|98E00 lil i ‘Will OLNOWOL 4O ALISHSAIND HANDBOUND AT THE ake. oy UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PREss oP lig el A PEO EE OI ES OD Mts ne een eas 29457 BACON ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING WRIGHT Oxford University Press London Edinburgh Glasgow Copenhagen New York Toronto Melbourne Cape Town Bombay Calcutta Madras Shanghai Humphrey Milford Publisher to the UNIVERSITY annette FE aye BACON The Advancement of Learning EDITED BY WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT, M.A. HON. D.C.L. AND LL.D. FELLOW AND VICE-MASTER OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE Fifth Edition Paty - ihe. ae a, oh OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS ID lial Wi 1G2o con ee : Printed in England At the OxrorD UNIVERSITY PRESS By John Johnson Printer to the University Impression of 1926 First edition, 1868 See aa! VW) PRET ret, B FRANCIS BACON was born on the 22nd of January, 1560-1, at York House in the Strand, the residence of his father Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. Sixty years later, Ben Jonson sang of him as ‘England’s high Chancellor; the destined heir, In his soft cradle, to his father’s chair.’ His mother, Anne Cooke, whose eldest sister was married to Lord Burleigh, was his father’s second wife, and had borne him two children. Anthony, the friend and correspondent of Essex, was two years older than Francis. Of their childhood nothing is known. In April, 1573, when Francis was little more than twelve years old, the two brothers were entered as fellow-commoners at Trinity College, Cambridge, and ma- triculated between the roth and 13th of June in the same year. They were placed under the care of Dr. Whitgift, Master of the College, who found this distinguished position not inconsistent with holding the Deanery of Lincoln, a Canonry at Ely, and the Rectory of Teversham; having, however, previously resigned the Regius Professorship of Divinity. From an account-book which he kept, and which was published by the late Dr. Mait- land in the British Magazine (vols. xxxii. xxxiii), we glean the meagre facts of Francis Bacon’s University career. We learn, for instance, that during the period of his residence in College, from April 5, 1573, to Christmas 1575, the Master’s parental care supplied him with so many pairs of shoes, a bow and quiver of arrows, that there was oil bought for his neck, and certain money paid to the ‘ potigarie’ when he was sick, and for meat probably as he was recovering, that he had a vi PREFACE, desk put up in his study, that his stockings were dyed at a cost of 12d., that his laundress’s bill from Midsummer to Michaelmas was 3 shillings, that his hose were mended, his windows glazed, two dozen silk points, a pair of pantofles and pumps bought for him, and a dozen new buttons set on his doublet. Some books the brothers brought with them from London. With others they were furnished by the Master, as Livy, Cicero, Demosthenes’ Olynthiacs, Homer’s Iliad, Cesar, Aristotle, Plato, Xenophon, Sallust, and Hermogenes. There is an interval in the accounts from the latter part of August, 1574, to the 21st of March following; during which time the plague raged in Cambridge, and the members of the Uni- versity were dispersed. The only record of Bacon’s residence at Trinity is a reminiscence of his own preserved in the Sylva Sylvarum (cent. ii. 151), which shows that at this early period he had begun to observe natural phenomena, ‘I remember,’ he says, ‘in Trinity College in Cambridge, there was an upper chamber, which being thought weak in the roof of it, was supported by a pillar of iron, of the bigness of one’s arm, in the midst of the chamber; which if you had struck, it would make a little flat noise in the room where it was struck, but it would make a great bomb in the chamber beneath.’ We may possibly have here a description of the rooms occupied by the two brothers, but if so they must have been in the buildings of King’s Hall, removed by Dr. Nevill in constructing the pre- sent Old Court. No tradition of their whereabouts remains. If we add to these fragments an anecdote related by Dr. Raw- ley, his chaplain and earliest biographer, we are in possession of all that is known of Francis Bacon up to the time that he completed his fifteenth year. Rawley’s story introduces us to a child of singular gravity and adroitness, the future Chan- cellor and courtier. The Queen ‘delighted much then to confer with him, and to prove him with questions; unto whom he delivered himself with that gravity and maturity above his years, that Her Majesty would often term him “The young Lord Keeper.”’ Being asked by the Queen how old he was, he answered with much discretion, being then PREFACE. vii but a boy, “ That he was two years younger than Her Ma- jesty’s happy reign ;” with which answer the Queen was much taken.’ Another anecdote from the same source, of which more than enough has been made, belongs to this period. ‘Whilst he was commorant in the University, about sixteen years of age (as his lordship hath been pleased to impart unto myself), he first fell into the dislike of the philosophy of Aristotle; not for the worthlessness of the author, to whom he would ever ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruit- fulness of the way; ‘being a philosophy (as his lordship used to say) only strong for disputations and contentions, but barren vA of the production of works for the benefit of the life of man; in which mind he continued to his dying day.’ The story which has been told above of the iron pillar in the chamber at Trinity shows that Bacon’s attention had been very early directed to the observation of sounds, and lends a probability to the supposition that it may have been at this time that he tried the experiment recorded in the Sylva Sylvarum (cent. ii. 140). ‘There is in St. James’s Fields a conduit of brick, unto which joineth a low vault ; and at the end of that a round house of stone; and in the brick conduit there is a window; and in the round-house a slit or rift of some little breadth; if you cry out in the rift, it will make a fearful roaring at the window.’ In all this there is a certain ring of boyishness. To this time also belongs the story of the conjuror (Sylva, cent. x. 946), who must have exhibited his tricks at Sir Nicholas Bacon’s house before Francis left England. But his father had in view for him a public career as states- man or diplomatist, and after he had spent nearly three years over his books at Cambridge, sent him to France to read men. On the 25th of September, 1576, we learn from Burghley’s diary, ‘Sir Amyas Paulet landed at Calliss going to be Amb. at France in Place of Dr. Dale.’ It was not till the February following that he succeeded to the post. Bacon apparently joined him after his arrival in Paris, for on Nov. 21, 1576, he was admitted of the grand company at Gray’s Inn, having Vili PREFACE. entered the Society on the 27th of June previous. He was sub- sequently ‘entrusted with some message or advertisement to the Queen; which having performed with great approbation, he returned back into France again, with intention to continue for some years there.’ (Rawley.) Here we find him still keen in his observation of natural phenomena, sounds as before occupying a great share of his attention. Let him describe what he heard in his own words written nearly fifty years later. ‘ For echoes upon echoes, there is a rare instance thereof in a place which I will now exactly describe. It is some three or four miles from Paris, near a town called Pont-Charenton ; and some bird-bolt shot or more from the river of Seine. The room is a chapel or small church. The walls all stand- ing, both at the sides and at the ends. Two rows of pillars, after the manner of aisles of churches, also standing; the roof all open, not so much as any embowment near any of the walls left. ‘There was against every pillar a stack of billets above a man’s height; which the watermen that bring wood down the Seine in stacks, and not in boats, laid there (as it seemeth) for their ease. Speaking at the one end, I did hear it return the voice thirteen several times: and I have heard of others, that it would return sixteen times: for I was there about three of the clock in the afternoon; and it is best (as all other echoes are) in the evening. .... I remember well, that when I went to the echo at Pont-Charenton, there was an old Parisian, who took it to be the work of spirits, and of good spirits. For (said he) call Satan, and the echo will not deliver back the devil’s name; but will say, va t’en ; which is as much in French as apage or avoid. And thereby I did hap to find that an echo would not return S, being but a hissing and an interior sound.’ (Sylva Sylvarum, cent. iii. 249, 251.) Another story which he tells of himself belongs to this period of his life. ‘I had, from my childhood, a wart upon one of my fingers: after- wards, when I was about sixteen years old, being then at Paris, there grew upon both my hands a number of warts (at the least an hundred) in a month’s space. The English ambassador’s lady, who was a woman far from superstition, told me one day, e PREFACE, 1x she would help me away with my warts: whereupon she got a piece of lard, with the skin on, and rubbed the warts all over with the fat side; and amongst the rest, that wart which I had had from my childhood: then she nailed the piece of lard, with the fat towards the sun, upon a post of her chamber window, which was to the south. The success was, that within five weeks’ space all the warts went quite away: and that wart which I had so long endured, for company.’ (Sylva Sylvarum, cent. x. 997.) The questions of sounds and mys- terious syypathies did not, however, occupy the whole of his active mind. It was while at Paris learning diplomacy that he invented the cypher which he describes at the end of the sixth book of the De Augmentis, and here too he probably saw that strange visionary, Guillaume Postell, in his retreat at the monastery of St. Martin des Champs. In the summer of 1577, the French Court was at Poitiers. Sir Amias Paulet, with Bacon probably in his suite, remained there from the end of July to the latter end of October. That Bacon was at Poitiers at some time during his residence in France we know from ‘his own account of a conversation with a cynical young Frenchman, perhaps a student, who afterwards became a man of considerable distinction. (Hist. Vite et Mortis, Works, ii. 211.) There is no evidence however that he him- self studied at the University there. But now an event occurred which changed the whole cur- rent of his life. On the 2oth of February, 1578-9, Sir Nicholas Bacon died, after an illness of only a few days. His death, by a strange coincidence, was foreshadowed by a dream, which his son upon after reflection appears to have regarded almost as a sign of the coming disaster. ‘I myself remember,’ he says, ‘that being in Paris, and my father dying in London, two or three days before my father’s death I had a dream, which I told to divers English gentlemen, that my father’s house in the country was plastered all over with black mortar.’ (Sylva, cent. x. 986.) A month later, on the 2oth of March, 1578-9, Bacon left Paris, bearing with him a despatch and commendations from Sir Amias Paulet to the Queen. His Xx PREFACE. father, according’to Rawley, had accumulated a considerable’ sum of money for the purpose of purchasing an estate for his youngest son, but his sudden death prevented its accomplish- ment, and Francis was left with only a fifth part of his father’s personal property. Diplomacy was now abandoned as a career, his prospects. of a studious leisure became more distant than ever, and for one who would willingly have lived only to study, there was nothing left but to study how to live#. Soon after his return to England he appears to have entered upon a course of law at Gray’s Inn, and on the 27th of June, 1582, we find him admitted as an utter barrister. The next year he is seen abroad in the city in his barrister’s dress, and pro- mises to do well. Meanwhile he has made a beginning of the great work on which his fame was to rest, the first sketch of which he called, as he told Father Fulgentio forty years later, by the ambitious title of Temporis Partus Maximus. In 1584 Bacon appeared upon a new stage, which he never left for thirty years and upwards, and on which some of his greatest triumphs were achieved. On the 23rd of November he took his seat in the House of Commons as member for Melcombe Regis, in Dorsetshire. In D’Ewes’s Journal (p. 337), his name appears on the Committee appointed on the gth of December to consider the ‘Bill for redress of Disorders in Common Informers.’ In the next Parliament, which met Oct. 29, 1586, he sat for Taunton, and on the 4th of No- vember made a speech on ‘the great cause’ of Mary, Queen of Scots, but no report of it has been preserved. With other members of both Houses he attended (Nov. 12) upon the ® Of his personal appearance at this time we can form an idea from the interesting picture painted by Hilliard in 1578, with the significant motto, showing that his intellectual pre-eminence was already becoming conspicuous, Si tabula daretur digna, animum mallem. ‘The artist is he of whom Donne says :— ‘A hand or eye By Hilliard drawn, is worth a history By a worse painter made.’ — es PREFACE. X1 Queen, to present a petition for the speedy execution of Mary. In the previous February he had been admitted to the high table at Gray’s Inn, and in due course became a bencher, Beyond the fact that he was on the ‘Committees appointed for conference touching a loan or benevolence to be offered to Her Majesty,’ and of the Bill for Attainder, and that he was one of those sent up to confer with the Lords about the Bill for continuance of Statutes, we hear no more of Bacon during the present Parliament. The next finds him member for Liverpool, busy on frequent committees, and reporting their proceedings to the House. The Marprelate controversy was now at its height, and Bacon delivered his judgement, full of wisdom and moderation, on the points in dispute, in a paper which remained unprinted during his lifetime, called ‘An Advertisement touching the Controversies of the Church of England.’ It contains the germs of his essay ‘Of Unity in Religion.’ . In 1589 he received his first piece of preferment in the form of the reversion of an office, which however did not fall in for nearly twenty years. Under the date of Oct. in this year we find the entry in Burghley’s printed diary, ‘A Graunt of the Office of Clerk of the Counsell in the Starr Chamber to Francis Bacon.’ The office was worth 1600/. or 2000/. a year, and was executed by deputy, but Bacon had to exercise the patience of hope till July 16, 1608; and meanwhile, as he said himself, ‘it was like another man’s ground buttalling upon his house, which might mend his prospect, but it did not fill his barn.’ (Rawley.) He was a poor man in purse for many years to come, toiling in a profession in which his heart was not; but, as he writes to Burghley, with as vast contemplative ends as he had moderate civil ends, for he had taken all knowledge to be his province. His highest ambition at this time was to be put in an office which should place him above the reach of want and leave him leisure to prosecute his intellectual con- quests. This was the career he longed for at thirty-one, and it is important to bear it in mind as helping in some degree to vindicate his motives in later life. Xil PREFACE. In February, 1591-2, his brother Anthony came to live in Gray’s Inn, and from the motherly solicitude of Lady Bacon for her eldest son’s religious welfare, we learn that Francis was negligent in the use of family prayers, and was not to be held up as a pattern to his brother, or resorted to for counsel in such matters. To the autumn of 1592 Mr. Spedding with great probability assigns the speeches in praise of Knowledge and of the Queen, which were apparently written for some Court device, perhaps that contrived by the Earl of Essex for the Queen’s day. In close connexion with the latter of these is the treatise entitled ‘Certain observations upon a libel published this present year, 1592,’ which Bacon wrote in reply to the Responsio ad edictum Regine Anglie of Father Parsons. In the Parliament which met on February rg, 1592-3, Bacon, who had hitherto been returned only by boroughs, now sat as member for Middlesex. It was in the course of this session that, according to Macaulay, ‘he indulged in a burst of patriot- ism, which cost him a long and bitter remorse, and which he never ventured to repeat.’ In this sounding sentence there is hardly a word of truth. What really happened may be briefly told. On the 26th of February Bacon, with Sir Robert Cecil and other leading members of the House, moved that a com- mittee of supply be appointed to provide against the dangers with which the country was threatened both by Rome and Spain, and other confederates of the Holy League. A few fragments of his speech in support of the motion have been preserved, and he himself was one of the committee appointed, Another committee was formed by the Lords, the two com- mittees consulted together, and the result of their conference was communicated to the House of Commons by Sir Robert Cecil. The Lords demanded at least a treble subsidy, payable in three years by two instalments each year; Bacon spoke next, ‘and yielded to the subsidy, but misliked that this House should join with the Upper House in the granting of it.’ (D’Ewes, Journal of the House of Commons, p. 483.) His opposition was solely in defence of the privilege of the House PREFACE. xiii of Commons, and to preserve this he moved, ‘that now they might proceed herein by themselves apart from their Lord- ships.’ After considerable discussion the question was ultim- ately put to the House, that no such conference should be had with the Lords, and. was carried by a majority of 217 to 128. The point of privilege was yielded, and a motion of Sir Walter Ralegh’s for a general conference with the Lords carried unanimously. As the result of this, the original pro- position was so far modified that four years instead of three were to be allowed for the payment of the subsidies. Bacon ‘assented to three subsidies, but not to the payment under six years,’ but he was outvoted and made no further difficulty. Such was the solitary act of patriotism of which Macaulay says Bacon was guilty. And even for this, he adds, he made the most abject apologies. Two letters of Bacon’s on this subject have been preserved, one to Lord Burghley, the other probably, as Mr. Spedding conjectures, to Essex. The tone of both is that of manly justification of his conduct ; in neither is there one syllable of apology or regret for what he had done. He is evidently surprised at being misunderstood. The Queen was angry at his speeches, and Bacon expresses his grief that she ‘ should retain an hard conceit’ of them, What follows is very instructive. ‘It mought please her sacred Majesty to think what my end should be in those speeches, if it were not duty, and duty alone. Iam not so simple but I know the common beaten way to please. And whereas popul- arity hath been objected, I muse what care I should take to please many, that taketh a course of life to deal with few.’ At this juncture the Attorney-Generalship was vacant, and whatever chance Bacon might have had, through the influence of Essex, of being appointed to the post, was entirely nullified by the Queen’s displeasure. For himself he was not anxious for the honour, but he assured Elizabeth, in a letter which was intended to appease her, that he was ready to do that for her service which he would not do for his own gain. ‘My mind,’ he says, ‘turneth upon other wheels than those of prof.’ Had it not been for this chance, however, he would probably have XIV PREFACE, relieved himself from the embarrassment of his debts by selling the reversion of his property and purchasing an annuity, and would then have abandoned a profession for which he had no love, and lived the life of a student. But he was kept in sus- pense during the summer of 1593, and the delay decided his future career. In March, 1593-4, he drew up a report, not printed in his lifetime, ‘ of the detestable treason, intended by Dr. Roderigo Lopez, a physician attending upon the person of the Queen’s Majesty,’ which had been traced out with great skill by Essex. The latter meanwhile was urging Bacon’s claims upon the Queen with a pertinacity and petulance which rather injured than furthered his cause. Heartsick with hope deferred, Bacon writes to his friend, ‘I will, by God’s assistance ..... retire myself with a couple of men to Cambridge, and there spend my life in my studies and contemplations, without look- ing back.’ On the 1oth of April Coke’s patent as Attorney- General was made out and delivered. By this appointment the Solicitorship became vacant, and Essex renewed his im- portunities with the Queen, who disparaged Bacon in his legal capacity as one who was not deep, but rather showed to the utmost of his knowledge, while she admitted he had ‘a great wit and an excellent gift of speech, and much other good learning.’ On the 27th of July, 1594, being detained by illness at Huntingdon on his way north, he paid a visit to Cambridge, and received the honorary degree of Master of Arts. The Queen was still relentless, but had given way so far as to employ him on the 13th of June in the examination of two persons in the Tower, who were implicated in a conspiracy. In August and September he is again at work upon business of the same kind. Still the long hoped-for promotion did not come. In the Christmas vacation of this year he amused him- self with beginning his ‘Promus of Formularies and Elegan- cies,’ and in writing speeches for an entertainment at Gray’s Inn. The suspense of more than a year and half was brought to an end by the appointment of Serjeant Fleming to the Solicitorship on the 5th of November, 1595. Essex was mor- ss ep a el Po ah LA eee PREFACE, . XV tified at the ill success of his suit, the failure of which had perhaps in some measure been due to his own want of judge- ment in pressing it. Lady Bacon said truly, ‘though the Earl showed great affection, he marred all with violent courses.’ But he generously resolved that his friend should not be alto- gether a loser by his friendship. The relation between them at this juncture is excellently expressed by Mr. Spedding. ‘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.’ ‘ You shall not deny,’ said Essex, ‘to accept a piece of land which I will bestow upon you.’ Bacon declined, but the Earl insisted, and what followed must be told in Bacon’s own words, because it shows in what light he viewed the respective duties of citizenship and friend- ship, and how fixed a principle it was with him that, like Pericles, he could only be a friend usque ad aras, so far, that is, aS was consistent with higher obligations. After in vain endeavouring to persuade Essex not to imitate the Duke of Guise and turn his estate into obligations, he 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.’ It looks as if Bacon already foresaw that the impetuous rashness of Essex might at some time place him in such a position that the lower duty would have to give way before the higher. How strongly he felt this is shown by the closing sentence ot a letter to the Earl, which is very properly assigned to this period of his life, and carries with it a warning sound. ‘1 reckon myself as a common (not popular, but common); and as much as is lawful to be enclosed of a common, so much your xvi PREFACE. Lordship shall be sure to have.’ Five years later he reiterated in the same tone, ‘I humbly pray you to believe that I aspire to the conscience and commendation first of bonus civis, which with us is a good and true servant to the Queen, and next of bonus vir, that is, an honest man.’ But of this anon, The result of the present negotiation was that Essex presented Bacon with a piece of land, which he afterwards sold to Rey- nold Nicholas for 1800/. At what precise time Bacon was appointed by the Queen one of her counsel learned in the law, is not quite certain. It has been supposed that the appointment was made as early as the beginning of 1592, and he is certainly described by this title in a lease of sixty acres of land in Zelwood Forest, Somer- setshire, which was granted him by the Crown, July 14, 1596. From the fact that he is not so described in the grant of the reversion of the lease of Twickenham Park, dated Nov. 17, 1595, it would seem that he had been made Qucen’s counsel in the interval. Meanwhile he consoled himself for his pro- fessional disappointments by increased devotion to his favourite studies, and early in 1597 published, in a small volume, the first instalment of his Essays, which had been written some time before, and were already circulated in manuscript. From an expression in the dedication to his brother Anthony, he evid- ently regarded the publication as premature. ‘I doe nowe,’ he says, ‘like some that have an orcharde ill neighbored, that gather their fruit before it is ripe, to prevent stealing.’ The same volume contained the Colours of Good and Evil, and the Meditationes Sacre. Traces of his hand are also to be found in the ‘ Advice to the Earl of Rutland on his Travels,’ and to‘ Sir Fulke Greville on his Studies,’ which appear in the name of Essex, and belong to the beginning of 1596. On the 30th of April, 1596, the Mastership of the Rolls became vacant by the death of Lord Keeper Puckering, and the promotion of Egerton to his place. For this post Bacon was again a candidate, Essex as before supported his claim, and with the same result, suspense and ultimate disappointment. Burghley’s influence was exerted with no better success. He PREFACE. Xvii had endeavoured to procure the Solicitorship for his nephew, and, failing that, ‘the place of the Wards;’ probably, as Mr. Spedding conjectures, the office of Attorney of the Wards. But all came to nothing, as did another suit of a more private nature, which Bacon contemplated if he did not prosecute, and in which Essex again stood his friend. It is not certain that he ever actually proposed for the hand of Lady Hatton, the young and wealthy widow of Sir William Hatton, and granddaughter of Burghley. From an expression in one of his letters to Essex it is probable that he saw no opportunity of urging his suit with success, and on the 7th of November, 1598, the lady became the wife of his determined enemy, Sir Edward Coke. It was during the autumn of 1597 that an estrangement took place between Bacon and Essex. Warnings on the one side, which were unheeded on the other, ‘bred in process of time,’ says Bacon in his Apology, ‘a discontinuance of private- ness. . . . between his Lordship and myself; so as I was not called nor advised with, for some year and half before his Lordship’s going into Ireland, as in former time.’ After the brilliant success of the Cadiz expedition, Bacon wrote a letter of advice to the Earl touching his conduct; a letter full of the soundest wisdom, showing the clear apprehension which the writer had of the weak points of Essex’s character. The difference between the pclicy he recommended and the course which Essex adopted cannot be more strikingly put than in Bacon’s own words in his Apology: ‘I ever set this down, that the only course to be held with the Queen, was by obsequiousness and observance. . . My Lord on the other hand had a settled opinion that the Queen could be brought to nothing but by a kind of necessity and authority.” How true this was no man knew better by experience than Bacon himself, who ever in season and out of season gave him ‘the counsel of a wise and then a prophetical friend.” (Sir H. Wotton.) But it was all in vain. Essex’s nature was too impatient to follow a course which involved so much self- restraint. He went his own way, and in a few brief years b XVili PREFACE. followed the partial failure of the Island voyage, the total failure of the Irish expedition, his hasty return, the Queen’s displeasure, and then the final catastrophe. - But we must go back for a while to see in what matters Bacon was occupied. In 1595 the question of Star-Chamber Fees was undergoing investigation, and in consequence, cer- tain fees hitherto claimed by the Clerk had been restrained by the Lord Keeper. Bacon, who was immediately interested, addressed a paper to Egerton on the subject in July 1597. His estate at this time, as he confesses in another letter, was ‘weak and indebted,’ a condition which he attributed in part to the slender provision made for him by his father, and greatly also to the plan of his own life, in which he ‘rather referred and aspired to virtue than to gain.’ Want was steal- ing upon him. But he was not disheartened. There were three means of preventing it: his practice, in which he was conscious of not playing his best; the prospect of a place under government; and the reversion of the clerkship of the Star-Chamber. The last of these he proposed to give up to the Lord Keeper’s son, if Egerton would obtain the Master- ship of the Rolls for him; but once more he failed, and the office was not filled up till the next reign. The ninth Parliament of Elizabeth met on the 24th of October, 1597, and Bacon sat as member for Ipswich. His first speech was on a motion which he brought forward ‘against depopulation of towns and houses of husbandry, and for the maintenance of husbandry and tillage,’ a question which in after years possessed his mind, and was discussed in his Essay ‘Of the true Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates,’ first published in 1612, and again in his History of Henry VII. in 1622, An examination of D’Ewes’s Journal of the House of Commons shows that his name is to be found on com- mittees for the consideration of every question of import- ance during this session, and that though the Queen had not yet forgiven his conduct on a former occasion, his position in the House was as high as ever. But if his reputation was increasing his debts were in- — PREFACE, x1X creasing too, and in September 1598 he was arrested on his way from the Tower, where he had been engaged in the in- vestigation of a plot for the murder of the Queen. He com- plained of the indignity thus offered him to Sir Robert Cecil and the Lord Keeper Egerton, but how he was relieved from it we have no information. A history of the conspiracy from his pen appeared in the following year. In the spring of 1599 Essex set out on his disastrous exped- ition to Ireland. Bacon had already so far renewed his intercourse with the Earl as to write him two letters of advice. A third Cassandra-like note of warning was sounded just before his departure, containing two maxims which Essex was only too apt to forget, ‘that merit is worthier than fame,’ and ‘that obedience is better than sacrifice.’ He landed in Dublin on the 15th of April, and on the 28th of September he startled the Queen at Nonsuch, by rushing travel-stained into her chamber while she was dressing, ‘her hair about her face,’ as a letter-writer of the time tells us. And what had he done meanwhile? Practically, as Mr. Sped- ding puts it, ‘whatever might be said in justification of this or that item of the account, the totals must stand thus :— Expended, 300,o00/. and ten or twelve thousand men: re- ceived, a suspension of hostilities for six weeks, with promise of a fortnight’s notice before recommencing them, and a verbal communication from Tyrone of the conditions upon which he was willing to make peace.’ Between ten and eleven o’clock the same night he was ordered to keep his room. His first plan of bringing over with him a part of the army to enable him to make conditions with the govern- ment, had been abandoned by the advice of his stepfather Blount, and his friend Southampton. But he took with him a strong body-guard of trusty men, ‘who might have secured him against any commitment.’ On the ist of October he was placed in the custody of the Lord Keeper at York House. Bacon, who at this time had constant access to the Queen, was charged by popular rumour with irritating her against Essex. ‘According to the ordinary charities of ba a xX PREFACE, Court,’ he says with quiet irony, ‘it was given out that I was one of them that incensed the Queen against my Lord of Essex.’ To Elizabeth’s plan of having ‘somewhat pub- lished in the Star-Chamber, for the satisfaction of the world touching my Lord of Essex his restraint,’ Bacon was firmly opposed, and his opposition gave her great offence. She charged him with being absent from the Star-Chamber when the declaration was made on the 29th of November. That he was absent we have his own evidence to prove, and he pleaded indisposition as the cause. An unjust suspicion fell upon him of having given the Queen an opinion in the cause of Essex in opposition to that of the Lord Chief Justice and the Attorney-General. His life was even threatened; but he had ‘the privy coat of a good conscience,’ and felt that these falsehoods would recoil upon their authors. Essex still re- mained in the custody of the Lord Keeper, and for some months not a word passed between the Queen and Bacon about him. But neither of them at this time knew the depth of Essex’s guilt. They knew nothing of his first design of landing in England with two or three thousand men, to make good his position till he could gain support. They knew nothing of the treasonable intention with which Montjoy succeeded to Essex’s command in Ireland; an intention which had no less a scope than with half his army to join the King of Scots in an armed demonstration to support his right to the succession, the party headed by Essex in England working to the same end. James was too timid or too wary to listen to such a proposal, and the plot was for the time abandoned. Before it was revived Montjoy had come to his senses, and then ‘utterly rejected it as a thing which he could no way think honest.’ In the meantime Essex was released from custody and allowed to retire to his own house, still however remaining under surveillance. Towards the end of the Easter term the Queen admitted to Bacon that the former ‘ proceeding in the Star-Chamber had done no good, but rather kindled factious bruits (as she termed them) than quenched them.’ She now PREFACE. xxi proposed to proceed by public information against Essex. But for this, Bacon urged, it was far too late; at which the Queen was offended. At the beginning of the next term the subject was again discussed between them, Bacon as before dissuading any public process. The Queen finally resolved that the matter should be heard before a commission at York House. Her counsel had their parts assigned to them. At first it was doubtful whether Bacon, in consideration of his relations with Essex, and the way in which he had consist- ently pleaded his cause, would be allowed any share in the proceedings. He begged to be excused, but held himself ready to obey the Queen’s commands, thinking that by so far yielding to her he might be in a better position to serve Essex. Up to this time it must be remembered he knew nothing of the Earl’s treasonous designs, and regarded his quarrel with the Queen as a storm which would soon blow over. In the distribution to the counsel of their several parts, Bacon was allotted one which seemed insignificant, and was given him as least calculated to do harm to Essex. The Privy Council with their assessors met at York House on the 5th of June. Essex was acquitted of disloyalty, but censured for contempt and disobedience in neglecting his instructions and deserting his command. Bacon, by the Queen’s order, drew up a narrative of what had passed, in which he touched upon Essex’s faults with so tender a hand, that Elizabeth was moved and said, ‘she perceived old love would not easily be forgotten.’ Bacon with great adroitness took advantage of the expression. ‘Whereunto I answered suddenly, that I hoped she meant that by herself.’ In a short time Essex was released from the slight restraint which had been placed upon him, but forbidden to come to the Court. His fate was again in his own hands. So far it was proved that Bacon’s policy was the true one, and that by keeping on good terms with the Queen he could better serve Essex than by placing himself in opposition to her. His principles however remained the same as before. ‘For my Lord of Essex,’ he writes to Lord Henry Howard, Xxil PREFACE. ‘I am not servile to him, having regard to my superior duty. I have been much bound unto him. And on the other side, I have spent more time and more thoughts about his well- doing than ever I did about mine own.’ Still he had no suspicion of the dangerous secrets of which Essex was con- scious. His counsel was as ever patience, and for a time the Earl, to the outer world at least, seemed heedful of his advice. To his intimates he presented another aspect. ‘In my laste discourse,’ says Sir John Harington, ‘he uttered strange wordes, borderynge on suche strange desygns that made me hastene forthe, and leave his presence; thank heaven I am safe at home, and if I go in suche troubles againe, I deserve the gallowes for a meddlynge foole : His speeches of the Queene becomethe no man who hathe mens sana in corpore sano.’ (Nugae Antiquae, ii. 225, ed. 1779.) His patent for the monopoly of sweet wines was to expire at Michaelmas, and he petitioned for a renewal of the lease. His petition was refused and his patience at an end. From this time the Queen, who evidently was better informed than Bacon as to what Essex had really done, and supposed that Bacon knew as much as herself, was so angry at his importunity for his friend that she would no longer see him. For three months this estrangement lasted. It was not till after New Year’s Day, 1600-1, that Bacon was admitted to her presence, and then boldly and ‘with some passion’ spoke his mind. ‘Madam, I see you withdraw your favour from me, and now that I have lost many friends for your sake, I shall leese you too. . . . A great many love me not, because they think I have been against my Lord of Essex; and you love me not, because you know I have been for him: yet will I never repent me, that I have dealt in simplicity of heart towards you both, without respect of cautions to myself, and therefore vivus vidensque pereo.” The Queen was moved by the earnestness of his protestations, and spoke kindly to him as of old; but of Essex never a word. Henceforth Bacon determined to meddle no more in the matter, and never saw the Queen again till the Earl had put himself beyond the reach of intercession. He Rela aig CPR WA sete PREFACE. Xxiii now devoted his energies to his own affairs, which were still embarrassed, and to the business of his profession, in which he was gradually but surely rising. On the 24th of October, 1600, he had been made Double Reader at Gray’s Inn, and had his lectures for the Lent term to prepare on the Statute of Uses. Up to the 8th of February, 1600-1, it is abundantly evident that Bacon had done his utmost to restore Essex to the Queen’s favour. His efforts were vain, but they were made, and were made, moreover, not only at the risk but with the result of bringing the Queen’s displeasure upon himself. And now came the crisis in which his worst forebodings were more than realised. Essex, left to his own devices and the company and counsel of men who used him as an instrument for their own ends, plunged deeper and deeper in guilt. As long ago as the previous August he had again sounded Montjoy on the subject of an armed demonstration in con- junction with the King of Scotland. But Montjoy turned a deaf ear. Still there were hopes from James. Meanwhile the secret which had hitherto been confined to a few was in danger of being divulged. The discontented spirits of all parties were encouraged to rally round Essex, though without knowing the full extent of the conspiracy they were intended to support. Before Christmas, Essex had determined to se- cure his access to the Queen in such sort as might not be resisted. Bythe end of January the plot had assumed a defin- , ite form. He was ‘resolved not to hazard any more com- mandments and restraints.’ On the 3rd of February the plan for attacking the Court was made and the parts assigned to the conspirators. Sir Christopher Blount was to seize the utter gate, Sir Charles Davers the presence, and Sir John Davies the hall and water-gate. The guard being over- powered and the Queen’s person secured, the Earl and his company were to enter from the Mews, and make their own terms. Cecil, Ralegh, and Cobham were to be removed. They had no intention of injuring the Queen; but, as Blount confessed on the scaffold, they were prepared, rather than XxXiv PREFACE. fail in their ends, to have even ‘drawn blood from herself.’ The gatherings at Essex House had attracted the attention of the Court, and on Saturday the 7th of February Essex was summoned before the Privy Council. He refused to go; and in the evening, fearing that the Lords knew more than they did, proposed to make the attack. But the guards were doubled at Whitehall, and next morning Charing Cross and Westminster were barricaded. There was nothing now left but to raise the City. At ten o’clock on Sunday morning, the Lord Keeper, the Earl of Worcester, Sir William Knollys, and the Lord Chief Justice repaired to Essex House. Essex’s men had been running hither and thither all night to summon his friends, and by this time wellnigh three hundred were assembled. The arrival of the Lord Keeper precipitated their action, Essex cried out that he should be murdered in his bed, that his enemies had forged his name, and that he was armed in self-defence. The Lord Keeper promised that he should have justice done, but it was now too late. Essex left him and his companions prisoners, and rushed out with some two hundred followers on foot, crying hysterically that plots were laid against his life, and that the country was sold to the Spaniard. Not a man stirred in his defence. The conspirators marched through the City as far as Fenchurch Street to the house of Sheriff Smith, and there Essex showed signs that his nerve had forsaken him. Making their way back to Ludgate Hill, they found the street closed against them. A fight ensued, in which one or two were slain on either side, Essex was shot through the hat, Blount wounded and taken prisoner. The Earl, with some fifty followers, es- caped by water to Essex House, and by ten o’clock in the evening surrendered. And so ended this miserable and ‘fatal impatience.’ But there was evidently a mystery which the Court had not penetrated, and to unravel it Bacon with others of her Majesty’s counsel was employed. They soon dis- covered the true nature of the plot. Judgement followed swiftly upon the offenders. On the 19th of February Essex and Southampton were arraigned. The evidence against Se PREFACE, XXV them was overwhelming. Bacon took his place among the counsel. ‘The office he had to perform was none of his seeking: it was laid upon him with the rest of his fellows. The time had come when he was obliged to choose between his Queen and one to whom he had tried his utmost to be a friend. Essex’s defence was, as before, that his life was in danger, that he took up arms for his own protection, and that the kingdom was betrayed to Spain. Bacon spoke twice, on both occasions recalling the attention of the Court to the true nature of the case, and showing that the private quarrel which had been alleged was a mere pretext. The defence broke down on all points, and the two Earls were condemned. Even those who blame Bacon for taking any part in the trial have nothing to urge against the manner in which he acquit- ted himself. Birch (Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, ii. 499) says, ‘Mr. Francis Bacon’s behaviour towards the Earl at his trial was perhaps less exceptionable than his submitting to any share in it.’ Essex himself uttered no word of re- proach. He was too conscious that Bacon had stood by him in evil report and in good report, and how wise all his counsels had been. After a careful review of this strange eventful history, the whole course of which must have been inexpress- ibly painful to Bacon, it is difficult to see how, as a good citizen, whose first duty was to his country, he could have acted otherwise. His contemporaries passed no censure upon him. Essex, who laid the blame of his own treason upon his personal enemies, did not reckon Bacon among them. And these things being so, we may confidently expect at the hands of posterity a verdict not only of ‘not proven,’ but of ‘not guilty.’ So much misapprehension has existed as to the real nature of the offence of Essex, and of Bacon’s share in his trial and condemnation, that it has been necessary to discuss it some- what in detail. With the Earl’s execution, however, Bacon’s part in the transaction did not terminate. Though the evid- ence was crushing and irresistible, the conduct of the trial had been slovenly, and the impression left by it confused, It was XXVi PREFACE. desirable that an authoritative statement should be drawn up, setting forth with all clearness the real nature of the offence, and the evidence on which judgement had been pronounced, and the task of drawing up such a statement was entrusted to the skilful pen of Bacon. The result was 4 Declaration of the Practises and Treasons attempted and committed by Robert late Earle of Essex and his Complices, against her Maiestie and her Kingdoms, &c., which was published in 1601. His in- structions as to the writing were very precise, and after a first draft had been made, it was submitted to ‘certain principal counsellors,’ who ‘made almost a new writing,’ so that Bacon himself ‘gave only words and form of style,’ and in this he nothing extenuated or set aught down in malice. The principal offenders being punished, he exerted himself to save the inferior actors, and with such good success that six out of nine were stayed from being attainted. In the course of the spring of 1601 he lost his brother Anthony, to whom he had always been greatly attached. His circumstances were by this somewhat improved, and with the 1200/. which he received from the fine of Catesby, one of the accomplices of Essex, he was enabled to get rid of some obligations which had pressed heavily upon him. In the last Parliament of Elizabeth, which met on the 27th of October, 1601, Bacon was returned both by Ipswich and St. Alban’s, a conspicuous proof that his conduct in the Essex conspiracy had not brought upon him the censure of the country. His voice, as of old, was heard, and his pen was still busy, on all important questions. With the death of Elizabeth on the 24th of March, 1602-3, and the accession of James, no great change took place in Bacon’s prospects. He was still allowed to continue one of the learned counsel. On the 3rd of July he writes to Cecil that he is forced to sell the skirts of his living in Hertford- shire to preserve the body, thereby leaving himself free from debt and with a little money in hand, ‘ 300/. land per annum, with a fair house, and the ground well timbered.’ He wishes to be made a knight because of some disgrace which had Se oars Se ea — ee ae PREFACE. XXvii . ~ been passed upon him, and because there were three new knights in his mess at Gray’s Inn, The most important reason for seeking this honour he keeps to the last—‘ because I have found out an alderman’s daughter, an handsome maiden, to my liking.’ But he desired especially that the honour should be conferred as a real distinction, and that he ‘might not be merely gregarious in a troop.’ On the 23rd of July he gained his wish, but in the company of three hundred others. His ambition for professional advancement was quenched under the new sovereign. In the letter to Cecil which has already been referred to, he says, ‘My ambition now I shall only put upon my pen, whereby I shall be able to maintain memory and merit of the times succeeding.’ James, if not wise, was undoubtedly learned, and in his advent to the throne Bacon saw hopes of at last realizing his magnificent dreams of the regeneration of learning and the extension of the kingdom of man. And it may be that during this year (1603) he wrote the first book of The Proficience and Advancement of Learning. His other literary productions of this period are 4 Brief Discourse touching the Happy Union of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland, and Certain Considerations touching the better Pacification and Edific- ation of the Church of England. The latter of these may be regarded as the sequel to a tract on the same subject which he had written in 1589. It was partly printed in 1604, but not published, and was evidently composed with direct refer- ence to the subjects discussed at the Hampton Court con- ference. His Apology for his conduct in the Essex trial, which was addressed to Montjoy, now Earl of Devonshire, belongs to the same year. The first Parliament of the new reign met on the roth of March, 1603-4, and Bacon was again returned both by Ipswich and St. Alban’s, still taking the same prominent part in the proceedings of the House. His office as one of the learned counsel was confirmed to him by patent on the 18th of August, coupled with the grant of a pension of 60/. a year for life. His vacation was employed in drawing up Certain XXVill PREFACE. Articles or Considerations touching the Union of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland, in view of the Commission appointed to meet in October for the discussion of the question. A draft of a proposed proclamation touching his Majesty’s style was also prepared at the same time, but not used. Just as the Commission had commenced its sittings, the Solicitorship became vacant; but Bacon was again passed over, and Dode- ridge appointed. Still his professional occupations allowed him less leisure than ever, and when on the 24th of December the next meeting of Parliament was postponed till October, 1605, Bacon foresaw that, if he intended to finish his work on the Advancement of Learning, he must make good use of the interval. Mr. Spedding has pointed out that the first book was printed in all probability before the second was ready for the press, and that the second book shows marks of haste both in printing and composition. The entries in the books of the Stationers’ Company»? indicate that his first intention was to have issued the work both in Latin and English. Under the date of Aug. 19, 1605, we find, ‘Mr. Richard Ockould. Entred for his Copies vnder the handes of the B: of London & Mr. Feild warden, The firste parte of the Twoo bookes of St Frauncis Bacon, Of the proficience & advauncemt of Learninge divine and Humane to be printed bothe in Englishe & Lattin. xij4.’? And again, Sept. 19: ‘Mr. Ockold. Entred for his copie vnder the handes of my Lo. Bysshoop of Londof. and the wardens, A booke aswell in Latyn as in Englishe called The second book of frauncis Bacof. of the proficience and Advauncement of learninge Divine and humane. xij4.? We might almost infer from these two en- tries that Bacon in the course of the summer had resolved to issue the first book separately, either from inability to finish the second, or for some other reason, and that he afterwards changed his mind and printed the second very » For an opportunity of consulting these Iam indebted to the kind- ness of Mr. Greenhill. eae Fo a ee PREFACE. XxXix hastily. Dr. Playfer, Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cam- bridge, who had expressed the good liking he had conceived of the book, was applied to by Bacon to translate it into Latin, but the specimen of his version was too ornate for Bacon’s taste, and it was never completed. The two parts, in English only, were published together in quarto some time about the end of October, and then not by Richard Ockould but by Henry Tomes, with the following title: ‘The Twoo Bookes of Francis Bacon. Of the proficience and aduaunce- ment of Learning, diuine and humane. To the King. At London, Printed for Henrie Tomes, and are.to be sould at his shop at Graies Inne Gate in Holborne. 1605.’ Ina letter from Chamberlain to Carleton on the 7th of November, the appear- ance of Sir Francis Bacon’s new work on Learning is duly chronicled®, Any attention it might otherwise have attracted was no doubt greatly diminished by the event which then filled men’s minds, the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. In the investigations which followed this discovery, Bacon was only slightly concerned. A prospect of a vacancy occurs in the Solicitorship in March, 1606-7, and Bacon urges Cecil to press his claims. But he had again to wait. In the hurry and business of this session, the gossip of Carleton gives us a glimpse of Bacon, the statesman and philosopher, in a new aspect. On the sith of May, 1606, he writes to Chamberlain, ‘Sir Francis Bacon was married yesterday to his young wench in Maribone Chapel. He was clad from top to toe in purple, and hath made himself and his wife such store of fine raiments of cloth of silver and gold that it draws deep into her portion. The dinner was kept at his father-in-law Sir John Packington’s lodging over against ¢ In the present edition the text has been taken from that of 1605, corrected where necessary by the Errata and by the subsequent editions of 1629 and 1633. The spelling has been modernized throughout. In tracing the quotations I have been materially assisted by Wats’ trans- lation of the De Augmentis, and the recent editions of the Advancement by Mr. Markby and Mr. Kitchin, XXX PREFACE. the Savoy, where his chief guests were the three knights, Cope, Hicks, and Beeston; and upon this conceit (as he said himself) that since he could not have my L. of Salisbury in person, which he wished, he would have him at least in his representative body.’ Alice Barnham, who thus became the wife of Francis Bacon, was no doubt the same ‘handsome maiden’ whom he mentioned three years before to his cousin Cecil. She was the daughter of Benedict Barnham, a London merchant, whose widow took for her second husband Sir John Packington, a knight of Worcestershire. Lady Bacon brought with her a fortune of 220/. a year, which was settled upon herself, with an additional 500/. a year from her husband, a fact which at once disproves Lord Campbell’s charge that the match was a mercenary one. But how much of romance or even sentiment there was in it we have no means of know- ing. Bacon was now in his forty-sixth year, and his language three months later breathes not so much the tone of ecstasy as of tranquil satisfaction. ‘I thank God I have not taken a thorn out of my foot to put it into my side.’ No letter of their correspondence has been preserved, and from this time we hear nothing more of the lady which could tell us whether her influence over her husband was great or small. The gossip of fifteen years later credited her with a forward tongue, and from a sentence in Bacon’s will we learn that she had given him grievous cause of offence. She survived him many years, and married her gentleman usher. The subject of the Union with Scotland and the Natural- isation of the Scotch was still the prominent one before the House. On the former question we have a fragment of Bacon’s speech delivered on 25th Nov., 1606. On the latter he replied to Nicholas Fuller, 17th Feb., 1606-7. He spoke against the motion for the Union of Laws on the 28th of March, and on the 17th of June he reported to the House the speeches of Salisbury and Northampton at the conference concerning the petition of the merchants upon the Spanish grievances. The reward which he had so well earned came at last. Doderidge PREFACE. XxXxi was made King’s Serjeant, and Bacon became Solicitor General in his stead on the 25th of June, 1607. He had now no longer to fear that want would either steal upon him as a wayfaring man or assault him as an armed man, and in the greater tranquillity of mind which resulted he gave himself up to the developement of his plan for enlarging the borders of human knowledge. The Great Instauration seems now to have taken a definite form, and as a means of clearing the way for its reception he wrote the treatise called Cogitata et Visa, which must have been the product of the latter half of the year 1607. His professional work of the same period is represented by ‘A view of the differences in question betwixt the King’s Bench and the Council in the Marches,’ and by two prceclamations, the one touching the Marches, the other concerning Jurors. The next year (1608) is marked by the falling in of the clerkship of the Star-Chamber, by the death of William Mill on the 16th of July. Bacon had waited patiently for it nearly twenty years. In the summer vacation, and possibly during the unwilling leisure caused by an outbreak of the plague, he wrote his treatise In felicem memoriam Elizabethae, and towards the end of the year his discourse on the Plantation in Ireland, which will even now be read with interest. Letters to his friend Toby Matthew show that during the following year (1609) the Instauration was not laid aside. ‘My Instauration I reserve for our conference; it sleeps not.” He sent him ‘a leaf or two of the Preface, carrying some figure of the whole work.’ Shortly after he forwarded another portion, which may have been the Redargutio Philosophiarum. In the course of this year, also, he wrote and submitted to the judgement of the same friend, a little work of his recreation, as he calls it, the treatise De Sapientia Veterum, on the interpretation of the ancient fables of Greece and Rome. The Cogitata et Visa had undergone revision and elaboration at the same time, and a copy was sent in MS. to Bishop Andrewes, who had been translated from Chichester to Ely. The session of 1609-10 was occupied with disputes between XXXii PREFACE, the King and the Commons, on the subject of the King’s debts. Bacon spoke in favour of supply, and in defence of the King’s right of imposition. ‘Towards the end of August this year his mother died, and to the summer vacation Mr. Sped- ding refers ‘The beginning of the History of Great Britain.’ What were his occupations in 1611 we have no certain inform- ation. Perhaps he amused himself with elaborating his Essays, of which he published a much enlarged edition: in the following year. His letter to the King touching Sutton’s Estate, a report on the scarcity of silver at the Mint, and a charge on opening the Court of the Verge, show that his pro- fessional duties were not neglected. Salisbury’s death in 1612 left an opening for the appointment of a Secretary of State, and Bacon offered his services to the King. The office was not filled up immediately, and soon after the Mastership of the Wards, vacant from the same cause, was given to Sir George Carey, though popular rumour assigned it to Bacon, who had drawn up a frame of declaration and instructions for the new Master. In the trial of Lord Sanquhar for murder (June 27,1612), Bacon appeared in his capacity of Solicitor General as counsel for the prosecution. Three days later he made a speech before the Council and Judges, on the refusal of the Countess of Shrewsbury to be examined for aiding the Lady Arabella Stewart in her attempt to escape. The proposed marriage of the Princess Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine in 1612, gave Bacon additional employment in drawing up Instructions to the Commissioners for collect- ing the Aid which was levied on the occasion. Probably towards the end of November he published the second edition of his Essays. It was his intention to have dedicated them to Prince Henry; but the Prince’s unexpected death on the 6th of November prevented him from carrying this intention into effect, and the Essays were addressed to Sir John Constable, who had married Lady Bacon’s sister. ‘They must have ap- peared in the interval between the death of the Prince and the 17th of December, when they are referred to in one of Chamberlain’s letters. PREFACE. XXXili The marriage of the Princess, which had been postponed in consequence of her brother’s death, took place on the 14th ot February, 1612-13, and a masque was given as an enter- tainment in honour of the event by the gentlemen of Gray’s Inn and the Inner Temple. Bacon was the contriver of the device, which represented the marriage of the Thames and the Rhine. It was a work to which he was not new, and his Essay ‘Of Masques and Triumphs’ shows that he took interest in it. The Mastership of the Wards had again been vacant by the death of Sir George Carey, 13th November, 1612, and ‘Sir Francis Bacon certainly expecting the place, had put most of his men into new cloaks. Afterward when Sir Walter Cope carried the place, one said merrily that Sir Walter was Master of the Wards and Sir Francis Bacon of the Liveries.’ (Rawley.) As before, he might say sic nos non nobis. But the promotion for which he had almost served an apprenticeship was not long in coming. The death of Sir Thomas Fleming, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, on the 7th of August, 1613, brought about a change. Sir Edward Coke, who had hitherto been Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, became Chief Justice of England and a Privy Councillor; Hobart was put in his place, and Bacon succeeded Hobart as Attorney General on the 26th of October. For effecting this change, though Bacon himself attributed it to the King, the Court favourite, Somerset, wished to appropriate some credit, and it was ap- parently with the view of releasing himself from the implied obligation, that Bacon took the whole charge of preparing a masque, which was given by Gray’s Inn in honour of the marriage of Somerset to the divorced Countess of Essex. The first professional work in which he was engaged after his appointment, was the delivery of a charge in the Star- Chamber concerning duels, on the 26th January, 1613-4. But there were two cases with which his name has been associated, and upon the telling of which much of the impression in modern times with regard to his character depends, These were the cases of St. John and Peacham. The charge against c XXXIV PREFACE. him with regard to the former, is that he employed the laws, which he was engaged in reducing and re-compiling, to the vilest purposes of tyranny, by appearing as counsel for the prosecution of Oliver St. John, who maintained that the King had no right to levy benevolences. As Bacon acted in this matter in a purely official capacity, it is scarcely necessary to inquire whether the charge against St. John was justified or not, and whether his conduct was so ‘manly and constitu- tional’ as Macaulay represents it. The circumstances were these. In June, 1614, the Parliament, to which Bacon had been returned by three constituencies, Cambridge University, Ipswich, and St. Alban’s, was dissolved without voting any supplies. As a means of meeting the King’s wants, it was proposed that a voluntary contribution should be raised, to which all who would should give as they were disposed. No compulsion was to be employed and no tax levied, but it was to be a benevolence in the strict sense of the word. On the 11th of October, Oliver St. John, a gentleman of Marlborough (not the St. John of the Long Parliament), addressed a letter to the Mayor of that town, denouncing this kind of benevol- ence as contrary to law, reason, and religion, and charging the King with a violation of his coronation oath. For this he was tried on the 15th of April, 1615, in the Star-Chamber. The judges were unanimous, Coke leading the way, in sup- porting the legality of the benevolence, and St. John was condemned to a fine of 5000/., and to be imprisoned during the King’s pleasure. In this Bacon acted simply by the direc- tion of the Council, and even if he recommended the prose- cution, of which there is no evidence, he would have been fortified by the unanimous opinion of the judges. Peacham’s case was of a different nature, and the charge against Bacon founded upon it is even more serious. There were difficulties both of fact and law to be met, and Bacon, according to Macaulay, ‘was employed to settle the question of law by tampering with the judges, and the question of fact by torturing the prisoner.’ Edmund Peacham, a Somerset- shire clergyman, having brought libellous accusations against PREFACE. XXXV his diocesan, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, was sent up to Lambeth to be tried before the High Commission, and sen- tenced to be deprived of his orders on the 19th of December, 1614. Before the sentence his house was searched, and a finished sermon was discovered, the contents of which were decided by the Council to be of a treasonable nature. It was thought, moreover, to indicate a state of disaffection in the part of the country to which Peacham belonged, and as he refused to criminate any accomplices, the Council resolved that he should be put to the torture. In this there is no evidence that Bacon had any hand whatever, further than that he, as Attorney General, was one of the Commission appointed by the Council to attend the examination of the prisoner, It is clear that by the common law the use of torture for extracting evidence was regarded as illegal, but it is equally clear that it was employed by the Council for discovery, and not for evidence; that is, not to make a prisoner criminate himself, but to get from him other information which it was desirable to obtain. Bad as we may think this to be, it is not Bacon who was to blame for it. There is proof in his own letters that he engaged in the proceeding with reluctance, and that the step was taken against his advice. How far he can be justified against the other charge, of tampering with the judges, depends upon a clear knowledge of what his inter- ference really amounted to, and this is not easy to arrive at. As the torture had utterly failed to extort from Peacham any proof of the existence of a conspiracy, it became a question whether he himself could be proceeded against for treason. On this point of law the King was anxious to obtain the opinion ot the judges of the King’s Bench. It is not denied that the Crown had a right to consult the judges on points of this kind, but it does not appear to have been the custom to consult them separately, as was done in this case. There was no question with regard to Peacham’s authorship of the sermon, which was in his handwriting. The points for the judges’ consideration were, first, whether the sermon, had it been published, would have supported an indictment for C2 XXXVvi PREFACE. treason; and secondly, whether it was possible to establish a treasonable charge on the mere fact of composition. The idea of consulting the judges separately originated with the King. Whether he thought by this means to get a more genuine opinion from the others when they were not influenced by the presence and authority of Coke, or what was his motive, we have no means of knowing. That Bacon had anything to do with suggesting such a course, there is no evidence to show. What ke did was to carry out the King’s instructions, and to lay the case before the Lord Chief Justice for his opinion. Coke’s opposition was not exerted against the consultation of the judges, but against their being con- sulted separately. None of the judges of the King’s Bench had to try the case, and therefore it is hard to see with what truth Bacon’s conduct can be described as tampering with the judges in order to procure a capital conviction. Peacham was ultimately tried at the assizes at Taunton, on the 7th of August, 1615, and convicted of high treason, but the capital sentence was never carried into effect, because, as the report of his trial says of his offence, ‘many of the judges were of opinion that it was not treason.’ That his case excited any indignation in the country, is a simple invention of Lord Campbell's. On the 24th and 25th of May, 1616, Bacon took part as Attorney General in the trial of the Earl and Countess of Somerset for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. With the prosecution of the inferior agents in this mysterious crime he had nothing to do. During the early part of this year the health of the Lord Chancellor (Ellesmere) had been giving way, and Bacon was a suitor to the King for the office which seemed likely to be vacant. On the 9th of June he became a Privy Councillor, an appointment upon which he was formally congratulated by the University of Cambridge, which he represented in Parliament4. He had held the office of 4 He now gave up his practice, though he retained his office of At- torney General, and employed his first leisure in addressing to the King a proposition for the compiling and amendment of the laws of England. PREFACE. XXXvVii University Counsel since the roth of November, 1613, and had been retained in the same capacity by Trinity College during the years 1614-16. It was not known till the 3rd of March, 1616-7, that the Lord Chancellor resigned the Great Seal, which on the 7th of the same month was delivered by the King into the hands of Bacon. ‘Our new Lord-Keeper,’ says Chamberlain, ‘goes with great state, having a world of follow- ers put upon him, though he had more than enough before.’ On the first day of Term (May 7) he rode in pomp to West- minster, with a train of two hundred gallants, and delivered his inaugural speech in Chancery, in which he published the charge which the King gave him when he received the Seal, and the rules he had laid down for his own conduct. Such was his marvellous energy in his new office, that in the course of a month he had cleared off all arrears, and on the 8th of June he reports to Buckingham that there is not one cause unheard. A week after his appointment the King took his departure for Scotland, leaving Bacon at the head of the Council to manage affairs in his absence. In the same year we find him using his influence with the King to dissuade him from the Spanish match, and with Buckingham to prevent the marriage of his brother, Sir John Villiers, with the daughter of Sir Edward Coke. The issue of both showed that his counsel was wise, but the King and Buckingham alike re- sented his interference. Coke’s animosity was of course not lessened by it. But for the present the career of Bacon’s prosperity was unchecked. On the 4th of January, 1617-8, he became Lord Chancellor, and on the 11th of July in the same year he was created Baron Verulam. In his inaugural speech as Lord-Keeper, he had announced his intention of reserving ‘the depth of the three long vacations’ for the studies, arts, and sciences, to which in his own nature he was most in- clined. How well he had employed these moments of retire- ment from the business of his office became evident when, in October, 1620, he presented the King with the great work of his life, the Novum Organum, the object of which, he says, is to ‘enlarge the bounds of reason, and to endow man’s estate XXXVili PREFACE, with new value.’ He confesses that it is a fragment, and yet not written in haste, for he has been about it near thirty years. But he feels that. his own life is hastening to its close, and he wishes that a portion of his work at least should be saved. The end was now very near. On the 27th of January, 1620-1, he became Viscount St. Alban. His for- tune, which for nearly four years had borne him smoothly on, now raised him to his greatest height, as if to make the final catastrophe more dramatic and appalling. Parlia- ment met on the 30th. The Chancellor, in addressing the new Speaker, gave expression to a sentiment which, read in the light of subsequent events, seems prophetic, —‘It is certain that the best governments, yea, and the best of men, are like the best precious stones, wherein every flaw or icicle or grain are seen and noted more than in those that are generally foul and corrupted.’ Coke, who had not been in the House for many years, was returned as member for Liskeard. On the 5th of February he moved for a Committee to inquire into public grievances. A Committee was appointed to report concerning the Courts of Justice. Bacon, unsuspecting any malice, acted like a man who was certainly not conscious of any great delinquency. On the 17th of February Sir E. Sackville reported to the House that the Chancellor willingly consented that any man might speak anything freely concerning his Court. On the 15th of March Sir Robert Phillips laid before the Lower House the report of the Committee on Courts of Justice. It came like a thunderclap. The Lord Chancellor was accused of corrup- tion in the exercise of his functions, and two instances were given as proofs. On the 19th the Lords received a message from the Commons requesting a conference concerning abuses in certain eminent persons. Bacon was absent through ill- ness. He sat in the House of Lords for the last time on Saturday, the 17th of March. Next day, Sir James Ley, Lord Chief Justice, was empowered by the King’s commis- sion to act as his substitute. On the Monday the con- ference for which the Lower House applied was granted, PREFACE. XXXixX and on the 20th the Lord Treasurer reported to the Lords that the Lord Chancellor was accused of bribery and corruption, and that the charge was supported by two cases alleged. Bacon, sick to death as he thought himself, and tortured by his hereditary malady, felt that his enemies had closed upon him. He knew of ‘the courses that had been taken for hunting out complaints’ against him, and begged only a fair hearing, that he might give them an ingenuous answer. He wrote to Buckingham: ‘I know I have clean hands and a clean heart, and I hope a clean house for friends or servants. But Job himself, or whosoever was the justest judge, by such hunting for matters against him, as hath been used against me, may for a time seem foul, espe- ~ cially in a time when greatness is the mark, and accusation the game.’ And again, to the same: ‘I praise God for it, I never took penny for any benefice or ecclesiastical living ; I never took penny for releasing anything I stopped at the Seal; I never took penny for any commission, or things of that nature; I never shared with any servant for any second or inferior profit.’ To the King he said: ‘For the bri- beries and gifts wherewith I am charged, when the books of hearts shall be opened, I hope I shall not be found to have the troubled fountain of a corrupt heart, in a depraved habit of taking rewards to prevent justice ; howsoever I may be frail, and partake of the abuses of the times.” We must take into account these protestations when we come to consider his subsequent confession. The Houses adjourned on the 27th of March till the 17th of April. The day before they met, Bacon had an interview with the King. On the following day the Lord Treasurer reported to the Lords that the Chancellor desired two things of his Majesty :—1. That where his answers should be fair and clear to those things objected against him, his Lordship might stand upon his innocency,. 2. Where his answers should not be so fair and clear, there his Lordship might be admitted to the extenuation of the charge; and where the proofs were full and undeniable, his Lordship would ingenuously confess them, and put himself xl PREFACE, ‘ upon the mercy of the Lords. A few days later (April 22), Bacon, who had ascertained privately the particulars of the charge, wrote to the Lords: ‘I find matter sufficient and full, both to move me to desert my defence, and to move your Lordships to condemn and censure me.’ Why he thus avoided the trial is a mystery which has never yet been solved. He wished to resign the Seal, urging as a motive for clemency, ‘Neither will your Lordships forget, that there are witia temporis as well as vitia hominis; and the beginning of reformation hath the contrary power to the pool of Bethesda; for that had strength to cure him only that was first cast in, and this hath strength to hurt him only that is first cast in; and, for my part, I wish it may stay there and go no farther.’ His confession was regarded as insufficient, and it was ordered that the articles of the charge, now in- creased in number to twenty-three, should be laid before him. On the 30th of April his full confession, with the answers to the articles in detail, was read before the Lords. ‘I do plainly and ingenuously confess,’ he says, ‘that I am guilty of corruption, and do renounce all defence.’ As after the severe self-examination which he underwent, he did not find himself blameless, it would be doing an ill service to his memory to excuse him. But, in confessing himself guilty of corruption, we must have regard to his own language. That Bacon took bribes for the perversion of justice no one has ventured to assert. Not one of the thousands of decrees which he made as Chancellor was ever set aside. None of his judgements were reversed. Even those who first charged him with accepting money admitted that he decided against them. What his own opinions were concerning judicial bribery we know from many passages in his writings, and it would argue him a hypocrite of the deepest dye. to suppose that he openly practised what he as openly denounced. In his speech in the Common Pleas (May 3, 1617) to Justice Hutton, he admonishes him: ‘That your hands, and the hands of your hands (I mean those about you) be clean, and uncorrupt from gifts, from meddling in titles, and from PREFACE. xli serving of turns, be they of great ones or small ones.’ In his Essay ‘Of Great Place,’ first published in 1612, and re- issued in 1625, he says: ‘For corruption: Do not only bind thine own hands, or thy servants’ hands, from taking, but bind the hands of suitors also: from offering.’ In confessing himself guilty of corruption, therefore, does he admit that the whole practice of his life had been a falsification of his principles? Let us see. Of the twenty-two cases of bribery with which he was charged, and which we may safely assume were all that the malice of his enemies could discover against him, there are but four in which he allows that he had in any way received presents before the causes were ended; and even in these, though technically the presents were made pendente lite, there is no hint that they affected his decision. During the four years of his Chancellorship he had made orders and decrees to the number of two thousand a year, as he himself wrote to the Lords, and of the charges brought against him there was scarcely one that was not two years old. The witnesses to some of the most important were Churchill, a registrar of the Court of Chancery, who had been discharged for fraud; and Hastings, who contra- dicted himself so much that his testimony is worthless, But we are more concerned with Bacon’s confession of guilt than with the evidence by which the charge was supported. Ina paper of memoranda which he drew up at the time, and which has been printed by Mr. Montagu (Bacon’s Works, xvi. p* 1. p. cccxlv), he writes: ‘ There be three degrees or cases, as I conceive, of gifts or rewards given to a judge. The first is of bargain, contract, or promise of reward, - pendente lite. And of this my heart tells me I am innocent; that I had no bribe or reward in my eye or thought when I pronounced any sentence or order. The second is a neglect in the judge to inform himself whether the cause be fully at an end, or no, what time he receives the gift; but takes it upon the credit of the party that all is done, or otherwise omits to inquire. And the third is, when it is received sine fraude, after the cause ended; which it seems, by the opinions of xlii PREFACE. the civilians, is no offence.’ In another draft he adds this comment: ‘For the first, I take myself to be as innocent as any born on St. Innocents’ day in my heart. For the second, I doubt in some particulars I may be faulty. And for the last, I conceived it to be no fault.’ Such is Bacon’s own interpretation of his confession, and we are bound to accept it, for it is borne out by twenty-two of the articles of the charge. To the twenty-third article, that he had given way to great exactions by his servants, ‘he confessed it to be a great fault that he had looked no better to his servants.’ With this confession, we may leave his name and memory, as he left it in his will, ‘to men’s charit- able speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next ages.’ The verdict can hardly be other than that he pronounced himself: ‘I was the justest judge that was in England these fifty years; but it was the justest censure in Parliament that was these two hundred years,’ This censure, pronounced on the 3rd of May by the Lords, was that he should pay a fine of 40,000/, and be imprisoned in the Tower during the King’s pleasure; that he should thenceforth be incapable of holding any Office in the State, or of sitting in Parliament; and that he should not come within the verge of the Court. He had resigned the Seal to the King on the rst of May. It. had been decided by a majority of two that his titles were not to be taken from him. But the sentence of imprisonment was partially carried out, evidently to his great astonishment. On the 31st of May he was taken to the Tower, and instantly wrote a passionate letter to Buckingham, ‘Good my Lord, procure the warrant for my discharge this day.’ The order must have been given atonce. On the 4th of June he wrote to thank the King and Buckingham for his release. On the 7th® he dated a letter to the Prince of Wales from Sir John Vaughan’s house at Parson’s Green, whither he had been allowed to retire. On the 9th, Chamberlain writes to Carleton that the © The date usually given to this letter,‘ June 1,’ is obviously thcorrect. Mr. Spedding informs me that it should be ‘ June 7,’ PREFACE, xlili Lord Chancellor had obtained leave to go to his own home, and is talked of as President of the Council. On the 23rd, he reports that the Chancellor has removed from Fulham to his house at Gorhambury. Here he remained till the end of the year. From his retirement he writes to Buckingham (Sep- tember 5), ‘I am much fallen in love with a private life; but yet I shall so spend my time as shall, not decay my abilities for use.’ The occupation of his enforced leisure was the History of Henry VII, which was completed in manuscript by October. The fine inflicted by the sentence in Parliament was released by the King’s warrant on the 21st of September, but was assigned to trustees, that Bacon might be protected from the importunity of his creditors, He had nothing now but the pension of 1200/, a year which the King had recently given him, and his own private fortune. On being made Lord Keeper he had resigned not only the lucrative post of At- torncy General, but the clerkship of the Star-Chamber. By his fall he had lost 6000/. a year. A pardon was issued under the Privy Seal on the 17th of October, but it appears to have been stayed by the new Lord-Keeper. The prohibition which prevented him from coming within twelve miles of the Court was relaxed in the following March, and he was allowed to approach as near as Highgate. Buckingham was annoyed at his refusal to give up York House, and opposed his return to London. In the course of the year, however, the restriction was removed, and he took up his residence at Bedford House, his own mansion meanwhile having been surrendered. The publication of the History of Henry the Seventh in the spring, and the translation into Latin of the Advancement of Learning, kept him fully employed. In the latter work he is said to have been assisted by George Herbert. Writing to Bishop Andrewes the dedication to his Dialogue touching a Holy War, which was also the work of this year, he says: ‘And again, for that my book of Advancement of Learning may be some preparation, or key, for the better opening of the Instauration; because it exhibits a mixture of new con- ceits and old; whereas the Instauration gives the new un- xliv PREFACE, mixed, otherwise than with some little aspersion of the old for taste’s sake; I have thought good to procure a translation of that book into the general language, not without great and ample additions and enrichment thereof, especially in the second book, which handleth the Partition of Sciences; in such sort, as I hold it may serve in lieu of the first part of the Instauration, and acquit my promise in that part.’ The provostship of Eton fell vacant in April 1623, and Bacon sought the appointment as ‘a retreat to a place of study so near London,’ but without success. The Advance- ment of Learning in its Latin form was issued this year under the title of De Augmentis Scientiarum, in nine books, the first closely corresponding with the English. The last two or three years of his life were occupied with dictating his Sylva Sylvarum, putting the last touches to his Essays, which were published in their final form in March 1625, and superintend- ing their translation into Latin with other works to be entitled Opera Moralia. ‘The Apophthegms were the occupation of a morning. It does not appear that the sentence of Parliament was ever entirely revoked. The name of Lord St. Alban’s, it is true, is among those of the Peers summoned to the first Parliament of Charles, but for some reason he did not take his seat in the House. On New Year’s Day, 1625-6, he wrote to Sir Humphry May: ‘The present occasion doth invite me to desire that his grace (i.e. Buckingham) would procure me a pardon of the King of the whole sentence. My writ for Parliament I have now had twice before the time, and that without any express restraint not to use it.’ His health, long feeble, would not have allowed him to attend, but he could have appointed a proxy. At length came death, the friend, whom for five years he had looked steadily in the face, and released him from all his troubles. A cold, caught in the process of an experiment to test the preserving qualities of snow, terminated in a gentle fever, and after lingering a week he passed quietly away in the early morning of Easter-day, April 9, 1626. He died at the Earl of Arundel’s house at Highgate, and was buried in the church of St. Michael, at PREFACE. xlv St. Alban’s. His chaplain, Dr. Rawley, ends the life which he wrote of his old master with words which form a fitting conclusion to every life of him: ‘ But howsoever his body was mortal, yet no doubt his memory and works will live, and will in all probability last as long as the world lasteth.’ And with this anticipation we leave Francis Bacon to the judge- ment of all time. 3 W. A. W. i This Second Edition has been revised and corrected 1 throughout, and some additions have been made to the 4 Notes and Glossary. ra ; W.A. W. April, 1873. Ms LB: eS aie EER La SE EM aa, sg a a a eae es a CALLNDATK OF tHE LIFE AND WORKS OF FRANCIS BACONS, 1560-1. Jan. 22. Born at York House. 1573. April 5. Went up to Trinity College, Cambridge. », June Io, Matriculated. 1576. June 27. Entered at Gray’s Inn » Nov. 21. Admitted of the grand company of that society. »» Went to Paris with Sir Amias Paulet. 1578-9. Feb. 22. Death of his fa- ther, Sir Nicholas Bacon. 1582. June 27. Admitted as utter barrister. » About this time wrote Temporis Partus Maximus. 1584. Nov. 23. Sat in parliament as member for Melcombe Regis. 1586. Oct. 29. Member for Taunton. 1588. Lent term. Elected Reader at Gray’s Inn. » Nov. Member for Liverpool. 1589. Oct. 29. Reversion of the Clerkship of the Star-Cham- ber granted to him. 1589. An Advertisement touching the Controversies of the Church of England (1640). +1592 Nov. 17. Discourses in praise of Knowledge and of the Queen (1734). »» Observations on a Libel (1657). 1592-3. Feb. 19. Sat as member for Middlesex. 1593-4. Jan. 25. First appearance as a pleader in court. 1594. A true Report of Dr. Lopez his Treason (1657). » July 27. Made M.A. at Cam- bridge. 1595. Nov. 17. Contributions to the Device presented by Essex to the Queen: printed by Mr. Spedding (1861). 1595--6. Formularies and Elegancies (1859). +1596. Made Queen’s Counsel Extra- ordinary. 1597. First edition of the Essays. Colours of Good and Evil. Meditationes Sacre. Maxims of the Law (1630). f In the list of his Works I have not included his speeches in Parliament or his arguments in law. The date of composition when it could be ascertained is given; the date of publication, when different from that of composition, is included within parentheses. Probable dates are indicated by a dagger + Those pieces of which the date is altogether uncertain are placed at the end. CALENDAR OF LIFE AND WORKS. 1597. Oct. 24. Sat as member for Ipswich, 1609. Oct. 24. Double Reader at Gray’s Inn. 1600-1. Feb. 19. Trial of Essex and Southampton. 1601. A Declaration of the Practises and Treasons attempted and committed by Robert late Earl of Essex, &c., drawn up by Bacon, Oct. 27. Returned to parlia- ment as member for Ipswich and St. Alban’s. 1602. Letter to Cecil with Consider- ations touching the Queen's service in Ireland (1648). 1602-3. Mar. 24. Death of Elizabeth. 1603. July 23. Bacon knighted by James I. A Brief Discourse touching the Happy Union of the King- doms of England and Scot- land. +1603. Valerius Terminus of the Inter- pretation of Nature (1734). » De Interpretatione Nature Pro- @mium (1653). 1603-4. Mar. 19. Returned again by Ipswich and St. Alban’s. 1604. Certain Considerations touching the better Pacification and Edification of the Church of England (1640). Apology in certain imputations concerning the late Earl of Essex. Aug. 18. Counsel. Certain Articles or Consider- ations touching the Union of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland (1657). 1605. Advancement of Learning. +1605. Cogitationes de Natura Rerum (1653). 1606. May 10. Francis Bacon mar- ried Alice Barnham, Appointed King’s ” xl vii +1606. Partis Instaurationis Secunda Delineatio et Argumentum (1653). 1607. June 25. Made Solicitor Gen- eral, » Cogitata et Visa (1653). +1607, Filum Labyrinthi (1734). 1608. Inguisitio Legitima de Motu (1653). » Calor et Frigus (1734). » Historia Soni et Auditus (1658). » dn felicem memoriam Eliza- bethee (1658). » Afragment Of the true great- ness of Britain (1734). » July 16. The Clerkship of the Star-Chamber falls to him, +1608. Temporis (1653). »» Aphorismi et Consilia (1653). Partus Masculus 1608-9. Jan. 1. Discourse of the Plantation in Ireland (1657). 1609. De Sapientia Veterum. 1610. Death of his mother, Lady Anne Bacon, . The beginning of the History of Great Britain (1657). 1611-12. Advice to the King, touch- ing Sutton’s Estate (1648). 1612. Second edition of the Essays. +1612. Descriptio Globi Intellectualis (1653). 1» Thema Celi (1653). 1613. Oct. 26. Appointed Attorney General, 1614. Returned to parliament Ipswich, St. Alban’s, Cambridge University. 1616. June 9. Made a Privy Coun- cillor. Proposition to His Majesty touching the Compiling and Amendment of the Laws of England. +1616. De Fluxu et Refluxu Maris (1653). by and xviii +1616. De Principiis atque Originibus (1653). 1616-7. Mar. 7, Made Lord Keeper. 1617-8. Jan. 4. Made Lord Chan- cellor, 1618. July 9. Created Baron Veru- lam. 1620. Oct. Novum Organum pub- lished with Parasceve ad Historiam Naturalem et Ex- perimentalem. Jan. 27. Created Viscount St. Alban. 1621. May 3. Sentenced by . House of Lords. In this interval were com- posed Abecedarium Nature (lost except a fragment pub- lished by Tenison, 1679); Inquisitiode Magnete (1658); Topica ingquisitionis de luce et lumine (1653); Sylva Sylvarum (1627); Offer of a Digest to be made of the Laws of England (1629). 1622. History of Henry VII; Historia Naturalis et Experimentalis ; Advertisement touching an Holy War (1629). 1623. De Augmentis Scientiarum libri ix; Historia Vite et Mortis ; History of the reign of Henry VIII (1629). 1620-1, the 1621-6. CALENDAR OF LIFE AND WORKS. Considerations touching a War with Spain (1629). » New Atlantis (1627). »» Magnalia Nature (1627). » Dec. Apophthegms. < Translation of the Psalms. Third edition of the Essays. Apr. g. Bacon died at High- gate. 1624. 1625. 1626. Of the following works the date of composition is doubtful :— Phenomena Universi (1653); Scala Intellectus and Prodromi (1653); Cogitationes de Scientia Humana (1653); De Interpretatione Nature Sententiea xii (1653); Short Notes for Civil Conversation (1648) ; Confession of Faith (1641); Prayers (1648, 1679) ; Imago Civilis Fulii Casaris (1658); Imago Civilis Augusti Cesaris (1658);