TO A.D. 1601.]

FRANCIS BACON.

467 to keep his chamber. Next day he was examined before the Council, and was put under easy restraint-first with the LordKeeper, then in his own house. Tyrone rose in rebellion again; another lord-deputy was sent, whose action was efficient. Essex was then suspended from his offices of Privy Councillor, LordMarshal, and Master of the Ordnance. In August he, was released from custody, but forbidden to come to Court. His monopoly of sweet wines expired, and Elizabeth would not renew the patent. Then his quick temper became rebellious. He had been in correspondence with James VI. of Scotlandby cypher in the hand of Francis Bacon's brother Anthony-to force from Elizabeth, now sixty-eight years old, a recognition of her successor. His impulsive dealing with this question perhaps introduced the considerations that had paralyzed his Irish policy. But Essex now passed into open rebellion. On the 8th of February, 1601, he and three hundred gentlemen, including Shakespeare's friend, the Earl of Southampton, were at Essex House. The queen sent the Lord-Keeper and other officers of State to ask the reason of the gathering. Essex contrived to lock them up in his library, and then, with his adherents, he rode out to raise the Londoners. His object was to surprise the Court, seize the queen's person, and compel her to dismiss her present advisers and then call a Parliament. But he overrated his own influence with the people, and after some lives had been lost, retreated by water to Essex House, burnt some papers, and was forced to surrender; that night the Earls of Essex and Southampton were prisoners in the Tower. Queen's counsel, Bacon one of them, were called upon to inquire into this act of treason, by examining the prisoners. They worked for seven days, in parties of not more than three, taking the several prisons in succession. When Essex was arraigned, the evidence against him was produced by Coke, and Coke's way of letting it run off into side issues was rather favourable to the accused. Then Bacon rose, not being called upon to rise, pointed more strongly the accusations against his friend and benefactor, and brought the evidence back into a course more perilous to his life. "As Cain," said Bacon, "that first murderer, took up an excuse for his fact, shaming to outface it with impudency, thus the earl made his colour the severing some men and councillors from her Majesty's favour, and the fear he stood in of his pretended enemies, lest they should murder him in his house." The evidence proceeded, and Coke's method again gave the earl

some advantage. Bacon then rose and said, “I have never yet seen in any case such favour shown to any prisoner; so many digressions, such delivering of evidence by fractions, and so silly a defence of such great and notorious treasons." And he proceeded again to urge the main accusation home against Essex. On the 25th of February, 1601, Essex was beheaded, by his own wish privately, within the Tower. Upon Lord Southampton sentence was not executed, but he remained a prisoner during the rest of Elizabeth's reign. Justification of the execution of the Earl of Essex was entrusted to the advocate who had pressed with most energy the case against him at his trial. Materials were supplied in "twenty-five papers concerning the Earl of Essex's treasons, &c., to be delivered to Mr. Francis Bacon, for Her Majesty's service;" and Bacon's hand, following particular instructions as to the manner of treatment, drew up for the public A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons attempted and committed by Robert late Earle of Essex and his Complices. Before its publication (in 1601) this declaration was discussed by councillors and queen, and underwent the alterations incident to such discussion. Bacon had been living beyond his means, and was still seeking advancement. In September, 1598, he had been arrested for debt, but in the spring of 1601 his worldly means were somewhat improved by the death of his brother Anthony. He obtained a gift of £1,200, the fine of one of the accomplices of Essex, but he obtained no higher reward of his services before the death of Elizabeth, on the 24th of March, 1603.

87. Francis Bacon, our first essayist, was preceded in European literature only by Montaigne. Montaigne had a translator in John Florio. It has been suggested, without reason, that in the Holofernes of Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare was ridiculing Florio. "Resolute John Florio," as he wrote himself, was an active man of Italian descent, born in London in Henry VIII.'s reign, who taught Italian and French at Oxford, and was in high repute at Court. He published, in 1578, Florio his First Fruites; which yeelde familiar speech, merie Prouerbes, wittie sentences, and golden sayings. Also, a perfect Introduction to the Italian and English Tongues. In 1591 followed Florio's Second Frutes. To which is annexed his Garden of Recreation, yeelding six thousand Italian Prouerbs. At the end of Elizabeth's reign, in 1603, appeared The Essays of Michael, Lord of Montaigne, done into English by John Florio.

TO A.D. 1600.]

TRANSLATORS.

RICHARD HOOKER.

469

Upon a copy of this book Shakespeare's autograph has been found, and Shakespeare's knowledge of Montaigne is shown in the Tempest, where the ideal commonwealth of the old Lord Gonzalo (Act ii. sc. 1) corresponds closely, in word as well as in thought, with Florio's Montaigne. Of course, also, the great poems of Ariosto and Tasso were translated.

Sir John Harington, born at Helston, near Bath, in 1561, and educated at Eton and Cambridge, published at the age of thirty, in 1591, Orlando Furioso in English Heroical Verse. Harington was knighted on the field by the Earl of Essex.

Tasso had in Elizabeth's reign two translators. The first was Richard Carew, whose Godfrey of Bulloigne, or the Recouerie of Hierusalem appeared in 1594; the second was Edward Fairfax, whose translation appeared with the same titles in 1600. It is in the octave rhyme of the original, one of the most musical and poetical of all English translations into verse. Fairfax was the second son, perhaps illegitimate, of Sir Thomas Fairfax, of Denton, in Yorkshire. He lived as a retired scholar at Newhall, in Knaresborough Forest, and, later in life, educated with his own children those of his brother Ferdinand, Lord Fairfax. One of these nephews became famous as the, Fairfax of the Civil Wars. Edward Fairfax himself lived into the reign of Charles I., and died in 1632.

