LETTERS, SPEECHES, CHARGES, ADVICES, &c.

OF

FRANCIS BACON, LORD VISCOUNT ST. ALBAN,

LORD CHANCELLOR OF ENGLAND;

FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE YEAR 1763,

BY THOMAS BIRCH, D. D.

CHAPLAIN TO HER ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCESS AMELIA, AND SECRETARY TO
THE ROYAL SOCIETY.

SIR,

TO THE HONOURABLE CHARLES YORKE,

ATTORNEY-GENERAL TO HIS MAJESTY.

THE gratitude, which I owe you for the honour and other important advantages of your friendship, hath often made me wish for an opportunity of making you some return equal, in any degree, to your merit, and my own obligations. It was, therefore, a very agreeable incident to me, when by means of your noble brother, the Lord Viscount Royston, always attentive to enlarge the fund of history, as well as to encourage and reward every attempt in favour of literature in general, there was put into my hands a volume of original papers of the great Lord Bacon. This volume was, at his lordship's request, readily intrusted with me by his Grace the lord archbishop of Canterbury, whose zeal for the advancement of useful learning of all kinds bears a just proportion to that which he has shown in every station of the church filled by him, for the support of religion, and for what is the most perfect system of its principles, laws, and sanctions-Christianity.

From the long acquaintance with which I have been favoured by you, and the frequent conversations which we have had upon subjects foreign to the profession which you so much adorn, I well knew your high veneration for the writings of Bacon, and your thorough knowledge of the most abstruse of them. Having, therefore, with an application little less than that of decyphering, transcribed from the first draughts, and digested into order, a collection of his letters, little inferior in number, and much superior in contents, to what the world hath hitherto seen, intermixed with other papers of his of an important nature, I could not doubt, but that the publishing of them would be no less acceptable to you, than, I persuade myself, they will be to the public. For it is scarce to be imagined, but that the bringing to light, from obscurity and oblivion, the remains of so eminent a person, will be thought an acquisition not inferior to the discovery (if the ruins of Herculaneum should afford such a treasure) of a new set of the epistles of Cicero, whom our immortal countryman most remarkably resembled as an orator, a philosopher, a writer, a lawyer, and a statesman. The communication of them to the public appearing to me a duty to it and the memory of the author, to whom could I, separately from the consideration of all personal connexions and inducements, so justly present them, as to him, whom every circumstance of propriety, and conformity of character, in the most valuable part of it, pointed out to me for that purpose? Similarity of genius; the same extent of knowledge in the laws of our own and other countries, enriched and adorned with all the stores of ancient and modern learning; the same eloquence at the bar and in the senate; an equal force of writing, shown in a single work indeed, and composed at a very early age, but decisive of a grand question of law and sanction of government, the grounds of which had never before been stated with due precision; and the most successful discharge of the same offices of king's counsel and solicitor and attorney-general.

These reasons, Sir, give your name an unquestionable right to be prefixed to these posthumous pieces. And I hope, while I am performing this act of justice, I may be excused the ambition of preserving my own name, by uniting it with those of BACON and Yorke.

Your delicacy here restrains me from indulging myself farther in the language which truth and esteem would dictate. But I must be allowed to add a wish, in which every good man and lover of his country will join with me, that as there now remains but one step for you to complete that course of public service and glory, in which you have so closely followed your illustrious father, he, happy in the most important circumstance of human life, the characters and fortunes of his children,

-longo ordine Nati, Clari omnes patria pariter Virtute suaque,

may live to see you possessed of that high station. which himself filled for almost twenty years, with a reputation superior to all the efforts of envy or party. Nor is it less to his honour, (and may it be yours at a very distant period,) that, though he thought proper to retire from that station in the full vigour of his abilities, he still continues to exert them in a more private situation, for the general benefit of his country; enjoying in it the noblest reward of his services, an unequalled authority, founded on the acknowledged concurrence of the greatest capacity, experience, and integrity.

I am, SIR,

Your most obliged and most devoted humble servant,

London, June 1, 1762.

THOMAS BIRCH.

PREFACE.

