3. Councillors, and the council table, and the 4. Foreign negotiations and embassies. 5. Peace and war, both foreign and civil, and in that the navy and forts, and what belongs to them. 6. Trade at home and abroad. soon after fatally explained. Although powerfully attracted by the elegance and gayety of Vil-offices and officers of the kingdom. liers, yet James had been so harassed by complaints of favouritism, that he would not bestow any appointment upon him, until solicited by the queen and some of the gravest of his councillors. In 1613 Villiers was taken into the king's household, and rose rapidly to the highest honours. He was nominated cupbearer, received several lucrative appointments; the successive honours Each of these subjects he explains, with a miof knighthood, of a barony, an earldom, a mar-nuteness scarcely to be conceived, except by the quisate, and was finally created Duke of Buck-admirers of his works, who well know his exingham. tensive and minute survey of every subject to which he directed his attention. From the paternal character of Bacon's protection of the new favourite, it is probable that he had early sought his assistance and advice; as a friendship was formed between them, which con- | tinued with scarcely any interruption till the death, and, indeed, after the death of Bacon: 1 a friendship which was always marked by a series of the wisest and best counsels, and was never checked by the increased power and elevation of Villiers. This intimacy between an experienced statesman and a rising favourite was naturally looked upon with some jealousy, but it ought to have been remembered that there was never any intimacy between Bacon and Somerset. In the whole of his voluminous correspondence, there is not one letter of solicitation or compliment to that powerful favourite, or any vain attempt to divert him from his own gratifications to the advancement of the public good; but in Villiers he thought he saw a better nature, capable of such culture, as to be fruitful in good works. Whatever the motives were in which this union originated, the records extant of the spirit by which it was cemented are honourable to both. In the courtesy and docility of Villiers, Bacon did not foresee the rapacity that was to end in his own disgrace, and in the violent death of the favourite. 7. Colonies, or foreign plantations. In the beginning of the year 1613, Sir Thomas Overbury was poisoned in the Tower by one Weston, of which crime he was convicted, received In the sentence of death, and was executed. progress of the trial suspicions having been excited against the Earl and Countess of Somerset, as having been deeply concerned in this barbarous act; their injudicious friends, by endeavouring to circulate a report that these suspicions were but an artifice to ruin that nobleman, the King commanded the attorney-general to prosecute in the Star Chamber Mr. Lumsden, a gentleman of good family in Scotland, Sir John Hollis, afterwards Earl of Clare, and Sir John Wentworth, who were convicted and severely punished. The speech of Bacon upon this trial is fortunately preserved. Shortly after this investigation, so many circumstances transpired, all tending to implicate the Earl and Countess of Somerset, and so great an excitement prevailed through the whole country, that the king determined to bring these great offenders to trial; a resolution which he could not have formed without the most painful struggle between his duty to the public and his anxiety to protect his fallen favourite. His sense of duty as the dispenser of justice prevailed. Previous to the trial, which took place May, 1616, the same course of private consultation with the judges was pursued, and the king caused it to be privately intimated to Somerset, that it would be his own fault if favour was not extended to him: favour which was encouraged by Bacon, in a letter to the king, in which he says, "The great downfall of so great persons carrieth in itself a heavy judgment, and a kind of civil death, although their lives should not be taken. All which About this period, Sir George Villiers, personally and by letter, importuned his friend to communicate his sentiments respecting the conduct which, thus favoured by the king, it would be proper for him to observe; and, considering these requests as commands, Bacon wrote a letter of advice to Villiers, such as is not usually given in courts, but of a strain equally free and friendly, calculated to make the person to whom it was addressed both good and great, and equally honourable to the giver and the receiver: advice | may satisfy honour for sparing their lives." which contributed not a little to his prosperity In his speech upon the trial, Bacon gave a in life. It is an essay on the following sub-clear and circumstantial account of the whole conje ts: spiracy against Overbury, describing the various practices against his life; but though he fully and 1. Matters that concern religion, and the church fairly executed his duty as attorney-general, it and churchmen. was without malice or harshness, availing him 2. Matters concerning justice, and the laws, self of an opportunity, of which he never lost and the professors thereof. 