76 Bacon 



so were joined in one history for the times passed; after the 

 manner of the Sacred History, which draweth down the 

 story of the ten tribes, and of the two tribes, as twins, 

 together. And if it shall seem that the greatness of this 

 work may make it less exactly performed, there is an excel 

 lent period of a much smaller compass of time, as to the 

 story of England; that is to say, from the uniting of the 

 Roses to the uniting of the kingdoms; a portion of time, 

 wherein, to my understanding, there hath been the rarest 

 varieties that in like number of successions of any heredi 

 tary monarchy hath been known. For it beginneth with 

 the mixed adoption of a crown by arms and title : an entry 

 by battle, an establishment by marriage, and therefore 

 times answerable, like waters after a tempest, full of work 

 ing and swelling, though without extremity of storm; but 

 well passed through by the wisdom of the pilot, being one 

 of the most sufficient kings of all the number. Then follow- 

 eth the reign of a king, whose actions, howsoever conducted, 

 had much intermixture with the affairs of Europe, balancing 

 and inclining them variably ; in whose time also began that 

 great alteration in the state ecclesiastical, an action which 

 seldom cometh upon the stage. Then the reign of a minor: 

 then an offer of a usurpation, though it was but as febris 

 ephemera. Then the reign of a queen matched with a 

 foreigner: then of a queen that lived solitary and un 

 married, and yet her government so masculine, that it had 

 greater impression and operation upon the states abroad 

 than it any ways received from thence. And now last, 

 this most happy and glorious event, that this island of 

 Britain, divided from all the world, 1 should be united in 

 itself: and that oracle of rest, given to ^Eneas, antiquam 

 exquirite matrem, 2 should now be performed and fulfilled 

 upon the nations of England and Scotland, being now 

 reunited in the ancient mother name of Britain, as a full 

 period of all instability and peregrinations. So that as it 

 cometh to pass in massive bodies, that they have certain 

 trepidations and waverings before they fix and settle; so it 

 seemeth that by the providence of God this monarchy, 

 before it was to settle in your majesty and your generations, 

 (in which I hope it is now established for ever,) had these 

 prelusive changes and varieties. 



1 Virg. Ed. i. 67. 2 Virg. Mn. iii. 96. 



