Blair Worden - A Book of Friendship

ALEXANDRA GAJDA

Instead, Essex’s self-love – exhibited by his desire for military honour and fame - caused him to neglect the psychological needs of serving his monarch, and to seek fulfilment outside of the court and Elizabeth’s favour. The tract does not climax in an emotive and transcendent peroration but narrows to a defence of Bacon’s personal ‘honesty’ as a counsellor, who had bravely pleaded with the queen that she reconcile with Essex until the very eve of his uprising. Finally, Bacon absolves himself of the taint of treachery to his friend: the first draft of his Declaration of the Practices and Treasons of Essex , the cause of his recent defamation, had been taken out of his hands by certain privy councillors (he all but name-checks his loathed cousin Robert Cecil), ‘perused, weighed, censured, altered, and made almost anew, writing according to their Lordshippes better consideration’ and finally read and amended by Elizabeth herself. 44 Taken as a whole Bacon’s Apologie first engages with, then undermines the method and the argument of his former patron. While Essex publicly staked out his right to determine foreign and domestic policy, Bacon insists that the essential requirement of the statesman is to recognise that they are ‘creatures’ of their prince and not autonomous citizens, even if that prince is guilty of misgovernment (even tyranny). Serving the ‘state’, he argues, can only be achieved through serving the sovereign; and the bonds of loyalty and friendship to social superiors and patrons are always superseded by the direct ties between monarch and subject, even when that monarch is ageing, jealous, and follows their whim rather than the sage counsel of the sagest counsellor – in other words, Bacon. For everie honest man, that hath his heart well planted, will forsake his King than forsake God, and forsake his friend rather than forsake his King; and yet will forsake any earthly commoditie, yea and his owne life in some cases, rather than forsake his friend. 45 The autobiographical narrative Bacon spins of his own counsel argues that the subject cannot claim to command the affairs of the commonwealth or consider themselves in a position to overawe or manipulate their prince. The reputation that Essex defended so vehemently from his ‘irreligious’ and traitorous detractors,

44 Bacon, Apologie , sig. E3r-E4v. 45 Bacon, Apologie , sig. A4r-v.

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