Parliament man, having
no tongue to wag, has yet a passionate interest in the
appeal ; for Lord Zouch not only claims a certain authority
in his county, but shows no sense of the respect due, even
from a peer, to so great a man as Sir John.
15. Alice is now near her lover, whom she may spy as
he trots from Gray's Inn to Westminster, or lounges from
the House towards Chancery-lane. Bacon sees many a
rock ahead. He is still a simple knight, and he has the
misery of differing from Sir John on the great question of
Lord Zouch and the shires.
Sir John can hardly make him out. Pakington is a
Koyalist root and branch, one who has lent money to his
Prince on Privy Seals, and who would draw a sword
for Church and King with the ready zeal which made
15. Com. Jour., i. 286, 299 ; App. to the Verney Papers, ed. by John
Bruce, 281.
HIS LOFTY POSITION. 147
his grandson famous among the soldiers of Charles the VII. 15.
First ; yet this young lawyer, who has spent his life '
in recommending reforms, presumes to defend against
. Feb
him, loyal Sir John, the prerogatives of the Crown!
Wiser heads than that of the warm old AVorcester-
shire knight are often at fault when trying to explain to
themselves the relations of Bacon to the Puritan House
of Commons and to the episcopal and regal court. Yet
they seem to be easy of explanation. It is, indeed, so
rare for a man to stand on good terms with a hostile
Crown and House of Commons, that it is often thought
and sometimes found to be impossible. Winwood tried
it. Strafford tried it. Pym would have tried it. But
Winwood lost favour with the House when he took office
under the Crown ; lost favour at Court when he leaned to
the Puritan opinions of the House. Strafford and Pym had
each to choose a side. Bacon's position was far more lofty,
and for years it seemed as if it were more secure. From his
height of view and round of sympathy he is unable to
throw himself, tongue and pen, into the exclusive and
sectarian lines of either camp. His reconciling genius
spans the dividing stream of party. Above the foolish
Prince and petulant squires, he sees his country; not
merely the England of Bancroft, of the Hampton Court
Conference, of the Proclamation against Papists ; but the
England of a thousand years, of Alfred and of Edward, of
Cressy and of Cadiz, of Chaucer and "of Spenser ; the
England of a glorious past and a hopeful future; the
land which nurtured Wycliffe and Caxton, which broke
the spiritual bonds of Leo, which crushed the invin-
cible fleets of Spain. This country he strives to arm, to
free, to guide ; now by aiding the King in questions of
revenue and of union ; now by aiding the House in ques-
l 2
148 FRANCIS BACON.
VII. 15. tions of reform or war. In each he is consistent first
~ and last. His first votes in the House were for supplies,
-p , his last speech will be for supplies. With no fear of the
controversial genius of Borne, he feels a wholesome dread
of the fleets and regiments of Spain ; those tracts by which
Parsons, Schioppius, and Bellarmino sting the sleep from
so many pillows pass him by ; but he cannot hear unmoved
that the same Paul who has launched an interdict on Yenice
is forming a Koman Catholic League against England;
that the O'Neiles and O'Donnels driven out from Ireland
by Lord Montjoy are hurrying home from Brussels and
Madrid; thut rebels are drilling in the wilds of Con-
naught and Ulster ; that Fajardo is manning his ships in
Cadiz bay, and Brochero proffering his red hand to brush
away Virginia with steel and flame. Willing to meet the
men of words with words, he is not less eager to meet
the men of war with steel and lead, the midnight assassin
with the chain, the gibbet, and the cord. Now, to starve
the Crown is to leave England weak. True, the Prince is
lax, and moneys voted for the musters and the fleets
may chance to drop into the pouches of Hume and
Herbert and Carr; yet of two dark evils he chooses to
dare the least, seeing that to pare down the subsidies,
as many virtuous and unreasoning squires propose, is to
subject James and his needy servants to the magnificent
corruptions of Lerma, the great minister of Spain,
already suspected, and with truth, of having taken the
chief men of the Privy Council and the Bedchamber into
his pay. Better own the King's debts than let Lerma pay
them. Therefore, while he speaks with Hastings and Hyde
against patents, wardships, private monopolies, the whole
tag-rag of feudal privilege, he constantly votes with
Hitcham and Hobart for those supplies which are necessary
CONSULTED BY CECIL. 149
to maintain the splendour of the Crown and the efficiency VII. 15.
of the musters and the fleet. —
Here he parts from the majority ; wide as in his vote
for union with the Scots. e '
16. Cecil, knowing his kinsman free from selfish and
sectarian views, consults him on the money-bills and settle-
ments. The debates on a grant for the new reign are about
to come on ; and Cecil, who as Earl of Salisbury sits in
the Peers, has begun to feel his need of a bold and in-
fluential friend in the Lower House. He hints that the
Court shall no longer oppose Bacon's rise at the bar. On
his part, Bacon is ready to assist the Crown in procuring
an ample grant; to shape drafts and preambles such as
may disarm the resentment of knight and squire. Cecil
takes him at his word, and Bacon drafts a bill. Here is a
note which shows how he is nearing power :
Bacon to the Earl of Salisbury.
It may please your good Lordship, Feb. 10, 1606.
I cannot as I would express how much I think
myself bounden to your Lordship for your tenderness over
my contentments. But herein I will endeavour hereafter
as I am able. I send your Lordship a preamble for the
subsidy, drawing which was my morning's labour to-day.
This mould or frame, if you like it not, I will be ready to
cast it again, de novo, if I may receive your honourable
directions : for any particular corrections, it is in a good
hand ; and yet I will attend your Lordship (after to-
morrow's business, and to-morrow ended, which I know
will be wearisome to you) to know your further pleasure :
16. Bacon to Cecil, Feb. 10, 1606, S. P. O.
150 FRANCIS BACON.
VII. 16. and so in all humbleness I rest at your Lordship's honour-
able commands more your ever bounden
1606. „ -o
F. Bacon.
Mar. 11. 17. After warm debates in the Lower House a bill goes up
to the throne for two subsidies and four fifteenths, payable
in eighteen months. It is not enough. Hitchara, member
for Lyme, a patriotic fighting town on the Dorset coast,
proposes in committee a second grant of two subsidies,
four in all. A dozen members rise at once. Peake will
hear no more about the royal debts. Holt declares the
proposition of Hitcham dangerous. Paddye will tell the
King that even kings must not do wrong. Noy de-
claims against spoiling the poor to gorge the rich. Dyer
and Holcroft hint that more than once demands like
these have been met by the cry, To arms ! But the
warmest speaker is Lawrence Hyde of West Hatch,
member for Marlborough. Courtiers shrink from an
unequal contest. Sir Edward Hoby, an observant poli-
tician, friendly to his kinsman Cecil and the court, notes
how poor a figure the King's official friends make in that
masculine and stormy House.
Mar. 1.8. 18. Bacon starts to the front. In the midst of a noisy
sitting of the committee, word comes down from Whitehall
that James will not wait — that the bill must be passed,
or the undutiful members shall feel his ire. Such words
—now frequent — make the King odious and contemptible.
A storm sets in ; the members fling back threat for threat ;
the bill is lost.
17. Hoby to Edmonds, Mar. 7, 1606 ; Cecil to Earl of Mar, Mar. 9,
1606, S. P. 0. ; Com. Jour., i. 281-84.
18. Bacon to Cecil, Mar. 22, 1606, S. P. O. ; Com. Jour., i. 288 ; Jonson's
Epigrams, 41 ; A Proclamation touching a Seditious Rumour, Mar. 22, 1606.
1606.
BILL OF SUPPLY. 151
This scene takes place on Tuesday. On Thursday the yjj. 18.
committee meets again; the King has not accepted his
defeat, nor will the Commons enlarge their vote. Saturday
brings no change of mood. On Monday the committee Mar. 22.
must report to the House ; and Bacon, who has been
made reporter, will have to report against his own con-
victions of what is best for the country and the Crown. He
sees the committee sullen, almost savage. Monday is the
anniversary of the King's accession, yet no one rises to
propose a holiday.
Fagged with work, he must ride down to Gorhambury
for a day of rest. He does not wish to appear as if flying
from his post, so he takes up his pen and writes :
Bacon to the Earl of Salisbury.
This Saturday, the 22nd of March, 1606.
It may please youe good Lokdship,
I purpose upon promise rather than business to
make a step to mj house in the country this afternoon,
which, because your Lordship may hear otherwise, and
thereupon conceive any doubt of my return to the pur-
suance of the King's business, I thought it concerned me
to give your Lordship an account that I purpose (if I live)
to be there to-morrow in the evening, and so to report the
subsidy on Monday morning ; which, though it be a day of
triumph, yet I hear of no adjournment, and therefore the
House must sit. But if, in regard of the King's servants'
attendance, your Lordship conceive doubt the House will
not be well filled that day, I humbly pray your Lordship I
may receive your direction for the forbearing to enter into
the matter that day. I doubt not the success, if those
attend that should. So I rest, in all humbleness, at your
Lordship's honourable commands,
r F. Bacon.
152
FKANCIS BACON.
VII. 18.
1606.
Mar. 22.
All hour after this note is penned a rumour rises, none
knows how, that the King is dead. Some say he has been
shot, some stabbed, some smothered in his bed. No one
asks where the King is; all agree that he is killed.
Members rush to the council, to the city : but the minis-
ters, the aldermen, know as little as themselves. Some
spur for Theobalds, some for Eoyston. London yields itself
to the wildest terrors. Hundreds of men concerned in the
Powder Plot are still at large. Garnet is still unhung ;
the priests are sworn to have blood for blood ; the Jesuits,
it is said, have threatened to burn London to ashes, to
massacre all the Protestants, should that shining example
of Christian virtue come to harm. Citizens bar their doors
and swing on their Toledo blades.
A horseman, Sir Herbert Crofts, dashes into Palace
Yard. He has seen the King! The King is safe, and
near the town. Fear now mutinies into joy. Bells laugh
over London roofs, crowds ride in procession to meet their
Prince. If he is safe, the realm is safe. The Peers and
Commons go to Whitehall. Ben Jonson bursts into music.
As night comes down, the streets start out with fire, and
the taverns of Fleet-street and Cheapside roar with patriotic
songs.
Mar. 25. 19. Sunday and Monday pass in rejoicings and recep-
tions. Tuesday brings up Bacon. He has not, he tells the
House of Commons, drawn a word-for-word report from the
committee, for his soul is shaken with too much fear and joy*
What, he cries, are a few debts to the exultation now
straining every loyal heart ? These debts are less the King's
than the late Queen's. The Queen made war, the country
19. Com. Jour., i. 286, 299 ; Cecil to Wotton, Mar. 19, June 18, 1606,
S. P. O. ; Statutes 3 Jacobi, c. 26.
_ SUBSIDY GRANTED. 153
must repair the ravages of war. Eeparation costs money. VII. 19.
The Crown debts, too, must be paid in full, next year if
not this year ; and why prefer a vote one session to a vote M '
another session ? The House can name its time ; but he
says, Vote to-day ! In that rapturous and sacred moment,
when a great alarm has pressed heart to heart, and made
the whole nation one, he calls on the gentlemen of
England to crown their own happy work by voting the
subsidies necessary to support the power of the country, the
independence of the Crown.
His eloquence -bears away the House. Hyde fronts the
stream ; but the ticle has turned towards Whitehall, and
he strives against genius and enthusiasm, if manfully yet
in vain. A bill for another subsidy is passed.
20. In the flush of this triumph, with his fame now May 6 -
fixed, and with a great place, won by himself, not tossed
to him by a patron, within reach of his hand (not, as Lord
Campbell says, when he is poor and down in the summer
of the Queen's death), he begs the lady of his love to
name her day. Three years ago they were pledged to
each other ; he could have made her Lady Bacon then, or
at any time since then ; but he has hoped to give to his
bride a more settled fortune and a more illustrious name.
Kenown beyond the dreams of woman he can give her.
Nor is he poor in those worldly gifts which girls are taught
to covet even more than character and fame. Besides the
grants bestowed upon him by Elizabeth, the reversion in
the Star Chamber (not yet fallen in), and the leases of Chel-
tenham and Charlton Kings, of the Pitts and Twickenham
20. Bacon to Egerton, Tanner MSS. 251, fol. 38 b; Rawley's Resusci-
tatio, 41 ; Domestic Papers, James I., xix. 33 ; Heath's Preface, Bacon's
Works, vii. 576.
154 FRANCIS BACON.
VII. 20. Park, the death of poor Anthony (dead of the vices and
excesses caught from his noble friend) has given him Gorham-
' bury and the lands about it, where he now lives when not
at Gray's Inn, and where, in after years, he will build
Yerulam House by the pond, taking his house, as he says,
to the water, when the water will no longer flow to his
house. More than all, the patent of Solicitor-General may
be now sealed to him any day or week, a post of not less
value than three or four thousand pounds a-year, with
openings to higher office and greater pay, to the Privy
Council, the Peerage, and the Seals. He is rich, too,
in genius and in noble friends. If Cecil plays with him
fast and loose, the Lord Chancellor pushes his fortunes
at the bar, and Lady Egerton smooths his suit with
the young beauty and with her domineering kin. Sir
John is in high spirits. True, the bill to exempt the
four shires from Lord Zouch's jurisdiction has been dropped
by the Lords ; but the King has assured Sir Herbert
Crofts with his own lips that right shall be done ; and the
loyal country gentleman believes that when a prince pro-
mises to do right he will of course maintain his word.
The day is named ; the tenth of May.
May 10. 21. By help of Sir Dudley Carleton we may look upon
the pleasant scene, upon the pretty bride, the jovial knight,
the romping girls, and the merry company, as through a
glass. Feathers and lace light up the rooms in the Strand.
Cecil has been warmly urged to come over from Salisbury
House. Three of his gentlemen, Sir Walter Cope, Sir
Baptist Hicks, and Sir Hugh Beeston, hard drinkers and
men about town, strut over in his stead, flaunting in their
21, Carleton to Chamberlain, May 11, 1606, S. P. O. ; Bacon's Will ;
Spedding's Bacon, i. 8.
HIS MAKEIAGE. 155
swords and plumes ; yet the prodigal bridegroom, sump- VII. 21.
tuous in "his tastes as in his genius, clad in a suit of —
Genoese velvet, purple from cap to shoe, outbraves them 1606.
all The bride, too, is richly dight ; her whole dowry seeming ay
to be piled up on her in cloth of silver and ornaments
of gold. The wedding rite is performed at St. Mary-
lebone chapel, two miles from the Strand, among the lanes
and suburbs winding towards the foot of Hampstead Hill.
Who that is blessed with any share of sympathy or poetry
cannot see how that glad and shining party ride to the
rural church on that sunny tenth of May ? how the girls
will laugh and Sir John will joke, as they wind through
lanes now white with thorn and the bloom of pears ; how
the bridesmaids scatter rosemary and the groomsmen
struggle for the kiss ? Who cannot imagine that
dinner in the Strand, though the hunchback Earl of
Salisbury has not come over to Sir John's lodging to taste
the cheer or kiss the bride ? We know that the wit is
good, for Bacon is there ; we may trust Sir John for the
quality of his wine.
Alice brings to her husband two hundred and twenty
pounds a-year, with a further claim, on her mother's
death, of one hundred and forty pounds a-year. As
Lady Pakington long outlived Bacon, that increase never
came into his hands. Two hundred and twenty pounds
a-year is his wife's whole fortune. What is not spent in
lace and satins for her bridal dress, he allows her to invest
for her separate use. From his own estate he settles on
her five hundred pounds a-year.
Now, in what sense can a marriage in which there seems
to be a good deal of love, and in which there certainly is
no great flush of money, be called, on Bacon's side, a
mercenary match ?
156 FRANCIS BACON.
VII. 22. 22. A slight more galling than has yet been put on
— him awaits the close of his honeymoon. Only a few days
1606. after his marriage to Alice, Sir Francis Gawdy of the
June. Common Pleas, stricken with apoplexy, is removed from
his chambers at Serjeants' Inn to Easton Hall, where
he soon after dies. Coke goes up to the bench, and
Doderidge, the Solicitor-General, ought by the custom of
the law to follow Coke, leaving the post of Solicitor void.
But Sir Francis Gawdy having been a partizan of the
Essex faction, and his daughter married to the son of Lady
Eich, Cecil, either anxious not to offend that powerful
faction, which he has made his own by a double contract
of marriage, or doubtful of his cousin's subserviency in
office, sets aside the usual order of promotion at the bar, and
July 4. raises Sir Henry Hobart, his obscure Attorney of the Court
of Wards, over Doderidge's as well as over Bacon's head,
Oct. to the high place of Attorney-General. Bacon complains
to Egerton and Cecil of the insult even more than the
wrong of such a trick. The Lord Chancellor, who sees
the error made by the government in alienating the most
powerful man in the House of Commons, proposes to heal
the wound by asking Sir John Doderidge to yield his
patent to Bacon, taking in exchange the place of King's
Serjeant, together with a promise of the first seat that
shall fall vacant in the "King's Bench. To this Sir John
and Cecil both object.
Xov. 23. When Parliament meets in November to discuss the
Bill of Union, Bacon stands back. The King has chosen
22. Foss's Judges of England, vi. 158, 306, 329; Chron. Jurid. 181;
Montagu, v. 297 ; Council Reg., Oct. 14, 1606.
23. Carleton to Chamberlain, Dec. 18, 1606, S. P.O.; Foster to Mathews,
Feb. 16, 1607, S. P. O. ; Com. Jour., i. 314, 333 ; Lane's Reports in the
Court of Exchequer, 22, 31 ; M'Crie's Life of Melville, ii. 234.
THE SCOTS IN LONDON. 157
his Attorney; let the new Attorney fight the King's VII. 23.
battle. The adversaries to be met are bold and many. —
During the recess Cecil has imposed on the country a Book
of Kates, pretending that taxes may be lawfully laid in
the King's ports at the King's pleasure. John Bates, a
merchant trading with Venice, resisting a tax unsanctioned
by the House of Commons, has been condemned in the
Court of Exchequer ; but this condemnation of Bates
rousing a nation of taxpayers, from every port into which
ships can float come protests against Sir Thomas Fleming's
reading of the law. Beyond the Tweed, too, people are
mutinous to the point of war; for the countrymen of
Andrew Melville begin to suspect the King of a design
against the Kirk, and Melville himself, lured by a false
pretence from St. Andrew's to London, has been provoked
into an indiscretion, and clapped in the Tower.
Under such crosses, the Bill on Union fares but ill.
Fuller, the bilious representative of London, flies at
the Scots. The Scots in London are in the highest de-
gree unpopular. Lax in morals and in taste, they will
take the highest place at table, they will drink out of
anybody's can, they will kiss the hostess or her buxom
maid without saying " By your leave." Brawls fret the
taverns which, they haunt; pasquins hiss against them
from the stage. Such broils distract the poor King, who sees
no way to put them down save by commanding Popham
to whip and pillory the rogues who beat his countrymen
and friends. Three great poets, Jonson, Chapman, and
Marston, go to jail for a harmless jest against these Scots.
Such acts of rigour make the name of Union hateful to
the public ear.
Hobart goes to the wall. James now sees that the battle Dec.
is not to the weak nor the race to the slow. Bacon has only
158 FKANCIS BACON.
VII. 23. to hold his tongue and make his terms. Alarmed lest
— the Bill of Union may be rejected by an overwhelming
vote, Cecil suddenly adjourns the House. He must get
Dgc
strength. The plan proposed by Egerton for making
Doderidge a King's Serjeant, Bacon the Solicitor-General,
is revived. Pressed on all sides, here by the Lord Chancellor,
there by a mutinous House of Commons, Cecil at length
yields to his cousin's claim, Sir John Doderidge bows his
neck, and when Parliament meets after the Christmas
holidays Bacon holds in his pocket a written engagement
for the Solicitor's place.
1607. 24. The Bill of Union, drawn by Egerton, consists of
Feb. 14. f our parts : hostile laws, border laws, laws of commerce,
laws of navigation. Three of these parts present no diffi-
culties to the House of Commons. Statutes which forbid
a Scot to pass the Tweed, which fill the dales of Ettrick
and Yarrow with feud and slaughter, which prohibit the sale
of English wool in Scotland and of Scottish furs in England,
find no advocates. All the old barbarous laws are at once
annulled. But the knights and burgesses resist the King's
design of naturalizing the whole Scottish population.
Nicholas Fuller reopens the debate. A union of these
two countries, says the uncivil member for London, would
be a marriage of the rich with the poor, the strong with the
weak. With the pardonable pride of a London burgess he
points to the arts, the industry, and wealth of England, to its
orchards swelling with fruit, its pastures fat with kine, its
waters white with sails, to its thriving people, abundant agri-
culture, inexhaustible fisheries, woods, and mines. With all
these riches he contrasts a land of crags and storms, peopled
by a race of men rude as their climate, poor in resources
24. Com. Jour., i. 333-337 ; Lords' Jour., ii. 469, 472 ; Statutes, 4 Jac. c. 1.
1607.
Feb. 14.
DEBATE ON UNION BILL. 159
and in genius, a nation with pedlars for merchants, and VII. 24
two or three rotten hoys for a fleet. Such countries, he
contends, are best apart. What man in his senses, having
two estates divided by a hedge, one fruitful, one waste, will
break clown his fence and let the cattle stray from the waste
into garden and corn-field? Will any one mingle two
swarms of bees ? why then two hostile swarms of men ?
England is bare as the land round Bethel ; so that nature
and God call out to separate the nations, as Lot chose the
left hand, Abraham the right. He denies that the King's
accession has changed the relations of the Saxon to the
Scot : and sits down with demanding whether, if Mary had
borne a son to Philip, that son being heir to his father's
crowns, an English Parliament would have naturalized the
people of Sicily and Spain ?
25. The speech makes a deep impression. Fuller speaks
to men convinced ; men sore from daily wrongs and insults.
Bacon, rising to reply, begins with that shower of image Feb. 17.
and illustration which his experience tells him is never
lost on a learned and poetic House. He begs his hearers
to forget all private feuds, to raise their minds to questions
of the highest state ; not as merchants dealing with mean
affairs, but as judges and kings charged with the weal of
empires. Glancing in scorn at Fuller, he passes with his
light laugh the moral of that tale of Abraham and Lot, a
parting cursed with a cruel war and a long captivity, to
his illustration of the fence. The King, Bacon says, threw
down the fence when he crossed the Tweed ; yet the flock
of Scots has not yet followed through the rent. Proud
and lavish, doting on dress and show, the Scottish gentle-
25. Speech by Sir Francis Bacon in the House of Commons concerning
the Naturalization of the Scots, 1641 ; Wilson, 37.
160 FKANCIS BACON.
VII. 25. man will rather starve at home than betray his poverty
2 abroad. The Eoman commons fought for the right to
name Plebeian consuls, and, when they had won the right,
voted for Patricians : so with the Scots : they claim the
privilege of coming into England; yield the right, and
they will not come. It is said the land is full. London,
he grants, is thronged and swollen : not the open downs
and plains. France counts more people to the mile.
Flanders, Italy, Germany exceed us in population. Are
there no English towns decayed ? Are there no ancient
cities heaps of stones ? Why, marsh grows on the pasture,
• pasture on the plough-land. Wastes increase ; the soil
cries loud for hands to sow the corn and reap the harvest.
But this bill for naturalizing the Scots stands on a far
higher ground. A people, warlike as the Eomans and as
ourselves, a race of men who, like wild horses, are hard to
control because lusty with blood and youth, offer to be
one people with us, friends in the day of peace, allies in
the day of strife. Take from the Scots this brand of aliens,
they will stand by our side, bulwarks and defenders against
the world. Should you shut them out from England,
treating them as strangers and enemies, they may prove
to you what the Pisans proved to Florence, the Latins to
Rome. In our ancient wars the invader found the gates
of our kingdom open. France could enter through Scot-
land, Spain through Ireland. Pass this bill, we close our
gates. No minor argument deserves a thought. Union
is strength, union is defence. You object that the Scots
are poor. Are not strong limbs better than riches ? Has
not Solon told us the man of iron is master of the
man of gold? Does not Macchiavelli pour his scorn at
the false proverb which makes money the sinews of war ?
The true sinews of war are the sinews of valiant men.
1607.
Feb.
DEBATE ON UNION BILL. 161
Leave, gentlemen, to the Spaniards, the delusion that a VII. 25.
heap of gold, filched from a feeble race, can give the
dominion of the world. If union with the Scots will not
bring riches to our doors, it will bring safety to our frontiers,
will give us strength at sea and reserves on land. Alone
we have borne our flag aloft; with Scotland united in
arms, with Ireland settled and at peace, with our war fleets
on every sea, our merchants in every port, we shall become
the first power in the world. Warmed with such glorious
hopes, how can the gentleman of England stand upon
terms and audits — upon mine and thine — upon he knows
not what !
26. The House rings with applause. Cecil sends a copy
of this speech to James ; and in the midst of his trials, it
is some pleasure to the poor pedant to see what splendid
things a practical statesman and philosopher can say for
his favourite scheme.
If the Union is postponed until another generation, its
eloquent advocate gains his place.
Lord Campbell assumes that Egerton's plan for Bacon's June 25.
promotion failed, and that he rose into office through the
changes on Popham's death. These are mistakes. Fleming
succeeds Popham, Tanfield succeeds Fleming, and Hobart
remains Attorney. To create a vacancy, Doderidge has
to take the coif, when Bacon's commission as the King's
Solicitor-General immediately passes the Seal.
26. Cecil to Lake, April 16, 1607, S. P. O. ; Chron. Jurid., 183.
162 FKANCIS BACON.
CHAPTEE VIII.
SOLICITOK-GENEKAL.
VIII. 1. 1. On the twenty-fifth of June, 1607, at the age of forty-six
years and five months, Bacon entered office. During the
six years which he acted as Solicitor-General, Lord Camp-
bell has found no flaw in his practice — abstinence which is
due in part to the circumstance that for these six years,
with the unimportant exception of the trial of Lord San-
quhair for murder, Lord Campbell has overlooked every
fact in Bacon's life. If there is nothing to relate, there
may be nothing to condemn.
Yet there is much in the story of these six years —
years in which he wrought at the Essays and shaped out
the New Philosophy ; in which, to his personal disquiet, he
resisted the design of Sir John Pakington and his friends to
abridge the authority of the Court of Wales ; in which, at
his personal risk and loss, he aided to plant Virginia and
Ulster ; in which, against his professional interests, he en-
gaged in many a good fight for popular liberties against
the Crown — which men of sense and spirit will wish for the
sake of example to keep alive.
1608.
April. 2. Cecil is now at his height of fortune. On the sudden,
dramatic death of Dorset, the most daring of poets, the
most prudent of financiers, Cecil takes the White Staff
without parting from his office as premier Secretary of
1. Campbell's Life of Bacon, iii. 56.
2. Eure to Cecil, April 27, 1608, S. P. O. ; Chamberlain to Carleton,
July 7, 1608 ; Provisoes between Salisbury and Morral, Dec. 1608, S. P. 0„
POSITION OF CECIL. 163
State. He is now nearly all in all. Except in naval VIII. £
affairs, in which Nottingham's great age and eminence —
as a sailor forbid all meddling, no department of the
public service, home or foreign, trade, police, finances, law,
religion, war and peace, escapes the quick eye and con-
trolling hand of the tiny hunchback. Every one serves
him, every enterprise enriches him. He builds a new palace
at Hatfield, a new Exchange in the Strand. Countesses
intrigue for him. His son marries a Howard, his daughter
a Clifford. Ambassadors start for Italy, less to see Doges
and Grand Dukes than to pick up pictures and statues,
bronzes and hangings for his vast establishment at Hatfield
Chace. Gardeners travel through France to buy up for
him mulberries and vines. Salisbury House on the Thames
almost rivals the luxurious villas of the Eoman Cardinals
in wealth of tapestry, of furniture and plate. Yet under
this blaze of worldly success Cecil is the most miserable May.
of men. Friends grudge his rise ; his health is broken ;
the reins which his ambition draws into his hands are
beyond the powers of a man to grasp ; and the vigour of
his frame, wasted by years of voluptuous licence, fails him
at a moment when the strain on his faculties is at the full.
3. In this strain of powers no longer fresh, in this soli- Aug.
tude of severed friendships, in this misery of broken health,
Cecil turns to his hale, bright cousin, not for the com-
panionship he will not give, but for the hints and helps a
lawyer has to sell. Bacon does not love him. More than
Coke, Cecil has been to him a cross and grief; for while
he can fight with his own weapons the coarse and spite-
ful foe, his gentle heart supplies no armoury of defence
against the cold and veiled contempt of his perfidious
3, Bacon to Cecil, Aug. 24, 1608, S P. O, ; Essays, xliv.
M 2
1608.
164 FRANCIS BACON.
VIII. 3. friend. When this agonized spectre of success invites him
to more frequent consultations on affairs, instead of gliding
into that kindly and gracious correspondence which is the
°' habit of his pen, he chooses to stand with him on the
ceremonial footing of good manners and the duties of his
place. While writing notes of business like the following,
Bacon may have in mind the day, not long ago, when the
Earl of Salisbury declined to cross the Strand to taste the
hypocras and kiss the bride :
Bacon to Salisbury.
Aug. 24. This Wednesday, the 24th of Aug. 1608.
It may please your Lordship,
I had cast not to fail to attend your Lordship to-
morrow, which was the day your Lordship had appointed
for your being at London ; but having this day about noon
received knowledge of your being at Kensington, and that
it had pleased your Lordship to send for me to dine with
you as this day, I made what diligence I could to return
from Gorhambury ; and though I came time enough to
have waited on your Lordship this evening, yet, your Lord-
ship being in so good a place to refresh yourself, and
though it please your Lordship to use me as a kinsman,
yet I cannot leave behind me the shape of a Solicitor.
I thought it better manners to stay till to-morrow, what
time I will wait on you. And at all times rest, your Lord-
ship's most humble and bounden,
F. Bacon.
To the last hour of Cecil's life, Bacon keeps this cere-
monial style. No kindness flows between the cousins;
they talk of business, not of love ; and when Cecil passes
to his rest, a new edition of the Essays, under cover of a
THE COURT OF WALES. 165
treatise on Deformity, paints in true and bold lines, but VIII. 3.
without one harsh touch, the genius of the man.
& 1608.
4. The feud of the four shires is again ablaze. Sir John ■^ ov *
Pakington has found that the King's promise to do right
has borne no fruit for him or for his friends sweeter than
the sour crabs of his own orchard. Lord Zouch is gone, and
Lord Eure, with a new set of standing orders, reigns in his
stead ; yet the Court of Wales, under this new President,
is no less warm to maintain its right than under the old.
Indeed, in the belief of wise and practical men, the time
has not arrived for either abolishing the court or inter-
fering with its powers.
This Court of Wales and the Welsh Border, like the
more important Court of the North, was erected as a defence
against Papist missionaries and Papist plots. The gentry of
Wales and of the Border shires were mainly Koman Catholic ;
and every villain who in Elizabeth's time disturbed the
public peace, and brought shame or punishment on the mem-
bers of the Koman Church, reckoned on the aid of an army
of fighting and fanatical Sir Hughs. The Court of Wales
kept them under. The poor, who wished to smelt the iron-
ore, to feed their sheep, to dredge their streams for pearls,
and net their bays for fish, in peace, blessed it for this
boon, and not for this alone ; for this royal Court gave
them such cheap and speedy justice as could not be ob-
tained in counties governed by the ordinary courts under
the common law. If prompt and stern, its rule was na-
tional in spirit, popular in aim. The abuses which crept in
a few years later, and which caused its fall, were of a kind
unknown in the days of Elizabeth, and only just beginning
4. Cott. MSS. Vit., c. 1 ; Dom. Papers of James the First, xxviii. 48,
xxxii. 13, 14, S. P. O. ; Heath's Preface, Bacon's Works, vii. 584.
1608.
Nov.
166 FRANCIS BACON.
VIII. 4. to be known in the days of James. Charles the First gave
a new aim to the Court, perverting the power created by
Henry and fostered by Elizabeth as a defence of the national
sentiment and national faith, into instruments of attack upon
them ; then, indeed, but not till then, the Court of Wales
fell under public odium, and was swept away in the re-
volutionary storm. But the men who destroyed it under
Charles were not the men who complained of it under
James. The Crofts, Hoptons, Pakingtons, Sandys, Lees,
Sheldons, Blounts, and Corbets who contested the authority
of Lord Eure, were afterwards no less hot on the other
side, voting and fighting against popular rights under
Charles.
5. To Sir John, and to country gentlemen like Sir
John, the Court of Wales is not so much a national
grievance as a personal offence. It takes from his place
and dignity ; and he instructs his under-sheriff to refuse
obedience to the precepts of such a Court. The gentry of
Herefordshire are up in arms ; but people in the southern
and middle shires suspect, as proves to be the fact ere long,
that these loud cries against the Court of Wales come
mainly from a wish on the part of a few magistrates to
get rid of a popular and successful local power which curbs
for the common good their private feuds, and keeps a bright
eye on the movements of their missionary priests. Many
of those who cry loudest against the Court are said to find
reasons for their discontent in the commands of their con-
fessors. Most of them are Papists, open or concealed.
Sir Herbert Crofts, long passing for a firm Protestant,
has within the year avowed himself a convert to the
5. Eure to Salisbury, Jan. 26, 1608, S. P. O. ; Eure to Pakiugton, Jan. 3,
1608, S. P. O. ; Pakington to Eure, Jan. 17, 1608, S. P. 0. ; Council Peg.,
Nov. 2, 1613.
1608.
Nov.
THE COURT OF WALES. 167
Church of Kome. Sir John adheres to the Church, but VIII. 5.
his near kinsman, Humphrey Pakington, is an active and
dangerous recusant, whose name is constantly before the
Privy Council. Lord Eure complains to Sir John. Sir
John flatly refuses to obey his precepts. Eure writes to
Lord Salisbury that his powers must be preserved in full,
or he shall feel it a duty to resign his place.
6. Cecil consults Bacon, now become chief adviser of
the Crown in all affairs of law, and finds his opinion on the
jurisdiction of the Court of Wales, as in most things, the
reverse of that pronounced by Coke. Coke is against Eure.
A dry, stiff formalist, wanting the warmth of heart, the
large round of sympathies which enable his illustrious rival
at the bar to see into political questions with the eyes of
a poet and a statesman, Coke can only treat a constituted
court as a thing of words, dates, readings, and decisions ;
not as a living fact in close relation to other living
facts, and having in itself the germs of growth and change.
A point of law is taken for debate before the judges, when
Bacon appears in opposition to Sir John and his friends,
and pronounces that argument on The Jurisdiction of the
Marches which is printed in his works. After this hearing
a proclamation from the King announces the confirmed
authority of the Court of Wales ; but the magistrates of
the four shires continue their opposition, and the case
drags on for nine or ten years, until these magistrates
drop the agitation in presence of more solemn facts.
7. In no History of America, in no Life of Bacon, have I 1609.
found one word to connect him with the plantation of that May 23.
6. Dom. Papers James the First, xxxvii. 53, 54, 56, S. P. O. ; Bacon's
Works, vii. 587 ; Proclamation for the Continuance of the Authority and
Jurisdiction of the Presidencies of the North and of Wales [Nov. 1608].
7. Virginia Charter Book, May 23, 1609, S. P. O.
168 FBANCIS BACON.
VIII. 7. great Kepublic. Yet, like Kaleigh and Delaware, he takes
— an active share in the labours, a conspicuous part in the
sacrifices, through which the foundations of Virginia and
a ^ ' the Carolinas are first laid.
Like men of far less note, who have received far higher
honours in America, Bacon pays his money into the great
Company, and takes office in its management as one of
the Council. To his other glories, therefore, must be
added that of a Founder of New States.
y
8. The causes which lead Bacon, with most of his par-
liamentary and patriotic colleagues, to join the Virginia
Company with person and purse, are the same causes
which move him to fight for the Union and the Subsidies.
The plantation of Virginia is a branch of the great contest
with Spain.
England and Spain have long been rivals in plantation
and discovery. Neither may claim for itself the wide
continents of America by the happy exercise of native
genius ; for while a Genoese gave the south to Spain,
a Venetian conferred the north on England. Frobisher
and Gilbert followed in the wake of Cabot, though in a
different spirit and working to another end. Inflamed by
tales of the Incas' shining palaces, Frobisher went forth
in search of mines and gold; Gilbert, who revived the
spirit of the Great Discoverer, sailed to the far west and
gallantly gave his life, not for the rewards of wealth and
fame, but solely in the hope of extending English power
and of converting souls to God. When he sank in the
Golden Hind he left these tasks to his young half-brother,
8. Fernando Gorges' Brief Eelation, 3, 10 ; Charters of Virginia, April
10, 1606, Mar. 9, 1607, May 23, 1609, S. P. O.
1609.
May 23.
THE AMERICAN PLANTATIONS. 169
Sir Walter Kaleigh, who lived to be the true Founder of VIII. 8.
the United States.
Kaleigh, trained to politics under the eyes of Elizabeth,
saw that the battle-field of the two maritime powers lay
in the waters and along the shores of the New World.
Europe was peopled. But the prairie and the savannah,
the forest and the lake of America were virgin fields, the
homes of an expanding race, the seats of a mighty empire
in the time to come. Who shall occupy this splendid
scene ? Shall the New World become mainly English or
mainly Spanish ? Shall the original type and seed of her
institutions be a Free Press or a Holy Office ? Such ques-
tions throb and thrill in the veins of Englishmen of every
rank.
9. They answer with one voice. While the Queen
lived and Ealeigh was free to spend his genius and
his fortune on the work of discovery and plantation, it
never flagged. But when James came in, and, with
his dread of heroism and adventure, flung the explorer
of Guiana, the founder of Virginia, into the Tower, as a
first step towards receiving the Spanish ambassador Ve-
lasco with proposals for a shameful peace, the old English
spirit appeared to droop. Velasco for a time said little of Vir-
ginia, for the fires of the Armada and of Nieuport burned
in many hearts ; but Lerma, in his letters to the King, re-
served an exclusive right of the Spanish crown, based on a
Papal bull, to all the soil of the New World from Canada
to Cape Horn. When his agents in London found their
season they made this claim; when his admirals in the
9. Smith's History, 88, 90 ; Nova Britannia, 1609 ; Jourdan's Discovery
of the Barmudas, otherwise called the Isle of Divels, by Sir T. Gates, Sir
G. Sornmers, and Captain Newport, with divers others, 1610.
1609.
May 23.
170 FRANCIS BACON.
VIII. 9. Gulf of Mexico felt their strength they chased the English
from those seas as pirates. If the Spanish cruisers
caught an English crew, they either slung them to the
yard-arm or sent them prisoners to Spain.
Euled by a corporation of adventurers, tormented by
these ^Spanish cruisers, unprotected by the royal fleets, the
settlement on the James Eiver falls to grief. A man of
genius, Captain John Smith, more than once snatches it
from the jaws of death. But the planters fight among
themselves, depose Smith from power, and send back
nothing to the Company save miserable complaints and
heaps of glittering dust. The colony is on the verge of
failure, when a threat from Spain to descend on the
Chesapeake shoots new life into the drooping cause.
All generous spirits rush to the defence of Virginia.
Bacon joins the Company with purse and voice. Mont-
gomery, Pembroke, and Southampton, the noble friends
of Shakespeare, join it. Nor is the Church less zealous.
The ardent Abbott, the learned Hackluyt, lend their
names. Money pours in. A fleet, commanded by Gates
and Somers, sails from the Thames, to meet on its voyage
at sea those singular and poetic storms and trials which
add the Bermudas to our empire and The Tempest to our
literature.
10. One hundred and seventy-five years after Walter
Baleigh laid down his life in Palace Yard for America, his
illustrious blood paid for by Gondomar in Spanish gold, the
citizens of Carolina, framing for themselves a free consti-
tution, remembered the man to whose genius they owed
their existence as a state. They called the capital of their
country Kaleigh. The United States can also claim among
10. Statutes of North Carolina, c. xiv.
1609.
May 23.
LIST OF GRIEVANCES. 171
their muster-roll of Founders the not less noble name VIII
of Francis Bacon. Will the day come, when, dropping 10.
such feeble names as Troy and Syracuse, the people of
the Great Eepublic will give the august and immortal
name of Bacon to one of their splendid cities ?
11. The session of 1610 shows Bacon in a characteristic 1610.
scene. Bound by the traditions of his place to support April,
the King's measures in the House of Commons, when the
session opens, with a freedom which surprises the King's
friends, and which Coke and Doderidge have never dared
to take, he both speaks and votes against the superior
law-officers of the Crown.
The List of Grievances has at length been shaped
into a proposition, and laid before the House. This
Great Contract, as the people call it, offers to buy from the
Crown, either for a fixed sum of money to be paid down
or for a yearly rental, certain rights and dues inherited by
the King from feudal times, which the change of manners
and the refinements of society have made abominable
to rich and educated men. Escutage, Knight-service,
Wardship of the body, Marriage of heirs and of widows,
Respite of homage, Premier seizin, every knight and squire
in the land longs to suppress, as things which yield the
King an uncertain income, but cover themselves with a
certain shame. A group of feudal tenures which concern
the dignity of the Crown, such as Serjeantry, Homage,
Fealty, Wardship of land, and Livery, they propose to
modify, so as to satisfy just complaints while preserving to
the King all services of honour and ceremonial rite. Aids
to the King they limit in amount; suits, heriots, and
escheats they leave untouched ; monopolies for the sale of
11. Add. MSS., 11, 695 ; Lords' Journals, ii. 574.
172 FKANCIS BACON.
VIII. wines, for the licensing of inns, for the importation of
11- coal, they abrogate. In lieu of these reliefs, they offer the
King one hundred thousand pounds a year.
1610. & r j
April. 12. At first James will not listen. The terms of such a
contract touch, he says, his honour. These privileges may
be of no moment to the Crown ; to part with them may
neither lower its dignity nor abate its pride; yet why
should he be asked to part with them ? Elizabeth had them.
All the Plantagenets, all the Tudors had them. Why
should the first of the Stuarts strip his Crown of privileges
held by his predecessors for five hundred years? But
James is not true to his own folly. To resist a sale of
the rags and dust of feudal power, if done on the ground
of conscience, would to many seem respectable, to some
heroic; but the offer of a hundred thousand pounds a
year tempts a man dogged by duns to compromise with
his sense of right. He lends his ear ; he hints his willing-
ness to treat. Will the Commons give a little more ? Will
they take a little less ? If so, he will hear them ; if not,
not. Cecil asks Fleming and Coke to declare whether
James can lawfully sell the burthens on tenures, yet
preserve to his Crown the tenures themselves.
13. The chance of hurting Bacon, who pleads in office, as
he always spoke when out of office, for the full surrender
of these feudal dues, is too much for Coke. Their feud has,
indeed, grown fiercer as they have grown in years, flashing
out even in the courts of law. " The less you speak of
your own greatness/' says Bacon in open court, " the more
I shall think of it, and the more, the less." As Bacon
contends that a sale of the burthens on tenures is in fact a
12. Add. MSS., II, 695 ; Com. Jour., i. 419, 420.
13. Spedding's Bacon, vii. 177 ; Add. MSS., 11, 695.
DEBATE ON FEUDAL TENURES. 173
sale of the tenures, Coke answers Cecil that the King may, VIII.
if it shall please him, sell the burthens, yet keep the 13.
tenures intact. James therefore sends to tell the Com- —
mons that he will sell to them for six hundred thousand 1G1 °-
pounds paid down, and a rental of two hundred thousand ™
pounds a year, his rights of marriage, wardship, premier
seizin, respite of homage and reliefs.
14. In these debates, the Solicitor-General, brushing away
the distinctions of Coke and Fleming, urges on the House
of Commons and on the Crown the wisdom, of abolishing
these feudal tenures both in name and fact. Tenures in
capite and by knight-service, he says, have lost their virtue.
When the Sovereign summoned his liegemen to the field,
Eeason might have cried — Hold fast all tenures which
augment the national force ! But the King no longer
leads his armies in the field or calls his vassals round his
flag ; war has grown into a science, arms into a profession ;
if an enemy should appear at Dover or Berwick, no man
would now wait for the King's tenant to strike. In the
musters for defence, holders in soccage stand foot to
foot with holders by knight-service. In feudal ages the
tenures meant defence ; but the usage and the idea has
alike gone by; and tenures no longer represent either
force, honour, or obedience.
15. Bacon pleads so well that after warm debates the July 23.
King consents to reduce his demands, the- House of Com-
mons to raise their price. The two powers draw nearer to
each other, and a happy resolution seems about to cleanse
away some of the very worst abuses of the feudal state.
14. Bacon's Speech, April, 1610 ; Lords' Jour., ii. 580.
15. King's Proclamation, Dec. 31, 1610; Add. MSS., 11,695; Lords'
Jour., ii. 666-86 ; Statutes of the Realm, iv. 1207.
174 FBANCIS BACON.
VIII. For two hundred thousand pounds a year the Crown
15. agrees to renounce for ever these feudal rights.
lfi How this Great Contract comes to an abrupt and
July 23. ig nomm i° us en d, how King and Commons wrangle over
the Book of Kates, and how a session that began so pros-
perously closes in open strife between the people and their
prince, not a single bill receiving the royal signature, all
this, though full of constitutional, and even of romantic
interest, is a tale for the historian of England, not for the
critic of Bacon's life.
