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the stability of the throne. (Strype, Life of Parker.) He presided, together with the archbishop of York, in the capacity of moderator at a conference, or disputation between eight Protestant divines, and eight Roman-catholic bishops, from which, however, resulted no greater amount of advantage than usually accrues from exhibitions of the sort. He was appointed a commissioner to inquire into the grants made of crown lands in the reign of queen Mary, and on the assembling of parliament (25th January, 1558) opened the session with a very elaborate and eloquent speech. In this he treated of the various points which would come under the cognizance of the assembly, with a prudence and reserve becoming his station in the councils of the queen. He insisted on the queen's desire to promote true religion, and recommended the same object to their care. He advised them, however, to pursue it with caution and moderation, counselling them that "provision should be made that no contentious and contumelious words, as heretic, schismatic, papist, and such like, being the movers of seditious factions and sects, should be used, but banished out of men's mouths as the causers, continuers, and increasers of displeasure, hate, and malice, and as the utter enemies of all concord and unity, and the very mark they were now come to shoot at. (Strype, Annals.) In 1559 he was made one of the lay-commissioners appointed for the visitation of the various dioceses. Norwich and Ely constituted his district. In pursuance of his great anxiety to secure for the church the services of a clergy, qualified not only by their learning, but by their morals, to promote and diffuse true religion, the scandal of the times being an ignorant and demoralized ministry,-he used every persuasion to induce his friend Parker to accept the high post of archbishop of Canterbury, but it was not without considerable difficulty that he succeeded. (Strype, Life of Parker. Burnet, Hist. Ref.) It is recorded of him, that some years afterwards (1573) he nearly forfeited his right of presentation to a living, from the difficulty he found to discover a person worthy of the cure. At the opening of the next parliament (January 12, 1562) he alluded, with great severity, to the sloth of the clergy, and the negligence of their flocks. "Alliance was the policy of that time" (Lloyd, State Worthies) and Bacon did not fail to cultivate the friendship of those eminent persons who had married

into the same family with himself-Cecil, Hobby, Rowlet, and Killigrew. (Camd. Annal.) By their means he maintained himself at court against even the influence of the favourite, the celebrated earl of Leicester, who having been at one time a papist, and another a puritan, could have little in common with the lord keeper, a protestant of the high church school. In one matter, however, this powerful nobleman succeeded in depriving Bacon, although only for a time, of the confidence of his mistress. At this period the question of the succession to the throne was greatly agitated; some approving of the claim of the house of Suffolk, whilst others supported the title of the queen of Scots. The queen herself, desirous of balancing the factions-a secret, we are told, she learnt from Bacon (Naunton, Frag. Regal.), although it is far more probable that she had inherited it from her father-sometimes inclined to one and sometimes to another. Hales, a clerk of the hanaper, having published a book against queen Mary, the bishop of Ross, the Scottish ambassador, prompted by Leicester, complained of it to the queen. Hales was committed to prison, and Cecil, then secretary of state, desired to investigate the matter further. The result of the investigation was the imprisonment of Lord John Gray, of Pyrgo, in his own house, where he soon died, his friends reported, of the queen's displeasure, but Cecil believed merely of the gout. (Letter from Sec. Cecil to Sir T. Smith. Wright's Queen Elizabeth, vol. i. p. 179.) The lord keeper also was disgraced, it being suspected that he had some share in writing the book. Cecil, we are told by Wood, (Ath. Oxon.) was as much concerned in its authorship,

of

In 1723 was published a work entitled, the Right

Family of the Stuarts exclusive of Mary Queen of

Succession to the Crown of England in the Scots, learnedly asserted and defended by Sir Nicholas Bacon, lord keeper of the great seal, against Sir Anthony Browne, chief justice of the Common Pleas, faithfully published from the original manuscript. An imperfect copy, in manuscript, is to be Whether or no the first of these treatises was writfound in the Harleian Collection (Nos. 537, 555). ten by Sir Anthony Bacon it is not easy to determine. It is obvious, however, that the second against, the claim of the queen of Scots. A manuscript note in the printed copy in the British Museum states that the first treatise was written by Hales, and the second by Sir Anthony Browne. Wood, however, positively declares, that to Sir Anthony Browne's work in support of queen Mary's title, Bacon wrote a reply, and we are unable, therefore, to see upon what grounds it can be positively asserted that, not indeed the second, but the first of these tracts was not from the pen of Sir Nicholas Anthony Browne in this work.

