Mr. Francis Bacon brought in the Bill touching the Exchequer, now thus entituled An Act for the better observation of certain orders set down and established in the Exchequer under her Majesty's Privy Seal.

At which time he said :

Mr. Speaker. This Bill hath been deliberately and judiciously considered of by the Committees, before whom Mr. Osborne came; who, I assure this house, did so discreetly demean himself, and so submissively referred the state of his whole office to the Committees, and so well answered in his own defence, that they would not ransack the heaps or sound the bottoms of former offences, but only have taken away something that was superfluous and needless to the subject.

Though the Committees have reformed some part, yet they have not so nearly eyed every particular, as if they would pare to the quick an office of her Majesty's gift and patronage.

This Bill is both public and private: public, because it is to do good unto the subject; and private, because it doth no injustice to the particular officer. The Committees herein have not taxed the officer by way of imputation, but removed a tax by way of imposition.

I will not tell you that we have taken away either in quo titulo or Checquer language; but according to the poet, who saith, Mitte id quod scio, dic quod rogo, I will omit that which you have known and tell you that you know not, and are to know, and that in familiar terms. (And so he told the substance of the Bill.)

We found that her Majesty, whose eyes are the candles of our good days, had made him an officer by Patent; in which that he might have right, her Majesty's Learned Counsel were in sentinel, to see that her Majesty's right might not be suppressed. If my memory hath failed me in delivery of the truth of the ceeding and the Committees' determination, I desire those that were there present to help and assist me. Here is the Bill. So he called aloud to the Sergeant of the House, and delivered him the Bill to be delivered to the Speaker. Which said Bill was read prima vice.1

1 18 Nov. 1601. Townshend, p. 223. D'Ewes, p. 642. Harl. MSS. 2283, fo. 38 b. This Bill went through its several stages in the Commons; but appears to

8.

So far, everything had been going as sweetly as possible for the Queen. But shortly after Bacon had delivered his bill to the sergeant, symptoms of the smothered fire, the significance of which appears to have been well understood at head quarters, found their way to the surface.

As the course of proceeding is not very clearly explained, I give the passage in the very words of Townshend, who was no doubt an eye and ear witness of what took place.

"Mr. Dyott, of the Inner Temple, said:-Mr. Speaker, there be many commodities within this realm, which being public for the benefit of every particular subject, are monopolized by Patent from her Majesty, only for the good and private gain of one man. To remedy the abuses of those kind of Patents, which are granted for a good intent by her Majesty, I am, Mr. Speaker, to offer to the consideration of yourself and this House, an Act against Patents purporting particular power to be given to sundry Patentees, etc. It hath a very long title.

"Mr. Laurence Hide, of the Middle Temple, said: I would, Mr. Speaker, only move you to have an Act read, containing but twelve lines. It is an exposition of the Common Law touching these kind of Patents, commonly called monopolies."1

The move seems to have been unexpected. For, if Townshend's note may be trusted, it was received at the time in silence; the House proceeding at once to the discussion of another bill, on a different subject:-a bill about which there was "much dispute." From what happened after, it may be suspected that this was contrived with the Speaker's concurrence by Cecil, in order to evade or postpone the dangerous question. But though it had lain quiet so long, it could not when once raised be laid again. And (strangely enough) the member who brought it up afresh was a man officially connected with the Government. The other bill having been, "after much dispute," committed, and the House being engaged in naming the Committees," Mr. Downalde" (we are told), "the Lord have been dropped at last, in consequence of the introduction of a proviso by the Lords, which (though the Commons were willing to assent to it) there was not time to insert as proposed before the dissolution. The only part taken by Bacon in its further course, of which we have any record, is the following short speech on the question whether the counsel of the clerks should be heard before it was committed. "I did rather yieldingly accept than forwardly embrace this labour imposed upon me. I wish the counsel may be heard, because we shall have the more time of consideration what to do. There is nothing so great an impediment to certainty of prevailing as haste and earnestness of prosecuting. I therefore think it fit that they might have time assigned them to proceed by counsel." (Townshend, p. 237.)

1 Townshend, p. 224. Harl. MSS. 2283, fo. 39.

2 George Downhall, I presume, Member for Launceston.

Keeper's secretary, stood up, and desired that the Bill which Mr. Hide called for touching Patents might be read." The Speaker desired him to wait till the Committees were named: after that, he said, he might speak. But I suppose Cecil saw in the face of the House. that the question would have to be met, and felt that he must contrive to get his instructions before it came on. And therefore, while they were proceeding with the naming of the Committees, he "spake something in Mr. Speaker's ear:" who, as soon as the time and place of commitment were named, immediately rose," without further hearing Mr. Downalde:" and so the House adjourned. Whether Cecil's whisper had anything to do with it, I do not know; but some irregularity there clearly was. And that may be the reason why D'Ewes (not understanding perhaps how it could have happened according to the usages of the House) omits this whole passage, as related in that private journal of which he otherwise makes such large use, and gives merely the entries from the "original journalbook of the House," which contain no hint of it. Nevertheless, when we read further that Mr. Downalde took the Speaker's conduct "in great disgrace, and told him he would complain of him the next sitting; to which the Speaker answered not one word, but looked earnestly on him, and so the press of people parted them," we need not doubt that the note was taken from the life.

