PREFACE TO THE HISTORY OF THE REIGN OF HENRY VII. THE history of the reign of King Henry the Seventh was the first work composed by Bacon after his fall; the fruit of his first few months of leisure. The subject indeed of which it forms the opening chapterviz: a History of England from the Union of the Roses to the Union of the Crowns - was one which he had long before pointed out as eminently worth handling; but until the time when he saw his retirement from public life inevitable, and that (to use his own words) "being no longer able to do his country service it remained to him to do it honour," he does not seem to have thought of undertaking any part of it himself. And though it may appear from a letter to the king that he had conceived the purpose as early as the 21st of April 1621, when he was in the middle of his troubles, it is not before the 4th of June, when he was released from the Tower, hardly perhaps before the 22nd, when he returned to Gorhambury, -that he can be supposed to have commenced the work. By the end of the following October, or thereabouts, he had |