1 See Bacon's will. sight, to recommend mercy; and though the friends of the new favourite were supposed to have been deeply interested in the downfall of Somerset, | whom I owe most after the king and yourself, should be locked to his successor for any advancement or gracing of me. So I ever remain your true and most devoted and obliged servant. -3d June, 1616." and accused of secretly working his ruin, Bacon gained great honour in the opinions of all men, by his impartial yet merciful treatment of a man whom in his prosperity he had shunned and despised. Early in this year, (1615, Æt. 55,) a dispute which occasioned considerable agitation, arose He was accordingly sworn of the privy counbetween the Court of Chancery and the Court of cil, and took his seat at the board on the 9th of King's Bench, respecting the jurisdiction of the June; it having been previously agreed that, though chancellor after judgment given in courts of law. in general he should cease to plead as an advocate, Upon this dispute, heightened by the warmth and his permission to give counsel in causes should haughtiness of Sir Edward Coke, and the danger- continue, and that if any urgent and weighty ous illness of the chancellor at the time when | matter should arise, that he might, with the king's Coke promoted the inquiry, the king and Villiers permission, be allowed to plead. Upon this unuconferred with Bacon, to whom and other emi-sual honour he was immediately congratulated by nent members of the profession, the matter was the university of Cambridge. referred, and upon their report, the king in person pronounced judgment in favour of the lord chancellor, with some strong observations upon the conduct of Coke. Pending this investigation, (1616, Æt. 56,) Villiers, it seems, communicated to Bacon the king's intention either to admit him a member of the privy council, or, upon the death or resignation of the chancellor, to intrust him with the great seal, a trust to which he was certain of the chancellor's recommendation. Such were the occupations of this philosopher, who, during the three years in which period he was attorney-general, conducted himself with such prudent moderation in so many perplexed and difficult cases, and with such evenness and integrity, that his conduct has never been questioned, nor has malice dared to utter of him the least calumny. He now approached his last act as attorneygeneral, which was of the same nature as the first, his prosecution of Mr. Markham in the Star Chamber, for sending a challenge to Lord Darcy. Having thus discharged the duties of solicitor and attorney-general, with much credit to himself On the 3d of March, 1616-17, Lord Brackley, and advantage to the community, he, early in the then lord chancellor, being worn out with age and year 1615-16, expressed to Villiers his wish to be infirmities, resigned the great seal, and escaped, admitted a member of the privy council, from the for a short interval, from the troubles of the Court hope that he might be of service "in times which of Chancery, over which he had presided for did never more require a king's attorney to be thirteen years, amidst the disputes between this well armed, and to wear a gauntlet and not a high tribunal and the courts of common law, and glove." In consequence of this communication, the pressure of business, which had so increased the king, on the 3d of June, gave him the option as to have been beyond the power of any indieither to be made privy councillor, or the assur-vidual to control. ance of succeeding the chancellor. Bacon, for reasons which he has thus expressed in a letter to Villiers, preferred being sworn privy councillor: On the 7th of the same month, the seals were delivered by the king to Sir Francis Bacon, with four admonitions: First, To contain the jurisdiction of the court within its true and due limits, without swelling or excess. Secondly, Not to put the gre: t seal to letters patent, as a matter of course to follow after precedent warrants. Thirdly, To retrench all unnecessary delays, that the subject might find that he did enjoy the same remedy against the fainting of the soul and the consumption of the estate, which was speedy justice. "Bis dat, qui cito dat." Fourthly, That justice might pass with as easy charge as might be; and that those same brambles, that grow about justice, of needless "Sir, the king giveth me a noble choice, and you are the man my heart ever told me you were. Ambition would draw me to the latter part of the choice; but in respect of my hearty wishes that my lord chancellor may live long, and the small hopes I have that I shall live long myself, and, above all, because I see his majesty's service daily and instantly bleedeth; towards which I persuade myself (vainly, perhaps, but yet in mine own thoughts firmly and constantly) that I shall give, when I am of the table, some effectual fur-charge and expense, and all manner of exactions, therance, (as a poor thread of the labyrinth, which hath no other virtue but a united continuance, without interruption or distraction,) I do accept of the former, to be councillor for the present, and to give over pleading at the bar; let the other matter rest upon my proof and his majesty's pleasure, and the accidents of time. For, to speak plainly, I would be loath that my lord chancellor, to might be rooted out so far