As Attorney, Bacon had to take a much more prominent part in affairs, legal, criminal, constitutional, administrative, than he had yet been allowed to have. We know that it was his great object to show how much more active and useful an Attorney he could be than either Coke or Hobart; and as far as unflagging energy and high ability could make a good public servant, he fully carried out his purpose. In Parliament, the "addled Parliament" of 1614, in which he sat for the University of Cambridge, he did his best to reconcile what were fast becoming irreconcilable, the claims and prerogatives of an absolute king, irritable, suspicious, exacting, prodigal, with the ancient rights and liberties, growing stronger in their demands by being denied, resisted, or outwitted, of the popular element in the State. In the trials, which are so large and disagreeable a part of the history of these years—trials arising out of violent words provoked by the violent acts of power, one of which, Peacham's, became famous, because in the course of it torture was resorted to, or trials which witnessed to the corruption of the high society of the day, like the astounding series of arraignments and condemnations following on the discoveries relating to Overbury's murder, which had happened just before the Somerset marriage—Bacon had to make the best that he could for the cruel and often unequal policy of the Court; and Bacon must take his share in the responsibility for it. An effort on James's part to stop duelling brought from Bacon a worthier piece of service, in the shape of an earnest and elaborate argument against it, full of good sense and good feeling, but hopelessly in advance of the time. On the many questions which touched the prerogative, James found in his Attorney a ready and skilful advocate of his claims, who knew no limit to them but in the consideration of what was safe and prudent to assert. He was a better and more statesmanlike counsellor, in his unceasing endeavours to reconcile James to the expediency of establishing solid and good relations with his Parliament, and in his advice as to the wise and hopeful ways of dealing with it. Bacon had no sympathy with popular wants and claims; of popularity, of all that was called popular, he had the deepest suspicion and dislike; the opinions and the judgment of average men he despised, as a thinker, a politician, and a courtier; the "malignity of the people" he thought great. "I do not love," he says, "the word people." But he had a high idea of what was worthy of a king, and was due to the public interests, and he saw the folly of the petty acts and haughty words, the use of which James could not resist. In his new office he once more urged on, and urged in vain, his favourite project for revising, simplifying, and codifying the law. This was a project which would find little favour with Coke, and the crowd of lawyers who venerated him—men whom Bacon viewed with mingled contempt and apprehension both in the courts and in Parliament where they were numerous, and whom he more than once advised the King to bridle and keep "in awe." Bacon presented his scheme to the King in a Proposition, or, as we should call it, a Report. It is very able and interesting; marked with his characteristic comprehensiveness and sense of practical needs, and with a confidence in his own knowledge of law which contrasts curiously with the current opinion about it. He speaks with the utmost honour of Coke's work, but he is not afraid of a comparison with him. "I do assure your Majesty," he says, "I am in good hope that when Sir Edward Coke's Reports and my Rules and Decisions shall come to posterity, there will be (whatever is now thought) question who was the greater lawyer." But the project, though it was entertained and discussed in Parliament, came to nothing. No one really cared about it except Bacon.

But in these years (1615 and 1616) two things happened of the utmost consequence to him. One was the rise, more extravagant than anything that England had seen for centuries, and in the end more fatal, of the new favourite, who from plain George Villiers became the all-powerful Duke of Buckingham. Bacon, like the rest of the world, saw the necessity of bowing before him; and Bacon persuaded himself that Villiers was pre-eminently endowed with all the gifts and virtues which a man in his place would need. We have a series of his letters to Villiers; they are of course in the complimentary vein which was expected; but if their language is only compliment, there is no language left for expressing what a man wishes to be taken for truth. The other matter was the humiliation, by Bacon's means and in his presence, of his old rival Coke. In the dispute about jurisdiction, always slumbering and lately awakened and aggravated by Coke, between the Common Law Courts and the Chancery, Coke had threatened the Chancery with Praemunire. The King's jealousy took alarm, and the Chief-Justice was called before the Council. There a decree, based on Bacon's advice and probably drawn up by him, peremptorily overruled the legal doctrine maintained by the greatest and most self-confident judge whom the English courts had seen. The Chief-Justice had to acquiesce in this reading of the law; and then, as if such an affront were not enough, Coke was suspended from his office, and, further, enjoined to review and amend his published reports, where they were inconsistent with the view of law which on Bacon's authority the Star Chamber had adopted (June, 1616). This he affected to do, but the corrections were manifestly only colourable; his explanations of his legal heresies against the prerogative, as these heresies were formulated by the Chancellor and Bacon, and presented to him for recantation, were judged insufficient; and in a decree, prefaced by reasons drawn up by Bacon, in which, besides Coke's errors of law, his "deceit, contempt, and slander of the Government," his "perpetual turbulent carriage," and his affectation of popularity, were noted—he was removed from his office (Nov., 1616). So, for the present, the old rivalry had ended in a triumph for Bacon. Bacon, whom Coke had so long headed in the race, whom he had sneered at as a superficial pretender to law, and whose accomplishments and enthusiasm for knowledge he utterly despised, had not only defeated him, but driven him from his seat with dishonour. When we remember what Coke was, what he had thought of Bacon, and how he prized his own unique reputation as a representative of English law, the effects of such a disgrace on a man of his temper cannot easily be exaggerated.

But for the present Bacon had broken through the spell which had so long kept him back. He won a great deal of the King's confidence, and the King was more and more ready to make use of him, though by no means equally willing to think that Bacon knew better than himself. Bacon's view of the law, and his resources of argument and expression to make it good, could be depended upon in the keen struggle to secure and enlarge the prerogative which was now beginning. In the prerogative both James and Bacon saw the safety of the State and the only reasonable hope of good government; but in Bacon's larger and more elevated views of policy—of a policy worthy of a great king, and a king of England—James was not likely to take much interest. The memorials which it was Bacon's habit to present on public affairs were wasted on one who had so little to learn from others—so he thought and so all assured him—about the secrets of empire. Still they were proofs of Bacon's ready mind; and James, even when he disagreed with Bacon's opinion and arguments, was too clever not to see their difference from the work of other men. Bacon rose in favour; and from the first he was on the best of terms with Villiers. He professed to Villiers the most sincere devotion. According to his custom he presented him with a letter of wise advice on the duties and behaviour of a favourite. He at once began, and kept up with him to the end, a confidential correspondence on matters of public importance. He made it clear that he depended upon Villiers for his own personal prospects, and it had now become the most natural thing that Bacon should look forward to succeeding the Lord Chancellor, Ellesmere, who was fast failing. Bacon had already (Feb. 12, 1615/16). in terms which seem strange to us, but were less strange then, set forth in a letter to the King the reasons why he should be Chancellor; criticising justly enough, only that he was a party interested, the qualifications of other possible candidates, Coke, Hobart, and the Archbishop Abbott. Coke would be "an overruling nature in an overruling place," and "popular men were no sure mounters for your Majesty's saddle." Hobart was incompetent. As to Abbott, the Chancellor's place required "a whole man," and to have both jurisdiction, spiritual and temporal, "was fit only for a king." The promise that Bacon should have the place came to him three days afterwards through Villiers. He acknowledged it in a burst of gratitude (Feb. 15, 1615/16). "I will now wholly rely on your excellent and happy self.... I am yours surer to you than my own life. For, as they speak of the Turquoise stone in a ring, I will break into twenty pieces before you bear the least fall." They were unconsciously prophetic words. But Ellesmere lasted longer than was expected. It was not till a year after this promise that he resigned. On the 7th of March, 1616/17, Bacon received the seals. He expresses his obligations to Villiers, now Lord Buckingham, in the following letter:

"MY DEAREST LORD,—It is both in cares and kindness that small ones float up to the tongue, and great ones sink down into the heart with silence. Therefore I could speak little to your Lordship to-day, neither had I fit time; but I must profess thus much, that in this day's work you are the truest and perfectest mirror and example of firm and generous friendship that ever was in court. And I shall count every day lost, wherein I shall not either study your well-doing in thought, or do your name honour in speech, or perform you service in deed. Good my Lord, account and accept me your most bounden and devoted friend and servant of all men living,

"March 7, 1616 (i.e. 1616/1617). FR. BACON, C.S."

