PREFACE.

THE Dedication and first four of these Arguments were printed by Blackbourne in 1730, from Sloane MS. 4263., a MS. largely corrected by Bacon himself. The Dedication, as first copied in the uncorrected draft, must have been written while Coke was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, i. e. before Mich. Term, 1613; but, if I am right in identifying the Case of Impeachment of Waste with Lewis Bowles' Case, the transcript must have been made after Easter Term, 1615. Bacon's interlineations fix his revision as of the time when he was a Privy Councillor and Coke Chief Justice of the King's Bench, i. e. 1616, and before November of that year.

These four Arguments are given in the order of the MS. The others follow in their own chronological order.