Since the writing of this letter I have had some farther speech with his Majesty touching my Lord Brackley, and find that if in your Lordship's information of the course you write any thing that may tend to the furthering of the dispatch of it in that kind he desireth, it may be done.1

This letter, as I find by the docket, was received by Bacon on the 25th of April and must therefore have crossed the two next on the road.

:

TO THE R. HON. HIS VERY GOOD L. THE EARL OF BUCKINGHAM OF HIS MS. MOST HON. PRIVY COUNCIL.2

My singular good Lord,

I pray your good Lordship to deliver to his Majesty the inclosed.

I send your Lordship also the warrant to my Lord Treasurer and Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer for the Queen's house. It is to come again to the King, when the bill is drawn for the letters patents; for this is only the warrant to be signed by his Majesty.

I asked the Queen, whether she would write to your Lordship about it; her answer was very modest and discreet, That because it proceeded wholly from his Majesty's kindness and goodness, who had referred it, it was not so fit for her to write to your Lordship for the dispatch of it; but she desired me to thank your Lordship for your former care of it, and to desire you to continue it. And withal she desireth your Lordship not to press his Majesty in it, but to take his best times. This answer (because I like it so well) I write to you at large. For other matters I will write by the next. God ever prosper

you and preserve you.

Your lordship's most faithful

London, 19 April, 1617.

and devoted friend and servant,

FR. BACON, C: S.

The letter to the King which was inclosed in this brings us back to the negotiation with Spain; and reveals the existence of some discordant element at the Council-board, upon which I am not able to throw any clearer light. It was no secret that there were some of 1 Harl. MSS. 7006, f. 11 original.

2 Fortescue Papers. Original, own hand.

the Cabinet opposed to the match. "The Archbishop of Canterbury, Mr. Comptroller, and Sir Ralph Winwood," says Chamberlain, March 29, "are excepted and left out [of the Commission] as openly opposite." But it was at this time that Sir Walter Raleigh was preparing for his voyage to Guiana, and if Mr. Gardiner is justified in asserting, as a fact of which "there can be little doubt," that "Winwood was urging him to break the peace at all hazards, and to fall upon the Mexico fleet, as the best means, if all others failed, of bringing the King to a rupture with Spain" (P. Charles and the Spanish Marriage, vol. i. p. 61,) this discovery which was new to Bacon," and opened but darkly," and on which Sir John Digby was to report further to the King, may have related to some suspected proceeding of his. A secretary of state who was capable of such a plot against the government he was serving must have been a very dangerous man to employ, and though it seems too much to believe of any man on no better authority than the report of an ambassador, yet the very rumour can hardly have gained currency respecting one in his place, unless he had been really implicated in some questionable

transaction.

TO THE KING, ABOUT THE SPANISH MATCH.1

It may please your most excellent Majesty,

Mr. Vice-Chamberlain hath acquainted myself and the rest of the commissioners for the marriage of Spain which are here, with your Majesty's instructions signed with your royal hand, touching that point of the suppressing of the pirates, as it hath relation to his negotiation; whereupon we met yesterday at my Lord Admiral's at Chelsea, because we were loth to draw my Lord into the air, being but newly upon his recovery.

We conceive the parts of the business are four. The charge. The confederations, and who shall be solicited or received to come in. The forces and the distributions of them. And the enterprise. We had only at this time conference amongst ourselves, and shall appoint (after the holy-days) times for the calling before us such as are fit, and thereupon perform all the parts of your royal commandments.

In this conference I met with somewhat which I must confess was altogether new to me, and opened but darkly neither; whereof I think Mr. Vice-Chamberlain will give your Majesty

1 Gibson Papers, vol. viii. f. 61. Fair copy in Meautys's hand. Docketed "My Lo. Keep. to his M. touching Sir John Digby's instructions."

By occasion whereof I hold it

some light, for so we wished. my duty, in respect of the great place wherein your Majesty hath set me (being only made worthy by your grace) which maketh it decent for me to counsel you ad summas rerum, to intimate or represent to your Majesty thus much.

I do foresee, in my simple judgment, much inconvenience to insue, if your Majesty proceed to this treaty with Spain, and that your Council draw not all one way. I saw the bitter fruits of a divided Council the last Parliament; I saw no very pleasant fruits thereof in the matter of the cloth. This will be of equal, if not more inconvenience; for wheresoever the opinion of your people is material (as in many cases it is not), there, if your Council be united, they shall be able almost to give law to opinion and rumour; but if they be divided, the infusion will not be according to the strength and virtue of the votes of your council, but according to the aptness and inclination of the popular. This I leave to your Majesty in your high wisdom to remedy. Only I could wish that when Sir John Digby's instructions are perfected, and that he is ready to go, your Majesty would be pleased to write some formal letter to the body of your Council (if it shall be in your absence) signifying to them your resolution in general; to the end that when deliberation shall be turned into resolution, no man (howsoever

A letter from Digby to Buckingham, dated London, May 1, 1617, seems to refer to this.

