CHAPTER IV.

Bacon returned to work when the Parliament met, November, 1606. The questions arising out of the Union, the question of naturalisation, its grounds and limits, the position of Scotchmen bornbeforeorsincethe King's accession, theAntenatiandPostnati, the question of a union of laws, with its consequences, were discussed with great keenness and much jealous feeling. On the question of naturalisation Bacon took the liberal and larger view. The immediate union of laws he opposed as premature. He was a willing servant of the House, and the House readily made use of him. He reported the result of conferences, even when his own opinion was adverse to that of the House. And he reported the speeches of such persons as Lord Salisbury, probably throwing into them both form and matter of his own. At length, "silently, on the 25th of June," 1607, he was appointed Solicitor-General. He was then forty-seven.

"It was also probably about this time," writes Mr. Spedding, "that Bacon finally settled the plan of his 'Great Instauration,' and began to call it by that name."

The great thinker and idealist, the great seer of a world of knowledge to which the men of his own generation were blind, and which they could not, even with his help, imagine a possible one, had now won the first step in that long and toilsome ascent to success in life, in which for fourteen years he had been baffled. He had made himself, for good and for evil, a servant of the Government of James I. He was prepared to discharge with zeal and care all his duties. He was prepared to perform all the services which that Government might claim from its servants. He had sought, he had passionately pressed to be admitted within that circle in which the will of the King was the supreme law; after that, it would have been ruin to have withdrawn or resisted. But it does not appear that the thought or wish to resist or withdraw ever presented itself; he had thoroughly convinced himself that in doing what the King required he was doing the part of a good citizen, and a faithful servant of the State and Commonwealth. The two lives, the two currents of purpose and effort, were still there. Behind all the wrangle of the courts and the devising of questionable legal subtleties to support some unconstitutional encroachment, or to outflank the defence of some obnoxious prisoner, the high philosophical meditations still went on; the remembrance of their sweetness and grandeur wrung more than once from the jaded lawyer or the baffled counsellor the complaint, in words which had a great charm for him,Multum incola fuit anima mea—"My soul hath long dwelt" where it would not be. But opinion and ambition and the immense convenience of being great and rich and powerful, and the supposed necessities of his condition, were too strong even for his longings to be the interpreter and the servant of nature. There is no trace of the faintest reluctance on his part to be the willing minister of a court of which not only the principal figure, but the arbiter and governing spirit, was to be George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.

The first leisure that Bacon had after he was appointed Solicitor he used in a characteristic way. He sat down to make a minute stock-taking of his position and its circumstances. In the summer of 1608 he devoted a week of July to this survey of his life, its objects and its appliances; and he jotted down, day by day, through the week, from his present reflections, or he transcribed from former note-books, a series of notes in loose order, mostly very rough and not always intelligible, about everything that could now concern him. This curious and intimate record, which he calledCommentarius Solutus, was discovered by Mr. Spedding, who not unnaturally had some misgivings about publishing so secret and so ambiguous a record of a man's most private confidences with himself. But there it was, and, as it was known, he no doubt decided wisely in publishing it as it stands; he has done his best to make it intelligible, and he has also done his best to remove any unfavourable impressions that might arise from it. It is singularly interesting as anevidence of Bacon's way of working, of his watchfulness, his industry, his care in preparing himself long beforehand for possible occasions, his readiness to take any amount of trouble about his present duties, his self-reliant desire for more important and difficult ones. It exhibits his habit of self-observation and self-correction, his care to mend his natural defects of voice, manner, and delivery; it is even more curious in showing him watching his own physical constitution and health, in the most minute details of symptoms and remedies, equally with a scientific and a practical object. It contains his estimate of his income, his expenditure, his debts, schedules of lands and jewels, his rules for the economy of his estate, his plans for his new gardens and terraces and ponds and buildings at Gorhambury. He was now a rich man, valuing his property at £24,155 and his income at £4975, burdened with a considerable debt, but not more than he might easily look to wipe out. But, besides all these points, there appear the two large interests of his life—the reform of philosophy, and his ideal of a great national policy. The "greatness of Britain" was one of his favourite subjects of meditation. He puts down in his notes the outline of what should be aimed at to secure and increase it; it is to make the various forces of the great and growing empire work together in harmonious order, without waste, without jealousy, without encroachment and collision; to unite not only the interests but the sympathies and aims of the Crown with those of the people and Parliament; and so to make Britain, now in peril from nothing but from the strength of its own discordant elements, that "Monarchy of the West" in reality, which Spain was in show, and, as Bacon always maintained, only in show. The survey of the condition of his philosophical enterprise takes morespace. He notes the stages and points to which his plans have reached; he indicates, with a favourite quotation or apophthegm—"Plus ultra"—"ausus vana contemnere"—"aditus non nisi sub persona infantis" soon to be familiar to the world in his published writings—the lines of argument, sometimes alternative ones, which were before him; he draws out schemes of inquiry, specimen tables, distinctions and classifications about the subject of Motion, in English interlarded with Latin, or in Latin interlarded with English, of his characteristic and practical sort; he notes the various sources from which he might look for help and co-operation—"of learned men beyond the seas"—"to begin first in France to print it"—"laying for a place to command wits and pens;" he has his eye on rich and childless bishops, on the enforced idleness of State prisoners in the Tower, like Northumberland and Raleigh, on the great schools and universities, where he might perhaps get hold of some college for "Inventors"—as we should say, for the endowment of research. These matters fill up a large space of his notes. But his thoughts were also busy about his own advancement. And to these sheets of miscellaneous memoranda Bacon confided not only his occupations and his philosophical and political ideas, but, with a curious innocent unreserve, the arts and methods which he proposed to use in order to win the favour of the great and to pull down the reputation of his rivals. He puts down in detail how he is to recommend himself to the King and the King's favourites—

"To set on foot and maintain access with his Majesty, Dean of the Chapel, May, Murray. Keeping a course of access at the beginning of every term and vacation, with a memorial. To attend some time his repasts, or to fall into a course of familiar discourse. To find means to win a conceit, not open, but private, of being affectionateand assured to the Scotch, and fit to succeed Salisbury in his manage in that kind; Lord Dunbar, Duke of Lennox, and Daubiny: secret."

Then, again, of Salisbury—

"Insinuate myself to become privy to my Lord of Salisbury's estate." "To correspond with Salisbury in a habit of natural but no ways perilous boldness, and in vivacity, invention, care to cast and enterprise (but with due caution), for this manner I judge both in his nature freeth the stands, and in his ends pleaseth him best, and promiseth more use of me. I judge my standing out, and not favoured by Northampton, must needs do me good with Salisbury, especially comparative to the Attorney."

The Attorney Hobart filled the place to which Bacon had so long aspired, and which he thought, perhaps reasonably, that he could fill much better. At any rate, one of the points to which he recurs frequently in his notes is to exhort himself to make his own service a continual contrast to the Attorney's—"to have in mind and use the Attorney's weakness," enumerating a list of instances: "Too full of cases and distinctions. Nibbling solemnly, he distinguisheth but apprehends not;" "No gift with his pen in proclamations and the like;" and at last he draws out in a series of epigrams his view of "Hubbard's disadvantages"—

"Better at shift than at drift....Subtilitas sine acrimonia.... No power with the judge.... He will alter a thing but not mend.... He puts into patents and deeds words not of law but of common sense and discourse.... Sociable save in profit.... He doth depopulate mine office; otherwise called inclose.... I never knew any one of so good a speech with a worse pen." ...

Then in a marginal note—"Solemn goose. Stately, leastwise nodd (?) crafty. They have made him believe that he is wondrous wise." And, finally, he draws up apaper of counsels and rules for his own conduct—"Custumæ aptæ ad Individuum"—which might supply an outline for an essay on the arts of behaviour proper for a rising official, a sequel to the biting irony of the essays onCunningandWisdom for a Man's Self.