could not, inasmuch as it is in favour of, and not

Bacon. See further on this subject the Life of Sir

46 yet was the matter so wisely laid upon Hales and Bacon that Sir William was kept free, thereby to have the more authority and grace to procure the others' pardon, as he did." It is stated by the same writer, that there was an intention of taking the seals from Bacon, which would have been done if Sir Anthony Browne could have been prevailed on to accept them. As it was, Bacon was forbidden the court, and confined to the business of the chancery. It was with some difficulty that Cecil restored him to the queen's favour, who probably was not, after all, unwilling to be reconciled to him, as, especially in the adjustment of matters connected with the church, she had found his services of great utility. "About this time," says Strype, under the year 1565, "lawyers in most eminent places, were generally favourers of popery" (Annals). This consideration, together with a magnificent entertainment given by Bacon to the queen, at his house at Gorhambury, near St. Alban's, we are told cooperated with Cecil's exertions to place the lord keeper in his former position in Elizabeth's esteem. In 1567 a difference arose between him and the archbishop, who does not appear to have approved of the interference of laymen in church matters, respecting some ecclesiastical appointments which he had either made or sanctioned. Parker remonstrated, by letter, with the lord keeper, who," being a passionate man,' returned for answer a few lines importing that he conceived that now of the archbishop which he thought not to have heard at his hands," and "sent also a hard message by the archbishop's man. Whether or no this breach was healed we have no information.

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On his death-bed (1575), Parker is reported to have written to the queen, inveighing against Bacon and Burghley" as the chief procurers of the spoils of the church." (Strype.) Some judicious friend, it is said, dissuaded him from sending the letter, nor should we have known any thing of the matter but for the officious zeal of Dr. Whitgift. No one showed a more earnest zeal than did Bacon for the efficiency of the clergy, and we find him in 1569 signing an address of the privy council to the archbishop, censuring the negligence of the bishops, and requiring him to institute an examination into the state of his clergy. It was his zeal for the reformation, indeed, which exposed him to the calumnies of the papists. In the next

year was published a libel, addressed to the lieutenants of the county of Worcester, and which professed to emanate from Edinburgh, in which it was asserted that the queen's ministers, the lord keeper, Cecil, Mildmay, and Sadleir, misgoverned the state, and abused the confidence of the sovereign; and that by them and "the paganical pretended bishops" the people were continued "in a state of religion of their own devising, worse than Turkery!"

His hostility to popery, his having been, both in 1568 and in 1571, (Camden, Annal.) appointed to preside in the commission for hearing the differences between the queen of Scots and her subjects, appear to have exposed him to the hatred of the other party. In 1572 he again opened the session of parliament with a speech, in which he, as usual, dwelt chiefly on the state of religion, reprehending the clergy for their negligence, and advising the bishops to exercise a more rigid superintendence

over them.

Of Bacon, it was said by Lloyd. that "he had the deepest reach of any man that was at the council-table," (State Worthies,) and we may believe the fact to have been so from the advice which he addressed to the queen a short time before he died (28th Nov. 1578). He warned her that France, Spain, and Rome were her three great enemies, that they had three ways of annoying, for which, in her turn, she had thres remedies. The means of France was through Scotland; of Spain by the Low Countries; of Rome, by her emissaries in England. The way to withstand France

was

to attach Scotland to England; to meet Spain, was to assist the prince of Orange and the reformed party in the Low Countries; and to defeat the machinations of Rome, those who were hostile to the pope should be encouraged. (Strype, Annals.)

Bacon's health, which had long been indifferent, failed him towards the close of his life. He became exceedingly corpulent, so that the queen used sportively to remark, " My lord keeper's soul lodgeth well.' Walking from Westminster hall to the star-chamber, he would become so much out of breath that counsel forbore addressing him until, by knocking with his staff, he notified that he had recovered himself. (See Burgon's Life of Gresham, vol. ii. p. 485.) His death took place on the 20th of February, 1579. Sir Nicholas Bacon was essentially a man for his time.

