And this I did in as gentle and reasonable terms as might be.
"Mr.Attorney kindled at it, and said, '_Mr.Bacon, if you have any tooth against me pluck it out; for it will do you more hurt than all the teeth in your head will do you good._' I answered coldly in these very words: '_Mr.Attorney, I respect you; I fear you not; and the less you speak of your own greatness, the more I will think of it._' "He replied, '_I think scorn to stand upon terms of greatness towards you, who are less than little; less than the least;_' and other such strange light terms he gave me, with that insulting which cannot be expressed.
"Herewith stirred, yet I said no more but this: '_Mr.Attorney, do not depress me so far; for I have been your better, and may be again, when it please the Queen._' "With this he spake, neither I nor himself could tell what, as if he had been born Attorney-General; and in the end bade me not meddle with the Queen's business, but with mine own; and that I was unsworn, etc.

I told him, sworn or unsworn was all one to an honest man; and that I ever set my service first, and myself second; and wished to God that he would do the like.
"Then he said, it were good to clap a _cap.

ultegatum_ upon my back! To which I only said he could not; and that he was at fault, for he hunted upon an old scent.

He gave me a number of disgraceful words besides, which I answered with silence, and showing that I was not moved with them." The threat of the _capias ultegatum_ was probably in reference to the arrest of Bacon for debt in September, 1593.

After this we are not surprised at Bacon writing to Coke, "who take to yourself a liberty to disgrace and disable my law, my experience, my discretion," that, "since I missed the Solicitor's place (the rather I think by your means) I cannot expect that you and I shall ever serve as Attorney and Solicitor together, but either serve with another on your remove, or step into some other course." And Coke, no doubt, took care that it should be so.
Cecil, too, may possibly have thought that Bacon gave no proof of his fitness for affairs in thus bringing before him a squabble in which both parties lost their tempers.
Bacon was not behind the rest of the world in "the posting of men of good quality towards the King," in the rash which followed the Queen's death, of those who were eager to proffer their services to James, for whose peaceful accession Cecil had so skilfully prepared the way.