"To furnish my L. of S. with ornaments for public speeches. To make him think how he should be reverenced by a Lord Chancellor, if I were; Princelike."To prepare him for matters to be handled in Council or before the King aforehand, and to show him and yield him the fruits of my care."To take notes in tables, when I attend the Council, and sometimes to move out of a memorial shewed and seen. To have particular occasions, fit and graceful and continual, to maintain private speech with every the great persons, and sometimes drawing more than one together.Ex imitatione Att.This specially in public places, and without care or affectation. At Council table to make good my L. of Salisb. motions and speeches, and for the rest sometimes one sometimes another; chiefly his, that is most earnest and in affection."To suppress at once my speaking, with panting and labour of breath and voice. Not to fall upon the main too sudden, but to induce and intermingle speech of good fashion. To use at once upon entrance given of speech, though abrupt, to compose and draw in myself. To free myself at once from payt. (?) of formality and compliment, though with some show of carelessness, pride, and rudeness."(And then follows a long list of matters of business to be attended to.)

"To furnish my L. of S. with ornaments for public speeches. To make him think how he should be reverenced by a Lord Chancellor, if I were; Princelike.

"To prepare him for matters to be handled in Council or before the King aforehand, and to show him and yield him the fruits of my care.

"To take notes in tables, when I attend the Council, and sometimes to move out of a memorial shewed and seen. To have particular occasions, fit and graceful and continual, to maintain private speech with every the great persons, and sometimes drawing more than one together.Ex imitatione Att.This specially in public places, and without care or affectation. At Council table to make good my L. of Salisb. motions and speeches, and for the rest sometimes one sometimes another; chiefly his, that is most earnest and in affection.

"To suppress at once my speaking, with panting and labour of breath and voice. Not to fall upon the main too sudden, but to induce and intermingle speech of good fashion. To use at once upon entrance given of speech, though abrupt, to compose and draw in myself. To free myself at once from payt. (?) of formality and compliment, though with some show of carelessness, pride, and rudeness."

(And then follows a long list of matters of business to be attended to.)

These arts of a court were not new; it was not new for men to observe them in their neighbours and rivals. What was new was the writing them down, with deliberate candour, among a man's private memoranda, as things to be done and with the intention of practising them. This of itself, it has been suggested, shows that they were unfamiliar and uncongenial to Bacon; for a man reminds himself ofwhat he is apt to forget. But a man reminds himself also of what seems to him, at the moment, most important, and what he lays most stress upon. And it is clear that these are the rules, rhetorical and ethical, which Bacon laid down for himself in pursuing the second great object of his life—his official advancement; and that, whatever we think of them, they were the means which he deliberately approved.

As long as Salisbury lived, the distrust which had kept Bacon so long in the shade kept him at a distance from the King's ear, and from influence on his counsels. Salisbury was the one Englishman in whom the King had become accustomed to confide, in his own conscious strangeness to English ways and real dislike and suspicion of them; Salisbury had an authority which no one else had, both from his relations with James at the end of Elizabeth's reign, and as the representative of her policy and the depositary of its traditions; and if he had lived, things might not, perhaps, have been better in James's government, but many things, probably, would have been different. But while Salisbury was supreme, Bacon, though very alert and zealous, was mainly busied with his official work; and the Solicitor's place had become, as he says, a "mean thing" compared with the Attorney's, and also an extremely laborious place—"one of the painfullest places in the kingdom." Much of it was routine, but responsible and fatiguing routine. But if he was not in Salisbury's confidence, he was prominent in the House of Commons. The great and pressing subject of the time was the increasing difficulties of the revenue, created partly by the inevitable changes of a growing state, but much more by the King's incorrigible wastefulness. It was impossible to realise completely the great dream and longing of the Stuart kings and their ministers to make the Crown independentof parliamentary supplies; but to dispense with these supplies as much as possible, and to make as much as possible of the revenue permanent, was the continued and fatal policy of the Court. The "Great Contract"—a scheme by which, in return for the surrender by the Crown of certain burdensome and dangerous claims of the Prerogative, the Commons were to assure a large compensating yearly income to the Crown—was Salisbury's favourite device during the last two years of his life. It was not a prosperous one. The bargain was an ill-imagined and not very decorous transaction between the King and his people. Both parties were naturally jealous of one another, suspicious of underhand dealing and tacit changes of terms, prompt to resent and take offence, and not easy to pacify when they thought advantage had been taken; and Salisbury, either by his own fault, or by yielding to the King's canny shiftiness, gave the business a more haggling and huckstering look than it need have had. Bacon, a subordinate of the Government, but a very important person in the Commons, did his part, loyally, as it seems, and skilfully in smoothing differences and keeping awkward questions from making their appearance. Thus he tried to stave off the risk of bringing definitely to a point the King's cherished claim to levy "impositions," or custom duties, on merchandise, by virtue of his prerogative—a claim which he warned the Commons not to dispute, and which Bacon, maintaining it as legal in theory, did his best to prevent them from discussing, and to persuade them to be content with restraining. Whatever he thought of the "Great Contract," he did what was expected of him in trying to gain for it fair play. But he made time for other things also. He advised, and advised soundly, on the plantation and finance of Ireland. It was a subject in which he tookdeep interest. A few years later, with only too sure a foresight, he gave the warning, "lest Ireland civil become more dangerous to us than Ireland savage." He advised—not soundly in point of law, but curiously in accordance with modern notions—about endowments; though, in this instance, in the famous will case of Thomas Sutton, the founder of the Charter House, his argument probably covered the scheme of a monstrous job in favour of the needy Court. And his own work went on in spite of the pressure of the Solicitor's place. To the first years of his official life belong three very interesting fragments, intended to find a provisional place in the plan of the "Great Instauration." To his friend Toby Matthews, at Florence, he sent in manuscript the great attack on the old teachers of knowledge, which is perhaps the most brilliant, and also the most insolently unjust and unthinking piece of rhetoric ever composed by him—theRedargutio Philosophiarum.

"I send you at this time the only part which hath any harshness; and yet I framed to myself an opinion, that whosoever allowed well of that preface which you so much commend, will not dislike, or at least ought not to dislike, this other speech of preparation; for it is written out of the same spirit, and out of the same necessity. Nay it doth more fully lay open that the question between me and the ancients is not of the virtue of the race, but of the rightness of the way. And to speak truth, it is to the other but aspalmatopugnus, part of the same thing more large.... Myself am like the miller of Huntingdon, that was wont to pray for peace amongst the willows; for while the winds blew, the wind-mills wrought, and the water-mill was less customed. So I see that controversies of religion must hinder the advancement of sciences. Let me conclude with my perpetual wish towards yourself, that the approbation of yourself by your own discreet and temperate carriage, may restore you to your country, and your friends to your society. And so I commend you to God's goodness."Gray's Inn, this 10th of October, 1609."

"Gray's Inn, this 10th of October, 1609."

To Bishop Andrewes he sent, also in manuscript, another piece, belonging to the same plan—the deeply impressive treatise calledVisa et Cogitata—what Francis Bacon had seen of nature and knowledge, and what he had come by meditation to think of what he had seen. The letter is not less interesting than the last, in respect to the writer's purposes, his manner of writing, and his relations to his correspondent.

