"It may please your Honour to give me leave amidst your great and diverse business to put you in remembrance of my poor suit, leaving the time unto your Honour's best opportunity and commodity. I think the objection of my years will wear away with the length of my suit. The very stay doth in this respect concern me, because I am thereby hindered to take a course of practice which, by the leave of God, if her Majesty like not my suit, I must and will follow: not for any necessity of estate, but for my credit sake, which I know by living out of action will wear. I spake when the Court was at Theball's to Mr. Vice-Chamberlain,[25] who promised me his furderance; which I did lest he mought be made for some other. If it may please your Honour, who as I hear hath great interest in him, to speak with him in it, I think he will be fast mine."
Spedding remarks: "This is the last we hear of this suit, the nature and fate of which must both be left to conjecture. With regard to its fate, my own conjecture is that he presently gave up all hope of success in it, and tried instead to obtain through his interest at Court some furtherance in the direct line of his profession."
He adds: "The solid grounds on which Bacon's pretensions rested had not yet been made manifest to the apprehension of Bench and Bar; his mind was full of matters with which they could have no sympathy, and the shy and studious habits which we have seen so offend Mr. Faunt would naturally be misconstrued in the same way by many others."[26]
This passage refers to a letter to Burghley dated the 6th of the following May, i.e., 1586, from which it will be seen that the last had not been heard of the motion. Burghley had been remonstrating with Bacon as to reports which had come to him of his nephew's proceedings. Bacon writes:—
"I take it as an undoubted sign of your Lordship's favour unto me that being hardly informed of me you took occasion rather of good advice than of evil opinion thereby. And if your Lordship had grounded only upon the said information of theirs, I mought and would truly have upholden that few of the matters were justly objected; as the very circumstances do induce in that they were delivered by men that did misaffect me and besides were to give colour to their own doings. But because your Lordship did mingle therewith both a late motion of mine own and somewhat which you had otherwise heard, I know it to be my duty (and so do I stand affected) rather to prove your Lordship's admonition effectual in my doings hereafter than causeless by excusing what is past. And yet (with your Lordship's pardon humbly asked) it may please you to remember that I did endeavour to set forth that said motion in such sort as it mought breed no harder effect than a denial, and I protest simply before God that I sought therein an ease in coming within Bars, and not any extraordinary and singular note of favour."
May not the interpretation of the phrase "I sought therein an ease in coming within Bars" be "I sought in that motion a freedom from the burden (or necessity) of coming within Bars." The phrase "an ease in" is very unusual, and unless it was a term used in connection with the Inns it is difficult to see its precise meaning. In other words, he sought an alternative method to provide means for carrying out his great philosophical enterprise.
There is an interval of five years before the next and last letter of the six was written. It is undated, but an observation in it shows that it was written when he was about 31 years of age, thus fixing the date at 1591.
From an entry in Burghley's note book,[27] dated 29 October, 1589, it appears that in the meantime a grant had been made to Bacon of the reversion of the office of Clerk to the Counsel in the Star Chamber. This was worth about £1,600 per annum and executed by deputy, but the reversion did not fall in for twenty years, so it did not affect the immediate difficulty in ways and means.
There are occasional references to Francis in Anthony's correspondence which show that the brothers were residing at Grays Inn, but nothing is stated as to the occupation of the younger brother.
At this time, according to Spedding,[28] who, however, does not give his authority, Francis had a lodge at Twickenham. Many of his letters are subsequently addressed from it, and three years later he was keeping a staff of scriveners there.