1620.1 PROMOTION OF COVENTRY AND HEATH. 159 Having thus freely delivered to your Lordship my opinion, I now leave it to your self whether I shall move his Majesty in your suit or no: wherein I will be ready so to carry myself as I shall be further directed by your Lordship, and as it becometh Your Lordship's faithful friend and servant G. BUCKINGHAM.1 As we hear no more of this matter, I presume that Bacon acquiesced in Buckingham's objections, and said no more about it. The next letter, in favour of a suitor in Chancery, is in Buckingham's usual style, and subject to the same observations as the rest of that class. Two others belonging to this place;-being merely significations of the King's pleasure that grants be drawn up of the place of Attorney-General to Sir Thomas Coventry (9 January, 16201) and of Solicitor-General to Robert Heath (20 January)-it is enough to mention. And what relates to the meeting of Parliament will open a new chapter. TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR. 2 My honourable Lord, I have been intreated to recommend unto your Lordship the distressed case of the Lady Martin, widow of Sir Richard Martin, deceased, who hath a cause to be heard before your Lordship in the Chancery, at your first sitting in the next term, between her and one Archer and others, upon an antient statute, due long since unto her husband; which cause (as I am informed) hath received three verdicts for her in the common law, a decree in the Exchequer Chamber, and a dismission before your Lordship: which I was the more willing to do, because I have seen a letter of his Majesty to the said Sir Richard Martin, acknowledging the good service that he did him in this kingdom, at the time of his Majesty's being in Scotland. And therefore I desire your Lordship, that you would give her a full and fair hearing of her cause, and a speedy dispatch thereof, her poverty being such that having nothing to live on but her husband's debts, if her suit long depend, she shall be inforced to lose her cause for want of means to follow it: wherein I will acknowledge your Lordship's favour, and rest Your Lordship's faithful friend and servant, Whitehall, the 13th of January, 1620. 1 Fortescue Papers. Docketed, "Coppie to my L. Chanc. from my Lord. His sute." 2 Harl. MSS. 7000, f. 43. Original. Docketed by Meautys, "13 Jan. 1620. The Lo. Marq' Buck to yo' Lp. in the behalf of the La. Martyn." It was unlucky for the special business of this Parliament, which was to provide the Government with the means of sending an army to recover the Palatinate, that it coincided with a great scarcity of money and general apprehension of poverty. It could not have been national poverty, because it was caused by the low price of commodities, and the low price was caused by the abundance of them. But though a country must always be richer for plenty upon the whole, it may be poorer in parts. The course of the markets being disturbed, what was bought dear has to be sold cheap, and the compensating advantages do not show themselves at once or do not. find their way into the same pockets which the low prices have left empty. The farmer that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty,' was one of many whom a low price of corn would have made poorer for a time. : "But the difficulty will be," says Chamberlain, writing on the 10th of February, "how and where these supplies should be raised for it is most certain that England was never generally so poor since I was born as it is at this present; inasmuch as all complain they cannot receive their rents. Yet is there plenty of all things but money; which is so scant that country people offer corn, cattle, and whatsoever they have else, in lieu of rent, but bring no money and corn is at so easy rates as I never knew it at, 20 and 22 pence a bushel : barley at 9d.; and yet no quantity will be taken at that price: so that for all the common coinion of the wealth of England, I fear when it comes to the trial, it will appear as some merchants, which, having carried a great shew a long time, when they are called on too fast by their creditors, are fain to play bankrupt. But the strangeness of it is how this great defect should come and be perceived but within these two or three years at most. Divers reasons are devised, 1620-1.] COST OF A WAR TO RECOVER THE PALATINATE. 161 as some say the money is gone northward, some eastward, and I know not whither, etc." 1 Whatever the cause, one of the consequences was clear enough. It was not a time when a House of Commons-as houses of commons were in the early part of the 17th century—would like to vote many subsidies. Though the people were impatient for war, and much discontented with the Government for maintaining a neutral attitude so long, there is no reason to suppose that any of them had yet considered what the war they wanted would cost. The fighting men of the country (except the young nobility) had shown no alacrity in following Sir Horace Vere to help in defending the Palatinate the last summer; and it remained to be seen how much alacrity the taxpayers would shew in supplying what was needful for an army strong enough to recover it in the coming spring,—or their representatives (who belonged chiefly to the class whom the scarcity of money touched) in exacting it from them. For the orators and the pamphleteers it was not necessary to know more about the work than that they wished it done. But for the Government it was necessary before they entered upon it to consider how it was to be done, and how much money it would require. Among the manuscripts at Lambeth there is a paper which certainly belongs to this period, and appears to be the opinion of some councillor upon this question. 