14 J. HOPKINSON — ANNIVERSAHY ADDRESS : 



said that Bacon, when called upon by Ms Queen, as her learned 

 counsel-extraordinary, to do his duty, should have declined, or, far 

 worse, should purposely not have done it to the best of his ability. 

 Bacon somewhere says that a man's love for his friend should be 

 greater than for himself, for his Sovereign greater than for his 

 friend, and for his country greater than for his Sovereign, and few 

 will disagree with him ; but nearly all maintain that when Essex 

 turned traitor and endeavoured to stir up civil war, Bacon, knowing 

 that he was powerless to save his life, should have disobeyed the 

 commands of his Sovereign, or, while ostensibly carrying out her 

 instructions, should have been guilty of duplicity. ^luch stress 

 has been laid upon the expressions of esteem and affection which 

 Bacon in his letters bestowed upon Essex while he remained a 

 dutiful subject of the Queen, but it should be borne in mind that 

 in those days such expressions were mere matters of form, almost 

 as meaningless as the epistolary term, " Your obedient servant," 

 is now. 



Lord Campbell, in his 'Lives of the Lord Chancellors,' says that 

 "for some time after Essex's execution Bacon was looked upon 

 with great aversion." About six months after it he was returned 

 as a member of Parliament for Ipswich, his former constituency, 

 and also for St. Albans ; three years after it, in the first year of the 

 reign of James the First, this double return was repeated. Surely 

 this is not the way the electors would show their disapproval of his 

 conduct. It is true that Essex was popular with a certain class ; 

 that Elizabeth considered it necessaiy to have published fuller 

 particiilars of his treasonable proceedings than came out at his 

 trial ; and that Bacon, when, on the accession of James the First, 

 the friends of Essex came into favour and power, had to repel the 

 accusations of his own enemies and explain his conduct ; but it is 

 no less true that Essex proved himself to be a traitor, and that 

 Bacon satisfied his contemporaries that he had done his best to 

 make Essex loyal, and, having failed, had done his duty to his 

 Queen and country. 



Bacon was frequently suing for lucrative employments under the 

 crown during the reign of Elizabeth, but, though the Queen em- 

 ployed him and occasionally rewarded him for his services, it seems 

 that she either never fully forgave him for opposing her on the 

 question of subsidies, or that, to use her own word, he did not 

 " frame " sufficiently — she could not rely upon his implicit subjec- 

 tion to her imperious will. One of her rewards was the reversion 

 of the Clerkship of the Council in the Star Chamber, worth about 

 £1600 per annum. This, he said, was like " another man's ground 



