40 PREFACE TO HIST. OF REIGN OF HENRY VII.

never spared charge that his affairs required, and in his foundations was magnificent enough, but his rewards were very limited; so that his liberality was rather upon his own state and memory than towards the deserts of others. He chose commonly to employ cunning persons, as he that knew himself sufficient to make use of their uttermost reaches, without danger of being abused with them himself.

Here the MS., which is in a fair Roman hand, carefully written and punctuated, ends in the middle of the page, without any remark, and without any appearance of being finished, just as if the transcriber had left off at the end of a sentence, intending to go on. I have no reason however to suppose that Bacon proceeded any further with the work. further with the work. His increasing business as a lawyer, and perhaps also an increasing apprehension of the magnitude of his undertakings in philosophy, led him probably to relinquish it. The fragment remains however to show that his conception of the character of Henry in all its principal features was formed in his earlier life and under another sovereign; and therefore if it stands in need of excuse, we must seek for it elsewhere than in the circumstances suggested by Sir James Mackintosh. For my own part, I am satisfied with the conjecture that he thought it the true conception.

THE

HISTORIE OF THE RAIGNE

OF

KING HENRY THE SEVENTH.

WRITTEN BY THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

FRANCIS LORD VERULAM, VISCOUNT ST. ALBAN.

LONDON:

Printed by W. Stansby, for Matthew Lownes and William Barret.

1622.

TO THE

MOST ILLUSTRIOUS AND MOST EXCELLENT PRINCE

CHARLES,

PRINCE OF WALES, DUKE OF CORNWALL, EARL OF CHESTER,

ETC.

It may please your Highness,

IN part of my acknowledgment to your Highness, I have endeavoured to do honour to the memory of the last King of England that was ancestor to the King your father and yourself; and was that King to whom both Unions may in a sort refer: that of the Roses being in him consummate, and that of the Kingdoms by him begun. Besides, his times deserve it. For he was a wise man, and an excellent King; and yet the times were rough, and full of mutations and rare accidents. And it is with times

as it is with ways. Some are more up-hill and downhill, and some are more flat and plain; and the one is better for the liver, and the other for the writer. I have not flattered him, but took him to life as well as I could, sitting so far off, and having no better light. It is true, your Highness hath a living pattern, incomparable, of the King your father. But it is not amiss for you also to see one of these ancient pieces. God preserve your Highness.

Your Highness's most humble

and devoted servant,

FRANCIS ST. ALBAN.