In the autumn of 1611 the Attorney-General was ill, and Bacon reminded both the King and Salisbury of his claim.  He was afraid, he writes to the King, with an odd forgetfulness of the persistency and earnestness of his applications, “that by reason of my slowness to sue, and apprehend occasions upon the sudden, keeping one plain course of painful service, I may in fine dierum be in danger to be neglected and forgotten.”  The Attorney recovered, but Bacon, on New Year’s Tide of 1611/12, wrote to Salisbury to thank him for his good-will.  It is the last letter of Bacon’s to Salisbury which has come down to us.

“IT MAY PLEASE YOUR GOOD LORDSHIP,—­I would entreat the new year to answer for the old, in my humble thanks to your Lordship, both for many your favours, and chiefly that upon the occasion of Mr. Attorney’s infirmity I found your Lordship even as I would wish.  This doth increase a desire in me to express my thankful mind to your Lordship; hoping that though I find age and decays grow upon me, yet I may have a flash or two of spirit left to do you service.  And I do protest before God, without compliment or any light vein of mind, that if I knew in what course of life to do you best service, I would take it, and make my thoughts, which now fly to many pieces, be reduced to that center.  But all this is no more than I am, which is not much, but yet the entire of him that is—­”

In the following May (May 24, 1612) Salisbury died.  From this date James passed from government by a minister, who, whatever may have been his faults, was laborious, public-spirited, and a statesman, into his own keeping and into the hands of favourites, who cared only for themselves.  With Cecil ceased the traditions of the days of Elizabeth and Burghley, in many ways evil and cruel traditions, but not ignoble and sordid ones; and James was left without the stay, and also without the check, which Cecil’s power had been to him.  The field was open for new men and new ways; the fashions and ideas of the time had altered during the last ten years, and those of the Queen’s days had gone out of date.  Would the new turn out for the better or the worse?  Bacon, at any rate, saw the significance of the change and the critical eventfulness of the moment.  It was his habit of old to send memorials of advice to the heads of the Government, apparently without such suggestions seeming more intrusive or officious than a leading article seems now, and perhaps with much the same effect.  It was now a time to do so, if ever; and he was in an official relation to the King which entitled him to proffer advice.  He at once prepared to lay his thoughts before the King, and to suggest that he could do far better service than Cecil, and was ready to take his place.  The policy of the “Great Contract” had certainly broken down, and the King, under Cecil’s guidance, had certainly not known how to manage an English parliament.  In writing to the King he found it hard to satisfy himself.