He himself believed the appointment to be a popular one. "I know I am come in," he writes to the King soon after, "with as strong an envy of some particulars as with the love of the general." On the 7th of May, 1617, he took his seat in Chancery with unusual pomp and magnificence, and set forth, in an opening speech, with all his dignity and force, the duties of his great office and his sense of their obligation. But there was a curious hesitation in treating him as other men were treated in like cases. He was only "Lord Keeper." It was not till the following January (1617/18) that he received the office of Lord Chancellor. It was not till half a year afterwards that he was made a Peer. Then he became Baron Verulam (July, 1618), and in January, 1620/21, Viscount St. Alban's.

From this time Bacon must be thought of, first and foremost, as a Judge in the great seat which he had so earnestly sought. It was the place not merely of law, which often tied the judge's hands painfully, but of true justice, when law failed to give it. Bacon's ideas of the duties of a judge were clear and strong, as he showed in various admirable speeches and charges: his duties as regards his own conduct and reputation; his duties in keeping his subordinates free from the taint of corruption. He was not ignorant of the subtle and unacknowledged ways in which unlawful gains may be covered by custom, and an abuse goes on because men will not choose to look at it. He entered on his office with the full purpose of doing its work better than it had ever been done. He saw where it wanted reforming, and set himself at once to reform. The accumulation and delay of suits had become grievous; at once he threw his whole energy into the task of wiping out the arrears which the bad health of his predecessor and the traditional sluggishness of the court had heaped up. In exactly three months from his appointment he was able to report that these arrears had been cleared off. "This day" (June 8, 1617), he writes to Buckingham, "I have made even with the business of the kingdom for common justice. Not one cause unheard. The lawyers drawn dry of all the motions they were to make. Not one petition unheard. And this I think could not be said in our time before."

The performance was splendid, and there is no reason to think that the work so rapidly done was not well done. We are assured that Bacon's decisions were unquestioned, and were not complained of. At the same time, before this allegation is accepted as conclusive proof of the public satisfaction, it must be remembered that the question of his administration of justice, which was at last to assume such strange proportions, has never been so thoroughly sifted as, to enable us to pronounce upon it, it should be. The natural tendency of Bacon's mind would undoubtedly be to judge rightly and justly; but the negative argument of the silence at the time of complainants, in days when it was so dangerous to question authority, and when we have so little evidence of what men said at their firesides, is not enough to show that he never failed.

But the serious thing is that Bacon subjected himself to two of the most dangerous influences which can act on the mind of a judge—the influence of the most powerful and most formidable man in England, and the influence of presents, in money and other gifts. From first to last he allowed Buckingham, whom no man, as Bacon soon found, could displease except at his own peril, to write letters to him on behalf of suitors whose causes were before him; and he allowed suitors, not often while the cause was pending, but sometimes even then, to send him directly, or through his servants, large sums of money. Both these things are explained. It would have been characteristic of Bacon to be confident that he could defy temptation: these habits were the fashion of the time, and everybody took them for granted; Buckingham never asked his good offices beyond what Bacon thought just and right, and asked them rather for the sake of expedition than to influence his judgment. And as to the money presents—every office was underpaid; this was the common way of acknowledging pains and trouble: it was analogous to a doctor's or a lawyer's fee now. And there is no proof that either influence ever led Bacon to do wrong. This has been said, and said with some degree of force. But if it shows that Bacon was not in this matter below his age, it shows that he was not above it. No one knew better than Bacon that there were no more certain dangers to honesty and justice than the interference and solicitation of the great, and the old famous pest of bribes, of which all histories and laws were full. And yet on the highest seat of justice in the realm he, the great reformer of its abuses, allowed them to make their customary haunt. He did not mean to do wrong: his conscience was clear; he had not given thought to the mischief they must do, sooner or later, to all concerned with the Court of Chancery. With a magnificent carelessness he could afford to run safely a course closely bordering on crime, in which meaner men would sin and be ruined.

Before six months were over Bacon found on what terms he must stand with Buckingham. By a strange fatality, quite unintentionally, he became dragged into the thick of the scandalous and grotesque dissensions of the Coke family. The Court was away from London in the North; and Coke had been trying, not without hope of success, to recover the King's favour. Coke was a rich man, and Lady Compton, the mother of the Villiers, thought that Coke's daughter would be a good match for one of her younger sons. It was really a great chance for Coke; but he haggled about the portion; and the opportunity, which might perhaps have led to his taking Bacon's place, passed. But he found himself in trouble in other ways; his friends, especially Secretary Winwood, contrived to bring the matter on again, and he consented to the Villiers's terms. But his wife, the young lady's mother, Lady Hatton, would not hear of it, and a furious quarrel followed. She carried off her daughter into the country. Coke, with a warrant from Secretary Winwood, which Bacon had refused to give him, pursued her: "with his son, 'Fighting Clem,' and ten or eleven servants, weaponed, in a violent manner he repaired to the house where she was remaining, and with a piece of timber or form broke open the door and dragged her along to his coach." Lady Hatton rushed off the same afternoon for help to Bacon.

After an overturn by the way, "at last to my Lord Keeper's they come, but could not have instant access to him, for that his people told them he was laid at rest, being not well. Then my La. Hatton desired she might be in the next room where my Lord lay, that she might be the first that [should] speak with him after he was stirring. The door-keeper fulfilled her desire, and in the meantime gave her a chair to rest herself in, and there left her alone; but not long after, she rose up and bounced against my Lord Keeper's door, and waked him and affrighted him, that he called his men to him; and they opening the door, she thrust in with them, and desired his Lp. to pardon her boldness, but she was like a cow that had lost her calf, and so justified [herself] and pacified my Lord's anger, and got his warrant and my Lo. Treasurer's warrant and others of the Council to fetch her daughter from the father and bring them both to the Council."

It was a chance that the late Chief-Justice and his wife, with their armed parties, did not meet on the road, in which case "there were like to be strange tragedies." At length the Council compelled both sides to keep the peace, and the young lady was taken for the present out of the hands of her raging parents. Bacon had assumed that the affair was the result of an intrigue between Winwood and Coke, and that the Court would take part against Coke, a man so deep in disgrace and so outrageously violent. Supposing that he had the ear of Buckingham, he wrote earnestly, persuading him to put an end to the business; and in the meantime the Council ordered Coke to be brought before the Star Chamber "for riot and force," to "be heard and sentenced as justice shall appertain." They had not the slightest doubt that they were doing what would please the King. A few days after they met, and then they learned the truth.

