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be too sharp)" in matters affecting Coke which came before the Council; and it may well be that even James, irritated as he was against the most self-willed and inconvenient of Judges, nevertheless revolted from the tone of the censure which Bacon would have put into his mouth, censure of a fallen man proceeding from an acknowledged rival or enemy. However, Bacon's long series of assiduous, obsequious, and valuable services, was too obvious to be ignored. Scarcely a week passed without a letter giving the King some new proof of the activity and usefulness of his Attorney, and some suggestion how much more useful he would be as a Chancellor, plastic as clay, and making all the Judges equally plastic beneath the pressure of the King's hand. For example, a few days after Coke's fall (21 Nov. 1616,) he writes thus :

"But while your Majesty peruseth the accounts of Judges in circuits your Majesty will give me leave to think of the Judges here in their upper region. And because Tacitus saith well opportuni magnis conatibus transitus rerum, now, upon this change (when he that letteth1 is gone) I shall endeavour, to the best of my power and skill, that there may be a consent and united mind in your Judges to serve you and strengthen your business."

In particular, Bacon used his utmost efforts to carry out the King's wishes by the suppression of duelling: and here he gives a specimen of the way in which the Judges, by their co-operation with the King, might do something to rid the kingdom from a growing evil. Sending to Villiers an account of a speech of his before the Council on this subject, he says:

"Yesterday was a day of great good for his Majesty's service and the peace of this kingdom concerning duels by occasion of D'Arcy's case. I spake big, and, publishing his Majesty's strait charge to me, said it had struck me blind as, in point of duels and cartels, I should not know a coronet from a hat-band. In this also I forgot not to prepare the judges, and wish them to profess, and as it were to denounce, that in all cases of duel capital before them, they will use equal severity towards the insolent murder by the duel and the insidious murder, and that they will extirpate that difference out of the opinions of men which they did excellent well."

As a specimen of Bacon's "big" style, the notes of his speech before the Council (27 Nov.) to which he refers in the letter just quoted, are not without interest :

1 i.e. Coke.

2 i.e. "so as," or "so that;" see note on p. 197.

"The duel to which your chartel hath introduction shall never have better terms at my hands than to be the inceptive act to murder. It always carries this with it, that it is a direct affront of Law, and tends to the dissolution of Magistracy. They, being men, despising laws divine and human, they become like Anabaptists that do as the Spirit moves them, and according to the boundings and corvets of their own wills, and for this they have made acts, and have rules, distinctions, and cases. This is right as the Scripture saith-to imagine mischief as a law.

".... These swelling tumours that arise in men's proud affections must be beaten flat with justice; or else all will end in ruin. It is to set a vile price upon the blood of the subject.... Will you have the sacrifices of men, not of bulls or oxen ?

"You say the Law is such. But, my Lords, the Law of England is not taken out of Amadis de Gaul, nor the book of Palmerin, but out of the Scripture, out of the laws of the Romans and Grecians, where never a duel was; and they had such excellent reproachful speeches as we read in their writings, and yet never no sword drawn.

"But the King hath taken away all excuse, having given a fair passage; and nothing can be offered as a wrong, but he hath left sufficient remedy. My Lords, when his Majesty spake lately unto me of this business-and no man expresseth himself like him he said, 'I come forth and see myself nobly attended, but I know not whether any of them shall live four-andtwenty hours; for it is but the mistaking of a word in heat, and that brings the lie, and that a challenge, and then comes the loss of their lives." "

An Attorney who could thus give expression to every wish of the King, and diffuse it through the kingdom by the instrumentality of the Judges, might well be regarded by James as likely to be a Chancellor after his own heart. The present Chancellor Egerton, Lord Ellesmere, who had recently been created Viscount Brackley, had indeed served him faithfullyso faithfully that the lawyers of Westminster Hall nicknamed him Viscount "Break-law"; but though he constantly maintained the King's Prerogative, he had not the energy or ability which Bacon possessed, to enlarge and extend it. Besides, he had been long ailing and desirous of resigning. On 5 March, worn out with disease, he at last succeeded in persuading the King to accept his resignation; and on 7 March, 1617, with the best wishes of his predecessor, Sir Francis Bacon received the Great Seal with the title of Lord Keeper.3

1 "Your" is used contemptuously, or familiarly, as often in Shakespeare: "the chartel (i.c. challenge,) with which you are so well acquainted." 2 That is, "just as."

3 Dean Church (p. 108) observes, "There was a curious hesitation in treating him as other men were treated in like cases. He was only Lord Keeper. It was not till the following January that he received the office of Lord Chancellor. It was not till half a year afterwards that he was made a Peer." But this appears to be a mistake; for "during the whole of Elizabeth's reign no one had borne the title of Lord Chancellor, and no Lord Keeper had been made a Peer."-Dictionary of National Biography, "Bacon," ii. 345.

