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which is heaven to some men, is hell to me (?), or purgatory at least. It is true I was glad to see that the King's choice was so generally approved, and that I had so much interest in men's good will and good opinion, because it maketh me a fitter instrument to do my master service, and my friend also. After I was set in Chancery, I published his Majesty's charge which he gave me when he gave me the Seal, and what rules and resolutions I had taken for the fulfilling his commandments. I send your Lordship a copy of what I said. Men tell me it hath done the King a great deal of honour, insomuch that some of my friends that are wise and no vain ones, did not stick to say to me that there was not this seven years such a preparation for a parliament,—which was a commendation I confess pleased me well. I pray take some fit time to show it to his Majesty, because if I misunderstood him in any thing, I may amend it, because I know his judgment is higher and deeper than mine.”*

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He was greatly delighted with the following answer :—

I have acquainted his Majesty with your letter and the papers that came enclosed, who is exceedingly well satisfied-especially with the speech you made at the taking of your place in the Chancery. Whereby his Majesty perceiveth that you have not only given proof how well you understood the place of a Chancellor, but done him much right also in giving notice to those that were present, that you have received such instructions from his Majesty, whose honour will be so much the greater in that all men will acknowledge the sufficiency and worthiness of his Majesty's choice in preferring a man of such abilities to that place, which besides cannot but be a great advancement and furtherance to his service; and I can assure your Lordship that his Majesty was never so well pleased as he is with this account you have given him of this passage."

The Lord Keeper resolved to show what could be effected by vigour and perseverance. He sat forenoon and afternoon,-coming punctually into Court and staying a little beyond his time to finish a matter, which if postponed might have taken another day, -most patiently listening to every thing that could assist him in arriving at a right conclusion, but giving a broad hint to council by a question, a shrug, or a look, when they were wandering from the subject, not baulking the hopes of the suitors by breaking up to attend a Cabinet or the House of Lords,-not encouraging lengthiness at the bar to save the trouble of thought,-not postponing judgment till the argument was forgotten,-not seeking to allay the discontent of the bar by "nods, and becks, and wreathed

smiles."

At the end of one month he had satisfactorily cleared off the

* Works, v. 469. Bacon no doubt expected that the letter as well as the address would be laid before the King.

† Works, v. 475.

whole arrear, and on the 8th of June he thus exultingly writes to Buckingham:

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My very good Lord,―This day 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 unanswered. And this I think could not be said in our age before. This I speak not out of ostentation, but out of gladness when I have done my duty. I know men think I cannot continue if I should thus oppress myself with business; but that account is made. The duties of life are more than life; and if I die now, I shall die before the world will be weary of me which, in our times is somewhat rare."*

He then goes on to mention a slight attack of the gout in his foot, which he ascribed to "changing from a field air to a Thames air," that is from Grey's Inn to York House, of which he had now taken possession with great delight, as his father had so long occupied it, and it was the place of his own birth.†

To gain the good will of the profession, he wisely revived a practice which having succeeded well with Lord Chancellor Hatton, had fallen into desuetude, and which all prudent Chancellors follow, to give dinners to the Judges and the leaders of the bar.‡ He sends the following account in a letter to Buckingham of his first banquet:

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Yesterday, which was my weary day, I bid all the Judges to dinner, which was not used to be, and entertained them in a private withdrawing chamber with the learned counsel. When the feast was past, I came amongst them and sat me down at the end of the table, and prayed them to think I was one of them and but a foreman.§ I told them I was weary, and therefore must be short,

*Works, vi. 149.

† York House having been the residence of so many Chancellors and Lord Keepers, and being so often mentioned, some farther account of it may please the curious reader. The see of York being deprived of its ancient inn by Wolsey's cession of Whitehali to Henry VIII, Heath, Archbishop of York and Chancellor, purchased a piece of land and certain old buildings between the river Thames and the Strand, near where Villiers Street now stands; there he erected York House in which he resided and which, under leases from successive Archbishops of York, was occupied by almost all the holders of the Great Seal who succeeded him down to Lord Bacon. The hall was fitted as a court for business in the afternoons and out of term, and it contained various accommodations for the Chancellor's officers. Coming by exchange to the Crown after the fall of Bacon, it was granted to Buckingham. Being seized as forfeited by the Long Parliament, it was granted to Lord Fairfax, but reverting to the second Duke of Buckingham, he sold it for building, and there were erected upon it "George Street," "Villiers Street," "Duke Street," and "Buckingham Street," which with " Of Alley," still preserve his name and title, the lines of Pope being a lasting record of his infamy.

