not know what it was for or upon what conditions it was received ;1 and that the rest have followed the lead-as people do. It would not be the only instance in which a sneer of Sir Anthony Weldon's translated into the decorous language of respectable historians has taken its place as the judgment of posterity.

10.

These were Bacon's smaller cares at this time. A more important business was to get all the machinery of government into such a train that it might go on smoothly in the King's absence; for his journey to Scotland was now near at hand. The "remembrances " which follow will be found sufficiently intelligible without any comment.

REMEMBRANCES FOR THE KING BEFORE HIS GOING INTO SCOTLAND.2

May it please your Majesty,

Although your journey be but as a long progress, and that your Majesty shall be still within your own land and therefore any extraordinary course neither needful nor in my opinion fit; yet nevertheless I thought it agreeable to my duty and care of your service, to put you in mind of those points of form which have relation not so much to journey into Scotland as to an absence from your city of London for six months, or to a distance from your said city near three hundred miles; and that in an ordinary course, wherein I lead myself by calling to consideration what things there are that require your signature, and may seem not so fit to expect sending to and fro; and therefore to be supplied by some precedent warrants.

:

First, your ordinary commissions of justice, of assize, nisi prius, oyer and determiner, gaols delivery and the peace, need not your signature, but pass of course by your Chancellor and your commissions of lieutenancy though they need your signature, yet if any of the lieutenants should die, your Majesty's choice and pleasure may be very well attended; only I should think fit (under your Majesty's correction) that such of your

1 "Paid, up to March 25, 1614, £90,885. Sent into Ireland, up to Michaelmas, 1613, £129,013." Gardiner, vol. i. p. 560 (note).

2 Gibson Papers, vol. viii. f. 56. Draught partly in Meautys's hand and partly in Bacon's own. Docketed by Meautys "February 21, 1616. Remembrances for the K. before his going into Scotland."

3 "four" had been written first.

Lord Lieutenants as do not attend your person were commanded to abide within their counties respectively.

For grants, if there were a longer cessation, I think your Majesty will easily believe it will do no hurt. And yet if any be necessary, the continual dispatches will supply that turn.

That which is chiefly considerable is proclamations, which all do require your Majesty's signature, except you leave some warrant under your great seal to your standing council here in London. It is true that I do not foresee any case of such sudden necessity, except it should be the apprehension of some great offenders, or the adjournment of the term upon sickness, or some riot in the city,' such as hath been about the liberties of the Tower, or against strangers, etc. But your Majesty in your own great wisdom may perhaps think of many things that I cannot remember or foresee; and therefore it was fit to refer those things to your better judgment.

Also my Lord Chancellor's age and health is such, as it doth not only admit but require the accident of his death to be thought of; which may fall in such a time, as the very commissions of ordinary justice before mentioned, and writs which require present dispatch, cannot well be put off. Therefore your Majesty may be pleased to take into consideration, whether you will not have such a commission as was prepared about this time twelvemonth in my Lord's extreme sickness for the taking of the seal into custody, and for the seal of writs and commissions for ordinary justice, till you may advise of a Chancellor or Keeper of the great seal.

Your Majesty will graciously pardon my care, which is assiduous; and it is good to err in caring even rather too much than too little. These things, for so much as concerneth forms, ought to proceed from my place as Attorney, unto which you have added some interest in matter, by making me of your privy council. But for the main they rest wholly in your princely judgment, being well informed; because miracles are ceased, though admiration will not cease while you live.

11.

Before the King set out on his journey to Scotland he had two

1 In the MS. after "city" there is the mark of the beginning of a parenthesis, but the end is not marked, and I am not clear where it should come.

or three affairs to despatch, some of more moment and some of less. Among those of less moment was his answer to the petition from the townspeople of Cambridge for a new Charter, which had so alarmed the authorities of the University. More than a month had passed since Bacon promised that their interests should be cared for, and the question was still unsettled. By way of reminder, they wrote in February the following letter to the Earl of Suffolk, Chancellor of the University, which explains the nature of their apprehensions.

Right Honourable,

The confidence which the townsmen have in obtaining their charter and petition makes us bold and importunate suitors to your Honour, by whose favour with his Majesty and protection we again humbly entreat the University and ourselves may be freed from that danger which by them is intended to us. By their own reports it is a matter of honor and advantage for which they sue. When they were at the lowest and in their meanest fortunes they ever showed themselves unkind neighbours to us, and their suits with us within these few years have caused us to spend our common treasury and trouble our best friends; and therefore we cannot expect peace amongst them when their thoughts and wills shall be winged and strengthened by that power and authority which the very bare title of a City will give unto them. Since our late letter to the Right Honourable Lord Chancellor, your Honour, and his Majesty's Attorney-General, we (being better informed of the course they take and of their confidence to prevail at the end of the next term) have sent letters from the Body of the University the King's Majesty, the Lord Chancellor, and others our honourable friends, shewing them of our fear, and their purpose, and to entreat them to join with your Honour and us to his Majesty to stay their suit before we be driven to further charge or trouble in entertaining counsel or soliciting our friends. Thus humbly entreating your Honour to pardon our importunity and often soliciting your Lordship in this business, with our earnest prayers to the Almighty for your Honour's long life and happy estate, we end, this of Febr. 1616.

Your Honour's in all duty to be commanded.

The same apprehensions were expressed more officially and elaborately, though less intelligibly, in two Latin letters, one addressed to the Kings on the 2nd of February, the other to Bacon on the 11th. They are written in the grandiloquent style which modern 2 Sloane MSS. 3562, f. 43.

