not been preserved; but the particulars which I have given are taken from a note of the legal proceeding, and explain the nature of the question now referred to the King's decision-namely, whether the writing and scattering about of these letters was an offence fit to be brought before the Star-Chamber.

TO THE KING.2

It may please your most excellent Majesty,

I send your Majesty, according to your commandment, the warrant for the review of Sir Edward Coke's Reports. I had prepared it before I received your Majesty's pleasure: but I was glad to see it was in your mind, as well as in my hands. In the nomination which your Majesty made of the Judges to whom it should be directed, your Majesty could not name the Lord Chief Justice that now is, because he was not then declared: but you could not leave him out now, without discoun

tenance.

I send your Majesty the state of Lord Darcy's cause in the Star-Chamber, set down by Mr. Solicitor, and mentioned in the letter which your Majesty received from the Lords. I leave all in humbleness to your Majesty's royal judgment: but this is true, that it was the clear opinion of my Lord Chancellor and myself and the two Chief Justices, and others, that it is a cause most fit for the censure of the Court, both for the repressing of duels, and the encouragement of complaints in courts of justice. If your Majesty be pleased it shall go on, there resteth but Wednesday next for the hearing; for the last day of the term is commonly left for orders, though sometimes, upon extraordinary occasion, it hath been set down for the hearing of some great

cause.

I send your Majesty also Baron Bromley's report, which your Majesty required; whereby your Majesty may perceive things go not so well in Cumberland (which is the seat of the party your Majesty named to me) as was conceived; and yet if there were land-winds as there be sea-winds to bind men in, I could wish he were a little wind-bound to keep him in the south.

But while your Majesty peruseth the accounts of Judges in 1 Harl. MSS. 6807, f. 170.

2 Gibson Papers, vol. viii. f. 280. Fair copy in Meautys's hand.

circuits, your Majesty will give me leave to think of the Judges here in their upper region. And because Tacitus saith well, opportuni magnis conatibus transitus rerum, now upon this change (when he that letteth is gone) I shall endeavour to the best of my power and skill that there may be a consent and united mind in your Judges to serve you and strengthen your business. For I am persuaded there cannot be a sacrifice from which there may come up to you a sweeter odour of rest, than this effect whereof I speak.

For this wretched murderer, Bertram, now gone to his place, I have (perceiving your Majesty's good liking of that I propounded) taken order that there shall be a declaration concerning that cause in the King's Bench, by occasion of punishment of the offence of his keeper; and another in Chancery, upon the occasion of moving for an order according to his just and righteous report. And yet withal I have set on work a good pen (and myself will overlook it) for making some little pamphlet fit to fly abroad in the country.

For your Majesty's proclamation touching the wearing of cloth. After I had drawn a form as near as I could to your Majesty's direction, I propounded it to the Lords, my Lord Chancellor being then absent; and after their Lordships' good approbation, and some points by them altered, I obtained leave of them to confer therenpon with my Lord Chancellor and some principal Judges, which I did this afternoon; so as it being now perfited, I shall offer it to the board to-morrow, and so send it to your Majesty.

So humbly craving your Majesty's pardon for troubling you with so long a letter, specially being accompanied with other papers, I ever rest,

Your Majesty's most humble, and

most bounden servant,

FR. BACON.

This 21 of No

vember, at x o'clock

at night.

The opinion of the Council on Lord Darcy's case being approved by the King, it came on for hearing in the Star-Chamber on the 27th of November. According to the practice of that Court, as soon as

the case had been heard the members delivered their judgments severally in order of seniority, the younger speaking first. On this occasion, Bacon, being the last-appointed Privy Councillor, had to begin; and as it was the first occasion for putting in practice the measures for the repression of duelling which he had himself advised and announced, it is a matter of some interest to know how he handled it. Our means of judging, however, are very incomplete; for though I have found two independent reports of his speech, both apparently made by ear-witnesses, and each no doubt containing much of what he said, they are both so imperfect, especially in the latter part, that it is often hard to guess even the general drift of the argument. The fuller of the two is unluckily the less intelligible, and seems in some places to be made up of unfinished sentences run together, the beginning of one being fitted to the end of another. If an unpractised reporter should try to write down as much as he could of a speech as it proceeded, and as often as he found himself left behind and thrown out should leave the sentence on which he was engaged and take up the speaker's last words; and if a transcriber should then make a fair copy of his report without observing the dislocations, and shape it into consecutive sentences, by inserting commas and full stops at pleasure, the result would be something like what we have here; and I should not be surprised if that were the real history of it. In the notes of speeches preserved in the Journals of the House of Commons (which appear to have been made in that way) the dislocations are indicated by dashes, and it would perhaps be possible by a liberal use of that mark of separation to make this report more intelligible. But such a process would involve too much invention, and I have thought it better to present the record as I find it; giving both reports in extenso, and so set out that they may be easily compared. Enough remains to show in a general way how the case was treated.

