I add a due and joyful gratulation, confessing that your Lordship,
in your last conference with me before your journey, spake not in
vain, God making it good, That you trusted we should say _Quis
putasset_! Which as it is found true in a happy sense, so I wish
you do not find another _Quis putasset_ in the manner of taking
this so great a service. But I hope it is, as he said, _Nubecula
est, cito transibit_, and that your Lordship's wisdom and
obsequious circumspection and patience will turn all to the best.
So referring all to some time that I may attend you, I commit you
to God's best preservation."

But when Essex's conduct in Ireland had to be dealt with, Bacon's
services were called for; and from this time his relations towards Essex
were altered. Every one, no one better than the Queen herself, knew all
that he owed to Essex. It is strangely illustrative of the time, that
especially as Bacon held so subordinate a position, he should have been
required, and should have been trusted, to act against his only and most
generous benefactor. It is strange, too, that however great his loyalty
to the Queen, however much and sincerely he might condemn his friend's
conduct, he should think it possible to accept the task. He says that he
made some remonstrance; and he says, no doubt truly, that during the
first stage of the business he used the ambiguous position in which he
was placed to soften Essex's inevitable punishment, and to bring about a
reconciliation between him and the Queen. But he was required, as the
Queen's lawyer, to set forth in public Essex's offences; and he admits
that he did so "not over tenderly." Yet all this, even if we have
misgivings about it, is intelligible. If he had declined, he could not,
perhaps, have done the service which he assures us that he tried to do
for Essex; and it is certain that he would have had to reckon with the
terrible lady who in her old age still ruled England from the throne of
Henry VIII., and who had certainly no great love for Bacon himself. She
had already shown him in a much smaller matter what was the forfeit to
be paid for any resistance to her will. All the hopes of his life must
perish; all the grudging and suspicious favours which he had won with
such unremitting toil and patient waiting would be sacrificed, and he
would henceforth live under the wrath of those who never forgave. And
whatever he did for himself, he be