anted were those which resist and defy it? The only thing that is
clear is that Burghley, in spite of Bacon's continual applications,
abstained to the last from advancing his fortunes.

Whether employed by government or not, Bacon began at this time to
prepare those carefully-written papers on the public affairs of the day,
of which he has left a good many. In our day they would have been
pamphlets or magazine articles. In his they were circulated in
manuscript, and only occasionally printed. The first of any importance
is a letter of advice to the Queen, about the year 1585, on the policy
to be followed with a view to keeping in check the Roman Catholic
interest at home and abroad. It is calm, sagacious, and, according to
the fashion of the age, slightly Machiavellian. But the first subject on
which Bacon exhibited his characteristic qualities, his appreciation of
facts, his balance of thought, and his power, when not personally
committed, of standing aloof from the ordinary prejudices and
assumptions of men round him, was the religious condition and prospects
of the English Church. Bacon had been brought up in a Puritan household
of the straitest sect. His mother was an earnest, severe, and intolerant
Calvinist, deep in the interests and cause of her party, bitterly
resenting all attempts to keep in order its pretensions. She was a
masterful woman, claiming to meddle with her brother-in-law's policy,
and though a most affectionate mother she was a woman of violent and
ungovernable temper. Her letters to her son Antony, whom she loved
passionately, but whom she suspected of keeping dangerous and papistical
company, show us the imperious spirit in which she claimed to interfere
with her sons; and they show also that in Francis she did not find all
the deference which she looked for. Recommending Antony to frequent "the
religious exercises of the sincerer sort," she warns him not to follow
his brother's advice or example. Antony was advised to use prayer twice
a day with his servants. "Your brother," she adds, "is too negligent
therein." She is anxious about Antony's health, and warns him not to
fall into his brother's ill-ordered habits: "I verily think your
brother's weak stomach to digest hath been much caused and confirmed by
untimely going to bed, and then musing _nescio quid_ when he should
sleep, and then in consequent by late rising and long lying in bed,
whereby his men are made slothful and himself continueth si