there is so good proof) stands my last hope. If I now find a stop, I will resolve it is fatum Carthaginis, and sit down in perpetual peace. In this business I desire all convenient silence; for though I can endure to be refused, yet it would trouble me to have my name blasted. If your honour return not, and you think it requisite, I will attend at court. Mean time, with all humble and hearty wishes for increase of all happiness, I kiss your honour's hands.

September 27, 1616.

Your Honour's humbly at command, R. MARTIN. Indorsed To the Right Honourable Sir Francis Bacon, Knight, his Majesty's Attorney-General, and one of his Majesty's most honourable privy council, my singular patron at court.

To the King.

It may please you Majesty,

This morning, according to your majesty's command, we have had my Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench* before us, we being assisted by all your learned council except Serjeant Crew, who was then gone to attend your majesty. It was delivered unto him, that your majesty's pleasure was, that we should receive an account from him of the performance of a commandment of your majesty laid upon him, which was, that he should enter into a view and retractation of such novelties, and errors, and offensive conceits, as were dispersed in his Reports; that he had had good time to do it; and we doubted not but he had used good endeavour in it, which we desired now in particular to receive from him.

His speech was, that there were of his Reports eleven books, that contained about five hundred cases; that heretofore in other Reports, as namely, those of Mr. Plowden,† which he reverenced much, there hath been found nevertheless errors, which the wisdom of time had discovered, and later judgments controlled; and enumerated to

*Sir Edward Coke.

Edward Plowden, born of an ancient family of that name at Plowden in Shropshire, about the year 1518. He was educated at Cambridge and Oxford, in both which universities he studied physic for some time, being admitted in November 1552, by the latter to practise chirurgery and physic. After this, he applied himself to the study of the common law, in which he soon became eminent, and in 1557 was autumn reader to the Middle Temple, and three years after lent reader, having been made serjeant, October 27, 1558. He died February 6, 1584-5, at the age of sixty-seven, in the profession of the Roman Catholic faith.

us four cases in Plowden, which were erroneous: and thereupon delivered in to us the inclosed paper, wherein your majesty may perceive, that my lord is a happy man, that there should be no more errors in his five hundred cases than in a few cases of Plowden. Your majesty may also perceive, that your majesty's direction to my Lord Chancelfor and myself, and the travail taken by us and Mr. Solicitor, in following and performing your direction, was not altogether lost; for that of those three heads, which we principally respected, which were the rights and liberties of the church, your prerogative, and the jurisdiction of other your courts my lord hath scarcely fallen upon any, except it be the prince's case, which also yet seemeth to stand but upon the grammatical, of French and Latin.

My lord did also give his promise, which your majesty shall find in the end of his writing, thus far in a kind of common place or thesis, that it was sin for a man to go against his own conscience, though erroneous, except his conscience be first informed and satisfied.

The Lord Chancellor in the conclusion signified to my Lord Coke your majesty's commandment, that until report made, and your pleasure thereupon known, he shall forbear his sitting at Westminster, &c. not restraining nevertheless any other exercise of his place of chief justice in private. Thus having performed, to the best of our understanding, your royal commandment, we rest ever

Your Majesty's most faithful and

most bounden Servants, &c. The Lord Viscount Villiers to Sir Francis Bacon, Attorney-General.

Sir,

I have acquainted his majesty with my Lord Chancellor's and your report, touching my Lord Coke; as also with your opinion therein; which his majesty doth dislike for these three reasons: first, because that by this course you propound, the process cannot have a beginning, till after his majesty's return; which, how long it may last after, no man knoweth; he therefore thinketh it too long and uncertain a delay, to keep the bench so long void from a chief justice. Secondly, although his majesty did use the council's advice in dealing with the Chief Justice upon his other misdemeanours, yet he would be loath to lessen his prerogative in making the council judges, whether he should be

*Sir Henry Yelverton.

VOL. XII.

X

turned out of his place or no, if the case should so require. Thirdly, for that my Lord Coke hath sought means to kiss his majesty's hands, and withal, to acquaint him with some things of great importance to his service; he holdeth it not fit to admit him to his presence before these points be determined, because that would be a grant of his pardon before he had his trial. And if those things wherewith he is to acquaint his majesty be of such consequence, it would be dangerous and prejudicial to his majesty to delay him too long. Notwithstanding, if you shall advise of any other reasons to the contrary, his majesty would have you, with all the speed you can, to send them unto him; and in the mean time to keep back his majesty's letter, which is herein sent unto you, from my Lord Čoke's knowledge, until you receive his majesty's further direction for your proceeding in his business. And so I rest

Your ever assured Friend at command,
GEORGE VILLIERS.

Theobald's, the 3d of

October, 1616.