The complaints of Lord Eldon's delays were much aggravated by his non-fenzance in this respect. During a course of professional dinners by Sir Thomas Plomer, Romilly observed, that "the Master of the Rolls was very properly clearing off the arrears of the Lord Chancellor."

§ I do not exactly understand how my Lord Keeper Bacon comported himself on this occasion. Are we to understand that he could not be at table during dinner from indisposition? or that he was too great to eat with his company, and conde

and would now speak to them upon two points." The first was about injunctions:-" I plainly told them that, for my part, as I would not suffer any the least diminution or derogation from the ancient and due power of the Chancery, so if any thing should be brought to them at any time touching the proceedings of the Chancery, which did seem to them exorbitant or inordinate, that they should freely and friendly acquaint me with it, and we should soon agree; or if not, we had a Master that could easily both discern and rule. At which speech of mine, besides a great deal of thanks and acknowledgment, I did see cheer and comfort in their faces, as if it were a new world." The second point was, requiring from each of them a written account of what they had done and observed on circuits, to be sent to the King.

What was not so lauable,-he already began to tamper privately with the Judges, and soliciting such of them as were most apt for his purpose, prosecuted a scheme for extending still farther the usurped jurisdiction of the High Commission Court.

He continued regularly to correspond on all matters of State with the King and Buckingham, who were holding a parliament in Scotland, in the vain hope of establishing episcopacy in that country. Having at first ventured to oppose the projected matrimonial alliance between Prince Charles and the Infanta of Spain, he yielded to the King's wishes, and did all in his power to promote it.

He was thus in the highest possible favour, when suddenly his inextinguishable enmity to Sir E. Coke had nearly produced his own ruin. Not satisfied with turning him out of his office of Chief Justice, and erasing his name from the list of Privy Councillors, he still went on with the absurd charge against him about his Reports, and hoped to "make a Star Chamber business of it."*

The Ex-chief Justice counteracted this scheme by a most mas terly stroke of policy. His second wife, Lady Hatton, had brought him one child, a daughter, who was to succeed to all her mother's immense property. This heiress he offered in marriage to Sir John Villiers, the brother of the favourite, who was eager for the aggrandisement of his family. The proposal was highly agreeable to both brothers and their mother who ruled them,-but most highly alarming to Bacon. He was delighted to hear that Lady Hatton disliked the match as much as himself, and forgetting the scornful usage he had experienced from her in former days, when he sought her hand in marriage, he opened a correspondence with her, and strenuously abetted her resistance. Without duly

scendingly asked them to "think he was one of them, when he came in to harrangue them? Whoever has had the good fortune to be present when Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst pres des at similar dinners, will form a better opinion of the manners of the man and the times.

*I did call upon the committees also for the proceeding in their purging of Sir Edward Coke's Reports, which I see they go on with seriously."-Bacon to Buckingham, May, 1617.

considering what were likely to be the feelings of Buckingham on the occasion, he wrote to him,-" The mother's consent is not had, nor the young gentlewoman's, who expecteth a great fortune from her mother, which, without her consent, is endangered. This match, out of my faith and freedom towards your Lordship, I hold very inconvenient both for your brother and yourself. First, he shall marry into a disgraced house, which in reason of state is never held good. Next, he shall marry into a troubled house of man and wife, which in religion and Christian discretion is disliked. Thirdly, your Lordship will go near to lose all such your friends as are adverse to Sir Edward Coke, myself only except, who out of a pure love and thankfulness shall ever be firm to you. And, lastly and chiefly, it will greatly weaken and distract the King's service." He therefore strongly advises that the match shall be broken off, "or not proceeded in without the consent of both parents, required by religion and the law of God."*

