Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/358

 Bacon 

Of judicial matters outside the court of Chancery the most notable with which Bacon was concerned were the prosecution of Raleigh [see ] in 1618, of Suffolk in 1619, and of Yelverton [see ] in 1620. In the first two of these cases Bacon's feelings, as well as his official duty, were enlisted on the side of the court. Raleigh was to him an unscrupulous pirate, and Suffolk [see ] an unscrupulous peculator. Yelverton's case was somewhat different. He had, through inadvertence, given his assent to a charter for the city of London which contained larger powers than he was warranted to allow. Bacon urged strongly that carelessness was an offence of presumption, and contributed to the passing of a heavy sentence.

Looked at from the point of view of a guardian of official duty, the sentence on Yelverton might easily be justified. What did not appear in court was that Buckingham was hostile to Yelverton. That hostility arose out of a series of transactions in which Bacon also was involved. Though Elizabeth at the end of her reign, and James at the beginning of his, abolished the greater number of the existing monopolies, the future issue of similar grants was not regulated by statutelaw. By degrees many new patents were issued, conveying to certain persons the sole right of manufacturing various articles, sometimes in cases where the patentees were the actual inventors of some new process of manufacture, but frequently where public policy, as then understood, demanded that the manufacture should be placed in the hands of persons who might be accountable for the production of the various articles in accordance with the ideas of the government. In this way a patent was issued for the manufacture of glass, because the patentees offered to use coal instead of wood, so as to spare the timber of the realm; whilst another patent protected the manufacture of gold and silver lace, because the patentees offered to use bullion imported from abroad instead of bullion within the realm, which, according to the economical ideas of the day, constituted the wealth of the country. Besides these patents of monopoly there were also commissions issued for the regulating of inns and alehouses. There is every reason to suppose that Bacon was in favour of these patents, and there was nothing in them which might not have been expected to commend itself to the ideas of the age.

Various circumstances, however, concurred to render these patents unpopular. In the first place the government was itself unpopular at the time, and when it was known that some payments out of the proceeds were reserved for Buckingham's kinsmen and followers it was suspected that the whole affair had been arranged for the purpose of bringing money to Buckingham. In the second place, some of the grants had been supported against competitors in violation of the law, and there was a growing feeling that the prerogative of the sovereign had lately been made to override the law more than had been the case before. Bacon, therefore, when the summoning of a new parliament was announced, knowing as he did what was the state of public opinion on the subject, recommended the withdrawal of the most obnoxious patents. In his most characteristic style he announced to Buckingham what he had done. 'The king,' he wrote, 'did wisely put it upon a consult, whether the patents which we mentioned in our joint letter were at this time to be removed by act of council before parliament. I opined (but yet somewhat like Ovid's mistress, that strove, but yet as one that would be over-comen) that yes.' Bacon's habit of suiting at least the mode in which he expressed his thoughts to the pleasure of those in power, never found a stronger expression.

The summoning of parliament itself was all that Bacon wished. The king was at last appealing to the nation for assistance in the defence of the Palatinate; and whether that policy were right or wrong, there can be no doubt that Bacon believed it to be thoroughly right, not only in itself, but as bringing forward a question on which the king could sympathise with his people. Once more, however, Bacon was disappointed. James hesitated, asked for money to prepare for war, and announced his intention of making a fresh diplomatic effort, which would enable him to avoid war. The commons were puzzled, offered him two subsidies in token of their goodwill, and waited to see in what his diplomacy might end.

It looked very much as if the slight gleam of hope which had shone upon that foreign policy which, in Bacon's mind, was so closely connected with his home policy, would die away. Of his personal position he never felt more assured than when parliament was opened. On 12 Oct. 1620 he published the 'Novum Organum.' On 22 Jan. 1621 he had kept his sixtieth birthday at York House, and received the homage of Ben Jonson as one

Whose even thread the fates spin round and full Out of their choicest and their whitest wool.

On 27 Jan. he was raised a step in the peerage, and became Viscount St. Albans. Nor had he reason to suspect that the new House of Commons, which met on 30 Jan., would be