"Coke and his friends," writes Chamberlain, "complain of hard measure from some of the greatest at that board, and that he was too much trampled upon with ill language. And our friend [i.e. Winwood] passed out scot free for the warrant, which the greatest [word illegible] there said was subject to a praemunire; and withal told the Lady Compton that they wished well to her and her sons, and would be ready to serve the Earl of Buckingham with all true affection, whereas others did it out of faction and ambition—which words glancing directly at our good friend (Winwood), he was driven to make his apology, and to show how it was put upon him from time to time by the Queen and other parties; and, for conclusion, showed a letter of approbation of all his courses from the King, making the whole table judge what faction and ambition appeared in this carriage. Ad quod non fuit responsum."

None indeed, but blank faces, and thoughts of what might come next. The Council, and Bacon foremost, had made a desperate mistake. "It is evident," as Mr. Spedding says, "that he had not divined Buckingham's feelings on the subject." He was now to learn them. To his utter amazement and alarm he found that the King was strong for the match, and that the proceeding of the Council was condemned at Court as gross misconduct. In vain he protested that he was quite willing to forward the match; that in fact he had helped it. Bacon's explanations, and his warnings against Coke the King "rejected with some disdain;" he justified Coke's action; he charged Bacon with disrespect and ingratitude to Buckingham; he put aside his arguments and apologies as worthless or insincere. Such reprimands had not often been addressed, even to inferior servants. Bacon's letters to Buckingham remained at first without notice; when Buckingham answered he did so with scornful and menacing curtness. Meanwhile Bacon heard from Yelverton how things were going at Court.

"Sir E. Coke," he wrote, "hath not forborne by any engine to heave at both your Honour and myself, and he works the weightiest instrument, the Earl of Buckingham, who, as I see, sets him as close to him as his shirt, the Earl speaking in Sir Edward's phrase, and as it were menacing in his spirit."

Buckingham, he went on to say, "did nobly and plainly tell me he would not secretly bite, but whosoever had had any interest, or tasted of the opposition to his brother's marriage, he would as openly oppose them to their faces, and they should discern what favour he had by the power he would use." The Court, like a pack of dogs, had set upon Bacon. "It is too common in every man's mouth in Court that your greatness shall be abated, and as your tongue hath been as a razor unto some, so shall theirs be to you." Buckingham said to every one that Bacon had been forgetful of his kindness and unfaithful to him: "not forbearing in open speech to tax you, as if it were an inveterate custom with you, to be unfaithful unto him, as you were to the Earls of Essex and Somerset."

All this while Bacon had been clearly in the right. He had thrust himself into no business that did not concern him. He had not, as Buckingham accuses him of having done, "overtroubled" himself with the marriage. He had done his simple duty as a friend, as a councillor, as a judge. He had been honestly zealous for the Villiers's honour, and warned Buckingham of things that were beyond question. He had curbed Coke's scandalous violence, perhaps with no great regret, but with manifest reason. But for this he was now on the very edge of losing his office; it was clear to him, as it is clear to us, that nothing could save him but absolute submission. He accepted the condition. How this submission was made and received, and with what gratitude he found that he was forgiven, may be seen in the two following letters. Buckingham thus extends his grace to the Lord Keeper, and exhorts him to better behaviour:

"But his Majesty's direction in answer of your letter hath given me occasion to join hereunto a discovery unto you of mine inward thoughts, proceeding upon the discourse you had with me this day. For I do freely confess that your offer of submission unto me, and in writing (if so I would have it), battered so the unkindness that I had conceived in my heart for your behaviour towards me in my absence, as out of the sparks of my old affection towards you I went to sound his Majesty's intention how he means to behave himself towards you, specially in any public meeting; where I found on the one part his Majesty so little satisfied with your late answer unto him, which he counted (for I protest I use his own terms) confused and childish, and his vigorous resolution on the other part so fixed, that he would put some public exemplary mark upon you, as I protest the sight of his deep-conceived indignation quenched my passion, making me upon the instant change from the person of a party into a peace-maker; so as I was forced upon my knees to beg of his Majesty that he would put no public act of disgrace upon you, and, as I dare say, no other person would have been patiently heard in this suit by his Majesty but myself, so did I (though not without difficulty) obtain thus much—that he would not so far disable you from the merit of your future service as to put any particular mark of disgrace upon your person. Only thus far his Majesty protesteth, that upon the conscience of his office he cannot omit (though laying aside all passion) to give a kingly reprimand at his first sitting in council to so many of his councillors as were then here behind, and were actors in this business, for their ill behaviour in it. Some of the particular errors committed in this business he will name, but without accusing any particular persons by name.

"Thus your Lordship seeth the fruits of my natural inclination; and I protest all this time past it was no small grief unto me to hear the mouth of so many upon this occasion open to load you with innumerable malicious and detracting speeches, as if no music were more pleasing to my ears than to rail of you, which made me rather regret the ill nature of mankind, that like dogs love to set upon him that they see once snatched at. And to conclude, my Lord, you have hereby a fair occasion so to make good hereafter your reputation by your sincere service to his Majesty, as also by your firm and constant kindness to your friends, as I may (your Lordship's old friend) participate of the comfort and honour that will thereby come to you. Thus I rest at last

"Your Lordship's faithful friend and servant, "G.B."

"MY EVER BEST LORD, now better than yourself,—Your Lordship's pen, or rather pencil, hath pourtrayed towards me such magnanimity and nobleness and true kindness, as methinketh I see the image of some ancient virtue, and not anything of these times. It is the line of my life, and not the lines of my letter, that must express my thankfulness; wherein if I fail, then God fail me, and make me as miserable as I think myself at this time happy by this reviver, through his Majesty's singular clemency, and your incomparable love and favour. God preserve you, prosper you, and reward you for your kindness to

"Your raised and infinitely obliged friend and servant, "Sept. 22, 1617. FR. BACON, C.S."

Thus he had tried his strength with Buckingham. He had found that this, "a little parent-like" manner of advising him, and the doctrine that a true friend "ought rather to go against his mind than his good," was not what Buckingham expected from him. And he never ventured on it again. It is not too much to say that a man who could write as he now did to Buckingham, could not trust himself in any matter in which Buckingham, was interested.

