Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/380

 . He acknowledged the danger to England of the establishment of a strong French catholic power in Scotland, but urged delay, at any rate until it was clearly seen how likely it was that this danger would be realised (Harl. MS. 398, p. 8). But Bacon was not desirous that England should appear to temporise with Catholicism, or should remain a passive spectator of catholic hostilities in Europe whenever action had good chances of success. In 1501 he strongly urged an English alliance with the King of Navarre and the French Calvinists, and in 1562 he opposed in a forcible speech delivered before the privy council in the queen's presence the suggestion that she and Mary Stuart should meet in England to discuss the questions at issue in Scotland, although he was well aware of Elizabeth's desire for the interview (Harl. MS. 398, p. 17). At the opening of the parliament of 1563, the lord keeper made another lucid speech describing the internal disorders of the country, the laxity of religious observances, and the dangers to be apprehended from the fanatical Guises in Scotland and France. In 1566 Bacon had to read to the queen at Westminster an address framed by a joint committee of the two houses of parliament entreating her to marry, or, in case of her refusal to accede to that request, to make arrangements for the succession. When the parliament of 1567 sent a deputation to address her again on the subject, and the speakers added menacing words as to the queen's practice of taking 'money or other things … at her own pleasure,' Bacon was ordered by the queen to express her displeasure, and to summarily declare parliament dissolved. He obeyed the command, but Elizabeth supplemented his speech with one of her own.

Bacon was never anxious to pose as the mere spokesman of Elizabeth. In 1564 he fell under her displeasure on suspicion of having prompted the publication of a work entitled 'A Declaration of the Succession of the Crowne Imperiall of Ingland.' The pamphlet was attributed to John Hales, clerk of the hanaper, and in it the claims of the Stuart line were passed over in favour of those of Lady Catherine Grey, granddaughter of Mary, Henry VIII's younger sister, and Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk. Lady Catherine was out of favour with Elizabeth, and the queen, listening to the suggestions of Dudley, who had no liking for the lord keeper, hurriedly assumed that Bacon was compromised in the matter. She therefore ordered him 'from the court, and from intermeddling with any other thing but Chancery,' and threatened to dismiss him from her service (, Annals, 8vo, i. ii. 121; cf. Wood's Athenæ, ed. Bliss, i. 405). Elizabeth was right in ascribing to Bacon an increasing distrust of Mary Stuart, but she was wrong in identifying his views on the succession with those of the author of the 'Declaration,' and he was ultimately restored to favour. Bacon afterwards drew up an answer to another vindication of the rights of the house of Suffolk from the pen of Sir [q.v.], and there he distinctly seconded the claims of the house of Stuart, 'exclusive of Mary Queen of Scots, who had forfeited her rights.' Browne's argument and Bacon's refutation were published together in 1723 under the title of 'The Right of Succession to the Crown of England in the Family of the Stuarts exclusive of Mary Queen of Scots, learnedly asserted by Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, against Sir Anthony Brown, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. Faithfully published from the original MS. by Nathaniel Booth, Esq., of Gray's Inn.'

In all the discussions in the English council and parliament as to Mary Stuart, both before and after her imprisonment in England in 1568, he took up a very independent attitude. He became honestly convinced that whatever influence she could command would be used to the injury of protestantism in England, and advocated stringent measures against her. But he was credited with sufficient impartiality as a judge to admit of his appointment to the presidency of two conferences held in London in 1568 and 1570 respectively to consider the fortunes of Mary Stuart and the English relations with Scotland, and in that capacity he is reported to have acted with dignity and propriety. In 1569 he showed himself averse to the proposal to marry her to the Duke of Norfolk, and when in 1570 Elizabeth seemed to incline to her restoration, he spoke so directly against the plan—implying in the course of his speech that her execution might possibly be necessary in the interests of protestantism—as to call forth the rebuke from the queen's-lips that 'his counsels were like himself, rash and dangerous.' On 13 Aug. 1570, Bacon in a letter to Cecil pointed out the risks to which Elizabeth exposed herself by allowing a momentary cessation of hostilities between foreign protestants and catholics to lead her to adopt a conciliatory policy towards Mary Stuart and her friends. Early in the next year he declared that, 'If,' as was still contemplated, 'the Queen of Scots was restored, in three months she would kindle a fire which would wrap the island in flames, and which the power of man would fail to