Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/379

Bacon taught civil law, Latin, and French. Some of the students were to be attached to foreign embassies, and others were to compile histories of official transactions. But the proposal met with little favour, and the monastic estates were distributed among the king's friends. Bacon himself secured a share of the spoils. Lands in Hertfordshire, Norfolk, Wilts, and Hampshire, belonging to the monasteries of St. Albans, Walsingham, and Thetford, and to the unfortunate Countess of Salisbury, who had been executed in 1541, were bestowed upon him in 1543 and 1544. Redgrave Park, Suffolk, one of these estates, he exchanged in the latter year with the king for the manors and woods of Great Holland, Essex, and of Redgrave, Botesdale, and Gillingham, Suffolk, all of which had been the property of the abbey of Bury St. Edmunds. Other lands in Suffolk, Bedfordshire, and London and Westminster fell to him towards the end of the same year (1544) and in May 1545. In December 1544 he obtained a thirty years' lease of the rectory of Burwell St. Mary, Cambridgeshire. In 1545 he was made attorney of the court of wards and liveries, an office in which he was continued by Edward VI in the following year. In February 1547-8 he was one of the commissioners to survey the suppressed colleges in Norfolk and Suffolk. In 1550 he became a bencher of Gray's Inn; and in the same year he was granted by the king a pension of 5l. as a 'studeant at the lawe' (Trevelyan Papers, Camden Soc, passim). He purchased the famous estate of Gorhambury, near St. Albans, in 1550. On 24 Oct. 1552 he was chosen treasurer of his inn, and a few months later he obtained from Edward VI a charter of incorporation for the town of St. Albans, of which he was afterwards nominated high steward ( St. Albans, p. 481).

Under Mary, Bacon retained his office in the court of wards, and, in spite of his protestantism, escaped persecution. The only restriction placed upon Bacon by the queen's advisers was a prohibition against his leaving England; it was feared that he might enter into dangerous relations with protestant exiles. He was at the time in continual intercourse with his old friend Sir William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burghley, who had married a sister of Bacon's second wife, and in 1557 the friends interchanged visits at their country houses at Redgrave and Burghley respectively.

The accession of Elizabeth brought Bacon into active political life. Cecil was at once created secretary of state, and Bacon, possibly through Cecil's influence, received at Somerset House on 22 Dec. 1558 the post of lord keeper of the great seal (in the place of lord chancellor Heath). He was afterwards admitted to the privy council and knighted. One of the first duties of his new office was to communicate to his friend Parker the news of his appointment—chiefly at his own recommendation—to the archbishopric of Canterbury, and the queen was content for many years following to leave 'the ordering of church matters for the most part' in the hands of Bacon and Cecil. The reformed religion largely benefited by this arrangement. On 25 Jan. 1558-9, Elizabeth opened her first parliament. Bacon, who by virtue of his office presided in the House of Lords, explained in her presence to the two houses the causes of their assembling, and procured an act for the recognition of the queen's title ( Journals, ii.). On 31 March, Bacon, with Heath, archbishop of York, presided over a public disputation at Westminster between champions of protestantism and Catholicism. The meeting continued till 3 April, when Sir Nicholas was compelled to dissolve the assembly by the refusal of the catholics to begin the discussion. At first the lord keeper sought to conciliate the disputants by 'words of amity and office,' but he was ultimately roused to anger by the obstinacy of the catholics, and 'at his departure said, "Seeing you are not willing that we should heare you, it is likely that shortly you shall heare of us"' ( Annals (Camden Soc), pp. 22-3). Two of the disputants. White, bishop of Winchester, and Watson, bishop of Lincoln, were sent to prison, and the rest had to enter into their recognisances to remain in London, and to appear again when summoned. On 14 April 1559 letters patent were issued authorising Bacon, as keeper of the great seal, to hear causes in chancery, and to exercise the full jurisdiction of lord chancellor (Egerton Papers (Camd. Soc), p. 29).

Before 1559 closed, Bacon had shown himself a statesman of no ordinary ability. Cecil was anxious that the queen should aid the Scotch protestants, who were in rebellion against their catholic sovereign, Mary Stuart, and her French friends. The failure of this warlike proposal was mainly due to Bacon's opposition. On 15 Dec. 1559, while addressing the House of Lords on the subject, he forcibly described the impoverished condition of the country, the doubtful wisdom of a policy which should aid subjects to oppose their sovereign, and the criminality of breaking the public peace, especially with so powerful an enemy as France, without adequate 