But the reconciliation was complete, and Bacon took his place more and more as one of the chief persons in the Government. James claimed so much to have his own way, and had so little scruple in putting aside, in his superior wisdom, sometimes very curtly, Bacon's or any other person's recommendations, that though his services were great, and were not unrecognised, he never had the power and influence in affairs to which his boundless devotion to the Crown, his grasp of business, and his willing industry, ought to have entitled him. He was still a servant, and made to feel it, though a servant in the "first form." It was James and Buckingham who determined the policy of the country, or settled the course to be taken in particular transactions; when this was settled, it was Bacon's business to carry it through successfully. In this he was like all the other servants of the Crown, and like them he was satisfied with giving his advice, whether it were taken or not; but unlike many of them he was zealous in executing with the utmost vigour and skill the instructions which were given him. Thus he was required to find the legal means for punishing Raleigh; and, as a matter of duty, he found them. He was required to tell the Government side of the story of Raleigh's crimes and punishment—which really was one side of the story, only not by any means the whole; and he told it, as he had told the Government story against Essex, with force, moderation, and good sense. Himself, he never would have made James's miserable blunders about Raleigh; but the blunders being made, it was his business to do his best to help the King out of them. When Suffolk, the Lord Treasurer, was disgraced and brought before the Star Chamber for corruption and embezzlement in his office, Bacon thought that he was doing no more than his duty in keeping Buckingham informed day by day how the trial was going on; how he had taken care that Suffolk's submission should not stop it—"for all would be but a play on the stage if justice went not on in the right course;" how he had taken care that the evidence went well—"I will not say I sometime holp it, as far as was fit for a judge;" how, "a little to warm the business" ... "I spake a word, that he that did draw or milk treasure from Ireland, did not, emulgere, milk money, but blood." This, and other "little things" like it, while he was sitting as a judge to try, if the word may be used, a personal enemy of Buckingham, however bad the case might be against Suffolk, sound strange indeed to us; and not less so when, in reporting the sentence and the various opinions of the Council about it, he, for once, praises Coke for the extravagance of his severity: "Sir Edward Coke did his part—I have not heard him do better—and began with a fine of L100,000; but the judges first, and most of the rest, reduced it to L30,000. I do not dislike that thing passed moderately; and all things considered, it is not amiss, and might easily have been worse."

In all this, which would have been perfectly natural from an Attorney-General of the time, Bacon saw but his duty, even as a judge between the Crown and the subject. It was what was expected of those whom the King chose to employ, and whom Buckingham chose to favour. But a worse and more cruel case, illustrating the system which a man like Bacon could think reasonable and honourable, was the disgrace and punishment of Yelverton, the Attorney-General, the man who had stood by Bacon, and in his defence had faced Buckingham, knowing well Buckingham's dislike of himself, when all the Court turned against Bacon in his quarrel with Coke and Lady Compton. Towards the end of the year 1620, on the eve of a probable meeting of Parliament, there was great questioning about what was to be done about certain patents and monopolies—monopolies for making gold and silk thread, and for licensing inns and ale-houses—which were in the hands of Buckingham's brothers and their agents. The monopolies were very unpopular; there was always doubt as to their legality; they were enforced oppressively and vexatiously by men like Michell and Mompesson, who acted for the Villiers; and the profits of them went, for the most part, not into the Exchequer, but into the pockets of the hangers-on of Buckingham. Bacon defended them both in law and policy, and his defence is thought by Mr. Gardiner to be not without grounds; but he saw the danger of obstinacy in maintaining what had become so hateful in the country, and strongly recommended that the more indefensible and unpopular patents should be spontaneously given up, the more so as they were of "no great fruit." But Buckingham's insolent perversity "refused to be convinced." The Council, when the question was before them, decided to maintain them. Bacon, who had rightly voted in the minority, thus explains his own vote to Buckingham: "The King did wisely put it upon and consult, whether the patents were at this time to be removed by Act of Council before Parliament. I opined (but yet somewhat like Ovid's mistress, that strove, but yet as one that would be overcome), that yes!" But in the various disputes which had arisen about them, Yelverton had shown that he very much disliked the business of defending monopolies, and sending London citizens to jail for infringing them. He did it, but he did it grudgingly. It was a great offence in a man whom Buckingham had always disliked; and it is impossible to doubt that what followed was the consequence of his displeasure.

"In drawing up a new charter for the city of London," writes Mr. Gardiner, "Yelverton inserted clauses for which he was unable to produce a warrant. The worst that could be said was that he had, through inadvertence, misunderstood the verbal directions of the King. Although no imputation of corruption was brought against him, yet he was suspended from his office, and prosecuted in the Star Chamber. He was then sentenced to dismissal from his post, to a fine of L4000, and to imprisonment during the Royal pleasure."

In the management of this business Bacon had the chief part. Yelverton, on his suspension, at once submitted. The obnoxious clauses are not said to have been of serious importance, but they were new clauses which the King had not sanctioned, and it would be a bad precedent to pass over such unauthorised additions even by an Attorney-General. "I mistook many things," said Yelverton afterwards, in words which come back into our minds at a later period, "I was improvident in some things, and too credulous in all things." It might have seemed that dismissal, if not a severe reprimand, was punishment enough. But the submission was not enough, in Bacon's opinion, "for the King's honour." He dwelt on the greatness of the offence, and the necessity of making a severe example. According to his advice, Yelverton was prosecuted in the Star Chamber. It was not merely a mistake of judgment. "Herein," said Bacon, "I note the wisdom of the law of England, which termeth the highest contempt and excesses of authority Misprisions; which (if you take the sound and derivation of the word) is but mistaken; but if you take the use and acception of the word, it is high and heinous contempt and usurpation of authority; whereof the reason I take to be and the name excellently imposed, for that main mistaking, it is ever joined with contempt; for he that reveres will not easily mistake; but he that slights, and thinks more of the greatness of his place than of the duty of his place, will soon commit misprisions." The day would come when this doctrine would be pressed with ruinous effect against Bacon himself. But now he expounded with admirable clearness the wrongness of carelessness about warrants and of taking things for granted. He acquitted his former colleague of "corruption of reward;" but "in truth that makes the offence rather divers than less;" for some offences "are black, and others scarlet, some sordid, some presumptuous." He pronounced his sentence—the fine, the imprisonment; "for his place, I declare him unfit for it." "And the next day," says Mr. Spedding, "he reported to Buckingham the result of the proceeding," and takes no small credit for his own part in it.

It was thus that the Court used Bacon, and that Bacon submitted to be used. He could have done, if he had been listened to, much nobler service. He had from the first seen, and urged as far as he could, the paramount necessity of retrenchment in the King's profligate expenditure. Even Buckingham had come to feel the necessity of it at last; and now that Bacon filled a seat at the Council, and that the prosecution of Suffolk and an inquiry into the abuses of the Navy had forced on those in power the urgency of economy, there was a chance of something being done to bring order into the confusion of the finances. Retrenchment began at the King's kitchen and the tables of his servants; an effort was made, not unsuccessfully, to extend it wider, under the direction of Lionel Cranfield, a self-made man of business from the city; but with such a Court the task was an impossible one. It was not Bacon's fault, though he sadly mismanaged his own private affairs, that the King's expenditure was not managed soberly and wisely. Nor was it Bacon's fault, as far as advice went, that James was always trying either to evade or to outwit a Parliament which he could not, like the Tudors, overawe. Bacon's uniform counsel had been—Look on a Parliament as a certain necessity, but not only as a necessity, as also a unique and most precious means for uniting the Crown with the nation, and proving to the world outside how Englishmen love and honour their King, and their King trusts his subjects. Deal with it frankly and nobly as becomes a king, not suspiciously like a huckster in a bargain. Do not be afraid of Parliament. Be skilful in calling it, but don't attempt to "pack" it. Use all due adroitness and knowledge of human nature, and necessary firmness and majesty, in managing it; keep unruly and mischievous people in their place, but do not be too anxious to meddle—"let nature work;" and above all, though of course you want money from it, do not let that appear as the chief or real cause of calling it. Take the lead in legislation. Be ready with some interesting or imposing points of reform, or policy, about which you ask your Parliament to take counsel with you. Take care to "frame and have ready some commonwealth bills, that may add respect to the King's government and acknowledgment of his care; not wooing bills to make the King and his graces cheap, but good matter to set the Parliament on work, that an empty stomach do not feed on humour." So from the first had Bacon always thought; so he thought when he watched, as a spectator, James's blunders with his first Parliament of 1604; so had he earnestly counselled James, when admitted to his confidence, as to the Parliaments of 1614 and 1615; so again, but in vain, as Chancellor, he advised him to meet the Parliament of 1620. It was wise, and from his point of view honest advice, though there runs all through it too much reliance on appearances which were not all that they seemed; there was too much thought of throwing dust in the eyes of troublesome and inconvenient people. But whatever motives there might have been behind, it would have been well if James had learned from Bacon how to deal with Englishmen. But he could not. "I wonder," said James one day to Gondomar, "that my ancestors should ever have permitted such an institution as the House of Commons to have come into existence. I am a stranger, and found it here when I arrived, so that I am obliged to put up with what I cannot get rid of." James was the only one of our many foreign kings who, to the last, struggled to avoid submitting himself to the conditions of an English throne.



