without a word of reproof for the Bishops. Again, later on (1616), when he found that the King was determined to make no concessions to the Puritans, he adapts himself once more to the royal views, and faces about so completely that he actually adopts the tone of one who is more conservative than the King himself and most earnestly hopeful that his Majesty will give way to no innovations. Times, no doubt, had changed. An interval of twelve years (1604-16) had introduced a temporary reaction in some quarters against extreme Puritanism, and had allowed many pleasing and hallowed associations to gather round some of those very rites and forms of the Anglican Church which had previously excited most dislike and suspicion. But we shall be doing no injustice to Bacon by supposing that the Courtier, rather than the Statesman, speaks in the following passage in which Bacon (1616) strenuously warns Villiers, the royal Favourite, against making the slightest concession to these same Nonconformists whose cause the writer had pleaded with equal strenuousness in 1604:

...

"It is dangerous to give the least ear to such innovators, but it is des perate to be misled by them. Besides the Roman Catholics, there are a generation of sectaries. . . . They have been several times very busy in this kingdom, under the colourable pretensions of zeal for the reformation of religion. The King your Master knows their dispositions very well; a small thing will put him in mind of them. His Majesty had experience of them in Scotland; I hope he will beware of them in England. A little countenance or connivance sets them on fire." 1

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It is for these reasons that the paper on the Pacification and Edification of the Church, deserves our special attention as being the truest exponent of Bacon's real ecclesiastical policy. Speaking his own mind, for once, freely, he advocates Church Reform. He pleads, not for a mere "countenance" or connivance," but for a “law which may give a liberty." He is ready to give up such details as the surplice, the ring in marriage, the name of Priest, the use of Confirmation in its present shape, and the allowance of private Baptism; but he is ready to do much more than this. It is not that he will merely concede a considerable immediate reform; he goes further, and maintains the need of future and periodic reforms in the Church.

1 Spedding, vi. 18-32.

"It is excellently said by the Prophet, State super vias antiquas, et videte quænam sit via recta et vera, et ambulate in ea; so as he doth not say, State super vias antiquas et ambulate in eis. . . . But, not to handle this matter common-place-like, I would only ask why the civil State should be purged and restored by good and wholesome laws made every third or fourth year in Parliaments assembled, devising remedies as fast as time breedeth mischiefs, and contrariwise the ecclesiastical State should still continue upon the dregs of time, and receive no alteration now for these five-andforty years and more? If any man shall object that, if the like intermission had been used in civil causes also, the error had not been great, surely the wisdom of the kingdom hath been otherwise in experience for three hundred years at least. But if it be said to me that there is a difference between civil causes and ecclesiastical, they may as well tell me that churches and chapels need no reparations, though houses and castles do; whereas commonly, to speak truth, dilapidations of the inward and spiritual edification of the Church of God are in all times as great as the outward and material."

Had these sensible and statesmanlike views been adopted, the Church of England might have been made to include, and might perhaps now include, all but a small minority of the nation; and the adoption of this ecclesiastical policy might have gone far to conciliate the House of Commons and to prevent the civil war which was to fall upon the next generation. But the King peremptorily rejected such advice. "I will have none of that," said he to the Puritan Doctors who pleaded for elasticity of ceremonial, “I will have one doctrine, one discipline, one religion, in substance and ceremony. Never speak more on that pointhow far you are bound to obey." The Church historian Fuller, after relating the King's determination, remarks that "thenceforward many cripples in conformity were cured of their former halting therein; and such who knew not their own, till they knew the King's, mind in this matter, for the future quietly digested the Ceremonies of the Church." It is hard to decide to which of these two classes Bacon should be assigned. A sound Anglican would certainly call him "a cripple in Conformity;" on the other hand, his extraordinary power of unconscious self-adaptiveness may perhaps justify the assertion that "he knew not his own mind till he knew the King's." Be that as it may, he obeyed to the letter the royal command "never to speak more on that point." The printed copies of the treatise

appear to have been "called in" immediately after the King's decision was known; and, as we have seen above, when he undertakes afterwards to advise Villiers on the subject, the King himself could not be more conservative, and more averse to the countenancing or conciliating of "sectaries," than the converted author of Certain Considerations touching the better Pacification and Edification of the Church of England.

Here then once more we have to lament the extraordinary suppleness, the portentous power of adapting his mind to the mind of others-much as if he had "never known his own mind "-which made Bacon one of the most pernicious of counsellors for any man in authority who had not insight enough to perceive at once the wisdom of his advice. He had not the same courage in maintaining his moral, as in maintaining his intellectual convictions; he could "strive for the truth unto death" 2 death" in Science, but not in Politics. None knew better than he that "it is one thing to understand persons, and another thing to understand matters," and he prided himself upon understanding both, and did understand both but he deliberately sacrificed "the real part of business" in order to retain his hold on the "humours" of great personsalways in the hope of hereafter influencing the great for some good end, and always with the result of making himself their tool. And hence he met the fate ordained for those who know but will not "strive for the truth": he made himself "an underling to foolish men, and accepted the person of the mighty."

