part of her prerogative, and maintained that if her grantees and patentees abused her favors, she should be appealed to by the House, in the form of a petition:

"The use hath been ever by petition," he said, “to humble ourselves to Her Majesty, and by petition to desire to have our grievances redressed; especially when the remedy toucheth her so nigh in point of prerogative.

I

say, and I say again, that we ought not to deal, or judge, or meddle with Her Majesty's prerogative."

The prerogative which Bacon defended was born of the times when English liberty lay smothered in the ashes of the War of the Roses.

"With the closing years of his [Edward IV.] reign," says a recent popular and philosophical writer, "the monarchy took a new color. The introduction of an elaborate spy system, the use of the rack and the practice of interference with the purity of justice, gave the first signs of an arbitrary rule which the Tudors were to develop. It was on his creation of a new financial system that the King laid the foundation of a despotic rule. Sums were extorted

from the clergy; monopolies were sold.”*

It will be seen, not only from this instance, but from others which will appear as the scroll of Bacon's life is unrolled, that as a law-reformer he did not deal with the great questions which involved collision between crown and people, out of which sprang some new principle of freedom, or which emitted sparks that kindled after-glows upon the altar of constitutional

* Green's Hist. Eng. Peop., Vol. II., p. 51.

liberty. Unlike the martyr upon this shrine in the reign of Henry VIII., Sir Thomas More,

"He ne'er with patriot fires had warmed his youth,

Or staked existence on a single truth."

And if the reader finds his moral instincts blunted for the instant by the brilliancy of Bacon's intellect, he can take no surer guide to lead him back to paths of courageous honesty than the man whose life, as well as pen, set example for future ages:

"There will never be wanting some pretense for deciding in the King's favor," wrote More, "as, that equity is on his side, or the strict letter of the law, or some forced interpretation of it; or, if none of these, that the royal prerogative ought, with conscientious judges, to outweigh all other considerations."

The committees who were to give, in some form, an expression to the grievance of the people, delayed reporting to the Commons, and the Queen, anticipating their action and wish, announced that she had given orders to have some of the abuses reformed, others were to be revoked, and all were to be suspended for examination and report.

An enthusiastic, grateful and loyal Commons then greeted their great Queen for the last time.

Bacon's services in this parliament, upon the heel of his services at the trial of Essex, supplementing, also, the devotion of his pen to the Queen, deserved some special recognition for their earnestness alone, even if they had not been valuable, which, however, they must have been. Yet he continued on his unrewarded course, volunteering elaborately-written advice to his

cousin, Sir Robert Cecil, now chief adviser of the Queen and anxious candidate for the same place under him who was to be her successor.

Elizabeth was old, and her strength began to yield to time and the anxieties which were incident to a reign unparalleled in so many respects. It only needed some acute illness to irritate her bad temper and excite her stubborn will. She had survived the great men who surrounded her throne at her accession. When Burghley yielded to age and disease, she lost the service of one of the wisest and most conservative statesmen that had ever stood by a monarch's side. His son was his successor, but could not be his substitute. He was impregnated by education with his father's ideas and policy, and endeavored to walk in the same path; but, in the forcible words of Bacon, "As, in Egypt, the seven good years sustained the seven bad, so governments, for a time well grounded, do bear out errors following." The policy of Burghley ran through the entire reign of Elizabeth, and overlapping into the early part of that of James, sustained for a time the station of England among her contemporaries.

Elizabeth, declining all medical aid, grew worse day by day, and yielding to a settled melancholy, faded rapidly away. In three weeks from her attack she reached the border, and on the 24th day of March, 1603, crossed over to join the spirits of her beautiful young rival and handsome young favorite, whose deathwarrant she had signed.

At the time of the Queen's death Bacon was fiftythree years of age. As he stood by her bier he must

* Advancement of Learning. Vol. II., 257.

have reflected how long and anxiously he had sought her favor and smile, what sacrifices he had made in vain, what slight recognitions she had given of his ability and ardor! And yet her death came when he was highest in her good graces; a little time might have crowned his long waiting. Now that she was gone, and he was brought face to face with the waste of precious moments, the opportunity was offered for retirement from a stage which held out no encouragements to the society of that divine philosophy which never ceased to be his first love, although he had so often turned his back upon her and closed his ears to her voice. But the breath was hardly out of the body of Bacon's "most gracious mistress" before he sent a skirmish line of propitiatory letters to meet his most gracious master, who, with a Scotch mob at his heels, was heading for the throne of England