Neither need we doubt that Elizabeth knew that same evening what had passed, and made up her mind for what was coming. For Elizabeth, though she often seemed to venture into dangerous positions and to run great risks, knew how to measure her own forces, and always kept some course in reserve upon which she might fall back in an emergency. If her ministers could hold the ground for her, it was best. If not, she could still come herself.

On this occasion she had a day's respite. Thursday, the 19th, was occupied with matters in which the House always took an eager interest, and spoke with many tongues. A burgess elect, being stopped on his way up to London, had "sent up his solicitor to follow his causes in law," etc. The solicitor had been arrested at the suit of a tailor, and carried prisoner to Newgate; where "after a discharge gotten because he said he served a Parliament-man, he was no sooner discharged, but straight he was again arrested and carried to the Compter, and there lay all night, until he sent to the Sergeant-at-arms, who fetched him out and kept him in his custody." The question was whether this were a breach of privilege; inasmuch as the master had not taken the oaths; and it was not till after much examination, re-examination, discussion, and con1 Townshend, p. 225. Harl. MSS. 2283, fo. 40 b.

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sultation, that the solicitor was ordered to be discharged, and the tailor and his officer to pay all fees, and undergo three day's imprisonment. Immediately upon this came a report of proceedings in another privilege question of higher interest, the question pending between the House and the Lord Keeper. Mr. Secretary Herbert had delivered their message to his Lordship, who had replied that upon consideration of "the weightiness of divers businesses now in hand," etc., "he would not now stand to make contention,” but "would be most ready and willing to perform the desire of the House."l

All this was satisfactory; but it consumed time; and nothing more was said about the monopolies that day. On Friday, however, the 20th, though not till after a long debate on a Bill against wilful absence from Church, and the hearing of another complaint from a member whose man had been arrested on his way up to London,— the great question at last forced its way into the front.

"The Speaker," says Townshend, " gave the Clerk a Bill to read. And the House called for the Checquer Bill: some said Yea, and some said No, and a great noise there was.

"At last Mr. Laurence Hide said: To end this controversy, because the time is very short, I would move the House to have a very short bill read; entituled An Act for Explanation of the Common Law in certain cases of Letters Patents. And all the House cried I, I, I."2

The long silence being at length broken, the cry of grievance found no want of tongues, and seems to have been felt from the first to be irresistible for though some of the members must have been personally interested in the monopolies, not a voice was raised in defence of them. A difference of opinion no doubt there was; but it turned wholly upon the form of the proposed proceeding for redress. In the object of the measure, namely to obtain relief from the grievance, all parties were prepared to concur. Nor was the disputed point of form material to that object, though very material in other ways. For the remedy proposed by the Bill was to declare these Patents illegal by the Common Law. Now since they had been granted in virtue of a prerogative which was at that time confidently assumed, asserted, and exercised, as indisputably belonging to the Crown; which, though not perhaps wholly undisputed, was freely allowed by a large body of respectable opinion; and which had not as yet been disallowed by any authority that could claim to be decisive; it was now no longer the monopolies, but the Prerogative itself, that was in question. It was like one of the cases of privilege 1 Townshend, p. 226. 2 Ib. p. 229.

with which the House had just been dealing. As the arrest of a debtor, though by a process strictly legal, was a breach of Privilege if the debtor was servant to a member, so the taking away of Patents by Act of Parliament was an invasion of Prerogative if they had been granted by a right constitutionally belonging to the Crown. And as the House would certainly have denied the right of the tailor to dispute the legality of their Privilege, so might the Queen deny the right of the House to dispute the constitutionality of her Prerogative. Nor indeed except by implication, was such a right now asserted. The question was not whether the House might meddle with the Prerogative, but whether this Bill did. And it is a notable fact that as the stoutest champions of the Prerogative disclaimed all wish to uphold monopolies, so the most eager assailants of monopoly disclaimed all intention of questioning the Prerogative.

Cecil said nothing. He had been excused the day before from going up with a Bill to the Lords, "because he was troubled with a cold" and perhaps he had not recovered his voice. But after a speech from the member for Warwick,—which was not so much against the legality of the Patents as against the proceedings of the Patentees' deputies; and against those proceedings, rather as transgressing the commission than as taker in virtue of it-Bacon rose to speak against the Bill. And for a note of the tenour of his speech we are again indebted to Townshend.

SPEECH IN THE HOUSE AGAINST A BILL FOR THE EXPLANATIONS OF THE COMMON LAW IN CERTAIN CASES OF LETTERS PATENTS.2

The gentleman that last spake coasted3 so for and against the Bill, that for my own part, not well hearing him, I did not well understand him. The Bill, as it is, is in few words; but yet ponderous and weighty.

For the prerogative royal of the Prince, for my own part I ever allowed of it: and it is such as I hope I shall never see discussed. The Queen, as she is our Sovereign, hath both an enlarging and restraining liberty of her Prerogative: that is, she hath power by her Patents to set at liberty things restrained by statute law or otherwise: secondly, by her Prerogative she may restrain things that are at liberty.

1 Townshend, p. 226.

2 20 Nov. 1601. Townsend, p. 231. D'Ewes, p. 644. Harl. MSS. 2283, f. 45, b. 3 tossed, Townshend; costed in MS.