As the reader will undoubtedly have some curiosity about the history of the transmission of these papers, now presented to him at the distance of an hundred and forty years from the date of most of them, though the hand of the incomparable writer is too conspicuous in them to admit of any suspicion of their genuineness; it will be proper here to give him some information upon that subject. Dr. Thomas Tenison is known to have been the editor of the Baconiana, published at London, 1679, though he added only the initial letters of his name to the account of all the lord Bacon's works, subjoined to that collection. He had been an intimate friend of, and fellow of the same college † with Mr. William Rawley, only son of Dr. William Rawley, chaplain to the lord chancellor Bacon, and employed by his lordship, as publisher of most of his works. Dr. Rawley dying in the 79th year of his age, June the 18th, 1667, near a year after his son; his executor, Mr. John Rawley, put into the hands of his friend Dr. Tenison these papers of lord Bacon, which composed the Baconiana; and probably, at the same time, presented to him all the rest of his lordship's manuscripts, which Dr. Rawley had been possessed of, but did not think proper to make public. The reasons of his reserve appear from Dr. Tenison's account § cited above, to have been, "that he judged some papers touching matters of state to tread too near to the heels of truth, and to the times of the persons concerned and that he thought his lordship's letters concerning his fall might be injurious to his honour, and cause the old wounds of it to bleed anew.' But this is a delicacy, which though suitable to the age in which Dr. Rawley lived, and to the relation under which he had stood to his noble patron, ought to have no force in other times and circumstances, nor ever to be too much indulged to the prejudice of the rights of historical truth.

Dr. Tenison being, soon after the publication of the Baconiana, removed from the more private station of a country living to the vicarage of St. Martin's in the Fields, Westminster, and, after the revolution, advanced to the bishopric of Lincoln, and at last to the archbishopric of Canterbury, had scarce leisure, if he had been inclined, to select more of the papers of his admired Bacon. These therefore with the rest of his manuscripts, not already deposited in the library at Lambeth, were left by him in his last will, dated the 11th of April, 1715, to his chaplain, Dr. Edmund Gibson, then rector of Lambeth, and afterwards successively bishop of Lincoln and London, and to Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Benjamin Ibbot, who had succeeded Dr. Gibson as library-keeper to his Grace. Dr. Ibbot dying || many years before bishop Gibson, the whole collection of archbishop Tenison's papers came under the disposition of that bishop, who directed his two. executors, the late Dr. Bettesworth, dean of the Arches, and his eldest son, George Gibson, Esq. to deposite them, with the addition of many others of his own collecting, in the manuscript library at Lambeth: and accordingly after his lordship's death, which happened on the 6th of Sept. 1748, all these manuscripts were delivered by his said executors to archbishop Herring, on the 21st of October of that year, and placed in the library on the 23d of February following. But as they lay undigested in bundles, and in that condition were neither convenient for use, nor secure from damage, his Grace the present archbishop directed them to be methodized and bound up in volumes with proper indexes, which was done by his + Benet, in the university of Cambridge. The 11th of April, 1725.

This account is dated Nov. the 30th, 1678.
Who was buried the 3d of July, 1666.

§ Page 81.

learned librarian, Andrew Coltee Ducarel, LL. D. Fellow of the Royal and Antiquarian Societies, to whose knowledge, industry, and love of history and antiquities, the valuable library of manuscripts of the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury is highly indebted for the order in which it is now arranged; and by whose obliging and communicating temper it is rendered generally useful. Bishop Gibson's collection, including what is the chief part of it, that of archbishop Tenison, fills fourteen large volumes in folio. The eighth of these consists merely of lord Bacon's papers.

Of them principally, the work which I now offer the public is formed; nor has any paper been admitted into it that had been published before, except two of lord Bacon's letters, which having been disguised and mutilated in all former impressions, were thought proper to be reprinted here, together with two other letters of his lordship; one on the remarkable case of Peacham, the other accompanying his present to king James I. of his Novum Organum. These letters I was unwilling to omit, because the collection, in which they have lately appeared, entitled by the very learned and ingenious editor, Sir David Dalrymple, Bat. Memorials and Letters relating to the History of Britain in the reign of James the First, published from the Originals, at Glasgow, 1762, in 8vo, is likely to be much less known in England, from the smallness of the number of printed copies, than it deserves.

