so that henceforth the Stewards and Marshals should hold plea "only of trespass done within the House and of other trespasses done within the Verge and of Contracts and Covenants that one of the King's House shall have made with another of the same House, and in the same House and none otherwise." These words left room for doubt whether the authority of the court in matters of trespass was intended to include all trespasses within the Verge or only those of persons in the King's House; and the exclusive view was strengthened by the clause that thenceforth the Steward should "not take cognizance of debts nor of other things but of people of the same House."

Upon this point an action was at this time pending; and, if it had come before Sir Edward Coke as one of the Common Law Judges, Bacon might well have reason to fear that the issue would have been unfavourable to the Marshalsea. Availing himself, therefore, of the right of the Prerogative (as then interpreted) to erect a new Court of Record,1 Bacon appears to have advised the King to get round, or override, the difficulty, by establishing this new Court with unmistakable jurisdiction over all trespasses, whether committed by the King's servants or the King's subjects; and by extending the word "trespass" to mean any offence tending to injure the King or the King's subjects generally. Thus quietly and unobtrusively did Bacon procure the establishment, in the King's interest, of a Court having a jurisdiction over almost all offences except breach of private contract, throughout a circle of twelve miles radius round the King's residence, for the time being.

A brief summary must suffice of another important paper written by Bacon at this time, entitled Advice to the King touching Sutton's Estate. Thomas Sutton, who died on the 12 December, 1611, had by his will endowed the Charterhouse with £8,000 a year for the sustenance of a hospital and school. The will had been disputed; and the possible heir-at-law had been bound over by the Council, "if he do evict the will, to stand to the King's award and arbitrement." Hereupon Bacon writes to the King protesting that to turn the Charterhouse, a palace fit for a prince, into a hospital, is all one as if one should give in alms a rich embroidered cloak to a beggar. The master of the hospital, some great person, will take the sweet; the poor, the crumbs. If, therefore, the heir has a right, and if that right is submitted to the King, the three following changes are desirable : First, instead of a hospital-a corporation of declared beggars, a cell of loiterers, cast serving-men and drunkards-let there be a beneficence that shall prevent beggary and ease hardworking honesty, viz., houses of relief and correction where disabled labourers can be relieved and sturdy beggars buckled to work. Secondly, instead of teachers for children (of whom there are already too many) raise up teachers for men by adding to the niggardly endowments of existing Chairs at the Universities. Thirdly, instead of a Preacher, establish a College of Controversies, a "Receipt (I like not the word Seminary") for converts to the Reformed Religion, or for preachers in remote and superstitious corners of the realm." Thus, "that mass of wealth that was in the owner little better than a stack or heap of muck may be spread over your kingdom to many fruitful purposes.'

"2

Cecil's health had been for some time failing, and his death (4 May, 1612) deprived Bacon of a patron to whom he had faithfully, or perhaps we should say closely, adhered for fourteen years, and to whom his letters express an entire devotion. It was impossible that the two cousins could ever have cordially co-operated. Cecil, a man of systematic, orderly, and accurate mind, without a spark of genius or originality, could not but regard Bacon as a mere visionary, versatile student, whose law was to be distrusted, and whose statesmanship was unworthy of serious consideration. To Bacon Cecil appeared a mere man of detail, a broker and accountant in finance; a man in whom cunning served as a substitute for wisdom; one who, having no merit himself, deliberately suppressed the merit of others. It speaks much for the self-control of the younger cousin that for

so long a period he so assiduously cultivated his senior and

more powerful relative. Even in the years in which he has no leisure" to write to Essex, and not long before the Earl complained of his "silence in his vocations," Bacon finds time to write to Sir Robert Cecil a letter "empty of matter, but out of the fullness of my love," to signify "my continual and incessant love for you, thirsting for your return," followed by another in which he addresses his cousin as another self: "I write to myself, in regard of my love to you, you being as near to me in heart's blood as in blood of descent."

When

he is insulted by Coke (1601) it is to Cecil that he complains, as to one that I have ever found careful of my advancement and yet more jealous of my wrongs;" and just before the Queen's death (1603) he fears that his superabundant affection for his great kinsman may make him almost intrusive: "If it seem any error for me thus to intromit myself, I pray your lordship to remember I ever loved her Majesty and the State, and now love yourself; and there is never any vehement love without some absurdity;" while at the same time he begs that Cecil's private secretary will "let him [Cecil] know that he is the personage in the State which I love most." Cecil is his refuge when he is twice arrested for debt, first in 1598 and again in 1603; Cecil is his intercessor when he desires the honour of knighthood; and in the Commentarius Solutus (1608) Cecil appears as a generous lender of money sine die and without interest. His continuous kindness extorts from Bacon (forgetful for once of the wise "precept of Bias," never to love a friend to such a degree as not to remember that he may become your enemy) the rash expression " I cannot forget your Lordship, dum memor ipse mei.”

