with greater pertinacity. He importuned the Queen. He risked without
scruple offending her. She apparently long shrank from directly refusing
his request. The Cecils were for Coke--the "_Huddler_" as Bacon calls
him, in a letter to Essex; but the appointment was delayed. All through
1593, and until April, 1594, the struggle went on.

When Robert Cecil suggested that Essex should be content with the
Solicitor's place for Bacon, "praying him to be well advised, for if his
Lordship had spoken of that it might have been of easier digestion to
the Queen," he turned round on Cecil--

"Digest me no digesting," said the Earl; "for the Attorneyship is
that I must have for Francis Bacon; and in that I will spend my
uttermost credit, friendship, and authority against whomsoever, and
that whosoever went about to procure it to others, that it should
cost both the mediators and the suitors the setting on before they
came by it. And this be you assured of, Sir Robert," quoth the
Earl, "for now do I fully declare myself; and for your own part,
Sir Robert, I do think much and strange both of my Lord your father
and you, that can have the mind to seek the preferment of a
stranger before so near a kinsman; namely, considering if you weigh
in a balance his parts and sufficiency in any respect with those
of his competitor, excepting only four poor years of admittance,
which Francis Bacon hath more than recompensed with the priority of
his reading; in all other respects you shall find no comparison
between them."

But the Queen's disgust at some very slight show of independence on
Bacon's part in Parliament, unforgiven in spite of repeated apologies,
together with the influence of the Cecils and the pressure of so