1612. 16. So long as his kinsman Cecil lives, Bacon sees
May. no hope of rising in the world. In May, 1612, the
Earl of Salisbury, Lord Treasurer of England, premier
Secretary of State, and Master of the Court of Wards,
worn out by fag of brain not less than by disease of blood,
dies, and a burst of gladness breaks over court and country
at the news. His companions of the Privy Council tra-
duce his fame, his tenants at Hatfield attack his park. Of
all men living, the cousin he so deeply hurt is the least
unjust. In an edition of the Essays, now in the press,
Bacon paints him to the life : every one knows the por-
trait ; yet no one can pronounce this picture of a small
shrewd man of the world, a clerk in soul, without a spark
of fire, a dash of generosity in his nature, unfair or even
unkind. The spirit of it runs in a famous anecdote.
" Now tell me truly," says the King, " what think you of
your cousin that is gone?" "Sir," answers Bacon,
"since your Majesty charges me, I'll give you such a
character of him as if I were to write his story. I do
think he was no fit councillor to make your affairs better.
But yet he was fit to have kept them from growing worse."
16. Bacon's Essays, xliv. ; Apophthegms, Works, vii. 175.
APPLIES FOE THE COURT OF WARDS, 175
" On my so'l, man ! " says James, " in the first thou VIII.
speakest like a true man, in the second like a kinsman." 16.
17. From the day of Cecil's death his prospects, clouded 1612.
till now, begin to clear. If promotion pauses, it is only May.
because the crowds of suitors perplex the King. Carr and
Northampton claim the Treasurer's staff. Everybody begs
the Court of Wards and Liveries. Sir Thomas Lake, Sir
Henry Wotton, Sir Kalph Winwood, Sir Henry Neville,
each aspires to the rank of Secretary of State. The
patriots put up Bacon's name for this great office, and
shrewd observers fancy him nigh success. Poor James,
unable to decide, hankering, though afraid, to make Carr
his chief minister, puts the Treasury into commission for
six months, gives the Wards to Carew, and startles the
gossips of Whitehall by announcing that, instead of em-
ploying either Bacon or Wotton, Winwood or Lake, he
means for the future to be his own Secretary of State.
18. Carew dying suddenly six months after his nomina- Nov.
tion, Bacon applies for the Court of Wards. His pay
as Solicitor-General is only seventy pounds a-year. Pro-
mised for his service to the Crown a place of profit, he
points *out in a letter to Carr that the Court of Wards is
one for a lawyer rather than a courtier to hold.
Bacon to Lord Eochester.
IT MAY PLEASE YOUK GOOD LoEDSHIP, Nov. 14, 1612.
This Mastership of the Wards is like a mist — some-
times it goeth upwards and sometimes it falleth downwards.
If it go up to great lords, then it is as it was at the first,—
17. Chamberlain to Carleton, Nov. 26, 1612, S. P. O.
18. Bacon to Carr, Nov. 14, 1612, S. P. 0. ; Lake to Carleton, Nov. 19,
1612, Venetian MSS., S. P. O.
1612
Nov.
176 FRANCIS BACON.
VIII. if it fall down to mean men, then it is as it was at the last.
18. But neither of these ways concerns me in particular, — but
if it should in a middle region go to lawyers, then I be-
seech your Lordship have some care of me. The attorney
and solicitor are as the King's champions for ciyil business,
and they had need have some place of rest in their eye for
their encouragement. The Mastership of the Kolls, which
was the ordinary place kept for them, is gone from them.
If this place should go to a lawyer, and not to them, their
hopes must diminish. Thus I rest, your Lordship's affec-
tionate, to do you humble service,
F. Bacon.
He feels so certain of this suit that he orders the new
clothes for his servants ; yet the suit fails. He wants the
Court of Wards and Liveries as a right, and will not buy
it. Sir Walter Cope, a man of larger fortunes and smaller
scruples, while Bacon alleges service, tells down his money
and buys the place. The wags of the Mitre have their
laugh. " Sir Walter," they say, " has got the Wards, Sir
Francis the Liveries."
1613. 19. If he sue without success for the Court of Wards,
Aug. he is constantly consulted or employed in the most weighty,
the most delicate business of the Crown. Most conspicuous,
perhaps, of the cases which now engage his mind is the
old, old story of Irish broils.
Of Ireland itself he never speaks but in words of tender-
ness and grief. With him the green lustrous island is " a
country blessed with almost all the dowries of nature —
with rivers, havens, woods, quarries, good soil, temperate
climate, and a race and generation of men, valiant, hard,
19. Bacon to Carr, Nov. 14, 1612, S. P. O.
CHICHESTER'S IRISH GOVERNMENT. 177
and active, as it is not easy to find such confluence of com- VIII.
modities, if the hand of man did join with the hand of 19.
nature; but they severed, — the harp of Ireland is not " —
strung or attuned to concord." More the pity, thinks its
generous and sagacious friend ! °*
20. Sir Arthur Chichester, the wisest, firmest man ever
sent from England to rule the Celt, — after driving out the
rebels O'Neile and O'Donnel, crushing O'Dogherty and
the assassins who ravished and destroyed Derry, — has
built a new city on Lough Foyle, garrisoned and calmed
Strabane, Ballyshannon, Omagh, and the forts along
the lines from Kerry to Inishoan, and peopled with
the germs of a new race the wastes of Antrim and
Down, of Londonderry and Coleraine. Strong in his
genius and in his success, after founding an English state
in Ulster on the ruins of the great Celtic insurrection,
he calls a Parliament in Dublin to sanction what has
been done, and to resume, for the first time in the
remembrance of living men, a regular mode of civil
and popular government. For seven years he has ruled
by the sword. He wishes to lay it down. But blood is
hot and feuds run high. The Saxon and the Celt, the
Protestant and the Papist, meet in Dublin, less disposed to
sit on the same benches and hear each other prate than to
pluck out the sharp skean and fly at each other's throats.
At the first meeting they fall to blows. One party says
Sir John Everard shall be Speaker ; the other, Sir John
Davis. Everard is in opposition, Davis the Irish Attorney-
General ; Everard the candidate of the monks, Davis of
20. An Account of the Right Hon. Sir Arthur Chichester, Lord Belfast,
Lord Deputy of Ireland ; by Sir Faithful Fortescue : with Notes and a
Memoir of the Writer by Lord Clermont ; 1858. Ellis's Orig. Letters,
Third Series, iv. 173.
178 FKANCIS BACON.
VIII. the Crown. Chichester can but follow the Imperial law.
20. Usage good in Westminster must be held good in Dublin.
Davis must be Speaker. Indeed, the majority elect him.
. ' But a crowd of men summoned from the Bog of Allen,
from the banks of Lough S willy, from the wilds of Sligo
and Mayo, — representatives of the MacOiraghtys and Mac
Coghlans, of the O'Doghertys, O'Donnels, and O' Con-
cannons, — who have scarcely ever heard of a precedent,
have not learned to respect a majority of votes. When
the Protestants file into the right lobby, instead of
filing into the left the Roman Catholic members seat
Everard in the chair. They refuse to move or to be
counted like a drove of sheep! Davis, voted into the
chair by a majority of twenty-eight, is taken up to his
seat by two members, as in the English House of Commons.
Everard will not stir. Davis plumps into his lap. In
a wild Irish uproar, Everard, caught by the crowd, is
thrust out neck and crop. The Celtic members grasp
their skeans. If Chichester, wise in time, had not pru-
dently set them in a ring of steel, the members, instead
of hearing each other's grievances, would have cut each
other's throats. Such a House of Commons is an im-
practicable instrument for preserving the peace of Ireland,
and Chichester dissolves it. On the evening of the row, to
show his scorn of such brabbles, the Lord Deputy goes
out to play his usual rubber.
21. Everard and his friends come over to complain at
Whitehall. They talk of their wrongs. They object to
the new boroughs planted by the English ; they require
that these boroughs shall not be allowed to send represen-
tatives to an Irish House of Commons ! They whine of
21. Abbot, Aug. 4, 1613, S. P, O. ; Add. MSS. 19, 402, fol. 37.
ADVICE CONCERNING IRELAND. 179
danger to their persons, of a Gunpowder Plot to blow them VIII.
into the sky. 21.
The King consults Bacon. Anxious for Parliaments,
but aware that Parliaments presuppose habits of order
and discussion, respect for opinion, submission to majorities,
Bacon gives the King this advice :
Bacon to James.
Aug. 13, 1613.
May it please youe most excellent Majesty,
I was at my house in the country what time the
commission and instructions for Ireland were drawn by
Mr. Attorney, but I was present this day the forenoon,
when they were read before my Lords and excepted to,
some points whereof use was made, and some alterations
followed, but I could not in decency except to so much as
I thought there might be cause, lest it might be thought a
humour of contradiction or an effect of emulation, which, I
thank God, I am not much troubled with, for, so your Ma-
jesty's business be well done, whosoever be the instrument,
I rest joyful. But because this is a tender piece of service,
and that which was well directed by your Majesty's high
wisdom may be marred in the manage, and that I have
been so happy as to have my poor service in this business
of Ireland, which I have minded with all my powers, be-
cause I thought your estate laboured, graciously accepted
by your sacred Majesty, I do presume to present to your
Majesty's remembrance (whom I perceive to be one of the
most truly politic princes that ever reigned, and the
greatest height of my poor abilities is but to understand
you well) some few points in a memorial enclosed which I
wish to be changed. They tend to this scope principally,
that I think it safest for your Majesty at this time, hoc
n 2
180 FKANCIS BACON.
VIII. <*gwe* which is to effect that you may hold a parliament in
21. Ireland with sovereignty, concord, contentment, and mode-
— rate freedom, and so bind up the wound made without
clogging the commission with too many other matters. . . .
u ^' ' whereas these instruments are so marshalled as if the
grievances were the principal. The grievances which were
not commended to these messengers from the party in
Ireland, but slept at least a month after their coming
hither, and . . . are divers of them of so vulgar a nature
as they are complained of both in England and Ireland,
and both now and at all times. For your Majesty to give
way upon this ground, to so particular an inquiry of all
these points, I confess I think is unworthy of majesty, for
they are set down like interrogatories in a suit in law.
And my fear is they will call up and stir such a number of
complaints and petitions, which not being possible to be
satisfied, this commission meant for satisfaction will end in
murmur. But these things which I write are perhaps but
my errors and simplicities. Your Majesty's wisdom must
steer and ballast the ship. So most humbly craving
pardon, I ever rest your Majesty's most devoted and
faithful subject and servant,
Fr. Bacon.
Government acts on this counsel of maintaining in
Dublin a firm and inflexible justice. A Parliament meets
within twelve months, the members of which quarrel indeed
among themselves, as is only national and natural ; but
which proves itself as capable of transacting public busi-
ness as almost any Parliament in Palace Yard. It gives
peace to Ireland for thirty years.
For nearly all that is most gracious and noble, most wise
and foreseeing in the Irish policy of the Crown in this
MADE ATTOKNEY-GENERAL. 181
reign, thanks are due, next after Arthur Chichester, to VIII.
Francis Bacon. Yet Lord Campbell, a statesman and a 21.
lawyer, has not one word on this theme !
J 1613.
22. Two years of fag and moil cure James of his Oct. 27.
ambition to be thought the best scribe in Christendom.
Dissolving the commission of the Treasury, he gives the
Staff to Northampton. He brings Winwood forward as
Secretary of State ; but ere passing his commission under
the Seal, James raises his great competitor for that post
a step in his profession; Coke going up to the King's
Bench," Hobart to the Common Pleas, and Bacon to the
Attorney's place. Coke huffs at the King's Bench, a
court of higher dignity than the Common Pleas, but of
fewer fees. James has to interfere. "This is all your
doing, Mr. Attorney," says the irascible Lord Chief
Justice; "it is you that have made this great stir."
With the light laugh that has so often maddened Coke, he
answers, " Your lordship all this while hath grown in
breadth; you must needs now grow in height, or you
will be a monster."
23. Lord Campbell sees in these promotions, not the Nov.
natural changes brought about by time, such as every year
occur at the bar, but a mean trick, a court intrigue, an
affair of secret letters, of back-stairs interest, in short, a
dodge and a cheat ! To this reading of events may be
opposed the judgments of those among Bacon's contempo-
22. Chamberlain to Carleton, Oct. 14, 27, 1614, S. P. O. ; Grant Book,
102 ; Bacon's Apophthegms in Kesuscitatio, 38.
23. Mem. of Burgesses chosen for more than one place, April, 1614,
S. P. O. Bacon's biographers have been misled about his seat in 1614 by
an erroneous conjecture of Willis (Not. Pari., iii. 173). There is a list of
the Parliament of 1614 among the valuable MSS. at Kimbolton Castle, for
which, as for many other courtesies, I am indebted to the obliging friend-
ship of his Grace the Duke of Manchester.
1614
Mar.
182 FKANCIS BACOK
YIII. raries who know him best, the electors of the University
23. of Cambridge, the members of the House of Commons.
Their judgments, happily for us, are given in a very con-
spicuous and decisive way.
Bacon's first advice to the Crown in his new office is to
abandon its irregular, unproductive methods of raising
funds, inventions of the Meercrafts and Overreaches of the
court ; to call a new Parliament to Westminster, to explain
frankly the political situation, and to trust the nation for
supplies. The advice, though hotly opposed by North-
ampton and the whole gang of Spanish pensioners, men
paid to provoke hostility between the Commons and the
Crown, so far prevails that writs go down into the country.
For thirteen years Bacon has represented Ipswich in the
House of Commons. Ipswich clings to him with the love
of a bride. But Cambridge, a more splendid and gracious
constituency, claims him for its own. In the ambition
of a public man there is nothing more pure than the
wish to represent in Parliament the University at which
he has been trained; nor is there for the scholar and
the writer any reward more lofty than the confidence im-
plied in the votes of a great constituency of scholars and
gentlemen. In Bacon's case there are peculiar obstacles.
He left Cambridge early and in disdain ; he has kept
no friendly intercourse with its dons ; the business of his
intellectual life has been to destroy the grounds on which
its system of instruction stands, Yet the members of the
University feel that as a writer and a philosopher he is not
only the most brilliant Cambridge man alive, but the most
brilliant Englishman who ever lived. They elect him.
The burgesses of Ipswich also elect him. The burgesses
of St. Albans also elect him. Such a return is unprece-
dented in parliamentary annals. Only the most popular
1614.
Mar.
TRIPLE RETURN TO PARLIAMENT. 183
and patriotic candidates are rewarded in this Parlia- VIII.
ment by double returns. Sandes is elected for Hendon 23.
and Kochester, Whitelocke for Woodstock and CorfFe Castle.
No one save the new Attorney-General can boast of a
triple return.
Of course he sits for Cambridge ; a fact, overlooked by
his biographers from Eawley to Lord Campbell, which
connects his fame in a gentle and gracious form with the
political history of Cambridge.
24. Nor is this gracious confidence of his University the April
most striking proof of popularity which he now receives.
When the Houses meet in April, a whisper buzzes round the
benches that the elections for Cambridge, Ipswich, and St.
Albans are null and void. No man holding the office of
Attorney-General has ever been elected to serve in Parlia-
ment: and some of the members seem resolved that so
powerful an officer of the Crown never ought to sit, and
never shall sit, in that House. The Attorney-General is the
Crown trier ; he sets the law in motion ; he gathers the evi-
dence, weighs the words, sifts the facts for prosecution.
Unless scrupulous beyond the virtue of man, such an officer,
hearing everything, noting everything, forgetting nothing,
may become, in a House of Commons bent on free speech
as its sacred right, the worst of inquisitors and tyrants. He
shall not sit. Yet, notwithstanding their jealousy of power,
the representative gentlemen of England have no heart to
put the wisest and best among them to the door. They
seek for precedents, that he may sit. No case is on the
rolls. An Attorney-General, chosen after his nomination,
cannot sit by precedent. What then ? They waive their
right. They take him as he is. Crown lawyer or not
24. Chamberlain to Carleton, April 14, 1614, S. P. 0. ; Com. Jour., i.
456 ; Statutes of the Realm, iv. 1207.
184 FRANCIS BACON.
VIII. Crown lawyer, he is Sir Francis Bacon. As Sir Francis
24. Bacon he shall sit. But the case shall stand alone. This
1614. tribute paid to personal merit and public service must
April. n °t b e drawn, say the applauding members, into a
precedent dangerous to their franchise. He is the first
to sit, he must be the last.
That an exception in favour of the new Attorney-
General should have been made by men so hostile to
the court that they broke up atl ast without passing a
single bill which the Crown could assent to, is most
strange. The results are yet more strange. As if to
witness to the latest generations the profound estimation
in which Bacon was held by a House of Commons which
had known him closely for thirty years, and which had
seen him vote and act under every form of tempta-
tion that can test the virtue and tax the genius of
a public man, this exception, made in his favour solely,
became the rule for his successors and for succeeding
times. Once only has the restriction been referred to
in the House. That was in the case of his immediate
successor. Since his time the presence of the Attor-
ney-General among the representatives of the people
has been constant. This fact suggests not only that a
change has taken place in public thought, but that the
character of the Crown official has undergone a change.
Such is the truth. Before Bacon's day the Attorney-
General was the personal servant of the prince: from
Bacon's day he has been the servant of the State. Bacon
was the first of a new order of public men. The fact is
scarcely less creditable to his political purity than the
composition of the Novum Organum is glorious to his
intellectual powers. Bad men kill great offices. Good
uien fouud them.
THE PAPAL LEAGUE. 185
CHAPTEE IX. IX. 1.
ST. JOHN AND PEACH AM. 1614 '
Oct. 11.
1. If Lord Campbell has not one word to say on Bacon's
part in the plantation of Virginia, in the regeneration of
Ulster, he has room for page after page of statement, more
or less false in fact, wholly false in spirit, on the examina-
tion into the contempt of Oliver St. John, and on the trial
for libel of Edmond Peacham.
Happy the great lawyer who in passionate times can give
up office with no worse recollection on his soul than
having conducted two such cases for the Crown !
2. First of Oliver St. John. In the session of 1614, as
in every session when he was out of office, Bacon puts his
strength to the supplies. The day which he has so t long
feared has come ; the Papal powers, united over the corpse
of Henri Quatre, have formed their league ; Spinola's Pan-
dours and Walloons are crushing out the free, industrial,
and religious life of the Lower Bhine. A dozen cities lift
their hands for help. Battalions clash down the passes of
the] Alps and the Pyrenees, armadas ride in the roads of
Sicily and in the bays of Spain. The English fleet is rotting
in port. Only ten or twelve ships are in commission ; four in
the Thames or the Downs, one or two at Portsmouth and
Plymouth, four in the Irish seas. The Crown is deep in
debt. To a man not mad with jealousy of power such a
political situation must be intolerable, and it is intolerable
1. Campbell, Life of Bacon, iii. 62-66.
2. St. John to Mayor of Marlborough, Oct. 11, 1614, S. P. O.
1614.
Oct. 11.
186 FEANCIS BACON.
IX. 2. to Bacon. But the Puritans are deaf. They fear the King
even more than the Boman League. They will not give.
Unable to procure grants from Parliament, James tries to
raise money by a benevolence ; when the lords, the bishops
and archbishops, come to his aid, bringing cups, rings, and
golden angels into the Jewel House of the Tower. All
mayors of towns are ordered to receive such gifts as may be
offered. No rate is laid ; no one is forced to give ; at least,
so say the officers of the Crown. In loyal shires persuasion
may be used to swell the lists ; but where the magistrates
are not loyal,, the benevolence flags. Many of the Puri-
tans, all the Papists, close their hands ; those distrusting
the court ; these wishing well to the foe. The benevolence
fares best in the Protestant shires ; worst in the Catholic
shires. Kent, Surrey, Middlesex, Herts, Berks, Esses, and
Norfolk yield an army of subscribers. Sussex sends up
only three ; Durham, Cumberland, Westmoreland, not
one. Now, it is clear that those who oppose a Parlia-
mentary vote may fairly decline to make a free gift. But
Oliver St. John, Black Oliver his contemporaries call
him from his bilious temper and dark complexion, is
not content merely to decline. A man of a stormy and
yet slavish spirit, he must denounce this measure of the
government by voice and pen. He will not let the
people give. In a public letter to the Mayor of Marl-
borough he declares that the King, in asking his people
for a free gift of money, is violating his oath, committing a
perjury more gross than that for which more than one
English monarch has lost his crown !
Dec. 3. It is impossible for the Privy Council to overlook such
3. Council Keg., Nov. 19, 25, Dec. 4, 9, 1614, Feb. 3, May 31, 1615 ;
Chamberlain to Carleton, Jan. 5, Feb. 9, 1615, S. P. O. ; Council to James,
Feb. 8, 1615, S. P. O. ; Add. MSS. 19, 402.
1614.
Dec.
CASE OF OLIVEK ST. JOHN. 187
a contempt. The lawfulness of a Benevolence may be open IX. 3
to debate ; no true Englishman can doubt that St. John's
letter is in the highest degree scandalous to the King, and
in the highest degree injurious to the national force. Lord
Campbell (who confounds this Oliver St. John with the
famous Lord Chief Justice of the Commonwealth, now a
boy of sixteen !) appears to regard St. John as an earlier
Hampden. A closer reading of the time would show that
he was one of those loud and lying politicians who are the
disgrace of every cause. Instead of being the Hampden,
Black Oliver was the O'Brien or the O'Connor of his time ;
though he had neither Smith O'Brien's abilities nor Feargus
O'Connor's dash. When the Marlborough bully is cited
into the Star Chamber, Coke condemns him to five thou-
sand pounds fine and imprisonment for life. Yet even the
Tower, which so often elevates a fool into a martyr, fails
to make St. John appear, even to the uncliscerning mob,
either a wise or a brave man. When the gate of his cell
creaks on its hinge he begins to whine and cry. He re-
pents his sally, recants his words. . He goes on his knees,
he pledges his future fame. He begs, fawns, groans to
be let out. Even those who make an idol of every one
barred in the Tower turn from this pusillanimous and
crouching prisoner in disgust.
4. One of St. John's letters to the King is so amaz-
ingly abject as to constitute a curiosity in literature.
In England we are not used to such a style of prison
supplication, for the men who go wrong generally have
the merit of going wrong in good faith, and when
called to the martyr's crown w r ear it as a crown. It may
be well to give a passage from this document (now
4. Add. MSS. 19, 102, fol. 62.
Dec.
188 FRANCIS BACON.
IX. 4. for the first time printed), that the world may note, under
— his own seal, what kind of hero this Oliver St. John
^ 14, is, whom Lord Campbell mistakes for the great Chief
Justice !
Oliver St. John to the King.
Most High and Mighty King, my alone virtually
and rightfully dread Lord and Sovereign (after God my
Maker and my Saviour Jesus Christ), my hearty chief joy,
love, slave, and delight !
In all humbleness of soul and spirit showeth unto your
sacred Majesty your poor distressed subject and faithful
servant, sometimes long close prisoner in the Tower of
London; that whereas it graciously pleased your said
Majesty, on humble submission and petition, to consider
and commiserate the lamentable condition of the poor
petitioner, censured in the Star Chamber for a letter
written to the Mayor of Marlborough in October 1614,
and therewith showed your princely and Eoyal heart so
moved to mercy, that as the then Lord Chancellor said
you had out of your admirable and more than kingly
benignity and bounty so remitted the same that I had
not any more to starve, although my fine, together with
my submission, remained on record. . . . But my great and
brain-sick offence against your Most Excellent Majesty, my
right dear Sovereign (for which phrase at your Highness's
feet, my broken heart again and again most humbly and
instantly asketh your most gracious pardon), forbidding me
your awful presence ... on my bended knees, in all hu-
mility of heart and spirit, [I] beseech of your great, imperial,
and sacred Majesty, first gracious remission and pardon,
both of the fault and pain, as also, most gracious King and
my dearest liege lord, that you will further be graciously
1614.
Dec.
CASE OF OLIVER ST. JOHN. 189
pleased to show your most admirable goodness and mercy IX. 4
(if it may stand with due order of state policy) in com-
manding a removal or deleator of the whole record thereof ;
that so great an ignominy remain not on the name of
him who, having been now received your Majesty's sworn
servant, is still resolved ever to receive therein that fatal
arrow in his breast (with loyal Hugo de St. Clara) than
once admit into his heart the least disloyal thought against
your sacred person, dignity, or fame ; the very least of us
whoso shall seek to impeach, let God from Heaven shoot
sharp arrows into his heart, that all the King's enemies
may fall before him. So prayeth, from his inmost heart,
Your Majesty's humble, faithful, and
obedient vassal,
Oliver St. John.
5. Lord Campbell, who brands the conduct of Bacon in
officially aiding to silence this impudent and whining de-
magogue, is more than usually infelicitous in the grounds
of his charge. He says that Bacon in his speech against
Oliver St. John strenuously defends the raising of money
by benevolences. Now, he does no such thing. He never
once touches the law of these free gifts. He proves, and
proves most clearly, that the particular benevolence de-
nounced by St. John to the Mayor of Marlborough as a
violation of the King's oath, has no character of a forced
loan. The question tried, if one may say so to a noble-
man who has been a Lord Chief Justice and is now a
Lord Chancellor, was not one of law, but one of fact —
not whether a benevolence was, in the reign of James the
First, legal, but whether St. John had been guilty of a
5. State Trials, ii. 899.
1614.
Dec.
190 FKANCIS BACON.
IX. 5. grievous contempt . in publishing his letter to the Mayor.
The trial of John Bates for refusing to pay the taxes levied
by the Book of Bates was a trial of law ; the trial of Oliver
St. John for calling the King forsworn was a trial of fact.
St. John was condemned, not for refusing to subscribe his
money, but for publishing a letter in contempt of the
Crown.
6. Pass to the case of Peacham : a case which Lord
Campbell has taken less pains to understand than even
that of St. John. "Fine and imprisonment," he writes,
" having no effect in quelling the rising murmurs of the
people, it was resolved to make a more dreadful example,
and Peacham, a clergyman of Somersetshire, between
sixty and seventy years of age, was selected for the victim.
On breaking into his study, a sermon was there found,
which he had never preached, nor intended to preach, nor
shown to any human being, but which contained some
passages encouraging the people to resist tyranny. He
was immediately arrested, and a resolution was taken to
prosecute him for high treason. But Mr. Attorney, who
is alone responsible for this atrocious conduct, anticipated
considerable difficulties both in law and in fact before the
poor old parson could be subjected to a cruel and almost
ignominious death."
In every line of this passage there is error ; indeed, the
whole passage is an error. No murmurs arose in the
country on account of St. John. ~No one at court ever
dreamt of making Peacham a victim, for no one out of
Somersetshire had ever heard his name. His study was
not broken into for the purpose of finding treason in
it. It was not a sermon that had been found. It is
6. Peacliam's Examination, Aug. 31, 1615, S. P. O.
1614.
Dec.
CASE OF EDMOND PEACHAM. 191
ridiculous to say that the papers seized in his desk were IX. 6
not intended to be shown to any human being, for they
had been written for publication and had in truth been
shown to several persons. Peacham was not arrested
immediately on the seizure of his papers : he was already
in custody for offences less dubious than a political crime.
Mr. Attorney was not alone responsible for his prosecu-
tion. He was not at all responsible. The prosecution
was ordered by the Privy Council, of which he was not
a member. It was conducted by Winwood, the Puritan
Secretary of State.
7. Not much has been left to us by the writers about
Edmond Peacham ; yet evidence remains in the books at
Wells and in the records of Her Majesty's State Paper
Office, to prove that he was one of the most despicable
wretches who ever brought shame and trouble on the
Church. It is there seen that he was a libeller. It is
there seen that he was a liar. It is there seen that he
was a marvel of turbulence and ingratitude ; not alone a
seditious subject, but a scandalous minister and a perfidious
friend. It is in evidence that he outraged his bishop by a
scandalous personal libel ; and that he did his worst to get
the patron to whom he owed his living hung.
8. Hallam tells us how hard it is for him to see any way in
which this poor parson, in a wild part of the west country,
far from a large town, could have fallen into the clutches of
7. Sentence of Deprivation against Peacham, Dec. 19, 1614, S. P. 0. ;
Presentation Books at Wells. I am indebted for many particulars re-
specting Peacham to the friendly inquiries made for me by Lord Auckland,
Bishop of Bath and Wells. A brief inspection of the papers preserved in
the old gate-tower at Wells convinces me of their very great value for
ecclesiastical and family history.
8. Wells MSS. ; Collins' Peerage, art. Pawlett ; Council Reg., Dec. 9,
16, 1614.
1614.
Dec.
192 FEANCIS BACON.
IX. 8. the law. The reader of Hallam will be glad to find that
Peacham fell into grief, not on account of his politics, but
for an unbearable ecclesiastical offence.
For several years Peacham had been rector of Hinton
St. G-eorge, a parish in the wildest part of Somerset-
shire, and in the diocese of Bath and Wells. James
Montagu, Dean of the Chapel, was bishop. The lord
of the manor and patron of the living of Hinton St.
George was John Paulett, grandson of Bacon's old friend
and guardian, Sir Amias Paulett, and founder of the noble
line of that name and place. Margery, a sister of this
John, married Sir John Sydenham of Combe, one of
his political friends. Paulett represented the county in
Parliament, in which he distinguished himself by a firm
yet far from disloyal opposition to the court.
The papers at Wells still prove that Peacham had been
very troublesome to the Church. There had been irregu-
larities in his institution. There had been libels and accu-
sations in the Bishop's Court. At length there came from
Hinton St. George a foul and malignant libel against the
bishop himself ; when Montagu appealed to his primate, and
Archbishop Abbott cited the offender to appear before him
at Lambeth and purge his fame. His character and his
cause appeared so bad that on his arrival in town Abbott
lodged him in the Gatehouse, among the herd of recusants,
monks, and priests.
Dec. 19. 9. Many a Puritan preacher, silenced for a word on
copes and stoles, on the closed book or the unlit candle,
must have envied this libeller such a hearing as the Church
condescends to grant him. Ten commissioners, one of
9. Sentence of Deprivation against Edmond Peacham, Dec. 19, 1614,
S. P. 0.
1614.
Dec. 19.
' CASE OF EDMOND PEACHAM. 193
them an archbishop, four of them bishops, meet to try his IX. 9
case. If Abbott and King lean to Puritan views, An-
drews and JSTeile incline towards Kome. In such a tri-
bunal there is sure to be sympathy for any excess of
zeal. Yet these four men, as well as the other six,
condemn him. Ecclesiastics who differ from each other
on every point of doctrine and discipline, agree to find
Peacham guilty of composing, writing, or causing to
be written, a defamatory libel against his ordinary, con-
trary to his canonical obedience and reverence and to the
virtue of his oath, and of writing, or causing to be written,
a scandalous libel against the laws, statutes, and customs
of the Church and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, defaming
the clerical order and the national rite. By a solemn act
they cast him from the Church.
10. Among the papers seized in his house at Hinton St. 1615.
George, and brought up with him to London, is a mass of Jan.
political writings scrawled on loose sheets, sewn together
so as to make a book. Glancing through these sheets, the
commissioners find them stuffed with defamatory attacks
on the Court, the Government, the Prince of Wales, and
the King, so sharp and savage that they must have been
either meant for the signal of a rising or have been com-
posed by a man drunk or mad. The King is charged
with falsehood, his ministers with fraud. Peacham treats
the King with no more reverence than his bishop. He
has felt himself moved to say that James might be smitten
of a sudden, in a week, like Ananias and Nabal ; that the
Prince will want to take back the Crown-lands sold by
his father, when men will rise up against him, saying —
10. The true State of the Question whether Peacham 's Case be Treason,
State Trials, ii. 878.
1615.
Jan.
194 FRANCIS BACON.
IX. 10. This is the heir, let us kill him. He has declared the
King's officers so vile that they should be set upon and
put to the sword ; the King himself a creature not alone
unfit to reign, but unworthy to bear the name of Christian
or of man — a thing too abject to crawl on earth or be
redeemed in heaven.
These passages are not only meant for the public eye,
but are ready for the press.
11. Winwood, who, if not a Puritan, is a protector of
the Puritans, by whose help he holds his place at court,
sees no cause in this depraved and convicted man's religion
to stay his hand. If Peacham is a Puritan, the lay chief
of the body does not seem to know it. Winwood puts him
under question ; when the vicious old sinner falls into
deeper and more odious sin. From either demoniacal
spite at his recent loss, or from utter callousness of heart,
he accuses John Paulett, the patron to whom he owes his
living in the Church, of a treasonable knowledge of the
contents of his book. And not only John Paulett, but
his sister's husband, Sir John Sydenham, whom he
charges, not alone with criminal silence, but with a posi-
tive share in the composition. Nor do the wretch's lies
end here. Among the most intimate friends of Paulett
is Sir Maurice Berkeley, a politician and a reformer, who
plays a conspicuous part in London life, and who divides
with him the representation of the shire ; him also
Peacham charges as a confederate. Winwood gets alarmed.
A sedition of which Paulett, Berkeley, and Sydenham are
the accomplices may be fraught with peril. He sends
Peacham to the Tower, brings Paulett and Berkeley
11. Council Keg., Nov. 2, Dec. 9, 1614, Feb. 25, 26, 1615.
CASE OF EDMOND PEACHAM. 195
before the Privy Council, and calls up Sydenham from IX. 11.
Combe. —
1615.
12. All three gentlemen scout with indignation this j an .
abominable lie. Paulett and Berkeley say they have never
heard one word of the scandalous and seditious book ;
Sydenham says he never wrote a line of it. And they
tell the truth. If they speak against the Crown on
questions of prerogative and grievances, they say what
they have to say in the House of Commons. If they
are hostile to the court, these men are neither libellors
nor traitors.
Where lies the truth ?
Here are the seditious libels against the Crown, of which
Peacham asserts that he shares the authorship with
Sydenham and the privity with Paulett and Berkeley.
How is Win wood to probe the mystery? The law has
but one course. Peacham must be interrogated as Fawkes
was interrogated.
The Crown sends down a commission to the Tower, con- j an . 18.
sisting of Winwood, Secretary of State ; Cesar, Master of
the Bolls ; Bacon, Attorney-General ; Yelverton, Solicitor-
General ; Montagu, Becorder of London ; Serjeant Crew ;
and Helwys, Lieutenant of the Tower, to put him to the
question. An extract from the Council Begister will show
the order under which they act : —
The Council to Winwood, Master of the Bolls,
Lieut, of Tower, and others.
" After our hearty commendations. Whereas Edmond
Peacham, now prisoner in the Tower, stands charged with
the writing of a book or pamphlet containing matters
12. Council Keg., Jan. 18, 1615.
o 2
1615.
Jan. 18.
196 FRANCIS BACON.
IX. 12. treasonable (as is conceived), and being examined there-
upon refuseth to declare the truth in those points whereof
he hath been interrogated. For so much as the same doth
concern his Majesty's sacred person and government, and
doth highly concern his service, to have many things yet
discovered touching the said book and the author thereof,
wherein Peacham dealeth not so clearly as becometh an
honest and loyal subject. These shall be therefore in his
Majesty's name to will and require you and every of you to
repair with what convenient diligence you may unto the
Tower, and there to call before you the said Peacham, and
to examine him strictly upon such interrogatories con-
cerning the said book as you shall think fit and necessary
for the manifestation of truth ; and if you find him obstinate
and perverse, and not otherwise willing or ready to tell
the truth, then to put him to the manacles as in your dis-
cretion you shall see occasion ; for which this shall be to
you and every of you sufficient warrant."
13. That these instructions were obeyed by the commis-
sioners there is no room to doubt. A man of gentle heart
may regret that commands so savage and so futile should
proceed from the English Crown; but while grieving
that our ancestors were either less wise or less compas-
sionate than ourselves, no candid mind will consent to
assess the fault of an entire generation on the character of
a single man. A belief that truth must be sought by help
of the cord, the maiden, and the wheel, was in the opening
years of the seventeenth century universal. It had come
down with the codes and usages of antiquity, sustained by
the practice of every people on the civilized globe ; most
of all by the practice of those wealthy and illustrious
13. Dora. Papers James the First, lxxx. 6, 26, 88.
GENEEAL USE OF TORTURE. 197
communities which had kept most pure the traditions IX. 13.
of Imperial Roman law. Men who agreed in nothing —
else, agreed in seeking truth through pain. Nations
which fought each other to the knife over definitions of
grace, election, and transubstantiation, had a common faith
in the possibility of discovering truth by the rack, the
pincers, and the screw. There were torture-chambers at
Osnaburgh and Eatisbon no less hideous than those of
Valladolid and Rome. The same hot bars, the same Feb.
boots, the same racks, were found in the Piombi and the
Bastile, in the Bargello and the Tower. Nor was the
Church one whit more gentle or enlightened than the civil
power. Cardinals searched out heresy in the flames of the
Quemadero, as the Council of Ten tracked treason in the
waves of the Lagune. Bacon was not more responsible for
the universal practice than for the particular act. To
have set himself against the spirit of his time he must
have mounted St. Simeon Stylites' column, or shrunk into
St. Anthony's cave. If he chose to live among men, he
must discharge the duties of a man. There lies a deep
gulf between acts of duty and acts of the will. One who
from morbid mind, or from love of pain, must follow the
death-cart to Tyburn, is not performing a noble or
necessary deed; yet the chaplain who has to recite the
prayer, the sheriff who has to signal the drop, go free
from blame. So in truth with Bacon. If he were present
at the question of Peacham, he was there as one of a com-
mission acting under special commands from the Privy
Council. It is silly to say he was responsible for what was
done. He was not chief of the commissioners. He was
not even a member of the high body in whose name they
spoke. His official superiors, Winwood and Cesar, were
on the spot. Does Lord Campbell think the Attorney-
198 FRANCIS BACON.
IX. 13. General should have declined to act with them, thrown up
— his commission, and refused to obey the Crown ?
1615.
Feb. 14. Bear in mind the age in which he lived. The cry
of pain, the gasp of death, were no such shocks to the
gentle heart as they would be in a softer time. Men had
been hardened in the Smithfield fires. Minds were infected
by the atrocities of Papist plots. The ballads sung in the
streets were steeped in blood, and the plays which best
drew audiences to the Globe theatre were those in which
fewest of the characters were left alive. Hamlet 3 Pericles,
Titus Andronicus, were the Shakesperean favourites. No
man is known to have felt any sickness of the heart in
presence of judicial torture. Egerton often saw men on
the rack. Win wood stood by while Peacham, under tor-
ture, told his tale. James was present when Fawkes was
stretched. A feeling, it is true, was beginning to quicken in
society against this use of the rack. Both Coke and Bacon
disapproved its use ; but this merciful sentiment of a few
jurists and philosophers was unshared by the multitude of
men who made the laws. Until the Crown should see fit
to abandon this old plan of seeking truth through crushed
feet and dislocated joints, the officers of the Crown had
no choice but to read their commission and execute their
trust.
15. This truth is so clear that it ought to need no
illustration. Take a fact from our own time. More
than one living judge is supposed to be adverse to trial
by J ur y« Yet the judges sit in courts where property
and life are daily exposed to the mercy of a dozen illo-
gical and prejudiced men. Are they responsible for the
wrong done ? Again, it is conceivable that a judge might
feel uneasy on the score of capital punishments. It is
1615.
Feb.
POSSIBLE CASE OF LOKD CAMPBELL. 199
inconceivable that any judge on the Bench would refuse IX. 15.
to hang a Palmer or a Bush so long as the law continues
to declare wilful murder worthy of death. Bacon told the
King that he misliked the use of torture in judicial in-
quiries. He told him so in this very case of Peacham.
Further than that expression he could not go.
Bacon's case in 1860 may possibly become Lord Camp-
bell's case in 1960. Let the public heart go on softening
for a hundred years, fast as it has softened from the
early days of John Howard, and the whole civilized world
may come by 1960 to regard the strangling of a human
being, on any pretext whatever, as a monstrous crime.
Would such a change of public feeling lay Lord Campbell
open to the charge of judicial murder ? Would it be just
in a writer of that compassionate age to relate with
"horror" that Lord Campbell prostituted eminent parts
and sullied an honourable name by sitting for many years
in a court of justice where life was taken in the name of
law, with his own lips delivering man after man, and even
woman after woman, to be strangled in presence of a brutal
crowd, by a wretch who received his blood-money for every
loathsome job? Would it be fair to say that Lord
Campbell in his thirst for blood took the life of Sarah
Chesham, a poor woman sentenced to death on circum-
stantial proof, who protested her innocence with the rope
round her throat ? Would it be fair to say that with savage
glee he ordered Emma Mussett to be strangled on pretence
of child-murder, even though obliged to confess that the
evidence was full of doubt ? Would it be honest in the
writer of a future century to say that in 1860 Lord Camp-
bell stood alone on the bench in his resolute practice of
hanging women' — while, under such humane judges as
Crompton and Cresswell, the lives of Celestina Sommers
200 FRANCIS BACON.
IX. 15. and Elizabeth Harris, criminals of whose guilt no man
could doubt, were spared? We think the writer who
should say this, or anything like this, in 1960, would be as
unfair to Lord Campbell as Lord Campbell has been to
Francis Bacon.
1615.
Feb.
Aug. 16. How Peacham lies and swears, now accusing others,
and now himself, anon retracting all that he has said,
denying even his handwriting and his signature, one day
standing to the charge against Sydenham, next day run-
ning from it altogether ; how he is sent ^.own into Somer-
setshire, the scene of his ignoble ministry, to be tried by
a jury of men who will interpret his public conduct by
what they know of his private life ; how he is found guilty
by the twelve jurors and condemned by Sir Lawrence Tan-
field and Sir Henry Montagu, two of the most able and
humane judges on the bench; how his sentence is com-
muted by the Crown into imprisonment during the King's
pleasure ; and how he ultimately dies in Taunton jail,
unpitied by a single friend, I need not pause to tell.
V
Aug. 31. 17. After sentence of death has been recorded against
him, he offers to tell the truth, if the King will only spare
his life. The written confession, twice signed by his hand,
which remains in the State Paper Office, tells in his own
words how he came to utter that lie about Sir John
Sydenham. A question being put to him :
"He answereth that all the said words wherewith he
charged Sir John Sydenham were first written by himself,
this examinate, only ; and, afterwards hearing these same
16. State Trials, ii. 870 ; Diary of Walter Yonge, 27 ; Chamberlain to
Carleton, Feb. 9, Mar. 2, Aug. 24, 1615, S. P. O. ; Council Reg., July 12,
1615.
17. Peacham's Examination, Aug. 31, 1615, S. P. O.
Aug. 31.
PEACHAM'S ANSWERS. 201
words delivered unto him by Sir John Sydenham, they IX. 17.
were, to this examinate, a confirmation of that which he —
had formerly written. And, being further asked how he 1615.
could so strongly father those words upon Sir John Syden-
ham, seeing he now confesseth himself to be the author,
and Sir John Sydenham but only to confirm him in them,
he answereth that, when he made this answer, he under-
stood not that distinction betwixt the author and confirmer,
but that they were both taken for one to his under-
standing. And, being asked as before, what was his
reason and end in charging Sir John Sydenham, he
answereth he did it to satisfy his Majesty and the Lords
with the truth."
Being asked his motives and intentions in writing the
pamphlet :
" He answereth that, first, it was compiled without any
knowledge of evil (?) on his part, either against the King or
estate ; and, secondly, after good and advised deliberation,
he would have taken out all the venom and poison thereof,
before ever he would have published the same. And,
being asked in what manner he would have published it —
either by preaching it, or delivering copies of it, or by
printing it — he protesteth that his intent was never either
to publish, or to give copy, or to print, but only in
private, for his own study, to reduce it into, heads, that
he might make use thereof for such particulars as he
out of the text observed, whensoever he should have
occasion to speak of any such matter, when all the evil
was taken out."
He pronounces this a true confession ; saying he should
abhor telling a lie to his sovereign, and should think
himself guilty of his own blood if he kept back anything
202 FRANCIS BACON.
IX. 17. after having been promised his life for revealing the
— truth.
1615.
e P " 18. One more charge. Bacon, it has been said, not
only stands by while the prisoner undergoes examination,
but, on the King's command, consults the judges as to
whether this crime of seditious writing amounts to treason
by the law. In the wake of Macaulay, Lord Campbell
says that a private consultation with the judges was an
act most scandalous and most unusual. The scandal of
such proceedings may be matter of opinion; their fre-
quency is beyond denial. The Kings of England always
enjoyed, and constantly exercised, the right of consulting
their judges on 'the statutory bearing of political crimes.
