xiv PREFACE, 
relieved himself from the embarrassment of his debts by selling 
the reversion of his property and purchasing an annuity, and 
would then have abandoned a profession for which he had no 
love, and lived the life of a student. But he was kept in sus- 
pense during the summer of 1593, and the delay decided his 
future career. 
In March, 1593-4, he drew up a report, not printed in his 
lifetime, ‘ of the detestable treason, intended by Dr. Roderigo 
Lopez, a physician attending upon the person of the Queen’s 
Majesty,’ which had been traced out with great skill by Essex. 
The latter meanwhile was urging Bacon’s claims upon the 
Queen with a pertinacity and petulance which rather injured 
than furthered his cause, MHeartsick with hope deferred, 
Bacon writes to his friend, ‘I will, by God’s assistance ..... 
retire myself with a couple of men to Cambridge, and there 
spend my life in my studies and contemplations, without look- 
ing back.’ On the roth of April Coke’s patent as Attorney- 
General was made out and delivered. By this appointment 
the Solicitorship became vacant, and Essex renewed his im- 
portunities with the Queen, who disparaged Bacon in his legal 
capacity as one who was not deep, but rather showed to the 
utmost of his knowledge, while she admitted he had ‘a great 
wit and an excellent gift of speech, and much other good 
learning.’ On the 27th of July, 1594, being detained by illness 
at Huntingdon on his way north, he paid a visit to Cambridge, 
and received the honorary degree of Master of Arts. The 
Queen was still relentless, but had given way so far as to 
employ him on the 13th of June in the examination of two 
persons in the Tower, who were implicated in a conspiracy. 
In August and September he is again at work upon business 
of the same kind. Still the long hoped-for promotion did not 
come. In the Christmas vacation of this year he amused him- 
self with beginning his ‘Promus of Formularies and Elegan- 
cies,’ and in writing speeches for an entertainment at Gray’s 
Inn. The suspense of more than a year and half was brought 
to an end by the appointment of Serjeant Fleming to the 
Solicitorship on the 5th of November, 1595. Essex was mor- 
