§ 23 THE DECLINE OF CECIL

As long as Cecil lived there was no chance of Bacon's having free access to the King and influence over his policy. This Bacon avowed afterwards to the King, when he declared that during his cousin's life he was like a hawk tied to another's wrist, which may flutter and "bate," but cannot fly; and he obscurely hints it in the last quoted note to the King, in which he says that his love "must creep since it cannot go" (i.e., walk upright). But there were now signs that the great man's influence was on the wane. The King had been warned by one of his nobles on his death-bed that, under cover of the Great Contract, he was being stripped of his royal dignities, and that "the subject was bound to relieve him and to supply his occasions without any such contractings;" and we are told that "ever after, the Earl of Salisbury, who had been a great stirrer in that business, began to decline." 2 On 25 November, 1610, the King wrote a letter to Salisbury soundly rating him for expecting from him an "asinine patience," and commanding the adjournment of Parliament, and on 29 February, 1611, Parliament was dissolved.

At the same time a favourite was coming to the front. A young Scotchman named Robert Carr, who had been one of the King's pages in Scotland but had been dismissed on James's accession to the English throne, coming to Court soon afterwards, had the good fortune to break his leg at a tilting match (1606) in the royal presence. This accident, combined with his great physical vigour and activity and strong animal spirits, sufficed to place the lad at once high in the King's favour. He was knighted without delay, and by the good offices of Cecil-who seems to have courted the rising Favourite-advantage was soon taken of a flaw in a legal conveyance to dispossess Sir Walter Raleigh's wife and children of the Manor of Sherborne, and to bestow it (1609) upon Carr. In March, 1611, still rising in royal favour, Sir Robert Carr was created Viscount Rochester.

1 Goodman, see Spedding, iv. 223.

2 The Spanish ambassador (Sarmiento) declared that Salisbury also began to fall into disgrace from the time when he advocated a war with Spain.-(Gardiner, History, ii. 220, note).

Meanwhile honours and preferments were flying about. The Speaker of the last House of Commons, who had assisted the Great Contract and had made himself generally useful to the King on critical occasions, had been rewarded with the Mastership of the Rolls; and another of the King's supporters had been promised the reversion of the office. Finding himself unable to trust the good-will or ability of Salisbury to help him to the Attorney's place at the next vacancy, Bacon determined (early in 1611) to make a direct appeal to the King. The following letter, in which he expressly disclaims appealing to the intercession of those "friends" who are "near and assured" (obviously meaning Salisbury), and in which he gracefully touches on the possibility of his retiring from the "laborious place" of the Solicitorship, without actually threatening resignation, could hardly fail to make James feel how great a loss he would sustain if his Solicitor were to throw up his "course of painful service" and devote himself to literature :—

"It may please your Majesty,

"Your great and princely favours towards me in advancing me to place, and, that which is to me of no less comfort, your Majesty's benign and gracious acceptation from time to time of my poor services, much above the merit and value of them, hath almost brought me to an opinion, that I may sooner perchance be wanting to myself in not asking, than find your Majesty's goodness wanting to me in any my reasonable and modest desires. And therefore, perceiving how at this time preferments of the law fly about mine ears, to some above me and to some below me,1 I did conceive your Majesty may think it rather a kind of dullness, or want of faith, than modesty, if I should not come with my pitcher to Jacob's well, as others do. Wherein I shall propound to your Majesty that which tendeth not so much to the raising of my fortune as to the settling of my mind being sometimes assailed with this cogitation that, by reason of my slowness to see and apprehend occasions upon the sudden, keeping one course of painful service, I may in fine dierum be in danger to be neglected and forgotten.

"And, if that were so, then were it much better for me, now while I stand in your Majesty's good opinion (though unworthy) and have some little reputation in the world, to give over the course I am in, and to make proof to do you some honour by my pen-either by writing some faithful narrative of your happy but not untraduced times, or by recompiling your

1 The Speaker of the last House of Commons had been rewarded with the Mastership of the Rolls; and Sir Julius Cæsar had received a grant of the reversion of the office.

laws (which I perceive your Majesty laboureth with and hath in your head as Jupiter had Pallas), or by some other the like work-(for without some endeavour to do you honour I would not live)--than to spend my wits and time in this laborious place wherein I now serve, if it shall be deprived of those outward ornaments and inward comforts which it was wont to have in respect of an assured succession to some place1 of more dignity and rest; which seemeth to be an hope now altogether casual, if not wholly intercepted.

"Wherefore, not to hold your Majesty long, my humble suit to you is that which I think I should not without suit be put by, which is, that I may obtain your assurance to succeed (if I live) into the Attorney's place, whensoever it shall be void; it being but the natural and immediate step and rise which the place I now hold hath ever in a sort made claim to, and almost never failed of.

2

"In this suit I make no friends to your Majesty, though your Majesty knoweth that I want not those which are near and assured, but rely upon no other motive than your grace; resting your Majesty's most humble subject and servant.”