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Bacon wrote still more strongly to the King, pointing out the public mischief which would arise from the notion that Coke was about to be restored to favour. Now, then, I reasonably doubt that, if there be but an opinion of his coming in with the strength of such an allliance, it will give a turn and relapse in men's minds into the former state of things hardly to be holpen, to the great weakening of your majesty's service." Having dwelt upon the dangerous influence which Coke might thus acquire if a parliament were called, he contrasts himself with the dangerous rivalwhose coming patriotism seems to have cast its shadow before : 'I am omnibus omnia for your Majesty's service; but he is by nature unsociable, and by habit popular, and too old now to take a new ply. And men begin already to collect, yea, and to conclude, that he that raiseth such a smoke to get in, will set all on fire when he is in." Bacon's head was so turned by his elevation, that in this letter he madly went so far as to throw out some sarcasms upon the favourite himself. To him, as might have been expected, it was immediately communicated. Buckingham was thrown into an ecstasy of rage, and he easily contrived to make the King, if possible, more indignant at the presumption and impertinence of the Lord Keeper.

Meanwhile the plot thickened in England. Lady Hatton, with the concurrence of her present adviser, carried off her daughter, and concealed her in a country house near Hampton Court. The Ex-chief Justice tracing the young lady to her hiding-place, demanded a warrant from the Lord Keeper to recover her, and this being refused, he went thither at the head of a band of armed men and forcibly rescued her. For this alleged outrage he was summoned, and several times examined before the Council,—and, by the Lord Keeper's directions, Yelverton, the Attorney General, filed an information against him in the Star Chamber.

*Bacon's Works, v. 177.

VOL. II.

27

+ Ibid. v. 478.

Intelligence of these events being brought to Edinburgh, the King and Buckingham put an end to the sullen silence they had for some time observed towards the Lord Keeper*, and wrote him letters filled with bitter complaints, invectives, and threats Bacon suddenly awoke as from a trance, and all at once saw his imprudence and his danger. In an agony of terror, he ordered the Attorney General to discontinue the prosecution in the Star Chamber; he sent for Lady Hatton, and tried to reconcile her to the match, and he made the most abject submissions to Buckingham's mother, who had complained of having been insulted by him. He then sent despatches by a special messenger to Edinburgh to relate his altered conduct.

There never was a more striking instance of "kissing the rod" than is exhibited in his answer to the King. "I do very much thank your Majesty for your letter, and I think myself much honoured by it. For though it contain some matter of dislike, in which respect it hath grieved me more than any event which hath fallen out in my life, yet I know reprehensions from the first masters to the best servants are necessary, and chastisement, though not pleasant for the time, worketh good effects." But the great difficulty was to explain away the disparaging expressions he had so unguardedly used about Buckingham. "I know him to be naturally a wise man, of a sound and staid wit, as I ever said unto your Majesty. And again, I know he hath the best tutor in Europe. But yet I was afraid that the height of his fortune might make him too secure, and, as the proverb is, a looker on seeth more than a gamester.” With respect to his treatment of Sir Edward Coke, he says, "I was sometimes sharp, it may be too much, but it was with end to have your Majesty's will performed, or else when methought he was more peremptory than became him, in respect of the honour of the Table. It is true, also, that I disliked the riot or violence whereof we of the Council gave your Majesty advertisement, and I disliked it the more because he justified it by law, which was his old song. Now that your Majesty hath been pleased to open yourself to me, I shall be willing to further the match by any thing that shall be desired of me, or that is in my power."‡

James, now on his return to the South,-by order of Buckingham, wrote back an answer showing an unappeased resentment:§ "Was not the thefteous stealing away of the daugher from her own father the first ground whereupon all this great noise hath since proceeded? We never took upon us such a patrocinying of Sir Edward Coke, as if he were a man not to be meddled withal

* Bacon had complained of this silence. "I do think long to hear from your Lordship touching my last letter, wherein I gave you my opinion of touching your brother's match.-July 25. 1617. Works, vi, 157.

† Privy Council.

§ It is superscribed "James R.," and coldly begins "Right trusty and well-beloved Councillor, we greet you well."

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