REMEMBRANCES FOR THE KING, ETC. 123 



to my duty and care of your service to put you in mind of 

 those points of form, which have relation, not so much to 

 a journey into Scotland, as to an absence from your city of 

 London for six months, or to a distance from your said city 

 near three hundred miles, and that in an ordinary course ; 

 wherein I lead myself by calling to consideration what 

 things there are that require your signature, and may seem 

 not so fit to expect sending to and fro ; and therefore to be 

 supplied by some precedent warrants. 



First, your ordinary commissions of justice, of assize, 

 and the peace need not your signature, but pass of course 

 by your chancellor. And your commissions of lieutenancy, 

 though they need your signature, yet if any of the lieuten 

 ants should die, your majesty s choice and pleasure may be 

 very well attended. Only I should think fit, under your 

 majesty s correction, that such of your lord lieutenants as 

 do not attend your person were commanded to abide within 

 their countries respectively. 



For grants, if there were a longer cessation, I think your 

 majesty will easily believe it will do no hurt. And yet if 

 any be necessary, the continual dispatches will supply that 

 turn. 



That which is chiefly considerable is proclamations, 

 which all do require your majesty s signature, except you 

 leave some warrant under your great seal to your standing 

 council here in London. 



It is true I cannot foresee any such case of such sudden 

 necessity, except it should be the apprehension of some great 

 offenders, or the adjournment of the term upon sickness, 

 or some riot in the city, such as hath been about the liber 

 ties of the Tower, or against strangers, &c. But your ma 

 jesty, in your great wisdom, may perhaps think of many 

 things that 1 cannot remember or foresee : and therefore it 

 was fit to refer those things to your better judgment. 



Also my lord chancellor s age and health is such as it 

 doth not only admit, but require the accident of his death* 

 to be thought of, which may fall in such a time as the very 

 commissions of ordinary justice beforementioned, and writs, 

 which require present dispatch, cannot well be put off. 

 Therefore your majesty may be pleased to take into, consi 

 deration, whether you will not have such a commission as 

 was prepared about this time twelvemonth in my lord s 

 extreme sickness, for the taking of the seal into custody, 



* He died at the age of seventy, on the 15th of March, 1616-7, having re 

 signed the great seal on the third of that month ; which was given on the 7th to 

 Sir Francis Bacon. 



