LETTERS FROM BIRCH. 



Mr. Francis Bacon to Sir John Puckering, Lord 



Keeper of the Great Seal.* 

 My Lord, 



It is a great grief unto me, joined with marvel, that her 

 majesty should retain a hard conceit of my speeches in 

 parliament.^ It might please her sacred majesty to think 

 what my end should be in those speeches, if it were not 

 duty, and duty alone. I am not so simple but I know the 

 common beaten way to please. And whereas popularity 

 hath been objected, I muse what care I should take to 

 please many, that take a course of life to deal with few. 

 On the other side, her majesty s grace and particular favour 

 towards me hath been such, as I esteem no worldly thing 

 above the comfort to enjoy it, except it be the conscience 

 to deserve it. But if the not seconding of some particular 

 person s opinion shall be presumption, and to differ upon 

 the manner shall be to impeach the end, it shall teach my 

 devotion not to exceed wishes, and those in silence. Yet 

 notwithstanding (to speak vainly as in grief) it may be her 

 majesty hath discouraged as good a heart as ever looked 

 toward her service, and as void of self-love. And so in more 

 grief than I can well express, and much more than I can 

 well dissemble, I leave your lordship, being as ever, 



Your Lordship s intirely devoted, &c. 



To Sir Thomas Egerton, Lord Keeper of the Great 



Seal.t 



It may please your Lordship, 



I am to make humble complaint to your lordship of some 

 hard dealing offered me by one Sympson, a goldsmith, a 

 man noted much, as I have heard, for extremities and 



* Harl. MSS. Vol. 286. No. 129. fol. 232. 



t On Wednesday, the 7th of March, 1592-3, upon the three subsidies demanded 

 of the house of commons ; to which he assented, but not to the payment of them 

 under six years, urging the necessities of the people, the danger of raising public 

 discontentment, and the setting of an evil precedent against themselves and their 

 posterity. See Sir Simonds D Ewes s Journals, p. 493. He sat in that parlia 

 ment, which met November 19, 1592, and was dissolved 10 April, 1593, as one 

 of the knights of the shire for Middlesex. 



t From the original in the Hatfield Collection of State Papers, communicated 

 to me by the Rev. William Murdin, B. D. and intended by him for the public 

 in a third volume of the collection of those papers, if his death had not prevented 

 him from executing his design. 



T2 