88. The literature of the Church of England was represented in the latter years of Elizabeth's reign by Richard Hooker, who was born at Heavitree, near Exeter, about 1553. He was to have been apprenticed to a trade, but his aptness for study caused him to be kept at school by his teacher, who persuaded young Richard Hooker's well-to-do uncle, John, then Chamberlain of Exeter, to put him to college for a year. John Hooker, a friend of Bishop Jewel's (§ 14), introduced his nephew to that bishop, who, finding the boy able and his parents poor, sent him at the age of fifteen to Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Edwin Sandys, Bishop of London, heard from Jewel the praises of young Richard Hooker, and though himself a Cambridge man, sent his son to Oxford that he might have Hooker, whose age then was nineteen, for tutor and friend. Other pupils came, and Hooker was on the most pleasant relations with them. In 1577 he became M.A. and Fellow of his college.

89. A friend of Hooker's at college, about four years older than himself, was Sir Henry Savile, who had graduated at

Brazenose and removed on a Fellowship to Merton College. Savile afterwards travelled on the Continent. On his return he gave lessons to the queen in Greek and Mathematics, and became Warden of Merton College. In 1581 Savile published, at Oxford, a translation of The Ende of Nero and Beginning of Galba, Fower Bookes of the Histories of Cornelius Tacitus ; The Life of Agricola. In 1596, Savile added to his office of Warden of Merton College that of Provost of Eton, and in the same year published Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores post Bedam præcipui-a folio containing the works of some of the old historians after Bede; namely, William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, Roger Hoveden, Ethelwerd, and Ingulphus of Croyland. The death of his son caused Savile to devote his property to the encouragement of learning, and, in the reign of James I., in 1619, he founded at Oxford the Savilian professorship of Astronomy and Geometry. Sir Henry Savile died at Eton in 1622.

90. Richard Hooker, whom we left to follow the career of his friend Savile, was appointed, in 1579, to read the Hebrew lecture in his university, and did so for the next three years. He took holy orders, quitted Oxford, and married a scolding wife. He was shy and shortsighted, and had allowed her to be chosen for him. Of himself it is said that he never was seen to be angry. In 1584 Hooker was presented to the parsonage of Drayton-Beauchamp, near Aylesbury; and there he was found by his old pupil, Edwin Sandys, with Horace in his hand, relieving guard over his few sheep out of doors, and indoors called from his guests to rock the cradle. Sandys reported Hooker's condition to his father, who had become Archbishop of York. In 1585 the office of Master of the Temple became vacant, and Hooker, then thirty-four years old, was, through the Archbishop's influence, called from his poor country parsonage to take it.

When, in 1583, good Archbishop Grindal (§ 33) was succeeded at Canterbury by John Whitgift, there was a return of bitterness against the Nonconformists, with extreme claim of all rights of the Church. This intensified the controversies of the time. The lecturer at the Temple for evening sermons, when Hooker became Master, was Walter Travers, a minister of blameless life, a correspondent of Beza's, and a warm supporter of opinions cherished by the Puritans. He was popular in the Temple, had hoped also himself to be chosen Master, and

TO A.D. 1594.] HOOKER'S ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY.

471

obtain increase of influence for his opinions. In Hooker the Temple had a Master who was faithful to the ecclesiastical system of the English Church. In the Temple church on Sundays Hooker preached in the morning, Travers in the evening, and, as it was said, "the forenoon sermon spake Canterbury, the afternoon Geneva." This continued until the Archbishop forbade Travers's preaching. Petition was in vain made to the Privy Council; and this led to discontent. The petition was printed privately, and published. Hooker then published an Answer to the Petition of Mr. Travers, and was drawn into a controversy, which led his pure and quiet mind to the resolve that he would argue out in detail his own sense of right and justice in the Established Church system of his country, in Eight Books of the Law of Ecclesiastical Polity. That he might do this he asked for removal to some office in which he might be at peace. He wrote to the Archbishop, “My Lord, when I lost the freedom of my cell, which was my college, yet I found some degree of it in my quiet country parsonage: but I am weary of the noise and oppositions of this place; and indeed, God and Nature did not intend me for contentions, but for study and quietness. My Lord, my particular contests with Mr. Travers here have proved the more unpleasant to me, because I believe him to be a good man; and that belief hath occasioned me to examine mine own conscience concerning his opinions." Study had not only satisfied him, but he had "begun a treatise, in which I intend a justification of the laws of our ecclesiastical polity; in which design God and his holy angels shall at the last great Day bear me that witness which my conscience now does, that my meaning is not to provoke any, but rather to satisfy all tender consciences; and I shall never be able to do this but where I may study, and pray for God's blessing upon my endeavours, and keep myself in peace and privacy, and behold God's blessings spring out of my mother earth, and eat my own bread without opposition; and, therefore, if your Grace can judge me worthy of such a favour, let me beg it, that I may perfect what I have begun." Hooker accordingly was made, in 1591, rector of Boscombe, in Wiltshire, a parish with few people in it, four miles from Amesbury, and was instituted also, as a step to better preferment, to a minor prebend of small value in Salisbury. At Boscombe Hooker finished the Four Books of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, published in 1594, with "A Preface to them that Seeke