The general rule, which I have prescribed myself, of publishing only what is new, restrained me from adding those letters, written in the earlier part of Mr. Francis Bacon's life, which I had before published from the originals, found among the papers of his brother Anthony, in the Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, from the year 1581 to her death.

The example of the greatest men, in preserving in their editions of the classics the smallest remains of their writings, will be a full justification of my industry in collecting and inserting even the fragments of a writer equal to the most valuable of the ancients. Nor will the candid and intelligent object to the least considerable of the duke of Buckingham's letters, since they acquire an importance from the rank and character of the writer, as well as from their carrying on the series of his correspondence, acquainting us with new facts, or ascertaining old ones with additional evidence and circumstances, and showing the extent of that authority and influence, which his situation, as a favourite, gave him in all parts of the government, even as high as the seat of justice itself.

POSTSCRIPT, RELATING TO THIS SECOND EDITION.

SINCE the former edition, there came into my hands, among the collections in print and manuscript, relating to lord Bacon and his works, made by the late John Locker, Esq. two letters of Dr. Tenison, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, which will enable me to give the public full satisfaction, in what manner that learned divine became possessed of the Letters, &c. of the noble author published by me.

One of these letters, the original, written to Mr. Richard Chiswell, the bookseller, for whom the Baconiana had been printed, is as follows:

"SIR,

Decemb. 16, 1682.

"I HAVE now looked over all the books and papers in the box. In the books there are copies of Essays, Maxims of Law, &c. all printed already: but they contain some things fit to be printed; and they and the Letters will make a handsome folio, which I doubt not but will turn to account. For the Letters, there are divers of Sir Thomas Meautys, &c. worth nothing: but there are more than forty letters to the duke of Buckingham, and some of the duke of Buckingham to him.

"There are eight or ten to king James. There are three or four to Gondomar, and Gondomar's answer to one of them.

"There are two or three letters to bishop Williams, and two from him.

"There is lord Bacon's letter to Casaubon in Latin.

"There is one essay never printed.

"All which will be well accepted.

"After the holy-days I will methodize all, and put all letters of the same date together, (for as yet they are in confusion,) and then we will take farther resolutions about them. I will get an afternoon (if God permit) to see the remaining papers in Bartholomew-Close. The Greek MS. will not prove much worth.

The latter and greater part is only a piece of Tzetzes.

"It is necessary that you procure for me Tobie Matthew's printed letters, for here are also ten of his to lord Bacon; and I know not which they are yet printed. Also I shall want a copy of the Essays printed in 12mo, 1663, printed for Thomas Palmer, at the Crown in Westminster-Hall, with a preface by one Griffith. I have the book; and the preface is mentioned in the title page, but is wanting.

"If more sheets of Dr. Spencer's are done, pray send them."
For Mr. Chiswell, at the Rose and Crown, in St. Paul's Church-Yard, London.

The other letter of which I have a copy taken by the late Richard Rawlinson, L.L. D. from bishop Tanner's manuscripts, in Christ-Church, Oxford, Vol. XXXV. p. 152, was addressed to archbishop Sancroft in these terms:

"I HAVE received your Grace's letter touching my course of preaching in Lent, which I shall be ready, God assisting me, to do my duty at that time according to my poor talent.

"I did forget on Tuesday to acquaint your Grace, that I had, by a strange providence, lately found out in this town a great many original papers of the lord Bacon. When I have looked over them and sorted them, I will be bold to present your Grace with a catalogue of them. They came to me from the executor of Sir Thomas Meautys, who was his lordship's executor. Amongst his lordship's papers are letters from king James, the queen of Bohemia, count Gondomar, and others. Amongst his lordship's own letters there is one in Latin to Isaac Casaubon.

"One just now come from my lord chancellor's✶ assured me he was not indeed dead, but just dying. "I am your Grace's most obliged servant,

The reason of the rule, which I prescribed to myself in the former edition, of publishing only what was new, not subsisting in the present, which forms a part of a complete collection of the author's writings, I have inserted in it such letters from and to him, as I had published in 1754 in the Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth.

LETTERS, &c. OF LORD CHANCELLOR BACON.