as might be. Thus was Francis Bacon, then in the fiftyseventh year of his age, created Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England. In the joy of recent possession he instantly wrote to his friend and patron, the Earl of Buckingham, with a pen overflowing with the expression of his gratitude. My dearest Lord,-It is both in cares and kindness, that small ones float up to the tongue and great ones sink down into the heart in silence. Therefore I could speak little to your lordship to-day, neither had I fit time. But I must profess thus much, that in this day's work you are the truest and perfectest mirror and example of firm and generous friendship that ever was in court. And I shall count every day lost, wherein I shall not either study your well doing in thought, or do your name honour in speech, or perform you service in deed. Good my lord, account and accept me your most bounden and devoted friend and servant of all men living, March 7, 1616-17. FR. BACON, C. S. part nothing worth: that is, they can judge well of the mode of attaining the end, but ill of the value of the end itself.” He would have warned ambition that "the seeled dove mounts and mounts because he is unable to look about him." To the supposition" that worldly power is the means to do good," he would have said, “A man who spends his life in an impartial search after truth, is a better friend to mankind than any statesman or hero, whose merits are commonly confined within the circle of an age or a nation, and are not unlike seasonable and favouring showers, which, though they be profitable and desirable, yet serve for that season only wherein they fall, and for a latitude of ground which they water; but the benefices of the philosopher, like the Such is the nature of human delight; such the influences of the sun and the heavenly bodies, are nature of human foresight! for time permanent, for place universal: those As he must have known, what he has so beau- again are commonly mixed with strife and pertifully taught, that a man of genius can seldom│turbation; but these have the true character of be permanently influenced by worldly distinc- divine presence, and come in aura leni withcut tion; as he well knew that his own happiness noise or agitation." and utility consisted not in action but in contemplation; as he had published his opinion that "men in great place are thrice servants; servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business; so as they have no freedom, neither in their person, nor in their actions, nor in their times," it is probable that he was urged to this and to every other step on the road to aggrandizement, either by the importunities of his family, or by his favourite opinion, that "knowledge is never so dignified and exalted as when contemplation and action are nearly and strongly conjoined together: a conjunction like unto that of the two highest planets, Saturn, the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupiter, the planet of civil society and action.” It has been said by some of the ancient magicians, that they could see clearly all which was to befall others, but that of their own future life they could discern nothing. It might be a curious speculation for any admirer of the works of this great man, to collect the oracles he would have delivered to warn any other philosopher of the probable danger and certain infelicity of accepting such an office in such times. To the hope of wealth he would have said, "it diverts and interrupts the prosecution and advancement of knowledge, like unto the golden ball thrown before Atalanta, which, while she goeth aside and stoopeth to take it up, the race is hindered. "Declinat cursus aurumq. volubile tollit." To the importunities of friends he would have answered by his favourite maxim, "You do not duly estimate the value of pleasures; for if you observe well, you shall find the logical part of some men's minds good, but the mathematical VOL. I.—(?) The flattering illusion of good to result from the union of contemplation and action, would have been dissipated by the admonition, that the life and faculties of man are so short and limited that this union has always failed, and must be injurious both to the politician and to the philosopher. To the politician, as, from variety of speculation, he would neither be prompt in action nor consistent in general conduct; and as, from meditating upon the universal frame of nature, he would have little disposition to confine his views to the circle where his usefulness might be most beneficial. To the philosopher, as powers intended to enlarge the province of knowledge, and enlighten distant ages, would be wasted upon subjects of mere temporary interest, debates in courts of justice, and the mechanism of state business. That Bacon should have been doomed to such occupations, that he, who stood the lofty beacon of science, evermore guiding the exploring scholar in voyages of discovery to improve and bless mankind, should voluntarily have descended to the shifting quicksands of politics, is a theme for wonder and pity. He could have pointed cit to another the shoals, the sunken rocks, and the treacherous nature of the current; but he adventured,—and little minds can now point out where he was lost, and where