These judges had always been the King's judges ; holding
their commissions at his pleasure ; bound by their oaths to
advise him on points of law. Macaulay says there is no
instance of the Crown privately consulting with the bench :
"Bacon was not conforming to an usage then generally
admitted to be proper. He was not even the last lingering
adherent of an old abuse. It would have been sufficiently
disgraceful to such a man to be in this last situation. Yet
this last situation would have been honourable, compared
with that in which he stood. He was guilty of attempt-
ing to introduce into the courts of law an odious abuse,
for which no precedent could be found." Why, the
law-books teem with precedents. One will serve for a
score. It happens, indeed, that there is one precedent
so strange in its circumstances, and so often the subject
of legal and historical comment, that it is amazing how
it could have slipped the recollection of any lawyer,
18. Macaulay 's Essay on Bacon ; Campbell's Life of Bacon, iii. 65.
LEGATE BURNT BY JAMES. 203
and most of all a lawyer writing of the times of James IX. 18.
the First. —
1615.
19. Peacham's arrest occurred in 1614. In 1612, Bar- g ,
tholomew Legate, a poor Arian preacher, of simple nature
and extreme dogmatic views, was tried by a consistory
of divines then sitting at St. Paul's, condemned for ten
separate heresies, and sentenced to be burnt alive. King,
his ordinary, turned him over to the secular arm. But, as
an Act of the first year of Elizabeth had repealed the
Statute of Heresy, leaving errors of faith to the more
merciful ruling of the common law, a question arose as
to whether the Crown had power to execute this abomi-
nable sentence of the divines. James thought he had
full powers. The judges were consulted one by one.
Abbott instructed Egerton how to act; and the Lord
Chancellor conferred in private with his legal brethren,
Williams, Croke, and Altham being sounded by him or by
his orders. As they all agreed that James, despite the
repeal of the Statute of Heresy, had power to burn, the
King, on their authority, issued his warrant under the
sign manual to Egerton, Egerton sent his writ to the
sheriff, and thus, without condemnation in any civil
court, Bartholomew Legate perished in the Smithfield
flames.
This is the precedent Macaulay seeks.
20. It is right to add that the Privy Council abandoned
all proceedings against Paulett and Berkeley at an early
date, and that Sydenham was restored to his freedom
purged in fame. It is also right to add that the notion of
19. Chamberlain to Carleton, Feb. 26, Mar. 25, 1612, S. P. O. ; Sign
Manuals, i. No. 15 ; Egerton Papers, 447.
20. Council Keg., Mar. 26; Chamberlain to Carleton, Mar. 2, 1615,
S. P. O.
204 FEANCIS BACON.
IX. 20. treating Edmond Peacham as though he were in some
sort a Puritan martyr is an aberration of the modern
biographical mind. The Puritan writers say nothing for
him ; he has no place in the pages of Toulmin or of
Neale. He was degraded by a Puritan Archbishop, pro-
secuted and condemned by a Puritan Secretary of State.
1615.
Sept.
CARR, EARL OF SOMERSET. 205
CHAPTER X.
KACE WITH COKE.
1. Lord Campbell accuses Bacon of having fawned on X. 1.
Somerset in his greatness, of having abandoned him in his —
fall. Part of this accusation was made by Coke ; not all of 1615 -
it ; and in a whisper, not in boldly-spoken words. A glance e ^ '
at the facts, as they stand in the registers of the Privy
Council and the archives of the State Paper Office, will
suffice, it is thought, to convince an impartial reader that
Bacon's course through these proceedings against the Earl
and Countess of Somerset was in the highest degree noble
and humane. Such a reader will see that he was neither
obsequious to Somerset in his pride, nor insolent to him
in his disgrace.
2. Somerset had not been friendly to Bacon's suit.
Not that«fche young Scottish favourite was wholly want-
ing in sympathy for merit. His own abilities were not
vast, nor his tastes, except in dress, refined ; yet he was
very far from being the abject creature that Lord Campbell
says. Abject of nature he was not; guilty of murder
he was not. More than one popular poet found in
1. Campbell, iii. 66 ; Yelverton to Bacon, Sept. 3, 1617, Lambeth MSS.
936.
2. Bacon to Carr, Nov. 14, 1612, S. P. O. Mr. Amos, in his Great Oyer
of Poisoning, 1846, and Dr. Eimbault, in his Introduction to the Mis-
cellaneous Works of Sir Thomas Overbury, 1856, have thrown light on
the story of Somerset ; but the true history can be traced in its minute
details nowhere save in the State Papers of 1612-15. These papers are
far too numerous to cite.
206 FKANCIS BACON.
X. 2. him a patron and a friend. He was kind to Jonson,
— more than kind to Donne. For years he maintained the
closest intimacy with Overbury ; a connexion not to have
•P ' been kept with that haughty and sensitive man of genius
had Somerset been the fool in feathers and rosettes he is
commonly made. But Bacon's policy was not his policy.
Blown about with every wind, the favourite swayed
from west to east, now moored among the extreme
Puritans, now among the most bigoted of the Papists.
When he at length chose a side, it was with the party
against which Bacon had spent the best of his days and
the most brilliant of his powers ; for he suffered his
name to be used, and his influence over James to be
abused, by that iniquitous Spanish faction of which Sir
William Monson was the pensioned agent, Lord North-
ampton the pensioned chief.
A nature proof against gold was not proof against love.
A pair of bright eyes, which, in the language of Donne,
" Sowed the court with stars,"
turned upon him ; the eyes of Lady Essex, Lord North-
ampton's niece. Her uncle set her on; that%enal old
pander putting the young wife of Essex in Somerset's
way, tempting her virtue to break its vows, and lending
his house to the profligate pair for their stolen kisses.
Soft of heart, inclined by youth and rivalry to vice,
Somerset fell into the snares laid for him by the wily
greybeard and the shameless girl.
3. Somerset won to their side, the Eomanist party
ruled the state. All that a doting prince has in his gift
3. Wake to Carleton, Venice Correspondence, Nov. 18, 1612 ; Chamber-
lain to Carleton, Nov. 26, 1612, S. P. O. ; Bacon's Speech in Star Chamber,
Nov. 10, 1615, S. P. O.
MURDER OF OVERBURY. 207
— rank, places, pensions, grants, monopolies, embassies, X. 3.
mitres — for a time were theirs. They gave to whom —
they would, and they sold to whom they could. They
refused to give Bacon the Court of Wards. They sold P '
it to Cope. But their reign was short ; for the actors in
this drama of unholy love fell from their odious pro-
fligacy into a diabolical crime. Overbury, whom they
feared, not only for his influence over Carr, but for the
English vigour of his Protestantism, was done by them to
death. At first they kept their secret ; and in truth the
accusation against them was of a kind which defies belief.
That three great earls, with three or four distinguished
knights holding high positions in the country, should league
themselves with wizards, harlots, quacks, prentice-boys, and
grooms, to murder a private gentleman for a few verses
of reproof addressed to a friend in love, required the bold
and morbid imagination of a Webster even to conceive.
Poisoning, too, was rare : "It is neither of our country nor
of our church," said Bacon ; " you may find it in Kome or
Italy; there is a region or perhaps a religion for it."
People forgot that Northampton was of that religion,
that his associates were Italians and Jesuits, and that his
early days had been spent in Florence and Eome.
4. Yet suspicion spread. The poet's kinsmen mur-
mured. Some who understood his character, many who
admired his writings, spoke of his sudden death, his singular
interment. Then, the publication of ' The Wife,' a poem
which charmed all hearts by its wisdom and poetic beauty,
kindled a burning wish to inquire into the poet's fate. Five
editions of The Wife were sold in a year ; five thousand
4. A Wife, now a Widowe, 1614 ; A Wife, now the Widow of Sir Thomas
Overbury e, 1614; Do., in three subsequent impressions, 1614; Bacon's
Speech in Star Chamber, Nov. 10, 1615.
1615.
Sept.
208 FRANCIS BACON.
X. 4. voices began to call his enemies to account. The cry could
not be stifled. Men forgot their affairs to ask about the
poisoners of Overbury ; the ordinary courts of law, even the
playhouses, were abandoned for the development of a more
striking drama. Term, says Bacon, was turned into a
justicium or vacancy by it. Yet, who was to set the law in
motion ? Those to be touched by the officers of justice,
perhaps by the hangman, stood among the highest in the
land. Who would lay finger on the Howards and the
Carrs ?
5. Men sprang up for this desperate duty. By his
union with the wife of a living man, Somerset grieved the
church of which Abbott was the hierarchical head, not less
than the Puritan congregations of which Winwood was con-
sidered the parliamentary chief. The Archbishop, having
strained his strength and jeopardized his life to prevent
the divorce, was ready to fight, with such allies as God
might send him, against the malign ambition and insatiable
greed of Lady Somerset's kin. Therefore, when the cry
for justice on the murderers of Overbury rose to heaven, he
offered his high rank and holy character as a shield to such
witnesses as, without this august protection, would scarcely
have dared to wag their tongues. Winwood, Egerton, Zouch,
Southampton, Essex, Pembroke, and Montgomery, all the
more patriotic peers, the friends of poets, the founders
of Free States, joined hands with the brave Archbishop
in this crusade against vice and crime. Bacon, who had
known the poet and admired the qualities of his genius, went
with the English churchman and the English peers.
5. Archbishop Abbott's Narrative, in Kushworth, i. 460 ; Bacon's Speech
in Star Chamber, Nov. 10, 1615; Weston's Examination, Sept. 28, 29,
Oct. 2, 3, 5, 6, 1615, S. P. O. ; Sir Thomas Monson's Examination, Oct. 5,
1615, S. P. O.
1615.
PROCEEDINGS AGAINST POISONEES. 209
The bright eyes and soft cheek of George Villiers, a X. 5.
prettier man than even Carr, reconciled the King's heart
to a general arrest and rigorous examination of his old
favourite's bosom friends. Coke managed the case against e ^ '
them.
Soon the confessions of Franklin, Weston, and Anne
Turner implicated high persons. Northampton was beyond
the reach of law; but his tools or dupes, Sir Gervase
Helwys, Sir Thomas and Sir William Monson, were still
alive. Coke lodged them in the Tower ; sent Helwys to
the gallows ; got a true bill found against Sir Thomas
Monson at Guildhall, and would have put him to death,
with or without evidence of his guilt, but for the necessity
of keeping him, an unconvicted man, as evidence against
Carr.
6. In these trials of the assassins, it is remarkable that Nov.
Bacon, though holding office as Attorney-General, has no
share. Either his gentle nature shrinks from the horrors of
a criminal prosecution, or Coke excludes him from pro-
ceedings in which he expects to find abundant profit and
fame. Either supposition may be true. It is obvious from
the record of the criminal courts that Bacon must often have
left to others, when he might have taken the part himself,
the dramatic and exciting task of chasing criminals to death.
None of Coke's thirst for blood parched up his soul : the
trials of Essex and Sanquhair are almost the sole cases in
which Bacon took part that ended in the loss of life. Coke,
bent on hanging and bowelling all these miserable wretches,
may have feared his tender heart and his respect for the
forms of law. Certain it is that Sir Lawrence Hyde acts
as Crown prosecutor, and that one at least of the prisoners,
6. State Trials, ii. 911-948 ; Welden, 101.
210 FRANCIS BACON.
X. 6. that one a woman, is hurried to the gallows in a way
which no lawyer can now defend.
1616. 7. In the more important trials of the Earl and Countess
May 24. f Somerset, not before Coke, but before the highest court
in the realm, the House of Peers, Bacon assumes his place.
Lady Somerset pleads guilty, throwing herself on the mercy
of God and the King — drawn to that course by an under-
standing, or a promise, that her appeal to the Crown shall
be mercifully heard. Bacon is prepared for either course :
the notes of a speech intended to have been made against
her are preserved among his works. They are singularly
merciful and gentle. Somerset's case comes last. Lord
Campbell assumes his guilt ; but such a study of the con-
fessions as he gave to the evidence against Sarah Chesham
or William Palmer would convince him that, though guilty
of some depravity of heart and understanding, as well as of
criminal weakness towards his wife and her associates, it is
very far indeed from sure that he was guilty of any share
in Overbury's death. No proof was given, nor has any proof
been yet found, that Somerset knew of Weston being put
into the cell to kill Overbury, or of the Countess sending the
relays of poisoned tarts and soups. It is certain that he
was deceived throughout by Lord Northampton. Yet, on
the other hand, it is not to be denied that his indolent
selfishness led him to the very verge of connivance in the
crime. It was a case of doubt, and will remain so to the
end of time. Bacon claimed strict justice from the Peers,
while he left the gates of mercy open to the Crown. The
Peers condemn Somerset, but with a tacit understanding
that his life shall not be taken away.
7. Sherburne's Eeport of Lady Somerset's Trial, May 24, 1616, S. P. O. ;
Winwood to Wotton, May 2, 1616, Venice Correspondence, S. P. O. ;
Bacon's Charge, in Montagu, vi. 235.
1616.
May.
INTERCEDES FOR THE SOMERSETS. 211
8. When Somerset has been sent to the Tower — when X. 8.
the Howards are cast down from their bad eminence,
and the flagitious Spanish clique seems broken by their
fall — Bacon's voice is raised for clemency. When he has
done his duty as Attorney-General, he remembers his
privileges as a Christian and a man. Life enough has
been taken. Helwys, Weston, Franklin, Anne Turner,
all the more active agents in the deed, are gone. The
Countess has a baby at her breast — that little girl who
born in shame, will live to become the mother of William
Lord EusselL She has confessed her guilt, she has been
awfully punished, and the remnant of her years is doomed
to obscurity and shame. The Earl maintains his inno-
cence ; the world has not been satisfied of his guilt.
Humanity and Law alike concede to him the protection
of every doubt. Bacon's counsel to the Crown must be
allowed to be pure. He owes nothing to Somerset in the
past — he can have nothing to hope from him in the time
to come.
9. He has some domestic and rather humorous trials of
his own. Sir John and the lady in Worcester break his
rest. Having put his scorn upon Lord Eure,^and worried
him into selling his place to Lord Gerard ; having got, with
the help of Gervase Babington, Bishop of Worcester, a
grant from the Crown to restore his pool ; having finished
his house in the middle of Westwood Park, and given a
banquet to Lord and Lady Compton and their train in
honour of the event, which has been the talk of neighbour-
ing shires, the warm old knight, having no one left to
8. Bacon to James, April 28, 1616.
9. Council Reg., Mar. 7, 1615 ; Dom. Papers James the First, lxxxvii.
67, S. P. O. ; Wotton, i. 186.
p 2
212 FRANCIS BACON.
X. 9. fight with, has begun to fuss and wrangle with his wife.
— The widow, on her side, is now perverse. Sir John has
" "• to turn her out of doors. When she leaves the park
a ^' and rides up to town, her clothes and trinkets, sent on
before her, are stolen on the way. In the full belief that
Sir John has caused her to be plundered, Lady Pakington
sends her wrongs to the Privy Council, and begs to have
a general warrant of search for her stolen trunks. This
piece of domestic comedy stands solemnly recorded in the
Council-books :
March the seventh, 1615.
Present :
George Abbott, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Thomas Howard Earl of Suffolk, Lord Treasurer.
Edward Somerset Earl of Worcester, Lord Privy Seal.
William Herbert Earl of Pembroke, Lord Chamberlain.
The Earl of Dunfermline.
The Bishop of Winchester.
Lord Knollys.
Sir Ealph Winwood, First Secretary of State.
A General Warrant directed to all His Majesty's
Public Officers.
" Whereas complaint hath been made unto us by the
Lady Pakington, wife to Sir John Pakington, knight, that,
having occasion to repair to London, and sending up
divers trunks of apparel and other necessaries for the use
of her person, the same was carried aside, and as yet
detained from her, to her great hindrance and prejudice.
These are therefore to will and require you to make search
in all places where you shall be directed by this bearer for
apparel belonging to the Lady Pakington, and the same
LADY PAKINGTON. 213
being found to cause it to be delivered to this bearer for X. 9.
her use." —
1610.
This warrant to search for Lady Pakington's hoods May.
and jerkins, fans, ruffs, and farthingales, is signed by the
Archbishop, the Lord Treasurer, and the rest !
10. It may for charity be hoped the poor lady finds her
trunks, though the Council-books say no more about them.
Certain it is that when she again goes home to Westwood
Park she nags and frets Sir John, and not Sir John alone.
Two of her girls are now married, and she does her very
worst to make their husbands as miserable as her own.
How Mervin Touchet bears her tongue we are not told ; but
this young lord being rather crazed, and exceedingly vicious
and tyrannical, it is likely enough that he submits, as such
men do, to the woman's cold, dry, dogged will. Not so
Francis Bacon, who insists, to her surprise and rage, on
being the master in his own house. When she tries on
him the arts which have sometimes roused, but more fre-
quently have tamed Sir John, he tells her in the plainest
words to mind her own business, and mind it better than
she has done. He even shuts his door upon her when he
finds her naught. If she hints in her own sweet way
that, should he turn his wife out of the house, as she sup-
poses he soon will, now that he has turned his deaf side
to her mother's counsels, she will receive her back from
him, and give her, the poor outraged thing, a home, Bacon
quietly reminds her that, considering what is passed, and
who has been already cast off once, it is more likely that
she will come to beg a room at Gorhambury than that
Lady Bacon will need to seek one at Westwood Park.
10. Montagu, xiii. 63.
1616.
214 FKANCIS BACON.
X. 10. This letter is in Montagu ; but though curious to the last
degree, it has passed unnoticed the eye of every writer
of Bacon's life, because the relation of Bacon to Lady
May . •
J * Pakington has not been known. I reproduce it in con-
nexion with the domestic facts to which it belongs, and
which it helps to explain.
To my Lady Pakington, in answee to a Message by her sent.
Madam,
You shall with right good will be made acquainted
with anything that concerneth your daughters, if you bear
a mind of love and concord, otherwise you must be content
to be a stranger unto us ; for I may not be so unwise as to
suffer you to be an author or occasion of dissension between
your daughters and their husbands, having seen so much
misery of that in yourself. And above all things I will
turn back your kindness, in which you say you will receive
my wife if she be cast off ; for it is much more likely we
have occasion to receive you being cast off, if you re-
member what is passed. But it is time to make an end of
those follies, and you shall at this time pardon me this one
fault of writing to you ; for I mean to do it no more till you
use me and respect me as you ought. So, wishing you
better than it seemeth you will draw upon yourself,
I rest yours,
Fe. Bacon.
11. The merciful part which Bacon, as Attorney-General,
plays in the release of Sir William Monson and Sir
11. Waad's Statement, Sept. 1615, S. P. O. ; Coke's Memorandum,
Sept. 11, 1615, Jan. 8, 1616, S. P. O. ; James to the Commissioners, Oct.
21, 1615, S. P. O. ; Coke to the King, Dec. 4, 1615, S. P. O. ; Sir Thomas
Monson to Coke, Dec. 5, 1615, S. P. O.
INTERCEDES FOR THE MONSONS. 215
Thomas Monson from the Tower, having escaped the X. 11.
researches of Basil Montagu, has escaped the critfcisms of —
1 f 1 A
Lord Campbell. Yet the facts of this interference embrace
. • Mav
a continuation of the duel with Coke, and are essential to J *
an understanding of some of the remoter causes of Bacon's
fall.
In the first warm days of discovery the two Monsons
were flung into the Tower. The proof would have
gone hard against them. They were Papists. They
were friends of Northampton. They were intimate
with Lady Somerset. Sir William Monson was the
secret agent of the Spanish Ambassador. Sir Thomas
had been the means of placing Weston in Overbury's
cell. Any actual participation in the murder has never
yet been proved against either of them; yet in the
flush and anger of the public, more could have been
brought against them than any twelve Protestant jurors
would have asked in order to their condemnation. Guild-
hall would have pronounced them guilty, as King's
Bench had pronounced Anne Turner guilty, and Coke
would most gladly have sent them to the gallows or the
block.
But Bacon feels that, now the King has resolved to
pardon Somerset and his guilty wife, the Monsons cannot
be put to death without shocking all reasonable, con-
scientious men. They are Catholics ; but he cannot treat
their religion as a crime. Coke is furious. As one of the
four commissioners for the prosecution, he has made a vast
collection of secret papers on the subject; these papers
he refuses to give up; and from threats which he has
used on hearing that he may be baulked of his prey,
it is feared that in his fury he may send them to the
216 FKANCIS BACON.
X. 12. 12. The advocates of mercy hie to the King. James
— commands Bacon to require from Coke the surrender of all
1616. these documents for his Majesty's use. The Attorney-
May. General thereupon writes to the Lord Chief Justice : —
Bacon to Coke.
My Lokd,
I received yesternight express commandments from
his Majesty to require from 3 r our Lordship, in his Majesty's
name, all and every such examinations as are in your
Lordship's hands of Sir William Monson for his Majesty's
present service. Therefore, I pray your Lordship either
send them presently, sealed up, by your servant, or, if you
think it needful, I will come to you myself and receive
them with mine own hands. I rest, your Lordship's loving
friend, to command,
Fb. Bacon.
This Tuesday, at seven o'clock in the morning, 16th of
April, 1616.
Imagine the rage of Coke ! No evidence to connect Sir
William with the murderous scenes in the Tower has been
discovered, while the proofs of his connexion with the
Spanish Ambassador, and of his disbursements of money to
the partisans of Spain, are of a kind not to be produced by
the King in a court of law.
13. Sir Thomas Monson's case is far more difficult than
Sir William's ; for Sir Thomas was in daily communica-
tion with Helwys when the poisons were being given,
and his warm recommendation of Weston first encou-
12. Bacon to Coke, April 16, 1616, S. P. O. ; Carew to Eoe, Jan. 18,
1617, S. P. O.
13. Coke to the King, Feb. 8, 1616, S. P. O. ; Queries by Coke, Feb.
1616, S. P. O. ; Chamberlain to Carleton, June 8, 1616, S. P. O.
CASE OF COMMENDAMS. 217
raged Helwys to permit and then to share the crime. Yet X. 13.
a careful examination of the mass of evidence in the State —
Paper Office must convince a lawyer that Monson was
no worse than Northampton's tool and dupe. He was a ^'
guilty of Eomanism : a crime which Coke, and many
bigots like Coke, would have punished with the drop. He
was guilty, too, of grave indiscretion and of crawling sub-
serviency towards Northampton. How could the Crown
lawyers deal with such a case ? Monson had undergone a
public examination, not a public trial. Coke would have
his life.
14. But while the two Monsons lie in the Tower, each June,
loud in his denial of guilt, yet scared in soul by the
violence and injustice of his adversaries, Coke himself, the
most eager and malicious of those adversaries, crashes down
suddenly from his high place.
That command to give up the confessions and examina-
tions of Sir William must have gone to the quick ; as it
not only robs him of the power to bully and hang a man
for whose creed he has no tolerance, but takes from him a
case in which he feels a lawyer's pride, to give it over to
one whom of all living men he most loathes and fears.
This wrong he resents in word and deed. Seeing scorn
and insult on the brow of a prince from whom he hoped
to win smiles and bounty, he droops into discontent and
opposition. In the great case of Commendams he comes
into fatal collision with the King.
15. The case of Commendams, on the law of which
Egerton and Bacon differ from Coke, may be explained
14. Carew to Eoe, Jan. 18, 1617, S. P. O.
15. Storia del Concilio Tridentino, 1629 ; Collier's Ecclesiastical History
of Great Britain, vii. 389 ; Council Reg., June 6, 1616.
1616.
June.
218 FKANCIS BACON.
X. 15. in a few words. A living in commendam was in the
same position as a ward in custody ; it was oommitted to
some one's care. The custom of such holdings in the
church arose in troublous times, when a Genseric was in
Eome or an Attila in Gaul ; then sees and parishes, left
without occupants, were given in commendam to the
nearest bishop or the nearest priest. In time the Popes
discovered in this system of holding sees or livings a
means of rewarding a loyal friend or buying off a formid-
able foe. In England, too, the plan had its use and its
abuse. Some of the livings were so rich, while some of
the sees were so poor, that a clergyman might lose in
worldly state by his translation to the bench of spiritual
peers. Such a fact, it is obvious, must have limited the
choice of the Crown, in case of vacancy among the bishops,
f* ' to the lower or less fortunate ranks of the clergy — a limi-
tation not to be desired or endured, had not the Crown,
when succeeding to the rights of the Holy Chair, in-
herited the power of granting livings in commendam.
Yet such a power was open to grave abuse. Paulo
Sarpi has denounced the evils which it brought upon
Koman Catholic communities, where a Pope's bastard
or a Cardinal's nephew, under the title of a holder in
commendam, swept the revenues of a province into his
private purse.
While Coke is in his rage, the case of a living held in
commendam comes before the King's Bench. It is a pri-
vate cause ; but Serjeant Chibborne, in the course of his
speech, goes out of his way to contest the King's power to
grant commendams at all. Fearful lest the angry Chief
Justice may pronounce a verdict touching the Crown,
without the Crown being heard in its defence, James mounts
a messenger for London commanding Bilson and Winwood
1616.
June.
CASE OF COMMENDAMS. 219
to attend the next sitting of the Court of King's Bench X. 15
and report to him the arguments there used. Winwood
being sick, Bilson, Bishop of Winchester, is the sole witness ;
but his report alarms the King in high degree, for he
hears Chibborne contend that the Crown has no power to
grant livings or sees in commenclam save in cases of
extreme need ; and that no such need can arise in Eng-
land, where no man is bound to keep hospitality beyond
his means.
16. Informed by Bilson of what has passed in the King's
Bench, James sees the gravity of his position, and com-
mands Bacon to write and require Coke to pnt off the
further hearing of this case until he, the King, can come
to town and consult the judges. • This command a servant
carries from Gray's Inn to the Lord Chief Justice's room
in Serjeants' Inn ; when Coke, who is just setting out for
Westminster Hall, sends his own man to Gray's Inn to
beg that Mr. Attorney will give to each of the twelve
judges a copy of his note.
Coke's presence has been required in the Court of Chan-
cery to assist in hearing a case for the Crown ; but setting
the immediate duty of the day aside, defying the royal
command, as conveyed through Bacon, he goes down to
Westminster, takes his seat in the King's Bench, and calls
the forbidden case. After a further hearing he takes
the judges to his rooms in Serjeants' Inn, where he per-
suades them to sign a letter to the King, throwing the
blame of his disobedience on Bacon, whose request for a
postponement of the trial they condemn as contrary to law
and to the oaths of a judge.
16. The Judges to James, April 27, 1616, S. P. 0. ; James to the Judges,
Council Keg., June 6, 1616.
220 FRANCIS BACON.
X. 17. 17. James reads this letter with, amazement. If his rage
— against Coke, and his fears of encroachment, do not lure
1616. ^ m one ^j gooner f rom his dogs an( i deer, he pens a smart
June. re b u k e to the judges, who, when they see how the tide
sets, begin to feel heartily ashamed of what they have signed.
They know, indeed, that the reasons given by Coke are
a mere pretence; that Bacon's letter was sent by com-
mand ; that the Crown has power by law to grant livings in
commendam ; and that to delay the hearing until James
could arrive in town and lay his arguments before them
would neither interfere with justice nor disturb their oaths.
All these points of the case the King sets forth in his
note with unsparing ire. He ends by once again, in
his own words and in his own name, insisting that the
hearing shall be stayed, referring them, with a good sense
of which he is seldom capable, to his Attorney-General for
his opinions on particular points.
June 6. 18. Ambling to town for the Whitsun games, he sends
for his twelve judges to the palace. Of the many
comedies played in that superb political theatre, few have
been so droll as this trial of the judges by the King. All
the great officers of state are present ; the King himself,
Archbishop Abbott and Bishop Bilson, Lord Chancellor
Egerton and Lord Treasurer Suffolk, Winwood Secretary
of State, and Zouch Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports,
together with a host of inferior councillors and clerks.
Bacon stands there to defend himself. Coke, a member
of the Privy Council, takes his seat.
The men whose lives have been one long duel, who have
pleaded in the same courts, who have made love to the same
17. Council Reg., June 6, 1616.
18. Council Reg., June 6, 1616.
1616.
June 6.
COKE BEFORE THE COUNCIL. 221
woman, who have served in the same House of Commons, X. 18
who for thirty-five years have been at guard and thrust,
appear in a scene which can only end in disaster for one of
them, perhaps in ruin for both. James opens the inquiry.
Bilson states what he heard in the King's Bench. Bacon's
letter and Coke's reply are put in as evidence and read.
Eleven of the judges see their error. Falling on their knees,
they confess their fault and implore the King's most gracious
pardon. Coke alone, if wrong at first, has courage enough to
be wrong at last ; maintaining that the facts of his note were
true, and that Mr. Attorney's message was against his oath.
James turns to his Chancellor ; but Egerton, before
pronouncing judgment, begs, as the case involves points of
law, that Bacon may first be heard.
19. Bacon rises. In the portrait of Van Somers, painted
a few weeks later, we see him as he stands confronting
Coke. Thirty-six years have passed since he entered
on the fag and contest of the world ; but thirty-six years
of toil, thought, study, disappointment, and success, have
neither soured his blood nor disturbed the beauty of his
face. The bust of Somers is the bust of Hilyard come to
its perfect growth. Brow broad and solid ; eye quick yet
mild ; nose straight and strong, of the pure old English
type ; beard trim and dainty, as of one to whom grace is
nature ; over all the countenance a bold, soft, kindling
light ; an infinite sense of power, and subtlety, and humour,
unmixed with any trace of pride.
20. Turning to the King, he shows, by proofs which seem
superfluous, that in staying the hearing Coke would have
19. The portrait of Van Somers is at Gorhambury.
20. Council Keg., June 6, 1616 ; Sherborne to Carleton, June 12, 1616,
S. P. O. ; Gerard to Carleton, June 14, 1616, S. P. O.
1616.
June 6.
222 FRANCIS BACON.
X. 20. hurt no law. broken no oath. The Lord Chief Justice
starts to his feet ; the King's counsel, he says, may plead
before the judges, they must not dispute with them. Bacon
answers for his order and for himself, that a King's counsel
is, by his office and his oath, free to proceed or declare
against any man, against the greatest lord in the kingdom,
even against any body of men, though they were peers and
judges ; and he demands from the King's justice that this
spirt of bad temper and worse law shall be withdrawn.
James sides with his Attorney-General, and Coke has to
eat his words.
The Lord-Chancellor now asks that the oath of a judge
may be read ; and when Yelverton has done this, he pro-
nounces judgment wholly against Coke. In Egerton's
verdict the judges all concur ; promising for themselves to
respect all future messages from the Crown. Coke alone
answers that he will do what he shall find fit for a judge.
The fall of this arrogant man is soon noised in the
Strand and at St. Paul's.
June 9. 21. Bacon is sworn a member of the Privy Council ; as
in every stage of his rise, without a bribe. The very first
. act of this new Councillor, who, on grounds of humanity, is
moving heaven and earth to save a couple of Papists from
the gallows, is to induce the favourite and his master to
June 16. restore the famous Puritan preacher Doctor Burgess to his
ministry in the Church. Burgess has long been silenced.
Many congregations wish to hear him ; among others, the
Honourable Society of Gray's Inn. Bacon prevails, and
the thunders of the great preacher are again heard at
St. Paul's Cross.
21. Council Keg., June 9, 1616 ; Montagu, xiii. 233 ; Carew to Roe,
Jan. 18, 1617, S. P. O. ; Chamberlain to Carleton, July 5, 1617, S. P. O.
1616.
June 30.
FALL OF COKE. 223
22. Bacon is nominated one of a commission, with the X. 22.
Lord Treasurer, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and other
ministers, to consider a plan for raising funds by selling
the old feudal right of homage and by disafforesting the
distant and unprofitable Crown-lands.
More than sufficient offences are soon discovered against
Coke, frauds, contempts, and disobediences, to ensure a
condemnation either in the Star Chamber or in any court
over which the Crown can name the judge. When he
hears of this investigation into his past life, the bully
of Westminster Hall lowers his tone. Not that his
course on the bench has been impure ; it has, in fact,
as all the world knows, been ostentatiously the reverse
of impure ; yet the practice of all the courts is so
unsafe, the system of fees so lax, that no man on the
bench can stand up against an accusation brought by the
Crown. No judge on the bench knows better than Coke
that to be tried for a Crown offence is to be condemned.
In the most grovelling key he prays to be spared the
shame of a public trial; on his knees he implores the
Council to protect him; saying, and very truly saying,
that any man in place, however high his state, however
clean his hands, may be crushed by an indictment laid in
the royal name. Again and again he appears before the
Privy Council, under his rival's eyes, in the same igno-
minious attitude, begging for mercy in the same miserable
tone.
The woman who in his prosperity was the torment of July
his life no sooner finds him grovelling on his knees before
men deaf to his groans, and the savings of his long prac-
22. Council "to the Commissioners, June 30, 1616, S. P. O. ; Council
Keg., June 26, 30, 1616 ; Chamberlain to Carleton, June 22, 1616, S. P. O. ;
Sherborne to Carleton, June 29, 1616, S. P. 0.
224 FKANCIS BACON.
X. 22. tice at the bar menaced with fine and forfeit, than she
bounds to his side, makes his suit her own, worries her
kinsmen for help, besieges the Queen with petitions, and
declares that, come evil or come good to her husband, she
will share his fate.
Oct. 23. Though Anne puts forth her weakness in his cause,
Coke is degraded from the Council, forbidden to travel
circuit, commanded to revise his Reports. Yilliers against
him, the poor Queen is snubbed : and Lady Hatton, in place
of conciliating those who might help her suit, insults the
favourite's mother, and on her complaint gets sent away
from court. Coke humbles his pride, confesses his fault,
nay, darkens his fame as a jurist and a judge by stooping, on
the King's demand, to alter his Law Reports ; a confession
of guilt if his cases are false, a dishonest compliance if he
believes them true. Even this last concession is made in vain.
When stripped of his office and deposed from the bench,
his wife, who was going to make his cause her own, packs
up her furniture and plate, leaps into her coach, and leaves
him to his loneliness and rage. His seat in the King's
Bench is offered to Bacon and declined. Sir Henry
Montagu, Recorder of London, a man of very great wealth
and very high abilities as a lawyer, grandson of Bluff King
Hal's famous Lord Chief Justice, and founder of the ducal
line of Manchester, gets his place.
Kov. 24. The fall of Coke throws light into the Tower. Sir
Thomas Monson gains the liberty of that fortress. Sure
23. Villiers to Bacon, Oct. 3, 1616, Lambetli MSS. 936 ; Williams to
Carleton, July 3, 1616, S. P. O. ; Chamberlain to Carleton, July 6, Oct. 26,
Nov. 9, 14, 23, 1616, S. P. O. ; Sherborne to Carleton, July 11, Oct. 5,
1616, S. P. O. ; Winwood to Carleton, July 13, 1616, S. P. O. ; Egerton's
Speech to Montagu, Nov. 18, 1616, S. P. O. ; Grant Book, 197, 198.
24. Council Peg., Aug. 10, 1616 ; Bacon to James, Dec. 7, 1616, S. P. O. ;
Statement of the Case of Sir Thomas Monson, Feb. 12, 1617, S. P. 0,
Nov.
1616.
ADVISES PAEDON FOE STE T. MONSON. 225
that Monson ought not to be tried, since it has become X. 24.
improbable that he could be convicted and impossible that
he could be hung, Bacon is not the less sure that for the
King's credit and for Monson's own safety he ought not to
be merely set free. He proposes, therefore, with the full
concurrence of Sir Henry Yelverton, that a pardon shall
be granted under the Seal, reciting Monson's plea of inno-
cence, the dubious proofs against him, and the gracious
clemency of the King. Egerton backs tins compromise ;
for he too, though himself a convert from the Church of
Rome, believes with Bacon that a gentleman may be a
Papist without being a traitor. In his own name and that
of Yelverton, Bacon communicates this plan to James : —
Bacon to King James.
7th of December, 1616. Dec. 7,
It may please your most excellent Majesty,
According to your pleasure, signified unto me, your
Attorney, by word of mouth, we have considered of the
state of Sir Thomas Monson's case, and what is fit further
to be done in it, and we are of opinion— first, that it is
altogether unfit to have a proceeding to a trial, both
because the evidence itself (for so much as we know of it)
is conjectural, as also for that to rip up those matters now
will neither be agreeable to the justice nor to the mercy
formally used by your Majesty towards others ; secondly,
to do nothing in it is neither safe for the gentleman, nor
honourable (as we conceive) for your Majesty, whose care
of justice useth not to faint or become weary in the latter
end. Therefore we are of opinion that it is a case fit for
your Majesty's pardon, as upon doubtful evidence, and that
Sir Thomas Monson plead the same publicly, with such
Q
226 FRANCIS BACON.
X. 24. protestations of his innocency as he thinks good, and so
1616 the matter may come to a regular and just period, wherein
Dec. 7. * ne vei T reading of the pardon, which shall recite the
evidence to be doubtful and conjectural, added to his own
protestations, is as much for the reputation of the gentle-
man as we think convenient, considering how things have
formerly passed. Hereupon we have advised with the
Lord Chancellor, whom we find of the same opinion. All
which, nevertheless, we, in all humbleness, submit to your
Majesty's better judgment.
Your Majesty's most humble
and most bounden servants,
Fe. Bacon,
Henky Yelvekton.
The advice is welcome. A pardon, drawn up in this
xeb.12. gengej p asses under the Seal. Monson, brought up at the
bar of the King's Bench and this paper read to him,
declares his innocence once more, protests that his pardon
should be read as evidence of his innocence, not of his guilt.
Montagu, now Chief Justice, tells him it may be read in
this sense, and Monson with a joyful heart goes home from
the Tower.
25. Egerton is sick. Though he will not give up the
Seals, as Villiers presses him to do, while he can sign his
name, he begins to divest himself of the minor offices and
responsibilities of the world ; among other changes yielding
the Stewardship of St. Albans to the friend who now sits by
his bed, lightening his pains and cares, and whom he, like
all the world, has sealed for his successor in the Court of
25. Add. MSS. 19, 402 ; Sherborne to Carleton, Feb. 8, 1617, S. P. 0. ;
Council Reg., Feb. 2, 1617.
1617.
Feb. 12.
KUMOUKED OFFSPRING OF ARABELLA STUART. 227
Chancery. Among the public affairs in which Bacon is X. 25
employed are, the Disorders in our Trade with Spain, and
a Eeport touching a child supposed to have been left by
Lady Arabella Stuart. The first is referred to Bacon alone,
with power to collect evidence and to offer remedies for the
wrong. The second concerns the King more nearly than
the murder of English crews, the confiscation of English
goods. This story of a royal child he refers to four com-
missioners, the highest functionaries of the state — Abbott,
Suffolk, Winwood, and Bacon ; Bacon, on whom the burthen
of inquiry falls, representing the great lawyer now lying
sick at York House.
26. After Lady Arabella's death in the Tower a whisper Feb. 2.
flew abroad that her romantic marriage had not been
altogether barren ; that she had given birth to a child
while confined in Sir Thomas Parry's house at Lambeth ;
and that this heir of the Seymours was still alive. The
story' has a deep and romantic interest. If there be such a
child, it stands very near the throne — uniting, as it must,
in one head the rival claims of the Seymour and Lennox
lines of descent from Henry the Seventh ; therefore a rival,
as some folks think, to the King's own children, and one
who may become truly formidable should the rickety
Prince of Wales not live. Such a birth was not unlikely
in itself. The Lady Arabella was only thirty-six when she
fell in love and secretly gave her hand to William Seymour.
They were married weeks before their amour was discovered.
Even when parted by force, their love and wit found means
for meeting. Even when Seymour was in the Tower,
he so far won upon his jailor by his youth, his misery,
or his gold, that he was frequently allowed to go up
26. Council Reg., Feb. 2, 16, 1617.
Q 2
1617.
Feb. 2.
228 FKANCIS BACON.
X. 26. the river and see his wife. Nothing, therefore, in the tale
of a child having been born to all this love appears impro-
bable to men who fear or hate the King, while the motives
for concealment, if it has been born, are clear to all.
James is profoundly moved. A new Perkin Warbeck
menaces his throne.
True or false, the story is a serious fact for James and
for his dynasty : not less grave for them if false than true ;
unless it can be wholly and for ever rooted out from the
minds of men. Hence the commission. For a time the
mystery defies even Bacon's subtlety of search and proof.
It is always hard to prove a negative — most hard in such a
case as this. The commissioners may convince themselves ;
they have to convince a credulous world, at the risk of
leaving that world open to seduction by any knave who
may choose to play his head against a crown. They send
for Seymour, who knows nothing or will tell them nothing.
They send for Sir John Keys and Doctor Mountford,
physicians to the royal lady. They question Edward
Kirton and Edward Eeeves, her body servants. None of
these will own to knowledge of the birth of any child.
Such evidence is, however, far from decisive. Where are
Lady Arabella's waiting-women ?
It is known that, while imprisoned in Parry's house,
Arabella's waiting-woman was called Ann Bradshaw. Ann
has dropped out of sight, though no one thinks that she is
dead. Where is she ? The Seymours don't know. Her
old friends and fellow servants don't know. Such a fact is
of itself suspicious. Is the missing maid watching over the
missing child ? There must be an end of these questions.
If alive, and between the four seas, Ann must be found ;
for on her testimony hang the chances of a civil war.
A search through every shire from Exe to Tweed dis-
1617.
Feb. 2.
EECEIVES THE SEALS. 229
covers her in Duffield — an obscure village lost among the X. 26,
snows of the Peak. Though old, full of aches and pains,
her memory is good : she remembers everything about her
unhappy mistress, was with her day and night in Parry's
house, and is positive she never had a child. The local
magistrates dare not jolt her off to London through the
winter cold, the doctors saying she would die on the road.
A message speeds to Bacon. Not an hour is to be lost ;
the weal of millions hangs on the words of this sick creature ;
so he mounts for Duffield Sir Clement Edmondes, a trusty
Clerk of the Privy Council, to see the woman and take her
important evidence on oath. Clement sends in his report.
The tale sworn by the waiting-woman convinces the com-
missioners and the Council that the rumour of a young
Seymour, born of Lady Arabella, being in existence is a
lie. In witness of this inquiry, and of this result, James
causes an elaborate statement of the facts to be inserted in
the Council Kegister, signed by George Abbott, Thomas
Howard, Kalph Winwood, and Francis Bacon. The search
which satisfies the Council seems to satisfy mankind. It is,
indeed, amazing that, during all the troubles and illusions
of the succeeding forty years, no one ever assumed the
character of Lady Arabella's son.
27. Four weeks after closing this delicate inquiry Bacon Mar. 7.
receives the Seals. Egerton's love bears fruit; but the
risks of failure in his suit have indeed been great, for
Buckingham makes no secret of his wish to ruin the old
Chancellor and sell his place. While the favourite haggles
with aspirants for the office about its price, the King himself
puts the Seals into Bacon's hands.
27. Council Keg., Mar. 7, 24, 1617 ; Grant Book, 200 ; Chamberlain to
Carleton, Mar. 15, 1617, S. P. O. ; Commission to Abbott, Bacon, and
others, Mar. 17, 1617, S. P. O.
230 FRANCIS BACON.
X. 27.
1617.
Mar. 7.
Biding down to York House, he thanks his old friend,
and in his Majesty's name presents him with the patent of
an Earl. He now turns to the Court of Chancery, not in
despair at the long arrears, but with confident sense of his
power to conquer the vast accumulation of work. The
rules which he lays down, the spirit in which he decides,
are beyond all praise. Nor do the labours of his Court,
the ceremonial of his rank, and the sittings of the Council,
consume his strength. He instructs Buckingham in the
arts of government. He toils at his Novum Organum.
Within a week of his investiture the King leaves London
Mar. 17. for the Northern Kingdom, calling Bacon to the exercise
of very extraordinary powers. In commission with Pem-
broke, Suffolk, and a single secretary, he receives power
to pardon able-bodied offenders under sentence of death,
save only those convicted of rape, burglary, witchcraft, and
wilful murder, and send them over sea. In commission
with Abbott and others, he is authorised to pass securities
for loans, to issue proclamations, to conduct the Irish
business, to perfect the ecclesiastical commission, and
generally to conduct the government of the realm. Yet, in
spite of this enormous addition to his active duties, he
clears off the whole arrears of Chancery causes by the end
of June.
RAGE OF COKE. 231
CHAPTEE XL
LOKD CHANCELLOR.
1. In striding over Coke's head to the Mace and Seals, XI. 1.
Bacon puts the crown to his many offences against that —
wealthy and vindictive foe. Their lives have been spent in 16 17,
a daily contest for rank, love, place, and power. Up to the ^'
present year Coke has been able to keep in front. He
made more money, he won Lady Hatton, he first got office
under the Crown. He went up to the Common Pleas
while Bacon was fighting for his promotion at the bar.
Before the great philosopher was commissioned as Attorney-
General, the great jurist had been seated on the King's
Bench. For the three years and four months that
Bacon, as Attorney, waited in the Council ante-room, Coke
sat at the board. The scene is now changed, the cha-
racters reversed. Within a few weeks Coke has been
degraded from the Council to make way for Bacon, and
reduced from the King's Bench that his rival may feel
the insolent joy of refusing to accept his place. The
humiliation has now been capped by Bacon filching from
him, at the very moment of his negotiation with Yilliers,
the Mace and Seals, without paying for them one shilling
of those irregular sums which he himself was told he
must lay down. Such a success enrages the miser even
more than it galls the man.