That he received the assurance he desired may be inferred from another letter written soon afterwards, during the Attorney's illness, in the summer or autumn of 1611:—

"It may please your most excellent Majesty,

"I do understand by some of my good friends, to my great comfort, that your Majesty hath in mind your Majesty's royal promise (which to me is anchora spei) touching the Attorney's place. I hope Mr. Attorney shall do well. I thank God I wish no man's death; nor much mine own life more than to do your Majesty service. For I account my life the accident and my duty the substance.

"But this I will be bold to say if it please God that I ever serve your Majesty in the Attorney's place, I have known an Attorney Cooke (Coke) and an Attorney Hubberd (Hobart), both worthy men and far above myself : but if I should not find a middle way between their two dispositions and carriage, I should not satisfy myself. But these things are far or near as it shall please God. Meanwhile I most humbly pray your Majesty accept my sacrifice of thanksgiving for your gracious favour. God preserve your Majesty. I ever remain.

The Attorney, however, recovered; and although Bacon may have felt in secret that Salisbury gave him no effectual help, he nevertheless did not think it prudent to neglect his cousin and patron, to whom he protests unshaken devotion in the 1 i.e. the Attorney's place.

2 Meaning, that he would not employ the intercession of his cousin Cecil.

following New Year's letter (January, 1612).

In his usual

sympathetic style, writing to a man who was broken down with cares and infirmities, and fast nearing the grave, Bacon discovers that he himself also finds "age and decays" growing upon him :

"It may please your good Lordship,

"I would entreat the new year to answer for the old, in my humble thanks to your Lordship, both for many your favours, and chiefly that upon the occasion of Mr. Attorney's infirmity I found your Lordship even as I could wish. This doth increase a desire in me to express my thankful mind to your Lordship; hoping that-though I find age and decay grow upon me yet I may have a flash or two of spirit left to do you service. And I do protest before God, without compliment or any light vein of mind, that if I knew in what course of life to do you best service, I could take it, and make my thoughts, which now fly to many pieces, be reduced to that centre. But all this is no more than I am, which is not much, but yet the entire of him that is.

A pleasing instance of Bacon's familiar humorous style is afforded by the following letter to Sir Michael Hickes, Cecil's business man, a patient and friendly creditor of Bacon's, and seemingly a man of kindly, genial disposition. He was an old servant of Lord Burghley's, and Bacon appears to have had a genuine liking for him. It is a New Year's letter written on making restitution for a pair of scarlet stockings borrowed some occasion of need either from Lady Hickes or her daughter :

on

"To my very good friend Sir Michael Hickes, Knight,

"SIR MICHAEL,

"I do use as you know to pay my debts with time. But indeed if you will have a good and parfite colour in a carnation stocking, it must be long in the dyeing. I have some scruple of conscience whether it was my Lady's stockings or her daughter's, and I would have the restitution to be to the right person, else I shall not have absolution. Therefore I have sent to them both, desiring them to wear them for my sake, as I did wear theirs for mine own sake. So wishing you all a good new year, I rest, Yours assured FR. BACON."

§ 24 THE "COURT OF THE VERGE;" DEATH OF CECIL

About this time we have a glimpse of Bacon for the first time in a judicial position. Some complaints had been made that the Court of the Marshalsea, which had a special jurisdiction over the King's servants and over offences committed within the "verge or precincts of the King's court, was in the habit of exceeding its limits; and the disputes involved some doubtful questions. The King therefore decided, probably at Bacon's suggestion, to establish (8 June, 1611) a new Court by Patent, to be called the "Court of the Verge," in which Sir Francis Bacon was appointed a Judge. Accordingly it devolved upon him to open the new Court. On this occasion he delivered a magniloquent charge to the Grand Jury, which is almost redeemed from the accusation of being too courtier-like and obsequious by a kind of grandiose unction which gives us the impression that he really did mean a great deal of what he said. It is possible that the creation of this new Court was stimulated by the assassination of the French King (Henry IV.) in the previous year, and by the consequently increased anxiety of James to secure his own personal safety.

"You are to know and consider well the duty and service to which you are called, and whereupon you are, by your oath, charged. ... This happy estate of the subject will turn to hurt and inconvenience, if those that hold that part which you are now to perform, shall be negligent and remiss in doing their duty. For (as of two evils) it were better men's doings were looked into overstrictly and severely, than that there should be a notorious impunity of malefactors; as was well and wisely said of ancient times, a man were better live where nothing is lawful than where all things are lawful. . . . David saith (who was a king) The wicked man shall not abide in my house; as taking knowledge that it was impossible for kings to extend their care to banish wickedness over all their land or empire, but yet at least they ought to undertake to God for their house. We see further that the Law doth so esteem the dignity of the King's settled mansion-house, as it hath laid unto it a plot of twelve miles round (which we call the Verge) to be subject to a special and exempted jurisdiction depending upon his person and great officers. This is as a halfpace, or carpet, spread about the King's Chair of Estate, which therefore ought to be cleared and voided more than other places of the kingdom; for if offences shall be shrouded under the King's wings, what hope is there of discipline and good justice in more remote parts? We see the sun, when