personage whom he had once instructed in the art of conducting himself with dignity.[341] Footnote 340: Macaulay’s Essay on Bacon in the _Edinburgh Review_. Footnote 341: Sir Anthony Weldon’s Court and Character of King James. This was not such conduct as would entitle a man to respect even from him on whom he cringed. Yet Bacon, in one of his letters addressed to Buckingham, declares him to have been the “truest and perfectest mirror of friendship that ever was in a court;” and protests that “he should count every day lost in which he should not study his well-doing in thought, or do his name honour in speech, or perform service for him indeed.”[342] Nor is the statement given by Weldon, of the manner in which the seals were offered to Bacon by Buckingham, credible. According to that writer, the Favourite, when he sent to proffer them to Bacon, accompanied them with an insulting message, saying, that whilst he knew him to be a man of excellent parts, he was also aware “that he was an errant knave, apt, in his prosperity, to ruin any that had raised him in his adversity;” yet from regard to his master’s service, he had obtained the seals for him; but with this assurance, that if he ever should act to him as he had done to others, he would be cast down as much below as he was now above any honour that he had expected,[343] alluding to the flagrant ingratitude and perfidy of Bacon to Essex. But this story, supported by no evidence, is at variance with probability; and since it rests upon the authority of one who is always inveterate against Buckingham, it may be discarded as wholly unworthy of belief. Footnote 342: Biog. Brit. Art. Bacon, note. Footnote 343: Bacon’s Works, ii., p. 201. That Buckingham knew well the character of the Lord Keeper before he promoted him to the Chancellorship—that he calculated on his subservience to himself, expressed in his letters, so that posterity may judge of Bacon’s professions—that he had discovered that the doctrine of expediency influenced the practice of Bacon, is almost certain; for he did not hesitate to sway him to the most disgraceful countenance of abuses for which the whole country was crying out for redress. Amongst the grievances most disliked were those of monopolies; and amongst the most detested of detestable patents was that for the exclusive manufacture of gold and silver lace. It had been conjointly granted to Sir Giles Mompesson, who is supposed to have been the original of Sir Giles Overreach, and to Sir Frances Michell, who is said to have suggested the character of Justice Greedy. Sir Giles was a Wiltshire knight, patronised by Buckingham; or, as it was the fashion of the day to speak, “a creature of the Favourite’s;” and was concerned, not only in the patent of gold and silver lace, but in forming the monopolies styled the patents of “Inns and Osteries.” In this affair Michell assisted him.[344] Footnote 344: Nichols’s Progresses, vol. iii., p. 297.