310 LETTERS FROM BJRCH. 



If your majesty resolve of Montagu* (as I conceive and 

 wish), it is very material, as these times are, that your ma 

 jesty have some care that the recorder succeeding be a 

 temperate and discreet man, and assured to your majesty s 

 service. If your majesty, without too much harshness, 

 can continue the place within your own servants, it is best ; 

 if not, the man upon whom the choice is like to fall, which 

 is Coventry ,f I hold doubtful for your service ; not but 

 that he is a well learned, and an honest man, but he hath 

 been, as it were, bred by Lord Coke, and seasoned in his 

 ways. God preserve your majesty. 



Your Majesty s most humble 



and most bounden Servant, 



FR. BACON. 



I send not these things which concern my Lord Coke 

 by my Lord Villiers, for such reasons as your majesty may 

 conceive. 



November 13, at Noon, 1616. 



To the King. 

 It may please your most excellent Majesty, 



I send your majesty, according to your commandment, 

 the warrant for the review of Sir Edward Coke s Reports. 

 I had prepared it before I received your majesty s pleasure 

 but I was glad to see it was in your mind, as well as in my 

 hands. In the nomination which your majesty made of 

 the judges, to whom it should be directed, your majesty 

 could not name the Lord Chief Justice that now is,J because 

 he was not then declared ; but you could not leave him out 

 now without discountenance. 



I send your majesty the state of Lord Darcy s cause 



* Sir Henry Montagu, Recorder of London, who was made Lord Chief Jus 

 tice of the King s Bench, November 16, 1616. He was afterwards made Lord 

 Treasurer, and created Earl of Manchester. 



t Thomas Coventry, Esq. afterwards Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. 



| Sir Henry Montagu. 



This is just mentioned in a letter of Sir Francis Bacon to the Lord Viscount 

 Villiers, printed in his works ; but is more particularly stated in the Reports of 

 Sir Henry Hobart, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, p, 120, 121. 

 Edit. London, 1658, fol. as follows. The Lord Darcy of the North sued Ger- 

 vase Markham, Esq. in the Star-chamber, in 1616, on this occasion. They had 

 hunted together, and the defendant and a servant of the plaintiff, one Beckwith, 

 fell together by the ears in the field ; and Beckwith threw him down, and was 

 upon him cuffing him, when the Lord Darcy took his servant off, and reproved 

 him. However, Mr. Markham expressing some anger against his lordship, and 

 charging him with maintaining his man, Lord Darcy answered, that he had 

 used Mr. Markham kindly ; for if he had not rescued him from his man, the 

 latter would have beaten him to rags. Mr. Markham upon this wrote five or 

 six letters to Lord Darcy, subscribing them with his name ; but did not send 



