him a confession of the truth, at which he seems to have owned himself the author of the writings imputed to him, but denied any intention to publish or preach them. Whether the Government believed this or whether it was merely out of respect for the opinion of the dissentient Judges, the verdict and sentence pronounced against him were thought sufficient for example; and though not pardoned or liberated, he was allowed to live otherwise unmolested till he died about seven months after. It was a case which might have been expected (considering that Coke was understood to be against the prosecution) to excite a good deal of popular sympathy at the time. But I do not find traces of any. Peacham's contemporaries seem to have seen nothing interesting in him. Whatever his deservings may have been, his name owes all its favour with posterity to the discovery, about a hundred years since, of the name of Bacon among eight witnesses to his examination under torture.

"Peacham, the condemned minister, is dead in the jail at Taunton, where they say he left behind him a most wicked and desperate writing, worse than that he was convicted for." Chamberlain to Carleton, 27 March 1616.

EASTER term began in 1615 on the 26th of April, and Bacon returned from his vacation with a budget of papers for the King on the means of improving his revenue. I have not succeeded in finding any which answer the description, and I am afraid they are altogether lost. If they should ever be recovered they can hardly fail to throw light of the most valuable kind upon his political principles; being a contribution entirely voluntary to the solution of the main political difficulty of his times. As it is, we must content ourselves with the knowledge, derived from the next letter, that this was the subject, or one of the subjects, with which he was busy during the interval of comparative leisure between the law-terms.

The difference of a day between the date at the foot of the letter and the docket on the back (which I noted as remarkable when I made the collation, and therefore I conclude that I was satisfied of the fact at the time, which is long ago) may serve as a reminder that, valuable as exact dates are in all these historical and biographical inquiries, their exactness cannot be depended on always and absolutely. If any question of importance had turned upon the day on which this letter was written, either of the dates in the absence of the other would have seemed conclusive, and yet one must be wrong. If the difference had been the other way, I should have supposed that the date at the end represented the day on which the letter was written and the date on the back the day on which it was sent off. But it is difficult to imagine how it can have been docketed before it was finished.

VOL. V.

K

A LETTER TO THE KING, TOUCHING MATTER OF HIS MAJESTY'S REVENUE AND PROFIT. 25 APR. 1615.1

It may please your Majesty,

I may remember what Tacitus saith by occasion that Tiberius was often and long absent from Rome. In urbe, et parva et magna negotia imperatorem simul premunt. But, saith he, In recessu, dimissis rebus minoris momenti, summæ rerum magnarum magis agitantur. This maketh me think it shall be no incivility to trouble your Majesty with business during your abode from London; knowing that your Majesty's meditations are the principal wheel of your estate; and being warranted by a former commandment which I received from you.

I do now only send your Majesty these papers inclosed, because I do greatly desire so far forth to preserve my credit with you, as thus ;-that whereas lately (perhaps out of too much desire, which induceth too much belief,) I was bold to say that I thought it as easy for your Majesty to come out of want as to go forth of your gallery; your Majesty would not take me for a dreamer or a projector. I send your Majesty therefore some grounds of my hopes. And for that paper which I have gathered of increasements sperate, I beseech you to give me leave to think that if any of the particulars do fail, it will be rather for want of workmanship in those that shall deal in them than want of materials in the things themselves. The other paper hath many discarding cards, and I send it chiefly that your Majesty may be the less surprised by projectors, who pretend sometimes great discoveries and inventions in things that have been propounded, and perhaps after a better fashion, long since. God Almighty preserve your Majesty.

26 April, 1615.

Your Majesty's most humble

and devoted subject and servant.

2.