the waters went over his soul. Much as it is to be lamented that he should have accepted this office, the loss to science seems, in some sort, to have been compensated by his entire devotion to his professional and political duties: duties for which he possessed unrivalled powers. It has been truly said by the biographer of Bacon's successor, that "the chancellorship of England is not a chariot for every scholar to get (F2) the judges upon their appointment or promotion, he availed himself of every opportunity to explain them. As a Statesman, we have seen that he was cradled in politics; that his works abound with notices of his political exertions; that his advice to Sir George Villiers is an essay upon all the various duties of a statesman, with respect to religion, justice, the council table, foreign negotiations, peace and war, trade, the colonies, and the court; and of his parliamentary eloquence his friend Ben Jonson says, "There happened in my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in his speaking; his language, where he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss. He commanded where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power. The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end." up and ride in. Saving this one, perhaps it would or state above them :" and in his addresses to take a long day to find another. Our laws are the wisdom of many ages, consisting of a world of customs, maxims, intricate decisions, which are responsa prudentum. Tully could never have boasted, if he had lived amongst us, Si mihi vehementer occupato stomachum moverint, triduo me jurisconsultum profitebor. He is altogether deceived, that thinks he is fit for the exercise of our judicature, because he is a great rabbi in some academical authors; for this hath little or no copulation with our encyclopedia of arts and sciences. Quintilian might judge right upon the branches of oratory and philosophy, Omnes disciplinas inter se conjunctionem rerum, et communionem habere. But our law is a plant that grew alone, and is not entwined into the hedge of other professions; yet the small insight that some have into deep matters, cause them to think that it is no insuperable task for an unexpert man to be the chief arbiter in a court of equity. Bring reason and conscience with you, the good stock of nature, and the thing is done. Equitas optimo cuique notissima est, is a trivial saying, a very good man cannot be ignorant of equity; and who knows not that extreme right is extreme injury? But they that look no further than so, are shortsighted for there is no strain of wisdom more sublime, than upon all complaints to measure the just distance between law and equity; because in this high place, it is not equity at lust and pleasure that is moved for, but equity according to decrees and precedents foregoing, as the dewbeaters have trod the way for those that come after them." : Of Bacon's fitness for this office, some estimate may be formed by a consideration of the four principal qualifications of a chancellor, as A Lawyer, A Judge, A Statesman, And the Patron of Preferment. As a Patron, he considered preferment a sacred trust, to preserve and promote high feeling, encourage merit, and counteract the tendency of learning to dispose men to leisure and privateness. In his advice to Villiers, as to the patrimony of the church, he says, " You will be often solicited, and perhaps importuned to prefer scholars to church livings; you may further your friends in that way, 'cæteris paribus;' otherwise remember, I pray, that these are not places merely of favour; the charge of souls lies upon them, the greatest account whereof will be required at their own hands; but they will share deeply in their faults who are the instruments of their preferment." A few weeks after he was appointed lord As a Lawyer he had for a series of years been keeper, he thus writes to a clergyman of Trinity engaged in professional life. He had been so- College, Cambridge: "After my hearty comlicitor and attorney-general; had published upon | mendations, I have heard of you, as a man well diferent parts of the law; had deeply meditated deserving, and of able gifts to become profitable in upon the principles of equity, and had availed | the church; and there being fallen within my gift himself of every opportunity to assist in improve- the rectory of Frome St. Quintin, with the chapel ment of the law, in obedience to his favourite maxim, “that every man is a debtor to his profession, from the which, as men do of course seek countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavour themselves, by way of amends, to be a help and ornament.” As a Judge, he, from his infancy, had seen the different modes in which judicial duties were discharged, had meditated deeply and published his opinions upon the perfection of these duties "to the suitors, to the advocates, to the officers of justice underneath them, and to the sovereign of Evershot, in Dorsetshire, which seems to be a From your loving friend, Upon sending to Buckingham his patent for creating him a viscount, he says, "I recommend unto you principally, that which I think was never done since I was born, and which, because it is not done, hath bred almost a wilderness and solitude