MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 83 



Mr. Francis Bacon to his Brother Antony.* 



Good Brother, 



Since I saw you this hath passed. Tuesday, though sent 

 for, I saw not the Queen. Her majesty alledged she was 

 then to resolve with the council upon her places of law. 

 But this resolution was ut supra ; and note the rest of the 

 counsellors were persuaded she came rather forwards than 

 otherwise ; for against me she is never peremptory but to 

 my lord of Essex. I missed a line of my Lord Keeper s ; 

 but thus much I hear otherwise. The Queen seemeth to 

 apprehend my travel. Whereupon I was sent for by Sir 

 Robert Cecil in sort as from her majesty; himself having 

 of purpose immediately gone to London to speak with me; 

 and not finding me there, he wrote to me. Whereupon I 

 came to the court, and upon his relation to me of her 

 majesty s speeches, I desired leave to answer it in writing ; 

 not, I said, that I mistrusted his report, but mine own wit ; 

 the copy of which answer I send. We parted in kindness 

 secundum exterius. This copy you must needs return, for I 

 have no other; and I wrote this by memory after the 

 original was sent away. The Queen s speech is after this 

 sort. Why! I have made no solicitor. Hath any body carried 

 a solicitor with him in his pocket ? But he must have it in 

 his own time (as if it were but yesterday s nomination) or 

 else I must be thought to cast him away. Then her majesty 

 sweareth thus : &quot; If I continue this manner, she will seek 

 all England for a solicitor rather than take me. Yea, she 

 will send for Heuston and Coventryf to-morrow next,&quot; as 

 if she would swear them both. Again she entereth into it, 

 that &quot;she never deals so with any as with me (in hoc 

 erratum non est) she hath pulled me over the bar (note the 

 wordsyfor they cannot be her own) she hath used me in her 

 greatest causes. But this is Essex, and she is more angry 

 with him than with me.&quot; And such like speeches, so 

 strange, as I should lose myself in it, but that I have cast 

 off the care of it. My conceit is, that I am the least part 

 of mine own matter. But her majesty would have a delay, 

 and yet would not bear it herself. Therefore she giveth no 

 way to me, and she perceiveth her council giveth no way 



* Among the papers of Antony Bacon, Esq. vol. iv. fol. 28, in the Lambeth 

 Library. 



t Thomas Coventry, afterwards one of the Justices of the Common Pleas, 

 and father of the Lord Keeper Coventry. 



