TO THE

MOST ILLUSTRIOUS AND MOST EXCELLENT PRINCE

CHARLES,

PRINCE OF WALES, DUKE OF CORNWALL, EARL OF CHESTER,

ETC.

It may please your Highness,

IN part of my acknowledgment to your Highness, I have endeavoured to do honour to the memory of the last King of England that was ancestor to the King your father and yourself; and was that King to whom both Unions may in a sort refer: that of the Roses being in him consummate, and that of the Kingdoms by him begun. Besides, his times deserve it. For he was a wise man, and an excellent King; and yet the times were rough, and full of mutations and rare accidents. And it is with times as it is with ways. Some are more up-hill and down-hill, and some are more flat and plain; and the one is better for the liver, and the other for the writer. I have not flattered him, but took him to life as well as I could, sitting so far off, and having no better light. It is true, your Highness hath a living pattern, incomparable, of the King your father. But it is not amiss for you also to see one of these ancient pieces. God preserve your Highness.

Your Highness's most humble

and devoted servant,

FRANCIS ST. ALBAN.

THE

HISTORY OF THE REIGN

OF

KING HENRY THE SEVENTH.

AFTER that Richard, the third of that name, king in fact only, but tyrant both in title and regiment, and so commonly termed and reputed in all times since, was by the Divine Revenge, favouring the design of an exiled man, overthrown and slain at Bosworth Field'; there succeeded in the kingdom the Earl of Richmond, thenceforth styled Henry the Seventh. The King immediately after the victory, as one that had been bred under a devout mother, and was in his nature a great observer of religious forms, caused Te deum laudamus to be solemnly sung in the presence of the whole army upon the place, and was himself with general applause and great cries of joy, in a kind of militar2 election or recognition, saluted King. Meanwhile the body of Richard after many indignities and reproaches (the dirigies and obsequies of the common people towards tyrants) was obscurely buried. For though the King of his nobleness gave charge unto the friars of Leicester to see an honourable interment to be given to it, yet the religious people themselves (being not free from the humours of the vulgar) neglected it; wherein nevertheless they did not then incur any man's blame or censure. No man thinking any ignominy or contumely unworthy of him, that had been the executioner of King Henry

1 August 22nd, 1485.

2 Militar is the reading of the original edition: and is the form of the word which Bacon always, I believe, employed. He sometimes spells it militare, sometimes militar, but I think never militarie.

the Sixth (that innocent Prince) with his own hands; the contriver of the death of the Duke of Clarence, his brother; the murderer of his two nephews (one of them his lawful King in the present, and the other in the future, failing of him); and vehemently suspected to have been the impoisoner of his wife, thereby to make vacant his bed for a marriage within the degrees forbidden.' And although he were a Prince in militar virtue approved, jealous of the honour of the English nation, and likewise a good law-maker for the ease and solace of the common people; yet his cruelties and parricides in the opinion of all men weighed down his virtues and merits; and in the opinion of wise men, even those virtues themselves were conceived to be rather feigned and affected things to serve his ambition, than true qualities ingenerate in his judgment or nature. And therefore it was noted by men of great understanding (who seeing his after-acts looked back upon his former proceedings) that even in the time of King Edward his brother he was not without secret trains and mines to turn envy and hatred upon his brother's government; as having an expectation and a kind of divination, that the King, by reason of his many disorders, could not be of long life, but was like to leave his sons of tender years; and then he knew well how easy a step it was from the place of a Protector and first Prince of the blood to the Crown. And that out of this deep root of ambition it sprang, that as well at the treaty of peace that passed between Edward the Fourth and Lewis the Eleventh of France, concluded by interview of both Kings at Piqueny, as upon all other occasions, Richard, then Duke of Gloucester, stood ever upon the side of honour2, raising his own reputation to the disadvantage of the King his brother, and drawing the eyes of all (especially of the nobles and soldiers) upon himself; as if the King by his voluptuous life and mean marriage were become effeminate, and less sensible of honour and reason of state than was fit for a King. And as for the politic and wholesome laws which were enacted in his time, they were interpreted to be but the brocage of an usurper3, thereby to woo and win the hearts of the people, as being conscious to himself that the true obli

1i. e. with Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Edward IV. The Latin translation has incestuosas cum nepti nuptias.

2 Pacem pro viribus impugnasset, et a parte honoris stetisset.

3 Inescationes et lenocinia: baits and panderings.

gations of sovereignty1 in him failed and were wanting. But King Henry, in the very entrance of his reign and the instant of time when the kingdom was cast into his arms, met with a point of great difficulty and knotty to solve, able to trouble and confound the wisest King in the newness of his estate; and so much the more, because it could not endure a deliberation, but must be at once deliberated and determined. There were fallen to his lot, and concurrent in his person, three several titles to the imperial crown. The first, the title of the Lady Elizabeth, with whom, by precedent pact with the party that brought him in, he was to marry. The second, the ancient and long disputed title (both by plea and arms) of the house of Lancaster, to which he was inheritor in his own person. The third, the title of the sword or conquest, for that he came in by victory of battle, and that the king in possession was slain in the field. The first of these was fairest, and most like to give contentment to the people, who by two-and-twenty years reign of King Edward the Fourth had been fully made capable of the clearness of the title of the White Rose or house of York; and by the mild and plausible reign of the same King towards his latter time, were become affectionate to that line. But then it lay plain before his eyes, that if he relied upon that title, he could be but a King at courtesy, and have rather a matrimonial than a regal power; the right remaining in his Queen, upon whose decease, either with issue or without issue, he was to give place and be removed. And though he should obtain by Parliament to be continued, yet he knew there was a very great difference between a King that holdeth his crown by a

1 Verum obedientiæ subditorum vinculum : jus scilicet ad regnum legitimum: the true bond which secures the obedience of subjects—a right to the throne.

2 Such pact implying that it was in her right he should reign; as is more fully expressed in the Latin translation. "Primus erat titulus reginæ suæ Elizabethæ : cui etiam accesserat pactum illud, quo se proceribus quorum auxiliis regnum adeptus est obstrinxerat, de nuptiis cum illa contrahendis, quod illum in jure ejus regnaturum haud obscure subinnuebat."

Quarum alteri,

In the Latin translation this expression is materially qualified. Lancastria scilicet, ipse se pro hærede gerebat: to which he considered himself as heir.

Sir T. Meautys, in a letter to Bacon of 7th Jan. 1621-2, mentions, as one of the verbal corrections made in the MS. by the King, "mild instead of debonnaire.” This is probably the place. Compare the expression in Perkin's proclamation further on, "the blessed and debonair government of our noble father King Edward in his last times."

• Licet magna spes subesset quod comitiorum suffragiis regnum in persona sua durante vita sua continuare et stabilire posset.