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himself well, and had an evident applause. I meant well also; and because my information was the ground; having spoken out of a few heads which I had gathered, for I seldom do more, I set down, as soon as I came home, cursorily, a frame of that I had said; though I persuade myself I spake it with more life. I have sent it to Mr. Murray sealed; if your majesty have so much idle time to look upon it, it may give some light of the day's work: but I most humbly pray your majesty to pardon the errors. preserve you ever.

Your majesty's most humble subject
and devoted servant,

April 29, 1615.

God

FR. BACON.

king's displeasure, and being engaged in the quarrels of his wife and daughter the lady Roos, with the countess of Exeter; he was at first suspended from the execution of his place, and afterwards removed, and deeply censured and fined in the star-chamber; although it is said the king then gave him in open court this public eulogy, that he was a minister of state fit to serve the greatest prince in Europe. Whilst this storm was hanging over his head, he writ many letters to the king and the marquis of Buckingham, which I have seen, complaining of his misfortune, that his ruin was likely to proceed from the assistance he gave to his nearest relations. Stephens.

8 William earl of Pembroke, son to Henry Herbert earl of Pembroke, lord president of the council in the marches of Wales, by Mary his wife, a lady in whom the Muses and Graces seemed to meet; whose very letters, in the judgment of one who saw many of them, declared her to be mistress of a pen not inferior to that of her brother, the admirable Sir Philip Sidney, and to whom he addressed his Arcadia. Nor did this gentleman degenerate from their wit and spirit, as his own poems, his great patronage of learned men, and resolute opposition to the Spanish match, did, among ot herinstances, fully prove. In the year 1616, he was made lord chamberlain, and chosen chancellor of the university of Oxford. He died suddenly on the 10th of April, 1630, having just completed fifty years. But his only son deceasing a child before him, his estate and honours descended upon his younger brother, Philip earl of Montgomery, the lineal ancestor of the present noble and learned earl. Stephens.

CXXII. To the KING, concerning the new Rawley's company.

It may please your most excellent Majesty,

YOUR majesty shall shortly receive the bill for the incorporation of the new company, together with a bill for the privy-seal, being a dependency thereof: for this morning I subscribed and docketted them both. I think it therefore now time to represent to your majesty's high wisdom that which I conceive, and have had long in my mind, concerning your majesty's service, and honourable profit in this business.

• Among other projects for supplying his majesty with money, after his abrupt dissolution of the parliament, there was one proposed through the lord treasurer's means by Sir William Cockayne, an alderman of London. For the society or fellowship of Merchant Adventurers, having enjoyed by licence from the crown a power of exporting yearly several thousands of English cloths undyed; it was imagined that the king would not only receive an increase in his customs by the importation of materials necessary for dying, but the nation a considerable advantage in employing the subject, and improving the manufacture to its utmost before it was exported. This proposition being besides attended with the offer of an immediate profit to his majesty, was soon embraced; the charter granted to the Merchant Adventurers recalled, and Sir William Cockayne and several other traders incorporated upon certain conditions, as appears in part from this letter; though some other letters in the same and the following year inform us what difficulties the king and council, and indeed the whole kingdom, sustained thereby. For the trading towns in the LowCountries and in Germany, which were the great mart and staple of these commodities, perceiving themselves in danger of losing the profit, which they had long reaped by dying and dressing great quantities of English cloth, the Dutch prohibited the whole commodity; and the materials being either dearer here, or the manufacturers less skilled in fixing of the colours, the vent of cloth was soon at a stand; upon which the clamour of the countries extended itself to the court. So that, after several attempts to carry on the design, Sir Fr. Bacon finding the new company variable in themselves, and not able to comply with their proposals, but making new and springing demands, and that the whole matter was more and more perplexed, sent, on the 14th of October, 1616, a letter to the lord Villiers, inclosing his reasons why the new company was no longer to be trusted, but the old company to be treated with and revived. Accordingly, pursuant to a power of revocation, contained in the new charter, it was recalled, and a proclamation published for restoring the old company, dated August 12, 1617; and soon after another charter granted them upon their payment of 50,0001, Stephens's Introduct. p. 38, 39.

Resuscitatio.