"MY VERY GOOD LORD,—Now your Lordship hath been so long in the church and the palace disputing between kings and popes, methinks you should take pleasure to look into the field, and refresh your mind with some matter of philosophy, though that science be now through age waxed a child again, and left to boys and young men; and because you were wont to make me believe you took liking to my writings, I send you some of this vacation's fruits, and thus much more of my mind and purpose. I hasten not to publish; perishing I would prevent. And I am forced to respect as well my times as the matter. For with me it is thus, and I think with all men in my case, if I bind myself to an argument, it loadeth my mind; but if I rid my mind of the present cogitation, it is rather a recreation. This hath put me into these miscellanies, which I purpose to suppress, if God give me leave to write a just and perfect volume of philosophy, which I go on with, though slowly. I send not your Lordship too much, lest it may glut you. Now let me tell you what my desire is. If your Lordship be so good now as when you were the good Dean of Westminster, my request to you is, that not by pricks, but by notes, you would mark unto me whatsoever shall seem unto you either not current in the style, or harsh to credit and opinion, or inconvenient for the person of the writer; for no man can be judge and party, and when our minds judge by reflection of ourselves, they are more subject to error. And though for the matter itself my judgement be in some things fixed, and not accessible by any man's judgement that goeth not my way, yet even in those things the admonition of a friend may make me express myself diversly. I would have come to your Lordship, but that I am hastening to my house in the country. And so I commend your Lordship to God's goodness."

There was yet another production of this time, of which we have a notice from himself in a letter to Toby Matthews, the curious and ingenious little treatise on theWisdom of the Ancients, "one of the most popular of his works," says Mr. Spedding, "in his own and in the next generation," but of value to us mainly for its quaint poetical colour, and the unexpected turns, like answers to a riddle, given to the ancient fables. When this work was published, it was the third time that he had appeared as an author in print. He thus writes about it and himself:

"MR. MATTHEWS,—I do heartily thank you for your letter of the 24th of August from Salamanca; and in recompense thereof I send you a little work of mine that hath begun to pass the world. They tell me my Latin is turned into silver, and become current. Had you been here, you should have been my inquisitor before it came forth; but I think the greatest inquisitor in Spain will allow it.... My great work goeth forward, and, after my manner, I alter ever when I add. So that nothing is finished till all be finished."From Gray's Inn, the 17th of February, 1610."

"From Gray's Inn, the 17th of February, 1610."

In the autumn of 1611 the Attorney-General was ill, and Bacon reminded both the King and Salisbury of his claim. He was afraid, he writes to the King, with an odd forgetfulness of the persistency and earnestness of his applications, "thatby reason of my slowness to sue, and apprehend occasions upon the sudden, keeping one plain course of painful service, I mayin fine dierumbe in danger to be neglected and forgotten." The Attorney recovered, but Bacon, on New Year's Tide of 1611/12, wrote to Salisbury to thank him for his good-will. It is the last letter of Bacon's to Salisbury which has come down to us.

"IT MAY PLEASE YOUR GOOD LORDSHIP,—I would entreat the new year to answer for the old, in my humble thanks to your Lordship, both for many your favours, and chiefly that upon the occasion ofMr. Attorney's infirmity I found your Lordship even as I would wish. This doth increase a desire in me to express my thankful mind to your Lordship; hoping that though I find age and decays grow upon me, yet I may have a flash or two of spirit left to do you service. And I do protest before God, without compliment or any light vein of mind, that if I knew in what course of life to do you best service, I would take it, and make my thoughts, which now fly to many pieces, be reduced to that center. But all this is no more than I am, which is not much, but yet the entire of him that is—"

In the following May (May 24, 1612) Salisbury died. From this date James passed from government by a minister, who, whatever may have been his faults, was laborious, public-spirited, and a statesman, into his own keeping and into the hands of favourites, who cared only for themselves. With Cecil ceased the traditions of the days of Elizabeth and Burghley, in many ways evil and cruel traditions, but not ignoble and sordid ones; and James was left without the stay, and also without the check, which Cecil's power had been to him. The field was open for new men and new ways; the fashions and ideas of the time had altered during the last ten years, and those of the Queen's days had gone out of date. Would the new turn out for the better or the worse? Bacon, at any rate, saw the significance of the change and the critical eventfulness of the moment. It was his habit of old to send memorials of advice to the heads of the Government, apparently without such suggestions seeming more intrusive or officious than a leading article seems now, and perhaps with much the same effect. It was now a time to do so, if ever; and he was in an official relation to the King which entitled him to proffer advice. He at once prepared to lay his thoughts before the King, and to suggest that he could do far better service than Cecil, and was ready to take his place. The policy of the "Great Contract" had certainly brokendown, and the King, under Cecil's guidance, had certainly not known how to manage an English parliament. In writing to the King he found it hard to satisfy himself. Several draft letters remain, and it is not certain which of them, if any, was sent. But immediately on Salisbury's death he began, May 29th, a letter in which he said that he had never yet been able to show his affection to the King, "having been as a hawk tied to another's fist;" and if, "as was said to one that spake great words,Amice, verba tua desiderant civitatem, your Majesty say to me,Bacon, your words require a place to speak them," yet that "place or not place" was with the King. But the draft breaks off abruptly, and with the date of the 31st we have the following:

"Your Majesty hath lost a great subject and a great servant. But if I should praise him in propriety, I should say that he was a fit man to keep things from growing worse, but no very fit man to reduce things to be much better. For he loved to have the eyes of all Israel a little too much upon himself, and to have all business still under the hammer, and like clay in the hands of the potter, to mould it as he thought good; so that he was morein operationethanin opere. And though he had fine passages of action, yet the real conclusions came slowly on. So that although your Majesty hath grave counsellors and worthy persons left, yet you do as it were turn a leaf, wherein if your Majesty shall give a frame and constitution to matters, before you place the persons, in my simple opinion it were not amiss. But the great matter and most instant for the present, is the consideration of a Parliament, for two effects: the one for the supply of your estate, the other for the better knitting of the hearts of your subjects unto your Majesty, according to your infinite merit; for both which, Parliaments have been and are the antient and honourable remedy."Now because I take myself to have a little skill in that region, as one that ever affected that your Majesty mought in all your causes not only prevail, but prevail with satisfaction of the inner man; and though no man can say but I was a perfect and peremptory royalist, yet every man makes me believe that I was never one hour out ofcredit with the Lower House; my desire is to know whether your Majesty will give me leave to meditate and propound unto you some preparative remembrances touching the future Parliament."

"Now because I take myself to have a little skill in that region, as one that ever affected that your Majesty mought in all your causes not only prevail, but prevail with satisfaction of the inner man; and though no man can say but I was a perfect and peremptory royalist, yet every man makes me believe that I was never one hour out ofcredit with the Lower House; my desire is to know whether your Majesty will give me leave to meditate and propound unto you some preparative remembrances touching the future Parliament."

Whether he sent this or not, he prepared another draft. What had happened in the mean while we know not, but Bacon was in a bitter mood, and the letter reveals, for the first time, what was really in Bacon's heart about the "great subject and great servant," of whom he had just written so respectfully, and with whom he had been so closely connected for most of his life. The fierceness which had been gathering for years of neglect and hindrance under that placid and patient exterior broke out. He offered himself as Cecil's successor in business of State. He gave his reason for being hopeful of success. Cecil's bitterest enemy could not have given it more bitterly.

"My principal end being to do your Majesty service, I crave leave to make at this time to your Majesty this most humble oblation of myself. I may truly say with the psalm,Multum incola fuit anima mea, for my life hath been conversant in things wherein I take little pleasure. Your Majesty may have heard somewhat that my father was an honest man, and somewhat you may have seen of myself, though not to make any true judgement by, because I have hitherto had onlypotestatem verborum, nor that neither. I was three of my young years bred with an ambassador in France, and since I have been an old truant in the school-house of your council-chamber, though on the second form, yet longer than any that now sitteth hath been upon the head form. If your Majesty find any aptness in me, or if you find any scarcity in others, whereby you may think it fit for your service to remove me to business of State, although I have a fair way before me for profit (and by your Majesty's grace and favour for honour and advancement), and in a course less exposed to the blasts of fortune,yet now that he is gone, quo vivente virtutibus certissimum exitium, I will be ready as a chessman to be wherever your Majesty's royal hand shall set me. Your Majesty will bear me witness, I have not suddenly opened myself thus far. I have lookedupon others, I see the exceptions, I see the distractions, and I fear Tacitus will be a prophet,magis alii homines quam alii mores. I know mine own heart, and I know not whether God that hath touched my heart with the affection may not touch your royal heart to discern it. Howsoever, I shall at least go on honestly in mine ordinary course, and supply the rest in prayers for you, remaining, etc."

