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be, ready to perform and obey your Majesty's direc- | and habeas corpus, collected by my lord of Cantertions; towards which the first degree is to understand them well.

In answer therefore to both the said letters, as well concerning matter as concerning time, we shall in all humbleness offer to your Majesty's high wisdom the considerations following:

First, we did conceive, that after my lord Coke was sequestered from the table and his circuits,* when your Majesty laid upon him your commandment for the expurging of his Reports, and commanded also our service to look into them, and into other novelties introduced into the government, your Majesty had in this your doing two principal ends :

The one, to see, if upon so fair an occasion he would make an expiation of his former faults; and also show himself sensible of those things in his Reports, which he could not but know were the likest to be offensive to your Majesty.

The other, to perform de vero this right to your crown and succession, and your people also; that those errors and novelties might not run on, and authorize by time, but might be taken away, whether he consented to it or no.

bury. In all which course we foresee length of time, not so much for your learned council to be prepared, for that is almost done already, but because himself, no doubt, will crave time of advice to peruse his own books, and to see, whether the collections be true, and that he be justly charged; and then to produce his proofs, that those things, which he shall be charged with, were not conceits or singularities of his own, but the acts of court, and other like things, tending to excusation or extenuation; wherein we do not see, how the time of divers days, if not of weeks, can be denied him.

Now for time, if this last course of charging him be taken, we may only inform your Majesty thus much, that the absence of a chief justice, though it should be for a whole term, as it hath been often upon sickness, can be no hinderance to common justice. For the business of the king's bench may be despatched by the rest of the judges; his voice in the star-chamber may be supplied by any other judge, that my lord chancellor shall call; and the trials by nisi prius may be supplied by commission.

But as for those great matters of discovery, we can say nothing more than this, that either they are old or new. If old, he is to blame for having kept them so long if new, or whatsoever, he may advertise your Majesty of them by letter, or deliver them by word to such counsellor as your Majesty will assign.

But we did not conceive your Majesty would have had him charged with those faults of his book, or those other novelties; but only would have had them represented to you for your better information. Now your Majesty seeth what he hath done, you can better judge of it than we can. If, upon this Thus we hope your Majesty will accept of our probation added to former matters, your Majesty sincerity, having dealt freely and openly with your think him not fit for your service, we must in all Majesty, as becometh us: and when we shall rehumbleness subscribe to your Majesty, and acknow-ceive your pleasure and direction, we shall execute ledge that neither his displacing, considering he holdeth his place but during your will and pleasure, nor the choice of a fit man to be put in his room, are council-table matters, but are to proceed wholly from your Majesty's great wisdom and gracious pleasure. So that in this course, it is but the signification of your pleasure, and the business is at an end as to him. Only there remaineth the actual expurgation or animadversions of the books.

But if your Majesty understand it, that he shall be charged, then, as your Majesty best knoweth, justice requireth, that he be heard and called to his answer, and then your Majesty will be pleased to consider, before whom he shall be charged; whether before the body of your council, as formerly he was, or some selected commissioners; for we conceive your Majesty will not think it convenient it should be before us two only. Also the manner of his charge is considerable, whether it shall be verbal by your learned council, as it was last; or whether, in respect of the multiplicity of matters, he shall not have the collections we have made in writing, delivered to him. Also the matter of his charge is likewise considerable, whether any of those points of novelty, which by your Majesty's commandment we collected, shall be made part of his charge; or only the faults of his books, and the prohibitions

On the 30th of June, 1616. Camdeni Annales Regis Jacobi I. p. 19; and Peck, Desiderata Curiosa, Vol. I. Lib. vi.

P. 18.

and obey the same in all things: ending with our
prayers for your Majesty, and resting

Your Majesty's most faithful, and most bounden
servants,
T. ELLESMERE, CANC.
FR. BACON.

October 6, 1616.

REMEMBRANCES OF HIS MAJESTY'S DE-
CLARATION, TOUCHING THE LORD COKE.

THAT although the discharging and removing of his Majesty's officers and servants, as well as the choice and advancement of men to place, be no council-table matters, but belong to his Majesty's princely will and secret judgment; yet his Majesty will do his council this honour, that in his resolutions of that kind, his council shall know them first before others, and shall know them accompanied by their causes, making as it were a private manifesto, or revealing of himself to them without parables.

