To the Right Honourable the Lord Keeper, &c.* My Lord, In my last conference with your lordship, I did entreat you both to forbear hurting of Mr. Fr. Bacon's cause, and to suspend your judgment of his mind towards your lordship, till I had spoken with him. I went since that time to Twickenham Park to confer with him, and had signified the effect of our conference by letter ere this, if I had not hoped to have met with your lordship, and so to have delivered it by speech. I told your lordship when I last saw you, that this manner of his was only a natural freedom, and plainness, which he had used with me, and in my knowledge with some other of his best friends, than any want of reverence towards your lordship; and therefore I was more curious to look into the moving cause of his style, than into the form of it; which now I find to be only a diffidence of your lordship's favour and love towards him, and no alienation of that dutiful mind which he hath borne towards your lordship. And therefore I am fully persuaded, that if your lordship would please to send for him, there would grow so good satisfaction, as hereafter he should enjoy your lordship's honourable favour, in as great a measure as ever, and your lordship have the use of his service, who, I assure your Lordship, is as strong in his kindness, as you find him in his jealousy. I will use no argument to persuade your lordship, that I should be glad of his being restored to your lordship's wonted favour; since your lordship both knoweth how much my credit is engaged in his fortune, and may easily judge how sorry I should be, that a gentleman whom I love so much, should lack the favour of a person whom I honour so much. And thus commending your lordship to God's best protection, I rest Your Lordship's very assured, ESSEX. Indorsed-31 August, 95. My Lord of Essex to have me send for Mr. Bacon, for he will satisfy me. In my Lord Keeper's own hand. To the Right Honourable the Lord Keeper, &c.t My very good Lord, The want of assistance from them which should be Mr. Fr. Bacon's friends, makes [me] the more industrious myself, and the more earnest in soliciting mine own friends. * Harl. MSS. vol. 6997, No. 47. + Ibid. No. 106. Upon me the labour must lie of his establishment, and upon me the disgrace will light of his being refused. Therefore I pray your lordship, now account me not as a solicitor only of my friend's cause, but as a party interested in this; and employ all your lordship's favour to me, or strength for me, in procuring a short and speedy end. For though I know, it will never be carried any other way, yet I hold both my friend and myself disgraced by this protraction. More I would write, but that I know to so honourable and kind a friend, this which I have said is enough. And so I commend your lordship to God's best protection, resting, At your Lordship's commandment, [No date.] ESSEX. A Letter to Dr. Morison,* a Scottish Physician, upon his Majesty's coming in. Mr. Doctor Morison, I have thought good by this my letter to renew this my ancient acquaintance which hath passed between us, signifying my good mind to you, to perform to you any good office, for your particular, and my expectation, and a firm assurance of the like on your part towards me: wherein I confess you may have the start of me, because occasion hath given you the precedency in investing you with opportunity to use my name well, and by your loving testimony to further a good opinion of me in his majesty, and the court. But I hope my experience of matters here will, with the light of his majesty's favour, enable me speedily both to requite your kindness, and to acquit and make good your testimony and report. So not doubting to see you here with his majesty, considering that it belongeth to your art to feel pulses, and I assure you Galen doth not set down greater variety of pulses than do vent here in men's hearts, I wish you all prosperity, and remain From my Chamber at Gray's Inn, &c. 1603. Yours, &c. He had held a correspondence with Mr. Anthony Bacon, and was employed to find intelligence from Scotland to the Earl of Essex.-See Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, from the year 1581 till her death, vol i. p. 79, 109, 116. A Letter to Mr. Murray, of the King's Bed Chamber. Mr. Murray, It is very true that his majesty most graciously, at my humble request, knighted the last Sunday my brother-inlaw, a towardly young gentleman;* for which favour I think myself more bound to his majesty, than for the benefit of ten knights: and to tell you truly, my meaning was not that the suit of this other gentleman, Mr. Temple,+ should have been moved in my name. For I should have been unwilling to have moved his majesty for more than one at once, though many times in his majesty's courts of justice, if we move once for our friends, we are allowed to move again for our fee. But indeed my purpose was, that you might have been pleased to have moved it as for myself. Nevertheless, since it is so far gone, and that the gentleman's friends are in some expectation of success, I leave it to your kind regard what is farther to be done, as willing to give satisfaction to those which have put me in trust, and loth on the other side to press above good manners. so with my loving commendations