PREFACE. XI 



Queen, to present a petition for the speedy execution of Mary. 

 In the previous February he had been admitted to the high 

 table at Gray s Inn, and in due course became a bencher. 

 Beyond the fact that he was on the Committees appointed 

 for conference touching a loan or benevolence to be offered 

 to Her Majesty, and of the Bill for Attainder, and that he was 

 one of those sent up to confer with the Lords about the Bill 

 for continuance of Statutes, we hear no more of Bacon during 

 the present Parliament. The next finds him member for 

 Liverpool, busy on frequent committees, and reporting their 

 proceedings to the House. The Marprelate controversy was 

 now at its height, and Bacon delivered his judgement, full of 

 wisdom and moderation, on the points in dispute, in a paper 

 which remained unprinted during his lifetime, called An 

 Advertisement touching the Controversies of the Church of 

 England. It contains the germs of his essay Of Unity in 

 Religion. 



In 1589 he received his first piece of preferment in the 

 form of the reversion of an office, which however did not fall 

 in for nearly twenty years. Under the date of Oct. in this year 

 we find the entry in Burghley s printed diary, A Graunt of 

 the Office of Clerk of the Counsell in the Starr Chamber to 

 Francis Bacon. The office was worth i6oo/. or 2ooo/. a year, 

 and was executed by deputy, but Bacon had to exercise the 

 patience of hope till July 16, 1608 ; and meanwhile, as he said 

 himself, it was like another man s ground buttalling upon his 

 house, which might mend his prospect, but it did not fill his 

 barn. (Rawley.) He was a poor man in purse for many years 

 to come, toiling in a profession in which his heart was not ; 

 but, as he writes to Burghley, with as vast contemplative ends 

 as he had moderate civil ends, for he had taken all knowledge 

 to be his province. His highest ambition at this time was to 

 be put in an office which should place him above the reach of 

 want and leave him leisure to prosecute his intellectual con 

 quests. This was the career he longed for at thirty-one, and 

 it is important to bear it in mind as helping in some degree to 

 vindicate his motives in later life. 