Then to have the report of the lords touching the business of the lord Coke, and the last order of the council read.

That done his Majesty farther to declare, that he might, upon the same three grounds in the order

mentioned, of deceit, contempt, and slander of his government, very justly have proceeded then, not only to have put him from his place of chief justice, but to have brought him in question in the starchamber, which would have been his utter overthrow; but then his Majesty was pleased for that time only to put him off from the council-table, and from the public exercise of his place of chief justice, and to take farther time to deliberate.

That in his Majesty's deliberation, besides the present occasion, he had in some things looked back to the lord Coke's former carriage, and in some things looked forward, to make some farther trial of him.

That for things passed, his Majesty had noted in him a perpetual turbulent carriage, first towards the liberties of his church and estate ecclesiastical; towards his prerogative royal, and the branches thereof; and likewise towards all the settled jurisdictions of all his other courts, the high commission, the star-chamber, the chancery, the provincial councils, the admiralty, the duchy, the court of requests, the commission of inquiries, the new boroughs of Ireland; in all which he had raised troubles and new questions; and lastly, in that, which might concern the safety of his royal person, by his exposition of the laws in cases of high treason.

That, besides the actions themselves, his Majesty in his princely wisdom hath made two special observations of him; the one, that he having in his nature not one part of those things, which are popular in men, being neither civil, nor affable, nor magnificent, he hath made himself popular by design only, in pulling down government. The other, that whereas his Majesty might have expected a change in him, when he made him his own, by taking him to be of his council, it made no change at all, but to the worse, he holding on all his former channel, and running separate courses from the rest of his council, and rather busying himself in casting fears before his council, concerning what they could not do, than joining his advice what they should do.

chief justice in Henry VIII.'s time, when it should have been in Edward VI.'s, and such other stuff; not falling upon any of those things, which he could not but know were offensive.

That hereupon his Majesty thought good to refresh his memory, and out of many cases, which his Majesty caused to be collated, to require his answer to five, being all such, as were but expatiations of his own, and no judgments; whereunto he returned such an answer, as did either justify himself, or elude the matter, so as his Majesty seeth plainly antiquum obtinet.

TO SIR FRANCIS BACON, ATTORNEY-
GENERAL.*

SIR,

I HAVE kept your man here thus long, because I thought there would have been some occasion for me to write after Mr. Solicitor-General's being with the king. But he hath received so full instruction from his Majesty, that there is nothing left for me to add in the business. And so I rest Your faithful servant,

GEORGE VILLIERS.

Royston, the 13th of Octob. 1616.

To the right honourable Sir Francis Bacon, knight, one of his Majesty's privy council, and his Attorney-general.

SIR EDMUND BACON + TO SIR FRANCIS
BACON, ATTORNEY-GENERAL.

MY LORD,

I AM bold to present unto your hands by this bearer whom the law calls up, some salt of wormThat his Majesty, desirous yet to make a farther wood, being uncertain, whether the regard of your trial of him, had given him the summer's vacation health makes you still continue the use of that to reform his Reports, wherein there be many dan- medicine. I could wish it otherwise; for I am gerous conceits of his own uttered for law, to the persuaded that all diuretics, which carry with them prejudice of his crown, parliament, and subjects; that punctuous nature and caustic quality by calcinand to see, whether by this he would in any partation, are hurtful to the kidneys, if not enemies to redeem his fault. But that his Majesty hath failed of the redemption he desired, but hath met with another kind of redemption from him, which he little expected. For as to the Reports, after three months time and consideration, he had offered his Majesty only five animadversions, being rather a scorn, than a satisfaction to his Majesty; whereof one was that in the prince's case he had found out the French statute, which was filz aisné, whereas the Latin was primogenitus; and so the prince is duke of Cornwall in French, and not duke of Cornwall in Latin. And another was, that he had set Montagu to be

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the other principal parts of the body. Wherein if it shall please you for your better satisfaction, to call the advice of your learned physicians, and that they shall resolve of any medicine for your health, wherein my poor labour may avail you, you know where your faithful apothecary dwells, who will be ready at your commandment; as I am bound both by your favours to myself, as also by those to my nephew, whom you have brought out of darkness into light, and by what I hear, have already made him by your bounty, a subject of emulation to his elder brother. We are all partakers of this your

died without issue, April 10, 1649. There are several letters to him from Sir Henry Wotton, printed among the works of the latter.

kindness towards him; and for myself, I shall be ever ready to deserve it by any service that shall lie in the power of

Your lordship's poor nephew,

EDM. BACON. Redgrave, this 19th of October, 1616. For the right honourable Sir Francis Bacon, knight, his Majesty's Attorney-General, and one of his most honourable privy counsellors, be these deli

vered at London.

