XOTE Z Z. 



&quot; Of the fact of these applications having been made, no doubt can be enter 

 tained. The inferences to be deduced from the fact alone vary. 



It was the custom of the times, is one and a legitimate inference. 



Judge Foster, applying the sentiments of his own more intelligent times to 

 this conduct, says, &quot; Every reader will make his own reflections upon it. I 

 have but one to make in this place. This method of forestalling the judgment 

 of a court in a case of blood then depending, at a time too when the judges 

 were removeable at the pleasure of the crown, doth no honour to the memory of 

 the persons concerned in a transaction so insidious and unconstitutional, and at 

 the same time weakeneth the authority of the judgment.&quot; 



And speaking of Bacon, he says, &quot; Avarice, I think, was not his ruling pas 

 sion ; but whenever a false ambition, ever restless and craving, overheated in 

 the pursuit of the honours which the crown alone can confer, happeneth to sti 

 mulate an heart otherwise formed for great and noble pursuits, it hath frequently 

 betrayed it into measures full as mean as avarice itself could have suggested to 

 the wretched animals who live and die under its dominion. For these passions, 

 however they may seem to be at variance, have ordinarily produced the same 

 effects. Both degrade the man ; both contract his views into the little point of 

 self interest, and equally steel the heart against the rebukes of conscience, or 

 the sense of true honour. Bacon having undertaken the service, informeth his 

 majesty, in a letter addressed to him, that with regard to three of the judges, 

 whom he nameth, he had small doubt of their concurrence. Neither, saith 

 he, am I wholly out of hope that my lord Coke himself, when I have, in some 

 dark manner, put him in doubt that he shall be left alone, will not continue 

 singular. These are plain naked facts ; they need no comment. 



SiSlljen ISacon teas Chancellor. 



It will be remembered that Sir Francis was appointed Lord Keeper on the 

 3rd of March, and that he did not take his seat in the court until the 7th of May, 

 but he had scarcely been entrusted with the seals when an application was 

 made to him out of court by Buckingham on behalf of a suitor, in a letter which 

 explains in a postscript that similar applications had been made to Sir Francis s 

 predecessor ; and similar applications were, as a matter of course, made during 

 the whole time he was entrusted with the great seal. This will appear from the 

 following letters : 



To the Lord Keeper, (a) 



My honourable Lord, Whereas the late Lord Chancellor thought it fit to 

 dismiss out of the Chancery a cause touching Henry Skipwith to the common 

 law, where he desireth it should be decided ; these are to entreat your lordship 

 in the gentleman s favour, that if the adverse party shall attempt to bring it now 

 back again into your lordship s court, you would not retain it there, but let it 

 rest in the place where now it is, that without more vexation unto him in posting 

 him from one to another, he may have a final hearing and determination thereof. 

 And so I rest your Lordship s ever at command, G. BUCKINGHAM. 



My Lord, This is a business wherein I spake to my Lord Chancellor, where 

 upon he dismissed the suit. Lincoln, the 4th of April, 1617. 



(a) This is the first of many letters, which the Marquis of Buckingham wrote 

 to Lord Bacon, in favour of persons who had causes depending in, or likely to 

 come into the court of Chancery ; and it is not improbable that such recommen 

 dations were considered in that age as less extraordinary and irregular than they 

 would appear now. The marquis made the same kind of applications to Lord 

 Bacon s successor, the Lord Keeper Williams, in whose life, by Bishop Racket, 

 part i. p. 107, we are informed, that &quot; there was not a cause of moment, but, as 

 soon as it came to publication, one of the parties brought letters from this mighty 

 peer, and tho lord keeper s patron.&quot; Birch. 



