Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/110

cii king's permission, to Sir John Vaughan's house at Parson's Green, from whence, although anxious to continue in or near London, he went, in compliance with his majesty's suggestion, for a temporary retirement to Gorhambury, where he was obliged to remain till the end of the year, but with such reluctance, that, with the hope of quieting the king's fears, he at one time intended to present a petition to the House of Lords to remit this part of his sentence.

In the month of July he wrote, both to Buckingham and to the king, letters in which may be seen his reliance upon them for pecuniary assistance, his consciousness of innocence, a gleam of hope that he should be restored to his honours, and occasionally allusions to the favours he had conferred. To these applications he received the following answer from Buckingham:

My noble lord:—The hearty affection I have borne to your person and service hath made me ambitious to be a messenger of good news to you, and an eschewer of ill; this hath been the true reason why I have been thus long in answering you. not any negligence in your discreet, modest servant you sent with your letter, nor his who now returns you this answer, ofttimes given me by your master and mine; who, though by this may seem not to satisfy your desert and expectation, yet, take the word of a friend who will never fail you, hath a tender care of you, full of a fresh memory of your by-past service. His majesty is but for the present, he says, able to yield unto the three years advance, which if you please to accept, you are not hereafter the farther off from obtaining some better testimony of his favour, worthier both of him and you, though it can never be answerable to what my heart wishes you, as your lordship's humble servant,

. That he was promised some compensation for the loss of his professional emoluments seems probable, not only from his letters to the king, and from the aid received, but from his having lived in splendour after his fall, although his certain annual income seems not to have exceeded £2500. With this income he, with prudence, might, although greatly in debt, have enjoyed worldly comfort: but in prudence he was culpably negligent. Thinking that money was only the baggage of virtue, that this interposition of earth eclipsed the clear sight of the mind, he lived not a a philosopher ought to have lived, but as a nobleman had been accustomed to live. It is related that the prince, coming to London, saw at a distance a coach followed by a considerable number of people, on horseback; and, upon inquiry, was told it was the Lord St. Albans, attended by his friends; on which his highness said, with a smile, "Well, do what we can, this man scorns to go out like a snuff." Unmindful that the want of prudence can never be supplied, he was exposed, in the decline of life, not only to frequent vexation, and his thoughts to continual interruption, but was frequently compelled to stoop to degrading solicitations, and was obliged to encumber Gorhambury and sell York House, dear to him from so many associations, the seat of his ancestors, the scene of his former splendour. These worldly troubles seem, however, not to have affected his cheerfulness, and never to have diverted him from the great object of his life, the acquisition and advancement of knowledge. When an application was made to him to sell one of the beautiful woods of Gorhambury, he answered, "No, I will not be stripped of my feathers." In September the king signed a warrant for the release of the parliamentary fine, and, to prevent the immediate importunities of his creditors, assigned it to Mr. Justice Hutton, Mr. Justice Chamberlain, Sir Francis Barnham, and Sir Thomas Crew, whom Bacon, in his will, directed to apply the funds for the payment and satisfaction of his debts and legacies, having a charitable care that the poorest creditors or legatees should be first satisfied.

This intended kindness of the king the Lord Keeper Williams misunderstood, and endeavoured to impede by staying the pardon at the seal, until he was commanded by Buckingham to obey the king's order. In October the pardon was sealed.

He had scarcely retired to Gorhambury, in the summer of 1621, when he commenced his History of Henry the Seventh.

During the progress of the work considerable expectation of his history was excited: in the composition of which he seems to have laboured with much anxiety, and to have submitted his manuscript to the correction of various classes of society; to the king, to scholars, and to the uninformed. Upon his desiring Sir John Danvers to give his opinion of the work, Sir John said, "'Your lordship knows that I am no scholar.' 'Tis no matter,' said my lord, 'I know what a scholar can say: I would know what you can say.' Sir John read it, and gave his opinion what he misliked, which my lord acknowledged to be true, and mended it. 'Why,' said he, 'a scholar would never have told me this;'" but, notwithstanding this labour and anxiety, the public expectation was not realized.

If, however, in the History of Henry the Seventh, it is vain to look for the vigour or beauty with which the Advancement of Learning abounds: if the intricacies of a court are neither discovered nor illustrated with the same happiness as the intricacies of philosophy: if, in a work written when the author was more than