TO THE KING.

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR EXCELLENT MAJESTY, I SEND your Majesty a form of discharge for my lord Coke from his place of chief justice of your bench.*

I send also a warrant to the lord chancellor, for making forth a writ for a new chief justice, leaving a blank for the name to be supplied by your Majesty's presence; for I never received your Majesty's express pleasure in it.

If your Majesty resolve of Montagu † as I conceive and wish, it is very material, as these times are, that your Majesty have some care, that the recorder succeeding be a temperate and discreet man, and assured to your Majesty's service. If your Majesty, without too much harshness, can continue the place within your own servants, it is best; if not, the man upon whom the choice is like to fall, which is Coventry, I hold doubtful for your service; not but that he is a well learned, and an honest man; but he hath been, as it were, bred by lord Coke, and seasoned in his ways.

God preserve your Majesty.

TO THE KING.

IT MAY PLEASE YOUR MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY, I SEND your Majesty, according to your commandment, the warrant for the review of Sir Edward Coke's Reports. I had prepared it before I received your Majesty's pleasure; but I was glad to see it was in your mind, as well as in my hands. In the nomination, which your Majesty made of the judges, to whom it should be directed, your Majesty could not name the lord chief justice, that now is,§ because he was not then declared; but you could not leave him out now, without discountenance.

I send your Majesty the state of lord Darcy's cause in the star-chamber, set down by Mr. Solicitor, and mentioned in the letters, which your Majesty received from the lords. I leave all in humbleness to your Majesty's royal judgment: but this is true, that it was the clear opinion of my lord chancellor, and myself, and the two chief justices, and others, that it is a cause most fit for the censure of the court, both for the repressing of duels, and the encouragement of complaints in courts of justice. If your Majesty be pleased it shall go on, there resteth but Wednesday for the hearing; for the last day of term is commonly left for orders, though sometimes, upon extraordinary occasion, it hath been set down for the hearing of some great cause.

I send your Majesty also baron Bromley's ** report, which your Majesty required; whereby your Majesty may perceive things go not so well in Cumberland, which is the seat of the party your Majesty named to me, as was conceived. And yet if there were land-winds, as there be sea-winds, to bind men in, I could wish he were a little wind-bound, to keep him in the south.

But while your Majesty passeth the accounts of

Your Majesty's most humble and bounden judges in circuits, your Majesty will give me leave servant,

FR. BACON.

I send not these things, which concern my lord Coke, by my lord Villiers, for such reasons as your Majesty may conceive.

November 13, at noon [1616].

Sir Edward Coke was removed from that post on the 15th of November, 1616. † Sir Henry Montagu, recorder of London, who was made lord chief justice of the king's bench, November 16, 1616. He was afterwards made lord treasurer, and created earl of Manchester.

Thomas Coventry, Esq. afterwards lord keeper of the great seal.

Sir Henry Montagu.

This is just mentioned in a letter of Sir Francis Bacon to the lord viscount Villiers, printed in his works; but is more particularly stated in the Reports of Sir Henry Hobart, lord chief justice of the Common Pleas, pp. 120, 121, Edit. London 1658, fol. as follows. The lord Darcy of the North sued Gervase Markham, Esq. in the star-chamber, in 1616, on this occasion. They had hunted together, and the defendant and a servant of the plaintiff, one Beckwith, fell together by the ears in the field; and Beckwith threw him down, and was upon him cuffing him, when the lord Darcy took his servant off, and reproved him. However, Mr. Mark

