UNDER A CLOUD AT COURT.

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ful bride, and Vere is recalled from the Flemish camp. A VII. 1. master-work of political art sends Gray and Raleigh to the Tower. At the same time Bacon is thrust aside, discredited to the new sovereign, his usual access to the throne refused, and his proffered services of tongue and pen disdained.

2. At court he is under a cloud. The patron of Essex, the employer of Valentine Thomas, takes into his grace all those who shared in the Earl's affections and in his crime. Southampton is restored in blood. Lady Rich and the Countess of Northumberland appear at court. Lady Rich's lover, Montjoy, becomes an earl. Rutland gets the reversion of a royal park, Monteagle a grant of land. Among those old partizans of Essex, who now keep the gates of Whitehall and dispose of offices and grants, Bacon is undoubtedly unpopular: less, however, for his past speech against the Earl than for his present defence of the dead Queen. In James's ear the name of Elizabeth is rank; on Bacon's tongue and pen her virtues live and her glories speak. When no man but himself dares breathe her name in the court of her successor, he composes that magnificent prose elegy, In felicem Memoriam Elizabethæ, which he himself esteems the most precious of all his works. The cloud is at Whitehall or at Hampton Court, not at Ipswich or St. Albans. To the country his name is dear as ever. When writs go out for the first Parliament of the new reign (one purpose of which is to restore the friends of Devereux in estate and blood), though the King and court bear hard against him, Ipswich and St. Albans send him to

2. Grant Book of James the First, 2, 3, S. P. O.; Doquets of James the First, Nov. 13, 1604, S. P. O.; Warrant Book of James the First, 4, S. P. O; In felicem memoriam Elizabethæ, Bacon's Works, vi. 283; Willis, Not. Parl., 160.

Nov.

1604. Jan.

1604.

Feb.

VII. 2. London once again by a double return. Nor is this all. So soon as the burgesses meet in Westminster, he becomes again, what he has been before in every session for twenty years, their chief. Some go so far as to use his name for Speaker of the House; a fact unknown to Lord Campbell ; yet worth a word in reference to the report of his lying at that very moment under public ban.

Mar. 27.

3. By ancient usage the Crown appointed the Speaker to be chosen by the House. A leave to elect came down, weighted with a particular recommendation; and, like a dean and chapter in the election of a bishop, the squires and burgesses were expected to adopt the royal choice. A time has now come for trying what force remains in these feudal forms. Some members think this leave to elect a Speaker should be taken in its open sense: that the House should choose its officers, causing these old pretensions of the Crown to cease. When, therefore, the court proposes Sir Edward Phellippes, a buzz and hum of opposition rises. Why not have a Speaker of their own? Hastings, Neville, Bacon, each is named. Hastings is a Puritan, Neville an opponent of the court. That each of these men should be deemed fit instruments of opposition to the Crown is susceptible of easy explanation. But Bacon is neither a Puritan nor an enemy of the court. He differs from the Puritans on some of their principles, particularly on their intolerance for errors of faith; and he supports the King against many of their most obstinate prejudices, particularly their repugnance to a union with the Scots. Yet the gentlemen who live with him and serve with him, who dine at the same tables, laugh over the same jests, and

3. Com. Jour., i. 141; Bacon's Essays, No. 3; Bacon's Speech on the Naturalization of the Scots, State Trials, ii, 575.

sometimes, it is likely, suffer from his wit, believe he VII. 3. may be played, in a good cause, even against the King. These gentlemen have not discovered that Bacon is a corrupt and obsequious rogue.

1604, Mar. 27.

4. If the House of Commons, not yet strong enough to April. give battle to the Crown on such a field as the choice of Speaker, accepts the nomination of Phellippes, it puts Bacon forward as its man of confidence, electing him on the Standing Committee of Privileges, on the Committee of Grievances, of which he is named reporter, on the Committee for Conference on the Restraint of Speech, on the Committee for Union with Scotland; in all, on twenty-nine committees. All through the session he speaks with a boldness, an ability, a frequency unrivalled in the House of Commons before his day or since. The topics are great and various abuses in the taverns, the laws against witchcraft, the licence of purveyors, the election of members, the sin of adultery, the increase of drunkenness, the sale of Crown offices and lands. Two topics stand out from the rest with almost solid brightness of historical outline. These are the Grievances and the Union.

On the first he has the disadvantage of differing from the Crown; on the second from a majority of those country gentlemen with whom he usually speaks and votes. James will not hear of the List of Grievances, nor will the burgesses vote his Bill of Union with the Scots. Each side has its personal feeling and its narrow view. With a deeper wisdom and a larger patriotism, Bacon, while he sees with the King that these claims to suspend the penal laws, to grant private monopolies, to command personal service, to sign away heiresses

4. Com. Jour., i. 142-253; Lords' Jour., ii. 206, 309.

1604. April.

VII. 4. in marriage, to supply his kitchen from the poulterer's basket and his cellars from the vintner's store at his own price, are each and all incontestably historical, founded in custom older in date than the oldest statute in the book, sees also with the complaining citizen or squire that time, by its slow but devouring sap, has hollowed the ground on which these regal privileges stand, so that they have no longer a safe foundation on which to rest, and seeks to improve the old ways before improvement is too late. But James is deaf. To take from him the right to reward a barber with a wine patent, to compel the young noble to hold his reins or feed his dogs, to match his favourites of the bedchamber with the daughters of English earls, to fetch in ale from Blackfriars and fish from Billingsgate wharf, to grant leave to his groom, or the darling of his groom, to vend pardons for rape and arson, burglary and murder, would, in his opinion, be to rob him of the most princely attributes of his high rank.

5. Some among the Commons are not less weak than James. When they see him break his word, turn his back on the List of Grievances, nip in the flower their hopes of a Church reform, begin a secret correspondence with the Cardinal Archduke and with the Pope, they set themselves to oppose his policy even in the few particulars on which his policy is just and sound. In a union with the Scots Bacon finds a measure of defence against Spain. A dull squire sees in it only an opening for the rush into London of savages with red beards, bare legs, and scurvy tongues.

5. Abstract by Bacon of Objections in the House of Commons, April 25, 1604, S. P. O.; Speech on the Union, April 25, 1604, S. P. O.

INTRODUCES THE BILL OF UNION.

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April.

Waiving his own wrongs for the public good, Bacon VII. 5. draws for the King the draft of a Bill of Union, which he introduces into the House of Commons in a splendid speech, opening to the view of knight and squire a political scene, in which he pictures to their minds the contending nationalities and hostile creeds of Europe, striving, by his bold, persuasive eloquence, to lure them into pondering less on the ancient feud of Saxon and Scot, more on the permament safety of the English faith and power. With all the lights of fancy, all the subtleties of logic, he meets on one side the obstinacy of his colleagues, on the other side the perverseness of his prince. Each, however, holds to his own. The Grievances are not heard, the Bill of

Union does not pass.

6. While Bacon is making these splendid displays of political wisdom and personal independence in the House of Commons, Lord Campbell fancies him slinking and skulking under public odium!

Lord Campbell takes everything on trust. When Bacon got his knighthood, Lord Campbell says he was "infinitely gratified by being permitted to kneel down with three hundred others." Now, Bacon's letters to Cecil on the knighthood are not only in print, but are known to every one who reads. In place of being infinitely gratified, Bacon protests against the shame of being compelled to kneel down with Peter and John. So again with his marriage to Alice Barnham. Lord Campbell makes merry over his mercenary love and his match of convenience. Yet from his own text, and from the pages of Montagu, it is certain that he knows nothing whatever of this love or of this match; neither who Alice Barnham

6. Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, iii. 49.

July.