1. Council Reg., Nov. 4, 1613; Yelverton to Bacon, Sept. 3, 1617,
Lambeth MSS. 836*
232 FKANCIS BACON.
XI. 2. 2. How can he drag this rival down ? The way is but
— too easy. Grain the favourite. Virtue is no protection
to men in] power. He has been thrown. Egerton only
^' escapes an ignominious fall by the approach of death.
The story of Egerton's latter days has never yet been
told. As an illustration of the time, it is in the highest
degree important for a clear comprehension of his suc-
cessor's fall.
As Egerton grew old a host of lawyers and eccle-
siastics began to crave the Seals; conspicuous among
these were Bilson and Bennett, Hobart and Coke. The
Great Seal, though held like the White Staff during
pleasure, changed hands so rarely that the possession
was regarded as one for life. Pickering, Hatton, Brom-
ley, Nicholas Bacon, kept the Seals to the last, as North-
ampton, Salisbury, Dorset, and Burghley kept the Staff.
The rule applied to every office in the Household and
the State. Now this appearance of a permanent pos-
session gave to each holder of office a vested right in it,
which had a market value. No man ever yielded his
place without being paid for it, any more than a colonel of
the line gives up his commission without his price. Death
only could deprive him. As Egerton would . not die
though he had held the Seals longer than any Chancellor
since the Conquest, nor yield his place except on rea-
sonable terms of surrender, those who meant to make a
purse by the transfer began to brood over the possibility
of forcing him to yield by means of a criminal prosecu-
tion. A sentence in the House of Lords would be legal
death. Once it were pronounced the Seals would fall into
the King's gift. Tins was a new and perilous game to
2. Sherborne to Carleton, Feb. 23, 1617, S. P. O. ; Lovelace to Carleton,
Mar. 11, 1617, S. P. O.
PLOT TO RUIN EGERTON. 233
play ; but the plan seemed easy, the profits vast. A trial XI. 2.
might be made. Any old lawyer, learned in the vices of
the times, could get up an accusation. Buckingham could
secure a majority in the House of Lords. The temptations
which drew Buckingham into this odious and criminal
course were very great. Sir John Bennett offered for the
Seals no less a sum than thirty thousand pounds.
3. This scheme of a criminal information quickened into
life on Egerton's refusal to pass under the Seal some patents
in which the Villiers family had a share. Famous among
these was a grant to Sir Giles Mompesson for the manu-
facture of gold and silver thread. Everybody wore lace.
In the comic writers of James's reign, in Jonson, in Webster,
in Massinger, the young gallants strut in lace — not in the
tawdry stuff sold by Autolycus as a present from country
lads to country lasses — but in glinting silver and gold;
the metals dropping in threads from the ruff, or wrought
into the doublet and hose, the cloak and cap. Venice could
not supply the want. The price of gold and silver lace ran
high; and the profits of the trade all went abroad. A
Licenser of Inns, Sir Giles Mompesson, a man of energy
and wealth, conceived a scheme for introducing this profit-
able manufacture into England. There were serious diffi-
culties. Silver and gold were scarce ; sometimes not to be
bought except on ruinous terms. The patent under which
he was to work must not alone protect his trade, but allow
him to take up gold and silver for his need, even the coin
of the realm. By giving two of Buckingham's brothers
a share in the business, Mompesson hoped to secure pro-
tection for his enterprise.
3. Sign Manuals, vi. 109 ; Com. Jour., i. 530-576.
1617.
July.
234 FKANCIS BACON.
XL 4. 4. Blind to the lights of trade, Egerton refused to
seal this grant. Not that he perceived and lamented the
true evil of monopolies ; every profession was then a guild ;
and without a monopoly there could be no trade. The
grocer, the perfumer, the vintner, the tailor, was each in-
vested in a charter or a patent. Egerton, during his long
reign as Chancellor, passed hundreds of patents, some
of them far more mischievous than the one for enabling
the London spinners to rival their Venetian brethren in
the production of gold and silver thread. His repugnance
to it sprang from the contempt of an old man for new
fripperies of dress and show, and from a fear that Mompes-
son would ruin the Crown by withdrawing the coinage from
circulation into trade.
5. Buckingham was furious. Urged by his own vexation
and by his complaining brothers, he swore to ruin the old
Chancellor. Agents sneaked about the Inns of Court
speaking evil of the great lawyer, now on his bed of death,
provoking all who had suffered wrongs, or who fancied they
had suffered wrongs, in his court, to rise up against the
tyrant. Men soon answered to the call. A blameless life,
a sick bed, were no protection against this outrage. One said
he had given money into the court ; another said he had given
a ring, a cabinet, a piece of plate. In substance and form
these tales were true, in spirit and intention they were false.
Charges enough were gathered : charges more numerous,
said Sir William Lovelace, than those which had recently
crushed Coke ; charges as flimsy and as fatal, I may add,
as those which four years later served to overwhelm
Egerton's successor. Buckingham sent to the sick man's
4. Chamberlain to Carleton, Mar. 8, 1617, S. P. 0.
5. Lovelace to Carleton, Mar. 11, 1617, S. P. O.
CALUMNIES OF COKE. 235
room the news of this flagitious inquisition and its tri- XI. 5.
umphant close ; it is greatly to be feared that the blow —
broke the old man's heart. 1617.
July.
6. It needs no magician to see that he who nearly slew
Egerton might just as easily slay the successor of Egerton.
Buckingham is cheated of his profit; for though Bacon
pays to Egerton eight thousand pounds for the surrender
of his legal rights, not a shilling of this money flows into
the favourite's purse. The Villiers people are not pleased
with a Chancellor who refuses to push their fortunes and
feed their pride ; nor is Buckingham a man to forget
that, if Egerton had been chased into the House of Lords,
as Coke had been into the Star Chamber, he might have
put into his own pocket from the transaction a good many
thousand pounds.
7. The loss is great. It is Coke's business to show Villiers
how it may be recovered. Bacon is not robust nor likely
to live long. He works too much, and lives too well, for
vegetable length of days. Gout racks his joints; being
the first beggar, as he jests, who ever had it. If he dies,
well ; if not, he may be ruined. Coke, who begins by collect-
ing scandals against him, whispers to the favourite that the
new Chancellor is no true friend to him ; that he is not
zealous for the advancement of Sir Christopher Villiers
and Sir John Villiers ; that he has been already false
to Somerset, and may end by playing false with his
Lordship. Buckingham lies open to such hints ; his family
more open to the direct persuasion of angels and double
6. Chamberlain to Carleton, Mar. 11, 1617, S. P. O. ; Gerard to Carleton,
Mar. 20, 1617, S. P. O.
7. -Telverton to Bacon, Sept. 3, 1617, Lambeth MSS. 936 ; Carleton to
Chamberlain, May 24, 1617, S. P. O.
236 FKANCIS BACON.
XI. 7. angels. Coke gets Lady Buckingham on his side. If he
could only part with his hoards, his day of revenge might
be near ; happily he cannot pay down his money even to
*-" assuage the rancour of his heart.
He thinks of a plan by which he may gain his end, yet
save his pelf.
8. A daughter has been born to Coke of his second
wife. This wife and he never pulled together, and of
late their wrangles have been louder than at first. Their
marriage was a scrape, their wedded life has been a
quarrel and a jest. She disdains to bear his name, she
slams her door in his face. She gives entertainments
in Holborn] from which he and his friends are inso-
lently shut out. Their tastes are in the strongest degree
opposed.
He is penurious, she profuse. He loves folios and a
farthing candle ; she lights and revels, masques and plays.
By day and night a rout of fiddlers, dancers, wizards,
lovers, aud magicians pours through the galleries of her
great mansion looking on the Fleet. Coke slinks in shame
from the sight of all this devilry to his den in Serjeants'
Inn. Their misery makes the sport of wits and gallants ;
while in their quarrels and their unhappiness Bacon
(though he has not himself escaped the common lot — a
mother-in-law) has nevertheless, in his own modest and
tranquil home, good reason to thank heaven night and day
for his escape from such a wife.
9. The child of this dismal pair is blossoming into a
8. Jonson's Metamorphosed Gypsies ; Bankes's Story of Corffe Castle,
35-44 ; Lady Hatton to Cecil, undated Papers, xl. 6, S. P. O.
9. Jonson's Gypsies Metamorphosed ; Sherborne to Carleton, Dec. 7,
1616, S. P. O. ; Chamberlain to Carleton, Dec. 21, 1616 ; June 4, July 19,
1617, S. P. O. ; Winwood to Lake, May 27, 1617, S. P. O.
FKANCES COKE. 237
beauty and a toast, whose sensuous loveliness Jonson XI. 9.
depicts in some of his most luscious lines : —
1617.
Though your either cheek discloses July*
Mingled baths of milk and roses ;
Though your lips be banks of blisses,
Where he plants and gathers kisses ;
And yourself the reason why
Wisest men of love may die !
Yet the beauty of her cheek and lips is the smallest
part of Frances Coke's charms. As Lady Hatton's only
child, she is heiress of Hatton House, of Corffe Castle, of
Purbeck Isle. Coke privately offers this wealthy girl to
Buckingham's mother for one of her pauper sons. A
bargain is soon struck. Sir John Yilliers is to take her
with twenty thousand pounds dower and a settlement of
two thousand marks a year. Buckingham is to pardon all
Coke's offences, and use his power to restore him to high
place and confer on him high rank.
To this huckstering Frances Coke is much averse, her
mother still more averse. The young lady hates Sir John,
a man old enough to be her father, without person or
talents, and poor as a church mouse. Her mother huffs at
a contract made at her expense, without her leave. That
Coke should propose a scheme is enough to make her
loathe it. But in such a scheme as this match with Sir
John Yilliers she has better grounds for hesitation than a
woman's whim. She very justly fears the tenure of a
favourite's place. Has she not witnessed Somerset's golden
rise and stormy end ? A twinge of gout, a saucy word, a
prettier cheek, may turn the King's eye another way.
What then ? With Buckingham's fall may come down all
his house. Even now sharp eyes are turned on the rising
star of Lord Mordaunt. Some note how James of late
238 FRANCIS BACON.
XI. 9. has begun to ogle a youth named Coney. Bets are made
that Buckingham's fortunes are on the wane. Lady
Hatton will not hear of such a match for her only child.
*' Husband and wife dispute and quarrel, as they have
always done over lesser things ; and when the Lord
Keeper and the Council, anxious for peace, interpose be-
tween them, it is only, as results soon prove, to procure a
reconciliation in which Coke tries to deceive Lady Hatton
and Lady Hatton succeeds in deceiving Coke. Each plots
to outwit the other ; Coke bent on winning the good will
of Buckingham; his wife on disposing of her daughter
and her property as she herself thinks best. Each
plays the spy, makes friends among the servants, gets up
factions in the house. Her people take Lady Hatton's
part, more because they scorn the penurious old cur-
mudgeon i than because they like his prodigal and imperious
wife.
She steals a march upon him while he sleeps. Putting
her child into a coach at dead of night, she slips away to
Oatlands, where she hides from pursuit in her cousin Sir
Edward Withipole's house.
.10. These domestic broils occur while James and Buck-
ingham are in the north : setting up organs in churches,
wrangling over Kirk discipline, consecrating bishops in the
land of Knox. The Lord Keeper is acting as a sort of
regent. To him, therefore, in Council, Coke, when he has
traced his wife and child, applies for warrants of arrest.
Bacon refuses. Coke flies to Sir John's mother ; his
wicked wife, he tells this lady, has stolen his child, has
poisoned her affections towards Sir John, and means to
10. Council Beg,, July 11, 14, 1617 ; James to Bacon, July 25, 1617, in
Birch, 133.
LADY HATTON'S APPEAL AGAINST COKE. 239
carry her into France to avoid the match with her lady- XI. 10.
ship's son. —
Her cupidity aroused, the great lady writes to com-
mand the Lord Keeper to arm Coke with full powers *'
of search and arrest. Bacon again refuses. What he
feels it right to deny in one quarter, he has courage
to deny in another ; though aware that his duty may be
represented as an insult to Villiers, as an usurpation to
the King.
His refusal to do wrong at her bidding transforms Lady
Buckingham into a ruthless and inexorable foe.
11. Safe in the strength of his great patroness, Coke,
defying the Lord Keeper and the Privy Council, arms a
dozen of his servants, rides down to Oatlands, runs a beam
against Withipole's door, and, smashing into his wife's
retreat, without warrant of arrest, without a constable,
he seizes the fainting girl, tosses her into his coach, and
hurries her away to Stoke.
A universal howl pursues the perpetrator of this outrage
on the public peace. The Council meet to consider this
violation of domicile. As they are rising for the day,
Lady Hatton raves to the door. How can they decline to
see her ? She is a woman and in distress ; she is of kin
by blood or marriage to the Lord Keeper, to the Lord
Treasurer, to half the Council ; she is pleading in her right.
When admitted to the Council chamber, she describes with
consummate art the outrage she has suffered, the confine-
ment of her daughter in a lonely house, her sickness to
the point of death, and she implores the lords, as only
mothers robbed of their children can implore, that the
11. Chamberlain to Carleton, July 19, 1617, S. P. 0.; Gerard to Carleton
July 22, 1617, S. P. 0. ; Council Keg., July 14, 1617.
240 FRANCIS BACON.
XI. 11. child may be sent for, that her story may be heard, that a
— physician may see her lest she die.
The Council grant her prayer. An officer of the court
u y* rides down to Stoke, takes the girl from her imprisonment,
and lodges her in town.
July 21. 12. The Lord Keeper summons Coke to attend the
Council and answer for this breach of the King's peace.
With an insolence which his secret understanding with the
favourite's kin makes safe for him, Coke declares that he
has done his duty, that his wife meant to break the match
with Sir John Villiers, that she would have carried his
daughter away to France, that she herself traduced and
set on her servants to traduce Sir John. Bacon, who may
object to a marriage between Frances Coke and Sir John
Villiers — a marriage projected for his own humiliation and
for the recovery of power by the late Chief Justice — feels, as
one of the Commissioners governing the realm, the gravest
objection to such acts as those of Coke. He replies, there-
fore, in the name of the Counci], that Villiers, as a gentle-
man worthy of the young lady, would have sought her in
a noble and religious fashion, not with a gang of armed
men, in a midnight brawl, in contempt of natural and
statute law.
Yelverton, the Attorney-General, declares that the late
Lord Chief Justice, in violating Withipole's house without
warrant or constable, has grievously offended against the
law. None of the Council, certainly not the Lord Keeper,
has any wish to weigh upon the irascible old man ; but
when he fails to justify by witnesses any one allegation
against his wife, they are compelled to file an information
12. Council Reg., July 21, 1617 ; Chamberlain to Carleton, June 4,
1617, S. P. 0. ; Yelverton to Bacon, Sept. 3, 1617, Lambeth MSS. 936.
1617.
COKE'S SUBMISSION. 241
against him in the Star Chamber for breach of the peace, XI. 12.
and allow his daughter the shelter of the Attorney-General's
house.
Coke shudders at tins order for his appearance in the
Star Chamber. Kecently fined four thousand pounds in
that court for taking bail of a pirate, he fears lest a second
accusation should end in a second fine. He cannot count
on either gratitude or wisdom in the Villiers people. These
thriftless adventurers may think it safer to take his money
than wait for the chance of obtaining his wife's broad lands.
He finds it wiser to defer to the Privy Council. With a
rancorous animosity in his heart towards Bacon, and with
fiery rage against Yelverton, he bends so far as to undergo
a pretended reconciliation with his wife. Bacon joyfully
announces to the King that peace is made.
13. A line of writers closing in Lord Campbell repre- July 25.
sents Bacon as first selfishly striving to thwart the match ;
then, finding Buckingham bent on it, as plotting with
Lady Hatton by underground and criminal practices to
defeat it ; next, after bearing with abject spirit the most
provoking taunts and threats from the favourite, as meanly
condescending to eat his words and to forward a match
which he must have detested with all his soul. The
dates supplied by the Council Kegister correct these
errors. Bacon's first note to Buckingham on the match
has the date of July twelfth, his first note to the King that
of July twenty-fifth. Before the earlier date, Lady Hatton
and her daughter ran away, the ex-Chief Justice broke
into Withipole's house, the Council met to consider his
offence, and Clement Edmondes, their clerk, took charge
13. Bacon to Buckingham, July 12, 25, 1617 ; Bacon to James, July 25,
1617.
1617.
242 FRANCIS BACON.
XL 13. of the girl. Before the later date, and before a single
word was heard from Buckingham in answer, Bacon
calmed the outrage, reconciled husband and wife, and
^ ' ' restored Frances Coke to her father's house.
14. After all this was done, he wrote to Buckingham
and the King the reasons which, in his opinion, made a
marriage between John Villiers and Frances Coke un-
desirable : the refusal of Lady Hatton, the dependency of
the young girl on her mother, the quarrelsome temper of
the two parents, the notoriety and scandal of their domestic
feuds, the disapproval of leading men in the Government,
the recent disgrace of Coke, the divisions which his return
to the Council would bring with it — sage and honest reasons,
one and all, which received the most prompt and signal
justification from events. But Buckingham was blind.
The King himself forbad Bacon to oppose the favourite's
schemes of family aggrandisement. Unable either to resist
his Majesty's commands, or to close his eyes on the coming
evil, he accepted the duty laid upon him : " For my Lord
of Buckingham, I had rather go against his mind than
against his good. Your Majesty I must obey."
Oct. 15. Lady Hatton, on publishing a prior contract between
her daughter and the young Lord Oxford, is put into arrest,
and the marriage of Sir John and Frances celebrated
with regal pomp. It begins in misery to end in shame.
Lady Hatton resists every persuasion to appear, nor is there
a single Cecil present at the rite. James makes the bride-
14. Vere to Carleton, Aug. 12, 1617, S. P. O. ; Gerard to Carleton,
Aug. 18, 1617, S. P. O.
15. Council Peg., Sept. 24, 1617 ; Obligations and Oaths of Frances
Coke to become the Wife of Henry Vere, July 10, 1617, S. P. O. ; Gerard
to Carleton, Aug. 18, 1617, S. P. O. ; Herbert to Carleton, Oct. 6, 1617,
S. P. 0. ; Vere to Carleton, Oct. 20, 1617, S. P. 0.
1617.
Oct.
QUARRELS OF THE PAKINGTONS. * 243
groom Viscount Purbeck ; but he cannot make the young XI. 15.
bride love or respect a man to whom she has been sold.
Coke is content. To the chagrin of the Lord Keeper, to the
terror of Yelverton, he returns to the Privy Council — a
lawyer out of work — the situation in which his enmity can
oftenest wound and his activity oftenest thwart the detested
rival who holds the Seals. Expecting a coronet, Coke
chooses for himself the title of Lord Stoke. He believes,
as the world believes, that his rise will be the signal for
Bacon's fall; yet such are the suavity and zeal, the
splendour and success of the new Lord Keeper — such his
popularity on the bench and at Whitehall — that, in spite
of new scandals brought upon him and his family by Sir
John and Lady Pakington, he is able to defy the malice
of his enemies and to soar above every storm.
16. When her daughter's husband received the Great
Seal, Lady Pakington supposed that her day of deliverance
from Sir John was at hand. The lusty knight, who has
sunk her rents in his brine-pits and fish-ponds, has now
grown old, verging on seventy years of age, while she is
still young and hale. But time, which slackens his thews,
has left untamed his temper and his pride. The mother
of a Lord Keeper's wife can surely get justice done to her
at last against the tyrant ! She appeals to the law, and
brings him before the Court of High Commission, where
her cold easy manner tells in her behalf, and Ins fluster
and violence get him sent to jail and put under lock
and guard. To Bacon's deep mortification, and despite
his strenuous efforts to avoid the case, this domestic broil
is referred to him.
Under trials of excessive difficulty and delicacy, he
16. Dora. Papers James the First, xcii. 88.
E 2
1617.
Oct.
244 FKANCIS BACON.
XI. 16. bears himself between husband and wife, in this miserable
stage, in a way to extort the praise of even those news-
writers and gossips who are in other matters the harshest
critics of his life. He tells Lady Pakington she is in the
wrong and that she ought to yield. He warns her against
the hope of finding in him a lenient judge so long as she
follows her cold unbending course.
This is the testimony of an unfriendly hand :
Chamberlain to Carleton.
July 5, 1617.
There be great wars betwixt Sir John and his
lady, who sues him in the High Commission ; where, by
his own wilfulness, she hath some advantage of him and
keeps him in prison. But the Lord Keeper deals very
honourably in the matter, which, though he could not com-
pound being referred to him, yet he carries himself so
indifferently that he wishes her to yield, and tells her
plainly and publicly that she must look for no countenance
from him as long as she follows this course.
1618. 17. Notwithstanding these scandals and vexations in his
Jan. own family, the Lord Keeper rises in power, expands in
fame. In January, 1618, he attains the higher grade of
Chancellor. In July of the same year he becomes a Peer.
His slanderers sink beneath his feet. No severity seems
to the Privy Council too great for those, however high in
rank, who menace his person or dispute his justice. For
a saucy word they send Lord Clifton to the Fleet : for a
complaint against one of his verdicts they commit Lady
Ann Blount to the Marshalsea. In 1620 he publishes his
17. Council Eeg., Dec. 30, 1617, Mar. 17, 27, 1618 ; Grant Book, 241,
283 ; Herbert to Carleton, Dec. 30, 1617, S. P. O. ; Chamberlain to Carle-
ton, Feb. 3, 1621, S. P. 0,
1618.
Jan.
HEIGHT OF HIS FAME. 245
Novum Organum — a book which has in it the germs of XI. 17.
more power and good to man than any other work not of
Divine authorship in the world. He is now at the height
of earthly fame. First layman in his own country, first
philosopher in Europe, what is wanting to his felicity ?
Neither power, nor popularity, nor titles, nor love, nor
fame, nor obedience, nor troops of friends. All these he 1620.
has — no man in greater fulness. If his heart has other
longings, he has only to express his wish. In January, 1621.
1621, he receives the title of Viscount St. Albans, in a Jan. 27.
form of peculiar honour — other Peers being created by
letters-patent, he by investiture with the coronet and robe.
18. Yet, only seven months after printing the Greatest
Birth of Time, only three months after receiving in the
King's presence the .robe and coronet, he is stripped of his
honours, degraded from his great place, condemned to a
monstrous fine, and flung into the Tower.
The tale of this fall is the most strange and sad in the
whole history of man.
18, Lords' Jour., iii. 105.
246 FEANCIS BACON.
1620.
Nov.
CHAPTEE XII
FEES.
XII. 1. 1. To see why the threat of prosecution so deeply dis-
turbed Egerton, and how easy it may be for unscrupulous
men to frame a charge of corruption against his successor,
a reader who is not a lawyer should remind himself of the
state of society in the days of James the First.
There is no civil list. Few men in the court or in the
Church receive salaries from the Crown ; and each has to
keep his state and make his fortune out of fees and gifts.
The King takes fees. The archbishop, the bishop, the
rural dean take fees. The Lord Chancellor, the Lord
Chief Justice, the Baron of the Exchequer, the Master of
the Kolls, the Attorney-General, the Solicitor-General, the
King's Serjeant, the utter barrister, all the functionaries
of law and justice, take fees. So in the great offices of
state. The Lord Treasurer takes fees. The Lord Admiral
takes fees. The Secretary of State, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, the Master of the Wards, the Warden of the
Cinque Ports, the gentlemen of the Bedchamber, all take
fees. Everybody takes fees, everybody pays fees.
2. In some public offices and courts the amount to
be paid is fixed, either by ancient usage or by such a
common understanding as in modern times controls a rail-
way or steamboat fare. In some, particularly in the courts
of justice, it is open. Bassanio may present his ducats ;
three thousand in a bag. The judge may only take a ring.
1G20.
Nov.
UNIVERSALITY OF FEES. 247
A fee is due whenever an act is done. The occasions on XII. 2.
which, by ancient usage of the realm, the King claims help
or fine are many : the sealing of an office or a grant — the
knighting of his son — the marriage of his daughter — the
alienation of lands in capite — his birthday — New Year's
Day — the anniversary of his accession or his coronation ;
indeed, at all times when he wants money and finds men
rich enough and loyal enough to pay. In like manner the
clergy levy tithe and toll ; fees on christenings, fees on
churchings, fees on marriages, fees on interments ; Easter
offerings, free offerings ; charities, church reparations,
church extensions, pews, and rents.
In the government offices it is the same as in the palace
and the church. If the Attorney-General, the Secretary
of State, the Lord-Admiral, or the Privy Seal puts his
signature to a sheet of paper, he takes his fee. Often it is
his means of life. To wit, the retaining fee paid by the
King to Cecil, as premier Secretary of State, is a hundred
pounds a-year. But the fees from other sources are
enormous. These fees are not bribes.
3. The same at the Bar and on the Bench. The Bar is
a free profession : a member of the Temple or of Lincoln's
Inn being bound to plead, as the knights whose swords are
rust were bound to fight, in love and faith, taking no purse
nor scrip. It is an order of courtesy and chivalry ; its
members the soldiers of justice, pledged to protect the
weak, to help the needy, to defend the right. Now, all
this service is by law and usage free. A barrister may
not ask wages for his toil, like an attorney or a clerk, nor
can he reclaim by any process of law, as the clerk and the
attorney can, the value of his time and speech. If he lives
on the gifts of grateful clients, these gifts must be perfectly
1620.
Nov.
248 FKANCIS BACON.
XII. 3. free. This theory of a counsel's hire, though old as
our language and our institutions, is of course a sham.
No junior on the Oxford circuit dreams of succouring
damsels from love of Dulcinea, or freeing galley-slaves
from the obligations of knighthood. No guineas, no
speech. The shifts by which lax attorneys are tickled
into passing the fees which no law compels them to pay
are droll as anything in the immortal laws of Barataria.
4. Now, the rules which continue under Victoria to
govern the Bar, under James the First governed the
Bench. The Lord Chief Justice or the Lord Chancellor,
like the Secretary of State, is paid by fees. The King's
judge is neither in deed nor in name a public servant :
he receives a nominal sum as standing counsel for the
Crown; and for the rest he depends on the income
arising from his hearing of private causes. These facts
appear in a comparison of the amounts paid by the Crown
to its great legal functionaries, with the estimated profits
of each particular post. Thus, the Seals, though the Lord
Chancellor had no proper salary, were in Egerton's time
worth from ten to fifteen thousand pounds a-year. Bacon
valued Ins place as Attorney-General at six thousand
a-year ; of which princely sum (twenty-five thousand a-year
in coin of Victoria) the King only paid him eighty-one
pounds six shillings and eight pence. Yelverton's place
of Solicitor brought him three or four thousand a-year, of
which he got seventy pounds from James. The judges
had enough to buy their gloves and robes, not more.
Coke, when Lord Chief Justice of England, drew from the
State twelve farthings less than two hundred and twenty-
five pounds a-year. When travelling circuit, he was
allowed thirty-three pounds six shillings and eight pence
1620.
Nov.
FEES NOT BRIBES. 249
for his expenses. Hobart, Chief Justice of the Common XII. 4.
Pleas, had twelve farthings less than one hundred and
ninety-five pounds a-year ; Tanfield, Lord Chief Baron of
His Majesty's Court of Exchequer, one hundred and eighty-
eight pounds six shillings a-year. Yet each of these great
lawyers had given up a lucrative practice at the Bar.
After their promotion to the Bench, they lived in good
houses, kept a princely state, gave dinners and masques,
made presents to the King, accumulated goods and lands.
Their wages were paid in fees by those who resorted for
justice to their courts.
5. These fees were not bribes. If the satirists, from
Latimer to Nashe, described the Bench of Bishops and
the Bench of Judges as taking bribes, it was only in
the vein common to lampooners in every age of the
world ; the vein in which Boccaccio describes his Friars,
and Jonson his Justice Overdos. Serious men made no
complaint. Judicial corruption was not a grievance in
1604. In 1606 an attempt to reduce the fees in one
department of Chancery business was rejected by the
popular party in the House of Commons.
In the Great List of Grievances, drawn up in 1604,
we find complaints that Cecil lives in adultery, that Par-
liament is packed with courtiers, that the Forest Laws
have been revived, that pardons are sold to cutthroats
and felons, that monopolies are granted to duns, and patents
bestowed on extortioners and pimps; not that the great
lawyers are thought corrupt, or that justice is supposed to
be bought and sold.
Nor is such a grievance felt though undescribed. In the
List of Grievances there is one charge against the Lord
5. Dom. Papers James First, i. 68, S. P. 0,
1620.
Nov.
250 . FKANCIS BACON.
XII. 5. Chancellor Egerton. Had there been a second, it would
certainly have been named. In 1604 the charge which law
reformers made against Egerton was that he held the two
offices of Master of the Rolls and Keeper of the Great
Seals. It never occurred to these men to complain that
he took his wages in the shape of fees.
6. In 1606 a bill was laid before the Commons, by a dis-
appointed jobber, to reduce some of the fees for copies in
the Court of Kecord. In the debates on this bill Bacon
assumed a leading part. The argument of counsel was
against the interference of Parliament, in the unfair
fashion of the bill, with what Bacon called the freeholds of
the officers in that Court. The notes of his speech, which
are in the Bodleian Library, and have not been printed,
put the case as it appeared to the best minds in England
in 1606, a year before he held any office under the Crown.
Bacon showed that the bill to reduce the fees for copies
originated in a spirit, not of reform, but of revenge ; that
a similar bill had, in years gone by, been promptly rejected
by the House ; that such a law to cut down fees was un-
precedented ; that the bill was retroactive, against all law
and justice ; that a man's right in his fees was sacred as
his right in his goods and lands. Kemembering all that
is to follow, with how much curiosity one reads these
nineteen heads of a discourse against the bill !
Sir Francis Bacon's Speech.
First: It hath sprung out of the ashes of a decayed
monopoly by the spleen of one man ; that, because lie
could not continue his new exactions, therefore would now
pull down ancient fees.
6. Tanner MSS. 169, fol. 42 ; Com. Jour., i. 259, 268, 279.
SPEECH ON FEES FOR COPIES. 251
Second : It knows the way out of the House ; for in the XII. 6.
xxxv Eliz. the like bill was preferred, and much called —
upon at the first, and rejected at the engrossment, not 1620#
having twenty voices for it. ov "
Third : It is without all precedent ; for look into former
laws and you shall find that, when a statute enacts a new
office or acts to be done, it limits fees, as in case of enrol-
ment, in case of administration, &c, but it never limits
ancient fees to take away other men's freeholds.
Fourth : It looks extremely back, which is against all
justice of Parliament, for a number of subjects are already
placed in offices : some attaining them in course of long
service ; some in consideration of great sums of money ;
some in reward of service from the Crown, when they
might have had other suits and such offices again allied
with a number of other subjects, who valued them ac-
cording to their offices. Now, if half these men's liveli-
hoods and fortunes should be taken from them, it were an
infinite injustice.
Fifth : It were more justice to raise the fees than to
abate them, for we see gentlemen have raised their rents
and the fines of their tenants, and merchants, tradesmen,
and farmers their commodities and wares; and this
mightily within c. years. But the fees of offices continue
at one rate.
Sixth : If it be said the number of fees is much increased
because causes are increased, that is a benefit which time
gives and time takes away. It is no more than if there
were an ancient toll at some bridge between Berwick and
London, and now it should be brought down because that,
Scotland being united, there were more passengers.
Seventh : Causes may again decrease, as they do
already begin; and therefore, as men must endure the
252 FRANCIS BACON.
XII. 6. prejudice of time, so they ought again to enjoy benefit of
time.
Eighth : Men are not to consider the proportion between
the fee and the pains taken, as if it were in a scrivener's
shop, because in the copies (being the principal gain of the
officer) was considered ab antiquo his charge, his attend-
ance, his former labours to make him fit for the place, his
countenance and quality in the commonwealth, and the
like.
Ninth : The officers do many things sans fee, as in
causes in forma pauperis, and for the King, &c, which is
considered in the fees of copies.
Tenth : There is great labour of mind in many cases, as
in the entering of orders, and in all examinations. All
which is only considered in the copies.
Eleventh : These offices are either the gift of the King
or in the gift of great officers, who have their office from
the King, so as the King is disinherited of his ancient rights
and means to prefer servants, and the great offices of the
kingdom likewise disgraced and impaired.
Twelfth : There is a great confusion and inequality in
the bill, for the copies in inferior courts, as for example
the Court of the Marches, the Court of the North (being
inferior courts), are left in as good case as they were, and
high courts of the kingdom only abridged, whereas there
was ever a diversity half in half in all fees, as Chancellor's
clerks and all others.
Thirteenth : If fees be abridged as too great, they ought
to be abridged as well in other points as in copies, and as
well in other offices as in offices towards the law. For now
prothonotories shall have their old fees for engrossing upon
the roll and the like, and only the copies shall be abridged ;
whereas, if it be well examined, the copies are of all fees
SPEECH ON FEES FOR COPIES. 253
tho most reasonable ; and so of other offices, as customs, XII. G.
searchers, mayors, bailiffs, &c, which have many ancient —
fees incident to their offices, which all may be called in l62 0-
question upon the like or better reason. v '
Fourteenth : The suggestion of the bill is utterly false,
which in all law is odious. For it suggesteth that these
fees have of late years been exacted, which is utterly
untrue, having been time out of mind and being men's
freehold, whereof they may have an assize, so as the Par-
liament may as well take any man's lands, common means,
&c, as these fees. f
Fifteenth : It casts a slander upon all superior judges,
as if they had tolerated extortions, whereas there have been
severe and strict courses taken, and that of late, for the
distinguishing of lawful fees from new exactions, and fees
reduced into tables, and they published and hanged up in
courts, that the subjects be not poled nor aggrieved.
Sixteenth : The law (if it were just) ought to enter into
an examination and distinction what were rightful and
ancient fees and what were upstart fees and encroach-
ments, whereas now it sweeps them all away without
difference.
Seventeenth : It requires an impossibility, setting men
to spell again how many syllables be in a line, and puts
the penalty of xxs. for every line faulty, which is xviiiZ.
a sheet. And the superior officers must answer it for
clerks' faults or oversight.
Eighteenth : It doth disgrace superior judges in court,
to whom it properly belongeth to correct those misde-
meanours according to their oaths and according to
discretion, because it is impossible to reduce it to a
definite rule.
Nineteenth : This being a penal law, it seems there is
254 FKANCIS BACON.
XII. 6. but some commodity sought for, that some that could
— not continue their first monopoly might make themselves
" ' whole out of some penalties.
ov
These arguments prevailed. A committee being named
to report on the bill, they reported against it, and the
bill was laid asleep.
7. A few years later, mainly through the speeches and
the writings of Bacon himself, a feeling began to show
itself against the payment of judges, registrars, and clerks
by uncertain fees. Each new Parliament saw the subject
stirred. In the sessions of 1610 and 1614 bills were
introduced and dropped. But the argument for a great
and just change of the old system grew under debate.
The business of the courts increases daily, and the private
causes have long ago become more numerous and import-
ant than the King's causes. A plan, therefore, which may
have done very well under Edward or Henry, may be a
very great evil under James. An unpaid Bench, though
all that society wished for its defence under feudal or
Brehon law, may obviously become a dangerous power
in a highly artificial and litigious age. Such is the rea-
soning of many wise men. Not that justice is less
purely dispensed under Bacon than of yore ; the reverse
is a conspicuous fact. The improvement has been
slow and safe. Hatton danced through his duties with
more credit than Bromley ; Puckering surpassed Hatton,
and Egerton eclipsed Puckering. The last Chancellor
of all is the best ; in character as in intellect Bacon tops
the list. A desire to change the fee system is not the
child of discontent, but of growth. Under Edward or
7. Com. Jour., i. 427, 489.
1620.
Nov.
PLOTTINGS OF LADY BUCKINGHAM. 255
Kickard the Commons would have refused a salary to the XII. 7
judge ; for a magnificently paid Bench would have seemed,
and probably would have behaved, as the ministers of a
despotic prince, eager only for their master's work, con-
temptuous of the intrusion of private causes, callous to the
concerns of common men. The profits from private suits
quickened the stream of justice ; helped to maintain
the independence of the upright judge. Yet many men
see that a time must come, some think it has come,
when, through the growth of riches and the purification of
law, the system of various and precarious fees may be
wisely abandoned for a system of payments by the State.
8. An old lawyer like Coke knows how to turn this war
between an old system and a new sentiment to account.
Time has neither cured his jealousy of Bacon nor cooled
his resentment towards Yelverton. If the alliance with
Buckingham has not yet brought him the Mace and Seals,
nor even the barony of Stoke, it has given him the
favourite's mother for a friend. Lady Buckingham is
busy for her kin; her son John married and made a
peer, she wants an heiress for her son Christopher, two or
three rich husbands for her penniless nieces, a suitor,
may be, for herself. A wife for Kit she may buy with
honours, just as she bought Frances Coke for John. But
husbands for her nieces, men of high rank and wealth,
she can only tempt into the noose with offices and power.
She has bought Sir Lionel Cranfield up for one niece.
For another she has fixed her eye on James Ley, the
rich Attorney of the Court of Wards. Cranfield's wooing
8. Harwood to Carleton, Feb. 6, 1619, S. P. O. ; Brent to Carleton,
May 29, 1619, S. P. O. ; Nethersole to Carleton, Jan. 18, 1620, S. P. 0. ;
Chamberlain to Carleton, July 14, 1621, S. P. O. ; Sign Man., Nos. 44, 53.
1620.
Nov.
256 FRANCIS BACON.
XII. 8. has been comic as a play. Falling in love with Lady
Effingham, he proposes to her, and is about to marry
her, when the news reaches Lady Buckingham, who in-
stantly warns her miserable dependent that if he hopes
to thrive at court he must give up Lady Effingham, and
marry a young person who is certainly poor in purse,
but rich enough for two in friends. Cranfield takes the
wife offered to him, with a seat at the Privy Council, and
a promise of one of the highest places in the sovereign's
gift.
To lure him on, James Ley is made a baronet, and a
special act under the Sign Manual remits to him the usual
fees for the escutcheon of the bloody hand.
These promotions, moreover, are but stepping-stones to
place. What great offices can be got ?
9. A beginning has been made with the White Staff.
Suffolk was unpopular. The father of Lady Somerset,
an avowed Eoman Catholic, a suspected pensioner of
Spain, he was hated while in power with such bitterness* of
hate, that when Buckingham's tools charged him with
extortion, false dealing, bribery, and embezzlement, to
none of which accusations he lay fairly open, no one felt
either surprise or pity at the fate of this pernicious
peer ; and when the Court of Star Chamber, with the
sham proofs of his guilt before it, deprived hhn of the
Staff, fined him thirty thousand pounds, and flung him
during pleasure into the Tower, the whole country, which
knew him to be a Pajust and believed him to be a spy,
felt the sentence which deprived him of power to do harm
run through its veins — a shock of joy.
9. Proceedings against the Earl of Suffolk, Nov. 13, 1619, S. P. 0.
YELVERTON'S CASE. 257
10. The profits of this transaction only kindle the greed XII. 10.
for more. Yelverton's turn comes next. —
If not a Puritan in religion, Sir Henry Yelverton has 1G20.
generally spoken and voted with the Puritan party. A ^ ov «
man of good parts and unbending character, he has lived
on friendly terms with Bacon, with whom he kept his terms
at Gray's Inn and served in the House of Commons.
His popularity in the House, like the popularity of Bacon,
kept him out of office. In the debates, for many years,
his name stood side by side with that of Bacon, with
whom he spoke for the subsidies and for the Union. The
same breeze of favour brought them both into power.
When Bacon became Attorney- General he used his influ-
ence to procure the Solicitorship for Yelverton. Since
then they have acted constantly together, most of all so
in the effort to prevent Frances Coke from being forced to
marry a man she could not love. Buckingham and the
faction of Buckingham have never liked Yelverton. They
have not been able to forget the circumstances of his
rise, to forgive the obstinacy of his demeanour, or the
way in which he has exercised towards them his power.
When Bacon got the Seals, Sir James Ley, who wanted
to succeed him as Attorney, offered to pay Buckingham
ten thousand pounds for the post. Lady Buckingham
supported the lover of her niece ; but the King, when he
put the Seals into Bacon's hands, himself passed the patent
of office to Yelverton ; who refused to contract an obliga-
tion to Yilliers, though urged by Archbishop Abbott and the
Duke of Lenox to conciliate the chief authority in the bed-
chamber and the closet, Yelverton's offences are that he has
been very manly, and that he occupies a very high post.
10. Bacon's Notes, Lambeth MBS. 936, fol. 133 ; Chamberlain to Carle-
ton, June 28, 1620, S. P. O. ; Archseologia, xv. 27.
S
1620.
Xov. 10.
258 FEANCIS BACON.
XII. 11. 11. Unhappily, in the exercise of powers not well de-
fined, he has given an advantage to his hot and unscru-
pulous enemy Coke. A new charter has been lately
passed to the city of London, with clauses favourable to
the citizens, which Coke has no trouble in persuading
James trench on the prerogatives of his Crown. It is
not pretended that Yelverton took money for inserting
these clauses, though it is admitted for the defence that in
putting them into the charter he went beyond his powers.
Sir Henry submits his error to the King's judgment.
Such a course suits neither Buckingham nor Coke, who
want his fine and the profits on his place. Cited into the
Star Chamber, over which Bacon, as Lord Chancellor, pre-
sides, Yelverton admits his indiscretion, and Bacon, who
cannot deny his fault, essays to soften his judges. The
notes for his speech, written in his own hand, remain at
Lambeth Palace. They stand as under :
Bacon's Notes on Yelverton's Case.
" Sorry for the person, being a gentleman that I lived
with in Gray's Inn, served with when I was Attorney,
joined with since in 'many services, and one that ever gave
me more attributes in public than I deserved ; and, besides,
a man of very good parts, which with me is friendship at
first sight, much more joined with an ancient acquaintance.
But, as a judge, I hold the offence very great, and that
without pressing measure ; upon which I will only make a
few observations, and so leave it. First, I observe the
danger and consequence of the offence ; for if it be suffered
that the Learned Counsel shall practise the art of multi-
11. Lambeth MSS. 936, fol. 133 ; Yelverton's Speech in the Star
Chamber, Nov. 10, 1620, S. P. 0. ; Locke to Carleton, Nov. 11, 1620,
S. P. O. ; Dom. Papers, cxvii. 76.
SENTENCE ON YELVEIITON. 250
plication upon their warrants, the Crown will be destroyed XII. 11.
in small time. The Great Seal, the Privy Seal, Signet, —
are solemn things, but they follow the King's hand. It is J"
the bill drawn by the Learned Counsel that leads the
King's hand. Next, I note the nature of the defence ; as,
first, that it was error in judgment. For this, surely, if the
offence were small though clear, or great but doubtful, I
could hardly sentence it. For it is hard to draw a straight
line by steadiness of hand, but it could not be the swerving
of the hand. And herein I note the wisdom of the law of
England, which termeth the highest contempts and ex-
cesses of authority misprisions, which (if you take the
sound and derivation of the word) is but mistaken. But if
you take the use and acceptation of the word, it is high
and heinous contempt and usurpation of authority. Whereof
the reason I take to be, and the same excellently imposed,
for that main mistaking it is ever joined with contempt ;
for he that reveres will not easily mistake ; but he that
slights and thinks of the greatness of his place more than
of the duty of his place will soon commit misprisions."
Coke, furious at the sound of such mild, soft words,
demands from the Court a sentence of imprisonment for
life and a fine of six thousand pounds. Even the judges
of the Star Chamber will not go his length. They con-
demn Yelverton to a fine of four thousand pounds.
12. Two great offices, the Treasury and the Attorney- Dec.
Generalship, are now for sale. Buyers crowd in; for
this system of ruining men in order to vend their posts
is new, and no one yet perceives that to purchase a great
office is to be in future the first step towards destruction.
12. Apophthegms in Eesnscitatio, 42 ; Locke to Carleton, Dee. 2, 1C20,
S. P. O.
s 2
260 FEANCIS BACON.
XII. 12. Montagu bids for the Staff; and as the purchase, if
— made, will cause him to leave the King's Bench, Lady
1620. Buckingham promotes his suit, that she may raise Ley
^ ec * to the rank of Lord Chief Justice and marry him to her
pauper niece. On going down to Newmarket to see the
King, Montagu calls to tell Bacon he hopes to bring back
with him the Staff. " Take heed what you do, my Lord,"
says the Chancellor ; " wood is dearer at Newmarket than
at any other place in England." The Treasury, with the
title of Mandeville, costs Sir Henry Montagu no less than
twenty thousand pounds.
13. Coventry buys the Attorney's office, and Heath
becomes Solicitor in his place. At both ends Buckingham
makes his profit. Not to speak of present bribes, he so
arranges the game that these two removals bring him, or
save him, eight hundred pounds a-year. Lady Bucking-
ham presents the King's Bench to Ley.
These profits and promotions edge the tooth for more.
14. In the crowd of able and unscrupulous men who
wait in the ante-room of Villiers, and who build their
fortunes on him, there is none more able or more unscru-
pulous than Sir Lionel Cranfield. He had risen from the
grade of a London apprentice, through the useful and un-
clean offices of a receiver, a contractor, and a surveyor of
public income, to the rank of a Knight, a member of Par-
liament, and a Master of Bequests, before he got introduced
to the Villiers gang. His life, indeed, has been a study
13. Woodford to Netliersole, Feb. 2, 1621, S. P. O. ; Chamberlain to
Carleton, Feb. 3, 1621, S. P. O.
