the less the incident placed the Primate in a terrible position. Abbot never recovered from the shock of it, although the King, who was not wanting in sympathy for sportsmen, roundly refused to listen to the Archbishop's enemies, and declared that "an angel might have miscarried in this sort." The scandal, however, grew and grew, the question having to be tried whether Abbot had not ceased to be capable of holding the see of Canterbury in consequence of his involuntary homicide. A commission was appointed to inquire into it, which, on the 10th of November 1621, reported to the King that there was no irregularity in the Archbishop's authority. Abbot, however, was a broken man, although he lived on until the 4th of August 1633, retaining the Primacy to the last. The references to the fall of Bacon add nothing to our knowledge of that famous event; they leave us still uncertain as to the amount of Donne's personal acquaintance with Bacon. They must often have met, but they seem to have had little in common. Lady Nethersole was Sir Henry Goodyer's daughter Lucy, whose marriage in 1619 we have already recorded. The passage about his "circumference" gives us some indication of Donne's habits at this time. Peckham was still inhabited by a cluster of his old friends, among whom was the Master of the Rolls here mentioned, the excellent Sir Julius Cæsar. At Highgate lived Sir Henry Hobart, Lord Chief- Justice of Common Pleas; at Chelsea the Herberts; at Bedington, Donne's brother-in-law, Sir Nicholas Carew. "To the Honourable Knight Sir H[ENRY] GOODYER.' "SIR,-I have but one excuse for not sending you the sermon that you do me the honour to command, and I foresee that before I take my hand from this paper I shall lose the benefit of that excuse; it is that for more than twenty days I have been travailed with a pain in my right wrist so like the gout as makes me unable to write. The 1 From the Letters of 1651. writing of this letter will implore a commentary for that, that I cannot write legibly; for that I cannot write much this letter will testify against me. Sir, I beseech you, at first, tell your company that I decline not the service out of sullenness nor laziness, nor that any fortune damps me so much as that I am not sensible of the honour of their commanding it, but a mere experience whether I be able to write eight hours or no; but I will try next week, and either do it for their service, or sink in their service. "This is Thursday, and upon Tuesday my Lady Bedford came to this town; this afternoon I presented my service to her by Mrs. Withrington, and so asked leave to have waited upon them at supper, but my messenger found them ready to go into their coach, so that a third letter which I received from Mrs. Dadley, referring me to Mrs. Withrington's relation of all that State, I lose it till their return to this town. "To clear you in that wherein I see by your letter that I had not well expressed myself in mine, Sir Ed. Herbert writ to Sir Ed. Sackville not to press the King to fix any certain time of sending him, till he was come over and had spoken with the King; Sir Ed. Sackville collects upon that that Sir Ed. Herbert means to go again; I think it is only that he would have his honour so saved, as not to seem to be recalled, by having a successor before he had emptied the place. "We hear nothing from my Lord of Doncaster, nor have we any way to send to him. I have not seen my Lady Doncaster, for she crossed to Penhurst and from thence to Petworth; my Lady Isabella came to this town, where, before her coming, a letter attended her from my Lady of Titchfield; and thither she went with their servants, who stayed her coming. Hither came lately letters with good speed from Vienna, in which there is no mention of any such defeat as in rumour Count Mansfield hath been said to have given to the Duke of Bavyer [Bavaria], but their forces were then within such distance as may have procured something before this time. Those which watched advantages in the Court of the Emperor have made that use of Count Mansfield's proceedings, as that my Lord Digby complains that thereby the forwardness in which his negotiation was is somewhat retarded. He proceeds from thence into Spain. "The Duke of Bavyer hath presented the Emperor an account of £12,000,000 sterling in that war, to be reimbursed; and finding the Palatinate to be in treaty hath required a great part of Austria for his security, and they say it is so transacted, which is a good sign of a possibility in the restitution of the Palatinate. For anything I discern their fears are much greater from Hungary than from Bohemia, and the loss of cannon in a great proportion, and other things at the death of Bucquoy was much greater than they suffered to be published. "We hear Spinola is passed over at Rheinsberg; if it be so they are no longer distracted whether he would bend upon Juliers or the Palatinate. I know not what you hear from your noble son-in-law, who sees those things clearly in himself and in a near distance, but I hear here that the King hath much lost the affection of the English in those parts. Whether it proceed from any sourness in him, or that they be otherwise taken off from applying themselves to him, I know not. My Lord of St. Albans hath found so much favour as that a pension of £2000 will be given him; he desires that he might have it for [] years, that so he might transfer it upon his creditors, or that in place of it he might have £8000, for he hath found a disposition in his creditors (to whom I hear he hath paid £3000 since by retiring) to accept £8000 for all his debts, which are three times as much. "I have been sometimes with my Lord of Canterbury since his accident, to give you his own words. I see him retain his former cheerfulness here and at Croydon, but I do not hear from court that he hath any ground for such a confidence, but that his case may need favour and not have it. That place, and Bedington, and Chelsea, and Highgate, where that very good man my Lord Hobard is, and Hackney, with the Master of the Rolls, and my familiar Peckham, are my circumference. "No place so eccentric to me as that I lie just at London, and with those fragmentary recreations I must make shift to recompense the missing of that contentment which your favour opens to me, and my desire provokes me to the kissing of your hands at Polesworth. My daughter Constance is at this time with me, for the emptiness of the town hath made me, who otherwise live upon the alms of others, a housekeeper for a month, and so she is my servant below stairs and my companion above; she was at the table with me when your letter was brought, and I pay her a piece of her petition in doing her this office, to present her service to my Lady Nethersole and her very good sister. But that she is gone to bed two hours before I writ this she should have signed, with such a hand as your daughter Mary did to me, that which I testify for her, that she is as affectionate a servant to them all as their goodness hath created anywhere. Sir, I shall recompense my tediousness in closing mine eyes with a prayer for yours, as for mine own happiness, for I am almost in bed; if it were my last bed, and I upon my last business there, I should not omit to join you with "Your very humble and very thankful 66 August 30, 1611[21].” "J. DONNE. In 1621, upon the death of the Countess of Pembroke, the paraphrase of the Psalms, which she and her illustrious brother had made, fell in MS. into Donne's hands. He a wrote poem on the occasion, ending with these lines: "So though some have, some may some psalms translate, And, till we come th' extemporal song to sing- |