their muster-roll of Founders the not less noble name of Francis Bacon. Will the day come, when, dropping such feeble names as Troy and Syracuse, the people of the Great Republic will give the august and immortal name of Bacon to one of their splendid cities? 11. The session of 1610 shows Bacon in a characteristic scene. VIII. 10. 1609. May 23. 1610. Bound by the traditions of his place to support April. the King's measures in the House of Commons, when the session opens, with a freedom which surprises the King's friends, and which Coke and Doderidge have never dared to take, he both speaks and votes against the superior law-officers of the Crown. The List of Grievances has at length been shaped into a proposition, and laid before the House. This Great Contract, as the people call it, offers to buy from the Crown, either for a fixed sum of money to be paid down or for a yearly rental, certain rights and dues inherited by the King from feudal times, which the change of manners and the refinements of society have made abominable to rich and educated men. Escutage, Knight-service, Wardship of the body, Marriage of heirs and of widows, Respite of homage, Premier seizin, every knight and squire in the land longs to suppress, as things which yield the King an uncertain income, but cover themselves with a certain shame. A group of feudal tenures which concern the dignity of the Crown, such as Serjeantry, Homage, Fealty, Wardship of land, and Livery, they propose to modify, so as to satisfy just complaints while preserving to the King all services of honour and ceremonial rite. Aids to the King they limit in amount; suits, heriots, and escheats they leave untouched; monopolies for the sale of 11. Add. MSS., 11, 695; Lords' Journals, ii. 574. 11. VIII. wines, for the licensing of inns, for the importation of coal, they abrogate. In lieu of these reliefs, they offer the King one hundred thousand pounds a year. 1610. Why April. 12. At first James will not listen. The terms of such a contract touch, he says, his honour. These privileges may be of no moment to the Crown; to part with them may neither lower its dignity nor abate its pride; yet why should he be asked to part with them? Elizabeth had them. All the Plantagenets, all the Tudors had them. should the first of the Stuarts strip his Crown of privileges held by his predecessors for five hundred years? But James is not true to his own folly. To resist a sale of the rags and dust of feudal power, if done on the ground of conscience, would to many seem respectable, to some heroic; but the offer of a hundred thousand pounds a year tempts a man dogged by duns to compromise with his sense of right. He lends his ear; he hints his willingness to treat. Will the Commons give a little more? Will they take a little less? If so, he will hear them; if not, not. Cecil asks Fleming and Coke to declare whether James can lawfully sell the burthens on tenures, yet preserve to his Crown the tenures themselves. 13. The chance of hurting Bacon, who pleads in office, as he always spoke when out of office, for the full surrender of these feudal dues, is too much for Coke. Their feud has, indeed, grown fiercer as they have grown in years, flashing out even in the courts of law. "The less you speak of your own greatness," says Bacon in open court, "the more I shall think of it, and the more, the less." As Bacon contends that a sale of the burthens on tenures is in fact a 12. Add. MSS., 11, 695; Com. Jour., i. 419, 420. DEBATE ON FEUDAL TENURES. 173 sale of the tenures, Coke answers Cecil that the King may, if it shall please him, sell the burthens, yet keep the tenures intact. James therefore sends to tell the Commons that he will sell to them for six hundred thousand VIII. 13. 1610. pounds paid down, and a rental of two hundred thousand April. pounds a year, his rights of marriage, wardship, premier seizin, respite of homage and reliefs. 14. In these debates, the Solicitor-General, brushing away the distinctions of Coke and Fleming, urges on the House of Commons and on the Crown the wisdom of abolishing these feudal tenures both in name and fact. Tenures in capite and by knight-service, he says, have lost their virtue. When the Sovereign summoned his liegemen to the field, Reason might have cried-Hold fast all tenures which augment the national force! But the King no longer leads his armies in the field or calls his vassals round his flag; war has grown into a science, arms into a profession; if an enemy should appear at Dover or Berwick, no man would now wait for the King's tenant to strike. In the musters for defence, holders in soccage stand foot to foot with holders by knight-service. In feudal ages the tenures meant defence; but the usage and the idea has alike gone by; and tenures no longer represent either force, honour, or obedience. 