14. Doquets, April 1, 1605, Dec. 20, 1607, May 31, 1610 ; Sign Manuals,
No. 49 ; Minute, Undated Papers of 1607, xxviii. 81 ; Northampton to
Lake, Aug. 12, 1612, S. P. O. ; Winwood to Lake, Mar. 29, 1617, S. P. O. ;
Brent to Carleton, Jan. 31, 1618, May 29, 1619, S. P. O. ; Netliersole to
Carleton, Jan. 18, 1620, S. P. O.
SIR LIONEL GRANFIEL1). 201
of safe and decorous villany. He got his first step by XII. 14.
making love to his master's daughter; he grew rich by —
cheating the customs; he won notice from the Council by 1(,2 °-
telling them how to squeeze rich aldermen while lightening
the load on such poor devils as himself; he secured the
protection of Lord Northampton by a bribe of land which
was not his own ; he pleased the King by a plan for jobbing
away the Crown lands on a more extensive scale ; he fixed
himself on Buckingham by betraying to him, or to his
cause, his first patrons the Howards. Cranfield was the
chief instrument in denouncing Suffolk and placing the
Staff in Buckingham's hands for sale. To reward this
service, Suffolk's son-in-law, Yiscount Wallingford, was
compelled by threats of prosecution, fine, and ruin, to
surrender to Cranfield the Court of Wards. Only a villain of
stony heart and brazen cheek could have either done this
deed or taken this reward ; for these Howards whom he
betrayed and spoiled were the very men who brought
him into notice, presented him at court, and procured for
him a seat in the House of Commons. But, in truth,
there is no act of turpitude, short of the vulgar crimes
for which men are hung, at which Cranfield, when his
interests call, would stop.
15. Bishop Goodman, who knew him well and who
has left a defence of him, such as it is, confesses for him
to more dubious conduct and to more safe rascalities
than would have blasted the credit of ten ordinary men.
Courting the society of wits and scholars, pretending to wit
himself, he has no true knowledge of letters, no true sym-
pathy for such weak fry as poets and playwrights. Pelf is
15. Goodman, i. 295-308 ; Coryat's Description of a Philosophical Feast,
Dom. Papers, lxvi. 2, S. P. O.
262 FRANCIS BACON.
XII. 15. his god. His greed of money is a brisk passion, and be
— bas a perfect familiarity with the crooked ways in which
money can be got. No rogue can deceive Cranfield.
"Tush, man!" he will say, "I was bred in the city."
His hand is in every one's purse ; and woe to the man on
whose place he has set his heart! To pull down judges
and councillors, for his own advancement and for his
patron's gain, is the task to which he has now devoted a
busy and teeming brain. Since his marriage with Lady
Buckingham's niece he has been suffered to mulct and
plunder at his ease ; and though some of his victims, mad
with their losses, threaten to cut his throat, the audacious
speculator in human roguery holds his course as though
there were no retribution for injustice, either In this world
or in the next. A loftier vista opens to his sight ; the
Staff and the peerage seem within his reach ; but he can
only grasp them by the help of that powerful and vin-
dictive woman to whom he lately owed the pleasant alter-
native of destruction or a wife.
16. This great lady, if old enough to have grandchildren,
is not, in her own belief, too old to have a lover ; and one
more subtle than a serpent is at her side. John Williams
was the chaplain to Egerton when Egerton held the Seals ;
but while blessing his master's meat and wine, he kept an
eye on business ; and when Bacon, coming to York House,
offered to continue him in his post, the divine refused,
having begun to dream of recovering the custody of the
Great Seal from the lawyers to the churchmen. In the face
of candidates like Bacon, Montagu, and Coke, such a hope
would seem to most men vain ; not so to one versed in the
arts by which a low order of monks and priests have in all
16. Doquets, Nov. 5, 1619 ; Welden, 127, 130 ; Speaker's Note, Feb. 6,
1621, S. P. 0. ; Chamberlain to Carleton, Mar. 20, 1620, S. P. O.
JOHN WILLIAMS. 2(13
ages striven to enslave the world. He makes court to Buck- XII. 1G.
ingham's mother ; convinced that no woman is insensible
to the flatteries of love, least of all an ambitious woman, ~
Dec.
greedy for pleasure, and past her prime. When he has in-
terested her passions in his career, his fight is well nigh
won. She puts him in the way to rise. She recommends
him to her son ; so shaping his course that, as either Lord
Chancellor or as Archbishop of Canterbury, he may soon
appear to the world in rank and power a husband less
unworthy of herself.
Buckingham finds in Williams a divine of easy virtue
and specious talents ; who never prates to him about
reform, who pays no homage to the primate, who detests the
House of Commons with all Ins soul. At a word from his
new mistress or from her son, Williams would not scruple
to send his archbishop to the Fleet, or to resist and insult
the whole Puritan parliament. A man capable of rising
through an old woman's folly and a young man's vices has
not been slow to rise. The needy chaplain has become
Dean of Salisbury and Dean of Westminster. He is to
have the first mitre that falls into the King's gift. If
Bacon can be ruined, he is to have the Seals.
17. To three such schemers as an old Chief Justice, a
Master of the Court of Wards, and an ex-chaplain to the
Lord Chancellor, urged by the sharpest passions of cupidity
and revenge, and backed by the whole tribe of Villiers,
an accusation against the holder of the Seals is easy enough
to frame. The courts of law are full of abuses. The
highest officer of the realm has no salary from the state.
17. Gerard to Carleton, May 9, 1617, S. P. O. ; Chamberlain to Carleton,
May 10, 1617, S. P. O. ; Proposals concerning the Chancery, 1650 ; Council
Reg., Sept. 28, 1622.
264 FRANCIS BACON.
XII. 17. Custom imposes on him a host of servants ; officers of his
court and of his household ; masters, secretaries, ushers,
clerks, receivers, porters, none of wliom receives a mark a
Dgc.
year from the Crown ; men who have bought their places,
and who are paid, as he himself is paid, in fees and fines.
The amounts of half these fees are left to chance, to the
hope or gratitude of the suitor, often to the cupidity of the
servant or the length of the suitor's purse. The certain
fines of Chancery, as subsequent inquiries show, are only
thirteen hundred pounds a-year, the fluctuating fines
still less ; beyond which beggarly sum the great establish-
ments of the Lord Chancellor, his court, his household, and
his followers, gentlemen of quality, sons of peers and pre-
lates, magistrates, deputy-lieutenants of counties, knights
of the shire, have all to live on fees and presents. The
causes heard are many — five or six hundred in every term ;
the servants of the court are not all honest ; some indeed
are flagitious rogues. The Chancellor has not taken them
voluntarily into his service, nor can he always turn them
adrift : their places are their freeholds. Among thousands
of suitors, all of whom must have paid fees into the court,
half of whom must be smarting under the pangs of a lost
cause, it will be strange indeed if cunning, malice, and
unscrupulous power combined, cannot find some charge
that may be tortured into the appearance of a wrong.
18. They find a fitting instrument for this nefarious
search. John Churchill is a wretch whose days have been
spent in the most sordid tricks and chicaneries of law.
His father was a defaulter in the Court of Wards, he
18. Grant Book, 62; Crump to Churchill, April 14, 1605, S. P. 0. ;
Acton to Churchill, April 14, 1605, S. P. 0. ; Mabel to Churchill, Aug. 28,
1605, S. P. O. ; Ellis Churchill to Churchill, Aug. 29, Sept. 19, 20, Oct. 3,
1605, S. P. O. ; Bourchier to Cecil, June 16, 1611, S. P. O. ; Chamberlain
to Carleton, Mar. 21, 1621, S. P. O.
JOHN CHUKCHILL. 265
himself was early in life concerned in a most infamous XII. 18.
fraud. Ten years before he lends his services to the ene-
1 C ') C\
mies of Lord St. Albans, he sold to Sir John Bourchicr ~
Dec.
for a thousand pounds down and eighty pounds a-year for
life a manor which Bourchier found that he had previously
conveyed to his two uncles for twenty shillings.
Bacon, who found this rascal occupying a place of trust
in the Court of Chancery, detecting him in an act of forgery
and extortion, has been compelled to turn him into the
street. Broken for his bad faith, liable to severe punish-
ment for his fraud, sore against his superior, he is just the
man for Williams and Coke. Familiar with the court and
with its clients, every vicious witness, every maddened
loser, every knave who has been exposed, every dupe who
has been hurt, are known to him by name and sight. A
promise of protection from the law, with a restoration to
his place on Bacon's fall, sharpens at once his greed and
his hate. He hunts among the victims of Chancery law.
Every one who has a grievance, or w r ho fancies he has a
grievance, against the Lord Chancellor, he persuades or
compels to set down his tale. S
19. Ever since the day when Bacon got the Seals, Coke
has been scoring up accusations against him. Lists
were framed by the Yilliers clan, ready to lodge with the
King, before the Chancellor had been a year in office.
Every month has helped them to new matter. By the
industry of Churchill they are now r prepared to go before
the Star Chamber; but a patriotic proposal, made and
pressed on the Crown by Bacon himself, shifts the scene
of their accusation from the Star Chamber to the House
of Peers.
19. Yelverton to Bacon, Sept. 3, 1617, in Birch, 138.
266 FKANCIS BACON.
CHAPTEK XIII.
THE ACCUSATION.
1621.
Jan.
XIII. 1. 1. It is no easy berth that Lord Mandeville has bought
for his twenty thousand pounds. Soon he becomes aware
that greedy eyes are on the Staff, that Buckingham is
restless, and the Yilliers clan hungry. The more he
tries to please, the faster he multiplies his foes. Worse
than all, an empty exchequer gapes and yawns. " There
is not a mark in the Treasury," he says to Bacon. " Be
of good cheer then, my Lord," laughs the Chancellor;
"now you shall see the bottom of your business at
the first."
2. Something must be done. Bacon says, Call a par-
liament. The spirit of reform runs high and grievances
groan on every tongue. To meet the country is to court
complaint and risk collision; yet Bacon presses this
counsel on the King, for a series of astounding events
abroad makes a prompt and permanent reconciliation
of the English King and Commons a statesman's gravest
care. The Reformed Beligion is at stake. Deploying her
troops and the troops of her Austrian and Bavarian allies
into line, Spain has enveloped Germany in cloud and flame,
1. Bacon's Apophthegms, in Kesuscitatio, 42.
2. Council Keg., Dec. 27, 1620 ; Teynhain to Edmonds, Dec. 23, 1620,
S. P. O. ; Howard to Naunton, Dec. 26, 1620, S. P. O. ; Eeplies of Peers
and Bishops on the Palatinate Contributions, Undated Papers, cxviii. 43,
44, 45, 57, 58, 59, 60, S. P. O. ; Chamberlain to Carleton, Dec. 22, 1620,
S. P. O. ; Com. Jour., i. 507, 508.
THE KING'S POVERTY. 2G7
opening the Thirty Years' War with the sack of the Palati- XIII. 2.
nate and the occupation of Prague. Max is master of the —
Hradshin, Spinola of the Ehine.
England, not less than the Protestant faith, is smitten
by this blow; for Frederick and the Queen of Hearts
are fugitives from Prague ; the Winter King and
Queen, as the fanciful Germans call them, owning neither
principality nor kingdom, not even a home, on German
soil.
James, fooled by the Spanish Jew, Gondomar, is mumbling
about a Spanish match for his son Charles when surprised
in bis cups by news that Max and Spinola have robbed his
daughter and her children of their native and elective
crowns. What can he do ? His purse is empty — his credit
gone. The goldsmiths of Lombard-street will not cash his
bonds. He tries, indeed, to beg funds from a patriotic and
warlike people for the recovery of the Palatinate, making
of the great Protestant question a small affair of his own
household ; but the trick is stale, the confidence of his
people gone. No man will give or lend. Used as the King
is to evasion, he is startled by the shabbiness of his peers
in this great need. The Eoman Catholic lords refuse on
the ground of sickness, debts, and out of town ; their true
reason, as he ought to know, is their secret sympathy for
Spain and Bavaria as the armed protectors of the Eoman
Church ; but the bishops, the deans, the English clergy,
with rare exceptions, close their fists with the same hypo-
critical lies. The goldsmiths speak like men ; they will
not part with their money because they feel no confidence
in the securities offered for their gold. They will send
the King, they say, ten thousand pounds as a free gift,
rather than lend him a hundred thousand with his crown
for pledge.
1621.
Jan.
268 FRANCIS BACON.
XIII. 3. 3. Under such discouragements from Ins courtiers, James
listens to the voice of his Chancellor. If Lord St. Albans,
in Ins . earlier days, often had to differ from the House
of Commons on subsidies and grants, it had never been
through want of patriotism in the knights and burgesses ;
only through their fears lest the moneys granted by them
should be wasted, not on the regiments and fleets, but on
the Herberts and Carrs. In the hour of peril St. Albans
feels that he can trust their patriotism for supplies. The
success of Max on the Weissenberg, the devastations of
Spinola on the Neckar and the Main, disasters the most
signal which have yet befallen the cause of God and the
cause of freedom, bring the external danger to our doors.
The nation feels its loss. Men mourn the King's indif-
ference to the cries of religion and the claims of nature ;
and a popular frenzy breaks into accusing prose and song,
pouring its subtle fire through the veins and arteries of
the land in defiance of the most rigorous proclamations
and the most savage censorship of the press.
Bacon would meet the people. Let the King call a par-
liament together, state the situation, and throw himself
heart and soul into the religious war !
4. This time there should be no mistake. The sessions
of 1610 and 1614 were lost through quarrels; not one
Act passed in either. Grievances must now be met;
reasonable men must be gained over to support the Crown.
The enemy must see in England only one party, one flag.
3. Thomas Scot's Vox Populi, 1620 ; Second edition of the same, revised,
1620 ; Undated Domestic Papers, cxviii. 102, 105, S. P. O. ; Murray to
Morton, Jan. 11, 1621, S. P. O.
4. Bacon to James, Oct. 10, 1620, Mar. 11, 1621 ; to Buckingham, Oct. 19,
Dec. 19, 1620, printed in Birch, 1763, orig. at Lambeth Palace, 936 ;
Statutes of the Kealm, iv. 1207.
1021.
Jan.
SCHEME OF REFORM. 269
Therefore let the King become the leader of the Commons, XIII. 4.
let the Government adoj)t the business of reform !
Many voices in the Council rise against these pro-
posals of the Lord Chancellor. But the Queen of Hearts
cries loud for help; the bankers will lend no more, the
nobles will give no more ; so James, with many a pause
and doubt, with many a sigh for the days, now gone for
ever, when he could chase the stag and quaff his strong
Greek wine untroubled by the clash of arms or the brawl
of tongues, consents to Bacon's plan.
The Chancellor, with the help of four great lawyers,
including Montagu and Coke, draws up a scheme to pro-
mote a safer feeling between the House of Commons and
the Crown ; a scheme of reform as well as of defence ;
involving an immediate issue of writs, an honest hearing
of public complaints, an abolition of unjust or un-
popular monopolies, a withdrawal of some of the more
obnoxious patents, above all an instant increase of the
royal fleet.
5. This statement, addressed through Buckingham to
the King, and signed by Bacon, Montagu, Heath, Coke,
and Crewe, has not heretofore been printed :
My VERY GOOD LOED, November 29, 1620.
It may please his Majesty to call to mind, that,
when we gave his Majesty our last account of Parliament's
business in his presence, we went over the grievances of
the last Parliament in 7mo., with our opinion, by way of
probable conjecture, which of them are like to fall off, and
which may perchance stick and be renewed. And we did
also then acquaint his Majesty that we thought it no less
5. Tanner MSS. 290, fol. 33.
270 FRANCIS BACON.
XIII. 5. fit to take into consideration grievances of like nature
- — which have sprung since the said last session, which are
the more like, to be called upon by how much they are
the more fresh, signifying withal that they were of two
kinds. Some proclamations and commissions, and many
patents, which, nevertheless, we did not then trouble his
Majesty withal, in particular ; partly, for that we were not
then fully prepared (it being a work of some length), and
partly for that we then desired and obtained leave of his
Majesty to communicate them with the council-table.
But since, I the Chancellor received his Majesty's pleasure
by Secretary Calvert that we should first present them to
his Majesty with some advice thereupon provisional, and
as we are capable, and thereupon know his Majesty's
pleasure, before they be brought to the table, which is the
work of this despatch. And herein his Majesty may be
likewise pleased to call to mind that we then said, and do
now humbly make remonstrance to his Majesty, that in
this we do not so much express the sense of our own minds
or judgments upon the particulars, as we do personate the
Lower House, and cast with ourselves what is like to be
stirred there. And, therefore, if there be anything, either
in respect of matter, or the persons that stand not so well
with his Majesty's good liking, that his Majesty would be
graciously pleased not to impute it unto us, and withal to
consider that it is to this good end that his Majesty may
either remove such of them as in his own princely judg-
ment, and with the advice of his council, he shall think
fit to be removed, or be the better provided to carry
through such of them as he shall think fit to be main-
tained in case they should be moved, and so the less
surprised.
First, therefore, to begin with the patents. We find
1621.
Jan.
SCHEME OF REFORM. 271
three sorts of patents (and those somewhat frequent since XIII. 5.
the session of 7mo.) which in genere, we conceive, may
be most subject to exception of grievance ; patents of old
debts, patents of concealments, and patents of monopolies
and forfeitures of, or dispensations with, penal laws,
together with some other particulars which fall not so
properly under any one head.
In these three kinds we do humbly advise several
courses to be taken. For the first two, of old debts and
concealments, for that they are in a mode legal (thouglf
there may be found out some point in law to overthrow
them), yet it would be a long business by course of law,
and a matter unusual by act of council, to call them in.
But that truth moves us chiefly to avoid the questioning
them at the council-table is because if they shall be taken
away by the King's act it may let in upon him a flood of
suitors for recompense ; whereas, if they be taken away at
the suit of the Parliament, and a law thereupon made, it
frees the King, and leaves him to give recompense only
where he shall be pleased to extend grace. Wherefore
we conceive the most convenient way will be, if some
grave and discreet gentlemen of the country, such as have
at least relation to the court, make at fit times some
modest motions touching the same: That his Majesty
would be graciously pleased to permit some laws to pass
(for the time past only), nowhere touching his Majesty's
legal power to free his subjects from the same, and so his
Majesty, after due consultation, to give way unto them.
For the third, we do humbly advise that such of them as
' his Majesty shall give way to have called in may be
questioned before the council-table, either as granted
contrary to his Majesty's Book of Bounty, or found since
to have been abused in the execution, or otherwise by
272 FEANCIS BACON.
XIII. 5. experience discovered to be burthensome to the country.
But herein we shall add this further humble advice, that
1621
it be not done as matter of preparation to a Parliament,
but that occasion be taken, partly upon revising of the
Book of Bounty, and partly upon the fresh example in
Sir Henry Yelverton's case of abuse and surreption in
obtaining of patents, and likewise that it be but as a con-
tinuance in conformity of the council's former diligence
and vigilance, which hath already stayed and revoked
divers patents of like nature, whereof we are ready to
show the examples. Thus, we conceive, his Majesty shall
keep his greatness, and somewhat shall be done in Parlia-
ment and somewhat out of Parliament, as the nature of
the subject and business requires. We have sent his
Majesty herewith a schedule of the particulars of these
three kinds, wherein for the first two we have set down all
that we could at this time discover. But in the latter we
,have chosen out but some that are most in speech, and
which do most tend either to the vexation of the common
people, or the discontenting of the gentlemen and justices,
the one being the original, the other the representative of
the Commons. There be many more of like nature, but
not of like weight, nor so much rumoured, which to take
away now in a blaze will give more scandal that such
things were granted than cause thanks that they be now
revoked. The council may be still doing. And because
all things may appear to his Majesty in the true light, we
have set down as well the suitors as the grants, and not
only those in whose names the patent came to our know-
ledge.
For proclamations and commissions, they are tender
things, and we are willing to meddle with them sparingly ;
for, as for such as do but wait upon patents (wherein his
SCHEME OF REFOKM. 273
Majesty, as we conceived, gave some approbation to have XIII. 5.
them taken away), it is better they fell away by taking —
away the patent itself than otherwise, for a proclamation 1621 -
cannot be revoked but by a proclamation, which we would an *
avoid. For the Commonwealth Bills which his Majesty
approved to be put in readiness, and some other things,
there will be time enough hereafter to give his Majesty
account, and, amongst them, of the extent of his Majesty's
pardon, which, if his subjects do their part, as we hope
they will, we do wish may be more liberal than of later
times, pardons being the ancient remuneration in Parlia-
ment. Thus, hoping his Majesty, out of his gracious and
accustomed benignity, will accept of our faithful en-
deavours and supply the rest by his own princely wisdom
and direction ; and also humbly praying his Majesty, that,
when he hath himself considered of our humble propositions,
he will give us leave to impart them all, or as much as he
shall think fit, to the lords of his council, for the better
strength of his service, we conclude with our prayers for
his Majesty's happy preservation, and always rest
Your Lordship's, to be commanded,
Fr. Verulam, Cane.
H. Montagu.
Henry Heath.
Edw. Coke.
Ean. Crewe.
6. The King adopts, or appears to adopt, this scheme,
and writs go out for the elections. To Bacon's grief, the
nation, mad with news from Prague and the Palatinate,
6. Bacon to Buckingham, Dec. 16, 1620 ; Chamberlain to Carleton,
Jan.. 20, 1621, S. P. O. ; Lake to Carleton, Jan. 20, 1621, S. P. O. ; Bacon's
Declaration, Jan. 16, 1621, S. P. O.
274 FRANCIS BACON.
XIII. 6. sends up to Westminster four hundred of the most violent
men who have ever met in the Great Council ; yet, with
straight, swift meaning to do right, to purge abuses in
church and state, to launch the army and the fleet against
an insolent enemy, even a parliament of fanatics may be
turned to good. James, unhappily, loses heart. Fitful and
feverish in his moods, he gets alarmed by the returns, puts
off the opening, stoops to G-ondomar's tales, potters once
more about a match in Spain for young Prince Charles.
Gondomar regains his power. While Spinola cleanses
Cleves and the Palatinate with fire, and the Dutch bur-
ghers, smitten into warlike rage, rush to the help of
violated cities, James suspends Sir Robert Naunton, Secre-
tary of State, writer of the admirable Fragmenta Re-
galia from his public functions, for merely giving some
hope of English aid to the Protestants of the Rhine !
Jan. 30. 7. When allowed to meet, the knights and squires come
together in a turbulent, almost in a savage mood. They
listen with bent brows while the poor King maunders about
his love for the Church and his hopes of obtaining a
Spanish wife for his son, about his dislike for the doings of
the Bohemian Protestants and his willingness to spill his
own blood in defence of those of the Rhine, and when he
goes away to his palace they proceed, in stem bright
haste, to purge their benches from any suspicion of Popish
taint. A committee searches the vaults. The whole
House takes the sacrament in public. A second time, and
with added solemnity and publicity, the members swear
the oaths of supremacy. Hollis and JBritton, Roman
7. James' Speech on opening Pari., Jan. 30, ]621, S. P. 0. ; Note of Sir
George More's Report, Feb. 6, 1621, S. P. O. ; List of Sub-Committee on
Papists, Feb. 5, 1621, S. P. O. ; Chamberlain, Feb. 17, 1621, S.P. O. ;
Com. Jour., i. 508, 512, 515, 525.
1G21.
Feb.
SUPPLIES VOTED. 275
Catholics of good family, are excluded from Parliament. XIII. 7.
Shepherd is expelled for a jest against the Puritans. A
sub-committee revises and edges the penal laws.
Burgess and knight are now in fearful earnest. No
more weakness, no more tolerance ! Max and Spinola are
at our gates.
8. Coke, returned for Liskeard in Cornwall, offers him-
self as the champion of every fanatical cry, of every mad
antipathy of the hour. He yells for the blood of Papists,
for the hoards of monopolists, for the licence of free speech.
His age, his rank, his experience of the world, his powers
of debate, impose on many of the untried members, now
serving their maiden session in the House of Commons.
Some take him for a guide ; still more accept his aid.
The money bills pass at once. The Chancellor has not
reckoned on the patriotism of the land in vain. Indeed,
in their haste to man the fleets, to put a moving fort
between the coast of Essex and the camps of Calais and
Ostend, the burgesses vote the King two subsidies without
a dissenting voice.
9. James takes this money, not without joy and wonder ;
but when they ask him to banish recusants from London,
to put down masses in ambassadors' houses, to disarm all
the Papists, to prevent priests and Jesuits from going
abroad, he will not do it. In this resistance to a new per-
secution, his tolerant Chancellor stands at his back, and
bears the odium of his refusal. Bacon, who thinks the
8. Com. Jour., i. 510, 514, 519, 523 ; Chamberlain to Carleton, Feb. 10,
17, 1621, S. P. O. ; Locke to Carleton, Feb. 16, 1621, S. P. O. ; Statutes,
iv. 1208.
9. Com. Jour., 518, 523 ; Speech of a Privy Councillor in the House of
Commons, Feb. 16, 1621, S. P. O. ; Locke to Carleton, Feb. 16, 1621,
S. P. O. ; Murray to Carleton, Feb. 17, 1621, S. P. O.
T 2
1621.
Feb.
276 FRANCIS BACON.
XIII. 9. penal laws too harsh already, will not consent to inflame
the country, at such a time, by a new proclamation ; the
penalties are strong, and in the hands of the magistrates ;
he sees no need to spur their zeal by royal proclamations or
the enactment of more savage laws. Here is a chance for
Coke. Kaving for gibbets and pillories in a style to quicken
the pulse of a Brownist, men who are wild with news from
Heidelberg or Prague believe in his sincerity and partake
his heat. To be mild now, many good men think, is to be
weak. In a state of war philosophy and tolerance go to
the wall ; when guns are pounding in the gates, even
justice can be only done at the drum-head.
10. Feeding these fiery humours, Coke gets the ear of
an active section of the House, who push him on, their
orator of hate, as in happier times they have made his
great compeer their advocate of charity and peace. Coke
pours on them his gall. No one in the House yet dreams of
attacking persons under cover of a wish to expose abuses.
Even in the case of Mompesson, whose manufacture of gold
and silver thread is supposed by country gentlemen to
have raised the price of beer, they declare in their first
petition to the King that they want measures of redress,
not injury to particular men. But a moderation that might
end in a real good to the country is foreign to the nature
and designs of Coke.
11. Sure of the ears of a sect, Coke suggests, as a
branch of the Grievances, that inquiry should be made
10. Request concerning Sir Giles Mompesson, Feb. 27, 1621, S. P. O. ;
Locke to Carleton, Feb. 24, 1621, S. P. O.
11. Chamberlain to Carleton, May 10, 1617, S. P. O. ; Ordinances made
by the Rt. Hon. Sir Francis Bacon for the better Administration of Justice
in the Court of Chancery, 1642 ; Locke to Carleton, Feb. 24, 1621, S. P. O. ;
Com. Jour., i. 519, 525.
1621.
Feb.
THE COURT OF CHANCERY. 277
into abuses in the courts of law, with a view to limit the XIII
duration and cost of suits, more especially in the Chancery 11.
and the Court of Wards. Doubts arise on this as to whether
Parliament has any power over the King's courts ; when
Bacon, though he fears and distrusts Coke, and complains
to the King of his insolence, meets the inquiry with open
heart. The Commons are helping to do his work. Ke-
form of the law, and of the courts of law, has been his
theme for thirty years. When he got the Seals, his very
first speech in Chancery proposed a scheme for remov-
ing abuses in fees and suits. His rules for conducting
business were in themselves the best of reform bills.
More than all, he has introduced into that slow and
despotic court the substantial amendments of patience,
courtesy, and speed. Not a cause is on the lists unheard.
Vices remain ; vices of form, of persons, of constitution ; vices
too strong for a single man, however prompt and powerful,
to subdue. If the House of Commons have any search to
make into his court he offers them full leave ; if they have
anything to say on it he bids them freely speak their
mind. Without this leave they could not move one step.
Blind to the plot against him, the Chancellor knows no
cause why he should fear their search.
12. While Coke, under cover of the public good, is slowly
sliming round his prey, the Chancellor, called by his place
to decide between the quarrels of two peers, has the
honourable misfortune to offend in a peculiar manner the
pride of Lady Buckingham and her obedient clan.
This scheming mother has fixed her eyes on Elizabeth
Norreys, daughter of Francis Baron Norreys of Kycote,
12. Lords' Jour., iii. 19, 20; Locke to Carleton, Feb. 16, 21, 1621,
S. P. 0. ; Chamberlain to Carleton, Mar. 30\ 1621, S. P. O.
278 FRANCIS BACON.
XIII. as a wife for her son Kit. Elizabeth is rich, for her
12. mother was an heiress, and she is an only child. To
soften Lord Norreys, he has been created Viscount Thame
.„ ,' and Earl of Berkshire. But these Villiers peers, these Pur-
becks and Berkshires, gall the more ancient nobles. Berk-
shire either pushes or strikes Lord Scrope, a haughty peer,
whose ancestors have been in the House of Lords since the
days of Edward the First. The eleventh baron of his line
complains of this rude and upstart earl. Berkshire being
in the wrong, Bacon, despite his known connexion with the
Villiers people, has the courage to send him to the Fleet
prison till he repents his sally and apologises to Lord
Scrope.
In a few days Berkshire, on submission to Scrope, regains
his freedom, and returns to his seat ; making for the
upright Chancellor one vindictive enemy the more.
Mar. 2. 13. Free from the personal malevolence and from the
virtuous starts which harass Coke, bent on pleasing his
great patroness and on winning a rich reward, Cranfield
goes straight and swift to the point; attacking Bacon,
Montagu, and Yelverton by name, and proclaiming that he
does so from a sense of duty to the King. Some one speaks
of abuses in the Courts of Wards. Cranfield springs to his
feet, and with brazen brow admits the existence of abuses
in his court, but impudently declares that the corruptions
of the Court of Chancery far exceed the corruptions in the
Court of Wards.
14. Time has now come for the Villiers faction to show
their game. While Cranfield and Churchill have been
13. Com. Jour., i. 525, 535 ; Locke to Carleton, Mar. 3, 1621, S. P. O.
14. Council Keg., Mar. 11, 1621 : Coin. Jour., i. 552, 555 ; Lords' Jour.,
iii. 42, 50. \
ACCUSED IN THE COMMONS. 279
hunting the dens of London for accusations against the XIII.
Chancellor, Buckingham has been frequent in his calls at 14.
York House. Bacon is sick, and nigh to death. Pains —
rack his head, and gout torments his feet. Yet up to the 1621 -
1 1 th of March he continues to meet the Council, sitting ar ' '
face to face with Coke and Cranfield, who watch his looks
and weigh his words with all the vigilance of spite. At
length the treachery of Buckingham grows too plain for
even Bacon's eyes to blink. If the House of Commons is
slow to strike, it must be whipped into the mood for framing
accusations and demanding victims. So Coke brings down Mar. 13.
a message to the Commons, the most extraordinary and the
most criminal ever sent down by a subservient House of
Peers. Coke tells the burgesses that the King is pleased
with what they have done and what they are doing ; that
the King advises them to strike while the iron is hot, not
to rest content with shadows, but to demand real sacrifices.
He tells them, too, that Buckingham has fallen in love
with Parliaments ; that he urges them to go on, and gives
up his brother, a partner with Mompesson, to their wrath.
No one mistakes the drift and scope of these words.
Up to the date of this extraordinary and wicked speech,
no one has breathed a word against Bacon's fame.
Chancery, not the Chancellor, has been in fault. Now the
plot breaks.
Two days after Coke's message, Sir Robert Phillips,
chairman of the committee, informs the House that two
witnesses, Kit Aubrey and Edward Egerton, are ready to
make complaints against the Lord Chancellor. These men
come up to the bar and tell their tale.
Aubrey, having a suit in Chancery against Sir William
Brounker, says he was advised by his counsel to send
a present of a hundred pounds to the court ; which money
1621.
Mar. 13
280 FRANCIS BACON.
XIII. he paid to Sir George Hastings, who thanked him for it
14. in his master's name, and wished him better speed in his
suit. Egerton, feeling grateful to the Lord Chancellor for
a service done to him while Bacon was Attorney-General,
sent him, on his going to live at York House, through the
hands of Sir George Hastings and Sir Richard Young, a basin
and ewer, together with a purse of four hundred pounds.
Each complains that, though he paid Ins money, he
took nothing by his gift.
15. Such charges against the Lord Chancellor are in
the last degree frivolous. Fees and gifts like Aubrey's and
Egerton's are common as sun and rain. A barrister or a
judge, set apart from the world, with no salary from the
State, receives, as a rector or a prelate might receive in
his day of furnishing or feasting, aid from the public and
from his friends. Indeed, the higher clergy growl that the
great lawyers get a larger share of this help in need than
the zealous servants of God. Bishop Goodman has a
curious paragraph in point :
" I did once intend," he says, " to have built a church ;
and a lawyer in my neighbourhood did intend to build
himself a fair house, as afterward he did. One sent unto
him to desire him to accept from him all his timber ;
another sent unto him to desire him that he might supply
him with all the iron that he spent about his house. These
men had great woods and iron-mills of their own. The
country desired him to accept of their carriage. What
reason had this man not to build ? Truly I think he paid
very little but the workmen's wages. Whereas, on the con-
trary, in the building of my church, where it was so neces-
15. Goodman's Memoirs, i. 295-6 ; A Selection of the Proceedings of
the House of Commons against the Lord Verulam, Lord Chancellor of
England, Mar. 15, 17, 19, 1621 ; Com. Jour., i. 552-563.
1621.
Mar.
CHARGES OF BRIBERY. 281
sary, for without the church they had not God's service, XIII.
and no church was near them for nearly four or five miles, 15.
truly I could not get the contribution of one farthing.
Lord ! how are the times altered ! It was not so when
St. Paul's church in London and other cathedrals were
built. God's will be done ! "
When Bacon got the Seals his friends and admirers
clothed York House for him with plate, arras, furniture,
and pictures ; some sending books, some money, some cups
of silver and gold. In the crowd of presents came Eger-
ton's ewer and purse ; came as an expression of gratitude
and friendship. No reference was made when they were
given to any future act; nor had the Chancellor any
knowledge of Egerton's having a suit in court. These
facts are stated in the House by Sir Richard Young.
In Aubrey's case it is clear that the fee was paid in
the usual way ; openly paid ; paid by advice of his own
counsel ; paid to the proper officer of the court. It is
no less clear that the Lord Chancellor could have no
special personal knowledge of this payment. He does not
keep the accounts of his court. Hastings tells the House
of Commons that though he paid in Aubrey's money
he never mentioned to the Chancellor Aubrey's name.
The truth of this story is confirmed in a singular way.
When Bacon, on his sick couch, first hears of this payment
by Aubrey of a hundred pounds, he pronounces it a lie,
and declares that he shall deny it on his honour before the
world. He is not aware that it was paid to his clerk.
1 6. Such charges are too flimsy to stand alone. Except the
tools of Coke, of Cranfield, and of Buckingham, men who
have received their cue, and the herd who, without opinions
16. A Collection of the Proceedings, &c„ Mar. 17, 1621.
1621.
Mar.
282 FKANCIS BACON.
XIII. of their own, are ever to be found on the stronger side,
16. no one in the House of Commons pretends to believe that
such facts establish a case against the Lord Chancellor fit
to be sent before the House of Lords. Heneage Finch,
Kecorder of London, next to Coke himself the most learned
jurist in the House, declares that the evidence brought in
support of the accusation frees the Lord Chancellor from
blame.
Mar. 20. 17. Churchill now comes up. Meautys protests that a
dismissed servant, an extortioner, a forger, with no hope of
escaping pillories and jails except by lies against the Chan-
cellor, shall not be heard against his lord. But Coke
and Phillips get him sent, together with a wretch named
Keeling, a low solicitor, a partner in Churchill's villanies,
to the committee, which comprises the Chancellor's most
eager foes. In secret, and without cross-examination,
Churchill and Keeling tell their tales, and the hostile
members of the committee frame their grand indictment,
charging Bacon with bribery and fraud.
The cases on which they count are in number twenty-
two. It is amazing they should be no more. In his four
years of Chancery business, Bacon has pronounced about
seven thousand verdicts ; each verdict must have hurt some
man in fame or purse ; must, by a law of nature, have
seemed to the losing man unjust. Does any one love the
judge who has pronounced against him ? Would the most
upright judge feel easy on having to put his honour or
estate at the mercy of a jury, each of whom had been
mulcted in his court? Yet out of these seven thousand
sufferers, the skill of Coke and the roguery of Churchill
17. A Collection of the Proceedings, &c, Mar. 20, 21 , 1C21 ; Com. Jour.,
i. 564.
PROGRESS OF THE PLOT. 283
can only frame an accusation of twenty-two particulars, not XIII.
one of them to the point ! 17.
18. At first the Chancellor only smiles. Charges against 1621.
the court over which he sits he expects to hear, and will Mar. 20.
be glad to consider ; charges against himself personally he
knows must be malignant and he supposes must be vain.
The Council guards the high place he fills with as much
care as it guards the Crown. The fate of Lord Clifford
and Lady Blount is before the slanderer's eye ; and a word
from the King or from Buckingham would send Churchill
to be whipped through Cheap and fettered in the Clink.
When he finds the case go on, he expresses to Buckingham
his indignation at the course of Coke : " Job himself,
or whoever was the justest judge," he writes, "by such
hunting of matters against him as hath been used against
me, may for a time seem foul. If this is to be a Chan-
cellor, I think, if the Great Seal lay upon Hounslow
Heath, nobody would take it up." But he is not alarmed.
"I know I have clean hands and a clean heart."
19. As the case proceeds — as Ley, and Coke, and Cran-
field, all the tools of Lady Buckingham, take part in it —
he begins at length to perceive the bearing of the charge
and the purpose of his enemies. The facts of the accusation
are nothing, the fact of it is much. As he lies sick at York
House, or at Gorhambury, hearing through his friend
Meautys of the moil and worry about him in the House of
Commons, he jots on loose scraps of paper at his side his
answers and remarks. These scraps of paper are at Lam-
beth Palace. Their contents are embodied in letters to
18. Council Reg., Dec. 30, 1617, Mar. 17, 27, 1618, June 19, 1619,
Jan. 20, 1620 ; Bacon to Buckingham, in Montagu, 33.
19. Bacon Memoranda, Lambeth MSS. 936, fol. 146.
Mar.
284 FRANCIS BACON.
XIII. Buckingham, to the House of Lords, and to the King :
19. yet they possess an original and 'abiding interest in their
— first rude drafts ; a stamp of honesty and sincerity which
® the eye cannot help but see or the heart but feel. On one
of these sheets he writes :
" There be three degrees or cases, as I conceive, of gifts
or rewards given to a judge.
" The first is — of bargain, contract, or promise of reward,
pendente lite. And this is properly called venalis sen-
tentise, or baratria, or corruptelse munerum. And of this
my heart tells me I am innocent ; that I had no bribe or
reward in my eye or thought when I pronounced any
sentence or order.
" The second is — a neglect in the judge to inform him-
self whether the cause be fully at an end or no what time
he receives the gift, but takes it upon the credit of the
party that all is done, or otherwise omits to inquire.
" And the third is — when it is received, sine fraude, after
the cause is ended ; which it seems, by the opinions of the
civilians, is no offence."
Only the first of these three cases, a contract to defeat
justice for a personal gain, implies moral guilt or ^nvites
legal censure.
Bacon adds :
" For the first, I take myself to be as innocent as any
babe born on St. Innocent's day in my heart.
" For the second, I doubt in some particulars I may be
faulty.
" And for the last, I conceive it to be no fault."
20. The evidence produced against him, as Heneage
Finch has told the House of Commons, proves his case
20. A Collection of the Proceedings, &c, Mar. 20, 21, 1621 ; Com. Jour.,
i. 563, 578.
EVIDENCE AGAINST HIM. 285
and frees him from blame. Of the twenty-two charges of XIII.
corruption, three are debts — Compton's, Peacock's, and 20.
Vanlore's: two of these, Compton's and Vanlore's, debts "
on bond and interest. Any man who borrows money may , T
be as justly charged with taking bribes. One case, that of
the London Companies, is an arbitration, not a suit in law.
Even Cranfield, though bred in the city, cannot call their
fee a bribe. Smithwick's gift, being found irregular, has
been sent back. Thirteen cases — those of Young, Wroth,
Hody, Barker, Monk, Trevor, Scott, Fisher, Lenthal,
Dunch, Montagu, Kuswell, and the Frenchmen — are of
daily practice in every court of law. They fall under
Bacon's third list, common fees, paid in the usual way,
paid after judgment has been given. Kennedy's present
of a cabinet for York House has never been accepted, the
Chancellor hearing that the artisan who made it has not
been paid. Beynell, an old neighbour and friend, gave
him two hundred pounds towards furnishing York House,
and sent him a ring on New Year's day. Everybody
gives rings, everybody takes rings, on a New Year's day.
The gift of five hundred pounds from Sir Balph Hornsby
was made after a judgment, though, as afterwards ap-
peared, while a second, much inferior cause, was still in
hearing. The gift was openly made, not to the Chancellor,
but to the officer of his court. The last case is that of
Lady Wharton; the only one that presents an unusual
feature. Lady Wharton, it seems, brought her presents
to the Chancellor herself; yet even her gifts were openly
made, in the presence of the proper officer and his clerk.
Churchill admits being present in the room when Lady
Wharton left her purse ; Gardner, Keeling's clerk, asserts
that he was present when she brought the two hundred
pounds. Even Coke is staggered by proofs which prove
1621.
Mar.
286 FRANCIS BACON".
XIII. so much ; for who in his senses can suppose that the Lord
20. Chancellor would have done an act known to 'be illegal and
immoral in the company of a registrar and a clerk ?
It is clear that a thing which Bacon did under the
eyes of Gardner and Churchill must have been in his mind
customary and right.
It is no less clear that if Bacon had done wrong, knowing
it to be wrong, he would never have braved exposure of his
fraud by turning Churchill into the streets.
Thus, after the most rigorous and vindictive scrutiny
into his official acts, and into the official acts of his servants,
not a single fee or remembrance traced to the Chancellor
can, by any fair construction, be called a bribe. Not one
appears to have been given on a promise ; not one appears
to have been given in secret ; not one is alleged to have
corrupted justice.
21. Very few knights or burgesses take part in the
debate : on one side Cranfield, Coke, and Phillips ; on the
other side Sackville, Meautys, and Heneage Finch make
nearly all the list. This charge against Bacon is regarded
by citizens and country gentlemen as a mere theme for
lawyers — a charge of technical corruption more than of
moral guilt. They may very well stand aloof when Coke
and Finch, the two most eminent lawyers in the House,
express on it the most diverse views. Coke construes
every fee into a bribe : Finch denies that any fee can be
called a bribe unless it can be shown to have been taken
as part of a contract to pervert justice. Finch does not
admit of Bacon's three distinctions : he only knows of fees
and bribes. A fee paid at an improper time is not a bribe ;
for how, he asks, can a judge retain in his recollection the
21. Com. Jour., i. 564-67 ; Proceedings, &c., Mar. 20, 21, 1621.
1621.
Mar.
INQUIRY IN THE LORDS. 287
name of every suitor in his court ? The House consents to XIII
let the case go up to the Lords, though as an inquiry, not 21.
as an impeachment. If they wish the system of Fees
amended, as they wish that of Patents, of Protections, of
Pardons, of Personal Service, or of Wards and Liveries
amended, they do not load the Chancellor with a personal
charge. Otherwise Coke. They want to cleanse the court ;
he to destroy the judge. They see a grievance in the
Chancery, as they see one in the Rolls, the Wards, and the
King's Bench ; he finds the most noxious grievance in the
Lord Yiscount St. Albans, holder of the Great Seal.
22. To drag the House of Lords on the way down which
they have thus far lured the House of Commons, the gang
of conspirators procure from James a commission for Sir
James Ley to execute the office of Lord Chancellor.
Though not a peer, such a commission will make Ley the
leader and spokesman of the peers. Seeing what means
are used against him, Bacon is warned by a friend to
look about him. He calmly answers, " I look above."
23. He knows now that his ruin is meant — that the peers
who are to try him will pronounce as Buckingham points.
Two or three learned independent men may protest by
their votes or absence against these scandalous proceedings ;
the majority, who wish to dance at Whitehall — to enjoy
the favourite's smiles and partake the gifts of his master —
will have to speak and act under the eyes of Prince Charles,
who is not so much Buckingham's partisan as his slave-
It is with Ley and Williams not a question of Bacon's
guilt so much as of his place. But his own courtesy and
generosity blind him to the vile motives of his persecutors.
