TO THE LORD KEEPER.1

It may please your good Lordship,

I conceive the end already made, which will I trust be to me a beginning of good fortune, or at least of content. Her Majesty by God's grace shall live and reign long. She is not running away, I may trust her. Or whether she look towards me or no, I remain the same, not altered in my intention. If I had been an ambitious man, it would have overthrown me. But minded as I am, revertet benedictio mea in sinum meum. If I had made any reckoning of anything to be stirred, I would have waited on your Lordship, and will be at any time ready to wait on you to do you service. So I commend your good Lordship to God's holy preservation. From Twicknam Park, this 14th of October.

Your Lordship's most humble

at your hon. commandments,

Indorsed: 14th October, '95.

FR. BACON.

6.

At last then the chase was really at an end. The Queen had finally resolved that Bacon should not be her Solicitor-General, and on the 5th of November following, Serjeant Fleming received the patent of the office. It does not appear however that the resolution was brought on by any new offence given either by Bacon or Essex, or by any fresh distaste conceived by the Queen. Rather, I think, it was the end of that long displeasure. In the beginning of March, 1592-3, he had done a thing which Elizabeth did not choose persons in her service to do. As a member of the House of Commons representing Middlesex, he had taken a leading part in a movement which was certainly opposed to the wishes of the Government, and ended (if my interpretation of the proceedings be correct) in the defeat of a project for getting rid of one of the most important privileges of the Lower House, -most important to them and by consequence most inconvenient in many cases to the Crown. He was a young man, however, of unquestioned and most affectionate loyalty, attached to the Crown by all ties both of interest and feeling; and he might see his error and make amends. Reward and punishment lay before him month after 1 Harl. MSS. vol. 6997, fo. 119. Original: own hand.

VOL. I.

2 B

month and year after year, and he was still free to choose. The Attorney-Generalship was kept vacant for a year; during which it was twice at least intimated to him, that his conduct in Parliament was the thing which stood most in his way. When the AttorneyGeneralship was filled up, the Solicitorship was kept vacant for a year and a half, during which the same intimation was once at least conveyed to him. But all this time he had shown no symptom of repentance, no consciousness even of having done anything wrong. In April, 1593, all he had to say was that he had said nothing but what he thought it his duty to say; and in June, 1595, he had nothing to add in the way of excuse, except that the points in which he had opposed the Government proposition were only "circumstances of time and manner," and that " variety is allowed in counsel as a discord in music, to make it more perfect." Upon this point then it seemed that he was incorrigible; he could not see, or would not own, his fault; and he must take the consequences. But Elizabeth, though she could not bring herself to pardon such an offence, was not the less likely to feel respect for such an offender. And it seems that she was willing to let the final rejection of his suit for the Solicitorship pass for a full quittance, and allow the cloud which had so long hung upon her countenance to clear away.

7.

To the Earl of Essex the decision was in every way a mortification. He felt his friend's disappointment as his own; his whole credit for influence at Court had been notoriously staked upon success in this suit; and such a friend in such an office would have been a material support to him; so that it was a real loss to him in all respects. And if he was not yet convinced that his method of dealing with the Queen was unwise, he must at least have felt keenly that it had been in this case unlucky, and that Bacon had always disapproved of it, and warned him what it would come to. So deeply indebted as the Bacons were to him for his endeavours in this matter, they could not of course criticize the manner of them: but we know that in the management of his own affairs it was a point on which he and Bacon always "directly and contradictorily differed:" and when Lady Bacon said that "though the Earl showed great affection yet he marred all with violent courses," there can be little doubt now that she made a true judgment. In the account between him and Bacon the obligation was not all on one side. Bacon owed him much for his friendship, trust, and eager endeavours to serve him. He owed Bacon much

not only for affection and zeal, but for time and pains gratuitously spent in his affairs. These he had done his best to requite in the best way-namely by advancing him in his profession; but having failed, he (not unnaturally) desired to make him some reparation. And this he accordingly did with characteristic ardour and generosity. Of the particulars of the transaction, and indeed of the transaction itself, our only information is derived from Bacon's own narrative, published nine years after. And as subsequent events give it a peculiar importance, I shall quote at length all that relates to it.

"After the Queen had denied me the Solicitor's place, for the which his Lordship had been a long and earnest suitor on my behalf, it pleased him to come to me from Richmond to Twicknam Park, and brake with me, and said, 'Master Bacon, the Queen hath denied me yon place for you, and hath placed another; I know you are the least part of your own matter, but you fare ill because you have chosen me for your mean and dependence; you have spent your time and thoughts in my matters: I die (these were his very words) if I do not somewhat towards your fortune: you shall not deny to accept a piece of land which I will bestow upon you.' My answer I remember was, that for my fortune it was no great matter, but that his Lordship's offer made me to call to mind what was wont to be said when I was in France of the Duke of Guise, that he was the greatest usurer in France, because he had turned all his estate into obligations; meaning that he had left himself nothing, but only had bound numbers of persons to him. Now, my Lord,' said I, 'I would not have you imitate his course, nor turn your state thus by great gifts into obligations, for you will find many bad debtors.' He bade me take no care for that, and pressed it: whereupon I said, 'My Lord, 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 a saving of his faith to the king and his other lords: and therefore, my Lord' (said I) 'I can be no more yours than I was, and it must be with the ancient savings: and if I grow to be a rich man, you will give me leave to give it back to some of your unrewarded followers.'"

