Sir Francis Bacon's Journals - Sir Francis Bacon's New ...

Lochithea 381arms and ammunition of all sorts be provided and stored up, as against a day of battle; letthe ports and forts be fi tted so, as if by the next wind we should hear of an alarum; such aknown providence is the surest protection. Of foreign plantations and colonies; disturb theland of such inhabitants as may well be spared, and to employ their labour in the conquestof some foreign parts without injury to the natives. Of matter of trade; I confess it is outof my profession, yet in that I shall make a conjecture also, and propound some things,whereby may advance the good of the county and profi t his Majesty; and of ten points toconsider, I offer to Buckingham. Of the Court or Curialitie; neither in jest or earnest mustthere be countenance or ear given to fl atterers or sycophants, the bane of all Courts. Theyare fl ies, who, will not only buzz about in every ear, but will blow and corrupt every placewhere they light.I take time and leave with my physician, William Harvey, 62 this man may write sciencelike a Lord Chancellor as he was wont to say of me that I write philosophy like a LordChancellor. His experiments on the movement of the blood in the body of animals, assistedby his privilege Court position and James I’s passion for hunting, are to be stated in hisLumleian lectures at the Royal College of Physicians. His publication of the Circulation ofthe Blood keepeth in caveat his self; for he falls mightily in his practise, and ’twas believedby the vulgar that he was crack-brained. 63The King visits the University of Cambridge, where academic degrees have been prostitutedby the admission of unlearned men. Upon where Coke, that his Majesty’s pleasurewas, that I, and the Lord Chancellor, should receive an account from Coke into a viewand retraction of such novelties and errors and offensive conceits as were dispersed in hisReports; 64 his speech is that there are of his Reports eleven books that contain about fi vehundred cases: that heretofore in other Reports, as namely those of Mr. Plowden, which he626364William Harvey (1578–1657) his De motu cordis et sanguinis was published in 1628. “It is probablyno accident that these three groundbreaking scientifi c thinkers, Francis Bacon, WilliamGilbert and William Harvey came from a single intellectual milieu. The combined effect oftheir infl uential writings kick-started the scientifi c revolution in England.”Aubrey’s Brief LivesIn June 1616 the Privy Council, with Bacon behind it, formulated three charges against Coke.One was a trivial matter, never proved, about a bond that had passed through his hands. Theother two were charges of interference with the Court of Chancery and of disrespect to theKing in the matter of plural benefi ces. Coke was forbidden to go on circuit and ordered torevise the “errors” in his Reports, and on November 14, 1616, he was dismissed. Thereupon,presumably in search of an infl uential friend, he offered his daughter in marriage to Sir JohnVilliers, brother of George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham. Coke’s wife objected and hid thechild, who was then only 14, but Coke abducted her violently and had her married, stronglyagainst her will, to Villiers. Coke then made a gradual return to public life and by 1617 wasonce again a member of the Privy Council as well as a judge on the Court of Star Chamber.Coke’s 11 volumes of Reports appeared between 1600 and 1615, and two posthumous volumesfollowed. Coke commented, rather than reported, but he was careful to supply a copy of thecourt record of each case. As the only formal series of collected law cases available at the time,his reports formed the main source for the citation of cases for many years. His four volumes ofInstitutes of the Lawes of England, published between 1628 and 1644, dealt with the law of realproperty (Coke on Littleton), the medieval statutes, the criminal law (pleas of the crown), and