to Villiers, now Lord Buckingham, in the following letter: "MY DEAREST LORD,--It is both in cares and kindness that small ones float up to the tongue, and great ones sink down into the heart with silence. Therefore I could speak little to your Lordship to-day, neither had I fit time; but I must profess thus much, that in this day's work you are the truest and perfectest mirror and example of firm and generous friendship that ever was in court. And I shall count every day lost, wherein I shall not either study your well-doing in thought, or do your name honour in speech, or perform you service in deed. Good my Lord, account and accept me your most bounden and devoted friend and servant of all men living, "March 7, 1616 (_i.e._ 1616/1617). FR. BACON, C.S." He himself believed the appointment to be a popular one. "I know I am come in," he writes to the King soon after, "with as strong an envy of some particulars as with the love of the general." On the 7th of May, 1617, he took his seat in Chancery with unusual pomp and magnificence, and set forth, in an opening speech, with all his dignity and force, the duties of his great office and his sense of their obligation. But there was a curious hesitation in treating him as other men were treated in like cases. He was only "Lord Keeper." It was not till the following January (1617/18) that he received the office of Lord Chancellor. It was not till half a year afterwards that he was made a Peer. Then he became Baron Verulam (July, 1618), and in January, 1620/21, Viscount St. Alban's.