Yet this was the man to whom he had written the "New Year's Tide" letter six months before; a letter which is but an echo to the last of all that he had been accustomed to write to Cecil when asking assistance or offering congratulation.

Cecil had, indeed, little claim on Bacon's gratitude; he had spoken him fair in public, and no doubt in secret distrusted and thwarted him.

But to the last Bacon did not choose to acknowledge this.
Had James disclosed something of his dead servant, who left some strange secrets behind him, which showed his unsuspected hostility to Bacon?
Except on this supposition (but there is nothing to support it), no exaggeration of the liberty allowed to the language of compliment is enough to clear Bacon of an insincerity which is almost inconceivable in any but the meanest tools of power.
"I assure myself," wrote Bacon to the King, "your Majesty taketh not me for one of a busy nature; for my estate being free from all difficulties, and I having such a large field for contemplation, as I have partly and shall much more make manifest unto your Majesty and the world, to occupy my thoughts, nothing could make me active but love and affection." So Bacon described his position with questionable accuracy--for his estate was not "free from difficulties"-- in the new time coming.

He was still kept out of the inner circle of the Council; but from the moment of Salisbury's death he became a much more important person.

He still sued for advancement, and still met with disappointment; the "mean men" still rose above him.