This profit, which hath proceeded from a worthy service of the lord treasurer, I have from the beginning constantly affected; as may well appear by my sundry labours from time to time in the same: for I hold it a worthy character of your majesty's reign and times; insomuch, as though your majesty might have at this time, as is spoken, a great annual benefit for the quitting of it; yet I shall never be the man that should wish for your majesty to deprive yourself of that beatitude, Beatius est dare quam accipere, in this cause; but to sacrifice your profit, though as your majesty's state is, it be precious to you, to so great a good of your kingdom; although this project is not without a profit immediate unto you, by the increasing of customs upon the materials of dyes.

But here is the case: the new company by this patent and privy seal are to have two things, wholly diverse from the first intention, or rather er diametro opposite unto the same; which nevertheless they must of necessity have, or else the work is overthrown: so as I may call them mala necessaria, but yet withal temporary. For as men make war to have peace; so these merchants must have licence for whites, to the end to banish whites; and they must have licence to use tenters, to the end to banish tenters.

This is therefore that I say; your majesty, upon these two points, may justly, and with honour, and with preservation of your first intention inviolate, demand profit in the interim, as long as these unnatural points continue, and then to cease. For your majesty may be pleased to observe, that they are to have all the old company's profit by the trade of whites; they are again to have, upon the proportion of cloths which they shall vend dyed and dressed, the Flemings profit upon the tenter. Now then, I say, as it had been too good husbandry for a king to have taken profit of them, if the project could have been effected at once, as was voiced, so on the other side it might be, perchance, too little husbandry and providence to take nothing of them, for that which is merely lucrative to them in the mean time. Nay, I say farther, this will greatly conduce, and be a

kind of security to the end desired. For I always feared, and do yet fear, that when men, by condition merchants, though never so honest, have gotten into their hands the trade of whites, and the dispensation to tenter, wherein they shall reap profit for that which they never sowed; but have gotten themselves certainties, in respect of the state's hopes: they are like enough to sleep upon this as upon a pillow, and to make no haste to go on with the rest. And though it may be said, that this is a thing will easily appear to the state, yet, no doubt, means may be devised and found to draw the business in length. So that I conclude, that if your majesty take a profit of them in the interim, considering you refuse profit from the old company, it will be both spur and bridle to them, to make them pace aright to your majesty's end.

This in all humbleness, according to my vowed care and fidelity, being no man's man but your majesty's, I present, leave, and submit to your majesty's better judgment, and I could wish your majesty would speak with Sir Thomas Lake in it; who, besides his good habit which he hath in business, beareth, methinks, an indifferent hand in this particular; and, if it please your majesty, it may proceed as from yourself, and not as a motion or observation of mine.

Your majesty need not in this to be straitened in time; as if this must be demanded or treated before you sign their bill. For I foreseeing this, and foreseeing that many things might fall out which I could not foresee, have handled it so, as with their good contentment there is a power of revocation inserted into their patent. And so commending your majesty to God's blessing and precious custody, I rest,

Your majesty's most humble

Aug. 12, 1615.

and devoted subject and servant,
FR. BACON.

Rawley's CXXIII. To Sir GEORGE VILLIERS, about Roper's place.

Resuscita

tio.

Sir David Dalrymple's Memorials and Letters, p. 46.

SIR,

SENDING to the king upon occasion, I would not fail to salute you by my letter; which, that it may be more than two lines, I add this for news; that as I was sitting by my lord chief justice, upon the commission for the indicting of the great person; one of the judges asked him, whether Roper were dead; he said, he for his part knew not; another of the judges answered, It should concern you, my lord, to know it. Whereupon he turned his speech to me, and said, No, Mr. Attorney, I will not wrestle now in my latter times. My lord, said I, you speak like a wise man. Well, saith he, they have had no luck with it that have had it. I said again, Those days be past. Here you have the dialogue to make you merry. But in sad+ ness, I was glad to perceive he meant not to contest. I can but honour and love you, and rest Your assured friend and servant, FR. BACON.

Jan. 22, 1615.

CXXIV. Sir FRANCIS BACON to King JAMES,

It may please your most excellent Majesty, IT pleased your majesty to commit to my care and trust for Westminster-hall three particulars; that of the rege inconsulto, which concerneth Murray; that of the commendams, which concerneth the bishop of Lincoln; and that of the habeas corpus, which concerneth the chancery.

These causes, although I gave them private additions, yet they are merely, or at least chiefly, yours; and the die runneth upon your royal prerogatives diminution, or entire conservation. Of these it is my duty to give your majesty a short account.

For that of the rege inconsulto, I argued the same in the King's-bench on Thursday last. There argued on

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