This is no hasty outburst. In a later paper on the true way of retrieving the disorders of the King's finances, full of large and wise counsel, after advising the King not to be impatient, and assuring him that a state of debt is not so intolerable—"for it is no new thing for the greatest Kings to be in debt," and all the great men of the Court had been in debt without any "manner of diminution of their greatness"—he returns to the charge in detail against Salisbury and the Great Contract.

"My second prayer is, that your Majesty—in respect to the hasty freeing of your state—would not descend to any means, or degree of means, which carrieth not a symmetry with your Majesty and greatness.He is gone from whom those courses did wholly flow.To have your wants and necessities in particular as it were hanged up in two tablets before the eyes of your lords and commons, to be talked of for four months together; To have all your courses to help yourself in revenue or profit put into printed books, which were wont to be heldarcana imperii; To have such worms of aldermen to lend for ten in the hundred upon good assurance, and with such entreaty (?) as if it should save the bark of your fortune; To contract still where mought be had the readiest payment, and not the best bargain; To stir a number of projects for your profit, and then to blast them, and leave your Majesty nothing but the scandal of them; To pretend even carriage between your Majesty's rights and ease of the people, and to satisfy neither. These courses and others the like I hope are gone with the deviser of them; which have turned your Majesty to inestimable prejudice."

And what he thought of saying, but on further consideration struck out, was the following. It is no wonderthat he struck it out, but it shows what he felt towards Cecil.

"I protest to God, though I be not superstitious, when I saw your M.'s book against Vorstius and Arminius, and noted your zeal to deliver the majesty of God from the vain and indign comprehensions of heresy and degenerate philosophy, as you had by your pen formerly endeavoured to deliver kings from the usurpation of Rome,perculsit illico animumthat God would set shortly upon you some visible favour,and let me not live if I thought not of the taking away of that man."

And from this time onwards he scarcely ever mentions Cecil's name in his correspondence with James but with words of condemnation, which imply that Cecil's mischievous policy was the result of private ends. Yet this was the man to whom he had written the "New Year's Tide" letter six months before; a letter which is but an echo to the last of all that he had been accustomed to write to Cecil when asking assistance or offering congratulation. Cecil had, indeed, little claim on Bacon's gratitude; he had spoken him fair in public, and no doubt in secret distrusted and thwarted him. But to the last Bacon did not choose to acknowledge this. Had James disclosed something of his dead servant, who left some strange secrets behind him, which showed his unsuspected hostility to Bacon? Except on this supposition (but there is nothing to support it), no exaggeration of the liberty allowed to the language of compliment is enough to clear Bacon of an insincerity which is almost inconceivable in any but the meanest tools of power.

"I assure myself," wrote Bacon to the King, "your Majesty taketh not me for one of a busy nature; for my estate being free from all difficulties, and I having such a large field for contemplation, as I have partly and shall muchmore make manifest unto your Majesty and the world, to occupy my thoughts, nothing could make me active but love and affection." So Bacon described his position with questionable accuracy—for his estate was not "free from difficulties"—in the new time coming. He was still kept out of the inner circle of the Council; but from the moment of Salisbury's death he became a much more important person. He still sued for advancement, and still met with disappointment; the "mean men" still rose above him. The lucrative place of Master of the Wards was vacated by Salisbury's death. Bacon was talked of for it, and probably expected it, for he drew up new rules for it, and a speech for the new master; but the office and the speech went to Sir George Carey. Soon after Sir George Carey died. Bacon then applied for it through the new favourite, Rochester. "He was so confident of the place that he put most of his men into new cloaks;" and the world of the day amused itself at his disappointment, when the place was given to another "mean man," Sir Walter Cope, of whom the gossips wrote that if the "last two Treasurers could look out of their graves to see those successors in that place, they would be out of countenance with themselves, and say to the worldquantum mutatus." But Bacon's hand and counsel appear more and more in important matters—the improvement of the revenue; the defence of extreme rights of the prerogative in the case against Whitelocke; the great question of calling a parliament, and of the true and "princely" way of dealing with it. His confidential advice to the King about calling a parliament was marked by his keen perception of the facts of the situation; it was marked too by his confident reliance on skilful indirect methods and trust in the look of things; it bears traces also of his bitter feeling against Salisbury, whom he charges with treacherously fomenting the opposition of the last Parliament. There was no want of worldly wisdom in it; certainly it was more adapted to James's ideas of state-craft than the simpler plan of Sir Henry Nevill, that the King should throw himself frankly on the loyalty and good-will of Parliament. And thus he came to be on easy terms with James, who was quite capable of understanding Bacon's resource and nimbleness of wit. In the autumn of 1613 the Chief-Justiceship of the King's Bench became vacant. Bacon at once gave the King reasons for sending Coke from the Common Pleas—where he was a check on the prerogative—to the King's Bench, where he could do less harm; while Hobart went to the Common Pleas. The promotion was obvious, but the Common Pleas suited Coke better, and the place was more lucrative. Bacon's advice was followed. Coke, very reluctantly, knowing well who had given it, and why, "not only weeping himself but followed by the tears" of all the Court of Common Pleas, moved up to the higher post. The Attorney Hobart succeeded, and Bacon at last became Attorney (October 27, 1613). In Chamberlain's gossip we have an indication, such as occurs only accidentally, of the view of outsiders: "There is a strong apprehension that little good is to be expected by this change, and that Bacon may prove a dangerous instrument."

Thus, at last, at the age of fifty-two, Bacon had gained the place which Essex had tried to get for him at thirty-two. The time of waiting had been a weary one, and it is impossible not to see that it had been hurtful to Bacon. A strong and able man, very eager to have a field for his strength and ability, who is kept out of it, as he thinks unfairly, and is driven to an attitude of suppliant dependency in pressing his claim on great persons who amuse him with words, can hardly help suffering in the humiliating process. It does a man no good to learn to beg, and to have a long training in the art. And further, this long delay kept up the distraction of his mind between the noble work on which his soul was bent, and the necessities of that "civil" or professional and political life by which he had to maintain his estate. All the time that he was "canvassing" (it is his own word) for office, and giving up his time and thoughts to the work which it involved, the greatInstaurationhad to wait his hours of leisure; and his exclamation, so often repeated,Multum incola fuit anima mea, bears witness to the longings that haunted him in his hours of legal drudgery, or in the service of his not very thankful employers. Not but that he found compensation in the interest of public questions, in the companyof the great, in the excitement of state-craft and state employment, in the pomp and enjoyment of court life. He found too much compensation; it was one of his misfortunes. But his heart was always sound in its allegiance to knowledge; and if he had been fortunate enough to have risen earlier to the greatness which he aimed at as a vantage-ground for his true work, or if he had had self-control to have dispensed with wealth and position—if he had escaped the long necessity of being a persistent and still baffled suitor—we might have had as a completed whole what we have now only in great fragments, and we should have been spared the blots which mar a career which ought to have been a noble one.

The first important matter that happened after Bacon's new appointment was the Essex divorce case, and the marriage of Lady Essex with the favourite whom Cecil's death had left at the height of power, and who from Lord Rochester was now made Earl of Somerset. With the divorce, the beginning of the scandals and tragedies of James's reign, Bacon had nothing to do. At the marriage which followed Bacon presented as his offering a masque, performed by the members of Gray's Inn, of which he bore the charges, and which cost him the enormous sum of £2000. Whether it were to repay his obligations to the Howards, or in lieu of a "fee" to Rochester, who levied toll on all favours from the King, it can hardly be said, as has been suggested, to be a protest against the great abuse of the times, the sale of offices for money. The "very splendid trifle, the Masque of Flowers," was one form of the many extravagant tributes paid but too willingly to high-handed worthlessness, of which the deeper and darker guilt was to fill all faces with shame two years afterwards.