1 See above, p. 131.

3 Printed in Leland's Collectanea, vol. iv. Sloane MSS. 3562, f. 93. According to the manuscript this letter was dated "e Senatu frequenti nostro, tertio Idus Februarii 1616,” and addressed "Honoratissimo Domino Francisco Domino de Verulamio, Equiti Aurato, summo Anglia Cancellario" etc. which (if the date be correct) was impossible. But I suppose it was really addressed to Sir Francis Bacon, and the address given in the manuscript (which is only a collector's copy) was inserted by the transcriber at a later time, when those titles belonged to him.

scholars affect when they deliver themselves in Latin, and contrast unfavourably with their more simple and business-like English. But a specimen is necessary to explain the style of the answer, and I will take that part of the letter to Bacon which contains the substance of the complaint.

After a complimentary exordium, in which he figures as a Hercules, a Mecænas, and a harbour of refuge, they proceed to business.

"Imminet jam nostræ Mantuæ incursionis periculum a vicinâ et contigui liminis Cremonâ, quæ sub ementitæ dignitatis larvâ ac prætextu veræ ac veteri dignitati nostræ insidiatur; nec vanus nobis subest suspicionis metus, ne dum surgant Civitatis hujus moenia mox Academiæ parietes injurioso (sed occulto) pede conculcentur. Esto quidem per nos (imo sit per vos) Cantabrigia Civitas florentissima (cur enim honorem hunc ipsi nobis invideamus ?) sit tamen (ita uti nomen ei olim in archivis cluet) Civitas Literatorum,' non illiberalium opificum; qui dum majores nido pennas extendunt, et Civitatis (quam ambiunt) et Universitatis (cui invident) dignitatem eunt delibatum. Honorem nobis obtendunt, et auctiorem Oxonioque rivalem splendoris cumulum? Offuciæ meræ, et hamatum lenocinium. Blandiens ventus nos non inducet, quin tempestatem et nimbum expectemus. Ut aves semel deceptæ cæteros etiam cibos viscatos credunt, sic ab imposturâ ut ut speciosâ, quod etiam bonum sincerumque videtur, esse id tamen omne dilutum atque incrustatum haud perperam suspicamur. Nos macti titulis illis ac municipiis quos Principum Diplomata et domina rerum Consuetudo longâ annorum serie firmatos nobis indulserunt, in propriâ pelle quiescimus; haud ignari noxios interdum, curiosos sæpe, semper suspectos esse Novatores, qui ut aliquid sui videantur afferre etiam recta mutant in deterius. Tu vero, amplissime Heros," etc.

The King's decision was announced on the 26th of February. I have not seen specimens enough of his Latin style to judge whether or not the letter which conveyed it was of his own composition. There is no doubt that he had scholarship sufficient for a personal correspondence with the University in which he would not have shown to disadvantage; and it would not have been unlike him to make use of such an occasion to display it. But this was a thing in Bacon's line too, and knowing as we do that he was one of the three Commissioners to whom the question had been referred for consideration, and in all probability the most active of them (for neither the Lord Chancellor nor the Earl of Suffolk were likely to take such a business out of his hands), and that he had taken a special interest in it, it is not unlikely that when he obtained the King's decision upon the report he received his command to draw up

1 Literarum in MS. But it will appear from the King's answer, next page, that it should be Literatorum.

the answer. I have thought it best therefore, as on other occasions of the same kind, to give the reader the means of judging for himself. The letter in question has been printed in the Cabala (ed. 1663, p. 257) but with so many errors that it is hardly intelligible; the mistakes being those of a man who was not acquainted with the language. In Leland's Collectanea there is a better copy. But the best I have seen is in the Sloane MSS. 3562. f. 99; from which it is here printed. It appears to have been taken from the original, for the signature is written in imitation of James's own.

JACOBUS, DEI GRATIA MAGNE BRITANNIE, FRANCIE, ET HIBERNIE REX, FIDEI DEFENSOR, ETC. ACADEMIE CANTAB.

COMMUNI, SALUTEM.

Si jus Civitatis impetret a Nobis Cantabrigia veremini ne, æmulæ urbis potentiâ crescente, minuatur Academiæ securitas. Sat erit apud Nos metus vestri indicium fecisse. Nec enim tam vobis convenit Academiæ periculum deprecari, quam nobis sponte nostrâ quicquid in speciem illi noxium sit avertere. Glorietur Urbs illa se a majoribus nostris olim electam doctrinarum sedem, ingeniorum officinam, sapientiæ palæstram : Quicquid his titulis addi potest minus est. Non honestatur plebeiâ Civitatis appellatione Musarum domicilium. Vel sane literatorum dicatur Civitas, vel quod in villæ nomine vile est incolarum tegatur celebritate. Hæc ejus sint privilegia: Academiæ dignitatem comiter observare, cujus frequentiâ facta est se ipsâ major: Affluentes bonarum artium studiosos amice excipere, quorum concursu ditata est; Literarum denique honori ancillari, unde hæc illi nata est fœlicitas. Hæ artes quibus crevit tenendæ, non aucupanda titulorum novitas, incerti eventus. Facessat popularis vocabuli fastus, unde certa oriatur æmulationis necessitas, quæ eò turpior urbi est futura quo majori erga Academiam est obstricta reverentiâ. Nolumus sacrum illud Musarum asylum minaci Prætoris ense temerari, nec strepere tetrica Edicta ubi septemgeminus vestri chori auditur concentus. Satis est in vetere purpurâ invidiæ; nova pompa tam illi futura est supervacua quam vobis suspecta. In nostrâ solius tutelâ est, post Deum Opt. Max. Alma Scientiarum Mater: nostro fovebitur sceptro indefessa ejus fœcunditas. Non abortiet ad prætorii gladii terriculum. Nullum honoris titulum Cantabrigiæ

1 "Ac nos quidem purpuram iis haud invidemus, sed ensem metuimus." Letter from the University to the King.