PREFACE. XXXV11 



University Counsel since the icth of November, 1613, and had 

 been retained in the same capacity by Trinity College during 

 the years 1614-16. It was not known till the srd of March, 

 1616-7, that the Lord Chancellor resigned the Great Seal, 

 which on the 7th of the same month was delivered by the 

 King into the hands of Bacon. Our new Lord-Keeper, says 

 Chamberlain, goes with great state, having a world of follow 

 ers put upon him, though he had more than enough before. 

 On the first day of Term (May 7) he rode in pomp to West 

 minster, with a train of two hundred gallants, and delivered 

 his inaugural speech in Chancery, in which he published the 

 charge which the King gave him when he received the Seal, 

 and the rules he had laid down for his own conduct. Such 

 was his marvellous energy in his new office, that in the 

 course of a month he had cleared off all arrears, and on the 

 8th of June he reports to Buckingham that there is not one 

 cause unheard. A week after his appointment the King took 

 his departure for Scotland, leaving Bacon at the head of the 

 Council to manage affairs in his absence. In the same year 

 we find him using his influence with the King to dissuade him 

 from the Spanish match, and with Buckingham to prevent the 

 marriage of his brother, Sir John Villiers, with the daughter 

 of Sir Edward Coke. The issue of both showed that his 

 counsel was wise, but the King and Buckingham alike re 

 sented his interference. Coke s animosity was of course not 

 lessened by it. But for the present the career of Bacon s 

 prosperity was unchecked. On the 4th of January, 1617-8, he 

 became Lord Chancellor, and on the nth of July in the same 

 year he was created Baron Verulam. In his inaugural speech 

 as Lord-Keeper, he had announced his intention of reserving 

 the depth of the three long vacations for the studies, arts, 

 and sciences, to which in his own nature he was most in 

 clined. How well he had employed these moments of retire 

 ment from the business of his ollice became evident when, in 

 October, 1620, he presented the King with the great work of 

 his life, the Novum Organum, the object of which, he says, 

 is to * enlarge the bounds of reason, and to endow man s estate 