CHAPTER VI.

BACON'S FALL.

When Parliament met on January 30, 1620/21, and Bacon, as Lord Chancellor, set forth in his ceremonial speeches to the King and to the Speaker the glories and blessings of James's reign, no man in England had more reason to think himself fortunate. He had reached the age of sixty, and had gained the object of his ambition. More than that, he was conscious that in his great office he was finding full play for his powers and his high public purposes. He had won greatly on the confidence of the King. He had just received a fresh mark of honour from him: a few days before he had been raised a step in the peerage, and he was now Viscount St. Alban's. With Buckingham he seemed to be on terms of the most affectionate familiarity, exchanging opinions freely with him on every subject. And Parliament met in good-humour. They voted money at once. One of the matters which interested Bacon most—the revision of the Statute Book—they took up as one of their first measures, and appointed a Select Committee to report upon it. And what, amid the apparent felicity of the time, was of even greater personal happiness to Bacon, the first step of the "Great Instauration" had been taken. During the previous autumn, Oct. 12, 1620, the Novum Organum, the first instalment of his vast design, was published, the result of the work of thirty years; and copies were distributed to great people, among others to Coke. He apprehended no evil; he had nothing to fear, and much to hope from the times.

His sudden and unexpected fall, so astonishing and so irreparably complete, is one of the strangest events of that still imperfectly comprehended time. There had been, and were still to be, plenty of instances of the downfall of power, as ruinous and even more tragic, though scarcely any one more pathetic in its surprise and its shame. But it is hard to find one of which so little warning was given, and the causes of which are at once in part so clear, and in part so obscure and unintelligible. Such disasters had to be reckoned upon as possible chances by any one who ventured into public life. Montaigne advises that the discipline of pain should be part of every boy's education, for the reason that every one in his day might be called upon to undergo the torture. And so every public man, in the England of the Tudors and Stuarts, entered on his career with the perfectly familiar expectation of possibly closing it—it might be in an honourable and ceremonious fashion, in the Tower and on the scaffold—just as he had to look forward to the possibility of closing it by small-pox or the plague. So that when disaster came, though it might be unexpected, as death is unexpected, it was a turn of things which ought not to take a man by surprise. But some premonitory signs usually gave warning. There was nothing to warn Bacon that the work which he believed he was doing so well would be interrupted.

We look in vain for any threatenings of the storm. What the men of his time thought and felt about Bacon it is not easy to ascertain. Appearances are faint and contradictory; he himself, though scornful of judges who sought to be "popular," believed that he "came in with the favour of the general;" that he "had a little popular reputation, which followeth me whether I will or no." No one for years had discharged the duties of his office with greater efficiency. Scarcely a trace remains of any suspicion, previous to the attack upon him, of the justice of his decisions; no instance was alleged that, in fact, impure motives had controlled the strength and lucidity of an intellect which loved to be true and right for the mere pleasure of being so. Nor was there anything in Bacon's political position to make him specially obnoxious above all others of the King's Council. He maintained the highest doctrines of prerogative; but they were current doctrines, both at the Council board and on the bench; and they were not discredited nor extinguished by his fall. To be on good terms with James and Buckingham meant a degree of subservience which shocks us now; but it did not shock people then, and he did not differ from his fellows in regarding it as part of his duty as a public servant of the Crown. No doubt he had enemies—some with old grudges like Southampton, who had been condemned with Essex; some like Suffolk, smarting under recent reprimands and the biting edge of Bacon's tongue; some like Coke, hating him from constitutional antipathies and the strong antagonism of professional doctrines, for a long course of rivalry and for mortifying defeats. But there is no appearance of preconcerted efforts among them to bring about his overthrow. He did not at the time seem to be identified with anything dangerous or odious. There was no doubt a good deal of dissatisfaction with Chancery—among the common lawyers, because it interfered with their business; in the public, partly from the traditions of its slowness, partly from its expensiveness, partly because, being intended for special redress of legal hardship, it was sure to disappoint one party to a suit. But Bacon thought that he had reformed Chancery. He had also done a great deal to bring some kind of order, or at least hopefulness of order, into the King's desperate finances. And he had never set himself against Parliament. On the contrary, he had always been forward to declare that the King could not do without Parliament, and that Parliament only needed to be dealt with generously, and as "became a King," to be not a danger and hindrance to the Crown but its most sincere and trustworthy support.

What was then to portend danger to Bacon when the Parliament of 1620/21 met? The House of Commons at its meeting was thoroughly loyal and respectful; it meant to be benedictum et pacificum parliamentum. Every one knew that there would be "grievances" which would not be welcome to the Court, but they did not seem likely to touch him. Every one knew that there would be questions raised about unpopular patents and oppressive monopolies, and about their legality; and it was pretty well agreed upon at Court that they should be given up as soon as complained of. But Bacon was not implicated more than the Crown lawyers before him, in what all the Crown lawyers had always defended. There was dissatisfaction about the King's extravagance and wastefulness, about his indecision in the cause of the Elector Palatine, about his supposed intrigues with Papistical and tyrannical Spain; but Bacon had nothing to do with all this except, as far as he could, to give wise counsel and warning. The person who made the King despised and hated was the splendid and insolent favourite, Buckingham. It might have been thought that the one thing to be set against much that was wrong in the State was the just and enlightened and speedy administration of equity in the Chancery.

When Parliament met, though nothing seemed to threaten mischief, it met with a sturdy purpose of bringing to account certain delinquents whose arrogance and vexations of the subjects had provoked the country, and who were supposed to shelter themselves under the countenance of Buckingham. Michell and Mompesson were rascals whose misdemeanors might well try the patience of a less spirited body than an English House of Commons. Buckingham could not protect them, and hardly tried to do so. But just as one electric current "induces" another by neighbourhood, so all this deep indignation against Buckingham's creatures created a fierce temper of suspicion about corruption all through the public service. Two Committees were early appointed by the House of Commons: one a Committee on Grievances, such as the monopolies; the other, a Committee to inquire into abuses in the Courts of Justice and receive petitions about them. In the course of the proceedings, the question arose in the House as to the authorities or "referees" who had certified to the legality of the Crown patents or grants which had been so grossly abused; and among these "referees" were the Lord Chancellor and other high officers, both legal and political.