22. Lords' Jour., iii. 51.
23. Bacon to James, Mar. 25, 1621 ; Montagu, 099.
288 FRANCIS BACON.
XIII. In the loose sheets at his bedside, and afterwards in letters
23. to the King, he writes :
~~~l " When I enter into myself, I find not the materials of
1621. _ J ' T T M
■», such a tempest as is now come upon me. I have been
never author of any immoderate counsel, but always
desired to have things carried suavibus modis. I have
been no avaricious oppressor of the people. I have been
no haughty, intolerable, or hateful man in my conver-
sation or carriage. I have inherited no hatred from my
father; but am a good patriot born. Whence should
this be?"
That eye, so quick to see the power of truth, the beauty
of nature, cannot see that it is crime enough that he has
vexed Lady Buckingham by his independence, and that
Williams wants his place.
Yet, knowing his own heart, he can say with honest
pride :
" I praise God for it, I never took penny for any benefice
or ecclesiastical living.
" I never took penny for releasing anything I stopped
at the Seal.
" I never took penny for any commission, or things of
that nature.
"I never shared with any reward for any second or
inferior profit."
Mar. 19. 24. Ley presides over the peers. On the House re-
solving themselves into committee, a preliminary fight
takes place, which shows the strength of this Villiers gang.
When the House is in committee, it is the rule that
the Lord Chancellor shall move to his place and sit as a
simple peer. Ley, therefore, drops from the woolsack to
24. Lords' Jour., iii. 55 ; Lambeth MSS. 936, fol. 146.
URGED BY THE KING TO SUBMIT. 289
the back benches, where he must sit, while the Lords are XIII.
in committee, as a mere assistant, without a vote. His 24.
friends propose that he shall resume the chair, even while —
the House is in committee; and after a strong opposition, 1621.
though the Prince and Buckingham are present to sup- Mar '
port their friends, these last carry their proposal, and Ley
resumes the chair. This vote decides Bacon's fate.
In a private interview James now urges the Chancellor
to trust in him ; to offer no defence ; to submit himself to
the peers ; to trust his honour and his safety to the Crown.
It is only too easy to divine the reasons which weigh with
Bacon to intrust his fortunes to the King. He is sick.
He is surrounded by enemies. No man has- power to help
him, save the sovereign. He is weary of greatness. Age is
approaching. In his illness he has learned to think more
of heaven and less of the world. His nobler tasks are
incomplete. He has the Seals, and the delights of power
begin to pall. To resist the King's advice is to provoke the
fate of Yelverton, still an obstinate prisoner in the Tower.
Nor can he say that these complaints against the courts of
law, against the Court of Chancery, are untimely or unjust.
So far as they attack the court, and not the judge, they
are in the spirit of all his writings and of all his votes.
In his soul, he can find no fault with the House of
Commons, though the accidents of time and the machina-
tions of powerful enemies have made him, the Keformer,
a sacrifice to a false cry for reform.
25. In answer to a statement sent to him from the April 28.
Lords, he confesses, as the King has begged him to
confess, to the receipt of the several fees and gifts, and.
to a trust in the servants of his court, often most unwise.
25. Lords' Jour., iii. 99, 100.
1621.
April 28.
290 FRANCIS BACON.
XIII. Most of the cases fall under his third division ; two or
25. three under his second ; none under his first. Beyond
this point his confession and submission do not run. If
he takes to himself some share of blame, he takes to him-
self no share of guilt. He pleads guilty to carelessness,
not to crime. But he points out, too, t iat all the irregu-
larities found in his court occurred when he was new in
office, strange to his clerks and registrars, overwhelmed
with arrears of work. The very last of them is two years
old. For the latter half of his reign as Chancellor,
the vindictive inquisition of his enemies, aided by the
treachery of his servants, has not been able to detect in
his administration of justice a fault, much less a crime.
May 3. 26. The peers condemn. The Villiers faction move to
suspend during life his titles of nobility. Abbott and the
bench of bishops oppose this motion. Fine, imprison-
ment, loss of office, are the forms of a political sen-
tence ; degradation from nobility is a moral censure. One
is only loss of power, the other is loss of honour. A
majority of two defeats this scheme of adding infamy to
punishment. The second motion passes. Ley has the
' satisfaction of declaring to his partizans in the House of
Peers that the greatest man who ever sat upon its benches
is ignominiously expelled, deprived of the Seals, fined
forty thousand pounds, and cast into the Tower.
26. Chamberlain to Carleton, May 2, 5, 1621, S. P. O. ; Lords' Jonr.,
iii. 105.
REFORM AT AN END. 291
CHAPTER XIV.
AFTEK SENTENCE.
1. Bacon makes no complaint. He feels that he is made XIV. 1,
a sacrifice, an innocent sacrifice, for what he hopes may —
turn out to be the public good. The court is corrupt, 1621.
though the judge is pure. In a few brave words he states -M- a y-
the case : u I was the justest judge that was in England
these fifty years, but it was the justest censure that was
in Parliament these two hundred years."
2. With the sentence on Lord St. Albans ends the
ministerial passion for reform. No further search is made
into Chancery iniquities, nor does the House remember
to proceed with its inquiry into the evil practices of the
King's Bench and the Court of Wards. The Crown makes
a feeble effort of investigation, but only like the House of
Commons to let the question drop. If the new Chancellor
names a commission to report on Fees, nothing comes of
their report. All that is irregular in the mode of con-
ducting legal business grows to be more irregular. Instead
of being a court without arrears, it is soon blocked up with
clients. The new men invent new methods of extortion.
With the fall of the Reformer ends the immediate pros-
pect of reform. The very topic is adjourned to the times
of Naseby and Dunbar.
1. Apophthegms, Spedding's Works of Bacon, vii. 179,
2. Statutes of the Realm, iv. 1208 ; Welden, 130 ; King's Proclamation,
July 10, 1621 ; Proposals concerning the Chancery, 1650.
u 2
292 FRANCIS BACON.
XIV. 3. 3. All the agents of this memorable persecution get
— their share of spoil, except the man to whose invention
~ ' and persistence its success is due. Coke is in disgrace ;
n ^' for the match between his daughter and Sir John Villiers,
though crowned with a peerage, has turned out a dismal
work. Ley, if he misses the Seals, which Lady Buckingham
reserves for the one nearer and dearer, obtains a wife, with
the prospect of promotion and a peerage, for which indeed
he has not long to wait. Churchill goes back to the trust
which he so shamefully abused. Williams steps into the
Privy Council, and receives the Seals. "I should have
known my successor," says Bacon, on receiving this ex-
traordinary news. Some of the great peers demur to the
nomination of such a fellow as Williams to the presidency
of their lordships' house ; and the King only quells this
clamour of the Howards and De Teres by threatening
them, if they object to Williams, with the nomination of
Kichard Neile. To give dignity to Lady Buckingham's
friend, he is named successor to Dr. Mountain in the see
of Lincoln. Cranfield's merits demand and receive no
less magnificent a prize.
Some of the Villiers gang proposed to attack Montagu,
the Lord Treasurer, while their friends were pushing
the charge against Bacon. Coke hinted a fault before
the House of Peers, while Sir George Paul, one of
Lady Buckingham's crew, whose zeal had been inflamed
by the gift of a lucrative office under Ley, petitioned
the House of Commons against him. But there was
danger in attempting too much ; and a word from Buck-
ingham put a stop to the indiscreet initiative of Paul,
3. Chamberlain to Carleton, June 23, July 14, Oct. 13, Nov. 10, 1621,
S. P. O. ; Locke to Carleton, Sept. 29, 1621, S. P. O. ; Lords' Jour., iii.
42, 81 : Paul to Buckingham, July 12, 1621, S. P. O. ; Sign Manuals, xii.
No. 66 ; Grant Book, 309 ; Doquet, Sept. 12, 1622.
MONTAGU THE NEXT VICTIM. 293
his new clerk of the King's Bench. The attack is XIV. 3.
but deferred. When Bacon is in the Tower, Cranfield, —
now a baron, opens his siege against the Treasury.
Montagu is rich and timid, and Cranfield offers him no *'
choice but that of a cutthroat on Stamford Hill — Your
office or your life ! Where Bacon has gone down Montagu
cannot hope to stand. If he will allow himself to be robbed
of a post which has cost him twenty thousand pounds, and
of places about it which have cost his kinsmen and servants
twenty thousand pounds more, the victorious party promise
to secure him the undisturbed enjoyment of his peerage,
and to cover the shame of his fall by reviving for him the
old office of President of the Council. Montagu succumbs. Sept. 29.
Cranfield gets the White Staff, and after the birth of a
son the Earldom of Middlesex.
4. These ends of the conspiracy attained, the prosecu- 1622.
tion of Bacon, the heat of the Government for reform, dies Mar.
off. Buckingham has no implacable resentment against
the great Chancellor ; he only wanted the Mace and Seals.
When he has got these baubles into the hands of Williams,
he continues to express, and probably to feel, the warmest
affection for Bacon's person, the most unbounded admira-
tion for his parts. Indeed, he wishes to be thought the
friend of Lord St. Albans, as Greville was the friend of
Sir Philip Sydney. Meautys, the faithful henchman, in
his notes to his master, hints at something savouring of
an intrigue to procure from him confessions of friendship
and obligation to the powerful favourite. Bacon's' situa-
tion grows less painful ; his fine is remitted, his freedom
restored. An attempt to overthrow some of his judg-
4. Meautys to Bacon, Mar. 3, 1622, Lambeth MSS. 936 ; Spedding's
Note, i. 9 ; Bush worth's Historical Collections, i. 31.
294 FRANCIS BACON.
XIV. 4. ments fails. Of the thousands of decisions pronounced by
— him in the Court of Chancery not one is reversed.
1622.
Mar. 5 < Among his books and his experiments, with his horse
and his game of bowls, he soon in the country air recovers
his health, and with his health his spirits and his wit. He
enriches the Essays with a thousand exquisite touches.
When the Jew Gondomar, recalled to Spain by an order
from the King, sends to wish Bacon a good Easter, the wit
replies, " Tell the Count I return him the compliment and
wish him a good Passover." Montagu comes to Gorham-
bury to complain how ill he has been used by the Yilliers
faction ; " Why, my Lord," says Bacon, " they have made
me an example and you a president." Poor in everything
but his good spirits and his capacity for work, he toils at
his History of Henry the Seventh, at the new edition
of his Advancement of Learning, at his Advertizement
touching a Holy War. These writings, and the works
which have gone before them, extend his fame throughout
1623. Europe. But his debts weigh on him. He is anxious for
work, even for work of the humblest kind. In 1623 Tho-
mas Murray, secretary to Prince Charles, and Provost of
Eton, falls sick and is like to die. Bacon offers himself
as a candidate. Sir William Beecher, clerk of the Privy
Council, a creature of Yilliers, and Sir Henry Wotton,
poet, wit, ambassador, are his opponents. Beecher has a
promise from Buckingham of the succession to Murray ;
Buckingham is away in Spain with the Prince of Wales,
fanning his face at bull-fights, leering at Castilian dames.
Sir Edward Conway, Secretary of State, is now the im-
mediate influence near the King ; and Bacon, who comes
5. Apophthegms, in Speddings Bacon, vii. 181 ; Bacon to James, Mar,
25, 1623 | Lambeth MSS. 936 ; Bacon to Conway, Mar. 25, 1623, S. P. O.
SEEKS PROVOSTSHIP OF ETON. 295
back to London, to his old lodgings in Gray's Inn, writes XIV. 5.
to solicit his good will :
Bacon to Conway.
GOOD Mk. SECRETARY, Gray's Inn, 25th of March, 1623.
When you did me the honour and favour to visit
me you did not only in general terms express your love
unto me, but as a real friend asked me whether I had any
particular occasion wherein I might make use of you. At
that time I had none ; now there is one fallen. It is that
Mr. Thomas Murray, Provost of Eton (whom I love very
well), is like to die. It were a pretty cell for my fortune.
The college and school I do not doubt but I shall make to
flourish. His Majesty, when I waited on him, took notice
of my wants, and said to me that as he was a king he
would have care of me. This is a thing somebody must
have, and costs his Majesty nothing. I have written two
or three words to his Majesty, which I would pray you to
deliver. I have not expressed this particular to his Ma-
jesty, but referred it to your relation. My most noble
friend the Marquis is now absent. Next to him I could
not think of a better address than to yourself, as one likest
to put on his affections.
I rest your very affectionate friend,
Francis St. Albans.
Conway supports the suit.
6. James allows of Bacon's great claims. He will think
of it; he even hopes to arrange it; satisfying Beecher
with another place. But Beecher is Buckingham's crea-
6. Bacon to Conway, Mai-. 29, 1623, S. P. 0. ; Do., Mar. 31, 1623,
Lambeth MSS. 936.
1623.
1623.
296 FKANCIS BACON.
XIV. 6. ture ; Buckingham is away ; till he comes back nothing
can be done. Conway's answer is in the State Paper
Office ; its spirit may be guessed from the following note
of Bacon in reply to it :
Bacon to Conway.
GOOD Mr. SECRETARY, Gray's Inn, 29th of March, 1623.
I am much comforted by your last letter, wherein
I find that his Majesty of his great goodness vouchsafeth
to have a care of me, a man out of sight and out of use,
but yet his (as the Scripture sayeth, " God knows those
that are his"). In particular, I am very much bounden to
his Majesty, and I pray (Sir) thank his Majesty most
humbly for it, that, notwithstanding the former designment
of Sir A. Beecher, his Majesty (as you write) is not out of
hope in due time to accommodate me of this cell and to
satisfy that gentleman otherwise. Many conditions (no
doubt) may be as good for him, and his years may expect
them. But there will hardly fall (especially in the spent
hour-glass of such a life as mine) anything so fit for me,
being a retreat to a place of study so near London, and
where (if I sell my house at Gorhambury, as I purpose to
do, to put myself into some convenient plenty), I may be
accommodate of a dwelling for the summer time. And,
therefore, good Mr. Secretary, further this his Majesty's
good intention by all means if the place fall. For yourself
you have obliged me much ; I will endeavour to deserve
it. At best nobleness is never lost, but rewarded in itself.
My Lord Marquis I know will thank you. I was looking
over some short papers of mine touching usury, how to
grind the teeth of it, and yet to make it grind to his
Majesty's mill in good sort, without discontent or pertur-
bation : if you think good I will perfect it, as I send it to
1623.
APPLIES AGAIN FOR PROYOSTSHIP. 297
his Majesty as some fruits of my leisure. But yet I would XIY. 6.
not have it come as from me, not from any. tenderness in
the thing, but because I know well in the courts of princes
it is usual non res, sed displicet auetor. — God keep you.
I rest your very affectionate friend, much obliged,
Fr. St. Albans.
Two days later he writes again. What a mournful, yet
what a manful tone ! He has sold York House, the place
of his birth ; he must now sell Gorhambury, the scene of
his happiest hours and most splendid toils. Yet how
inspiring, in the depths of sorrow, to see the great man
bear his burthen bravely : no false pride ; no arrogant
remembrance of the Mace, the Seals, the Privy Council,
the Koyal table ; only a simple hope of finding in his old
age a sphere of duty in which he can win bread by honest
work !
7. He writes to the King :
Bacon to James. Mar. 29.
It may please your most excellent Majesty,
Now that my friend is absent (for so I may call
him still, since your Majesty, when I waited on you, told
me that fortune made no difference) your Majesty remaineth
to me king and master, and friend and all. Your Beads-
man, therefore, addresseth himself to your Majesty for a
cell to retire unto. The particular I have expressed to
my very hon. friend, Mr. Sec. Conway. This help (which
costs your Majesty nothing) may reserve me to do your
Majesty service, without being chargeable unto you, for I
will never deny but my desire to serve your Majesty is of
7. Bacon to James, Mar. 29, 1623, S. P. O. ; Bacon to Conway, April 7,
1623, S. P. (X
1623.
Mar. 29.
298 FRANCIS BACON.
XIV. 7. the nature of the heart, that will be ultimum moriens with
me. God preserve your Majesty, and send you a good
return of your treasure abroad, which passeth your Majesty's
Indian fleet.
Your most humble and devoted servant,
Francis St. Albans.
Murray grows daily worse. Bacon writes again to
Conway :
April 7. Bacon to Conway.
Good Me. Secretary, Gray's inn, 7th of April, 1623.
I received right now an advertisement from a
friend of mine who is like to know it, that Mr. Murrav is
very ill (and that, so are the words of his letter) not only
his days but his hours are numbered. You have put my
business into a good way, and (to tell you true) my heart
is much upon this place, as fit for me, and where I may do
good. Therefore, Sir, I pray you have a special eye to it,
and I shall ever acknowledge it to you in the best fashion
that I can. Besting your very affectionate friend,
Fr. St. Albans*
Sept. 8. Murray dies. Time passes on. Buckingham still
away, the King can form no resolution. Six months later
the place is still vacant. Bacon writes again :
Bacon to Conway.
Gray's Inn, this 4th day of September, 1623.
Good Mr. Secretary,
Let me, now his Majesty is in sight of Eton, make
my most humble claim to his Majesty's gracious promise
'8. Bacon to Conway, Sept, 4, 1623, S. P. 0. ; Sign Man., xvi., No. 42.
DISAPPOINTED OF PROVOSTSHIP. 299
by you signified, which, as I understand it, was, that if XIV. 8.
Mr. Beecher, who had a promise upon rny Lord of Buck- —
ingham's score, might otherwise be satisfied (which his 1(y ld.
Majesty would endeavour), I should have my desire. e P '
Mistake me not, as if I expected this should be done and
perfected till my noble, true friend comes back. But I
pray refresh it only in his Majesty's memory. It were
strange if I should not do as much good to the College as
another, be it square cap or round.
I always rest your affectionate friend and servant,
St. Albans.
Buckingham is adverse to his suit. In small things, as 1624.
in great things, though he professes a boundless admira-
tion for Bacon's parts, he chooses to have about him
men more pliable and more frail. Sir William Beecher,
a gentleman unfit for such a post as Murray's, takes
a promise of 2500£. in lieu of the succession; but Sir
Henry Wotton, an honourable man and a good scholar,
though of far less various learning and far less exalted
virtue than Lord St. Albans, gets the Provostship of
Eton.
9. It is the last time he troubles Buckingham or James.
Henceforth he devotes himself to his experiments and his
books ; to the collections for his Sylva Sylvarum ; to
his Historia Vitae et Mortis ; to the construction of his
New Atlantis ; to the enlargement of his Essays. He
is a greater man now in his study than when the Mace was
borne before him, and the Lord Treasurer and Secretary
of State rode on his right hand and on his left. He lives
in seclusion ; but his writings fill the whole world with his
fame.
1624.
300 FRANCIS BACON.
XIV. 10. From the seclusion of Gorhambury or Gray's Inn he
10. watches the men who have ruined his fortune and stained
his name fall one by one. Before their year of triumph
ran out, Coke's intolerable arrogance plunged him into
the Tower, from which he escaped, after eight months'
imprisonment, to be permanently degraded from the Privy
Council, banished from the court, and confined to his dismal
ruin of a house at Stoke. The sale of Frances Coke to
Viscount Purbeck is a dismal failure. She makes the
man to whom she was sold perfectly miserable ; quitting
his house for days and nights ; braving the public streets
in male attire; falling in guilty love with Sir Eobert
Howard ; shocking even the brazen sinners of St. James's
by the excessive profligacy of her life. Purbeck steals
abroad to hide his shame. At last he goes raving mad.
In less than three years from the day of that gorgeous
feast at court, Buckingham would have given his mar-
quisate to untie the knot. All that Bacon foresaw has
come to pass. Sir Eobert Howard, a son of that Earl
of Suffolk whom Buckingham broke and disgraced,
pursues his pleasure and his revenge in the amour with
Lady Purbeck, willing to vindicate by his sword the injury
done by his lawless love. Buckingham, who lacks courage
either to defend his family honour or to renew the scan-
dalous scene of the Essex divorce, in place of crossing
blades with Howard in Marylebone Park, proceeds against
his sister-in-law for incontinence, and procures from the
Ecclesiastical Court a sentence condemning her to stand
in a penitential white sheet at the door of the Savoy church.
It is easier to condemn than to catch the nimble profligate,
10. Council Eeg., Dec. 27, 1621, Aug. 6, 1622 ; Chamberlain to Carleton,
Aug. 18, Dec. 1, 1621, June 8, 1622, S. P. O. ; James' Eeply to the Com-
mons, Dec. 11, 1621, S. P. O. ; Locke to Carleton, Jan. 1, 1622, S. P. O. ;
Buckingham to Crew, Feb. 11, 1625, S. P. O.
1024.
FALL OF HIS ENEMIES. 301
an accomplished player at hide and seek. Once the pur- XIV.
suivants catch a glimpse of her near an ambassador's house ; 10.
they chase ; she slips from her -coach, runs through the
gates, changes clothes with a page, who minces like a lady
into her seat, and tears down the Strand with Buckingham's
men at the wheels. She trips laughingly away, while the
officers of justice follow the coach and seize the boy.
11. The very next Parliament which meets in West- May.
minster strikes down two of his foes. Three years after
his return to that trust he so grossly abused, Churchill
comes before the House of Commons as a culprit. He has
been at his tricks again, and is now solemnly convicted
of forgery and fraud. Two months after Churchill's con-
demnation Cranfield is in turn assailed. Charges of taking
bribes from the farmers of customs, of fraudulent dealing
with the royal debts, of robbing the magazine of arms, are
proved against him ; when, abandoned by his powerful
friends, he is sentenced by the House of Commons to public
infamy, to loss of office, to imprisonment in the Tower,
to a restitutionary fine of two hundred thousand pounds !
" In future ages," says a wise observer of events, " men
will wonder how my Lord St. Albans could have fallen,
how my Lord of Middlesex could have risen."
12. The most subtle of his enemies falls the last. After 1625.
his promotion to the Seals and mitre, Williams, silly enough Nov. 1.
to dream that he could stand alone, began to neglect Lady
Buckingham for younger and less exacting women. Mur-
11. Com. Jour., i. 591, 766 ; Nicholas to Nicholas, Mar. 17, 1624, S. P. O. ;
Chichester to Carleton, May 12, 1624, S. P. O. ; Locke to Carleton, May
13, 1624, S. P. 0.
12. Suckling to Buckingham, Oct. 24, 1625, S. P. O. ; Williams to
Goring, Oct. 30, 1625, S. P. O.
Nov. 1.
302 FEANCIS BACOK
XIV. murs now rise against him ; slowly at first, but gathering
12. strength as his ingratitude, his arrogance, and his cupidity
— prove themselves month by month. When Lady Bucking:-
ham withdraws from him her countenance, he falls at once
from Ins fatal height — is stripped of the Seals with every
mark of ignominy — and is driven, with a sullied reputa-
tion, though with sharpened powers for mischief, from
the Court of Chancery into the more settled scenes of
ecclesiastical strife.
13. Were there space in his generous heart for
vengeance, how the passions of the great Chancellor
would glow and leap as these adversaries fall before
his eyes like rotten fruit! Never was the wisdom of
counsel proved more signally, the vindication of conduct
more complete. All that he foresaw of evil has come
to pass. He does not, indeed, live to behold that fiery
joy which lights and shakes the land when Buckingham's
tyranny drops under an assassin's knife ; but he lives long
enough to find himself justified by facts on every point of
his opposition to the scandalous family policy and private
bargains of the Villiers clan, Frances Coke has made
Sir John a perfectly bad wife. Elizabeth Norreys has
run away from Sir Christopher, giving up her beauty
and her fortunes to Edward Wray. Lady Buckingham
herself, after moving earth and hell to pull down Abbott
and make her lover an archbishop, has had to endure the
pain and mortification of seeing the creature of her fantasy
neglect her charms. Coke, Cranfield, Churchill, Williams,
have been alike overwhelmed with misery and shame.
But he feels no quickening pang of joy at the discomfiture
13. Chamberlain to Carleton, Mar. 30, 1622, S. P. O. ; Bacon's Will ;
Montagu, xvi. part ii. 447 ; Dom. Papers of Charles the First, xxiv. 59.
1625.
Nov. 1,
HIS DEATH. 303
of these enemies. From the moment of his own trial, he XIV.
has accepted the position of a necessary sacrifice. He 13.
breathes no word against the House of Commons, nor
questions the justice of the House of Lords. He speaks
no evil word of the men who made themselves the instru-
ments of his fall. But he holds to his nobler intellectual
work, and the Father of Experimental Philosophy dies at
last in the very act of an experiment, quitting the world
in peace with all men, leaving a young widow, who, like
her mother, will marry again, and appealing for the vindi-
cation of his fame to time.
( 305 )
APPENDICES.
-No. 1. App>
Lady Ann Bacon to Lord Burghley.
(Original in Lansdowne MSS., xliii. 48.)
Feb. 26, 1585.
I know well, mine especial good Lord, it becorneth
me not to be troublesome unto your honour at any other
time, but now chiefly in this season of your greatest affair
and small or no leisure ; but yet, because yesterday
morning, especially as in that I was extraordinarily ad-
mitted, it was your Lordship's favour, so, fearing to stay
too long, I could not so plainly speak, nor so well receive
your answer thereto, as I would truly and gladly in that
matter, I am bold by this writing to enlarge the same
more plainly, and to what end I did mean.
If it may like your good Lordship, the report of the late
conference at Lambeth hath been so handled, to the dis-
crediting of those learned that labour for right reformation
in the ministry of the Gospel, that it is no small grief of
mind to the faithful preachers ; because the matter is thus
by the other side carried away, as though their cause
could not sufficiently be warranted by the word of God.
For the which proof they have long been sad suitors, and
would most humbly crave still both of God in heaven,
whose cause it is, and of her Majesty their most excellent
306 FRANCIS BACON.
App. Sovereign here in earth, that they might obtain quiet and
I- convenient audience either before her Majesty herself,
whose heart is in God's hand to touch and to turn, or
before your honours of the Council, whose wisdom they
greatly reverence. And if they cannot strongly prove
before you out (of) the Word of God that reformation
which they so long have called and cried for, to be accord-
ing to Christ's own ordinance, then to let them be rejected
with shame out of the Church for ever. And that this
may be the better done to the glory of God and true
understanding of this great cause, they require, first, leave
to assemble and to consult together purposely, which they
have forborne to do for avoiding suspicion of private con-
venticles. For hitherto, though in some writing they have
declared the state of their, yea God's cause, yet were they
never allowed to confer together, and so together be heard
fully. But now some one, and then some two, called upon
a sudden unprepared, to four prepared to catch them,
rather than gravely and moderately to be heard to defend
their right and good cause.
And, therefore, for such weighty conference they appeal
to her Majesty and her honourable wise Council, whom
God hath placed in highest authority for the advance-
ment of his kingdom, and refuse the bishops for judges,
who are parties partial in their own defence, because
they seek more worldly ambition than the glory of Christ
Jesus.
For my own part, my good Lord, I will not deny but
as I may I hear them in their public exercises as a chief
duty commanded by God to widows ; and also I confess, as
one that hath found mercy, that I have profited more in
the inward feeling knowledge of God's Holy will (though
but in a small measure) by such sincere and sound open-
LADY BACON TO LORD BURGHLEY. 307
ing of the Scriptures by an ordinary preaching, within App.
these seven or eight years, than I did by hearing odd L
sermons at Paul's well nigh twenty years together. I
mention this unfeignedly, the rather to excuse this my
boldness toward your Lordship, humbly beseeching your
Lordship to think upon their suit, and, as God shall move
your understanding heart, to further it. And if oppor-
tunity will not be had as they require, yet I once again
in humble wise am a suitor unto your Lordship that
you would be so good as to choose two or three of them
which your honour liketh best, and license them before
your own self, or other at your pleasure, to declare
and to prove the truth of the cause with a quiet and an
attentive ear.
I have heard them say ere now they will not come to
dispute and argue to breed contention, which is the manner
of the bishops' hearing ; but to be suffered patiently to lay
down before them that shall command (they then excepted)
how well and certainly they can warrant, by the infallible
touchstone of the Word, the substantial and main ground
of their cause. Surely, my Lord, I am persuaded you
should do God acceptable service herein ; and for the very
entire affection I owe and do bear unto your honour I wish
from the very heart that, to your other rare gifts sundry-
wise, you were fully instructed and satisfied in this principal
matter so contemned of the great Kabbis, to the dishonour-
ing of the Gospel so long amongst us.
I am so much bound to your Lordship for your comfort-
able dealing toward me and mine, as I do incessantly
desire that by your Lordship's means God's glory may
more and more be promoted, the grieved godly comforted,
and you and yours abundantly blessed. None is privy to
this ; and, indeed, though I hear them, yet I see them
x 2
308 FEANCIS BACON.
App. very seldom. I trust your Lordship will accept in best
I. part my best meaning.
In the Lord dutifully and most heartily,
A. Bacon.
For thinness of the paper I write on the other leaf for
my ill eyes.
II. 1.
No. II.
Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon.
(Orig. Lambeth MSS. 648, fol. 110.)
May 29, 1592.
I am glad and thank God of your amendment ; but
my man said he heard you rose at three of the clock. I
thought that was not well, so suddenly from bedding much,
to rise so early newly out of your diet. Extremities be
hurtful to whole, more to the sickly. If you be not wise
and discreet for your diet and seasoning of your doings,
you will be weakish I fear a good while. Be wise and
godly too, and discern what is good and what not for your
health. Avoid extremities. What a great folly were it
in you to take cold to hinder your amendment, being not
compelled, but upon voluntary indiscretion, seeing the cost
of physic is much, your pain long, and your amendment
slow, and your duty not yet done ! Give none occasion by
negligence. You go, as is commonly said, of your own
errands. I like not your lending your coach yet to any
lord or lady ; if you once begin you shall hardly end ; but
that in hope you shall shortly use it, I would it were here,
to shun all offending. It was not well it was so soon seen
at the Court, to make talk, and at last be mocked or
LADY BACON TO ANTHONY BACON. 309
misliked. Tell your brother I counsel you to send it no App.
more. What had my Lady Shrewsbury to borrow your II. 1.
coach ! Your man for money, and somebody else for their
vain credit, will work you but displeasure and loss, and
they have thanks. Learn to be wise in things of this sort,
and do nothing rashly. In haste. Late this Sabbath.
Farewell. Take care of your health and please God.
A. B.
Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon. H« 2.
(Orig. Lambeth MSS. 649, fol. 65.)
April 15, 1593.
My neighbour upon going to London for his own
business told me of it suddenly after this Sabbath forenoon
sermon that he must go to London, and that early to-
morrow. I am desirous to know how your health is ; how
matters after Parliament go to private folk, namely, as
concerns your cousin Hoby ; and, if vou will, your brother
too. God grant us all faithful hearts in piety and religion,
and wise and discreet in godly practices. If any lack
wisdom, ask of the Lord, and receive, as saith the Apostle
James, his grace with all Christian fortitude to bear up a
good conscience. I haste to the church again. God make
you able to hear public instructions to your great comfort !
I could willingly hear of Barly proceedings ; for your state
of want of health and of money, and some other things
touching you both, gives me no quiet. God bless you both
with good and godly increase in Christ.
Easter, as they say.
Your mother,
A. B.
310 FBANCIS BACON.
App. Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon.
n - 3- (Orig. Lambeth MSS. 649, fol. 100.)
SON, Gorhambury, June 26, 1593.
Goodman Grirmell of Barly came this morning
hither very sad upon a speech he had heard you were
about to let his farm to another, yet hopeth better, both
for your promise and the receipt of some money upon it.
Good son, keep your word advisedly spoken; it is a
Christian credit. Be not suddenly removed nor believe
hastily, but know whom and how. Sure, if that disposition
be found and observed in you once, it will be wrought
upon to your hinderance in estimation and profit, besides
that the grandfather, father, and son have there continued
—I think once upon a sale of wood in your absence I heard
that the Grinnells had dwelled there above a hundred and
twenty years. The man is willing to do as much as
another; the same person that now would I wot not.
What reversion in your absence was backward, and rather
hindered wood sales and other things, he would fain have
had Goodman Fynch with him to you, but I can in no
wise now spare him. Mowing and other businesses come
on ; it is here marvellously hot and dry, and grass burnt
away. God help us ! I pray you comfort Grinnell's
heart and keep just promises justly, and be not credulous
lightly ; and so the Lord bless you and guide you with
His Holy Spirit in His fear ! Be not too frank with that
Papist ; such have seducing spirits to snare the godly. Be
not too open. Sit not up late, nor disorder your body,
that you may have health to do good service when God
shall appoint.
Your careful mother,
A. Bacon.
LADY BACON TO ANTHONY BACON. 311
Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon. App.
II. 4
(Orig. Lambeth MSS. 649, fol. 232.)
Oct. 8, 1593.
I pray God keep you safe from all infection of
sin and plague. It hath pleased the Lord to put me in
remembrance, on both sides of me, by taking two of the
sickness, very necessary persons to me, a widow, specially
the goodman Fynch, whose want I shall have cause to
lament daily. His careful, and skilful, and very trusty
husbanding my special rural businesses every way pro-
cured me, and that even to the very last, much quiet of
mind and leisure to spend my time in godly exercises, both
public and private. I confess I am so heartily sorry for
his death as I cannot choose but mourn my great loss
thereby, and now in my weakish sickly age ; but the Lord
God doth it to humble His servants and teach them to draw
nearer to Him in heart unfeignedly, which grace God grant
me to be effectual in me. I humbly beseech His pity.
Surely, son, one cannot value rightly the singular benefit
of such a one in these dissolute and unfaithful days, but by
wise consideration and good experience. It may be you
know it ere this, by somebody's posting in jollity ; but be
wise and learn in time to your own good estimation, and
be not readily carried either to believe or do upon unthrifts'
pleasing and boasting speeches, and but mockeries, in order
to make their profit of you and to bear out their unknown
to you disordered unruliness. Among their peradventure
pot-fellowship companions there will be craving of you,
and 1 wot not what. Promise not rashly, be hie juris ; you
shall be better esteemed both of wise and unwise before
that punitive experience shall teach you to your cost. It is
312 FRANCIS BACON.
App. said that Thistleworth is visited. Some talk how Fynch
II. 4. should take it there in baiting his horse ; but now he is
gone. So was the will of God, who bless you and send
you much good of all your bodily physic, and make you
strong to do His holy will to your comfort. Be slow in
speaking and promising, lest you repent when it is too late.
Commend me to your brother. Look well to your house
and servants. Fear late and night roads, now towards
winter.
Your sad mother,
A. Bacon.
II. 5, Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon.
(Orig. Lambeth MSS. 650, fol. 223.)
Sept. 7, 1594.
I send you herein Crosby's letter, because you may
better understand by it the words of the Sheriff to himself,
if the State be brought in question. I am sorry of the last
act you so earnestly required, whereto I was hardly drawn,
as you know, for doubt of danger. Doubtless your brother
Mc hath done somewhat in the Exchequer. You thought
it could not come to his ear so soon ; but you see you are
deceived. You shall do well to send for the attorney and
mine — Marsh I do mean. If he should strain upon the
manor to trouble me and my tenants, I have brought myself
in good case by your means. Mr. Crew is not in city I
hear. It is the worse. The Sheriff threateneth to strain
before the next audit, which is before Michaeltide, which
is not three weeks hence at uttermost. You had not need
to slack this, as Brocket's matter is to my hindrance.
Some money I had need of for to have pay the suit by his
cousin. I have not of mine own at this present for my
LADY BACON TO ANTHONY BACON. 313
house and other charges 61. in money : I am ready to App.
borrow 101. of my neighbours if I can. I send purposely. II. 5.
I pray you let me know certainly what way you take to
help it with speed. If it once come in Exchequer suit, one
trouble will follow another. Prevent therefore. I would
fain have gone to London for physic next week, but I
perceive I cannot, being weakish to ride so far, and the way
is but ill for a coach for me, besides the wet weather. I
will desire Mistress Morer to be with me here for that
time. If you prove your new in hand physic, God give you
good of it. My Lord Treasurer about five years past was
greatly pressed by the great vaunt of a sudden start-up
glorious stranger, that would needs cure him of the gout
by boast ; " but," quoth my Lord, " have you cured any ?
Let me know and see them." "Nay," said the fellow,
" but I am sure I can." " Well," concluded my Lord, and
said, " Go, go, and cure first, and then come again, or else
not." I would you had so done. But I pray God bless it
to you, and pray heartily to God for your good recovery
and sound. I am sorry your brother and you charge your-
selves with superfluous horses. The wise will but laugh
at you both; being but trouble, besides your debts, long
journeys, and private persons. Earls be Earls. Your vain
man straitly by his sloth and proud quarrel-picking con-
ditions sets all your house at Kedbourn out of quiet order
by general complaint, as I hear. Lately young Morer was
smote in the eye by him, and I pray God you hear not of
some mischief by him. But my sons have no judgment.
They will have such about them, and in their house, and
will not in time remedy it before it break out in some
manifest token of God's displeasure. I cannot cease to
warn as long as I am a mother that loveth you in the Lord
most dearly, and as Seneca by philosophy only could say,
314 FRANCIS BACON.
App. in warning a friend I would rather lack success (which yet
II. 5. I deprecate) than fidelity.
Your mother,
A. Bacon.
The heavenly preacher saith, Each thing hath his op-
portunity and due season : well may you do as blessed in
the Lord !
II. (J. Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon.
(Orig. Lambeth MSS. 650, fol. 75.)
March, 1595.
One of the prophets, Nahum I think, saith that the
Lord hath His way in the whirlwind, the storm, and tem-
pest, and clouds are the dust of His feet. The wind hath
had great power : it hath thrown off a number of tiles, some
fruit-trees and one or two other pales, posts and all, and
stone pinnacle ; and that I am sorriest for, hath blown up
a sheet of lead on one side of the gate where the dial
stands. But, in my conscience, your French cattle, Jaques
and all, had before loosened it with hacking lead for pellets.
I pray burn this. Let them not see it ; but hurtful they
were. I desire to know how you did and do. I pray be
careful to be well to your own comfort and good desire of
your friends, with avoiding cold-taking continually and
preventing by wariness. Sustain and abstain, and be
cheerful and sleep in due time. I liked nothing my
cousin Kemp's horse I sent you. I will not Graham's.
My time is in God's hand, and not at his appointment:
he ever stood upon a month's warning in my life. Some
unknown trick there is ; it will not serve with me doubt-
less. And shall Elsdon and Brocket thus dally and mock
still ? If God give me strength I will to London for these
two causes, by His merciful guiding. ^ -g
LADY BACON TO ANTHONY BACON. 315
Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon. App.
II. 7.
(Orig. Lambeth MSS. 650, fol. 69.)
March, 1595.
I came yesterday home, I thank God well, though
very weary, by that missing the right way we roved and
made it longer. I found a very sick and sore altered man.
One might by him see what is the change wrought by the
hand of the Highest in correcting. He hath been, as you
know, a strong-armed man, and active in such exercises of
strength as shooting, wrestling, casting the bar ; and whilst
he was with me I never used footstool to horseback ; but
now, God help him, weak in voice, his flesh consumed, his
hands, bones, and sinews ; but his belly up to his very chest
swollen and hoved up, and as hard withal as though one
touched wainscot. I thank the Lord that put me in the
mind to visit him with a Christian desire to comfort his
soul, which I trust Mr. Wilblood's spiritual counsel and
comfort, with hearty prayer, was a mean to it ; God, I
trust, working with his admonitions in the sick body to the
reviving of his soul. He hath his memory perfect, and well
and glad of godly correction. God grant him and myself
also His continual sweet comfort and feeling mercy to the
end ! Amen,
For your going you spoke of to London, and will have
the two beds hence for your servants, let me know in time.
I would you had here tarried till that remove ; you should
have spared much waste expense, which you need not, and
have been better provided. Surely, if you keep all your
Kedbourn household at London, you will undo yourself.
Money is very hard to come by, and sure friends more
hard ; and you shall be still in other folk's danger, and not
316 FRANCIS BACON.
App. your own man, and your debts will pinch you, though you
II. 7. may hope ; but your continual sickliness withal is a great
hindrance ; and if you make show of a housekeeping in the
city, you shall quickly be overcharged, much disquieted,
and brought not over the ears but over shoulders. There-
fore at the beginning be very wary and wise, as it is said.
* Learn to be wise for yourself," one said Consult
the Lord, and do nothing rashly. I could not choose
but advise as heretofore. God guide you to safe age's
rest, and best course.
-*-*- • Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon.
(Orig. Lambeth M8S. 651, fol. 66.)
March 30, 1595.
I mean, if God will, to come hither again before
Easter; but you are going farther hence than my able-
ness will endure to travel, either by water or by land,
and know not when I shall see you any more. I pray
God to go before you, and to be with you ever, to
heal you, to help you, and to counsel and comfort you
continually with His fatherly love in Christ Jesus our
Lord. Amen.
I wrote yesterday to my Lady Walsingham and by her
to the Countess [of Essex]. She took it well, and thanked
me. The Countess is very near her travailing time. I
beseech God of His goodness make her a joyful mother,
with daily increase of God's blessing upon her and hers.
Beware in anywise of the Lord H. [Howard] ! He is a
dangerous intelligencing man ; no doubt a subtle Papist
inwardly, and lieth in wait. Peradventure he hath
some close working with Standen and the Spaniard
LADY BACON TO ANTHONY BACON. 317
[Perez]. Be not too open; he will betray you to divers, App.
and to your Aunt Kussell among others. The Duke H. 8.
had been alive but by his practising and still soliciting
him, to the double undoing. And the Eakl of Arun-
del, avoid his familiarity as you love the truth and
yourself. A very instrument of the Spanish Papists. I
pray you no creature know or see this I write ; "but
burn it with your own hands. And remember; for he,
pretending courtesy, works mischief devilishly. I have
long known him and observed him ; his workings have
been stark naught. Stand at a distance! I am sorry I
cannot speak with Dr. Fletcher for your horse. I would
certainly know. It is not like you will brew hastily. Send
me word what time you guess, because of mine absence if
God let me live. But vessels and carriage must surely be
provided ; for indeed I have none for malt. If you tell
Crosby your mind, I will pay for it when I have received
rents. Gryst is very dear methinks, but he denieth. If
you had taken your physics here in your well-warmed
house, it had been better I think. God be your guide in
all your ways, and take heed of cold-taking upon remove
and after physic. Call for your own necessaries ; you may
forget you, and you smart for it. Use your legs as you
may, daily ; they will else be the feebler, and the sinews
stark and strengthless. It is true, I fear, there is no ordi-
nary preaching ministry at Chelsea. I cannot tell how
to lament it ; but both my sons, methinks, do not care for
it where they dwell. Greater want cannot be. We had
needs watch continually to be well armed against evil days,
imminent to be feared ; for of all sorts we wax worse and
worse. London waxeth straitlaced, urging that slavish
pleasing will not salve his hard-cured sore. Burn this.
The God of mercy, health, and peace compass you about
318 FRANCIS BACON.
App. with His heavenly favour wheresoever. Farewell in Christ
II. 8. now and ever.
Your mother,
A. B.
My grief is great about Essex, and truly I fear lest
opportunity should have given rise to most shameful and
grievous adultery and the midst of evils and (Here
follow five words much blotted and very indistinct.)
II. 9. Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon.
(Orig. Lambeth MBS. 657, fol. 54.)
Gorhambuiy, April 1, 1595.
I send between your brother and you the first flight
of my dove-house : the Lord be thanked for all : ij dozen
andiiij pigeons, xij to you, and xvj to your brother, because
he was wont to love them better than you from a boy.
Marvellous hard, snowy, haily, and strong windy weather
here, and great scarcity. I have had more toil in my body
few days since I came last hither than in above twice as
long at London. I wish myself there again, and perad-
venture, if God will, I will before Easter as now minded.
I am glad your beer was sent so soon. To-day, upon occa-
sion of a maid sending to Kedborn, but none of my servants,
I hear Mistress Eead and Henry are malcontent for certain
implements ; specially, as they say, in the best reserved
chamber for your friends, noble or not noble, a carpet, and
other things filled with birds, hunting or hawks or dogs.
Mr. Lawson was the nobleman lodged there, I ween ; and
like enough, for he is subtle, vainglorious, and makes you
bleared still to ensure all, and pay for all ; and further, as
was reported, that Norris was discontented for your re-
quiring to Mr. Eead, he not made privy before. Thus they
LADY BACON TO ANTHONY BACON. 319
talk, and something else, now you are gone ; and one that App.
tames the bit is become a tippler and will be overseen with II. 9.
drink, but an ill servant in your house, the fruit of idleness.
Large was here this day. I told him it was honesty and
Christian duty to dwell at home with his wife. I would, I
said, be loth that my son should bear the blame of his
being an ill husband, and leave his first calling to labour,
for to leave over to be a good thriving fellow. I used him
so still, though other civil service, washing among. It is
commonly spoken that Fynch of Woodend and Guaram
are joint companions in all ill fellowship. Use them there-
after, and take no luck by such. You and your brother
have taken much discredit by not judging wisely and
rightly of those ; yea, both of you, over-credit to your
willing hinderance. I pray the Lord give you both good
understanding by His word and spirit, and health to serve
Him in truth, to your good estimation, with increase of His
blessed favour. Let not your men be privy hereof. As
your good mother, I thus certify. Think of it.
Your mother,
A. B.
Use your legs betimes, for fear of losing by disuse.
