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And now is Williams, sometimes chaplain to the Lord Keeper Egerton, brought into play, made a Privy-Councellor, Deane of Westminster, and of secret councell with the king. He was also made Bishop of Lincolne, and was generally voyced at his first step to marry Buckinghams mother, who was in her husbands time created a countesse, (he remaining still a c. silly drunken sot,) and this was the first president of this kinde ever known. Williams held her long in hand, and no doubt, in nature of her confessor, was her secret friend, yet would not marry at present, which afterwards was cause of his downfall.'

Then was there a parliament summoned,

▾ Welldon here insinuates a reason for Buckingham's resentment against Williams, which is to be fonnd no where else. It is generally supposed, that, after having been long protected by the favourite, Williams incurred his displeasure by giving his advice against the celebrated expedition of Charles and Buckingham to Spain. And it has been asserted, that Laud, then bishop of St David's, was the person who betrayed to the duke the part which the bishop of Lincoln had taken upon the occasion.

in which Bacon, for his bribery and injustice, was thrust out, being closely prosecuted by one Morby, a woodmonger, and one Wrenham, formerly deeply censured in the Star-chamber for accusing him of bribery and injustice. Bacon was by parliament justly put out of his place, and but only for the votes of the bishops, had been degraded. The bishops might have done better to have kept their voyces to have done themselves service at this time; but surely that, with some other injustice of theirs, had so filled up their measure of iniquity, that now Gods anger is kindled against them.

In Bacons place comes Williams, a man on purpose brought in at first to serve turns, but in this place to doe that which none of the layity could be found bad enough to undertake; whereupon this observation was made, that first no lay-man could be found so dishonest as a clergyman; next, as Bacon, the father of this Bacon, did receive the seals from a bishop, so a bishop againe

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received them from a Bacon; and at this did the lawyers fret, to have such a flower pulled out of their garland.'

This Williams, though he wanted much of his predecessors abilities for the law, yet did he equal him for learning and pride, and beyond him in the way of bribery; this man answering by petitions, in which his servants had one part, himselfe another, and so was calculated to be worth to him and his servants 3000l. per annum, by a new way never found out before."

• When Bacon was removed from the post of Chancellor, for reasons which we cannot delight to repeat, Williams, afterwards Archbishop of York, was employed by the Duke of Buckingham to draw up, for the king's information, an exact state of the just profits of the office. When the account (which brought the just revenue of Mr Chancellor's office to 27901. yearly) was perused by the king, he judged the person by whom it was drawn up most worthy to execute that great

trust.

This insinuation was made during Williams' chancellorship, and by him resolutely denied; in two several remonstrances, made to the king and Duke of Buckingham, he protests that he only received petitions privately, to prevent the delay arising from his secretaries.

And now being come to the height of his preferment, he did estrange himselfe from the company of the old countesse, having much younger ware, who had keys to his chamber to come to him, yet was there a necessity of keeping him in this place for a time, the Spanish match being yet in chase, and if it succeeded, this man was to clap the great seal (through his ignorance in the laws) to such things that none that understood the danger by knowing the laws would venture upon, and for this designe was he at first brought in, (no prince living knowing how to make use of men better than King James.') Now was also Suf

If this was really intended, Williams chose an excellent way to escape the plot laid for him, by studying for some time under Sir Henry Finch, chusing an able Master of the Rolls to sit with him in Chancery, and applying frequently for the assistance of the judges. The following instance of his checking the petulance of one who presumed upon his ignorance of the common law, is mentioned in his life by Dr Hacker:

"At his first entrance upon Chancery, one at the bar, thinking the Lord Keeper, as a novice, might be ignorant of the terms of the common law, troled out a motion, crammed like a grenado, with obsolete terms;

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folk turned out of his place of Lord Treasurer, and a fellow of the same batch that Williams was, brought into his place, Cranfield, that was the projector, and never could get higher than that title in Somersets time, now marrying one of Buckinghams kindred, attained one of the highest titles in the kingdome, so that it was now generally said, that for pride and basenesse, these two great places were never so suited, both of mean birth, both proud, only the one an excellent scholler, and of great parts; the other, nothing but a pack of ignorance sawthered together with impudence to raise him, (besides his marriage in the lusty kindred.)

This Cranfield was a fellow of so meane a condition, as none but a poore-spirited nobility would have endured his perching on

imagining that with those musty phrases he should baffle the new judge; but the keeper, with a serious face, answered him with a cluster of crabbed notions, picked out of logic and metaphysics; so that the counsellor being foiled at his own weapons, and well laughed at in the court, went home with this lesson, that he who tempts a wise man in jest, shall make himself a fool in earnest."