XXXI. On Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper; with extracts from some of his unprinted Papers and Speeches

Extract

A manuscript volume in my possession, which formerly belonged to Sir Christopher Hatton, as testified by his own handwriting upon it, supplies some additional information respecting Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper and father of Lord Chancellor Bacon, a notice of which seems not unsuited to the purposes of this Society. Sir Nicholas was a very unpretending man, as regards authorship: he published little or nothing in his lifetime; and perhaps the difficulties in which he was involved by, at least, assisting Hales, in his treatise on the title of the Scottish Queen, served as a warning to him how he again gave adversaries an advantage over him by printing a book. That book was the means of excluding him from the Privy Council, after he had been several years in possession of the Great Seal; and, owing to the animosity of the Earl of Leicester, he did not for some time re-establish himself in the favour of the Queen.