On the 5th of October, 1607,-according to the MS. lists of knights in the Herald's College, -the King, being then at Royston, knighted Sir John Constable. And though the statement involves, as we shall see, one small difficulty, it may serve in the absence of better evidence to determine the place of the next letter; to which (printed originally in the 'Remains,' without any date) some incautious editor, transcriber, or possessor, has attached a date which must be wrong.
John Constable, of Gray's Inn, married Dorothy Barnham, a sister of Alice, and so became what would then be called Bacon's “brother-in-law”; at whose request he was knighted. The precise date of his marriage I have not been able to ascertain ; but as I find him described as Sir John Constable” in a docket dated January 31, 1607-8, and as he could not be Bacon's brother-in-law before the 10th of May, 1607,—the day of Bacon's own marriage,—the occasion to which the letter refers must lie between those dates. The date given to it in the modern printed copies-1603—has no doubt been inserted by some one upon conjecture; 1603 being the year when knights were made so freely,--the true date of Bacon's marriage not being known,-and the extreme improbability that he could at that time have been so far advanced in the King's good graces as to ask for a personal favour of this kind not being consi. dered. In 1607 there is nothing strange either in the making or
Calendar of State Papers, Dom. James I.
