The lucrative place of Master of the Wards was vacated by Salisbury's death.

Bacon was talked of for it, and probably expected it, for he drew up new rules for it, and a speech for the new master; but the office and the speech went to Sir George Carey.

Soon after Sir George Carey died.

Bacon then applied for it through the new favourite, Rochester.

"He was so confident of the place that he put most of his men into new cloaks;" and the world of the day amused itself at his disappointment, when the place was given to another "mean man," Sir Walter Cope, of whom the gossips wrote that if the "last two Treasurers could look out of their graves to see those successors in that place, they would be out of countenance with themselves, and say to the world _quantum mutatus_." But Bacon's hand and counsel appear more and more in important matters--the improvement of the revenue; the defence of extreme rights of the prerogative in the case against Whitelocke; the great question of calling a parliament, and of the true and "princely" way of dealing with it.