wherein they are best. He is no statesman but an œconomist, wholly for himself; so as your Majesty, more than an outward form, will find little help in him for your business. If you take my Lord of Canterbury, I will say no more but the Chancellor's place requires an whole man; and to have both jurisdictions, spiritual and temporal, in that height, is fit but for a king.1 For myself, I can only present your Majesty with gloria in obsequio: yet I dare promise, that if I sit in that place your business shall not make such short turns upon you as it doth, but when a direction is once given, it shall be pursued and performed, and your Majesty shall only be troubled with the true care of a king, which is to think what you would have done in chief, and not how for the passages. I do presume also, in respect of my father's memory, and that I have been always gracious in the lower house, I have some interest in the gentlemen of England, and shall be able to do some effect in rectifying that body of parliament-men, which is cardo rerum. For let me tell your Majesty, that that part of the Chancellor's place, which is to judge in equity between party and party, that same regnum judiciale (which since my father's time is but too much enlarged) concerneth your Majesty least, more than the acquitting of your conscience for justice. But it is the other parts, of a moderator amongst your Council, of an overseer over your Judges, of a planter of fit justices and governors in the country, that importeth your affairs and these times most. I will add also, that I hope by my care the inventive part of your Council will be strengthened, who now commonly do exercise rather their judgments than their inventions, and the inventive part cometh from projectors and private men, which cannot be so well; in which kind my Lord of Salisbury had a good method, if his ends had been upright.3 To conclude: if I were the man I would be, I should hope, that as your Majesty hath of late won hearts by depressing, you should in this leese no hearts by advancing: for I see your people can better skill of concretum than abstractum, and that the waves of their affections flow rather after persons than things: 1 The whole of this paragraph is omitted in the Baconiana. 2" Parliament" in the Baconiana. 3 The last clause omitted in the Baconiana. so that acts of this nature (if this were one) do more good than twenty bills of grace. If God call my Lord, the warrants and commissions which are requisite for the taking of the seal, and for the working with it, and for the reviving of warrants under his hand, which die with him, and the like, shall be in readiness. And in this time presseth more, because it is the end of a term, and almost the beginning of the circuits; so that the seal cannot stand still. But this may be done as heretofore by commission, till your Majesty hath resolved of an officer. God ever preserve your Majesty. Your Majesty most humble subject and bounden servant, FR. BACON. 12th Feb. 1615. I should not have thought it worth while to make any comment here, were it not that Lord Campbell appeals to this letter as containing evidence in itself that Bacon was really the meanest of mankind; and that too with the letter itself lying fairly before him and fairly laid before his readers. The reason he gives is that it is "something very like suing to be made a Judge and bargaining for a place of judicature,”—-practices which Bacon had himself noted as disquali fying the suitor. Something like suing to be made a Judge no doubt it is it is advising the King to make him Lord Chancellor. But it is also something very unlike what Bacon meant when he denounced the practice for it is really a piece of advice offered to the King in the King's own interest by a person whom he had encouraged and invited to advise. When Bacon said that he should for his own part 'suspect" a man who sued to be made a Judge, he did not mean a man in the position of Attorney-General, or otherwise entitled to offer counsel in such matters; still less a man whose suit consisted in an appeal to the personal knowledge of his qualifications possessed by the patron himself, as proved in a long course of service. If all suits were urged on similar grounds and in a similar spirit to this, there would be no more harm in suing for a judicial office than for any other. And to say that it is "something like bargaining for a place of judicature" is not only to misapprehend, but absolutely to pervert and read in an opposite sense the nature of the proposal. What he offers for the place is only that which in accepting it he must necessarily relinquish. He could not keep the Attorney-Generalship and the Clerkship of the Star Chamber if he became Lord Chancellor; and though he might perhaps have made something of them by selling the reversions beforehand, I suppose nobody will say that in offering to forego that right and give up his patents gratis, he was proposing anything in the nature of a corrupt bargain. His enumeration of the four "oblations" which he was going to make was in fact a warning that he was not going to make oblation of money. Happily neither the King nor Villiers required any such propitiation, and he received a message in reply which amounted to a promise of the Chancellorship when it should be vacant; as I gather from the following letter, which comes also from his own collection. The heading is the docket, written in his own hand. A LETTER TO SIR G. VILLIERS TOUCHING A MESSAGE BROUGHT ΤΟ HIM BY MR. SHUTE, OF A PROMISE OF THE CHANCELLOR'S PLACE.1 Sir, The message which I received from you by Mr. Shute, hath bred in me such belief and confidence, as I will now wholly rely upon your excellent and happy self. When persons of greatness and quality begin speech with me of the matter, and offer me their good offices, I can but answer them civilly. But those things are but toys. I am yours surer to you than to my own life. For, as they speak of the Turquois stone in a ring, I will break into twenty pieces, before you have the least fall. God keep you ever. xyth of Feb. 1615. Your truest servant. FR. BACON. My Lord Chancellor is prettily amended. I was with him. yesterday almost half an hour. He used me with wonderful tokens of kindness. We both wept, which I do not often. 