"I may not omit to let you understand that concerning the chief business which I am to treat, I find here great industry used to discredit it, and to have it believed that it will never succeed, nor that his M. intendeth it, and notwithstanding all that hath been done herein by his M. it is still avowed that the Treaty with France was never dissolved but is yet in subsistence, for that the suspending of it had still a relation to the time that things should be quieted and settled in France, which are now (they say) in a fair way. The Spanish ambassador hath divers times spoken with me about this, and I have ever given him full assurance of his M.'s sincere intentions, and he hath parted from me well satisfied, but others speak the contrary with that confidence, and are persons of that quality and place, that he is much distracted. For mine own part I shall earnestly entreat your Lp. to represent unto his M. this my humble opinion, which I do for the discharge of my duty and service, that if whilst this treaty shall be on foot his M. shall not be pleased, with the show of a constant resolution and his favour to strengthen it, but that his inclination and affection shall be avowed to be doubtful, nay averse, but only for other ends (for this I write unto your Lp upon good grounds) I doubt his M. will not only in Spain find cold and unlooked for answers, but will, I fear, fail of any other service to which this treaty may be made useful (although it should miscarry) if it be constantly and secretly managed. I presume to write thus much, lest whilst his M. is pleased herein to proceed with his accustomed wisdom, and his ministers employed by him with fitting duty and care, others either unwittingly or through averseness overthrow not his M's service and inten tion." (From a copy made by Mr. Gardiner from the original holograph.)

he may retain the inwardness of his opinion) may be active in contrarium.

The letters of my Lords of the Council with your Majesty touching the affairs of Ireland, written largely and articulately, and by your Majesty's direction, will much facilitate our labours here; though there will not want matter of consultation thereupon. God ever preserve your Majesty safe and happy. Your Majesty's most devoted and obliged servant, FR. BACON, C. S.

London, April 19, 1617.

The administration of the ecclesiastical patronage of the Crown during Bacon's four years of office would be worth looking into if the records were accessible. The next letter, which is the only one of the kind that I have met with, shows that he began with the intention of bestowing the livings in his gift upon men selected for their worth and fitness, and one would like to know whether any improvement was visible in the general character of the clergy during these years. I am afraid there are no means of ascertaining, without an immoderate amount of labour, what livings in the Chancellor's gift were vacant at what time, and to whom they were given. Otherwise, as collective biographies of all persons who can be included under a given title have been fashionable of late, as we have had Lives of the Chancellors, the Judges, the Queens, the Princesses, the Archbishops of Canterbury, and I do not know how many more,-I would recommend to a biographer in search of a subject "Lives of the beneficed clergymen presented by the Lord Chancellor Bacon."

This letter was first printed by Birch "from the collection of the late Robert Stephens Esq:" but not quite correctly. Among those collections, now in the British Museum, I find a paper in the hand of John Locker (Add. MSS. 4260, f. 115) from which I conclude he took it. It runs thus.

'By the copy of a letter of the Lord Chancellor Bacon, 24 Apr. 1617, to the Bp of Norwich, it appears that his Lp had presented Mr Gyles Fletcher of Trin: Coll: Camb. to the rectory of Helmingham in Suffolk : and by another letter that he presented one Mr Maxey, Fellow of Christ Church in Oxford, who had been of Trinity in Cambr. to the rectory of Frome St. Quentin, with the chapel of Evershot in Dorsetshire. To Mr. Maxey he writes thus:

After my hearty commendations, I having heard of you, as a man well deserving, and of able gifts to become profitable in the

church; and there being fallen within my gift the rectory of &c. which seems to be a thing of good value, £18 in the King's books, and in a good country, I have thought good to make offer of it to you; the rather that you are of Trinity college, whereof myself was some time and my purpose is to make choice of men rather by care and inquiry, than by their own suits and commendatory letters. So I bid you farewell from Dorset House, 23 April,

1617.

Your loving friend.

The letter to the Bishop of Norwich I have not met with.

The letter which follows is again a solitary specimen. There was once (and perhaps in some unexplored bundle of papers there still is) a letter from Bacon to his brother on the same subject and of the same date. But letters from fathers or brothers to one another about marriages for daughters or sisters or nieces were ordinary affairs of business in those days. Letters addressed to the young ladies themselves in such cases were rarer and of more tenderness. And a letter of advice from Bacon to his niece upon an offer of marriage to which she was not inclinable is a task which, exhibiting him in a new relation, throws some new light upon his character,— a light which is the more valuable because, while he has left the records of the business of his life for our inspection in such abundance and with so little reserve,-while he makes us welcome to attend him to the courts, the palace, the Parliament, and the councilboard; to his gardens, his chambers, and his study; he seldom or never admits us to his fire-side. We have a few letters of affection to kinsmen or familiar friends, which are among the most agreeable of his writings; but if it had not been for the miscellaneous bundles of papers of all sorts left by his brother Anthony, and probably never examined, we should have known nothing at all of his more intimate domestic relations. Here we get a glimpse of him as an uncle only; but in the absence of all records of that most intimate relation of all, an account of which seems to have been expected of me, but must still be expected in vain, it is something to know how he acquitted himself in a correspondence with the daughter of his half-brother.

1 See an entry of a letter in Stephens's catalogue: date "28 April 1617;" beginning "I thank you for your " contents, "advising a marriage for his daughter;" address "his brother."