As Attorney, Bacon had to take a much more prominentpart in affairs, legal, criminal, constitutional, administrative, than he had yet been allowed to have. We know that it was his great object to show how much more active and useful an Attorney he could be than either Coke or Hobart; and as far as unflagging energy and high ability could make a good public servant, he fully carried out his purpose. In Parliament, the "addled Parliament" of 1614, in which he sat for the University of Cambridge, he did his best to reconcile what were fast becoming irreconcilable, the claims and prerogatives of an absolute king, irritable, suspicious, exacting, prodigal, with the ancient rights and liberties, growing stronger in their demands by being denied, resisted, or outwitted, of the popular element in the State. In the trials, which are so large and disagreeable a part of the history of these years—trials arising out of violent words provoked by the violent acts of power, one of which, Peacham's, became famous, because in the course of it torture was resorted to, or trials which witnessed to the corruption of the high society of the day, like the astounding series of arraignments and condemnations following on the discoveries relating to Overbury's murder, which had happened just before the Somerset marriage—Bacon had to make the best that he could for the cruel and often unequal policy of the Court; and Bacon must take his share in the responsibility for it. An effort on James's part to stop duelling brought from Bacon a worthier piece of service, in the shape of an earnest and elaborate argument against it, full of good sense and good feeling, but hopelessly in advance of the time. On the many questions which touched the prerogative, James found in his Attorney a ready and skilful advocate of his claims, who knew no limit to them but in the consideration of what was safe and prudent to assert. He was a better and more statesmanlike counsellor, in his unceasing endeavours to reconcile James to the expediency of establishing solid and good relations with his Parliament, and in his advice as to the wise and hopeful ways of dealing with it. Bacon had no sympathy with popular wants and claims; of popularity, of all that was called popular, he had the deepest suspicion and dislike; the opinions and the judgment of average men he despised, as a thinker, a politician, and a courtier; the "malignity of the people" he thought great. "I do not love," he says, "the wordpeople." But he had a high idea of what was worthy of a king, and was due to the public interests, and he saw the folly of the petty acts and haughty words, the use of which James could not resist. In his new office he once more urged on, and urged in vain, his favourite project for revising, simplifying, and codifying the law. This was a project which would find little favour with Coke, and the crowd of lawyers who venerated him—men whom Bacon viewed with mingled contempt and apprehension both in the courts and in Parliament where they were numerous, and whom he more than once advised the King to bridle and keep "in awe." Bacon presented his scheme to the King in a Proposition, or, as we should call it, a Report. It is very able and interesting; marked with his characteristic comprehensiveness and sense of practical needs, and with a confidence in his own knowledge of law which contrasts curiously with the current opinion about it. He speaks with the utmost honour of Coke's work, but he is not afraid of a comparison with him. "I do assure your Majesty," he says, "I am in good hope that when Sir Edward Coke's Reports and my Rules and Decisions shall come to posterity, there will be (whatever is now thought) question who was the greater lawyer." But the project, though it was entertained and discussed in Parliament, came to nothing. No one really cared about it except Bacon.

But in these years (1615 and 1616) two things happened of the utmost consequence to him. One was the rise, more extravagant than anything that England had seen for centuries, and in the end more fatal, of the new favourite, who from plain George Villiers became the all-powerful Duke of Buckingham. Bacon, like the rest of the world, saw the necessity of bowing before him; and Bacon persuaded himself that Villiers was pre-eminently endowed with all the gifts and virtues which a man in his place would need. We have a series of his letters to Villiers; they are of course in the complimentary vein which was expected; but if their language is only compliment, there is no language left for expressing what a man wishes to be taken for truth. The other matter was the humiliation, by Bacon's means and in his presence, of his old rival Coke. In the dispute about jurisdiction, always slumbering and lately awakened and aggravated by Coke, between the Common Law Courts and the Chancery, Coke had threatened the Chancery with Præmunire. The King's jealousy took alarm, and the Chief-Justice was called before the Council. There a decree, based on Bacon's advice and probably drawn up by him, peremptorily overruled the legal doctrine maintained by the greatest and most self-confident judge whom the English courts had seen. The Chief-Justice had to acquiesce in this reading of the law; and then, as if such an affront were not enough, Coke was suspended from his office, and, further, enjoined to review and amend his published reports, where they were inconsistent with the view of law which on Bacon's authority the Star Chamber had adopted (June, 1616). This he affected todo, but the corrections were manifestly only colourable; his explanations of his legal heresies against the prerogative, as these heresies were formulated by the Chancellor and Bacon, and presented to him for recantation, were judged insufficient; and in a decree, prefaced by reasons drawn up by Bacon, in which, besides Coke's errors of law, his "deceit, contempt, and slander of the Government," his "perpetual turbulent carriage," and his affectation of popularity, were noted—he was removed from his office (Nov., 1616). So, for the present, the old rivalry had ended in a triumph for Bacon. Bacon, whom Coke had so long headed in the race, whom he had sneered at as a superficial pretender to law, and whose accomplishments and enthusiasm for knowledge he utterly despised, had not only defeated him, but driven him from his seat with dishonour. When we remember what Coke was, what he had thought of Bacon, and how he prized his own unique reputation as a representative of English law, the effects of such a disgrace on a man of his temper cannot easily be exaggerated.

But for the present Bacon had broken through the spell which had so long kept him back. He won a great deal of the King's confidence, and the King was more and more ready to make use of him, though by no means equally willing to think that Bacon knew better than himself. Bacon's view of the law, and his resources of argument and expression to make it good, could be depended upon in the keen struggle to secure and enlarge the prerogative which was now beginning. In the prerogative both James and Bacon saw the safety of the State and the only reasonable hope of good government; but in Bacon's larger and more elevated views of policy—of a policy worthy of a great king, and a king of England—Jameswas not likely to take much interest. The memorials which it was Bacon's habit to present on public affairs were wasted on one who had so little to learn from others—so he thought and so all assured him—about the secrets of empire. Still they were proofs of Bacon's ready mind; and James, even when he disagreed with Bacon's opinion and arguments, was too clever not to see their difference from the work of other men. Bacon rose in favour; and from the first he was on the best of terms with Villiers. He professed to Villiers the most sincere devotion. According to his custom he presented him with a letter of wise advice on the duties and behaviour of a favourite. He at once began, and kept up with him to the end, a confidential correspondence on matters of public importance. He made it clear that he depended upon Villiers for his own personal prospects, and it had now become the most natural thing that Bacon should look forward to succeeding the Lord Chancellor, Ellesmere, who was fast failing. Bacon had already (Feb. 12, 1615/16). in terms which seem strange to us, but were less strange then, set forth in a letter to the King the reasons why he should be Chancellor; criticising justly enough, only that he was a party interested, the qualifications of other possible candidates, Coke, Hobart, and the Archbishop Abbott. Coke would be "an overruling nature in an overruling place," and "popular men were no sure mounters for your Majesty's saddle." Hobart was incompetent. As to Abbott, the Chancellor's place required "a whole man," and to have both jurisdiction, spiritual and temporal, "was fit only for a king." The promise that Bacon should have the place came to him three days afterwards through Villiers. He acknowledged it in a burst of gratitude (Feb. 15, 1615/16). "I will now wholly rely on your excellent and happyself.... I am yours surer to you than my own life. For, as they speak of the Turquoise stone in a ring, I will break into twenty pieces before you bear the least fall." They were unconsciously prophetic words. But Ellesmere lasted longer than was expected. It was not till a year after this promise that he resigned. On the 7th of March, 1616/17, Bacon received the seals. He expresses his obligations to Villiers, now Lord Buckingham, in the following letter:

"MY DEAREST LORD,—It is both in cares and kindness that small ones float up to the tongue, and great ones sink down into the heart with silence. Therefore I could speak little to your Lordship to-day, neither had I fit time; but I must profess thus much, that in this day's work you are the truest and perfectest mirror and example of firm and generous friendship that ever was in court. And I shall count every day lost, wherein I shall not either study your well-doing in thought, or do your name honour in speech, or perform you service in deed. Good my Lord, account and accept me your most bounden and devoted friend and servant of all men living,"March 7, 1616 (i.e.1616/1617).FR. BACON, C.S."

