“With this he spake, neither I nor himself could tell what, as if he had been born Attorney-General; and in the end bade me not meddle with the Queen’s business, but with mine own; and that I was unsworn, etc.  I told him, sworn or unsworn was all one to an honest man; and that I ever set my service first, and myself second; and wished to God that he would do the like.

“Then he said, it were good to clap a cap. ultegatum upon my back!  To which I only said he could not; and that he was at fault, for he hunted upon an old scent.  He gave me a number of disgraceful words besides, which I answered with silence, and showing that I was not moved with them.”

The threat of the capias ultegatum was probably in reference to the arrest of Bacon for debt in September, 1593.  After this we are not surprised at Bacon writing to Coke, “who take to yourself a liberty to disgrace and disable my law, my experience, my discretion,” that, “since I missed the Solicitor’s place (the rather I think by your means) I cannot expect that you and I shall ever serve as Attorney and Solicitor together, but either serve with another on your remove, or step into some other course.”  And Coke, no doubt, took care that it should be so.  Cecil, too, may possibly have thought that Bacon gave no proof of his fitness for affairs in thus bringing before him a squabble in which both parties lost their tempers.

Bacon was not behind the rest of the world in “the posting of men of good quality towards the King,” in the rash which followed the Queen’s death, of those who were eager to proffer their services to James, for whose peaceful accession Cecil had so skilfully prepared the way.  He wrote to every one who, he thought, could help him:  to Cecil, and to Cecil’s man—­“I pray you, as you find time let him know that he is the personage in the State which I love most;” to Northumberland, “If I may be of any use to your Lordship, by my head, tongue, pen, means, or friends, I humbly pray you to hold me your own;” to the King’s Scotch friends and servants, even to Southampton, the friend of Essex, who had been shut up in the Tower since his condemnation with Essex, and who was now released.  “This great change,” Bacon assured him, “hath wrought in me no other change towards your Lordship than this, that I may safely be now that which I truly was before.”  Bacon found in after years that Southampton was not so easily conciliated.  But at present Bacon was hopeful:  “In mine own particular,” he writes, “I have many comforts and assurances; but in mine own opinion the chief is, that the canvassing world is gone, and the deserving world is come.”  He asks to be recommended to the King—­“I commend myself to your love and to the well-using of my name, as well in repressing and answering for me, if there be any biting or nibbling at it in that place, as in impressing a good conceit and opinion of me, chiefly in the King, as otherwise in that Court.”