§ 15 BACON IS MADE SOLICITOR-GENERAL

In the Parliament which met 19 March, 1604, Sir Francis Bacon was again returned for Ipswich and St. Albans, and at once assumed a position prominent in the House and conciliating to the new Sovereign. He spoke in favour of a proposal to compound with the King for the extinction of Purveyance, at the same time maintaining the royal rights of Preemption and Prisage, and extolling the Prerogative as being no less ancient 1 Spedding, iii. 102. 2 Ecclesiasticus, iv. 27, 28.

8 Essays, xxii. 8.

than the Law: "caput inter nubila conditur." Charged with a petition to the King touching the abuses of Purveyors, he recommended (27 April) the suppression of their malpractices by appeal to two examples; the one, of King Edward the Third, who in his time made ten laws against this abuse; "the second is the example of God himself who hath said and pronounced that He will not hold them guiltless that take His name in vain ; for all these great misdemeanours are committed in, and under, your Majesty's name."

Besides warmly siding with the King in the proceedings for the Union (to consider the details of which he was the first of the Commissioners appointed by the House), he also advocated in characteristic language a subsidy to the Crown: "Let not this Parliament end, like a Dutch feast, in salt meats; but like an English feast, in sweet meats;" but the doubtful reception given to the project induced the King to express his wish that it should be dropped. In the discussions of the Commissioners on the Union, Bacon played a leading part; and to him, in conjunction with the Lord Advocate of Scotland, was intrusted the task of reducing the articles to a coherent whole. The instruments were signed and sealed on 6 December, 1604; but before this time Bacon had received his first token of the favour of the new Sovereign; it did, not, however, amount to much, being no more than the gift by Patent of his office of Learned Counsel, which hitherto he had held merely on verbal warrant. At the same time he received (18 August, 1604) a pension of £60 a year for life; but this was not in the way of a salary, but expressly granted "in consideration of the good services" of his brother Anthony, the intimate and faithful friend of Essex,1 who had co-operated with the Earl in keeping up a correspondence with the Court of James, for the purpose of facilitating the Scotch succession. So far as concerns promotion, Bacon was

2

1 Rymer's Fœdera, xvi. 597.

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2 Dean Church (p. 75), without mentioning the "pension" given in Anthony's name, says: Bacon, who had hitherto been an unsworn and unpaid member of the Learned Counsel, now received his office by patent, with a small salary ;” but I can find no record of any "salary.' Even Professor Gardiner says (History, i. 165): "Bacon retained, indeed, the title of King's Counsel, and he drew the salary such as it was; and again (ib. 195): "On August 18, Bacon was 'established by Patent in the position of a King's Counsel, with which he received a pension of £60" no mention being made of the grounds on which the "pension was given.

still neglected, and he himself appears to have expected nothing better; for two or three months afterwards, when the Solicitor's place was filled (October 1604) he did not even apply for it. In the summer of 1605, when the place of Chief Justice of Common Pleas was vacant, Bacon was again passed over; and in the trials and investigations that followed the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot in November 1605, his services were not required by the Government.

The length of the interval between December 1604, and the reassembling of Parliament in November 1605, gave Bacon leisure for working at his Advancement of Learning (for a summary of which see Appendix II), and apparently induced him to alter his purpose of publishing the first book by itself. In any case the two books appeared in October 1605. Sending a copy to Sir Thomas Bodley he repeats the protestation which he had made to Cecil two years before, that he has renounced "civil causes," and devoted himself to philosophy: "I think no man may more truly say with the Psalm, 'Multum incola fuit anima mea' (My soul hath long dwelt with them that are enemies unto peace) than myself. For I do confess since I was of any understanding my mind hath in effect been absent from that I have done; and in absence are many errors which I do willingly acknowledge, and amongst the rest this great one that led the rest; that knowing myself by inward calling to be fitter to hold a book than to play a part, I have led my life in civil causes, for which I was not very fit by nature, and more unfit by the preoccupation of my mind."

When Bacon wrote thus, he had good cause for thinking that his chance of legal promotion was small. Yet, however he might write as a philosopher to a philosopher, disavowing aptitude for civil causes, there can be no doubt that afterwards he bitterly felt his non-advancement. Writing to the Lord Chancellor (July 1606) he says that his non-promotion makes him "a common gaze and a speech," and that the little reputation which by his industry he gathers is scattered and taken away by continual disgraces, every new man coming above him. Simultaneous letters to the King and Cecil prove that he had been for some time assiduously seeking and expecting office. Among other reasons for pressing his suit he alleges his desire

I