Good Eolf was here to-day to speak with me, and very
sadly said thus to me, that he had before now, and presently
again did hear that his farm should be let from him ;
whereupon his ancient wife and he both were much grieved.
I told him I never heard any tittle of it, and thought it
was nothing ; so it will be worse, I wis, for you to make a
change for Humphrey. He hopes you will at least let him
tarry iij years longer after his present state. Finished
scamblers are easily had everywhere, but discreet, honest,
320 FRANCIS BACON.
App. sufficient farmers would be continued ; they serve the
II. 9. country and countenance their landlord indeed. Guaram
will prove stark naught if you suffer him to let the ground
from Pleatah farm ; you are marvellously abused by him
and misled ; some in my house are too often with him. I
will look better to them for it. Yet by them I hear of
these his naughty doings, both for himself and you. God
be with you, and make you able to every good duty, and
guide you all ways to your comfort. God knows when I
shall see you. I am therefore more careful to advertise
you to beware. Remember Groome I pray you. Brocket
will make jest of us both. Keep not superfluous servants
to mar them with idleness and undo you. Let Large live
at home ; best for him, a married man. Nobody see this,
but burn it, or send it back ; and so commend you to the
Lord.
II. 10. Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon.
(Orig. Lambeth MSS. 651, fol. 65.)
SON, April 1, 1595.
Woodward told me you required a hogshead of beer.
I will, if it please God I come well and in time home to-
morrow, I will send you one by the cart of my best ordi-
nary beer ; the rest remaining is March. I pray you let
me have another hogshead for it. I shall lack else ; and
let one be ready with a car, because of double jumbling.
I think, well used, you may drink it after five days' settling
at least ; but that, as you see, being above iiij months old,
after it is broached it will not last above a fortnight because
of turning.
This bearer I have newly taken into my house.
A. B.
LADY BACON TO ANTHONY BACON. 321
Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon. App.
(Orig. Lambeth MSS. 657, fol. 64.)
Gorhambury, April 3, 1595.
I thank you for your horses. I send you a hogs-
head of November beer, methinks good, and a barrel also
of the same brewing which I did cause the brewer then to
tun of the first tap of the same brewing, and so strong,
because at that time it was thought you would come to
Kedburn, and I meant it to you : it is so strong as I would
not drink ordinarily to my meals, but do you use it to your
most good ; in any wise when these two vessels be empty
let them be returned by the cart. I cannot want [do
without] them indeed, and they be strong, besides divers
other vessels of mine sent to your sundry places. I did at
one time send six together, if not seven, to Kedburn, and I
paid vii s. for heading and hooping and seasoning of them ;
howsoever they make you pay afterward. I did so in
truth. I pray remember Groom's ill handling, and curb it
well for all his naughty and tippling mates. I wrong my
men, living well and Christianly in then honest vocation,
to suffer them to be ill entreated and myself contemned ;
I mean not so. Crosby purposeth to be with you on Mon-
day if God will, and your corn ready.
Your mother,
A. B.
Yesterday, seeing my sister Eussell at the Blackfriars
house, after the sermon, I found her very much grieved,
and her words charging my Lord Treasurer of very unkind
dealing in a matter very chargeable to [her], and a slight
end procured, she said to her hurt, with tears on account of
him. I saw her so lamenting, I said I would write to Sir
Y
322 FRANCIS BACON.
App. Kobert Cecil. " No, no," said she, "it is too late ; lie hath
II. 11. marred all, and that against my counsel's liking at all."
But [do] not you nor your brother intermeddle in it nor be
a knowing of it. I pray you show your brother this, and
let him not take knowledge lest you both set on work ;
and for that Howaed, once again be very ware as of a
subtle serpent. Burn all, for fear of the servants. Be
not hasty to remove. Your drink well used, and not set
abroach all at once, above the bung first, then by degrees
lower once or twice, will be better and last long, saith the
brewer. York House lease is not here, as I said to my
cousin Kemp. Mr. Bayley hath seen every place pur-
posely to satisfy my Lord Keeper. I do not remember
that ever I saw any lease from the Bishop sealed, but by
parley and trust betwixt both. Farewell. The brewer,
who is now here, saith that your beer now sent, well
handled, will drink well a month's space. Let not your
servants beguile you secretly or openly. Use your legs in
any wise and daily, lest they fail you when you would ;
neglect not in time, and serve the Lord with all your
heart.
II. 12. Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon.
(Orig. Lambeth MSS. 651, fol. 102.)
May, 1595.
Grace, and the love of the Lord in Christ. — Your
beer, well handled I trust, is meant to be sent to-morrow
early. The brewer hath been careful himself. I had
no brewing, I dare say these twelve months, more dili-
gently attended upon of my servants ; if the carriers do
their part, and all were well watched and looked to in the
cellar, it is thought for your own special use it will last
till nigh Michaeltide, both for quantity and quality. As
LADY BACON TO ANTHONY BACON. 323
you appointed it is brewed, 8 hogsheads in all, and of the App.
chiefest beer 2 hogsheads, marked with an S on each side II. 12.
of the wheel mark ; the third, somewhat less strong, being
a second, is marked, likewise with chalk, with a smaller
wheel mark, and one only S, by it to know it rightly. All
the other five alike. God give you the right use of all
His gifts to God's glory and your own farther advancement
and true comfort.
Therowelled horse I had no mind to indeed, nor the
horse Master Spencer rode on. Lawson thrust in here his
and others smuttled and spoiled beast. The horse is full
of windgalls, a token of very spoiling in riding and dress-
ing. Grass is here yet but poor and scant, and I must
turn out shortly my two service geldings of necessity. I
will not change my own faulty husband's horse for yours,
both heavy and stumbling, and never broken for such a
toward horse when you first had him. Diverse of my folk
now sickly. God increase your health I pray God, and
be merciful to us both.
I thank you for your comely mastiff; it is supposed he
will hunt after sheep ; he is too old ; I durst not prove
him yet.
Your mother,
A. Bacon.
Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon. jj ^3
(Orig. Lambeth MSS. 657, fol. 144.)
SON, 3 June, 1595.
You had a mind to have the long carpet and the
ancient learned philosopher's picture from hence : but,
indeed, I had no mind thereto, yet have I sent them, very
carefully bestowed and laid in a hamper for safety in
carriage.
y 2
324 FKANCIS BACON.
App. For the carpet, being without gold, you shall not I
II. 13. think have the like at this time in London, for the right,
and not painted, colours ; which is too common in this
age in more things than carpets, and such it is for all not
of late bought worth you to buy. Such implements as
your father left I have very diligent locked in and kept.
You have now bared this house of all the best ; a wife
would have well regarded such things, but now they shall
serve for use of gaming or tippling upon the table of every
common person, your own men as well as others, and so
be spoiled as at Kedburn. I would think that John, your
tailor, should be fittest to look well to your furniture.
God, I humbly beseech Him, increase in you daily spiritual
store, and also the comfort of bodily health and other
comforts of this life to His own good pleasure, to whose
fatherly love in Christ I commend you.
I wish the hamper were not opened till yourself were at
Chelsea, to see it done before you ; for the pictures are
put orderly within the carpet. You have one long carpet
already. I cannot think what use this should be. It will
be an occasion of mockery that you should have a great
chamber, called and carpeted. What I say is not foolish.
Draw no charge till God better enable you ; but observe
narrowly both for your health and purse. Surely your
vi s beer is no ordinary drink for your house no time of
the year specially, and usually too strong for you ; but
Podagra will bestir him: Seeing God hath given you
some good abilities, I would, I trow, watch over my diet
and everything to put them in use by health to God's
glory and your own more credit.
If her Majesty have resolved upon the negative for
your brother, as I hear, truly, save for the brust a little,
I am glad of it. God, in His time, hath better in store I
LADY BACON TO ANTHONY BACON. 325
»
trust. For, considering his kind of health and what App.
cumber pertains to that office, it is best for him I hope. II. 13.
Let us all pray the Lord we make us to profit by His
fatherly correction ; doubtless it [is] His hand, and all for
the best, and love to His children that will seek Him first,
and depend upon His goodness. Godly and wisely love
ye like brethren, whatsoever [happen], and be of good
courage in the Lord with good hope.
Farewell ! take diligent heed of your health ; be master
of yourself and act most prudently.
Your mother,
A. Bacon, Widow.
Do not readily relinquish or grant your town house to
any one.
Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon. H # \^
(Orig. Lambeth MSS. 657, fol. 203.)
Gorhambmy, July 30, 1595.
I most humbly thank God and much rejoiced when
I heard by Crosby you do more exercise your body and
your legs, and that in your course you go to the Earl
yourself at occasions ; surely soon, by the grace of God,
you shall find great help by bodily exercise in season, and
much refreshing both to body and mind, and be more
accepted of. I would advise you went sometimes to the
French church, and have there, and bash not your neces-
saries for warmth to hear the public preaching of the word
of God, as it is His own ordinance, and, armed so with
prayer for understanding, it maketh the good hearers
wise to God, and enables them to discern how to walk in
their worldly vocation, to please God, and to be accepted
of man, indeed, which God grant to you both.
326 FRANCIS BACON.
App. Truly, son, the miller's last coming to you was but of a
II. 14. craft to colour his halting touching his secret consenting
to steal, as cause hath been given to suspect him, not lately
alone, but long : he waxeth a subtle fellow, and hath a
cunning head of his own, now he goeth with meal to
London and to some other places hereabout, and will mar
the mill, I doubt, by his flitting. Wherefore should he have
a net ? himself confessed about the scouring of the mill,
but lately, that there was store of trout, and now almost
none, because Bun and others did lately rob, as you know.
I took the miller's part in defending his right dealing, and
so the justices have bound Bun to good a-bearing till next
sessions ; but that same Bun said earnestly that the miller
could join and bear with some, and he could abide by it,
and so hath Mr. Coltman said when I have blamed him
but for angling. Certainly, son, where he bringeth you,
though I would they were more for you, he carrieth to
Mr. Preston and others twice as many, but say yet not so
to him. I mean to take his net from him, he is waxen so
heady, new-fangled, that the mill goeth to wreck, and
customers begin to mislike and to forsake it, which will
hinder our living and discontinue it. I will cause Hum-
phrey to be paid as you order with Crosby; surely set
aside my poor mortmain, but 200?., or little above, a small
portion for my continuance. I thank the Lord for all :
spending money goeth but from hand to mouth, as they
say, with me. I gave your brother at twice 25?. for his
paling, the rather to cheer him since he had nothing of
me. Crosby told me he looked very ill ; he thought he
taketh still inward grief; I fear it may hinder his health
hereafter. Counsel to be godly wise first, and wise for him-
self too, and both of you look to your expenses in time,
and oversee those you trust how trustify, for I tell you
LADY BACON TO ANTHONY BACON. 327
plainly it hath been long commonly observed that both App.
your servants are full of money. II. 14.
My Lord Chief Baron's marriage with your sister I
never [had] any inkling of before Crosby told. I pray at
your leisure write to me some circumstance of the manner,
and God bless it. I send Winter purposely, because you
should not send your boy. Gorhambury, penultima of
July.
Your mother,
A. B.
Nobody but yourself see my letters, I pray you.
After harvest some venison would do well here. God
bless you daily with good increase.
Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon. II. 15.
(Orig. Lambeth MSS. 651, fol. 211.)
7 of Aug. 1595.
For your bottles I thank you. The malmsey I
tasted a little ; very good. Humphrey shall, God willing,
be answered ; but with a sight of his reckoning he asketh
for 20 neats' tongues at once, not very seldom neither ;
for Mr. Barber Crosby will go within these 3 days to
keep your credit with him, and such is a very Christian
duty* Owe nothing to any, saith the Lord in His word,
but to love one another. I would I were able to help you
both out of debt ; but set apart my poor mortmain, which
I certainly have vowed for any acknowledgments to God,
I am not worth one 1001. Yea and specially you have
spent me quick ; nothing can therefore remain after I am
dead. God bless you ! I had not sent now but for this
cause, by. your message by Wynter. The two countess
sisters will neighbour you ; both ladies that fear God and
328 FRANCIS BACON.
App. love His word; indeed zealously, specially the younger
II. 15. sister. Yet upon advice and some experience I would
earnestly counsel you to be wary and circumspect, and not
to be too open nor willing to prolong speech with the
Countess of Warwick. She, after her father's fashion,
will search and sound and lay up with diligence, marking
things which seem not courtly, and she is near the Queen,
and follows her father's example too much in that. This
is the cause of my now writing. Another matter is, that
now the marriage of your sister is well, by God's appoint-
ment, I trust [you] use not such broad language upon
mislike of unkindness. Your men and others, how per-
adventure you mark not, may hurt you very much. Surely
if such phrases as you wrote in your letter or such deriding
should come to his ear, it would be very hurtful to you
more than one way, which you need not, being never
abroad amongst them. Your sister's nature is but unkind,
and at that time of her marriage could not herself think
of such things. I pray hearken to him with all courtesy ;
he is of marvellous good estimation for his religious mind
in following his law-calling uprightly ; beware, therefore,
in words and deeds and speeches at table before him.
There is scarce any fidelity in servants. I write more
hereof, because others write your letters and not yourself.
I am sorry your brother with inward secret grief hin-
dereth his health. Everybody saith he looketh thin and
pale. Let him look to God, and confer with Him in godly
exercise of hearing and reading, and continue to be noted
to take care : I had rather ye both, with God's blessed
favour, had very good healths and were well out of debt,
than any office. Yet, though the Earl showed great affec-
tion, he marred all with violent courses. I jpray God
increase His fear in his heart and a hatred of sin ; indeed,
LADY BACON TO ANTHONY BACON. 329
halting before the Lord and backsliding are very pernicious. App.
I am heartily sorry to hear how he [the Earl of Essex] II. 15.
sweareth and gameth unreasonably. God cannot like it.
I pray show your brother this letter, but to no creature
else. Kemember me and yourself.
Your mother,
A. B.
Gorhambury, 5th August, '95.
With a humble heart before God, let your brother be
of good cheer. Alas ! what excess of bucks at Gray's Inn,
and to feast it on the Sabbath. God forgive and have
mercy upon England !
Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon. II. 16.
(Orig. Lambeth MSS. 652, fol. 86.)
Gorhambury, Oct. 2], 1595.
Since it so pleaseth God, comfort your brother
kindly and Christianly, and let me, mother, and you, both
my sons, look up to the correcting hand of God in your
wants every way, with humble hearts before Him, and with
comfort, and procure your health by good means carefully.
If I did not warily sustain and abstain, I should live in con-
tinual pain pitifully. For set sickness, to speak of, I have
not now, I thank God, but very cumbersome troublous acci-
dents to keep me to exercise mortification. Kemember,
her Majesty is, they say, now at Bichmond. God preserve
her from all evil, and rule her heart to the zealous setting
forth of His glory ! Want of this zeal in all degrees is the
very ground of our honest trouble. We have all dallied
with the Lord, who will not ever suffer Himself to be
mocked. I send you xij pigeons, my last flight, and one
330 FRANCIS BACON.
\
App. ringdove beside, and a black coney taken by John Knight
II. 16. this day, and pigeons, too, to-day. Lawrence can tell you
my Lady Stafford's speech was of you, as she hath heard
from her Majesty, marvelling you came not to see her in
so long space. Consider 1 well and wisely ; for I sent him
to her to know of her Majesty's good estate to Nonsuch,
according to my duty, and to Mr. Doctor Smith. He came
not home by London, as I bade him : do what you may for
health, piously and diligently, out of question. Where you
be you must needs disorder your time of diet and quiet ;
want of which will still keep you in lame and uncomfort-
able. I hear the Lord Howard is too often with you. He
is subtilly deceitful. Beware ! beware ! Burn this. The
Lord of heaven bless you from heaven, in Christ our Lord
and hope.
Your mother,
A. Bacon.
Burn, I pray, but read well first.
H. 17, Lady Bacon to Anthony Bacon.
(Orig. Lambeth MSS. 657, fol. 113.)
Gorhambmy, June 15, 1596.
By the good hand of the Lord J am come well to
Gorhambmy, where I find my household well and in good
order. I thank Cod my sister my Lady Russell's coach is
far easier than either of yours, and her man, a comely man
withal, did it with care and very well ; and your brother's
footman did very diligently go by me. Here be no straw-
berries nor fish to send ; and for beer, son, I have none
ordinary under five weeks, at least above a month, brewed
the first week of May, which now carried, after so long
settling and in the heat of summer, must needs be spoiled,
LADY BACON TO ANTHONY BACON. 331
which were great pity this dearth time. Truly, son, as yet App.
I know not when to brew, by my provision not this ij weeks II. 17.
at least, as well as for vessels. I have tierce of last March
beer ; but surely, being yet unripe and carried this heat, it
will be utterly marred. Paying Mr. Moore's bill for my
physic, I asked him whether you did owe anything for
physic? He said he had not reckoned with you since
Michaelmas last. Alas ! why so long, say I ? I think I
said further it can be muted, for he hath his confections
from strangers ; and to tell you truly, I bade him secretly
send his bill, which he seemed loth but at my pressiug,
when I saw it came to above xv 1. or xvj I. If it had been
but vij or viij, I would have made some shift to pay. I told
him I would say nothing to you because he was so un-
willing. It may be he would take half willingly, because
" ready money made always a cunning apothecary," said
covetous Morgan, as his proverb. For Lange, I cannot tell
what you would have me do for him : he finds I do not
recompense evil with evil. I have at times given him, he
knoweth ; but he is but whining, and a companion too much
with naughty G-oodrain, though not at Redborn, but to his
hurt. Let him ply his labour, in God's name, and not a
busybody and secret quarrel-picker, as he is partly sus-
pected. I use charity to him, though I like not his crafty
soothing nature. With thanks for your horse J. C. . . . th
heed all your infirmities to your comfort. Be zealous over
your health. Hours sink away unseasonably. Farewell.
Your mother,
A. Bacon.
332 FKANCIS BACON.
App. No. III.
in.
Lady Anne Bacon, Jun., to her brothers Francis
and Anthony Bacon.
(Orig. Lambeth MSS. 648, fol. 10.)
GOOD BkOTHEKS, Guilford, 16th March, 1592.
Being very desirous to see you both at Redgrave,
and yet loth to put you to that pain which might by my
desire impair your healths by entreating your repair into
this country, yet can I not refrain, upon this occasion offered
of the marriage of my daughter, heartily to pray you both
to bestow your travels to Bedgrave to the same, where, if
it shall please God so to dispose of your business and healths
as I may see you, I shall think myself greatly beholden to
you, and the feast greatly honoured by your presence. I
hope also it will be comfortable to you, both in rejoicing
with my husband and me in the action itself, and also in
the intercourse and meeting of many good friends which
you there shall see and meet with, especially your brother
Anthony, having been so long absent from us all, and by
that means have not seen sundry of those good friends of
yours which I hope you shall there see. The day is ap-
pointed to be on the Thursday, the 6th of April ; and even
so, with my very hearty commendations to you both, and
wishing you all good as to myself, I cease to trouble you.
Your very loving sister,
Anne Bacon.
HIS LETTEKS. 333
No. IV. App.
IV. 1.
Francis Bacon to Thomas Phillips.
(Orig. in State Paper Office.)
Sir,
I congratulate your return, hearing that all is passed
on your word. Your Mercury is returned, whose return
alarmed us upon some great matter which I fear he will
not satisfy. News of his coming came before his own letter,
and to other than to his proper street, which maketh me
desirous to satisfy or to solve. My Lord hath required him
to repair to me, which, upon his Lordship's and my own
letter received, I doubt not but he will with all speed per-
form, when I pray you to meet him if you may, that, laying
our heads together, we may maintain his credit, satisfy my
Lord's expectations, and procure some good fruit. I pray
thee rather spare not your travail, because I think the
Queen is already party to the advertisement of his coming
over, and, in some, suspect, which you may not disclose to
him. So I wish you as myself, this 15th of September,
1592.
Your ever assured,
Fr. Bacon.
Francis Bacon to Thomas Phillips. IY. 2.
(Orig. in State Paper Office.)
Me. Phillips, [1593.]
I send you the copy of my letter to the Earl touching
the matter between us proposed. You may perceive what
expectation and conceit I thought good to imprint into my
Lord, both of yourself and of this particular service. And
334 FRANCIS BACON.
Apr as that which is in general touching yourself I know you
IV. 2. are very able to make good, so in this beginning of intelli-
gence I pray spare no care to conduct the matter to sort
to good effect. The more plainly and frankly you shall
deal with my Lord, not only in disclosing particulars, but
in giving him caveats and admonishing him of any error
which in this action he may commit (such is his Lordship's
nature), the better he will take it. I send you also his
letter, which appointeth this afternoon for your repair to
him, which I pray, if you can, perform ; although, if you
are not fully resolved of any circumstance, you may take
a second day for the rest, and show his Lordship the party's
letter. If your business suffer you not to attend their Lord-
ships to-day, then excuse it by two or three words in writing
to his Lordship, and offer another time.
In haste, your ever assured,
Fk. Bacon.
Whereas I mention in my letter an intelligence standing
in Spain of my brothers, I pray take no knowledge at all
thereof.
IV. 3, Fkancis Bacon to Thomas Phillips.
(Orig. State Paper Office.)
Me. Phillips, [1593.]
I have excused myself of this progress, if that be
to excuse to take liberty where it is not given. Being now
at Twickenham, I am desirous of your company. You may
stay as long and as little while as you will ; the longer the
better welcome. Otia colligunt mentem f And, indeed, I
would be the wiser by you in many things, for that I call
to confer with a man of your fulness. In sadness come, as
HIS LETTERS. 335
yon are an honest man. So I wish you all good. From App.
Twickenham Park this 14th of August. IV. 3.
Yours, ever assured,
Fe. Bacon.
Francis Bacon to his aunt Cooke. iy. 4.
(Orig. at Lambeth Palace, 649, p. 237.)
AUNT, Windsor Castle, 29 Oct. 1593.
I had spoken a good while since with my Lord-
Treasurer, whose Lordship took pains to peruse the will
which I had with me, and in conversation was of opinion
that, if the younger children wanted reasonable allowance,
it should be supplied, and the other parties to be stored for
their advancement : of the same mind I ever was and am,
and there is nothing in my cousin Morise's note against.
Accordingly I have enclosed a note, of a proportion which
I think you cannot dislike, and which I pray communicate
with my cousin Morise and the rest of the executors. For
my part, I wish you as a kind alliance. But the question
is not between you and me, but between your profit and
my trust. I purpose as soon as I can conveniently to put
the money I have into some other hands, lest you think
the case of the money prevaileth with me ; but I will
endure in a good cause, and wish I you right well.
In haste, your loving nephew,
Fra. Bacon.
Francis Bacon to Sir Thomas Coningsby. iy. 5.
(Orig. at Lambeth Palace, vol. 649, p. 236.)
My very good Cousin, [Oct. 1593.]
Whereas this gentleman, Mr. Nicholas Trot, one to
whom, besides familiar acquaintance, I am much beholden,
336 FRANCIS BACON.
App. hath conveyed unto him for his money a lease of the pre-
IV. 5. bend of Withington, under the title of Mr. Heyghton, that
was sometimes of the counsel of the Marches, a man not
like to have been overreached in his bargains, against the
which one Wallwyne claimeth by a former deed of gift,
supposed to be forged and appearing to be fraudulent,
because the same party undertook afterwards to sell it, and
his interest hath been quietly missed by twenty years*
space, I am earnestly to recommend the assistance of this
my friend, according to the equity of the cause, to your
good favour, whereof there will be the more need, both
because he is a stranger in the country, and because the
adverse party, as I understand, hath used force about the
possession; and therefore, good cousin, let him use your
experience and careful countenance for direction and help,
according to that good affection which I persuade myself
you bear me, and which I am ready to answer in all kind-
ness. And so I wish you as
Your assured loving cousin,
Fk. Bacon, &c.
IV. 6. Francis Bacon to Sir Francis Allen.
(Orig. at Lambeth Palace, 649, 309.)
SlE, Edborne, this 25th of December, 1593.
I accept with all kindness and thanks possible the
demonstrations you make from time to time of a sincere
affection and singular respect towards me, namely, in your
last letter to myself, and approve wholly yours to my
brother, even to the least and last tittle thereof, wishing as
a brother, for his own sake, that he had had but half as
good a ground and reason for his demand as you have for
HIS LETTERS. 337
your answer. Protesting unto you with a sincerity very App.
present to the merit of your own touching me without IV. 6.
prejudice, that the scanty link of German consanguinity
should never have prevailed so far with me as to have once
moved me to have given my clear consent to my brother
for such his request or recommendation. Touching your
particular business, I will not fail, by God's grace, in my
next to our most honourable Earl, to perform my utter-
most, and will not forget to acknowledge to our good friend
Mr. Standen, that whatsoever friendly office he shall have
rendered by his assistance to do to you, that same is done
to myself. And so, with most hearty wishes of your health
and contentment, I commit you to the protection of the
Almighty, remaining always inviolably
Your most entire friend and servant,
F. B,
Francis Bacos to Sir Francis Allen. IV. 7.
(Orig. at Lambeth Palace, 64:9, 310.)
SlK FKANCIS ALLEN, Hampton Court, Dec. 20, 1593.
I do so much favour this gentleman, Mr. Garret,
who from my praise entered a course of following the
wars, which hath succeeded unto him as to his good com-
mendations, so yet nevertheless not hitherto to his settling
in any place answerable to his desert and profession. In
regard whereof, understanding of the nomination and ap-
pearance of employment in Ireland, he conceiveth it will
be some establishment to him if he may receive your
favour, being by you accepted in the place of your lieute-
nant, your own virtue and reputation answered, and the
uncertainty of the French employment. Of his proof and
338 FRANCIS BACON.
A pp. sufficiency to serve I write the less because I take it to be
IV. 7. well known to yourself, but for my particular I do assure
you I can hardly imagine a matter wherein you shall more
effectually tie me unto you than in this. I wished him to
use me but as a mean of my brother's commendation,
which I esteemed to be of extraordinary weight with you.
But because this was the readier and that the entireness
between my brother and myself is well known to you, he
desired to begin with this. Thus I wish you all protection.
Yours in unfeigned good affection,
Fe. Bacon.
I was sorry to hear from Mr. Anthony Standen so
sharply and unseasonably you were afflicted by the gout.
But you have of him a careful solicitor, and if I can come
in to him with any good endeavour of mine you may reckon
of it,
iy g. Francis Bacon to the Masters of Bequests.
(Orig. in the Eecord Office.)
[? 1593.]
After my hearty commendations. At the request
of this bearer, Mr. Edward Cottwin, an ancient follower
and well-wilier to my name and family, I have considered
of a suit of his depending before you for the recovery
of certain rents due unto him for divers years past,
and detained from him only upon a strained construction
of extreme law. And finding the honesty of the man
and the equity of his cause to deserve favour, considering
that the main matter (which is the sum in demand) is
freely acknowledged, I could do no less than recommend
him unto your good discretions, desiring you in regard of
his great loss and troubles to afford him, that which you
HIS LETTERS. 339
deny to no man, lawful favour and expedition, which I Apr
shall be always ready thankfully to acknowledge by such IV. 8.
friendly offices as shall fall within my compass. And so I
leave you to God's safe tuition.
Besting your very loving friend,
Fk. Bacon.
Francis Bacon to Mr. Skinner. IV. 9.
(Orig. at Lambeth Palace, 650, 143.)
SlR, July 29, 1594.
I hope you will not find it strange nor amiss if the
confidence I have in your kind affection makes me so bold
as most earnestly to request you to pleasure me with the
loan of five hundred pounds for a year. My occasion to
employ the same presently is important. My meaning
(though I say it myself) is entirely, as it ought to be, to
satisfy you without fail at the day, and your assurance
shall be my brother A. Bacon's and my own bond.
The occasion, my good cousin, and my meaning being
by you believed, as I assure myself they shall and most
heartily pray they may you, I cannot doubt of the friendly
assistance of my request as a form of assurance, but look
for such a special favour at your hands, which I shall be
always ready and glad to acknowledge when and wherein
soever it shall please you to employ my true good will and
sincere affection. And so, desiring your answer, which 1
hope shall be no less to my contentment than my resolu-
tion of full acknowledgment to yours, I commit you to
the protection of the Almighty,
And rest your entire loving cousin to use,
F. B.
z 2
340 FRANCIS BACON.
App. Francis Bacon to Mr. Young.
* * • (Orig. at Lambeth Palace, 650, 186.)
ME. YOUNG, Gray's Inn, Sept. 2, 1594.
I shall desire your friendly pains in the repairing
and punishing of an outrage offered by one Thomas Lewys,
dwelling near Whiteehapel, upon a French gentleman of
very good quality and honourable, and my special acquaint-
ance, and upon his company, not in terms alone, but in
very furious assailing them. My request to you is the
rather for the good report of our nation, whither this gen-
tleman is come only for his own satisfaction and experience,
that he may have experience of the good policy amongst
us in correcting such insolences, specially upon strangers of
his respect. And therefore desire you so great an abuse
may be examined and corrected. And so in haste I wish
you very well.
Your very loving friend,
Fr. Bacon.
The French gentleman's name is Mr. Corugues, son
to the principal treasurer of Guienne, and this bearer shall
relate to you the particularities of the abuse.
jy -ji Francis Bacon to Anthony Bacon.
(Orig. at Lambeth Palace, 650, 227.)
BROTHER, Gray's Inn, Dec. 10, 1594.
I moved you to join with me in security for 500?.,
which I did purpose then decidedly to have taken up ;
300?. odd secure, and 200?. by way of forbearance, both to
the satisfaction of Peter Yan, our servant. I thank you,
you assented. I have now agreed with Peter for the taking
HIS LETTERS. 341
up of the whole of one man's, according to which I send App.
you the bonds and securities. You shall find the bond to IV. 11.
be of 6001., which is one hundred more than it was at first.
The jewel cost 500?. and odd, as shall appear to you by my
bond. Next I send you immediately for use an agreement,
so to free you of one hundred, for which you stand bound
to Mr. Willis Fleetwood. So in haste I commend you to
God's good preservation.
Your entire loving brother,
Fr. Bacon.
Francis Bacon to Anthony Bacon. IV. 12.
(Orig. at Lambeth Palace, 650, 237.)
Good Brother, [Dec. 1594.]
If you leave the matter to me, I am like both to
'deal with my Lord of Essex in it, attending the first occa-
sion, and to fortify it otherwise, as I will hereafter give you
account. And where I doubt, acquaint you in particular
beforehand. For Mr. Sugden, I had rather have brought
payment than allegation. I ever doubted the resting upon
[him] would come to nothing, and I desire you to do as you
wish ; and yet I will endeavour to speed my part never-
theless, and the whole if I can.
Mr. Trott I have desired to be here after to-morrow
to see her. He taketh this his second chance. I desired
Dr. Hammond to visit you from me, whom I was glad to
have here, he being a physician, and my complaint being
want of digestion.
I hope by this Sir Ant. Perez has seen the Queen dance.
That is not it, but her distraction of body to be fresh and
good, I do pray God both subjects and strangers may long
342 FRANCIS BACON.
App. be witnesses of. I would be sorry the bride and bride-
IV. 12. groom should be as the weather hath fallen out : thus, it
goes to bed fan, and rises lowering. Thus I commend you
to God's best preservation.
Your entire loving brother,
Fr. Bacon.
jy j3 ' Francis Bacon to the Earl of Salisbury.
(Orig. in State Paper Office.)
IT MAY PLEASE YOUR IjOKDSHIP, [1607.]
I send the two bills according to your Lordship's
pleasure signified to me, hoping your Lordship will pardon
me that they come not precisely at the hour. The book
is long and full of difficulty ; and a business such as this is,
I do not much trust to servants or precedents. I found it
more convenient to put one payment more upon the Privy
Seal than your Lordship directed, and to take it from the
rent; because else, the grant must have been for ten
years and a half, which is not formal. So I most humbly
leave,
And rest your Lordship's most humble and bounden,
F. Bacon.
jy 24 Francis Bacon to the Earl of Salisbury.
(Orig. in the State Paper Office.)
IT MAY PLEASE YOUR LOEDSHIP, 28th October, 1608.
According to your Lordship's warrant of the 15th
of June last I made a book ready for his Majesty's signa-
ture to the use of Mrs. Ellis of the benefit of an extent of
the lands and goods of Richard Yonge her father, extended
for a debt of 3000/. upon recognizances ; which book is
HIS LETTEKS. 343
since past the Great Seal. And now having received order App.
from your Lordship for amendment of the defects in that IV. 14.
patent, I find the case to be thus, — That she has since dis-
covered two other debts of record, the one of 85111. 19s. 4:d.,
the other of 2100/., remaining upon account in the Pipe
Office. And though it be true that she shall reap no
benefit by the former grant, except these debts be likewise
released, on regard the King may come upon the said lands
and goods for these debts, — and it may be the meaning was
in Queen Elizabeth to free and acquit Mr. Yonge of all
debts ; for else Quid te exenipta juvat spinis depluribus una ?
— yet do I not see how I may pass the book again, with a
release of these two debts, without your Lordship's further
warrant, which I humbly submit to your honourable consi-
deration.
Your Lordship's most humble and bounden,
Fk. Bacon.
Francis Bacon to the Earl of Salisbury. IV. 15.
(Orig. in the State Paper Office.)
Gray's Inn, the 6th of July, 1609.
It may please your Lordship,
The assurance which by your Lordship's directions
was to be passed to his Majesty by Richard Forebenche,
one of the yeomen of the guard of Potter's Park, within
the parish of Chertsey, in the county of Surrey, is tho-
roughly perfected ; so if your Lordship so please he may
receive the money your Lordship agreed to pay for it.
Your Lordship's most humble and bounden,
Fs. Bacon.
344 FRANCIS BACON.
App. Francis Bacon to the Earl of Salisbury.
IV. 16.
(Orig. in the State Paper Office.)
It may please youk good Lordship,
Though Mr. Chancellor and we rested upon the old
proclamation which Mr. Attorney brought forth, for matter
of transportation of gold and silver, yet because I could not
tell whither it were that your Lordship looked for from us,
and because if you should be of other opinion things might
be in readiness, I send your Lordship a draught of a new
proclamation, wherein I have likewise touched the point of
change in that manner as was most agreeable to that I
conceived of your intent ; the Frenchman, after I had given
him a day, which was the morrow after your Lordship's
departure, never attended nor called upon the matter since.
Sir Henry Nevill has sent up a solicitor of the cause, to
whom I perceive by Mr. Calvert your Lordship is pleased
a copy of his answer when it shall be taken may be de-
livered. So, praying for your good health and happiness, I
humbly take my leave from Gray's Inn, this 10th of
August, 1609.
Your Lordship's most humble and bounden,
Fs. Bacon.
IV. 17 Francis Bacon to the Earl of Salisbury.
(Orig. in State Paper Office.)
Gray's Inn, the 13th of Sept. 1609.
It may please your Lordship,
According to your Lordship's letter, I send an
abstract of the bonds and conditions touching the depopu-
lation, whereby it will appear unto your Lordship that all
HIS LETTERS. 345
the articles and branches of the condition consist only of App.
matter of reformation in the country, and not of any benefit IV. 17.
to the King, otherwise than that the forfeiture in point of
law belongeth to his Majesty ; but then the reformation is
at large. So I very humbly take my leave.
Your Lordship's most humble and bounden,
Fs. Bacon.
Francis Bacon to Sir Julius Caesar. IV, 18.
(Orig. in State Paper Office.)
It may please your Honour, Aug. 23, ieio.
In answer of your letter of the second of this present,
but not delivered to my hands till the 20th thereof, con-
cerning Sir Robert Steward his petition exhibited to his
Majesty in the name of Edward Williams, for the new
founding of the Hospital of St. John's in the town of
Bedford, I have examined the state of the cause, as far as
information may be expected by hearing the one side ; and
do find : That this hospital passed divers years since by
a Patent of Concealment to Farneham, from whom the
petitioner claimeth. That thereupon suit was commenced
in the Exchequer, wherein it seemeth the Court found that
strength in the King's title, as it did order the hospital
should receive a new foundation, together with divers good
articles of establishment of the good uses, and an allowance
of stipend unto the master. Nevertheless, I find not this
order to be absolute or merely judicial ; , but in the nature
of a composition or agreement; and yet that but con-
ditional : for it directeth a course of judicial proceeding, in
case the defendants shall not hold themselves to the agree-
ment. And yet notwithstanding this order had this life
346 FRANCIS BACON.
App. and pursuance, as I find a letter from the Lord-Treasurer,
IY. 18. his Lordship's father, to the then Attorney, for drawing up
a book for the new foundation. After which time nothing-
was done for aught that to me appeareth : no patent under
seal, no stirring of the possession, no later order : neither
doth it appear unto me likewise in whose default the falling
off was. But now of late, some four years past, and about
fourteen years after the former order, upon information
given of the King's right to the late Lord-Treasurer, Earl
of Dorset, his Lordship directed a sequestration of the
possession, and that without any mention of these former
proceedings ; but that, being as it seemeth swiftly granted,
was soon after by his Lordship revoked. The pretenders
unto the right of this hospital (with whom likewise the
possession hath gone) are as it seemeth the master of the
hospital (at this time one Dennis) and the town of Bedford,
who claim the patronage of it. But in what state the
hospital is for repair, or for employment according unto
the good uses, or for government, I can ground no certifi-
cate. And therefore it may please you to signify unto his
Lordship as well the state of the cause heretofore opened,
as my opinion, which is that it were great pity that this
hospital should continue either not well founded, or not
well employed, the rather being situate in so populous and
poor a town ; and that, nevertheless, herein some considera-
tion may be had of the patentee's right ; but for the present,
that which is first meet to be done, I conceive to be that
the other party be heard ; and to the end to avoid a tedious
suit (which must be defended with the moneys that should
go to the sustenance of the poor), his Lordship may
be graciously pleased to direct his letters as well to the
town of Bedford as to the present incumbent, that they do
attend a summary hearing of this cause (if his own great
HIS LETTERS. 347
business will not permit), before some other that he shall App.
assign ; in which letters it would be expressed that they IV. 18.
come provided to make defence and answer to three points :
that is, the King's title now in the patentee ; the order and
agreement in the Exchequer, why it was not performed ;
and the estate of the hospital, whether it be decayed and
misemployed ? And so I leave to trouble your Honour
from Gray's Inn, 23rd August, 1610.
Your Honour's, to do you service,
Fe. Bacon.
Francis Bacon to the Earl of Salisbury. IV. 19,
(Orig. in the State Paper Office.)
London, the 7th of May, 1611.
It may please youk good Loedship,
Understanding that his Majesty will be pleased to
sell some good portion of wood in the Forest of Dene, which
lies very convenient to the company's wireworks at Tynterne
and Whitbrooke, we are enforced to have recourse to your
Lordship as to our governor of the said company, humbly
praying your Lordship to afford us some reasonable quantity
thereof, the better to uphold the said works, whereof by
information from our farmers there we stand in such need
as without your Lordship's favour we shall hardly be able
to subsist any long time. We do not entreat your Lord-
ship for any other or more easy price than that your
Lordship directs the sale of it to other, only we humbly
pray for some preferment in the opportunity of the place
where the woods lie and in the quantity, as it may answer
in some proportion to our wants. Herein, if your Lordship
will be pleased to favour us, then we humbly pray your
348 FRANCIS BACON.
A pp - Lordship to direct us to some such persons as your Lordship
IV. U. resolves to employ in the business. And so we humbly
take our leaves of your Lordship.
Your Lordship's humbly at command,
Fk. Bacon.
IY. 20. Francis Bacon to the Earl of Salisbury.
(Orig. in State Paper Office.)
It may please your Lordship, October, i6ii.
I return your good Lord's minute, excellently, in
my opinion, reformed from the first draught in some points
of substance. I send likewise a clause warranting the
subject to refuse gold lighter than the remedies expressed,
which is no new device, but the same with 29th Eliz. I
find also Mr. Dubbleday to make it a thing difficult to
name the pieces of more ancient coin than his Majesty's,
for which I have likewise sent a clause. This last clause
is immediately to follow the table of the coins expressed.
The clause of the weight is to come last of all. So, with
my prayers, I rest
Your Lordship's most humble and bounden,
Fr. Bacon.
IV. 21. Francis Bacon to King James.
(Orig. in the State Paper Office.)
January 31st, 1615.
Though I placed Peacham's treason within the last
division, agreeable to divers predecessors, whereof I had
the records read, and concluded that your Majesty's safety,
and life, and authority was thus by law instanced and
HTS LETTERS. 349
quartered, and that it was in vain to fortify on three of the App.
heads and leave you open on the fourth, it is true he IV. 21.
heard me in a grave fashion more than accustomed, and
took a pen and took notes of my divisions ; and when he
read the precedent and records would say, That you mean
falleth within your first or your second division. In the
end I expressly demanded his opinion as that whereto both
he and I was enjoined. But he desired me to leave the
precedents with him that he might advise upon them. I
told him the rest of my fellows would despatch their part,
and I should be behind with mine, which I persuaded
myself your Majesty would impute rather to his backward-
ness than my negligence. He said as soon as I should
understand that the rest were ready he would not be long
after with his opinion or answer. For St. John's your
Majesty knoweth the day draws on, and my Lord Chancel-
lor's recovery the season and his age promiseth not to be
hasty. I spoke with him on Sunday, at what time I found
him in bed, but his spirits strong and not spent or wearied,
and spake wholly of your business, leading me from one
matter to another, and wished and seemed to hope that he
might attend the day for St. John's, as it were (as he said)
to be his last work, to commend his service and express his
affection towards your Majesty. I presumed to say to him
that I knew your Majesty would be exceeding desirous of
his being present that day, so as it might be without pre-
judice to his continuance ; but that otherwise your Majesty
esteemed a servant more than a service, specially such a
servant. Surely, in my opinion, your Majesty had better
put off the day than want his presence, considering the
cause of the putting off is so notorious, and then the capital
and the criminal may come together the next term. I
have not been unprofitable in helping to discover and
350 FRANCIS BACON.
App. examine within these few days a late patent by surreption
IV. 21. obtained from yonr Majesty of the greatest forest in Eng-
land, worth 30,000£., under colour of a defective title, for
a matter of 4:001. The person must be named, because the
patent must be questioned. It is a great person, my Lord
of Shrewsbury, or rather, as I think, a greater than he,
which is my Lady of Shrewsbury. But I humbly beg your
Majesty to know this first from my Lord Treasurer ; who
me thinketh groweth ever studious in your business. God
preserve your Majesty.
Your Majesty's most humble and devoted
subject and servant,
Fr. Bacon.
The rather in regard of Mr. Murray's absence, I humbly
pray your Majesty to have a little regard to this letter.
IV. 22. Fkancis Bacon to the Council.
(Orig. in State Paper Office.)
It may please your Lordships, Jan. 27, 1616 [1617].
According to your Lordships' preference of the 12th
of June last, I have considered of the patent of Clement
Dawbeny, gent., for the slitting of iron bars into rods.
And I have had before me the patentee that now is, and
some of the nailers and blacksmiths that complained
against the same. Whereupon it pleased your Lordships
to call in the said patent. But upon examination of the
business I find the complaint to be utterly unjust, and was
first stirred up by one Burrell, master carpenter to the
East India Company, who hath already of himself begone
to set up the like engine in Ireland, and therefore en-
HIS LETTERS. 351
deavoured to overthrow the said patent, the better to vent A pp.
his own iron to his further benefit and advantage, whereas IV. 22.
the nailers and blacksmiths themselves do all affirm that
they are now supplied by the patentee with as much good
and serviceable iron, or rather better, than heretofore they
have been, and that the said patent hath been of much use
to the kingdom in general, and likewise very beneficial to
themselves in their trades. And, therefore, your Lordships
may be pleased to suffer him quietly to enjoy it without
any further interruption, and to this did Burrell himself
and the opposers willingly condescend, which nevertheless
I submit to the wisdom of this most honourable Board.
Fk. Bacon.
TV 93
Francis Bacon to King James. v *
(Orig. in State Paper Office.)
March, 1617.
The gracing of the Justices of Peace. That your
Majesty doth hold the institution of Conservators and
Commissioners or Justices of the Peace to be one of the
most laudable and politic ordinances of this realm or any
other realm. That it is not your own goodness or
virtues, nor the labours of your counsel or Judges, that
can make your people happy, without things go well
amongst the Justices, who are the conduits to convey
the happy streams of your government to your people.
That your Majesty would as soon advance and call a
knight or gentleman that liveth in an honourable and
worthy fashion in his country ; and it were to be of
your counsel or to office about yourself, your Queen, or
son, or an Ambassador employed in foreign parts, or a
courtier bred an attendant about your person. That your
Majesty is and will be careful to understand the country
352 FRANCIS BACON.
App. as well as your court for persons, and that those that are
IV. 23. worthy servants in the country shall not need to have their
dependence upon any the greatest subject in your kingdom,
but immediately upon yourself.
IV. 24. Francis Bacon to Lord Zouch.
(Orig. in State Paper Office.)
Gorkanibuiy, 3rd August, 1619.