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(Master's Hist. Christ. Corp. Coll. by Dr. Lamb, p. 130,) the chapel of which was built chiefly through his assistance. He was twice married; the first time to a daughter of William Ferneley of West Creting, in the county of Suffolk, Esq., by whom he had issue three sons and three daughters: the sons were, 1. Sir Nicholas; 2. Nathaniel; and 3. Edward. The daughters were, 1. Anne; 2. Jane; 3. Elizabeth. He married a second time, Anne, daughter of sir Anthony Cooke, by whom he had Anthony and Francis. a Sir Nicholas Bacon was buried in St. Paul's, where a handsome monument was raised to his memory, with an epitaph, supposed to have been written by the celebrated Buchanan. This was destroyed by the great fire of London in 1666. Holingshed has mentioned Bacon as one of those who have written on the History of England; and Masters mentions in his History of Corpus Christi College, a Commentary on the Twelve Minor Prophets, which he wrote and dedicated to his son Anthony.

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Moderation and firmness were his characteristics; himself a sincere protestant, and warmly attached to the Church of England, he used all his influence to check the misguided zeal of those who used "to thynke," as Cecil observed, "nothing sharp ynough ageynst papists.' (Wright, vol. i. p. 126.) "He neither affected nor attained to greatness; mediocria firma was his principle and practice." (Lloyd.) He died lord keeper, never coveting the title which was, in popular esteem at least, higher-that of lordchancellor. "Give me," he said, " good estate rather than a great one.' He was no lover of "affected despatch;" he would say, "Let us stay a little, that we may have done the sooner.' He is said to have shown a great tenderness for the law in the exercise of his duties in chancery. The following character of him, by his son, gives us all that could be desired. He was "a plain man, direct and constant, without all finesse and doubleness, and one that was of a mind that a man in his private proceedings and estate, and in the proceedings of state, should rest upon the soundness and strength of his own courses, and not upon practice to circumvent others; insomuch that the bishop of Rosse, a subtle and observing man, said of him that he could fasten no words upon him, and that it was impossible to come within him, because he offered no play; and the queen-mother of France, a very politic princess, said of him that he should have been of the council of Spain, because he despised the occurrent and rested upon the first plot." (Observations upon a Libel, &c. Bacon's Works.) As a speaker, he is said to have combined two qualities rarely united; he was at once a witty and a weighty speaker. (Peachum, Complete Gentleman.) He was a lover of learning, as was shown by his munificent donations to the university library of Cambridge, his endowment of six scholarships in Corpus Christi college,

• After he had been in office a short time he obtained from the queen a patent, declaring his authority as lord keeper to be as large as that of any lord chancellor; and, some years afterwards, he declared "that the keeper of the great seal always

procured the passing of the Act 5 Eliz. c. 18, which

had, as of right belonging to his office, the same

authority, jurisdiction, execution of laws, and all

other customs, as the chancellor of England lawfully had." In very ancient times, it is probable that the great seal was often committed to a keeper who had simply its custody, and professed no judicial power whatever. See Lord Ellesmere's Observations on the Court of Chancery, where he speaks of a keeper appointed without oath, and who

could only affix the great seal to a document in the presence of certain masters in chancery.

BACON, (Anthony,) was the fourth son of lord keeper Bacon, and his eldest by his second wife, and was born in the year 1558. He was, as we have elsewhere stated, educated with his brother at Trinity college, Cambridge, under Dr. Whitgift. He applied himself, during his residence at the university, with great assiduity to his studies, although, like his brother, his health was very infirm, deriving from his father the undesirable heritage of the gout. At the age of fourteen he was in danger of losing his sight, and throughout his life was compelled to submit to a strict course of medical discipline. The period when he left the university does not appear to have been ascertained, but it is not probable that he continued longer than did his brother Francis. On the death of his father he became possessed of a considerable estate in Hertfordshire and Middlesex, the rental of which, taken in 1579, shows that he was left in a state actually of affluence. In this year he went upon the continent, and resided for some time in Paris, where, at the request of lord treasurer Burghley, he became acquainted with Dr. William Parry (afterwards executed for an attempt to assassinate the queen) to whom he lent money, and from whom he obtained information useful to the English government. The earl of Leicester, at that time the queen's chief favourite, becoming jealous of the advantages which Burghley obtained in

