304 LETTERS FROM BIRCH. 



there is so good proof) stands my last hope. If I now find 

 a stop, I will resolve it is fatum Carthaginis, and sit down 

 in perpetual peace. In this business I desire all convenient 

 silence ; for though I can endure to be refused, yet it would 

 trouble me to have my name blasted. If your honour return 

 not, and you think it requisite, I will attend at court. 

 Mean time, with all humble and hearty wishes for increase 

 of all happiness, I kiss your honour s hands. 

 September 27, Your Honour s humbly at command, 



1616. R. MARTIN. 



Indorsed To the Right Honourable Sir Francis Bacon, 

 Knight, his Majesty s Attorney-General, and 

 one of his Majesty s most honourable privy 

 council) my singular patron at court. 



To the King. 

 It may please your Majesty, 



This morning, according to your majesty s command, we 

 have had my Lord Chief Justice of the King s Bench * be 

 fore us, we being assisted by all your learned council except 

 Serjeant Crew, who was then gone to attend your majesty. 

 It was delivered unto him, that your majesty s pleasure 

 was, that we should receive an account from him of the 

 performance of a commandment of your majesty laid upon 

 him, which was, that he should enter into a view and re 

 tractation of such novelties, and errors, and offensive con 

 ceits, as were dispersed in his Reports; that he had had good 

 time to do it ; and we doubted not but he had used good 

 endeavour in it, which we desired now in particular to 

 receive from him. 



His speech was, that there were of his Reports eleven 

 books, that contained about five hundred cases ; that here 

 tofore in other Reports, as namely, those of Mr. Plow- 

 den,f which he reverenced much, there hath been found 

 nevertheless errors, which the wisdom of time had disco 

 vered, and later judgments controlled ; and enumerated to 



* Sir Edward Coke. 



t Edward Plowden, born of an ancient family of that name at Plowden in 

 Shropshire, about the year 1518. He was educated at Cambridge and Oxford, 

 in both which universities he studied physic for some time, being admitted in 

 November 1552, by the latter to practise chirurgery and physic. After this, he 

 applied himself to the study of the common law, in which he soon became 

 eminent, and in 1557 was autumn reader to the Middle Temple, and three years 

 after lent reader, having been made serjeant, October 27, 1558. He died 

 February 6, 1584-5, at the age of sixty-seven, in the profession of the Roman 

 Catholic faith. 