It was the little cloud. But lookers-on like Chamberlain did not think much of it. "The referees," he wrote on Feb. 29th, "who certified the legality of the patents are glanced at, but they are chiefly above the reach of the House; they attempt so much that they will accomplish little." Coke, who was now the chief leader in Parliament, began to talk ominously of precedents, and to lay down rules about the power of the House to punish—rules which were afterwards found to have no authority for them. Cranfield, the representative of severe economy, insisted that the honour of the King required that the referees, whoever they were, should be called to account. The gathering clouds shifted a little, when the sense of the House seemed to incline to giving up all retrospective action, and to a limitation for the future by statute of the questionable prerogative—a limitation which was in fact attempted by a bill thrown out by the Lords. But they gathered again when the Commons determined to bring the whole matter before the House of Lords. The King wrote to warn Bacon of what was coming. The proposed conference was staved off by management for a day or two, but it could not be averted, and the Lords showed their eagerness for it. And two things by this time—the beginning of March—seemed now to have become clear, first, that under the general attack on the referees was intended a blow against Bacon; next, that the person whom he had most reason to fear was Sir Edward Coke.

The storm was growing; but Bacon was still unalarmed, though Buckingham had been frightened into throwing the blame on the referees.

"I do hear," he writes to Buckingham (dating his letter on March 7th, "the day I received the seal"), "from divers of judgement, that to-morrow's conference is like to pass in a calm, as to the referees. Sir Lionel Cranfield, who hath been formerly the trumpet, said yesterday that he did now incline unto Sir John Walter's opinion and motion not to have the referees meddled with, otherwise than to discount it from the King; and so not to look back, but to the future. And I do hear almost all men of judgement in the House wish now that way. I woo nobody; I do but listen, and I have doubt only of Sir Edward Coke, who I wish had some round caveat given him from the King; for your Lordship hath no great power with him. But a word from the King mates him."

But Coke's opportunity had come. The House of Commons was disposed for gentler measures. But he was able to make it listen to his harsher counsels, and from this time his hand appears in all that was done. The first conference was a tame and dull one. The spokesmen had been slack in their disagreeable and perhaps dangerous duty. But Coke and his friends took them sharply to task. "The heart and tongue of Sir Edward Coke are true relations," said one of his fervent supporters; "but his pains hath not reaped that harvest of praise that he hath deserved. For the referees, they are as transcendent delinquents as any other, and sure their souls made a wilful elopement from their bodies when they made these certificates." A second conference was held with the Lords, and this time the charge was driven home. The referees were named, the Chancellor at the head of them. When Bacon rose to explain and justify his acts he was sharply stopped, and reminded that he was transgressing the orders of the House in speaking till the Committees were named to examine the matter. What was even more important, the King had come to the House of Lords (March 10th), and frightened, perhaps, about his subsidies, told them "that he was not guilty of those grievances which are now discovered, but that he grounded his judgement upon others who have misled him." The referees would be attacked, people thought, if the Lower House had courage.

All this was serious. As things were drifting, it seemed as if Bacon might have to fight the legal question of the prerogative in the form of a criminal charge, and be called upon to answer the accusation of being the minister of a crown which legal language pronounced absolute, and of a King who interpreted legal language to the letter; and further, to meet his accusers after the King himself had disavowed what his servant had done. What passed between Bacon and the King is confused and uncertain; but after his speech the King could scarcely have thought of interfering with the inquiry. The proceedings went on; Committees were named for the several points of inquiry; and Bacon took part in these arrangements. It was a dangerous position to have to defend himself against an angry House of Commons, led and animated by Coke and Cranfield. But though the storm had rapidly thickened, the charges against the referees were not against him alone. His mistake in law, if it was a mistake, was shared by some of the first lawyers and first councillors in England. There was a battle before him, but not a hopeless one. "Modicae fidei, quare dubitasti" he writes about this time to an anxious friend.

But in truth the thickening storm had been gathering over his head alone. It was against him that the whole attack was directed; as soon as it took a different shape, the complaints against the other referees, such as the Chief-Justice, who was now Lord Treasurer, though some attempt was made to press them, were quietly dropped. What was the secret history of these weeks we do not know. But the result of Bacon's ruin was that Buckingham was saved. "As they speak of the Turquoise stone in a ring," Bacon had said to Buckingham when he was made Chancellor, "I will break into twenty pieces before you have the least fall." Without knowing what he pledged himself to, he was taken at his word.

At length the lightning fell. During the early part of March, while these dangerous questions were mooted about the referees, a Committee, appointed early in the session, had also been sitting on abuses in courts of justice, and as part of their business, an inquiry had been going on into the ways of the subordinate officers of the Court of Chancery. Bacon had early (Feb. 17th) sent a message to the Committee courting full inquiry, "willingly consenting that any man might speak anything of his Court." On the 12th of March the chairman, Sir R. Philips, reported that he had in his hands "divers petitions, many frivolous and clamorous, many of weight and consequence." Cranfield, who presided over the Court of Wards, had quarrelled fiercely with the Chancery, where he said there was "neither Law, Equity, nor Conscience," and pressed the inquiry, partly, it may be, to screen his own Court, which was found fault with by the lawyers. Some scandalous abuses were brought to light in the Chancery. They showed that "Bacon was at fault in the art of government," and did not know how to keep his servants in order. One of them, John Churchill, an infamous forger of Chancery orders, finding things going hard with him, and "resolved," it is said, "not to sink alone," offered his confessions of all that was going on wrong in the Court. But on the 15th of March things took another turn. It was no longer a matter of doubtful constitutional law; no longer a question of slack discipline over his officers. To the astonishment, if not of the men of his own day, at least to the unexhausted astonishment of times following, a charge was suddenly reported from the Committee to the Commons against the Lord Chancellor, not of straining the prerogative, or of conniving at his servants' misdoings, but of being himself a corrupt and venal judge. Two suitors charged him with receiving bribes. Bacon was beginning to feel worried and anxious, and he wrote thus to Buckingham. At length he had begun to see the meaning of all these inquiries, and to what they were driving.

"MY VERY GOOD LORD,—Your Lordship spake of Purgatory. I am now in it, but my mind is in a calm, for my fortune is not my felicity. I know I have clean hands and a clean heart, and I hope a clean house for friends or servants. But Job himself, or whosoever was the justest judge, by such hunting for matters against him as hath been used against me, may for a time seem foul, specially in a time when greatness is the mark and accusation is the game. And if this be to be a Chancellor. I think if the great seal lay upon Hounslow Heath nobody would take it up. But the King and your Lordship will, I hope, put an end to these miseries one way or other. And in troth that which I fear most is lest continual attendance and business, together with these cares, and want of time to do my weak body right this spring by diet and physic, will cast me down; and then it will be thought feigning or fainting. But I hope in God I shall hold out. God prosper you."

