"Yet lest the calumnious tongues of men might extenuate the good
opinion you had of his worth and merit, I must ingenuously confess
that my selfe and others of his servants were the occasion of
exhaling his vertues into a darke exlipse; which God knowes would
have long endured both for the honour of his King and the good of
the Commonaltie; had not we whom his bountie nursed, laid on his
guiltlesse shoulders our base and execrable deeds to be scand and
censured by the whole senate of a state, where no sooner sentence
was given, but most of us forsoke him, which makes us bear the badge
of Jewes to this day. Yet I am confident there were some Godly
Daniels amongst us.... As for myselfe, with shame I must acquit the
title, and pleade guilty; which grieves my very soule, that so
matchlesse a Peer should be lost by such insinuating caterpillars,
who in his owne nature scorn'd the least thought of any base,
unworthy, or ignoble act, though subject to infirmites as ordained
to the wisest."
In FULLER'S "Worthies" it is written:
"He was a rich Cabinet filled with Judgment, Wit, Fancy and Memory,
and had the golden Key, Elocution, to open it. He was singular in
singulis, in every Science and Art, and being In-at-all came off
with Credit. He was too Bountifull to his Servants, and either too
confident of their Honesty, or too conniving at their Falsehood.
'Tis said he had 2 Servants, one in all Causes Patron to the
Plaintiff, the other to the Defendant, but taking bribes of both,
with this Condition, to restore the Mony received, if the Cause went
against them. Such practices, tho' unknown to their Master, cost him
the loss of his Office."
In "The Lives of Statesmen and Favourites of Elizabeth's Reign" it is
said:--
"His religion was rational and sober, his spirit publick, his love
to relations tender, to Friends faithful, to the hopeful liberal, to
men universal, to his very Enemies civil. He left the best pattern
of Government in his actions under one king and the best principles
of it in the Life of the other."
The following is a translation from the discourse on the life of Mr.
Francis Bacon which is prefixed to the "Histoire Naturelle," by PIERE
AMBOISE, published in Paris in 1631:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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