"March 7, 1616 (i.e.1616/1617).FR. BACON, C.S."

He himself believed the appointment to be a popular one. "I know I am come in," he writes to the King soon after, "with as strong an envy of some particulars as with the love of the general." On the 7th of May, 1617, he took his seat in Chancery with unusual pomp and magnificence, and set forth, in an opening speech, with all his dignity and force, the duties of his great office and his sense of their obligation. But there was a curious hesitation in treating him as other men were treated in like cases. He was only "Lord Keeper." It was not till the following January (1617/18) that he received the office of Lord Chancellor. It was not till half a year afterwards that he was made a Peer. Then he became Baron Verulam (July, 1618), and in January, 1620/21, Viscount St. Alban's.

From this time Bacon must be thought of, first and foremost, as a Judge in the great seat which he had so earnestly sought. It was the place not merely of law, which often tied the judge's hands painfully, but of true justice, when law failed to give it. Bacon's ideas of the duties of a judge were clear and strong, as he showed in various admirable speeches and charges: his duties as regards his own conduct and reputation; his duties in keeping his subordinates free from the taint of corruption. He was not ignorant of the subtle and unacknowledged ways in which unlawful gains may be covered by custom, and an abuse goes on because men will not choose to look at it. He entered on his office with the full purpose of doing its work better than it had ever been done. He saw where it wanted reforming, and set himself at once to reform. The accumulation and delay of suits had become grievous; at once he threw his whole energy into the task of wiping out the arrears which the bad health of his predecessor and the traditional sluggishness of the court had heaped up. In exactly three months from his appointment he was able to report that these arrears had been cleared off. "This day" (June 8, 1617), he writes to Buckingham, "I have made even with the business of the kingdom for common justice. Not one cause unheard. The lawyers drawn dry of all the motions they were to make. Not one petition unheard. And this I think could not be said in our time before."

The performance was splendid, and there is no reason to think that the work so rapidly done was not well done. We are assured that Bacon's decisions were unquestioned, and were not complained of. At the same time, before this allegation is accepted as conclusive proof of the public satisfaction, it must be remembered that the questionof his administration of justice, which was at last to assume such strange proportions, has never been so thoroughly sifted as, to enable us to pronounce upon it, it should be. The natural tendency of Bacon's mind would undoubtedly be to judge rightly and justly; but the negative argument of the silence at the time of complainants, in days when it was so dangerous to question authority, and when we have so little evidence of what men said at their firesides, is not enough to show that he never failed.

But the serious thing is that Bacon subjected himself to two of the most dangerous influences which can act on the mind of a judge—the influence of the most powerful and most formidable man in England, and the influence of presents, in money and other gifts. From first to last he allowed Buckingham, whom no man, as Bacon soon found, could displease except at his own peril, to write letters to him on behalf of suitors whose causes were before him; and he allowed suitors, not often while the cause was pending, but sometimes even then, to send him directly, or through his servants, large sums of money. Both these things are explained. It would have been characteristic of Bacon to be confident that he could defy temptation: these habits were the fashion of the time, and everybody took them for granted; Buckingham never asked his good offices beyond what Bacon thought just and right, and asked them rather for the sake of expedition than to influence his judgment. And as to the money presents—every office was underpaid; this was the common way of acknowledging pains and trouble: it was analogous to a doctor's or a lawyer's fee now. And there is no proof that either influence ever led Bacon to do wrong. This has been said, and said with some degree of force. But if it shows that Bacon was not in this matter below his age, itshows that he was not above it. No one knew better than Bacon that there were no more certain dangers to honesty and justice than the interference and solicitation of the great, and the old famous pest of bribes, of which all histories and laws were full. And yet on the highest seat of justice in the realm he, the great reformer of its abuses, allowed them to make their customary haunt. He did not mean to do wrong: his conscience was clear; he had not given thought to the mischief they must do, sooner or later, to all concerned with the Court of Chancery. With a magnificent carelessness he could afford to run safely a course closely bordering on crime, in which meaner men would sin and be ruined.

Before six months were over Bacon found on what terms he must stand with Buckingham. By a strange fatality, quite unintentionally, he became dragged into the thick of the scandalous and grotesque dissensions of the Coke family. The Court was away from London in the North; and Coke had been trying, not without hope of success, to recover the King's favour. Coke was a rich man, and Lady Compton, the mother of the Villiers, thought that Coke's daughter would be a good match for one of her younger sons. It was really a great chance for Coke; but he haggled about the portion; and the opportunity, which might perhaps have led to his taking Bacon's place, passed. But he found himself in trouble in other ways; his friends, especially Secretary Winwood, contrived to bring the matter on again, and he consented to the Villiers's terms. But his wife, the young lady's mother, Lady Hatton, would not hear of it, and a furious quarrel followed. She carried off her daughter into the country. Coke, with a warrant from Secretary Winwood, which Bacon had refused to give him, pursued her: "with his son, 'Fighting Clem,' and ten or elevenservants, weaponed, in a violent manner he repaired to the house where she was remaining, and with a piece of timber or form broke open the door and dragged her along to his coach." Lady Hatton rushed off the same afternoon for help to Bacon.

After an overturn by the way, "at last to my Lord Keeper's they come, but could not have instant access to him, for that his people told them he was laid at rest, being not well. Then my La. Hatton desired she might be in the next room where my Lord lay, that she might be the first that [should] speak with him after he was stirring. The door-keeper fulfilled her desire, and in the meantime gave her a chair to rest herself in, and there left her alone; but not long after, she rose up and bounced against my Lord Keeper's door, and waked him and affrighted him, that he called his men to him; and they opening the door, she thrust in with them, and desired his Lp. to pardon her boldness, but she was like a cow that had lost her calf, and so justified [herself] and pacified my Lord's anger, and got his warrant and my Lo. Treasurer's warrant and others of the Council to fetch her daughter from the father and bring them both to the Council."

It was a chance that the late Chief-Justice and his wife, with their armed parties, did not meet on the road, in which case "there were like to be strange tragedies." At length the Council compelled both sides to keep the peace, and the young lady was taken for the present out of the hands of her raging parents. Bacon had assumed that the affair was the result of an intrigue between Winwood and Coke, and that the Court would take part against Coke, a man so deep in disgrace and so outrageously violent. Supposing that he had the ear of Buckingham, he wrote earnestly, persuading him to put an end to the business; and in the meantime the Council ordered Coke to be brought before the Star Chamber "for riot and force," to "be heard and sentenced as justice shall appertain." They had not the slightestdoubt that they were doing what would please the King. A few days after they met, and then they learned the truth.

"Coke and his friends," writes Chamberlain, "complain of hard measure from some of the greatest at that board, and that he was too much trampled upon with ill language. And our friend [i.e.Winwood] passed out scot free for the warrant, which the greatest [word illegible] there said was subject to apræmunire; and withal told the Lady Compton that they wished well to her and her sons, and would be ready to serve the Earl of Buckingham with all true affection, whereas others did it out of faction and ambition—which words glancing directly at our good friend (Winwood), he was driven to make his apology, and to show how it was put upon him from time to time by the Queen and other parties; and, for conclusion, showed a letter of approbation of all his courses from the King, making the whole table judge what faction and ambition appeared in this carriage.Ad quod non fuit responsum."