IN CAMERA STELLATA XXVII° NOVEMBRIS 1616. NOTES OF THE LORD DARCY'S CASE OF DUELLS AGAINST MR. GERVICE MARKHAM.1

King's Attorney,

Here's a Bill of complaint by the Lord Darcy of the North against Mr. Gervice Markham: and it is at the suit of the party

Sir Francis Bacon' said that before he came to his sentence ne could not but commend my Lord Darcy for seeking his satisfaction for this 2 Harl. MSS. 6807, f. 180 b.

1 Harl. MSS. 3638, f. 51.

[CHAP. III. grieved. In which I commend the Lord Darcy for taking the right course and not the left hand; that he being a Peer of the realm and Counsellor in Parliament boru, yet hath shown his obedience to his Majesty's edict, as not to seek to right himself by the sword, but to resort to justice. And so it should be, that the first in place should be first in obedience.

The offence the Defendant stands charged withal is a compound, and notwithstanding anything I have heard I hold it a mixture, and a chartel and a libel being conjoined they are the more odious, and being accupled they are the worse. Your chartels may have their disguises, but yet they conduce to Duel, and the Duel conduceth to murder. Therefore I will speak something in general of Duels and Libels, and then in particular of this case clad in his circumstances; both briefly; and turn the edge of my speech to root out this vile weed out of the kingdom.

The Duel to which your chartel hath introduction shall never have better terms at my hands than to be the inceptive act to murder. There may be a scarlet in grain and a murder more glorious. And if the insidious murderer deriveth his pedigree from Cain that got his brother with a wile into the fields and so slew him, and the insolent murderer from Lamech, that called his wives together and told them that he would kill a man though he were hurt, there is not much gain in the pedigree for the nobleness of murder. But it always carries this with it, that it is a direct affront of law and tends to the dissolution of magistracy. They being men despising laws divine and human, they injury by course of law and not of himself: though he were a Peer of the realm by birth, he was glad to see this resolution, that they that are highest in place are first in obedience to the law.

For the cause now in censure: he would speak somewhat in general of those that provoke duelloes, that they are those men whom the prophet David speaks of, that they imagine mischief as a law and make the corvets of their own will to be the rules of their own honour. Men may account a duello an honourable kind of satisfaction, yet it is but a scarlet or a grained kind of murdering. Let the insidious murderer derive his antiquity from Cain and the insolent murderer from Lamech, who could brag to his wives that he could kill a man if he be but wounded, yet are they descended from the Devil. The life of one worthy man hath been the safety of a kingdom. This doctrine of man-killing is grown to a tumour, and must be beaten flat by justice; lest that which is now man-killing should become judge-killing. The law is charged as defective in matters of repa

become like Anabaptists, that do as the spirit moves them and according to the boundings and corvets of their own wills, and for this they have made acts, and have rules, distinctions, and cases. This is right, as the Scripture saith, to imagine mischief as a law it is meant of oppression in place of justice and no less meant of punctual faults as artificially invented, as was a law we have doctrine.1

:

These swelling tumours that arise in men's proud affections must be beaten flat with justice, or else all will end in ruin. It is to set a vile price upon the blood of the subject thus to contemn law; for we read in stories that in every battle the virtue of a few persons carried away the day.

Will you have the sacrifices of men, not of bulls or oxen?

You say the law is such. But, my Lords, the law of England is not taken out of Amadis de Gaul nor the books of Parallells,2 but out of the Scripture, out of the laws of the Romans and Grecians, where never a duel was; and they had such excellent reproachful speeches as we read in their orations, and yet never no sword drawn. But the King hath taken away all excuse, having given a fair passage, and nothing can be offered as a wrong but he hath left sufficient remedy. My Lords, when his Majesty spake lately unto me of this business, and no man expresseth himself like him, he said I come forth and see myself nobly attended, but I know not whether any of them shall live four and twenty hours: for it is but the mistaking of a word in ration of honour, and therefore men urge this course of single combats as the only means to right themselves in honour; but men must know that the law of England is not a law taken from Amadis de Gaule or Pal. merin de Oliva, but from the ancient Romans and the most illustrious and best governed commonwealths; and therefore ill may he speed that shall seek righting of his honour by other means than by them. He had often heard his M the King express himself graciously concerning these Duelloes (as indeed he doth best express himself of any other when it pleaseth him) That when he goeth abroad he seeth himself royally attended with many goodly noblemen and gentlemen, and taketh great joy and comfort so to see them and think on them. But again it grieveth3 him much more that he is not assured of the lives of any of them four and twenty hours, for if they discourse but a few words the lie is given, the lie begets a challenge, and the challenge death. Such is his Majesty's contemplation of clemency for the good of his people; answerable with Xerxes 1 So in MS. 2 So in MS. A mistake no doubt for 'Palmerin.'

3 'giveth' in MS.