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PREFACE.
xxxiii


The marriage of the Princess, which had been postponed in consequence of her brother’s death, took place on the 14th ot February, 1612-13, and a masque was given as an entertainment in honour of the event by the gentlemen of Gray’s Inn and the Inner Temple. Bacon was the contriver of the device, which represented the marriage of the Thames and the Rhine. It was a work to which he was not new, and his Essay ‘Of Masques and Triumphs’ shows that he took interest in it.

The Mastership of the Wards had again been vacant by the death of Sir George Carey, 13th November, 1612, and ‘Sir Francis Bacon certainly expecting the place, had put most of his men into new cloaks. Afterward when Sir Walter Cope carried the place, one said merrily that Sir Walter was Master of the Wards and Sir Francis Bacon of the Liveries.’ (Rawley.) As before, he might say sic nos non nobis. But the promotion for which he had almost served an apprenticeship was not long in coming. The death of Sir Thomas Fleming, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, on the 7th of August, 1613, brought about a change. Sir Edward Coke, who had hitherto been Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, became Chief Justice of England and a Privy Councillor; Hobart was put in his place, and Bacon succeeded Hobart as Attorney General on the 26th of October. For effecting this change, though Bacon himself attributed it to the King, the Court favourite, Somerset, wished to appropriate some credit, and it was apparently with the view of releasing himself from the implied obligation, that Bacon took the whole charge of preparing a masque, which was given by Gray’s Inn in honour of the marriage of Somerset to the divorced Countess of Essex.

The first professional work in which he was engaged after his appointment, was the delivery of a charge in the Star- Chamber concerning duels, on the 26th January, 1613-4. But there were two cases with which his name has been associated, and upon the telling of which much of the impression in modern times with regard to his character depends, These were the cases of St. John and Peacham. The charge against


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