Indorsed To the Right Honourable Sir Francis Bacon, Knight, his Majesty's Attorney General, and of his most honourable Privy Council.

To the King.

It may please your most excellent Majesty,

We have considered of the letters which we received from your majesty, as well that written to us both as that other written by my Lord Villiers to me, the attorney, which I thought good to acquaint my Lord Chancellor withal, the better to give your majesty satisfaction. And we most humbly desire your majesty to think that we are, and ever shall be, ready to perform and obey your majesty's directions; towards which the first degree is to understand them well.

In answer, therefore, to both the said letters, as well concerning matter as concerning time, we shall, in all humbleness, offer to your majesty's high wisdom the considerations following:

First, we did conceive that after my Lord Coke was sequestered from the table and his circuits, when your majesty laid upon him your commandment for the expurging of his Reports, and commanded also our service to look into them, and into other novelties introduced into the government, your majesty had in this your doing two principal

ends:

On the 30th of June, 1616. Camdeni Annales Regis Jacobi I. p. 19; and Peck, Desiderata Curiosa, vol. i. lib. vi. p. 18.

The one, to see if, upon so fair an occasion, he would make any expiation of his former faults; and also show himself sensible of those things in his Reports which he could not but know were the likest to be offensive to your majesty.

The other, to perform de vero this right to your crown and succession, and your people also; that those errors and novelties might not run on and authorize by time, but might be taken away, whether he consented to it or no.

But we did not conceive your majesty would have had him charged with those faults of his book, or those other novelties, but only would have had them represented to you for your better information.

Now your majesty seeth what he hath done, you can better judge of it than we can. If, upon this probation added to former matters, your majesty think him not fit for your service, we must, in all humbleness, subscribe to your majesty, and acknowledge, that neither his displacing (considering he holdeth his place but during your will and pleasure) nor the choice of a fit man to be put in his room are council-table matters, but are to proceed wholly from your majesty's great wisdom and gracious pleasure. So that, in this course, it is but the signification of your pleasure, and the business is at an end as to him: only there remaineth the actual expurgation or animadversions of the books.

But if your majesty understand it that he shall be charged, then, as your majesty best knoweth, justice requireth that he be heard and called to his answer; and then your majesty will be pleased to consider before whom he shall be charged, whether before the body of your council (as formerly he was) or some selected commissioners; for we conceive your majesty will not think it convenient it should be before us two only. Also the manner of his charge is considerable; whether it shall be verbal by your learned council, as it was last, or whether, in respect of the multiplicity of matters, he shall not have the collections we have made in writing delivered to him. Also the matter of his charge is likewise considerable; whether any of those points of novelty, which by your majesty's commandment we collected, shall be made part of his charge, or only the faults of his books, and the prohibitions and habeas corpus, collected by my Lord of Canterbury. In all which course we foresee length of time, not so much for your learned council, to be prepared (for that is almost done already), but because

himself, no doubt, will crave time of advice to peruse his own books, and to see whether the collections be true, and that he be justly charged; and then to produce his proofs, that those things which he shall be charged with were not conceits or singularities of his own, but the acts of court, and other like things tending to excusation or extenuation; wherein we do not see how the time of divers days, if not of weeks, can be denied him.

Now, for time (if this last course of charging him be taken) we may only inform your majesty thus much, that the absence of a chief justice, though it should be for a whole term, as it hath been often upon sickness, can be no hinderance to common justice. For the business of the King's Bench may be dispatched by the rest of the judges; his voice in the Star-chamber may be supplied by any other judge that my Lord Chancellor shall call; and the trials by nisi prius may be supplied by commission.

But as for those great matters of discovery we can say nothing more than this, that either they are old or new. If old, he is to blame for having kept them so long; if new, or whatsoever, he may advertise your majesty of them by letter, or deliver them by word to such counsellor as your majesty will assign.

Thus we hope your majesty will accept of our sincerity, having dealt freely and openly with your majesty as becometh us; and when we shall receive your pleasure and direction, we shall execute and obey the same in all things; ending with our prayers for your majesty, and resting Your Majesty's most faithful and most bounden Servants, T. ELLESMERE, Canc. FRANCIS BACON.

October 6, 1616.

To Sir Francis Bacon, Attorney-General.*
Sir,

I have kept your man here thus long because I thought there would have been some occasion for me to write after Mr. Solicitor General's being with the king. But he hath received so full instruction from his majesty that there is nothing left for me to add in the business. And so I rest Royston, the 13th of Your faithful Servant, October, 1616. GEORGE VILLIERS.

Indorsed To the Right Honourable Sir Francis Bacon, Knight, one of his Majesty's Privy Council, and his Attorney-General.

* Harl. MSS. Vol. 7006.