I remain Yours, &c. And I perceive you have some time when you can be content to think of your friends; from whom, since you have borrowed yourself, you do well, not paying the principal, to send the interest at six months' day. The relation, which here I send you enclosed, carries the truth of that which is public: and though my little leisure might have required a briefer, yet the matter would have endured and asked a larger. have now, at last, taught that child to go, at the swaddling whereof you were. My work touching the Proficiency and Advancement of Learning I have put into two To this Sir John Constable, Sir Francis Bacon dedicated the second edition of his Essays, published at London 1612, in octavo. + Probably Mr. William Temple, who had been educated in King's College, Cambridge, then master of the free school at Lincoln, next successively secretary to Sir Philip Sidney, Secretary Davison, and the Earl of Essex, made provost of Dublin College in 1609, and at last knighted, and appointed one of the Masters in Chancery in Ireland. He died about 1626, at the age of 72. Sir Tobie Matthew's Collection of Letters, p. 11. books; whereof the former, which you saw, I cannot but account as a page of the latter. I have now published them both; whereof I thought it a small adventure to send you a copy, who have more right to it than any man, except Bishop Andrews, who was my inquisitor. The death of the late great judge concerned not me, because the other was not removed. I write this in answer to your good wishes, which I return not as flowers of Florence, but as you mean them; whom I conceive place cannot alter, no more than time shall me, except it be for the better. 1605. To my Lady Packington, in Answer to a Message by her sent.† Madam, You shall with right good will be made acquainted with any thing that concerneth your daughters, if you bear a mind of love and concord, otherwise you must be content to be a stranger unto us; for I may not be so unwise as to suffer you to be an author or occasion of dissension between your daughters and their husbands, having seen so much misery of that kind in yourself. And above all things I will turn back your kindness, in which you say, you will receive my wife if she be cast off: for it is much more likely we have occasion to receive you being cast off, if you remember what is passed. But it is time to make an end of those follies, and you shall at this time pardon me this one fault of writing to you; for I mean to do it no more till you use me and respect me as you ought. So wishing you better than it seemeth you will draw upon yourself, I rest, Yours, FR. BACON. To Sir Thomas Bodeley, after he had imparted to him a Writing, intitled, Cogitata et Visa.† Sir, In respect of my going down to my house in the country, I shall have miss of my papers, which I pray you therefore to return unto me. You are, I bear you witness, slothful, Mr. Matthew wrote an Elegy on the Duke of Florence's felicity. Rawley's Resuscitatio. and you help me nothing: so as I am half in conceit that you affect not the argument, for myself, I know well, you love and affect. I can say no more to you, but non canimus surdis, respondent omnia sylva. If you be not of the lodgings chalked up, whereof I speak in my preface, I am but to pass by your door. But if I had you a fortnight at Gorhambury I would make you tell me another tale; or else I would add a cogitation against libraries, and be revenged on you that way. I pray you send me some good news of Sir Thomas Smith, and commend me very kindly to him. So I rest. 1607. To the King.* It may please your excellent Majesty, MR. ST. JOHN his day is past, and well past. I hold it to be Janus Bifrons; it hath a good aspect to that which is past, and to the future; and doth both satisfy and prepare. All did well; my Lord Chief Justice delivered the law for the benevolence strongly; I would he had done it timely. Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer+ spake finely, somewhat after the manner of my late Lord Privy Seal ;+ not all out so sharply, but as elegantly. Sir Thomas Lake, who is also new in that court, did very well, familiarly and counsellor-like.§ My Lord of Pembroke, who is likewise a stranger there, did extraordinary well, and became him Rawley's Resuscitatio. The chancellor of the exchequer here meant was Sir Fulke Greville, who being early initiated into the court of Queen Elizabeth, became a polite and fine gentleman; and in the 18th of King James was created Lord Brooke. He erected a noble monument for himself on the north side of Warwick Church, which hath escaped the late desolation, with this well known inscription, "Fulke Greville, servant to Queen Elizabeth, counsellor to King James, and friend to Sir Philip Sidney." Nor is he less remembered by the monument he has left in his writings and poems, chiefly composed in his youth, and in familiar exercises with the gentleman I have before mentioned.-Stephens. Late Earl of Northampton. Sir Thomas Lake was about this time made one of the principal secretaries of state, as he had been formerly Latin secretary to Queen Elizabeth, and before that time bred under Sir Francis Walsingham. But in the year 1618, falling into the 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, |