15. Bacon pleads so well that after warm debates the July 23. King consents to reduce his demands, the House of Commons to raise their price. The two powers draw nearer to each other, and a happy resolution seems about to cleanse away some of the very worst abuses of the feudal state. 14. Bacon's Speech, April, 1610; Lords' Jour., ii. 580. 15. King's Proclamation, Dec. 31, 1610; Add. MSS., 11, 695; Lords' Jour., ii. 666-86; Statutes of the Realm, iv. 1207. VIII. For two hundred thousand pounds a year the Crown agrees to renounce for ever these feudal rights. 15. 1610. How this Great Contract comes to an abrupt and July 23. ignominious end, how King and Commons wrangle over the Book of Rates, and how a session that began so prosperously closes in open strife between the people and their prince, not a single bill receiving the royal signature, all this, though full of constitutional, and even of romantic interest, is a tale for the historian of England, not for the critic of Bacon's life. 1612. May. 16. So long as his kinsman Cecil lives, Bacon sees no hope of rising in the world. In May, 1612, the Earl of Salisbury, Lord Treasurer of England, premier Secretary of State, and Master of the Court of Wards, worn out by fag of brain not less than by disease of blood, dies, and a burst of gladness breaks over court and country at the news. His companions of the Privy Council traduce his fame, his tenants at Hatfield attack his park. Of all men living, the cousin he so deeply hurt is the least unjust. In an edition of the Essays, now in the press, Bacon paints him to the life: every one knows the portrait; yet no one can pronounce this picture of a small shrewd man of the world, a clerk in soul, without a spark of fire, a dash of generosity in his nature, unfair or even unkind. The spirit of it runs in a famous anecdote. "Now tell me truly," says the King, "what think you of your cousin that is gone?" Sir," answers Bacon, "since your Majesty charges me, I'll give you such a character of him as if I were to write his story. I do think he was no fit councillor to make your affairs better. But yet he was fit to have kept them from growing worse." 66 16. Bacon's Essays, xliv.; Apophthegms, Works, vii. 175. APPLIES FOR THE COURT OF WARDS. 175 "On my so'l, man!" says James, "in the first thou VIII. speakest like a true man, in the second like a kinsman." The 17. From the day of Cecil's death his prospects, clouded till now, begin to clear. If promotion pauses, it is only because the crowds of suitors perplex the King. Carr and Northampton claim the Treasurer's staff. Everybody begs the Court of Wards and Liveries. Sir Thomas Lake, Sir Henry Wotton, Sir Ralph Winwood, Sir Henry Neville, each aspires to the rank of Secretary of State. patriots put up Bacon's name for this great office, and shrewd observers fancy him nigh success. Poor James, unable to decide, hankering, though afraid, to make Carr his chief minister, puts the Treasury into commission for six months, gives the Wards to Carew, and startles the gossips of Whitehall by announcing that, instead of employing either Bacon or Wotton, Winwood or Lake, he means for the future to be his own Secretary of State. 18. Carew dying suddenly six months after his nomination, Bacon applies for the Court of Wards. His pay as Solicitor-General is only seventy pounds a-year. Promised for his service to the Crown a place of profit, he points out in a letter to Carr that the Court of Wards is one for a lawyer rather than a courtier to hold. BACON TO LORD ROCHESTER. IT MAY PLEASE YOUR GOOD Lordship, Nov. 14, 1612. This Mastership of the Wards is like a mist-sometimes it goeth upwards and sometimes it falleth downwards. If it go up to great lords, then it is as it was at the first, 17. Chamberlain to Carleton, Nov. 26, 1612, S. P. O. 18. Bacon to Carr, Nov. 14, 1612, S. P. O.; Lake to Carleton, Nov. 19, 1612, Venetian MSS., S. P. O. 16. 1612. May. Νον. |