The first charges attracted others, which were made formal matters of complaint by the House of Commons. John Churchill, to save himself, was busy setting down cases of misdoing; and probably suitors of themselves became ready to volunteer evidence. But of this Bacon as yet knew nothing. He was at this time only aware that there were persons who were "hunting out complaints against him," that the attack was changed from his law to his private character; he had found an unfavourable feeling in the House of Lords; and he knew well enough what it was to have powerful enemies in those days when a sentence was often settled before a trial. To any one, such a state of things was as formidable as the first serious symptoms of a fever. He was uneasy, as a man might well be on whom the House of Commons had fixed its eye, and to whom the House of Lords had shown itself unfriendly. But he was as yet conscious of nothing fatal to his defence, and he knew that if false accusations could be lightly made they could also be exposed.

A few days after the first mention of corruption the Commons laid their complaints of him before the House of Lords, and on the same day (March 19) Bacon, finding himself too ill to go to the House, wrote to the Peers by Buckingham, requesting them that as some "complaints of base bribery" had come before them, they would give him a fair opportunity of defending himself, and of cross-examining witnesses; especially begging, that considering the number of decrees which he had to make in a year—more than two thousand—and "the courses which had been taken in hunting out complaints against him," they would not let their opinion of him be affected by the mere number of charges that might be made. Their short verbal answer, moved by Southampton (March 20), that they meant to proceed by right rule of justice, and would be glad if he cleared his honour, was not encouraging. And now that the Commons had brought the matter before them, the Lords took it entirely into their own hands, appointing three Committees, and examining the witnesses themselves. New witnesses came forward every day with fresh cases of gifts and presents, "bribes" received by the Lord Chancellor. When Parliament rose for the Easter vacation (March 27-April 17), the Committees continued sitting. A good deal probably passed of which no record remains. When the Commons met again (April 17) Coke was full of gibes about Instauratio Magna—the true Instauratio was to restore laws—and two days after an Act was brought in for review and reversal of decrees in Courts of Equity. It was now clear that the case against Bacon had assumed formidable dimensions, and also a very strange, and almost monstrous shape. For the Lords, who were to be the judges, had by their Committees taken the matter out of the hands of the Commons, the original accusers, and had become themselves the prosecutors, collecting and arranging evidence, accepting or rejecting depositions, and doing all that counsel or the committing magistrate would do preliminary to a trial. There appears to have been no cross-examining of witnesses on Bacon's behalf, or hearing witnesses for him—not unnaturally at this stage of business, when the prosecutors were engaged in making out their own case; but considering that the future judges had of their own accord turned themselves into the prosecutors, the unfairness was great. At the same time it does not appear that Bacon did anything to watch how things went in the Committees, which had his friends in them as well as his enemies, and are said to have been open courts. Towards the end of March, Chamberlain wrote to Carleton that "the Houses were working hard at cleansing out the Augaean stable of monopolies, and also extortions in Courts of Justice. The petitions against the Lord Chancellor were too numerous to be got through: his chief friends and brokers of bargains, Sir George Hastings and Sir Richard Young, and others attacked, are obliged to accuse him in their own defence, though very reluctantly. His ordinary bribes were L300, L400, and even L1000.... The Lords admit no evidence except on oath. One Churchill, who was dismissed from the Chancery Court for extortion, is the chief cause of the Chancellor's ruin."[3] Bacon was greatly alarmed. He wrote to Buckingham, who was "his anchor in these floods." He wrote to the King; he was at a loss to account for the "tempest that had come on him;" he could not understand what he had done to offend the country or Parliament; he had never "taken rewards to pervert justice, however he might be frail, and partake of the abuse of the time."

"Time hath been when I have brought unto you genitum columbae, from others. Now I bring it from myself. I fly unto your Majesty with the wings of a dove, which once within these seven days I thought would have carried me a higher flight.

"When I enter into myself, I find not the materials of such a tempest as is comen upon me. I have been (as your Majesty knoweth best) never author of any immoderate counsel, but always desired to have things carried suavibus modis. I have been no avaricious oppressor of the people. I have been no haughty or intolerable or hateful man, in my conversation or carriage. I have inherited no hatred from my father, but am a good patriot born. Whence should this be? For these are the things that use to raise dislikes abroad."

And he ended by entreating the King to help him:

"That which I thirst after, as the hart after the streams, is that I may know by my matchless friend [Buckingham] that presenteth to you this letter, your Majesty's heart (which is an abyssus of goodness, as I am an abyssus of misery) towards me. I have been ever your man, and counted myself but an usufructuary of myself, the property being yours; and now making myself an oblation to do with me as may best conduce to the honour of your justice, the honour of your mercy, and the use of your service, resting as

"Clay in your Majesty's gracious hands, "Fr. St. Aldan, Canc. "March 25, 1621."

To the world he kept up an undismayed countenance: he went down to Gorhambury, attended by troops of friends. "This man," said Prince Charles, when he met his company, "scorns to go out like a snuff." But at Gorhambury he made his will, leaving "his name to the next ages and to foreign nations;" and he wrote a prayer, which is a touching evidence of his state of mind—

"Most gracious Lord God, my merciful Father, from my youth up, my Creator, my Redeemer, my Comforter. Thou (O Lord) soundest and searchest the depths and secrets of all hearts; thou knowledgest the upright of heart, thou judgest the hypocrite, thou ponderest men's thoughts and doings as in a balance, thou measurest their intentions as with a line, vanity and crooked ways cannot be hid from thee.

"Remember (O Lord) how thy servant hath walked before thee; remember what I have first sought, and what hath been principal in mine intentions. I have loved thy assemblies, I have mourned for the divisions of thy Church, I have delighted in the brightness of thy sanctuary. This vine which thy right hand hath planted in this nation, I have ever prayed unto thee that it might have the first and the latter rain; and that it might stretch her branches to the seas and to the floods. The state and bread of the poor and oppressed have been precious in my eyes: I have hated all cruelty and hardness of heart; I have (though in a despised weed) procured the good of all men. If any have been mine enemies, I thought not of them; neither hath the sun almost set upon my displeasure; but I have been as a dove, free from superfluity of maliciousness. Thy creatures have been my books, but thy Scriptures much more. I have sought thee in the courts, fields, and gardens, but I have found thee in thy temples.

"Thousand have been my sins, and ten thousand my transgressions; but thy sanctifications have remained with me, and my heart, through thy grace, hath been an unquenched coal upon thy altar. O Lord, my strength, I have since my youth met with thee in all my ways, by thy fatherly compassions, by thy comfortable chastisements, and by thy most visible providence. As thy favours have increased upon me, so have thy corrections; so as thou hast been alway near me, O Lord; and ever as my worldly blessings were exalted, so secret darts from thee have pierced me; and when I have ascended before men, I have descended in humiliation before thee.

"And now when I thought most of peace and honour, thy hand is heavy upon me, and hath humbled me, according to thy former loving-kindness, keeping me still in thy fatherly school, not as a bastard, but as a child. Just are thy judgements upon me for my sins, which are more in number than the sands of the sea, but have no proportion to thy mercies; for what are the sands of the sea to the sea, earth, heavens? and all these are nothing to thy mercies.

"Besides my innumerable sins, I confess before thee that I am debtor to thee for the gracious talent of thy gifts and graces, which I have misspent in things for which I was least fit; so as I may truly say, my soul hath been a stranger in the course of my pilgrimage. Be merciful unto me (O Lord) for my Saviour's sake, and receive me into thy bosom, or guide me in thy ways."