Whereas there are processes gone out, at Mr. Attor-
ney General's prayer, against Hugh Hugginson and Josias
Ente, concerning the business against the Dutchmen in
Star Chamber; out of a desire to preserve the ancient
privileges and customs due to your place, not to serve
such process within your jurisdiction without your leave
and consent, I thought good hereby to desire your Lord-
ship for his Majesty's service, that you would cause them
forthwith to be sent up to answer Mr. Attorney's bill, and
abide such further proceedings as their case shall require.
IV. 25. Francis Bacon to King James.
(Orig. in State Paper Office.)
May it please your Majesty, Oct. 1626 [? 1620].
. According to your commandment I have considered
of your patent granted about the time of your going into
Scotland unto Mr. Murray and Sir Kob 1 Lloyd, of a custom
or duty detained from your Majesty of one shilling four
pence upon the cloth and 2s. in the pound upon certain
Northern cloth, by colour of a Privy Seal [of] Queen Eliza-
beth and of a former Seal certificate made by the Earl of
Suffolk, then Lord Treasurer, Mr. Chancellor that now is,
HIS LETTERS. 353
and myself, then your Attorney-General, upon which cer- A pp.
tificate the patent did pass. — And do find that the said IV. 25.
certificate is very true and well grounded, wherein I have
strengthened myself with the opinion of your new Solicitor,
so that there is no doubt but the right was and is in your
Majesty, and the thud part thereof was sufficiently granted
unto them, who nevertheless submit their interest (being
for one-and-twenty years) unto your Majesty. But to suffer
the patent to go on to operation, either for your Majesty's
two parts or their third part, considering that the mer-
chants have been in long past of that ease, and that cloth
is now loaden with the pretermitted duty which was not
before (and of which this is no part), and [damaged] the
state of the trade of cloth hath been weakened [damaged]
for that is concerned the cost of some of the out ports
..... not in any sort advise it, but humbly leave it to
your Majesty's . . . r judgment.
Francis Bacon to Secretary Conway. ^"*
(Orig. in State Paper Office.)
Good Mk. Secretary, Jan. 21, 1623.
When you visited me you expressed in so noble a
fashion a vif sense of my misfortunes, as I cannot but
express myself no less sensible of your good fortune, and
therefore do congratulate with you for your new honour
now settled. The excellent Marquis brought me yesterday
to kiss the King's hands, so as now methinks I am in the
state of grace. Think of me and speak of me as occasion
serveth. I shall want no will to deserve it. At best, noble-
ness is never lost. I rest your affectionate friend, to do
you service, *
Francis St. Albans.
2 A
354 FRANCIS BACON.
App.
jy 27. Francis Bacon to Secretary Conway.
(Orig. in State Paper Office.)
GOOD Mk. SeCKETARY, Gray's Inn, 3rd of June, 1624.
This gentleman, Mr. Richard Gilruan, who hath
been (?) towards me, hath served formerly in Scinde and
Russia and the Low Countries, and is suitor now for a
lieutenant's place in these succours which are now to be
sent. I recommend his suit unto you, and shall give you
very hearty thanks if, for my sake, you will pleasure him.
I rest your very affectionate friend,
Fs. St. Albans.
No. V.
V. 1. Patent Koll, 16 Elizabeth, Part 6, Memb. 3.
wardo Bacon, ar-
migero
Regina omib3 ad quos, etc., saltm.
P« /I^tL? J? I J ^ciatis qd nos in consideracoe qd dit-
cus subditus nr Edwardus Bacon, ar-
mig, non solum sup se assumpsit
nos hered et successor nros exoniare de solucoe quatuor
librae et decern solido^ £ feod custod parci nri de
Istleworth als diet' the newe Parke of Richemonde in
Coin nro Midd' annuatim allocat' sed eciam de on}il:>3
repaconu oniu domoi^ et edificio^ in dco Parco existea'
et manutenc' inclaus' pdict' parci cum sepibz et fossa?
cum quibz feod et onftb3 nos ad psens ofeit sum 9 tra-
didim 9 concessim 9 et ad firmam dimisim 9 , ac p psentes
t a clim 9 coucedim 9 et ad firmam dimittim 9 prato Edwardo
GRANT TO EDWARD BACON. 355
Bacon totum ilium parcum nrm de Istleworth ats diet' App.
the new Parke of Kichmonde cum ptiri' in Coin nro y i
Midd', ac omes Pras nras prat' et pastur' in dco parco modo
vel nup inclus' cont' p estimacoem. octoginta septem acr',
necnon omia domos, logeas, edificia, gardin', pomar, stagn',
aquas et piscacoes in pco p>dco existeri', seu eidem ptineii' ;
aceciam totam illam primam vesturam et tonsur triii pcett
prati in prato voc' Ferie meade, ext a parcum pdem jacefi
p Kivu Thames' cont' p estimacoem duodecem acr, ac
totam illam primam vesturam et tonsur unius pcett terr in
coi prato voc More meade, ext a dem parcum insimul jacefi
ad Boriat finem dci prati, in? Rivu Thames' ibm ex parte
occiden et coe campum ibm voc Twickenham feild, ex
parte oriental contineh p estimacoem quinc^ acr et dimid.
Que quidem tres pcelle prati in prato voc Ferie meade, et
pcett prati in coi prato voc More meade, nup domui Sion
in dco Com Midd' spectabant et ptinebant, ac pcett' Trai^
et possession^ dci nup domus quondam extiter' et ^pfic
prime vestur' et tonsur' eai^dem p custod parci jMict'
pcept' et gavis' sunt : exceptis tamen semp et noB hered
et successor nris omio reSvat omib3 grossis, arborib3, boscis,
subboscis miner et quarr pmissoi^. Hend et tenenct pdem
parcum domos, logeas, edificia, gard, pomar, stagh, terr,
pastur, prat', vestur, et tonsur pratoi^ ac cePa omia pmissa
supius in hiis psent' dimiss' cum eo^ ptiri unifsis, (excep-
tis ptexceptis), pfato Edwardo Bacon, execut' et assign
suis, a festo Sci Michis Arclii ultimo pPito us% ad finem
?mini et p Pminu viginti et unius annoi^ extunc p£ sequeii
et plenar complend, reddendo annuatim nofc hered et suc-
cess' nris, de et £ fMco parco cum ptin, sex libras et septem
solidos ; ac de et ^ prima vestur et tonsur dcax^ triii pcel-
laip prati in prato voc Ferie meade, viginti et quatuor
solidos ; ac de et p prima vestur et tonsur pdee pcelle Pre
2 a 2
356 FRANCIS BACON.
App. in coi prato voc More meade, undecem solid legalis monete
V. 1. Angl ad festa Annunciacois fete Marie vginis et Sci Micnis
Arcni, ad manus ballivo^ vel receptor pinisso^ p tem-
pore existefi p equales porcoes solvend, durante fmino
pdco. Et p>dcus Edwardus Bacon executores et assignati
sui nos lieredes et successores nros de quatuor libris et
decern solidis p feod custod pci jMict' solvend annuatim et
de tempore in tempus exonlabunt aoquietabnnt et in-
dempnes con§vabunt durante ?mino jMco. Et ulPius
pdcus Edwardus Bacon, executores et assignati sui, omia
domos et edificia ac omia sepes, fossata et inclur parci
pdict', cum fossat' sepib3 et le quicksett; necnon omes
alias necessar repac pmisso^ (p^qam in Pallac) in omib3
et p omia de tempore in tempus tociens quociens necesse
et oportunii fGit sumptib3 suis et expensis bene et suffi-
cient repabunt, supportabunt, sustinebunt et manutenebunt
durante fmino jMco, ac pmissa sufficient repata et manu-
tenta in fine £mini illius dimittent. Et volum 9 ac p
psentes concedim 9 pfato Edwardo Bacon execut' et assign
suis qd bene licebit eis et eoi^ cuitt de tempore in tempus
cape, pcipe et Here de, in et sup j^missis crescen, competes
et sufficien houseboote, hedgebote, firebote, ploughboote, et
carteboote ibm et non alibi annuatim expendend et occu-
pand duran ftnino pdco. Et qd neant maer in boscis et
terris pmissor^ crescen ad et fsus repacoes domoi^ et
edificiorp pmisso^ p assignac et supvicoem Senescalli seu
subsenescalli aut alioi^ officiarioi^ nroi^ hered et succes-
^o^ nrorp ibm p tempore existeri duraii Pmino jMco. Pro-
viso semp qd si contigit pdcos sepales redd supius reSvat
aut eo:^ aliquem aretro fore non solut in parte vel in toto
(si debito modo petant 1- ) p spaciu quadraginta die:^ post
aliquod festum festoi^ pdcoi^ quout pfert r solvi. debeant,
qd tunc et deinceps hec pteens dimissio et concessio vacua
GRANTS FROM THE CROWN. 357
sit ac dict parcel! bosci vel Pre
boscalis vocat the Pyttf, acciden, renovafi sive entgen,
parcel! Maner de Marston Bigott in dco Com nro Soms.
Exceptis tamen semp et nobis, heredib3 et successor^
nris omino reservat', omib3 arborib3 maer existen, ac omib3
358 FRANCIS BACON.
App. hujusmocli pulchris lej saplinges quercuu aptis, fieri vel
Y. 2. fore maeren necnon sufficien lez staddells in quart acra
pnrisso:^ scdm formam statuti in eo casu nup edit' et cpvis'.
Hend: et tenend pdict' parcel! bosci ac cePa oiriia et singula
pmissa cum ptifi (except' pexcept') ptfato Francisco Bacon,
executory et assign suis a festo Aiiunciacois be Marie
Virginis ultimo pPito us% ad finem £mini viginti et unius
annoi^ extunc q£ sequeii et plenarie complend, Keddendo
inde annuatim nob, heredib3 et successor^ nris, septem
libras et decern solidos legalis monete Angi ad festa Sci
Mictlis Archi et Aiiunciacois be Marie Virginis ad Kecept
Sc a cii nri seu ad manus Ballivoi^ vel Keceptoi^ pmissoi^
nob, heredib3 et successor^
nris t^dim 9 , concedim 9 et ad firm dimittim 9 diico nob
Francisco Bacon, Armigo, Tenenti nro, totum ill: parcum
nrm de Istleworth, alias diet', The new parke of Richmond,
cum ptin, in Com nro Midd', Ac omia ?ras, prat' et pastur
in dco parco modo vel nup indu's", continefi p estimacoem
octoginta septem acras, Necnon ofhia domos, logeas, edi-
ficia, gardina, pomaria, stagna aquas et piscacoes in parco
pdeo existeii, seu eidem ptineii ; Aceciam totam . illam
primam vesturam et tonsur triu sepaliu prat' in prato
vocat' Ferry meade, ext* parcum jMict' p rivii Thamesis,
contineii p estimacoem duodecim acras, Ac totam illam
primam. vestur et tonsur unius parcelle prati in coi prat'
vocat Moremeade, ext* dem parcum insimul jacen ad
360 FKANC1S BACON.
App. boreal fmero dci prati, in? rivu Thamisis ibidem ex parte
V. 3. occiden, et coem campum ibidem, vocat' Twikenham feilde,
ex parte orientali, contiii p estimacoem quino^ acras dimid.
Quequidern tres parcelle prati in prato vocat' Ferry meade
et parcelr prati in coi prato vocat' Moremeade, nup domui
Sion in dco Com Midd' spectabant et ptinebant, ac parcel!
'frar^ et possessionu dee nup domus quondam extiterunt ;
Et pficua prime vesture et tonsure eo^dem p Custodem
parci pdei pcept' et gavisa fuerunt. Quodquidem parcum
et ce?a pmissa p psentes dimiss' dee nup domui Sion in
dco Com Midd' spectan et ptin ac parcel! possessionu inde
quondam existen ac cuidam Miloni Doddinge, generoso, p
Iras nras patentes magno Sigillo nro Angi sigillat' geren
dat' apud Westm, decimo die Augusti, Anno regni nri
vicesimo ?cio p ?mino triginta annor, in Anno Dni Miftimo,
quingentesimo nonagesimo quarto, et p annual reddit octo
librae et duoi^ solido:^ (in? alia) dimiss' et concessa
fuerunt, Ac omia alia pficua comoditates, advantagia,
emolumenta et hereditanien nra quecunq^ pdict' parco et
ee?is pmissis p fPsentes dimiss' ullo modo spectan vel
ptineft, aut ut niembr' partes vel pcelf p>dict parci et ce?oi;
pmisso^ antehac usuali? p reddit' inferius pinde reservat'.
dimiss', locat', nit', cognit', accept', usitat', occupaf, re
putat' seu gavis' existen. Sciatis ulterius qct nos tarn in
consideracoe Svicii p>dci Kadi Fletcher, q a m p considera-
cob3 sup a dict', de ampliori gra nra spiali, ac ex Sta sciencia
et mero motu nris, Tradidim 9 , concessim 9 et ad firmam
dhnisim 9 , ac p psentes p nofc, heredib3 et successor^ nris,
t^dini 9 concedim 9 et ad firm dimittim^, fideli subdito nro
Jolii Hibberd, oines illas quinquaginta et septem acras et
decern pticat' terr arrabit et pastur, sive plus sive minus,
cum eoif ptin, uni^sis sepatim jacefi et existen in Whaplodd,
in Coin nro Lincoln, nup in tenura sive occupacoe Thome
GRANTS FROM THE CROWN. 361
Pinchbeck et Kici Bennett vel assign suoi^ sive eo^ altius, Apr
ac modo in tenura sive occupacoe Thome Middlecote vel V. 3.
assign suo^. annual reddit' Quatuor libra^, et triu solidor^ ;
Ac oihes illas decern acras ?re arrabil prati et pastur cum
ptin, jaceh et existen in vift et campis de Whaplodd pdict'
in jMco Com, quondam in tenura sive occupacoe Johis
Parker et nup in tenur Willi Skarlett, et modo vel nup in
tenura sive occupacoe Johis Dawson et Thome Dawson,
vel assign suoip seu assign eo^ alPius; Ac totam illam
pastur nram vocat' Souterland jacefi et existen in diet' viil
et Campis de Whaplodd pdict', quondam in tenura sive
occupacoe dci JoKis Parker, et modo in tenura sive occu-
pacoe jklci Willi Skarlett vel assign suo^ annual reddit'
in? se triginta duoi^ solidoj^ et octo denarioi^. Quequidem
pmissa in Whaplodd pdict sunt parcel! Maffii nri de
Whaplodd, ac nup Monastio de Crowland quondam spectaii
et ptin, ac parcell fa:^ et possessions inde quondam exti-
terunt, ac pfat' Thome Middlecote p Iras paten magno
sigillo nro Angl sigillat', gereii dat' apud Westni, vicesimo
quarto die Julii, Anno regni nri tricesimo sco!o,
Pmino viginti et unius anno^, inci-
piend a tempore quo quedam dimiss' cuidam Antonio
Eeade, Gen!oso, de eisdem fcta
missa Arr.
parcel! Maffii de Whaplodd p>dict, p>fato Thome Middle- V. 3.
cote p Iras patefi supius annotat' nt pfet 1- dimiss', ac fMca
duo claus' prati et pastur, ac pPdict virgulF, cotag, curtilag,
terr arrabil, prat', et pastur, ac ce?a omia et singula pmissa
parcel! Maner de Glaston fMict in Glaston pdict', in pdco
Com nro Sorfrs, cum eoi^ ptifi uni?sis (except' p>except')
pfato Jolii Hibberd, executor^ et assign suis, a festo
Anunciacois be Marie Virginis quod erit in Anno Dni
Miitimo Sexcentesimo undecimo, usq^ ad finem ftnini et p
Pminu viginti et unius annoi^ extunc ^x' sequeri et plenar
complend, Reddendo extunc et abinde annuatim nob, here-
dib3 et successor^ nris, de et p pmissis in Whaplodd
Indict' in tenura jMci Thome Middlecote ut p>fert r existen,
quatuor libras et tres solidos ; ac de et
fato Lawrencio Torkington p Iras paten
supius annotat' ut ptfert 1- dimiss' (except' pexcept') pPfato
Joni Hibberd, executorib^ et assign suis a festo Anuncia-
cois fte Marie Virginis quod erit in Anno Dni Miffimo sex-
centesimo septimo usq^ ad finem £mini et p ?minu viginti
et unius annoi^ extunc |>x' sequeil et plenar complend :
Reddendo inde, extunc et abinde annuatim nofc, heredib3
et succ nris quinquaginta solidos legalis monete Anglie ad
festa Sci Micriis Arcfii, et Anunciacois be Marie Virginis
ad Recept' Sc 5 cii nri, lieredum et successor nro^, seu ad
manus Ballivo^ vel Receptor pPmissox^ q tempore existen
p equales porcoes solvend duraii fmino pdco inde p pteentes
pteoncess'. Ac liend et tenend pdict' molendinu aquaticu
vocat' Farneham Myll cum ptifi, scituat', jacen et existeii
apud Farneham Royall pdict' in p>dict' Coin nro Buclf, ac
GRANTS FROM THE CROWN. 369
pdict' duo claus' jacefi et existen in Farneham Eoyall App.
pdict' vocat' the great Bownes and the little Bownes et V. 3.
omes jMict' £ras arrabit et prat' eidem Molendino aliquo
modo spectafi vel ptinefi ac ce£a omia et singula pmissa
parcett Maner de Farneham Eoyall pVlict' cum eoi^ ptin
uni^sis (except' pexcept') pfato Jolii Hibberd, executor^
et assign suis, a festo Afiuneiacois be Marie Virginis quod
erit in Anno Dni Mittimo, sexcentesimo, vicesimo quarto
usq^ ad finem fmini et p t/minu viginti et unius anno^
extunc px' sequen et plenar complend : Keddendo inde,
extunc et abinde annuatim nob, heredib3 et successorib3
nris, quadraginta solidos legalis monete Angt, ad festa Sci
Micnis ArcKi et Anunciacois be Marie Virginis, ad Eecept'
Sc 5 cii nri. hered et successor nroi^. seu ad manus Ballivoi^
vel Eecepto^, pmissoi^ p tempore existen p equales porcoes
solvend durafi ?mino pdco inde p pPsentes pteoncess'. Ac
hend et tenend fPdict' claus' sive pastur vocat Leafeilde
grove, continefi p estimacoem quatuor acras pPfato Ed-
mundo Gregorie p Indentur pdict' supius mencionat' nup
dimiss' ; aceciam pdict' parcett prat? vocat' the Baylies
Fee, continefi p estimacoem duas acras in Broadehall pfato
Thome Staunton p Indentur p>dict' supius mencionat' nup
dimiss ; Necnon omes pdcas sepales Pras et pastur existen
parcett parci de Wedgnocke pdict' continefi p estimacoem
decern acras pfat' Eobto Sheldon p Indentur pdict supius
mencionat' nup dimiss, ac ce£a omia et singula pmissa
parcett Maner de Warr jMict' in pdco Com nro Warr, cum
eo^ ptin uni^sis (except' ^except') pfato Johi Hibberd
executorib3 et assign suis, a tempore quo pdce Ire paten
et dimissio itt supius annotat' ptfat' Thome Staunton inde
ut pfert 1 ' confect' et fnriri annoi^ in iisdem expss' et men-
cionat' p expiracoem, sursumreddicoem, forisfcur seu de-
r^minacoem inde aut alio modo quocun% primo et px'
2 B
370 FKANCIS BACON.
App. vacari, finiri seu de£minari contigit, us% ad finem ?mini et
Y. 3. p ?minu viginti et unius anno]}, extunc niissa parcell
Maner de Warr pdict', ad manus et possess' p>dci Jobis Hib-
berd executory vel assign suo^ virtute ha^ lrai^ nraip paten
devenlint seu devenire debent. Necnon liend et tenend jMict'
ten et duas bovat' tre cum ptifi modo vel nup in tenura pdci
JoHis Marsball vel assign suoi^ ut ptfert 1 " existen ; ac pdcm
alburn ten et duas bovat' terr cum ptifi, modo vel nup in
tenura Robti Tarte alias Tatte vel assign suo^ ut p>fert r
existen ; necnon pdict' alftim ten et duas bovat' ?re cum
ptiii univsis, modo vel nup in tenura Thome Hedley vel
assign suoi^ ut ptfert r existen, ac ce?a omia et singula
pmissa parcell Maner de Poppleton pdict', cum eoi^. ptiii
uni9sis (except' ^except') plfato Jofii Hibberd executory
et assign suis, a fine expirac, sursum reddicoe, forisfcur seu
defrninacoe pdict' ftnin anno^ mencionat' et expss' in
jMcis Iris paten supius annotat' pfato Georgio Tirrell inde
in? alia ut pfetf confect' usq^ ad finem r?mini et p £ininu
viginti et unius annoi^ extunc px' sequefi et plenar com-
plend: Reddendo inde extunc et abinde annuatim nob,
GRANTS FROM THE CROWN. 371
heredib3 et successor^ nris de et dci Johis Hibberd executo^
vel assignatoi}, suor^ virtute hai^ Iraq, nikr^ paten devefflnt
seu devenire debent. Et pdict' Franciscus Bacon, exe-
cutores et assign sui nos heredes et successores nros, de
Quatuor libris et decern solidos £ feod custod parci jMci
solvend annuatim et de tempore in tempus exoffiabunt,
acquiet' et indempnes conservabunt duraii ?mino jMict'.
Qdqj pdict' Franciscus Bacon et Johes Hibberd exec et
assign sui respective oinia domos et edificia, ac omia sepes,
fossat', inetur, littora, ripas, et muros marittimos, necnon
omes alias necessar reparacoes pmissoi^ eis sepatim dimiss'
in 0111103 et p oinia de tempore in tempus tociens quociens
necesse et oportunu fuerit sumptib3 suis cppriis et expensis
bene et sufficient repabunt, supportabunt, sustinebunt,
escurabunt, purgabunt et manutenebunt duraii ?mino jMco,
ac pmissa sufficient reparat' et manutent' in fine frnini
pdict' dimittent. Et volum 9 ac p pteentes
dco ; Et qd freant niaerem in boscis et
Pris pmisso^, crescefi ad et vsus reparac domo^ et edificioi^
pmissoi^ p assignacoem et supvis' Seneschall seu Sub-
seneschalt aut alioi^ Officiarioi^ nroi^, heredum et successor
nroi^ ibidem p tempore existen duraii £mino pdict'. Pro-
viso semp qd si conti§it pdict 5 sepal reddit supius p
jpsentes reservat' aut eor, aliquem aretro fore non solu? in
parte vel in toto p spaciu quadraginta die^ post aliquod
Festum festoi^ jMcoi}, quo ut p>fert r solvi debeat, Qd tunc
et deinceps bee pteens dimissio et concessio quoad illam
partem et pceft pmissoi^ tantumodo unde sepal reddit'
.pinde supius p pteentes reservat', sic aretro fuer insolut' p
spaciu dcoi^, quadraginta die^ vacua sit ac
dict' Joftes Hibberd, executores vel
assign sui sufficiefi. sepal dimissiones in scriptis sub sigillo
suo conficiend cuilt sepal tenen sive occupator pmissoi^ vel
alicujus inde parcel! eis p psentes pdimiss' de sepal parcell
eo^dem pmissoi^ £ toto et integro fmino annoi^ p pteentes
pconcess et p sepal annual reddit' supius p psentes
dict' scdm veram
intencoem ha^ lrai^ nrai^ paten vacua sit ac nullius vigoris
in lege : Aliquo in pteentibsf in conform inde non obstan.
Aliquo statuto, etc. In cujus rei, etc. T' fy, apud Westm,
xvij die Novembr.
p fere de privato sigillo, etc.
Patent Eoll, 40 Elizabeth, Part 3, Memb. 26. V. 4.
. on firm g
co Bacon,
Begin a Omib3 ad quos etc sattm
Cum in Iris nris patent^ magno
Sigillo nro Anglie sigillat gerefi dat
apud Westm quintodecimo die Feb-
ruarij Anno regni nri tricesimo quarto continet r qd t a dide-
rim 9 concesserim 9 et ad firmam dimiserim 9 ditco nob
Bobto Stephens totam illam Kcoriam et Eccliam de Ches-
tleham cum suis jurib3 membris et ptin uni9sis in Com
nro Glouc Ac totam illam Capellam de Charleton cum suis
jurib3 membris et ptih univsis in eodem Com dee Kcorie
de Cheltenham annex existen Ac omia et singula scit
mesuagia grangia domos edificia structur horrea stabula
columbaria hort pomaria gardina ?ras tenta prata pascua
pastur Coias piscarias piscacoes opa tenen reddit et 3vicia
tarn liBor^, q a m Custumarioi^ tenentiu redditus et Svicia
reservat sup quibuscumq^ Dimissionib3 et Concessionib3
de ^missis eschaet relevia mortuaria herriet fines amcia-
menta Cur let vis Franc pleg Cur et let pquisit et pficua
eo^ Necnon totum ill staur nrm tarn vivu q%i mortuu
374 FRANCIS BACON.
A pp. videit a viol*? bon et catall et gran Ac omes illas decimas
V. 4. g a nor f blad feni lane agnoi^ vituloip et aliai", decima^ tam
major q a m minor oblacoes obvencoes fructus pficua como-
ditates advantagia emolumenta et hereditamenta nra que-
cumc^ cum ptiil tam spualia q a in temporalia cujuscuno^ sint
genlis nature seu speciei scituat jaceii et existen pvenien
crescen sive erfigeii infra villas campos paroehias sive ham-
lett de Cheltenham et Charleton ^dict vel eo^ aliquo seu
alibi in dco Com nro Glouc dee Ecorie et Ecclie de Chel-
tenham Capelle de Charleton p>dict scit mesuag ten* tentis
decimis et cefrs pmissis seu eoi*, alicui vel aliquib3 ullo
modo spectan vel ptineii aut cum eisdem seu eo^ aliquo
vel aliquib3 ut pars membrum vel parcel! eoi^dem sive eo^
alicujus antetunc dimiss locat vsitat occupat reputat seu
gavis existen cum eoXf ptin uni^sis quondam existen parcel!"
terr tentoi^ et possession^ nup monaster de Cirencester in
Com pdict Except tamen semp et nob heredib3 et succes-
sorib3 nris oihino reservat omib3 grossis arborib3 maerem
existen boscis subboscis Ward maritag miner et quarr ac
bonis et catallis felonu fugitivoi"* et felonu de se et in
exigend posit condempnat et utlagat Ac Advocac6ib3 Ec-
criarf et Capella^ qua^cumq^ Kcorie pdict vel cetis p'missis
appenden spectan vel ptinen hendum et tenendum ^dcam
Kcoriam Eccliam Capellam scit terr glebas decimas ac
ce?a omia et singula pmissa cum eo^ jurib3 membr et
ptiii univsis (except pexcept) pfat Kobto Stephens et
assign suis a Festo sci Micftis Archi tunc ultimo pPtito usq^
ad finem ftnini et ,p £mino viginti et unius Annor^, extunc
px sequen et plenarie complendoi"? Reddendo inde an-
nuatim nofc heredib3 et successorib3 nris septuaginta quinq^
libras tresdecim solidos et quatuo r denarios legalis monete
Anglie ad Festa Annunciacois be marie virginis et sci
micfris Archi ad Eeceptam Sc a cij nri heredum et successor^,
GRANTS FEOM THE CROWN. 375
nroi^ seu ad maims Ballivoi^ vel Beceptoi^ pmissoi^ p tern- App.
pore existen p equales porcoes solvend duran frnino p>dco Y. 4.
£iit p pdcas iras patentes plenius liquet et apparet Cum%
eciam in Iris nris patent^ magno Sigillo nro Anglie
sigillat geren dat apud Westm decimo die maij Anno regni
nri tricesimo £cio continet r qd t a diderim 9 concesserim 9 et
ad firmam dimisserim 9 difco nob Wiffo Greenewell totam
illam pdcam Kcoriam et Ecctiam nram de Cheltenham
cum suis jurib3 naembris et ptiri univ'sis in dco Com nro
Glouc Ac totam illam jMcam Capellam nram de Charleton
cum suis jurib3 et ptin in eodem Com nro Glouc dee
Kcorie de Cheltenham annex existen ac ornia et singula
pPdict scit mesuagia grangia domus edificia structur horrea
stabula Columbaria hortos pomaria- gardina £ras tenta
prata pascua pastur Coias aceciam aquas ac pdict pisca-
rias piscacoes opa tenenciu reddit et §vicia tarn liboi^ q u m
Custumarioi^ tenenciu redditus et 3vicia reservat sup qui-
buscumo^ dimissionib3 et Concession^ de pmissis seu de
aliqua inde parcella fact escaet relevia mortuaria herriet
fines arrrciainenta Cur let vis Franc pleg Cur et let pqui-
sicoes et pficua eoi^dem Necnon tot ill: staur nrm tarn vivu
q a m mortuu videlt a^ioi^ boil catatt et grail ac oines illas
decimas nras g^noi^, bladoi^ feni lane agno^ vituloi^ ac alias
decimas nras tarn majores q a m minores oblacoes obvencoes
fructus cpficua comoditates advantagia emolumenta et here-
ditamenta nra quecunq^ cum ptin tarn spualia q a m tempo-
ralia cujuscumq^ sint geffis nature vel speciei scituat jaceii
et existeii pvenien crescen sive errrgeil infra villas campos
paroch sive hamlett de Cheltenham et Charleton pdict seu
in vel infra eo^ aliquem vel aliquos seu alibi ubicumq^ in
dco Com nro Glouc jpdee Ecorie et Ecclie de Cheltenham
Capelle de Charleton pdict scit mesuag terr ten decim et
ce£is pmissis seu eoiq. alicui vel aliquib3 ullo modo spectaii
376 FRANCIS BACON.
Apr. vel ptinen aut ut membr part vel parcel! eai^dem Rcoriai^
v- 4. e t Ecctie Capelr scit mesuag terr ten decim ac ee^o^
pmisso^ seu eoXf aliquoi^ vel alicujus antetunc Hit cognit
accept vsitat occupat seu reputat existen nup monaster de
Cirencestr in dco Corn modo dissolut quondam spectan et
ptinen ac parceli terr et possessionii inde quondam existen
Exceptis tamen semp et nob heredib3 et successorib3 nris
ornino reservat omib3 grossis arborib3 maereni existen
boscis subboscis Wardis maritagiis miner et quarr ac bonis
et catallis felonu. fugitivoxj, et felonii de se et in exigend
posit condempnat et utlagat Ac advocacoib3 Eccliar^ et
Capella]}. qua^,cum% Rcorie p>dce vel ce&s pmissis appen-
deri spectan vel ptinen nenduin et tenend pdict Rector
terr glebales decimas ac cef?a orriia et singula pmissa cum
eoXf jm-ib3 membris et ptin uni9sis (except p>exceptis)
pfato Willo Greenewell executorib3 et assign suis a Festo
Annunciacois be marie virginis tunc ultimo p^ito us% ad
finem ?mini et p r?minu viginti et unius Annoi^ extunc et Capella^ quai^cuno^ Ecorie et Capelle
pPdict spectaii ptinen accideii sive erflgen bendum et tenend
pdcam Ecoriam et Capellam scit terr gleb decimas ac
ceter omia et singula jPraissa p pteentes dimissa et concessa
cum eoi^ jurib3 membris et ptifi uni^sis except ^except
pfat Francisco Bacon executory et assign suis a Festo
sci Micbis Arcbi quod erat in Anno Dm mittimo quingen-
GRANTS FROM THE CROWN. 379
tesimo nonagesimo septimo us% ad finem Tiffini et p frnino App.
Quadraginta Annoi^ extunc px sequen et plenar complend V. 4.
Si omes jMce sepales Ire patentes Concessiones ac Dimis-
siones confect et frit p>fat Eobto Stephens Wifto*Greene-
well ac Henr Jerningliam militi de jMca Eeoria et Ecclia
de Cheltenliam ac de Capella de Charleton ac de omib3 et
singulis Scit domib3 gardinis £ris pratis pastur Coijs red-
ditib3 et 'svicijs Cur et omib3 et singulis alijs pdcis reb3
pficuis coinoditatib3 tentis hereditaments quibuscunq^
cum omib3 et singulis suis ptirl in dcis sepalib3 iris nris
patentib3 mencionat et expss fore dimiss et concess
vacue irrite et nullius vigoris sive valoris in lege existunt
Et in casu qd p»dce nre sepales Ire patentes Concessiones
ac Dimissiones vel eoi^ alique vel aliqua confect et Hit
pfat EoBto Stephens Wiflo Greenewell ac henr Jerning-
ham militi de pdict Eeoria et Ecclia de Cheltenham jMict
ac de Capella de Charlton ac de oihib3 scit terr decimis
tentis et hereditamentis quibuscuno^ et cefts omib3 et sin-
gulis pPmissis cum suis ptin in dcis sepalib3 Iris nris
patentib3 mencionat et exp>ss fore dimiss et concess
bone et valide vel bona et valida in lege existunt vel
existit Tunc frenduin et tenendum pdcam Ecoriam et
Capellam scit terr glebas decimas ac ce£a oniia et singula
pmissa p pteeh dimissa et concessa cum eoi^ jurib3 membr
et ptin uni?sis (exceptis ^except) plfat Francisco Bacon
executorib3 et assign suis a tempore quo pPdca Eeoria -et
Capella scit terr decime ten et hereditamenta ac ce?a omia
et singula pmissa p pteentes dimissa et concessa cum omib3
et singulis suis ptin ad manus et possessionem nras heredum
et successor nroi^ rone expiracois sursumreddicois forisfcure
vel alicujus altius defrninacois dca^ sepaliu dimissionu vel
concess vel ear? aliquai^ vel alicujus sic existeii bonai^ et
validai^ vel bone et valide in lege fact ptfat Eoftto Stephens
380 FRANCIS BACON.
App. Witto Greenewell ac henr Jerningham devenire poter aut
V. 4. debent ad finem fiiiini et p tjnino Quadraginta Annoi^.
extunc px sequefi et plena? complend Eeddendo inde ex-
tunc et tbinde ammatim nob lieredib3 et successorib3 nris
septuaginta quinc^ libras tresdecim solidos et quatuor de-
narios legalis monete Anglie ad Festa Anunciacois be
marie virginis et sci micfiis Arcfri ad Eeceptam Sc a cij nri
heredum et successor nroi^ seu ad manus Balliyoi^ vel
Receptor pmisso:^ p tempore existefi. p equales porcoes
solvend duran fanino p>dco p pteentes pteoncess Prima
solucoe inde incipiend ad illnd Festum Festoi^ pdcoi^ quod
primu et px evenlit aut acciderit postq a m pdca Rcoria et
Capella et ce?a pinissa ad manus et possessionem p>dci
Francisci Bacon executo:^ vel assign suoi^ virtute liai^ Irai^
nrai^ patenciu devefiint seu devenire debent Et pdcus
Franciscus Bacon executores et assign sui solvent Arcliiano
Glouc p tempore existefi annualem pcuracoein suam
duran ftnino jMco Ac invenient annuatim ad onus
et custag sua ppria duos Capellanos et duos diaconos
idoneos et discretos p nos heredes et successores nros
noiand et admittend ad celebrand et Sviend in Ecclia et
Capeft jMict put ce£i parochiales Capellani et Diaconi
in eisdem celebrare et Svire consueverunt Ac invenient
panes et vinii et alias res necessarias p divinis cele-
bratur necnon ad sacra et sacrental Ecclie parocbial Rcor
pdict ac in Capella pdca ministrand tam p comunionib*
q a m aln° put antehac usitat et consuetum fuit necnon
Funiculos et cordas p campaii dee Ecclie Aceciam stra-
minacoem p eadem Ecclia de tempore in tempus put opus
et necesse fflit duran toto £mino p psentes pconcess
Quod% idem Franciscus Bacon executores et assign sui
ordinabunt et pvidebunt seu ordinari et pvideri facient qd
cursus aque ibidem p totum tempus {Mem possit accurrere
GRANTS FROM THE CROWN. 381
in et p quemcumq^ locum et quacumq^ partem terr Ecoric A pp.
pdict quibus ex antiquo accurrere consuevit et cursus V. 4.
illius aque escurabunt et mundabunt aut escurari et mun-
dari facient sumptib3 suis dci dimittent Et volum 9 ac p Rentes fert r solvi debeat q& tunc et deinceps hec pteens Dimissio
V. 4. et Concessio vacua sit ac p nullo rleat r Aliquo in pteentn^
incont a riu inde non obstafi Aliquo statuto Actu ordinacoe
pvisione pclainacoe sive restriccoe incont a riu inde ante-
hac hit fact edit ordinat seu pvis Aut aliqua alia re causa
vel matia quacumq, in aliquo non obstan In cujus rei etc
T. K. apud Westm xxvij die February.
p bre de privat sigirl etc.
No. VI.
YI. Anthony Bacon to Francis Bacon. .
(Orig. at Lambeth Palace, 650, fol. 221.)
Brother,
I thought it meet to advertise you that my Lord of
Essex, being come expressly yesterday, after dinner, to
speak with the French ambassador and Sir Anthony
Perez, not finding Sir Anthony Perez at his house,
but word that he should repair to Walsingham House
with all speed ; where he had two hours' conference
with him, and, amongst other things, urged the matter
you wot of at large, with no less judgment than devo-
tion to my Lord's honour and profit, and good affection
to us. His argument my Lord heard most attentively,
and accepted most kindly of many right hearty thanks,
assuring him that, at his return — which should be within
two days— from the Court, he would resolve. The occa-
sion was very fitly ministered by my Lord himself, by
advertising Spencer that the Queen had signed at two
of the clock, and had given him a hundred pounds in
lands, simple fee, and 30£ in parks, which, for her quiet-
LETTERS BY EARL OF ESSEX. 383
ness' sake, and in respect of his friend, he was content App.
to accept without any further contention. And so I wish VI.
you as myself,
Your entire loving brother,
Anthony Bacon.
No. VII.
Essex to * * *. VII. 1.
(Orig. at Lambeth Palace, 657, 90.)
My Lord,
By the advancement of Sir Thomas Egerton to
the place of Lord-Keeper (in which choice I think my
country very happy), there is void the office of Master
of the Rolls. I do, both for private and public respects,
wish Mr. F. B. to it before all men, and should think
much done for her Majesty's service if he were so
placed as his virtues might be active, which now lie as
it were buried. What success I have had in commend-
ing him to her Majesty your Lordship knows. I would
not the second time hurt him with my care and kindness.
But I will commend unto your Lordship his cause ; not
as his alone, or as mine — his friend, but as a public cause,
wherein your Lordship shall have honour to the world,
satisfaction to see worthy fruit of your own work, and ex-
ceeding thankfulness from us both. And so I rest,
Your Lordship's cousin and friend,
E.
384 FRANCIS BACON.
App. Essex to Sir John Fortescue.
VII. 2. (Orig. at Lambeth Palace, 657, 90.)
Cousin,
I do commend unto you both present actions and
absent friends — I mean those that are absent from me, so
as I can neither defend them from wrong nor help to
that right their virtue deserves. And, because an occa-
sion offers itself before the rest, I will commend unto you
one above the rest. The place is the Mastership of the
Kolls; the man, Mr. Francis Bacon, a kind and worthy
friend to us both. If your labours in it prevail, I will
owe it you as a particular debt, though you may challenge
it as a debt of the state.
And so, wishing you all happiness, I rest,
Your cousin and friend,
E.
Cousin, — I pray you remember my good Dr. Browne.
I shall challenge you for a great unkindness if his suit
succeed ill.
No. VIII.
VIII. 1. Extracts from the Council Eegister, April 25, 1614.
(Orig. in Privy Council Office.)
Present : —
Lord Chancellor.
Earl of Pembroke.
Lord Wotton.
Mr. Secretary Winwood.
Sir Julius Caesar.
Sir Thomas Lake.
EXTRACTS FROM PRIVY COUNCIL REGISTERS. 385
A Letter to Sir Francis Bacon, Knight, His Majesty's ^pp.
Attorney-General. VTII 1
We send you here enclosed the Petition of one
Kichard Arrowsmith, his Majesty's servant, wherein he coin-
plaineth unto us, that in February last a number of people
gathered together in the night and, in disguised apparel,
did riotously pull up and overthrow a hedge and ditch
which he had caused to be made about a copse called
Newland, for preservation of his Majesty's game in that
part of the forest of Windsor ; and do pray and require
you (if upon further information you shall find the offence
to deserve it) to send for such and so many of the
offenders as you shall think fit, and to proceed against
them in the Star Chamber, the next term, in the behalf
of his Majesty, according as is accustomed in cases of like
nature. And so, &c.
Council Eegister, Oct. 19, 1614. VIII. 2.
(Orig. in Privy Council Office.)
Ut Supra with the Lord Archbishop.
A Letter to Sir Francis Bacon, Knight, His Majesty's
Attorney- General.
Whereas his Majesty hath taken notice of a great
resort of gentlemen of quality and livelihood, together with
their wives and families, unto the city of London, and
other principal cities and towns of this realm, with a
purpose (as it appeareth) to settle their habitation there,
for saving of charges and other private respects. His
Majesty, considering of his great wisdom how prejudicial
these courses may prove to the general government of
the kingdom, when the country shall be deprived of the
assistance and presence of so many gentlemen, who for
2 c
386 FRANCIS BACON.
App. the most part bear office or authority in the counties
VIII. 2. where they dwell, besides the great decay of hospitality
and other inconveniences that will ensue thereupon, is
therefore pleased that a Proclamation shall be published,
enjoining and commanding all such persons aforemen-
tioned to repair unto their several dwellings in the country,
before the last of November next, there to abide and
continue as heretofore they have usually done, which we
require you to draw accordingly and to make ready for
his Majesty's signature with as much convenient expedi-
tion as you may. And so, &c.
(Orig. in Privy Council Office.)
VIII. 3. At Whitehall, on Tuesday the 20th of February, 1615.
Present : —
The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.
Lord Treasurer. Lord Bishop of Winchester.
Lord Privy Seal. Lord Knollis.
Duke of Lennox. Mr. Secretary Winwood.
Lord Chamberlain. Mr. Secretary Lake.
Earl of Mar. Mr. Chancellor of the Ex-
Earl of Dunfermline. chequer.
Master of the Kolls.
Upon a difference depending at the Board between the
Dutch Congregation of the town of Colchester and one
William Goodwin and others of that town, as will appear
by petitions offered to the Board by both parties. For-
asmuch as the matter consisting of many parties will
require a full and deliberate hearing for the better settling
of the Trade of Bay and Say making in that place.
Their Lordships have this day ordered that his Majesty's
Attorney-General, calling all parties before him, do hear
and examine the differences and allegations on both sides,
EXTRACTS FROM PRIVY COUNCIL REGISTERS. 387
and thereupon to make report of his opinion thereof, and App.
what course he thinketh fit to be observed therein, in VIII. 3.
writing, by Thursday next in the afternoon, that such
further order may thereupon be taken as shall be ex-
pedient.
(Orig. in Privy Council Office.) VIII. 4.
At the Court at Whitehall, on Wednesday in the
afternoon, the 5th of April, 1615 :
Present : —
Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.
Lord Chancellor. Mr. Secretary Win wood.
Lord Treasurer. Mr. Chancellor of the Ex-
Duke of Lennox. chequer.
Lord Chamberlain. Lord Chief Justice.
Lord Fenton. Mr. Chancellor of the
Lord Enollis. Duchy.
Sir Thomas Lake.
William Martin, Kecorder of the city of Exeter, being
heretofore sent for by order from their Lordships, and
this day called unto the Board, and charged by his
Majesty's Attorney-General to have lately written a His-
tory of England, wherein were many passages so unaptly
inserted as might justly have drawn some heavy and
severe censure upon him for the same. On his humble
submission and hearty repentance and acknowledgment
of his fault, their Lordships were pleased to become
mediators unto his Majesty for his grace and favour to be
extended towards him, which being happily obtained, he
is freely dismissed from all further attendance ; being first
enjoined by their Lordships to manifest hereafter in some
short declaration in writing (as he hath already done by
words) the true sense and understanding he hath of his
offence, together with his repentance for the same. And
388 FRANCIS BACON.
App. it is further ordered by their Lordships that the bond
VIII. 4. which he sealed to his Majesty's use for his appearance at
the Board should be cancelled and delivered unto him.
No. IX.
IX. Report by the Barons of the Exchequer, the Solicitor-
General (Sir Francis Bacon), and the Eecorder of
London, to the Privy Council.
(Orig. in State Paper Office.)
May it please your Lordships,
We have received your honourable letters bearing
date the 25th day of this instant month of June, and
enclosed in the same a note of a suit which has been of
late presented to his Majesty and by him referred to your
Lordships' consideration : the substance of which suit is to
have a warrant directed to some officer to demand and
collect fines upon actions of debt and other finable actions
to be sued in all other Courts of England (other than the
Courts held at Westminster), concerning which your Lord-
ships require us to certify you our opinions in all points
at our speediest opportunity. We have therefore, accord-
ing to your honourable directions, considered of the suit.
And do find it a matter of so great importance as we
must humbly pray leave to have time to confer with the
rest of the Judges, that upon our joint conference your
Lordships may have the more full satisfaction both for
law and convenienCy. Humbly taking our leaves, this 28th
of June, 1608.
Your Lordships' to command.
LONDON: MtTNTEO BX TVJLLTAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET,
AND CHARING CROSS.
' Mr'33