of advice to Villiers, such as is not usually given in courts, but of a strain equally free and friendly, calculated to make the person to whom it was addressed both good and great, and equally honourable to the giver and the receiver: advice which contributed not a little to his prosperity in life. It is an essay on the following subjects: (a)

1. Matters that concern religion, and the church and churchmen.

2. Matters concerning justice, and the laws, and the professors thereof.

3. Councillors, and the council table, and the great offices and officers of the kingdom.

4. Foreign negociations and embassies.

5. Peace and war, both foreign and civil, and in that the navy and forts, and what belongs to them.

6. Trade at home and abroad.

7. Colonies, or foreign plantations.

8. The court and curiality.

Each of these subjects he explains, with a minuteness scarcely to be conceived, except by the admirers of his works, who well know his extensive and minute survey of every subject to which he directed his attention. (b)

(a) See vol. vi. p. 400.

(b) From the following analysis, some conception of his vigilance may be formed:

1st, General advice as to Suitors.

I. Religion.

1. Protestant religion. 2. Doctrine. 3. Church discipline; its attention. 4. Catholics. 5. Archbishops and Bishops. 6. Deans, Canons, &c. 7. Clergy. 8. Dissenters. 9. Ceremonies. 10. Vicars, Clergy. 11. Preservation of revenue of church. 12. Universities. II. Justice.

1. The Law of the land. 2. Resistance to arbitrary power. 3. The Judges. 4. Of private application to them. 5. On the circuits. 6. Their duties. 7. Charges to them by the Chancellor. 8. Public and private.

In the beginning of the year 1613 Sir Thomas Overbury was poisoned in the Tower by one Weston, of which crime he was convicted, received sentence of death, and was exe

9. Not to being hurried from term to term. 10. Attendance of sheriffs. 11. Suing to be a judge. 12. Advancing puisne judges. 13. Serjeants at law. 14. King's counsel. 15. Provincial attorneys: of the court of Wards. 16. Of the duchy of Lancaster. 17. Welsh Judge. 18. Limitation of jurisdiction. 19. Ministers of justice. 20, 21. Sheriffs, their election. 22. Lord lieutenants. 23. Justices of the peace. 24. Their nomination. 25. The moderation of justice. 26. Lenity and severity. 27. Court of Parliament. 28. Its institution. 29. Its duties. 30. Legislature. 31. Its judicial power. 32. The House of Commons. 33. The use of parliaments. 34. Ecclesiastical law.

III. Councillors of State and Great Officers of the Kingdom.

1. Different sorts. 2. Privy council. 3, 4. Their election. 5. Their number. 6. Their duties. 7. Impropriety of hasty expression of opinion. 8. Impropriety of hasty decision. 9. The King's presence. 10. Secretary. 11. Not to interfere in private causes. 12. Clerks of council. 13. Great officers. 14. From all professions.

IV. Negociations, Embassies, &c.

1. Queen Elizabeth did vary, according to the nature of the employment, the quality of the persons she employed. 2. An embassy of gratulation or ceremony, some noble person, eminent in place and able in purse. 3. An embassy of weight, concerning affairs of state, choice of some person of known judgment, wisdom, and experience; and not of a young man not weighed in state matters, nor of a mere formal man. 4. Young noblemen or gentlemen, as assistants. 5. Grave men, skilful in the civil laws and languages, conversant in courts. 6. Negociation about merchants' affairs, doctors of the civil law. 7. Lieger ambassadors or agents, vigilant, industrious, and discreet men, and had the language of the place. 8. Their care to give timely intelligence of occurrences. 9. Their charge. 10. Their general instructions in writing, and private instructions. 11. There were sent forth young men of good hopes, to be trained up: this course I shall recommend unto you, to breed up a nursery of public plants.

v. Peace and War. I in my own disposition and profession am wholly

for peace.

1. I shall not need to persuade you to the advancing of it, nor the King your master. 2. God is the God of peace. 3. Justice is the best protector of it, and providence for war is the best prevention. 4. Wars.

cuted. In the progress of the trial suspicions having been excited against the Earl and Countess of Somerset, as having been deeply concerned in this barbarous act; their

5. War of invasion. 6. Be always prepared. 7. The navy. 8,9. Tackling, sails, and cordage. 10. True art of building of ships. 11. Powder and ammunition. 12. With mariners and seamen. 13. Sea captains and commanders, and other officers. 14. Amity and alliance with the Hollanders. 15. Scotland. 16. Civil war. 17. Competition to the crown. 18, 19, 20. A king to have a convenient stock of treasure. 21. Magazine of all sorts. 22. Expert and able commanders. 23. Governing military affairs in times of peace. 24. The faithful, the traitorous, the neutrals.

