PREFACE. eX xXvii 
University Counsel since the roth of November, 1613, and had 
been retained in the same capacity by Trinity College during 
the years 1614-16. It was not known till the 3rd of March, 
1616-7, that the Lord Chancellor resigned the Great Seal, 
which on the 7th of the same month was delivered by the 
King into the hands of Bacon. ‘Our new Lord-Keeper,’ says 
Chamberlain, ‘ goes with great state, having a world of follow- 
ers put upon him, though he had more than enough before.’ 
On the first day of Term (May 7) he rode in pomp to West- 
minster, with a train of two hundred gallants, and delivered 
his inaugural speech in Chancery, in which he published the 
charge which the King gave him when he received the Seal, 
and the rules he had laid down for his own conduct. Such 
was his marvellous energy in his new office, that in the 
course of a month he had cleared off all arrears, and on the 
8th of June he reports to Buckingham that there is not one 
cause unheard. A week after his appointment the King took 
his departure for Scotland, leaving Bacon at the head of the 
Council to manage affairs in his absence. In the same year 
we find him using his influence with the King to dissuade him 
from the Spanish match, and with Buckingham to prevent the 
marriage of his brother, Sir John Villiers, with the daughter 
of Sir Edward Coke. The issue of both showed that his 
counsel was wise, but the King and Buckingham alike re- 
sented his interference. Coke’s animosity was of course not 
lessened by it. But for the present the career of Bacon’s 
prosperity was unchecked. On the 4th of January, 1617-8, he 
became Lord Chancellor, and on the r1th of July in the same 
year he was created Baron Verulam. In his inaugural speech 
as Lord-Keeper, he had announced his intention of reserving 
‘the depth of the three long vacations’ for the studies, arts, 
and sciences, to which in his own nature he was most in- 
clined. How well he had employed these moments of retire- 
ment from the business of his office became evident when, in 
October, 1620, he presented the King with the great work of 
his life, the Novum Organum, the object of which, he says, 
is to ‘enlarge the bounds of reason, and to endow man’s estate 
