him have it. Seem not to dive
into the secret of it, though you are purblind if you see not
through it. I have told Mr. Meautys how I would wish your Lordship
now to make an end of it. From him I beseech you take it, and from
me only the advice to perform it. If you part not speedily with it,
you may defer the good which is approaching near you, and
disappointing other aims (which must either shortly receive content
or never), perhaps anew yield matter of discontent, though you may
be indeed as innocent as before. Make the Treasurer believe that
since the Marquis will by no means accept of it, and that you must
part with it, you are more willing to pleasure him than anybody
else, because you are given to understand my Lord Marquis so
inclines; which inclination, if the Treasurer shortly send unto you
about it, desire may be more clearly manifested than as yet it hath
been; since as I remember none hitherto hath told you _in terminis
terminantibus_ that the Marquis desires you should gratify the
Treasurer. I know that way the hare runs, and that my Lord Marquis
longs until Cranfield hath it; and so I wish too, for your good; yet
would not it were absolutely passed until my Lord Marquis did send
or write unto you to let him have it; for then his so disposing of
it were but the next degree removed from the immediate acceptance of
it, and your Lordship freed from doing it otherwise than to please
him, and to comply with his own will and way."

It need hardly be said that when Cranfield got it, it soon passed into
Buckingham's hands. "Bacon consented to part with his house, and
Buckingham in return consented to give him his liberty." Yet Bacon could
write to him, "low as I am, I had rather sojourn in a college in
Cambridge than recover a good fortune by any other but yourself." "As
for York House," he bids Toby Matthews to let Buckingham know, "that
_whether in a straight line or a compass line_, I meant it for his
Lordship, in the way which I thought might please him best." But liberty
did not mean either money or recovered honour. All his life long he had
made light of being in debt; but since his fall this was no longer a
condition easy to bear. He had to beg some kind of pension of the King.
He had to beg of Buckingham; "a small matter for my debts would do me
more good now than double a twelvemonth hence. I have lost six thousand
by