Ccclxxvl LIFE OF BACON. 



&quot; Soon after, according to his majesty s commands, be 

 wrote a submissive letter to the house, and sent me to 

 my Lord Windsor to know the result, which I was loth, at 

 iny return, to acquaint him with ; for, alas ! his sovereign s 

 favour was not in so high a measure, but he, like the 

 phrenix, must be sacrificed in flames of his own raising, 

 and so perished, like Icarus, in that his lofty design : the 

 great revenue of his office being lost, and his titles of 

 honour saved but by the bishops votes, whereto he replied, 

 that he was only bound to thank his clergy. 



&quot; The thunder of which fatal sentence did much perplex 

 my troubled thoughts as well as others, to see that famous- 

 lord, who procured his majesty to call this parliament, 

 must be the first subject of their revengeful wrath, and 

 that so unparalleled a master should be thus brought 

 upon the public stage, for the foolish miscarriage of his 

 own servants, whereof, with grief of heart, I confess myself 

 to be one. Yet shortly after, the King dissolved the 

 parliament, but never restored that matchless lord to his 

 place, which made him then to wish the many years he 

 had spent in state policy and law study had been solely 

 devoted to true philosophy : for, said he, the one, at the 

 best doth but comprehend man s frailty, in its greatest 

 splendour ; but the other, the mysterious knowledge of all 

 things created in the six days work.&quot; 



\Villiams On the llth of July the great seals were delivered to 



Keeper. Williams, who was now Lord Keeper of England and 



Bishop of Lincoln, with permission to retain () the deanery 



() &quot; The bishopric of Lincoln was bestowed upon him by the royal conge 

 d elire, the largest diocess in the land, because this new elect had the 

 largest wisdom to superintend so great a circuit. Yet inasmuch as the 

 revenue of it was not great, it was well preced out with a grant to hold the 

 deanery of Westminster, into which he had shut himself fast with as strong 

 bolts and bars as the law could make : else when the changes began to sing 

 in the fifth year after, he had been thrust out of doors in a storm, when he 



