Several draft letters remain, and it is not certain which of them, if any, was sent.  But immediately on Salisbury’s death he began, May 29th, a letter in which he said that he had never yet been able to show his affection to the King, “having been as a hawk tied to another’s fist;” and if, “as was said to one that spake great words, Amice, verba tua desiderant civitatem, your Majesty say to me, Bacon, your words require a place to speak them,” yet that “place or not place” was with the King.  But the draft breaks off abruptly, and with the date of the 31st we have the following: 

“Your Majesty hath lost a great subject and a great servant.  But if I should praise him in propriety, I should say that he was a fit man to keep things from growing worse, but no very fit man to reduce things to be much better.  For he loved to have the eyes of all Israel a little too much upon himself, and to have all business still under the hammer, and like clay in the hands of the potter, to mould it as he thought good; so that he was more in operatione than in opere.  And though he had fine passages of action, yet the real conclusions came slowly on.  So that although your Majesty hath grave counsellors and worthy persons left, yet you do as it were turn a leaf, wherein if your Majesty shall give a frame and constitution to matters, before you place the persons, in my simple opinion it were not amiss.  But the great matter and most instant for the present, is the consideration of a Parliament, for two effects:  the one for the supply of your estate, the other for the better knitting of the hearts of your subjects unto your Majesty, according to your infinite merit; for both which, Parliaments have been and are the antient and honourable remedy.

“Now because I take myself to have a little skill in that region, as one that ever affected that your Majesty mought in all your causes not only prevail, but prevail with satisfaction of the inner man; and though no man can say but I was a perfect and peremptory royalist, yet every man makes me believe that I was never one hour out of credit with the Lower House; my desire is to know whether your Majesty will give me leave to meditate and propound unto you some preparative remembrances touching the future Parliament.”

Whether he sent this or not, he prepared another draft.  What had happened in the mean while we know not, but Bacon was in a bitter mood, and the letter reveals, for the first time, what was really in Bacon’s heart about the “great subject and great servant,” of whom he had just written so respectfully, and with whom he had been so closely connected for most of his life.  The fierceness which had been gathering for years of neglect and hindrance under that placid and patient exterior broke out.  He offered himself as Cecil’s successor in business of State.  He gave his reason for being hopeful of success.  Cecil’s bitterest enemy could not have given it more bitterly.