XXX PREFACE. 



the Savoy, where his chief guests were the three knights, 

 Cope, Hicks, and Beeston; and upon this conceit (as he said 

 himself) that since he could not have my L. of Salisbury in 

 person, which he wished, he would have him at least in his 

 representative body. Alice Barnham, who thus became the 

 wife of Francis Bacon, was no doubt the same handsome 

 maiden whom he mentioned three years before to his cousin 

 Cecil. She was the daughter of Benedict Barnham, a London 

 merchant, whose widow took for her second husband Sir John 

 Packington, a knight of Worcestershire. Lady Bacon brought 

 with her a fortune of 22o/. a year, which was settled upon 

 herself, with an additional soo/. a year from her husband, 

 a fact which at once disproves Lord Campbell s charge that 

 the match was a mercenary one. But how much of romance 

 or even sentiment there was in it we have no means of know 

 ing. Bacon was now in his forty-sixth year, and his language 

 three months later breathes not so much the tone of ecstasy 

 as of tranquil satisfaction. I thank God I have not taken a 

 thorn out of my foot to put it into my side. No letter of 

 their correspondence has been preserved, and from this time 

 we hear nothing more of the lady which could tell us whether 

 her influence over her husband was great or small. The 

 gossip of fifteen years later credited her with a forward 

 tongue, and from a sentence in Bacon s will we learn 

 that she had given him grievous cause of offence. She 

 survived him many years, and married her gentleman 

 usher. 



The subject of the Union with Scotland and the Natural 

 isation of the Scotch was still the prominent one before the 

 House. On the former question we have a fragment of Bacon s 

 speech delivered on 25th Nov., 1606. On the latter he replied 

 to Nicholas Fuller, iyth Feb., 1606-7. He spoke against the 

 motion for the Union of Laws on the 28th of March, and on 

 the 1 7th of June he reported to the House the speeches of 

 Salisbury and Northampton at the conference concerning the 

 petition of the merchants upon the Spanish grievances. The 

 reward which he had so well earned came at last. Doderidge 



