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 Bacon can be entrusted to an official body organised for the purpose. If Bacon had been allowed to carry out his scheme, it would probably have been found that officialism would have smothered scientific inquiry. At all events, he reached a somewhat similar result in politics. He had improved the official organisation of the state only to find it useless for all good purposes in his hands.

Even before his elevation Bacon learned how little his advice was likely to be followed on the great question of the day. On 2 March 1617 James announced to a body of commissioners, of whom Bacon was one, that he had practically accepted the terms offered by Spain for a marriage between Prince Charles and the Infanta Maria. To this declaration the commissioners replied on the 7th, giving a somewhat hesitating assent, and on the 23rd Bacon proposed certain additional instructions for Sir John Digby, who was going as ambassador to Spain, suggesting that the alliance between Spain and England might be used to establish a court of arbitration between christian princes, and to head a general defensive war against the Turks. Among all Bacon's state papers there is none more characteristic of his habit of making the best of a disagreeable situation. Regarding, as he did, the Spanish alliance as not only bad in itself, but as fatal to the good understanding which he wished to see established between king and parliament, he was yet able to sit down coolly to ask whether any advantage could be reaped even from what appeared to him to be a policy fraught with disaster.

It is only the extraordinarily unemotional character of Bacon's mind which made it possible for him to act as he did during the next four years. He had not long been lord keeper before he learned how far Buckingham — for by that name Villiers was now known — fell short of the ideal of a favourite. While the court was absent in Scotland a marriage was agreed on between Buckingham's brother, Sir John Villiers, and Frances Coke, the daughter of the late chief justice. Bacon saw in the project, what it no doubt really was, an attempt once more to ingratiate Coke with the king. He accordingly took part with the young lady's mother, who opposed the match, and wrote to James to protest against it. He found that Buckingham was warmly interested in the project, and was not only angry himself, but made James angry with the lord keeper's interference. Buckingham talked of Bacon as showing the same ingratitude to himself which he had formerly shown to Essex and Somerset. It was only by the most profuse apologies that Bacon made good his imperilled position. The political danger which he feared was indeed averted, and Coke was no nearer to restoration to the bench than he was before, but Bacon learned a lesson regarding the manner in which Buckingham was to be approached. That Buckingham demanded obsequiousness and flattery was as much a fact as that James wished to ally himself with Spain, and Bacon was as ready to take account of one of these facts as he was of the other.

For the time he had his reward. On 7 Jan. 1618 he became lord chancellor, and on 12 July he was raised to the peerage as Baron Verulam. During the whole of Elizabeth's reign no one had borne the title of lord chancellor, and no lord keeper had been made a peer.

Bacon was obliged mainly to content himself with judicial work. On 8 June 1617, three months after he had taken his seat in chancery, he had cleared off all the arrears of business in that court. As far as we know, his justice was, on the whole, as exemplary as his energy. Not only were no complaints heard at the time, which may easily be accounted for, but in later years, when every man's mouth was opened against him, no successful attempt was made to reverse his decisions. Yet even in his court he was made to feel the weight of the favourite's patronage, and was exposed to a constant flow of letters from Buckingham asking him to show favour to this person or to that, of course under the reservation that he would do so only so far as was consonant with justice. One of the cases in which Buckingham's favour was invoked has recently been subjected to a searching criticism by Mr. D. D. Heath (, vii. app. i.). A certain Dr. Steward appealed to Buckingham against a decision pronounced by Bacon in favour of Steward's nephew, and Bacon, instead of openly maintaining the justice of his own decision or openly acknowledging his mistake, allowed the affair to be settled by arbitration. As there is no record of the decision of the arbitrators, it has been presumed that the young man abandoned his case, as knowing that the decision was likely to go against him on other grounds than those which would have availed him before a just and competent tribunal. If this is a correct representation of the matter — and it seems probable, though far from absolutely certain, that it was so — Bacon's conduct was distinctly blameworthy, though the appointment of arbitrators may have veiled for him the real nature of the offence, which consisted in transferring to others the responsibility which should have been borne by himself alone.