this way, complained to the queen, but the lord treasurer, in reply, drily assured her majesty that his nephew would suffer neither in conversation or loyalty through his intercourse with Parry. During his residence in Paris, Bacon appears to have corresponded frequently with Sir Francis Walsingham, then secretary of state. In 1581 he appears to have left Paris, as we find him in that year at Bourges in Berri, from whence he removed to Geneva, where he lodged in the house of the celebrated Beza. The next year he left that city for Montpelier, from whence he went to Marseilles, where he was in January. He appears, during his stay there, to have suffered severely from illness, for in a letter he received during his stay in this city, we find his correspondent expressing a hope that he should soon see him "cured in body, mind, and purse."

From Marseilles he went to Bourdeaux, where his attachment to the reformed faith exposed him to considerable annoyance. An English catholic, residing in the town, drew up a memorial to the governor, the marshal de Matignon, which was signed also by two English jesuits, charging Bacon with sheltering and assisting the rebellious Huguenots an accusation which made such impression on some fanatical members of the parliament that they declared Bacon to be worthy of the rack. He was protected by the governor, who treated his accusers with the contempt which they deserved. The visit which he had paid to the king of Navarre (afterwards Henry IV. of France), whose zeal for protestantism had made him obnoxious to the Roman catholics, contributed, without doubt, to Bacon's unpopularity at Bourdeaux. Henry was then residing at Berne, and on his visit there Bacon became acquainted with the distinguished civilian Ďanæus, who conceived so great a regard for him as to dedicate to him several of his works. During his residence at Bourdeaux, one of his friends addressed to him a letter entreating his return "from his voluntary banishment," observing that "they are not the best thought of where they would be that take any delight to absent themselves in foreign parts, especially such as are of quality, and known to have no other cause than their private contentment." (Birch.) There was, in fact, at this time a great jealousy evinced by the English government of its subjects residing in catholic countries, so much so, that in June 1580 a proclamation was

put forth, requiring all persons that had any children, wards or kinsmen, in any parts beyond seas, within ten days to deliver in their names to the ordinaries, and within four months, to send for them home again. (Aikin's Court of Queen Elizabeth.) Bacon, however, was unwilling to return to England, although, being then at Montaubon, he received (Nov. 1686) the queen's command to that effect, through secretary Walsingham.

He became about this time involved in a disagreeable affair with Madame de Mornay, the wife of the celebrated protestant, Seigneur du Plessis Marly. If we may credit the statement of Dr. Birch, who quotes the letters of Bacon himself, this lady was anxious to obtain him as a husband for her daughter, and, indignant at his refusing her advances for that purpose, and still more at his approving of the conduct of one of the pastors who had censured her for "scandalous excess in her head attire," succeeded in breaking off the intimacy which had previously subsisted between Bacon and her hus band. This is said to have involved Bacon in considerable difficulties, from which he was only relieved by an application to the bishop of Cahors, who treated him with the greatest consideration, and, amongst other acts of kindness, lent him 1000 crowns. This benevolent prelate entreated Bacon to interest himself with the lord treasurer on behalf of two priests imprisoned at Westminster - an office that Bacon readily undertook, and chiefly, it is said, in order to enable him to send his servant safely to England, with some information of a very important but dangerous description. The lord treasurer acting, as it appears, on the suggestions of Lady Bacon, whom Madame de Mornay had prejudiced against her son, ininstead of rewarding this messenger imprisoned him for ten months.