§ 35 THE LORD KEEPER'S ACTIVITY

"The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base, and by indignities men come to dignities:" so wrote the Solicitor-General in 1612.1 But the Lord Keeper was now to learn the truth of the converse proposition-that "by dignities men come to indignities;" for never, during all the patient drudgery of his Solicitorship, nor even in earlier days during his long, fruitless suit for place under Elizabeth, had he experienced such humiliations as were now to fall upon him. The Essay speaks, indeed, of "downfall," and hints at the difficulty of maintaining one's position in office: "The standing is slippery and the egress is either a downfall or at least an eclipse, which is a melancholy thing; " but it says nothing of the misery of only being allowed to stand at the cost of having first stooped to the most ignominious self-prostration. It describes the responsibilities of place as having "license to do good and evil;" but it is silent on the degradation of using a high place for nothing but an ampler exercise of obsequious arts, and for a more effectual servility to the will of an unworthy patron.

One of Bacon's first tasks in his capacity of Lord Keeper (23 March, 1617) was to find good reasons for the project of the Spanish match, from which he had formerly been averse, but to which he now assented in company with the rest of the Council. In a paper submitted to the King he suggests the good of Christendom arising from this union between Spain and England, whereby religious differences may be laid aside and forgotten; the extinction of piracy by the united fleets; the opportunity of a Holy War against the Turk so as to "suffocate and starve Constantinople;" the erection of a tribunal or praetorian power to decide controversies between Christian countries; and lastly, the opportunity for checking the growth

1 Essays, xi. 7.

of a disposition in some places to make "popular estates and leagues to the disadvantage of monarchies."

But in company with the rest of the Council he incurred a rebuke for using their discretion in keeping back a royal Proclamation commanding the nobility to leave London. It had been ordered at a time when most of the nobility had left, and was thought likely to be needlessly distasteful; but no such excuse availed with James; who signified to them (April, 1617) that "obedience is better than sacrifice, and that he knoweth he is King of England." Already therefore the new Lord Keeper had received some warning of the limits within which he must confine himself when (7 May, 1617), he took his seat in the Court of Chancery, exceeding all his predecessors, says correspondent of Carleton, in "the bravery and multitude of his servants."

a

Writing to Villiers (now Earl of Buckingham), an account how he yesterday took his seat in Chancery, the Lord Keeper deplores the pomp of the proceedings:

"Yesterday I took my place in Chancery, which I hold only from the King's grace and favour, and your friendship. There was much ado and a great deal of world. But this matter of pomp, which is heaven to some men, is hell to me, or purgatory at least."

We cannot here forget what the writer tells us elsewhere: "You shall observe that the more deep and sober sort of politic persons in their greatness, are ever bemoaning themselves what a life they lead, chanting a quanta patimur! Not that they feel it so, but to abate the edge of envy."1

His speech on taking his seat, abounds in promises of amended procedure. Beginning with the charge of the King, "the absolutest prince in judicature that hath been in the Christian World," he promises to keep within due bounds the jurisdiction of the Court; he will grant no injunction merely on priority of suit, nor "make it a horse-race who shall be first at Westminster Hall." So far from neglecting the assistance of the reverend

1 Essays, ix. 98. Professor Gardiner no doubt expresses the truth in saying (History, ii. 198): "He [Bacon] liked the pomp and circumstance of power, its outward show and grandeur, the pleasant company and the troops of followers which were its necessary accompaniments."

2 That is, "most perfect."

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Judges his coadjutors, he protests that, should there be any main diversity of opinion in his assistants from his own, he should probably have recourse to the King's own judgment before he should pronounce. Condemning the excess of deliberation in his predecessor on the Bench -" of whom I learn much to imitate and (with due reverence to his memory let me speak it) somewhat to avoid "1-he declares that "fresh justice is the sweetest," and that "the subject's pulse beats swift, though the Chancery pace be slow." On the other hand he condemns no less that affectation of despatch which turns utterly to delay and length, like Penelope's web, doing and undoing. As for the plaintiffs who make delays, after having obtained an injunction to stay a suit in Common Law-" by the grace of God I will make injunctions an hard pillow to sleep on." In an interesting little personal digression the Lord Chancellor hints that he may possibly cut short his life by hard work, and he takes his hearers so far into his confidence as to tell them what he intends to do with his long vacations:

"Again, because justice is a sacred thing, and the end for which I am called to this place, and therefore is my way to heaven (and if it be shorter, it is never a whit the worse) I shall, by the grace of God (as far as God shall give me strength) add the afternoon to the forenoon, and some fortnight of the vacation to the term, for the expediting and clearing of the causes of the Court. Only the depth of the leisure of the three long vacations I would reserve in some measure free for business of Estate, and for studies, arts, and sciences, to which, in my nature, I am most inclined."

In conclusion, the chief comfort to him under the burden of his new duty is that he serves so wise and good a Master, that he needs "to be but a conduit for the conveyance only of his goodness to the people."

A very interesting letter (8 May), to Buckingham, shows with what a mixture of graciousness and authority he intended to play his part of overseer of the Judges, whose assistance would be of inestimable advantage for the purpose of systematically magnifying the royal Prerogative :

"Yesterday, which was my weary day, I bid all the Judges to dinner (which was not used to be) and entertained them in a private withdrawing

1 The text varies, one version having "much to avoid." 2 Essays, xxv. 1.

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