VI. Trade.

1. The home trade. 2. Improve lands. 3. Planting of orchards. 4. Gardens. 5. Hop-yards. 6. Planting and preserving woods. 7. Draining of drowned lands. 8. Dairies. 9. Land gained from forests and chases; due care that the poor commoners have no injury. 10. The making navigable rivers. 11. The planting of hemp and flax. 12. Linen cloth or cordage. 13. Wools and leather. 14. Costly laces. 15. The breeding of cattle. 16. The minerals of the kingdom. 17. Fishing. 18. Merchandise in foreign parts. 19. Returns in solid commodities. 20. Monopolies. 21. Commission for the managing of these.

VII. Colonies.

1. Choice of the place. 2. Colonies raised by leave of the King, not by command. 3. Fit governor. 4. Dependency upon the crown of England. 5. General, the common law of England; when plantation settled, courts of justice as in England. 6. Assistance of some able and military man. 7. The discipline of the church. 8. One continent. 9. Houses; plant. 10. Woods; minerals. 11. Build vessels and ships. 12. Wicked person nor suffered to go into those countries. 13. No merchant suffered to work upon their necessities. 14. Subordinate council. 15. The King's profit.

VIII. Court and Curiality.

1. The King must be exemplary. 2. But your greatest care must be, that the great men of his court, for you must give me leave to be plain with you, for so is your injunction laid upon me, yourself in the first place, who are first in the eye of all men, give no just cause of scandal, either by light, or vain, or by oppressive carriage. 3. The great officers of the King. 4. Ministerial officers. 5. Leave the ordering of household affairs to the white staffs. 6. Green-cloth. 7. His majesty's own table. 8. Preserve

injudicious friends, by endeavouring to circulate a report that these suspicions were but an artifice to ruin that nobleman, the King commanded the Attorney General to prosecute in the Star Chamber Mr. Lumsden, a gentleman of good family in Scotland, Sir John Hollis, afterwards Earl of Clare, and Sir John Wentworth, who were convicted and severely punished. The speech of Bacon upon this trial is fortunately preserved. (a)

Shortly after this investigation, so many circumstances transpired, all tending to implicate the Earl and Countess of Somerset, and so great an excitement prevailed through the whole country, that the King determined to bring these great offenders to trial; a resolution which he could not have formed without the most painful struggle between his duty to the public and his anxiety to protect his fallen favourite. His sense of duty as the dispenser of justice prevailed. Previous to the trial, which took place May 1616, the same course of private consultation with the judges was pursued, and the King caused it to be privately intimated to Somerset, that it would be his own fault if favour was not extended to him: (b) favour which was encouraged by Bacon, in a letter to the King, in which he says, "The great downfall of so great persons carrieth in itself a heavy judgment, and a kind of civil death, although their lives should not be taken. All which may satisfy honour for sparing their lives."

In his speech upon the trial (c) Bacon gave a clear and circumstantial account of the whole conspiracy against

the revenues of crown; empty coffers give an ill sound. 9. Forfeitures. 10. Pastimes and disports, when there is a queen and ladies. 11. But for the King and Prince. 12. Dice and cards.

(a) Vol. vi. p. 154.

(b) See letter of April 28, 1616, from Bacon to Villiers, vol. vi. p. 223 (c) See vol. vi. p. 235.

Overbury, describing the various practices against his life; but though he fully and fairly executed his duty as Attorney General, it was without malice or harshness, availing himself of an opportunity, of which he never lost sight, to recommend mercy; (b) and though the friends of the new favourite were supposed to have been deeply interested in the downfall of Somerset, and accused of secretly working his ruin, Bacon gained great honour in the opinions of all men, by his impartial, and yet merciful treatment of a man (c) whom in his prosperity he had shunned and despised.

1615.

Early in this year a dispute which occasioned considerable agitation, arose between the Court of Chancery and Æt. 55.

(b) My lords, this is now the second time within the space of thirteen years reign of our happy sovereign, that this high tribunal-seat of justice, ordained for the trial by peers, hath been opened and erected; and that, with a rare event, supplied and exercised by one and the same person, which is a great honour to you, my Lord Steward.

"In all this meantime the King hath reigned in his white robe, not sprinkled with any drop of blood of any of his nobles of this kingdom. Nay, such have been the depths of his mercy, as even those noblemen's bloods, against whom the proceeding was at Winchester, Cobham and Grey, were attainted and corrupted, but not spilt or taken away; but that they remained rather spectacles of justice in their continual imprisonment, than monuments of justice in the memory of their suffering.

"I am very glad to hear this unfortunate lady doth take this course, to confess fully and freely, and thereby to give glory to God and to justice. It is, as I may term it, the nobleness of an offender to confess: and therefore those meaner persons, upon whom justice passed before, confessed not; she doth. I know your lordships cannot behold her without compassion; many things may move you, her youth, her person, her sex, her noble family; yea, her provocations, if I should enter into the cause itself, and furies about her; but chiefly her penitency and confession. But justice is the work of this day; the mercy-seat was in the inner part of the temple; the throne is public. But since this lady hath by her confession prevented my evidence, and your verdict, and that this day's labour is eased: there resteth, in the legal proceeding, but for me to pray that her confession may be recorded, and judgment thereupon."

(c) Biographia Brit. 469, art. Bacon.