2 Though not among the Bacon papers, it is the first of three " discourses," the second of which is that "Short view to be taken of Great Britain and Spain," which is printed in the second chapter of this volume, and otherwise known to be Bacon's composition: and I took a copy of it long ago, thinking that it also might turn out to be his. Upon that point, however, I have not yet met with any conclusive evidence either way. So far as I can judge, such a paper might have been written by him; though I am not prepared to say that it could have been written by him only-which is in most cases a good reason for inferring that it was written by somebody else. But whoever wrote it, it contains in the shortest compass the best statement I have seen of the problem with which the Government had to deal, and with which Bacon's mind must have been much occupied at this time. 1 S. P. vol. cxix. . 90. 2 Lambeth MSS. no. 494, f. 400. VOL. VII. M "For the freeing of the Palatinate by arms are three ways propounded to His Majesty. By a conquering army, a diverting army, or an army of assistance. Whereof these are the heads that follow. "For a Conquering Army. "We are to understand that there are to be considered, "1. That the distance between England and the Palatinate is great. "2. That we are to march through divers countries, and some of them of ill disposition, and over many grounds and rivers of dangerous and difficult passage. "3. That all new armies are much subject to decay, and the English more than any; being by experience held a tender nation of body when they first enter the field, and the least careful of themselves. 66 4. That by reason of the distance and other difficulties going with it, charge and danger of reinforcing the army will be always exces sive. "These things considered, my opinion is that the army ought to be great, and so furnished, as it may be able not only to carry through itself with provision of our own, but to force provision from the enemy, and (if need be) to besiege any town in the way (as Colen, Coblentz, or such from whence Spinola hath had and therefore may have relief); which may help to bear a great part of the charge of the war. "For the composing of this army, the number cannot consist of less than 25,000 foot and 5,000 horse, with so many men over allowed in the levy as may promise to bring that main proportion of number whole and undecayed into the Palatinate. With these forces there will be required about 20 pieces of ordnance; that is to say, 7 cannons, 7 demicannons, and 6 field-pieces, and an extraordinary provision of victual, grindingmills, bridges, boats, and carriages, for these munitions, their officers, and other instruments of war, such as shall be needfully and fully set down for a passage and an undertaking of this nature. "And lastly, if this may be resolved on (the season of their arriving there being not omitted) the army ought to be employed as soon as it can be while it is fresh and able, because it will be so subject to decay (as I said before) and so hard to be enforced. "For a Diverting Army. "His Majesty hath advantageous ways to fall into Flanders by the channel of Sluice, about four or five miles into the land up to Damme, with a sufficient fleet (as the English heretofore have done), where they shall find 1620-1.] CHOICE OF PLANS OF ACTION. 163 the country open before them for spoil, and principally for taking in of all the towns upon the coasts, as Ostend, Newport, Dunkirk, and Graveling, and other places to fortify upon. The "For this war, an army of 17,000 foot and 3,000 horse will serve. invasion will be easy and speedy, and for reinforcement a means always at hand. So as this way may be taken [with] less charge, more assurance, more advantage of time, which are all of them points of great weight and consequence, especially in a war. "But it will be objected that this cannot be set on foot without breaking peace with Spain. It is true it cannot be, and the confidence they had in his Majesty that he would not break with Spain was the encouragement without which I think Spinola would never have set upon the Palatinate. So that if we be driven from resolving upon the first war propounded here by the difficulty of it, and from the second by this caution, there remains then a third war, which is, "For an Army of Assistance. "An assistance of 10,000 foot and 2,000 horse, joined with the States, as it is a cheaper and speedier expedition, so it is like to prove a more prevailing way than a greater number without joining with them, considering that it is an old army that is to be undertaken and under the States' commission, and assistance from his Majesty can no more break peace with Spain, than the Spanish force serving under the commission of the Emperor can be accounted to have made a breach with his Majesty. "For the command of these forces, the [choice of the] chief ought to be careful: wherein the dignity (if there be art in the person) is not the chief quality required; for no man is born a soldier: and where the private soldier is good, if the chief be not so, the army is ill. We may observe in the wars we have now relation unto, those of Bohemia and the Palatinate, that none becomes the greater soldier for being the greater prince. A king when it pleaseth his majesty may make a soldier a nobleman, but not a nobleman a soldier without long time of practice. It is the full experience of the man, together with his natural sufficiency, that does it. "Of all enterprises, a war (when we resolve upon it) ought to be undertaken in earnest: which no man can do who takes not care what chief he makes: and it concerns his Majesty now principally as well by reason of the seriousness and weight of the cause as in regard of his Majesty's gracious disposition to peace, which is the true effect that a right war seeks, and the work that nothing by any means of man can so assuredly command and maintain as an army. A testimony whereof the world beholds in the United Provinces, whose perfection in armies brings their enemies home to their doors to desire a peace. From hence I conclude with this opinion, that his Majesty may be pleased to believe that |