to think of the judges here in their upper region.
And because Tacitus saith well, " opportuni mag-
nis conatibus transitus rerum ;" now upon this
change, when he, that letteth, is gone, I shall en-
deavour, to the best of my power and skill, that
there may be a consent and united mind in your
judges to serve you and strengthen your business.
For I am persuaded there cannot be a sacrifice,
from which there may come up to you a sweeter
odour of rest, than this effect, whereof I speak.
ham expressing some anger against his lordship, and charg-
ing him with maintaining his man, lord Darcy answered, that
he had used Mr. Markham kindly; for if he had not rescued
him from his man, the latter would have beaten him to rags.
Mr. Markham, upon this, wrote five or six letters to lord
Darcy, subscribing them with his name; but did not send
them, and only dispersed them unsealed in the fields; the
purport of them being this: that whereas the lord Darcy hath
said, that, but for him, his servant Beckwith had beaten him
to rags, he lied; and as often as he should speak it, he lied;
and that he would maintain this with his life: adding, that
he had dispersed those letters, that his lordship might find
them, or somebody else bring them to him; and that if his
lordship were desirous to speak with him, he might send his
boy, who should be well used. For this offence, Mr. Mark-
ham was censured, and fined 5007. by the star-chamber.
Sir Henry Yelverton.

**Edward Bromley, made one of the barons of the exchequer, February 6, 1609-10.

ty's correction, that such of your lord lieutenants, as do not attend your person, were commanded to abide within their counties respectively.

For this wretched murderer Bertram,* now gone | tended. Only I should think fit, under your Majesto his place, I have, perceiving your Majesty's good liking of what I propounded, taken order, that there shall be a declaration concerning the cause in the king's bench, by occasion of punishment of the of fence of his keeper; and another in chancery, upon the occasion of moving for an order, according to his just and righteous report. And yet withal, I have set on work a good pen,† and myself will overlook it, for making some little pamphlet fit to fly abroad in the country.

For your Majesty's proclamation touching the wearing of cloth, after I had drawn a form as near as I could to your Majesty's direction, I propounded it to the lords, my lord chancellor being then absent; and after their lordships' good approbation, and some points by them altered, I obtained leave of them to confer thereupon with my lord chancellor and some principal judges, which I did this afterso as, it being now perfected, I shall offer it to the board to-morrow, and so send it to your Majesty.

noon;

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MAY IT PLEASE YOUR MAJESTY, ALTHOUGH your journey be but as a long progress, and that your Majesty shall be still within your own land; and therefore any extraordinary course neither needful, nor in my opinion fit; yet nevertheless, I thought it agreeable to my duty and care of your service, to put you in mind of those points of form, which have relation, not so much to a journey into Scotland, as to an absence from your city of London for six months, or to a distance from your said city near three hundred miles; and that in an ordinary course, wherein I lead myself, by calling to consideration what things there are, that require your signature, and may seem not so fit to expect sending to and fro; and therefore to be supplied by some precedent warrants.

First, your ordinary commissions of justice, of assize, and the peace, need not your signature, but pass of course by your chancellor. And your commissions of lieutenancy, though they need your signature, yet if any of the lieutenants should die, your Majesty's choice and pleasure may be very well at

John Bertram, a grave man, above seventy years of age, and of a clear reputation, according to Camden, Annales Legis Jacobi I. p. 21. He killed with a pistol, in Lincoln'sInn, on the 12th of November, 1616, Sir John Tyndal, a master in chancery, for having made a report against him in a cause, wherein the sum contended for did not exceed

For grants, if there were a longer cessation, I think your Majesty will easily believe it will do no hurt. And yet if any be necessary, the continual despatches will supply that turn.

That, which is chiefly considerable, is proclamations, which all do require your Majesty's signature, except you leave some warrant under your great seal to your standing council here in London.

It is true, I cannot foresee any case of such sudden necessity, except it should be the apprehension of some great offenders, or the adjournment of the term upon sickness, or some riot in the city, such as hath been about the liberties of the Tower, or against strangers, &c. But your Majesty in your great wisdom, may perhaps think of many things, that I cannot remember or foresee: and therefore it was fit to refer those things to your better judg

ment.

Also my lord chancellor's age and health is such, as it doth not only admit, but require the accident of his death to be thought of; which may fall in such a time, as the very commissions of ordinary justice before mentioned, and writs, which require present despatch, cannot well be put off. Therefore your Majesty may be pleased to take into consideration, whether you will not have such a commission, as was prepared about this time twelvemonth in my lord's extreme sickness, for the taking of the seal into custody, and for the seal of writs and commissions for ordinary justice, till you may advise of a chancellor or keeper of the great seal.

