Francis Bacon’s ‘Speech on a Case of Deer-Stealing’

Abstract

The editor of the nineteenth-century edition of The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon included a report of a speech by Bacon concerning illegal hunting in parks.1 The text was accurately reproduced from a manuscript in the British Library.2 That manuscript lacked context and dated the speech simply as given on 23 October. Spedding conjectured that the speech was by Bacon as Attorney-General, prosecuting in the Star Chamber on 23 October 1614, on the basis of instructions sent to Bacon in that year.3 Another report of the speech has been discovered, in a collection of Star Chamber reports in the Folger Shakespeare Library.4 The collection is associated with the barrister and law reporter Francis Moore, but it is not clear if he is the author. It is likely that the manuscript used for the nineteenth century printing extracted the speech from this or another larger collection of Star Chamber reports. No other collection of reports has been found to include Bacon’s speech, although several do include many of the cases in the Folger manuscript.5