While the question was pending, he wrote to the King, the Chancellor, and Salisbury.

His letter to the King is a record in his own words of his public services.

To the Chancellor, whom he believed to be his supporter, he represented the discredit which he suffered--he was a common gaze and a speech;" "the little reputation which by his industry he gathered, being scattered and taken away by continual disgraces, _every new man coming above me_;" and his wife and his wife's friends were making him feel it.

The letters show what Bacon thought to be his claims, and how hard he found it to get them recognised.

To the Chancellor he urged, among other things, that time was slipping by-- "I humbly pray your Lordship to consider that time groweth precious with me, and that a married man is seven years elder in his thoughts the first day....