None indeed, but blank faces, and thoughts of what might come next. The Council, and Bacon foremost, had made a desperate mistake. "It is evident," as Mr. Spedding says, "that he had not divined Buckingham's feelings on the subject." He was now to learn them. To his utter amazement and alarm he found that the King was strong for the match, and that the proceeding of the Council was condemned at Court as gross misconduct. In vain he protested that he was quite willing to forward the match; that in fact he had helped it. Bacon's explanations, and his warnings against Coke the King "rejected with some disdain;" he justified Coke's action; he charged Bacon with disrespect and ingratitude to Buckingham; he put aside his arguments and apologies as worthless or insincere. Such reprimands had not often been addressed, even to inferior servants. Bacon's letters to Buckingham remained at first without notice; when Buckingham answered he did so with scornful and menacing curtness. Meanwhile Bacon heard from Yelverton how things were going at Court.

"Sir E. Coke," he wrote, "hath not forborne by any engine to heave at both your Honour and myself, and he works the weightiest instrument, the Earl of Buckingham, who, as I see, sets him as close to him as his shirt, the Earl speaking in Sir Edward's phrase, and as it were menacing in his spirit."

Buckingham, he went on to say, "did nobly and plainly tell me he would not secretly bite, but whosoever had had any interest, or tasted of the opposition to his brother's marriage, he would as openly oppose them to their faces, and they should discern what favour he had by the power he would use." The Court, like a pack of dogs, had set upon Bacon. "It is too common in every man's mouth in Court that your greatness shall be abated, and as your tongue hath been as a razor unto some, so shall theirs be to you." Buckingham said to every one that Bacon had been forgetful of his kindness and unfaithful to him: "not forbearing in open speech to tax you, as if it were an inveterate custom with you, to be unfaithful unto him, as you were to the Earls of Essex and Somerset."

All this while Bacon had been clearly in the right. He had thrust himself into no business that did not concern him. He had not, as Buckingham accuses him of having done, "overtroubled" himself with the marriage. He had done his simple duty as a friend, as a councillor, as a judge. He had been honestly zealous for the Villiers's honour, and warned Buckingham of things that were beyond question. He had curbed Coke's scandalous violence, perhaps with no great regret, but with manifest reason. But for this he was now on the very edge of losing his office; it was clear to him, as it is clear to us, that nothing could save him but absolute submission. Heaccepted the condition. How this submission was made and received, and with what gratitude he found that he was forgiven, may be seen in the two following letters. Buckingham thus extends his grace to the Lord Keeper, and exhorts him to better behaviour:

"But his Majesty's direction in answer of your letter hath given me occasion to join hereunto a discovery unto you of mine inward thoughts, proceeding upon the discourse you had with me this day. For I do freely confess that your offer of submission unto me, and in writing (if so I would have it), battered so the unkindness that I had conceived in my heart for your behaviour towards me in my absence, as out of the sparks of my old affection towards you I went to sound his Majesty's intention how he means to behave himself towards you, specially in any public meeting; where I found on the one part his Majesty so little satisfied with your late answer unto him, which he counted (for I protest I use his own terms)confused and childish, and his vigorous resolution on the other part so fixed, that he would put some public exemplary mark upon you, as I protest the sight of his deep-conceived indignation quenched my passion, making me upon the instant change from the person of a party into a peace-maker; so as I was forced upon my knees to beg of his Majesty that he would put no public act of disgrace upon you, and, as I dare say, no other person would have been patiently heard in this suit by his Majesty but myself, so did I (though not without difficulty) obtain thus much—that he would not so far disable you from the merit of your future service as to put any particular mark of disgrace upon your person. Only thus far his Majesty protesteth, that upon the conscience of his office he cannot omit (though laying aside all passion) to give a kingly reprimand at his first sitting in council to so many of his councillors as were then here behind, and were actors in this business, for their ill behaviour in it. Some of the particular errors committed in this business he will name, but without accusing any particular persons by name."Thus your Lordship seeth the fruits of my natural inclination; and I protest all this time past it was no small grief unto me to hear the mouth of so many upon this occasion open to load you with innumerable malicious and detracting speeches, as if no music weremore pleasing to my ears than to rail of you, which made me rather regret the ill nature of mankind, that like dogs love to set upon him that they see once snatched at. And to conclude, my Lord, you have hereby a fair occasion so to make good hereafter your reputation by your sincere service to his Majesty, as also by your firm and constant kindness to your friends, as I may (your Lordship's old friend) participate of the comfort and honour that will thereby come to you. Thus I rest at last"Your Lordship's faithful friend and servant,"G.B."

"Thus your Lordship seeth the fruits of my natural inclination; and I protest all this time past it was no small grief unto me to hear the mouth of so many upon this occasion open to load you with innumerable malicious and detracting speeches, as if no music weremore pleasing to my ears than to rail of you, which made me rather regret the ill nature of mankind, that like dogs love to set upon him that they see once snatched at. And to conclude, my Lord, you have hereby a fair occasion so to make good hereafter your reputation by your sincere service to his Majesty, as also by your firm and constant kindness to your friends, as I may (your Lordship's old friend) participate of the comfort and honour that will thereby come to you. Thus I rest at last

"Your Lordship's faithful friend and servant,"G.B."

"MY EVER BEST LORD, now better than yourself,—Your Lordship's pen, or rather pencil, hath pourtrayed towards me such magnanimity and nobleness and true kindness, as methinketh I see the image of some ancient virtue, and not anything of these times. It is the line of my life, and not the lines of my letter, that must express my thankfulness; wherein if I fail, then God fail me, and make me as miserable as I think myself at this time happy by this reviver, through his Majesty's singular clemency, and your incomparable love and favour. God preserve you, prosper you, and reward you for your kindness to"Your raised and infinitely obliged friend and servant,"Sept. 22, 1617.FR. BACON, C.S."

"Your raised and infinitely obliged friend and servant,"Sept. 22, 1617.FR. BACON, C.S."

Thus he had tried his strength with Buckingham. He had found that this, "a little parent-like" manner of advising him, and the doctrine that a true friend "ought rather to go against his mind than his good," was not what Buckingham expected from him. And he never ventured on it again. It is not too much to say that a man who could write as he now did to Buckingham, could not trust himself in any matter in which Buckingham, was interested.

But the reconciliation was complete, and Bacon took his place more and more as one of the chief persons in the Government. James claimed so much to have his own way, and had so little scruple in putting aside, in hissuperior wisdom, sometimes very curtly, Bacon's or any other person's recommendations, that though his services were great, and were not unrecognised, he never had the power and influence in affairs to which his boundless devotion to the Crown, his grasp of business, and his willing industry, ought to have entitled him. He was still a servant, and made to feel it, though a servant in the "first form." It was James and Buckingham who determined the policy of the country, or settled the course to be taken in particular transactions; when this was settled, it was Bacon's business to carry it through successfully. In this he was like all the other servants of the Crown, and like them he was satisfied with giving his advice, whether it were taken or not; but unlike many of them he was zealous in executing with the utmost vigour and skill the instructions which were given him. Thus he was required to find the legal means for punishing Raleigh; and, as a matter of duty, he found them. He was required to tell the Government side of the story of Raleigh's crimes and punishment—which really was one side of the story, only not by any means the whole; and he told it, as he had told the Government story against Essex, with force, moderation, and good sense. Himself, he never would have made James's miserable blunders about Raleigh; but the blunders being made, it was his business to do his best to help the King out of them. When Suffolk, the Lord Treasurer, was disgraced and brought before the Star Chamber for corruption and embezzlement in his office, Bacon thought that he was doing no more than his duty in keeping Buckingham informed day by day how the trial was going on; how he had taken care that Suffolk's submission should not stop it—"for all would be but a play on the stage if justice went not on in the right course;" how he had taken care thatthe evidence went well—"I will not say I sometime holp it, as far as was fit for a judge;" how, "a little to warm the business" ... "I spake a word, that he that did draw or milk treasure from Ireland, did not,emulgere, milk money, but blood." This, and other "little things" like it, while he was sitting as a judge to try, if the word may be used, a personal enemy of Buckingham, however bad the case might be against Suffolk, sound strange indeed to us; and not less so when, in reporting the sentence and the various opinions of the Council about it, he, for once, praises Coke for the extravagance of his severity: "Sir Edward Coke did his part—I have not heard him do better—and began with a fine of £100,000; but the judges first, and most of the rest, reduced it to £30,000. I do not dislike that thing passed moderately; and all things considered, it is not amiss, and might easily have been worse."

