of jurisdiction between the two Courts of King's Bench and Chancery, over which Coke and Egerton respectively presided, Bacon appears to have influenced his royal master to pronounce in the Court of Star-Chamber a judgement in favour of the latter.* During the three years indeed, for which he held the attorney-generalship, he conducted himself with such moderation, and discharged it's difficult and intricate duties with so much integrity, that if we except his strenuous support of government in the prosecution of a Mr. St. John for his letter against benevolences, and of a clergyman named Peacham for passages of a sermon never preached, but found in his study, little or nothing stands on record to his reproach.

In 1617, Chancellor Egerton, who had frequently petitioned his Majesty for leave to resign, on account of his age and infirmities, received the indulgence he requested. He had sat in the Court of Chancery twenty-one years, and was regarded as an able lawyer; but, in his official capacity, he bore the character of being an abject tool of administration. Sir Francis Bacon, who had constantly kept this high appointment in view, encountered a powerful competitor in Sir Edward Coke: but he so artfully suggested to his royal master his own ductility, and his influence in the House of Commons, at the same time depreciating his rival as one who had recently upon several occasions shown himself desirous rather to defend the rights of the people than the prerogatives of the crown, that the seals were given to

* See two letters in the Cabala, pp. 30, 31.

him, with the title of Lord Keeper.* Coke was

* A portion of his letter, addressed upon this occasion to his Majesty, is here subjoined:-"I beseech your Majesty, let me put you the present case truly. If you take my Lord Coke, this will follow: first, your Majesty shall put an over-ruling nature into an over-ruling place, which may breed an extreme; next, you shall blunt his industry in matter of finances, which seemeth to aim at another place; and, lastly, popular men are no sure mounters for your Majesty's saddle. If you take my Lord Hobart, you shall have a Judge at the upper end of your councilboard, and another at the lower end, whereby your Majesty will find your prerogative pent: for though there should be emulation between them yet as legists, they will agree in magnifying that wherein they are best. He is no statesman, but an economist wholly for himself; so as your Majesty (more than an outward form) will find little help in him for the business. If you take my Lord Canterbury, I will say no more, but the Chancellor's place requires a whole man; and to have both jurisdictions, spiritual and temporal, in that height, is fit but for a King.

"For myself, I can only present your Majesty with gloria in obsequio. Yet I dare promise that, if I sit in that place, your business shall not make such short turns upon you as it doth: but, when a direction is once given, it shall be pursued and performed; and your Majesty shall only be troubled with the true care of a King, which is to think what you would have done in chief, and not how for the passages.

"I do presume also, in respect of my father's memory, and that I have been always gracious in the Lower House, I have interest in the gentry of England, and shall be able to do some good effect in rectifying that body of parliament-men, which is cardo rerum: for let me tell your Majesty that that part of the Chancellor's place, which is to judge in equity between party and party, that same regnum judiciale (which, since my father's time, is but too much enlarged) concerneth your Majesty least, more than the acquitting of your conscience for justice; but it is in the other parts, of a moderator among your Councils, of an overseer over your Judges, of a planter of fit Justices and Governors in the country, that comporteth your affairs and these times most." (Cabala, pp. 28, 29.)

doomed to retain his new appointment, as. Chief Justice of the King's Bench, because he had been remiss in carrying on some severe prosecutions against the subject at the suit of the crown.*

Upon delivering to him the seals, his Majesty is said to have accompanied them with three cautions: 1. That he should not seal any thing, but after mature deliberation; 2. That he should give righteous judgements between parties; and 3. That he should not extend the royal prerogative too far. These precepts he made the ground-work of a long and learned speech, delivered in court on the day upon which he took possession of his high office.

The following year Buckingham, finding Bacon a man after his own heart, obtained for him the dignity of Chancellor,† with the Barony of Verulam,

* At the time of his nomination, Bacon received from the Duke of Buckingham the following humiliating message: 'that he knew him to be a man of excellent parts, and, as the times were, fit to serve the King in the Lord Keeper's place; but he also knew him of a base ungrateful disposition and an arrant knave, apt in his prosperity to ruin any who had raised him from adversity; yet for all this he (the Duke) did so much study the interest of his Sovereign, that he had obtained the seals for him, but with this assurance-should he ever requite him as he had done some others, he would cast him down as much below scorn, as he had now raised him high above any honour he could ever have expected.' Bacon patiently endured this message, replying, "I am glad my noble Lord deals so friendly and freely with me: but can he know these abilities in me, and can he think when I have attained the highest preferment my profession is capable of, I shall so much fail in my judgement and understanding as to lose those abilities, and by my miscarriage to so noble a patron cast myself headlong from the top of that honour to the very bottom of contempt and scorn? Surely, my Lord cannot think so meanly of me."

↑ During his possession of the Chancellorship, he procured

by which title he is chiefly distinguished in the learned world to his higher distinction as Viscount St. Alban's, he was advanced in 1620.

A few days after the appointment of Bacon to the Lord Keepership, his Majesty set out for Scotland; and Sir Francis, as the head of the Council in virtue of his office, had the chief management of public affairs. This happened at the critical juncture, when the proposition for a treaty of marriage between Charles Prince of Wales and an Infanta of Spain was brought into discussion. Bacon, who foresaw the difficulties and inconveniences which might attend this measure, strongly remonstrated against it; but James with his usual pride and pertinacity, against every principle of sound policy, persisted in his project, till the match was abruptly broken off by the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Buckingham in Spain.

During the King's absence, the Lord Keeper is said to have assumed all the pomp and circumstance' of royalty: he took possession of his Majesty's lodgings, gave audience in the Great Banqueting-House, conducted himself with the utmost arrogance toward his brother-councillors, and would not vouchsafe to open or read in public the letters even of Villiers

from the King the farm of the Alienation Office, which was of considerable benefit to him, and eventually proved a great part of his subsistence, after he had lost his office. He, likewise, obtained for his residence a grant of York House, for which he seems to have retained a strong affection as the place of his birth, and his father's habitation as Lord Keeper. He appears, indeed, occasionally to have checked the rapacity of Buckingham, by refusing to confirm grants which he recommended; but in numerous instances he did not scruple to affix the great seal to patents, evidently intended as instruments of extortion.

himself, though stated to require despatch, or return him any answer. When he heard however that James was on his return, he re-invested himself with his old rags of baseness,' attended two days in Buckingham's ante-chamber, sitting upon a wooden chest with his purse and seal lying by him, and on the Duke's entrance fell prostrate before him, kissed his feet, and vowed never to rise till he had his pardon.' The reconciliation which ensued was purchased by such concessions on the part of Bacon, that he was ever afterward a slave to the favourite and his family.

6

Another affair likewise occurred at this period, by which, though of a private nature, the Lord Keeper was deeply disturbed. Winwood, one of the Secretaries of State, having Coke's interest at heart and wishing to bring him into favour in opposition to Bacon, prevailed upon the Chief Justice to give his daughter in marriage with an immense fortune to Sir John Villiers, Buckingham's brother, though he had previously rejected the alliance with marks of disrespect. Bacon, apprehensive that his influence would be considerably lessened, if Coke were introduced into the Council, with a view of preventing the match went so far as to incur the displeasure both of the King and of his minister: but their resentment appears to have been only of short continuance,* as not long afterward he was elevated to the peerage.†

* Bacon, indeed, is said upon this occasion, in direct opposition to his former opinion, to have offered, unasked, his interest with the young lady's mother for promoting the union, which he had previously used all his ingenuity to obstruct.

↑ Both upon his appointment as Lord Keeper, and his creation