254 SIR FRANCIS BACON S APOLOGY 



earnestness by speech, by writing, and by all the 

 means I could devise. For I did as plainly see his 

 overthrow chained, as it were by destiny, to that 

 journey, as it is possible for any man to ground a 

 judgment upon future contingents. But my lord, 

 howsoever his ear was open, yet his heart and 

 resolution was shut against that advice, where 

 by his ruin might have been prevented. After 

 my lord s going, I saw then how true a prophet I 

 was, in regard of the evident alteration which natu 

 rally succeeded in the queen s mind ; and thereupon 

 I was still in watch to find the best occasion that in 

 the weakness of my power I could either take or 

 minister, to pull him out of the fire, if it had been 

 possible : and not long after, methought I saw some 

 overture thereof, which I apprehended readily; a 

 particularity which I think to be known to very 

 few, and the which I do the rather relate unto your 

 lordship, because I hear it should be talked, that 

 while my lord was in Ireland I revealed some mat 

 ters against him, or I cannot tell what ; which if it 

 were not a mere slander as the rest is, but had any, 

 though never so little, colour, was surely upon this 

 occasion. The queen, one day at Nonesuch, a lit 

 tle, as I remember, before Cuffe s coming over, 

 where I attended her, shewed a passionate distaste 

 of my lord s proceedings in Ireland, as if they were 

 unfortunate, without judgment, contemptuous, and 

 not without some private end of his own, and all 

 that might be ; and was pleased, as she spake of it 

 to many that she trusted least, so to fall into the like 



