LETTERS FROM BIRCH. 309 



Sir Edmund Bacon* to Sir Francis Bacon, Attorney- 

 General. 

 My Lord, 



I am bold to present unto your hands by this bearer, 

 whom the law calls up, some salt of wormwood, being un 

 certain whether the regard of your health makes you still 

 continue the use of that medicine. I could wish it other 

 wise; for I am persuaded that all diuretics, which carry 

 with them that punctuous nature and caustic quality by 

 calcination, are hurtful to the kidneys, if not enemies to the 

 other principal parts of the body. Wherein, if it shall 

 please you, for your better satisfaction, to call the advice of 

 your learned physicians, and that they shall resolve of any 

 medicine for your health, wherein my poor labour may 

 avail you, you know where your faithful apothecary dwells, 

 who will be ready at your commandment ; as I am bound 

 both by your favours to myself, as also by those to my 

 nephew, whom you have brought out of darkness into light, 

 and, by what I hear, have already made him, by your 

 bounty, a subject of emulation to his elder brother. We 

 are all partakers of this your kindness towards him ; and 

 for myself, I shall be ever ready to deserve it by any service 

 that shall lie in the power of 



Redgrave, this 19th of Your Lordship s poor Nephew, 



October, 1616. EDM. BACON. 



Indorsed For the Right Honourable Sir Francis Bacon, 

 Knight, his Majesty s Attorney-General, and 

 one of his most honourable Privy Counsellors, 

 be these delivered at London. 



To the King. 



May it please your excellent Majesty, 

 I send your majesty a form of discharge for my Lord 

 Coke from his place of chief justice of your Bench.f 



I send also a warrant to the Lord Chancellor for making 

 forth a writ for a new chief justice, leaving a blank for the 

 name to be supplied by your majesty s presence ; for I never 

 received your majesty s express pleasure in it. 



* Nephew of Sir Francis Bacon, being eldest son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, 

 eldest son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. Sir Edmund 

 died without issue, April 10, 1649. There are several letters to him from Sir 

 Henry Wotton, printed among the works of the latter. 



t Sir Edward Coke was removed from that post on the 15th of November, 

 1616. 



