PREFACE. xi 
Queen, to present a petition for the speedy execution of Mary. 
In the previous February he had been admitted to the high 
table at Gray’s Inn, and in due course became a bencher. 
Beyond the fact that he was on the ‘Committees appointed 
for conference touching a loan or benevolence to be offered 
to Her Majesty,’ and of the Bill for Attainder, and that he was 
one of those sent up to confer with the Lords about the Bill 
for continuance of Statutes, we hear no more of Bacon during 
the present Parliament. The next finds him member for 
Liverpool, busy on frequent committees, and reporting their 
proceedings to the House. The Marprelate controversy was 
now at its height, and Bacon delivered his judgement, full of 
wisdom and moderation, on the points in dispute, in a paper 
which remained unprinted during ‘his lifetime, called ‘An 
Advertisement touching the Controversies of the Church of 
England.’ It contains the germs of his essay ‘Of Unity in 
Religion.’ 
In 1589 he received his first piece of preferment in the 
_form of the reversion of an office, which however did not fall 
in for nearly twenty years. Under the date of Oct. in this year 
we find the entry in Burghley’s printed diary, ‘A Graunt of 
the Office of Clerk of the Counsell in the Starr Chamber to 
Francis Bacon.’ The office was worth 1600/. or 2000/. a year, 
and was executed by deputy, but Bacon had to exercise the 
patience of hope till July 16, 1608; and meanwhile, as he said 
himself, ‘it was like another man’s ground buttalling upon his 
house, which might mend his prospect, but it did not fill his 
barn.’ (Rawley.) He was a poor man in purse for many years 
to come, toiling in a profession in which his heart was not; 
but, as he writes to Burghley, with as vast contemplative ends 
as he had moderate civil ends, for he had taken all knowledge 
to be his province. His highest ambition at this time was to 
be put in an office which should place him above the reach of 
want and leave him leisure to prosecute his intellectual con- 
quests. This was the career he longed for at thirty-one, and 
it is important to bear it in mind as helping in some degree to 
vindicate his motives in later life. 