8. The Chancellor was in fact so much better, that it now seemed likely that he would overcome his disease completely, and live to take up arms once more in defence of his Court against a new aggression. For Coke,-whose elevation to the King's Bench and a 1 Gibson Papers, vol. viii. f. 26; fair copy: own hand. Another copy in Add. MSS. 5503. seat in the Privy Council, though it may have made his collisions with Prerogative less frequent, had not at all allayed his thirst for jurisdiction, had lately found a clause in an old statute which, with a little straining, might be construed as forbidding all other Courts to meddle with any case which had been adjudicated in his own; and a case had just occurred which gave him an opportunity of putting it in force. A man against whom judgment had been obtained in the King's Bench by a fraudulent creditor, having applied in vain for a reversal of the judgment in the same Court, had carried the case into Chancery, and obtained there a decree in his favour, for non-execution of which the fraudulent creditor had been committed to prison. The case being again brought before the King's Bench upon a writ of Habeas Corpus, Coke decided that the decree and imprisonment, being after a judgment at common law, were unlawful, and that the Court ought to relieve the prisoner. And there the matter rested up to the 27th of January; when Bacon (as we have seen) informed the King that he heard no further speech of it, and that he thought the common employment of the Chancellor and Chief Justice in the business of Somerset would suspend the quarrel for the time. This however does not appear to have been the real history of the delay. Protection against imprisonment was not the only relief which the Court could offer to its client. The passing of the decree in Chancery was held by Coke to be an indictable offence: and though the case, being new, took some time in preparation, it was ready before the term ended. On the 12th of February (which was the last day of it) indictments of pramunire were preferred in the King's Bench against all the persons who had been concerned in the proceeding in Chancery, the plaintiffs, the counsellors, the solicitors, and the clerks. They were preferred with Coke's full sanction and approbation, and only failed because he could not by instruction, authority, expostulation, or threats of committal-all of which he used to the full-induce the grand jury to find a true bill. And this was the state of the case when the three next letters were written; which with this introduction will be sufficiently intelligible. A LETTER TO THE KING, OF MY LORD CHANCELLOR'S AMEND- It may please your most excellent Majesty, I do find (God be thanked) a sensible amendment in my Gibson Papers, vol. viii. f. 25; fair copy, with two or three corrections in Ba's hand. The heading is from Add. MSS. 5503. I Lord Chancellor: I was with him yesterday in private conference about half an hour, and this day again at such time as he did seal, which he endured well almost the space of an hour, though the vapour of wax be offensive to him. He is free from a fever, perfect in his powers of memory and speech, and not hollow in his voice nor look. He hath no panting or labouring respiration; neither are his coughs dry or weak. But whosoever thinketh his disease is but melancholy, he maketh no true judgment of it. For it is plainly a formed and deep cough, with a pectoral surcharge; so that at times he doth almost animam agere. I forbear to advertise your Majesty of the care I took to have commissions in readiness, because Mr. Secretary Lake hath let me understand he signified as much to your Majesty but I hope there shall be no use of them for this time. And as I am glad to advertise your Majesty of the amendment of your Chancellor's person, so I am sorry to accompany it with an advertisement of the sickness of your Chancery court, though (by the grace of God) that cure will be much easier than the other. It is true I did lately write to your Majesty, that for the matter of the Habeas corpora (which was the third matter in law you had given me in charge,) I did think the communion of service between my Lord Chancellor and my Lord Chief Justice in the great business of examination, would so join them as they would not square at this time. But pardon me (I humbly pray your Majesty) if I have too reasonable thoughts. And yet that which happened the last day of the term, concerning certain indictments in the nature of præmunire, preferred into the King's Bench, but not found, is not so much as is voiced abroad; (though I must say, it was omni tempore nimium, and hoc tempore alienum): and therefore I beseech your Majesty not to give any believing ear to reports, but to receive the truth from me that am your Attorney-general and ought to stand indifferent for jurisdictions of all courts; which account I cannot give your Majesty now, because I was then absent, and some are now absent, which are properly and authentically to inform me touching that which passed. Neither let this any ways disjoint your other business, for there is a time for all things, and this very accident may be turned to good. Not that |