In all this, which would have been perfectly natural from an Attorney-General of the time, Bacon saw but his duty, even as a judge between the Crown and the subject. It was what was expected of those whom the King chose to employ, and whom Buckingham chose to favour. But a worse and more cruel case, illustrating the system which a man like Bacon could think reasonable and honourable, was the disgrace and punishment of Yelverton, the Attorney-General, the man who had stood by Bacon, and in his defence had faced Buckingham, knowing well Buckingham's dislike of himself, when all the Court turned against Bacon in his quarrel with Coke and Lady Compton. Towards the end of the year 1620, on the eve of a probable meeting of Parliament, there was great questioning about what was to be done about certain patents and monopolies—monopolies for making gold and silk thread, and for licensing inns and ale-houses—which were in the hands of Buckingham's brothers and their agents. The monopolies were very unpopular; there was always doubt as to their legality; they were enforced oppressively and vexatiously by men like Michell and Mompesson, who acted for the Villiers; and the profits of them went, for the most part, not into the Exchequer, but into the pockets of the hangers-on of Buckingham. Bacon defended them both in law and policy, and his defence is thought by Mr. Gardiner to be not without grounds; but he saw the danger of obstinacy in maintaining what had become so hateful in the country, and strongly recommended that the more indefensible and unpopular patents should be spontaneously given up, the more so as they were of "no great fruit." But Buckingham's insolent perversity "refused to be convinced." The Council, when the question was before them, decided to maintain them. Bacon, who had rightly voted in the minority, thus explains his own vote to Buckingham: "The King did wisely put it upon and consult, whether the patents were at this time to be removed by Act of Council before Parliament.I opined (but yet somewhat like Ovid's mistress, that strove, but yet as one that would be overcome), that yes!" But in the various disputes which had arisen about them, Yelverton had shown that he very much disliked the business of defending monopolies, and sending London citizens to jail for infringing them. He did it, but he did it grudgingly. It was a great offence in a man whom Buckingham had always disliked; and it is impossible to doubt that what followed was the consequence of his displeasure.

"In drawing up a new charter for the city of London," writes Mr. Gardiner, "Yelverton inserted clauses for which he was unable to produce a warrant. The worst that could be said was that he had, through inadvertence, misunderstood the verbal directions of theKing. Although no imputation of corruption was brought against him, yet he was suspended from his office, and prosecuted in the Star Chamber. He was then sentenced to dismissal from his post, to a fine of £4000, and to imprisonment during the Royal pleasure."

In the management of this business Bacon had the chief part. Yelverton, on his suspension, at once submitted. The obnoxious clauses are not said to have been of serious importance, but they were new clauses which the King had not sanctioned, and it would be a bad precedent to pass over such unauthorised additions even by an Attorney-General. "I mistook many things," said Yelverton afterwards, in words which come back into our minds at a later period, "I was improvident in some things, and too credulous in all things." It might have seemed that dismissal, if not a severe reprimand, was punishment enough. But the submission was not enough, in Bacon's opinion, "for the King's honour." He dwelt on the greatness of the offence, and the necessity of making a severe example. According to his advice, Yelverton was prosecuted in the Star Chamber. It was not merely a mistake of judgment. "Herein," said Bacon, "I note the wisdom of the law of England, which termeth the highest contempt and excesses of authorityMisprisions; which (if you take the sound and derivation of the word) is butmistaken; but if you take the use and acception of the word, it is high and heinous contempt and usurpation of authority; whereof the reason I take to be and the name 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 more of the greatness of his place than of the duty of his place, will soon commit misprisions." The day would come when this doctrine would be pressed with ruinous effect against Bacon himself. But now heexpounded with admirable clearness the wrongness of carelessness about warrants and of taking things for granted. He acquitted his former colleague of "corruption of reward;" but "in truth that makes the offence rather divers than less;" for some offences "are black, and others scarlet, some sordid, some presumptuous." He pronounced his sentence—the fine, the imprisonment; "for his place, I declare him unfit for it." "And the next day," says Mr. Spedding, "he reported to Buckingham the result of the proceeding," and takes no small credit for his own part in it.

It was thus that the Court used Bacon, and that Bacon submitted to be used. He could have done, if he had been listened to, much nobler service. He had from the first seen, and urged as far as he could, the paramount necessity of retrenchment in the King's profligate expenditure. Even Buckingham had come to feel the necessity of it at last; and now that Bacon filled a seat at the Council, and that the prosecution of Suffolk and an inquiry into the abuses of the Navy had forced on those in power the urgency of economy, there was a chance of something being done to bring order into the confusion of the finances. Retrenchment began at the King's kitchen and the tables of his servants; an effort was made, not unsuccessfully, to extend it wider, under the direction of Lionel Cranfield, a self-made man of business from the city; but with such a Court the task was an impossible one. It was not Bacon's fault, though he sadly mismanaged his own private affairs, that the King's expenditure was not managed soberly and wisely. Nor was it Bacon's fault, as far as advice went, that James was always trying either to evade or to outwit a Parliament which he could not, like the Tudors, overawe. Bacon's uniform counsel had been—Look on a Parliament as a certain necessity, but not onlyas a necessity, as also a unique and most precious means for uniting the Crown with the nation, and proving to the world outside how Englishmen love and honour their King, and their King trusts his subjects. Deal with it frankly and nobly as becomes a king, not suspiciously like a huckster in a bargain. Do not be afraid of Parliament. Be skilful in calling it, but don't attempt to "pack" it. Use all due adroitness and knowledge of human nature, and necessary firmness and majesty, in managing it; keep unruly and mischievous people in their place, but do not be too anxious to meddle—"let nature work;" and above all, though of course you want money from it, do not let that appear as the chief or real cause of calling it. Take the lead in legislation. Be ready with some interesting or imposing points of reform, or policy, about which you ask your Parliament to take counsel with you. Take care to "frame and have ready some commonwealth bills, that may add respect to the King's government and acknowledgment of his care; notwooingbills to make the King and his graces cheap, but good matter to set the Parliament on work, that an empty stomach do not feed on humour." So from the first had Bacon always thought; so he thought when he watched, as a spectator, James's blunders with his first Parliament of 1604; so had he earnestly counselled James, when admitted to his confidence, as to the Parliaments of 1614 and 1615; so again, but in vain, as Chancellor, he advised him to meet the Parliament of 1620. It was wise, and from his point of view honest advice, though there runs all through it too much reliance on appearances which were not all that they seemed; there was too much thought of throwing dust in the eyes of troublesome and inconvenient people. But whatever motives there might have been behind, it would have beenwell if James had learned from Bacon how to deal with Englishmen. But he could not. "I wonder," said James one day to Gondomar, "that my ancestors should ever have permitted such an institution as the House of Commons to have come into existence. I am a stranger, and found it here when I arrived, so that I am obliged to put up with what I cannot get rid of." James was the only one of our many foreign kings who, to the last, struggled to avoid submitting himself to the conditions of an English throne.

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