By his continued residence on the continent, Bacon aroused the indignation both of his mother and of the lord treasurer. Burghley blamed him for his extravagance, declaring that "he spent like a prince, being but a squire;" but Lady Bacon did not hesitate to call him a traitor to God and his country, and asserted that he had undone her and sought her death, adding that when he should succeed he would get only a hundred pounds more than he was then possessed of. She threatened to obtain the queen's letter to force him home, and trusted that he might be imprisoned on his return. She vowed that she could not

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bear to hear of him-that he was the most hated of all in France, and cursed of God in all his actions. The grounds of this displeasure appear to have been what she afterwards stated, that his extravagance had compelled her to sell all her jewels, and to borrow money of different persons to relieve his necessities. Her anger was also greatly aggravated by his contracting an intimacy with Anthony Standen, then imprisoned at Bourdeaux as a Spanish spy, and for whose liberation he had warmly interested himself. Lady Bacon suspected that Standen, who was an able, subtle, and designing man, had shaken Anthony's faith in the doctrines of the reformation; but, however, he easily satisfied her on that point. In February, 1591, he returned to England, and took up his abode with his brother in Gray's-inn. He managed also to effect a reconciliation with his mother. He joined also the party of Essex, a step which Francis Bacon declares he induced him to take. The statement he has himself given of his motives is, however, the more probable account: "On the one side," he says, coming over, I found nothing but fair words, which make fools fain, and yet even in those no offer or hopeful assurance of real kindness, which I thought I might justly expect at the lord treasurer's hands, who had inned my ten years' harvest into his own barn, without any halfpenny charge." This he said in allusion to the valuable information which he had from time to time transmitted to Burghley from the continent. On the other side, he observed "the rare virtues and perfections" of Essex, "the interest he had worthily in his sovereign's favour," together with his kindness to Francis, and was therefore induced, by the combined motives of admiration, interest, and gratitude, to tender to him his services, which offer was thankfully accepted. His ill health prevented his waiting on the queen when he returned, who, how ever, graciously received his excuses, and spoke of him in terms of high commendation. Early in his career, Essex, in imitation of his step-father, the earl of Leicester, had established correspondences in various countries to obtain such information as might give him weight and importance at the council-table. Unlike Leicester, however, Essex never communicated any of his information to the Cecils, to whose crafty, though prudent policy, he was most decidedly opposed. (J. P. Courte

nay, Life of the Earl of Salisbury. Lives of Brit. Statesm. Cab. Cyc.) In his foreign correspondence he received very considerable assistance from Anthony, who, in the parliament of 1592, in which his brother Francis sat for Middlesex, sat himself for Wallingford, but appears to have devoted himself almost exclusively to foreign politics, and to maintaining an epistolary intercourse with his friends on the continent. Amongst these was the celebrated Beza, who had dedicated a book to Lady Bacon, and to whom Anthony sent in his own name and that of his mother, a gift worth one hundred marks, some compliment of the kind being, it seems, expected by the learned reformer. In the year 1595 he took up his residence in Essex-house in order that he might, with the greater convenience, assist his munificent patron with his advice whenever it should be required. So highly was his influence with the earl estimated, that in 1596 he received a letter from Henry IV. of France, entreating his interest with Essex; the duke de Bouillon appears also to have cultivated his friendship, and probably for the same reason. There is an anecdote related of Bacon by Sir Henry Wotton, which cannot be omitted from this memoir, although we concur with most preceding biographers in questioning its authenticity. "The earl of Essex," says he, "had accommodated Master Anthony Bacon in a partition in his house, and had assigned to him a noble entertainment. This was a gentleman of impotent feet, but a nimble head, and through his hands run all the intelligences with Scotland, who being of a provident nature, and well knowing the advantage of a dangerous secret, would many times cunningly let fall some words as if he could amend his fortunes under the Cecilians, and who had made (as he was not unwilling should be believed) some great proffers to win him away; which, once or twice, he pressed so far, and with such tokens and signs of apparent discontent to my lord Henry Howard (who was of the party, and stood himself in much umbrage with the queen), that he flies presently to my lord of Essex (with whom he was commonly primæ admissionis by his bedside in the morning) and tells him that unless that gentleman were satisfied with a round sum all would be vented. This took the earl at that time ill provided, whereupon he was fain suddenly to give him Essex-house, which the good old Lady Walsingham did after

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