The sincerity of Bacon's belief that he was forwarding his own interests in supporting Cecil appears from private entries in the Commentarius.

"To insinuate myself to become privy to my Lord of Salisbury's estate. To correspond1 with Salisbury in a habit of natural but no way's perilous boldness, and in vivacity, invention, care, to cast and enterprise; but with due caution; for this manner I judge both in his nature freeth the stonds, and in his ends pleaseth him best and promiseth him most use of me." He assures his patron (1608) that he esteems whatsoever he has or may have in this world but as trash

"In comparison of having the honour and happiness to be a near and well-accepted kinsman to so rare and worthy a counsellor, governor, or patriot. For having been a studious, if not curious observer, as well of antiquities of virtue as of late pieces, I forbear to say to your Lordship what I find or conceive."

And in the year 1611, not long before his cousin's death, he writes this last protest of allegiance :

"I do protest before God, without compliment, that if I knew in what course of life to do you best service, I would take it, and make my thoughts, which now fly to many pieces, be reduced to that centre."

These words he writes thanking Cecil for his promises of help, upon the occasion of Mr. Attorney's infirmity; " and they seem to imply that, if Cecil would hereafter secure his promotion to the Attorney's place, Bacon would give up philosophy and every other distraction that might prevent him from devoting his whole life to his patron's service.

But on 24 May, 1612 Salisbury died; and in less than a week afterwards, on 31 May, Bacon, offering his services in his cousin's place, writes of him thus to the King.

"He was a fit man to keep things from growing worse,1 but no very fit man to reduce things to be much better; for he loved to keep the eyes of all Israel a little too much upon himself, and, though he had fine passages of action, yet the real conclusions came slowly on." 2

...

Elsewhere he writes that "my Lord of Salisbury had a good method, if his means had been upright;" and, in less than four months after his death (18 Sept.), he can congratulate the King upon his deliverance from the incapable counsellor who had planned and mismanaged the Great Contract :

"To have your wants and necessities in particular, as it were hanged up in two tablets before the eyes of your Lords and Commons, to be talked of for four months together; to stir a number of projects and then blast them and leave your Majesty nothing but the scandal of them; to pretend even carriage between your Majesty's rights and the ease of the people, and to satisfy neither-these courses and others the like, I hope, are gone with the deviser of them."

Then follow these words, which are cancelled in the MS., and which therefore (it is to be presumed) he did not send to the King; but that he should have even thought of sending them is sufficiently remarkable :

"I protest to God, though I be not superstitious, when I saw your Majesty's book against Vorstius and Arminius, and noted your zeal to deliver the Majesty of God from the vain and indign comprehension of heresy and degenerate philosophy. perculsit ilico animum that God would set shortly upon you some visible favour; and let me not live if I thought not of the taking away of that man."

Two or three months later appeared the second edition of the Essays, commenting on which-only seven months after the decease of "so rare and worthy a counsellor, governor and patriot "-Chamberlain writes as follows: "Sir Francis Bacon has set out new Essays; where (in a chapter of Deformity)," Essay xliv. "the world takes notice that he paints out his little cousin to the life."

§ 25 BACON SUING FOR PROMOTION

From 1608 to 1620 Bacon seems to have spent such leisure as he could snatch from business in revising the Novum Organum. But the disadvantages under which he pursued his great wish are well illustrated by a brief treatise on the Intellectual Sphere (Descriptio Globi Intellectualis) written in 1612. Beginning with a division of the provinces of the world of knowledge, it speedily passes into a detailed account of astronomy; a subject to which his attention may not improbably have been directed by Galileo's invention of the telescope and the discovery of Jupiter's satellites (May 1609-January 1610). But the work of a Solicitor-General desiring and scheming to be Attorney-General was not favourable for scientific study. In the Thema Coeli (which is the second part of the Descriptio) he constructs a theory of the Universe in which he denies the density and solidity of the moon, as well as the revolution of the earth. True, he admits that his own theory resembles all existing theories in being hypothetical; but in reality he had not given the subject even that decent degree of attention which would have justified him in forming a hypothesis on it.

The researches of Kepler, published in 1609 and known in