Your Majesty will graciously pardon my care, which is assiduous; and it is good to err in caring even rather too much than too little. These things for so much as concerneth forms, ought to proceed from my place, as attorney, unto which you have added some interest in matter, by making me of your privy council. But for the main they rest wholly in your princely judgment, being well informed; because miracles are ceased, though admiration will not cease, while you live. Indorsed, February 21, 1616.

SIR EDWARD COKE TO THE KING.

MOST GRACIOUS SOVEREIGN,

I THINK it now my duty to inform your Majesty of the motives that induced the lord chancellor and judges to resolve, that a murder or felony, committed by one Englishman upon another in a foreign kingdom, shall be punished before the constable and marshal here in England.

2007. He hanged himself in prison on the 17th of that month. + Mr. Trott.

He died at the age of seventy, on the 15th of March, 1616-17, having resigned the great seal on the 3rd of that month; which was given on the 7th to Sir Francis Bacon.

First, in the book case, in the 13th year of king Henry the fourth, in whose reign the statute was made, it is expressly said, one liege-man was killed in Scotland by another liege-man; and the wife of him that was killed did sue an appeal of murder in the constable's court of England. Vide Statutum, saith the book, de primo Henrici V. Cap. 14. | Et contemporanea expositio est fortissima in lege. Stanford, an author without exception, saith thus, fol. 65, a.: "By the statute of Henry IV. Cap. 14, if any subject kill another subject in a foreign kingdom, the wife of him that is slain may have an appeal in England before the constable and marshal; which is a case in terminis terminantibus. And when the wife, if the party slain have any, shall have an appeal, there, if he hath no wife, his next heir shall have it."

If any fact be committed out of the kingdom, upon the high sea, the lord admiral shall determine it. If in a foreign kingdom, the cognizance belongeth to the constable, where the jurisdiction pertains to him.

And these authorities being seen by Bromley, chancellor, and the two chief justices, they clearly resolved the case, as before I have certified your Majesty.

I humbly desire I may be so happy as to kiss your Majesty's hands, and to my exceeding comfort to see your sacred person; and I shall ever rest Your Majesty's faithful and loyal subject,

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whole carriage and passages of the negotiation, as well with the king himself, as the duke of Lerma, and council there, intermix discourse upon fit occasions, that may express ourselves to the effect following:

That you doubt not, but that both kings, for that which concerns religion, will proceed sincerely, both being entire and perfect in their own belief and way. But that there are so many noble and excellent effects, which are equally acceptable to both religions, and for the good and happiness of the christian world, which may arise of this conjunction, as the union of both kings in actions of state, as may make the difference in religion as laid aside, and almost forgotten.

As first, that it will be a means utterly to extinguish and extirpate pirates, which are the common enemies of mankind, and do so much infest Europe at this time.

Also, that it may be a beginning and seed (for the like actions heretofore have had less beginnings) of a holy war against the Turk: whereunto it seems the events of time do invite christian kings, in respect of the great corruption and relaxation of discipline of war in that empire; and much more in respect of the utter ruin and enervation of the Grand Signor's navy and forces by sea; which openeth a way, with congregating vast armies by land, to suffocate and starve Constantinople, and thereby to put those provinces into mutiny and insurrection.

Also, that by the same conjunction there will be erected a tribunal, or pretorian power, to decide the controversies, which may arise amongst the princes and estates of christendom, without effusion of christian blood; for so much as any estate of christendom will hardly recede from that which the two kings shall meditate and determine.

Also, that whereas there doth, as it were, creep make popular estates and leagues to the disadvanupon the ground a disposition in some places to tage of monarchies, the conjunction of the two kings will be able to stop and impedite the growth of any

such evil.

These discourses you shall do well frequently to treat upon, and therewithal to fill up the spaces of the active part of your negotiation; representing, that it stands well with the greatness and majesty of the two kings to extend their cogitations and the influence of their government, not only to their own subjects, but to the state of the whole world besides, specially the christian portion thereof.

Account of Council Business.

FOR remedy against the infestation of pirates, than which there is not a better work under heaven, and therefore worthy of the great care his Majesty hath expressed concerning the same, this is done : one of the justices of the common pleas. He died August 28, 1558.

+ His Majesty had begun his journey towards Scotland, on the 14th of March, 1616-17.

Ambassador to the court of Spain.

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