Peacham was not the only person whose name owes its lustre in modern times to the accident that when he was prosecuted by the Government Bacon was Attorney General. A gentleman of the

1 Gibson Papers, vol. viii. f. 18. The heading is the docket, which is in Bacon's hand. The letter is a copy by one of his own men.

name of Oliver St. John has enjoyed during the last thirty years a reputation for patriotic virtue, of which the men of his own time knew or thought so little that they did not care to set any mark upon him by which he could be distinguished from others of the same name; and it is only within the last ten years that the labour of antiquaries has discovered which of the Oliver St. Johns was the true owner of it. Lord Campbell took him for the Oliver St. John who defended Hampden, and became Solicitor General in 1641 and Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1648: Mr. Foss, very strangely, for Sir Oliver, who in the course of the very next year succeeded Chichester as Lord Deputy of Ireland, and was afterwards created Viscount Grandison. It was not till November 1859 that Mr. Maclean discovered and announced in Notes and Queries' that he was the second son of John St. John of Lydiard Tregoze--a near relation of Lord Grandison; but a very different man.1

Except as a proof that the reputation which the name enjoys is a modern growth, his parentage is a question of little importance. How far that reputation is deserved the reader shall judge for himself; for all that we know about the real Oliver St. John who was prosecuted in the Star Chamber for a seditious libel while Bacon was Attorney General, is so little, that I shall be able to exhibit it in these pages at full length. The offence laid to his charge was more serious than Peacham's, though it had not so bad a name or so heavy a penalty; for it aimed at the part in which the Government was weakest, and popular disaffection easiest to rouse and likely to cause most obstruction. And though I have no reason to think that Bacon was the original adviser of the prosecution, I do not doubt that he would have advised it had he been asked, or had it been his business. Indeed he had previously described the case by anticipation, as one which, if it should occur, would be fit for punishment. At the first starting of the project of the voluntary oblation, he had laid it down among the "points to be observed," that "howsoever no manner of compulsory means was to be used, nor no show thereof; yet if any malicious person should deride or scorn or slander the frank disposition of the King's subjects, or purposely dissuade it, or seek to defeat it or divert it, that he should be questioned and severely punished." I do not think he expected the case to arise in the quarter where it did, but otherwise he had forecast its features with great accuracy.

The Benevolence money having come in slowly and scantily in

'Notes and Queries,' 5 Nov. 1859, p. 386. If it be true, as stated by Birch, that Lord Grandison died in 1630, aged 70, they must have been nearly of the same age.

Against the law.

1.

2.

Against

Reason.

1.

2.

answer to the first letters from the Council, and the movements of Spinola in Germany (which seemed to threaten the Palatinate) having supplied them with a fresh and popular argument in favour of contribution-for without money how could the Government take such a part in the impending quarrel as became the greatness of England?-a second circular was sent to the Sheriffs towards the end of September, urging greater speed in making the collection and sending in the proceeds. Upon the receipt of these letters, meetings were appointed by the Justices of Peace to be held in the several towns, for the purpose of taking the subject into consideration and among the rest in Marlborough, a principal town of Wiltshire, which was governed by a Mayor. The Mayor (feeling apparently the want of counsel and assistance), applied to Oliver St. John, as a man of good family and a person of importance in the place. St. John forbore to give any answer in private, but the next day, when the Justices were to meet, sent a letter to the Mayor, with authority to lay it before them if he thought fit. And as this letter, of which a copy was printed in the Cabala, constitutes at once the whole of his offence and the whole of his title to renown, it will be best to give it entire.

:

"As I think, this kind of Benevolence is against Law, Reason, and Religion.

The Law is in the Statute called Magna Charta 9 H. 3. cap. 29. that no free man be any way destroyed, but by the laws of the land.

Secondly, besides that the said Statute of Magna Charta is by all Princes since established and confirmed, it is in this special case of voluntary or free grants enacted and decreed, 25 Ed. 1. cap. 5, that none such be drawn into custom, and cap. 6, that henceforth be taken no such aids, tasks, free grants, or prizes, but by assent of all the Realm, and for the good of the same. And in primo R. 3. cap. 2. That the subjects and Commons of this realm from henceforth shall in no wise be charged by any charge or imposition called a Benevolence, or any such like charge, and that such exactions called a Benevolence shall be damned and adnulled for ever.

It is not only without but against Reason that the Commons in their severals and particulars, should be made relievers or suppliers of his Majesty's wants, who neither know his wants, nor the sums that may be raised to supply the same.

Secondly, it is against reason that the particular and several Commons distracted, should oppose their judgments and discretion to the judgment and discretion of the wisdom of their land assembled in Parliament, who have there denied any such aid.

Against It argueth in us want of that love and due respect of our Sovereign Religion. Lord and King, which ought to be in every of us towards each other,