The end was that the Earl "enfeoffed" Bacon "of land," which he afterwards "sold for £1800, and thought was more worth." The land in question is said (probably enough, though on no better authority, so far as I know, than Bushell, upon whose authority I do not myself believe anything) to have been in Twickenham Park,—a piece, perhaps, adjoining Bacon's lodge there. It was certainly at this time that he received from the Crown a lease of certain lands at Twickenham, for twenty-one years, dating from Michaelmas, 1624, upon the same terms on which they had formerly been held by Edward Bacon,

and were then held by one Milo Dodding; viz. a rent of twelve guineas a year. It was granted however in consideration of the services and at the suit of one Ralph Fletcher-" unum Valett' de le Vestrie in Hospitio nostro "—of whose relations with Bacon and interest in the matter we know nothing; and probably formed part of a transaction of which the history has not been preserved. The grant of the reversion of the lease is dated the 17th of November, 1595;1 and, however he came by it, was a thing of value, upon the security of which money could be raised. In the meantime the transfer of the lease to a stranger did not interfere with his occupation, for he continued to reside at Twickenham Park as before.

As I find that the Court was at Richmond from the 20th of October, 1595, to the 5th of November,2 or thereabouts, I suppose this conversation took place within that period: perhaps after the Queen's resolution had been taken, and before the place had been actually given to Fleming. The next letter, which comes from Rawley's supplementary collection and has no date, may have been written a few days after, when everything was settled; and the last sentence may have reference to the munificent present for which Bacon had already made his acknowledgments in the manner above reported.

TO MY LORD OF ESSEX.3

It may please your good Lordship,

I pray God her Majesty's weighing be not like the weight of a balance; gravia deorsum, levia sursum. But I am as far from being altered in devotion towards her, as I am from distrust that she will be altered in opinion towards me, when she knoweth me better. For myself, I have lost some opinion, some time, and some means; this is my account: but then for opinion, it is a blast that goeth and cometh; for time, it is true it goeth and cometh not; but yet I have learned that it may be redeemed.

For means, I value that most; and the rather, because I am purposed not to follow the practice of the law: (If her Majesty command me in any particular, I shall be ready to do her willing service :) and my reason is only, because it drinketh too much time, which I have dedicated to better purposes. But even for that point of estate and means, I partly lean to Thales' opinion, That a philosopher may be rich if he will. Thus your Lordship

1 See a copy of the patent in Dixon's 'Personal History of Lord Bacon,' p. 359. 2 Birch's Memoirs, i. 312.

Resuscitatio, Supplement, p. 111.

seeth how I comfort myself; to the increase whereof I would fain please myself to believe that to be true which my Lord Treasurer writeth; which is, that it is more than a philosopher morally can disgest. But without any such high conceit, I esteem it like the pulling out of an aching tooth, which, I remember, when I was a child and had little philosophy, I was glad of when it was done. For your Lordship, I do think myself more beholding to you than to any man. And I say, I reckon myself as a common (not popular, but common); and as much as is lawful to be enclosed of a common, so much your Lordship shall be sure to have.

Your Lordship's, to obey your honourable commands,

more settled than ever.

The remarkable sentence with which this letter concludes, I cannot understand otherwise than as a warning, similar to that with which the conversation at Twickenham concluded, and suggested by some apprehension that Essex might misunderstand the nature of the relation between them, and expect from Bacon a devotion incompatible with his devotion to the State, which had the first claim upon him. "I can be no more yours than I was: it must be with the ancient savings-that is, of faith to the king and his other lords." I am but " as a common;" you can have for your own share only so much as is lawful to be enclosed:" that is, I can only offer you such services as can be lawfully rendered by one whose chief service is due to the State. It is true that Essex was still a loyal subject, and that all the objects of his personal ambition lay as yet within the limits of patriotism and duty. But he had already engaged deeply in a game very dangerous to play at with such a nature as the Queen's. The history of his relation with the Court is a history of quarrels and reconciliations, provocations given and forgiven, the liberties of a spoiled child with a mother, whose affection though mortified and irritated cannot afford to sacrifice him; each victory emboldening him to repeat the same experiment, without considering that patience has its limits, and that every successive strain put upon the affection leaves it less able to endure another. It was a point in which Bacon had always thought Essex in the wrong, and told him what would come of it. But though he listened, he was not convinced; and it seems to me that Bacon had already begun to fear that these repeated trials of the Queen's affection (there being, I fancy, not much real affection on Essex's part to temper provocations on his side) might end at last in some fatal alienation.