in the king's service; which is, that you countenance, and encourage, and advance able men, in all kinds, degrees, and professions. For in the time of the Cecils, the father and the son, able men were by design and of purpose suppressed; and though of late choice goeth better, both in church and commonwealth, yet money and time-serving, and cunning canvasses and importunity prevaileth too much. And in places of moment, rather make able and honest men yours, than advance those that are otherwise, because they are yours." prayed unto thee that it might stretch her branches to the seas and to the floods." Whatever were Sir Francis's gratifications, attendant upon the dignity of this promotion, in direct pecuniary profit he sustained great loss: as he relinquished his office of attorney-general, worth at least £6000 a year, his chancellorship to the prince, and his post of Registrar of the Star Chamber, worth about £1600 a year, whilst the direct profits of the great seal were only £918, 15s. Of the amount of the indirect profits from fees and presents it is, of course, impossible to form a correct estimate. It must, however, have been considerable, as, according to the oriental customs of the times, statesmen were then seldom approached by a suitor without some acceptable offering. The new year's gifts, regularly presented to the king, were of immense value, and were given by the great officers of state, peers and peeresses, the bishops, knights, and their ladies, gentlemen and gentlewomen, and even from the tradesmen, and all the officers of the household. These presents were chiefly in money, but sometimes varied by the taste of the donors. As a inatter of curiosity, it may be noticed, that Sir Francis Bacon gave to the queen "one pettycoat of white sattin, embrodered all over like feathers and billets, with three broad borders, fair embrodered with snakes and fruitage, emblems of wisdom and bounty;'" exhibiting, even at that day, a fancy delighting in splendour and allegory; and so general was the practice, that when Bacon applied to the queen to be appointed solicitorgeneral, his application was accompanied by the present of a jewel. 6 And in his appointment of judges, it will be seen that he was influenced only by an anxiety to select the greatest ability and integrity, "science and conscience," for these important trusts. In the exercise of this virtue there was not any merit peculiar to Bacon. It was the common sympathy for intellect, which, from consciousness of the imbecility and wretchedness attendant upon ignorance, uses power to promote merit and relieve wrongs. It passes by the particular infirmities of those who contribute any thing to the advancement of general learning, judging it fitter that men of abilities should jointly engage against ignorance and barbarism. This had many years before his promotion been stated by Bacon: "Neither can this point otherwise be; for learning endueth men's minds with a true sense of the frailty of their persons, the casualty of their fortunes, and the dignity of their soul and vocation: so that it is impossible for This custom of making presents to persons in them to esteem that any greatness of their own power was not confined to the reigning monarch, fortune can be a true or worthy end of their being but extended to statesmen. They were made, as and ordainment; whereas the corrupter sort of of course, to Lord Salisbury, to Lord Burleigh, mere politicians, that have not their thoughts and to all persons in office, and made by the most established by learning in the love and apprehen- virtuous members of the community. The same sion of duty, nor ever look abroad into universal- custom extended to the chancellor, and to the ity, do refer all things to themselves, and thrust judges. In the time of Henry the Sixth the themselves into the centre of the world, as if all lines should meet in them and their fortunes; never caring, in all tempests, what becomes of the ship of state, so they may save themselves in the cockboat of their own fortune." practice existed. In the time of Sir Thomas More, when the custom seems to have been waning, presents were, without any offence, offered to that righteous man; and it is mentioned by the biographer of Sir Augustine Nicholls, one of the This truth, necessarily attendant upon all judges in the time of James the First, as an knowledge, is not excluded from judicial know-instance of his virtue, that "he had exemplary ledge. It has influenced all intelligent judges: integrity, even to the rejection of gratuities after Sir Thomas More; the Chancellor de l'Hôpital; | judgment given, and a charge to his followers th it Lord Somers, to whom he has been compared; they came to their places clear-handed, and that D'Aguesseau; Sir Edward Coke, and Sir Mat- they should not meddle with any motions to him, thew Hale. Bacon's favourite maxim therefore that he might be secured from all appearance of was, “Detur digniori: qui beneficium digno dat corruption." omnes obligat;” and in his prayer, worthy of a chancellor, he daily said, "This vine, which my right-hand hath planted in this nation, I have ever This custom, which, more or less, seems to have prevailed at all times in nations approaching civilization, was, about the year 1560, partially |