your Lordship, as that I should think it an impudent thing to be suitor for your favour in a reasonable matter, your Lordship being to me as (with your good favour) you cannot cease to be, but rather it were a simple and arrogant part in me to forbear it. It is thought Mr. Attorney shall be Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. In case Mr. Solicitor rise, I would be glad now at last to be Solicitor, chiefly because I think it will increase my practice, wherein God blessing me a few years, I may amend my state, and so after fall to my studies and ease, whereof one is requisite for my body, and the other sorteth with my mind. Herein if I may find your Lordship's favour, I shall be more happy than I have been, which may make me also more wise. I have small store of means about the King, and to sue myself is not so fit. And therefore I shall leave it to God, his Majesty, and your Lordship. For if I must still be next the door, I thank God in these transitory things I am well resolved. So beseeching your Lordship not to think this letter the less humble, because it is plain, I remain

at your Lps. service very humbly,

FR. BACON.

The week before and the fortnight after the 11th of March was a period of some anxiety for the Government,-the Lower House having been engaged all the time in warm debates, first on the Purveyance Bill and afterwards on the question of a third Subsidy,-the report of the Committee on the other two Subsidies not having yet been brought in,—and the collection of general Grievances being diligently proceeded with meanwhile. It was a time in which Bacon's help in the House, where the representatives of the Government were not otherwise strong, could not be conveniently dispensed with. And though I do not find that any of his former disappointments and discouragements had on any occasion either altered his course or slackened his industry, it was not a time when Salisbury would have thought it prudent to neglect him, or hesitated to hazard words of promise. Nor have I any reason to doubt in this case the sincerity of his professions. The position in which a man like Bacon was still left, at the age of forty-six, while his cousin (though always friendly "secundum exterius ") had been in a position of such high influence for seven or eight years, makes it hard to believe that he had been really anxious to advance him in the service of the Crown. But the fact that on this occasion nothing

VOL. III.

U

followed the promises of favour, which (it seems) were his answer to the foregoing letter, may be sufficiently accounted for by the fact that the arrangement talked of was not carried into effect: and we do not know where or with whom the obstruction lay. All we know is that Gawdy, Coke, and Doderidge all kept their places, and Bacon still remained "next the door."

2.

In his private affairs, however, Salisbury had not been wanting (as we have already seen) in giving Bacon substantial help; and we know on Bacon's own authority that he had done something for him, though we are not told exactly what it was,-in furtherance of an important domestic enterprise which was successfully accomplished in the middle of this very session.

Marriages in those days were treated more openly as matters of business than they are now. Fathers proposed to fathers; and when the father was dead, great men were called in to countenance and recommend the suitor. It is true that in the Order of the Helmet, instituted by the Prince of Purpoole in 1594, this practice was strictly forbidden. "Item. No Knight of this Order shall procure any letters from his Highness to any widow or maid, for his enablement or commendation to be advanced in marriage; but all prerogative, wooing set apart, shall for ever cease as to any of these Knights, and shall be left to the common laws of this land, declared by the Statute, Quia electiones libera esse debent." But in a satire on the fashions of the time, the prohibition of a practice is proof of its prevalence. What obstructions Bacon met with on his way to matrimony, we do not know. But they would probably be such as a man who had the key of so many good places as Salisbury had, might well help to smooth.

The Lady was no doubt the same to whom he had alluded in 1603 -"an alderman's daughter," "an handsome maiden,” and “to his liking." Alderman Barnham, her father, had been dead for 15 years or more. Her mother, by a second marriage, had been Lady Packington since November 1598-a "little violent lady," according to Chamberlain.5 She herself was coheir to her father with three sisters; and her name was Alice: which is nearly all we know about her; unless a remark referring to a much later time, and re

See the first paragraph of Bacon's letter about the preamble of the Subsidy Bill, p. 277. 3 See Vol. I. p. 329.

2 See p. 79.

Note H H H to Montagu's Life of Bacon.

5 Chamberlain to Carleton, 20 Nov. 1598: 13 Feb. 1606-7.

corded more than twenty years after, be thought to imply that which if true in 1620 must have been true also in 1606, namely that she inherited some portion of her mother's weakness in the government of the unruly member. "One asked" (writes Dr. Rawley in his commonplace book) "how my La. Darby came to make so good use of her time whilst her husband' was Chancellor, and my La. St. Alban's made so little. The other answered, because my La. Darby's wit lay backward, and my La. St. Alban's lay forward: viz. in her tongue."2

The date of Bacon's marriage was not known, nor was there anything to be found in any printed book (so far as I am aware) by which it could be fixed within less than a year, until the appearance of Mrs. Everett Green's Calendar of State Papers :3 from which it appeared that there was a letter there from Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain, mentioning the marriage as fresh news on the 11th of May 1606. It had in fact taken place the day before, and in a very busy time: the Lower House having just passed the Subsidy Bill, and being that very day engaged in passing the second Purveyance Act and in arranging a fresh conference with the Lords about the Recusants. As we know no particulars from any other source (for I do not gather from Mr. Dixon's story that he had any independent information) Carleton shall give the news in his own words.

"Sir Francis Bacon was married yesterday to his young wench in Maribone Chapel. He was clad from top to toe in purple, and hath made himself and his wife such store of fine raiments of cloth of silver and gold that it draws deep into her portion. The dinner was kept at his fatherin-law Sir John Packington's lodging over against the Savoy, where his chief guests were the three knights, Cope, Hicks, and Beeston; and upon this conceit (as he said himself) that since he could not have my L. of Salisbury in person, which he wished, he would have him at least in his representative body."

When the domestic relations of a man so conspicuous as Bacon attract no notice, it may be inferred that they are peaceable and

1 Lord Ellesmere.

2 Lambeth MSS. 1034.

3 Domestic Series: James I. (published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls), p. 307.

+ Sir Michael, no doubt; whom we know: one of Salisbury's secretaries: not Sir Baptist, as Mr. Dixon calls him. Sir Walter Cope and Sir Hugh Beeston had also been long in the confidential employment of Salisbury. (See Chamberlain's letters (Camd. Soc.), p. 151.) All three were Members of Parliament. It is scarcely worth while to inquire on what ground Mr. Dixon describes them as “hard drinkers and men about town." It is probably a mere development of the fact that he knew them to have been once the chief guests at a wedding dinner, and knew no more.

5 Carleton to Chamberlain, 11 April, 1606.

Domestic Papers, James I., 1606.

quiet; and twenty years of married life in which the gossips and scandal-mongers of the time found nothing to talk about have a right to remain exempt from intrusion. In outward circumstances it appears to have been a very suitable match: the wife's fortune being a little less than the annual value of the husband's inherited estate, and her social rank a little lower; but not much. Taking his position and prospects into account, it was certainly a good match for her, nor was it a bad one for him. And I do not know why it should not be allowed to pass with as little remark now as it did then, or as any similar match would do in the present day.

3.

No change was made among the Law Officers during the session of Parliament. But shortly after the prorogation, Sir Francis Gawdy died; and on the 29th of June Coke succeeded him as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, thenceforward to be no longer the champion of Prerogative in its encounters with Parliaments and Judges, but the champion of the Bench in its encounters with Prerogative and Privilege.

A new Attorney General had now to be chosen. The right of the Solicitor-General to the refusal of the office was not yet established by custom. Since 1461, of 23 Solicitors only 9 had become Attorneys.1 And though it is true that three cases in succession had occurred in the last years of Elizabeth; and Fleming might possibly have made a fourth, had he not been removed by promotion before a vacancy occurred; yet the long delays and disputes in the appointment of Coke himself (who was the last of the three) are a sufficient proof that the custom was not then settled. It did not follow therefore that Mr. Solicitor would rise;" and if he did not (since he still, I believe, held his office quamdiu se bene gesserit), he could not be compelled to vacate it. And here it must be owned that the sincerity of Salisbury's professed desire to raise Bacon falls under just suspicion. At any rate there was another man in whose behalf the same desire worked more effectually. When the Attorney of the Court of Wards (of which Salisbury was Master) died, the King had left to him the choice of a successor," and he chose Sir Henry Hobart. Now that an Attorney General had to be chosen-whether it were that Doderidge had been found on trial to be inefficient, or that Hobart was more particularly suited to his own tastes and purposes-so it was that Doderidge remained Solicitor, and within 2 Chamberlain to Carleton, 24 Oct. 1605.

' Haydn's 'Book of Dignities.'

a week after Coke's promotion, Hobart became Attorney-Bacon being still left outside.

It is true that another arrangement was in contemplation, by which this would have been avoided. It appears to have been the wish and the intention, certainly of the Lord Chancellor, probably of the King, and possibly of Salisbury himself, to make way for Bacon's advancement by promoting Doderidge to the office of King's Serjeant, -an office of higher dignity, and so vacating the Solicitorship. Why this was not done, we do not know. It may be (as Mr. Gardiner has suggested) that it was thought necessary to wait for a vacancy among the King's serjeants; though it appears from the account of the office in Cowell's 'Interpreter,' a contemporary work, that the number of them was not limited.1 But at any rate it was not done: and Bacon thought it time at last to come to some distinct understanding as to his own prospects. He had had fair words enough, and upon them he had rested patiently until fair opportunities turned up of giving them effect. But a fairer opportunity than the present was not likely to come again; and it was fit he should know, with a view to the ordering of his own life and labours, whether he might reasonably expect to advance any further in his present career.

It was certainly with reference to this occasion that the three letters which come next were written; though I cannot determine the exact date of them. Hobart became Attorney General on the 4th of July; after which Bacon expected to hear news of the arrangement that had been intended for himself. Having waited long enough-how long I cannot say-and heard nothing, he wrote to ask about it.

These letters were first printed in the 'Remains:' and afterwards in the Resuscitatio. But as in other similar cases I take my text from the manuscript in the British Museum,-noting only such variations as appear to proceed from alterations introduced into the fair copy by Bacon himself. For I suppose the copies in the 'Remains' to have been taken from the letters sent,-though taken carelessly and full of blunders-and those in the Resuscitatio and in the manuscript from the drafts.

TO THE KING, TOUCHING THE SOLICITOR'S PLACE.2

How honestly ready I have been, most gracious Sovereign, to

1 "And of these [Serjeants of the Coif] one is the King's serjeant,-being commonly chosen by the King out of the rest, in respect of his great learning, to plead for him in all his causes; as, namely, in causes of treason.-And of these there may be more if it please the King."

2 Add. MSS. 5503, fo. 38.