Bacon up to this time strangely, if the Committees were "open Courts," was entirely ignorant of the particulars of the charge which was accumulating against him. He had an interview with the King, which was duly reported to the House, and he placed his case before James, distinguishing between the "three cases of bribery supposed in a judge—a corrupt bargain; carelessness in receiving a gift while the cause is going on; and, what is innocent, receiving a gift after it is ended." And he meant in such words as these to place himself at the King's disposal, and ask his direction:

"For my fortune, summa summarum with me is, that I may not be made altogether unprofitable to do your Majesty service or honour. If your Majesty continue me as I am, I hope I shall be a new man, and shall reform things out of feeling, more than another can do out of example. If I cast part of my burden, I shall be more strong and delivre to bear the rest. And, to tell your Majesty what my thoughts run upon, I think of writing a story of England, and of recompiling of your laws into a better digest."

The King referred him to the House; and the House now (April 19th) prepared to gather up into "one brief" the charges against the Lord Chancellor, still, however, continuing open to receive fresh complaints.

Meanwhile the chase after abuses of all kinds was growing hotter in the Commons—abuses in patents and monopolies, which revived the complaints against referees, among whom Bacon was frequently named, and abuses in the Courts of Justice. The attack passed by and spared the Common Law Courts, as was noticed in the course of the debates; it spared Cranfield's Court, the Court of Wards. But it fell heavily on the Chancery and the Ecclesiastical Courts. "I have neither power nor will to defend Chancery," said Sir John Bennett, the judge of the Prerogative Court; but a few weeks after his turn came, and a series of as ugly charges as could well be preferred against a judge, charges of extortion as well as bribery, were reported to the House by its Committee. There can be no doubt of the grossness of many of these abuses, and the zeal against them was honest, though it would have shown more courage if it had flown at higher game; but the daily discussion of them helped to keep alive and inflame the general feeling against so great a "delinquent" as the Lord Chancellor was supposed to be. And, indeed, two of the worst charges against him were made before the Commons. One was a statement made in the House by Sir George Hastings, a member of the House, who had been the channel of Awbry's gift, that when he had told Bacon that if questioned he must admit it, Bacon's answer was: "George, if you do so, I must deny it upon my honour—upon my oath." The other was that he had given an opinion in favour of some claim of the Masters in Chancery for which he received L1200, and with which he said that all the judges agreed—an assertion which all the judges denied. Of these charges there is no contradiction.[4]

Bacon made one more appeal to the King (April 21). He hoped that, by resigning the seal, he might be spared the sentence:

"But now if not per omnipotentiam (as the divines speak), but per potestatem suaviter disponentem, your Majesty will graciously save me from a sentence with the good liking of the House, and that cup may pass from me; it is the utmost of my desires.

"This I move with the more belief, because I assure myself that if it be reformation that is sought, the very taking away the seal, upon my general submission, will be as much in example for these four hundred years as any furder severity."

At length, informally, but for the first time distinctly, the full nature of the accusation, with its overwhelming list of cases, came to Bacon's knowledge (April 20 or 21). From the single charge, made in the middle of March, it had swelled in force and volume like a rising mountain torrent. That all these charges should have sprung out of the ground from their long concealment is strange enough. How is it that nothing was heard of them when the things happened? And what is equally strange is that these charges were substantially true and undeniable; that this great Lord Chancellor, so admirable in his despatch of business, hitherto so little complained of for wrong or unfair decisions, had been in the habit of receiving large sums of money from suitors, in some cases certainly while the suit was pending. And further, while receiving them, while perfectly aware of the evil of receiving gifts on the seat of judgment, while emphatically warning inferior judges against yielding to the temptation, he seems really to have continued unconscious of any wrong-doing while gift after gift was offered and accepted. But nothing is so strange as the way in which Bacon met the charges. Tremendous as the accusation was, he made not the slightest fight about it. Up to this time he had held himself innocent. Now, overwhelmed and stunned, he made no attempt at defence; he threw up the game without a struggle, and volunteered an absolute and unreserved confession of his guilt—that is to say, he declined to stand his trial. Only, he made an earnest application to the House of Lords, in proceeding to sentence, to be content with a general admission of guilt, and to spare him the humiliation of confessing the separate facts of alleged "bribery" which were contained in the twenty-eight Articles of his accusation. This submission, "grounded only on rumour," for the Articles of charge had not yet been communicated to him by the accusers, took the House by surprise. "No Lord spoke to it, after it had been read, for a long time." But they did not mean that he should escape with this. The House treated the suggestion with impatient scorn (April 24). "It is too late," said Lord Saye. "No word of confession of any corruption in the Lord Chancellor's submission," said Southampton; "it stands with the justice and honour of this House not to proceed without the parties' particular confession, or to have the parties to hear the charge, and we to hear the parties answer." The demand of the Lords was strictly just, but cruel; the Articles were now sent to him; he had been charged with definite offences; he must answer yes or no, confess them or defend himself. A further question arose whether he should not be sent for to appear at the bar. He still held the seals. "Shall the Great Seal come to the bar?" asked Lord Pembroke. It was agreed that he was to be asked whether he would acknowledge the particulars. His answer was "that he will make no manner of defence to the charge, but meaneth to acknowledge corruption, and to make a particular confession to every point, and after that a humble submission. But he humbly craves liberty that, when the charge is more full than he finds the truth of the fact, he may make a declaration of the truth in such particulars, the charge being brief and containing not all the circumstances." And such a confession he made. "My Lords," he said, to those who were sent to ask whether he would stand to it, "it is my act, my hand, my heart. I beseech your Lordships be merciful to a broken reed." This was, of course, followed by a request to the King from the House to "sequester" the Great Seal. A commission was sent to receive it (May 1). "The worse, the better," he answered to the wish, "that it had been better with him." "By the King's great favour I received the Great Seal; by my own great fault I have lost it." They intended him now to come to the bar to receive his sentence. But he was too ill to leave his bed. They did not push this point farther, but proceeded to settle the sentence (May 3). He had asked for mercy, but he did not get it. There were men who talked of every extremity short of death. Coke, indeed, in the Commons, from his store of precedents, had cited cases where judges had been hanged for bribery. But the Lords would not hear of this. "His offences foul," said Lord Arundel; "his confession pitiful. Life not to be touched." But Southampton, whom twenty years before he had helped to involve in Essex's ruin, urged that he should be degraded from the peerage; and asked whether, at any rate, "he whom this House thinks unfit to be a constable shall come to the Parliament." He was fined L40,000. He was to be imprisoned in the Tower during the King's pleasure. He was to be incapable of any office, place, or employment in the State or Commonwealth. He was never to sit in Parliament or come within the verge of the Court. This was agreed to, Buckingham only dissenting. "The Lord Chancellor is so sick," he said, "that he cannot live long."

What is the history of this tremendous catastrophe by which, in less than two months, Bacon was cast down from the height of fortune to become a byword of shame? He had enemies, who certainly were glad, but there is no appearance that it was the result of any plot or combination against him. He was involved, accidentally, it may almost be said, in the burst of anger excited by the intolerable dealings of others. The indignation provoked by Michell and Mompesson and their associates at that particular moment found Bacon in its path, doing, as it seemed, in his great seat of justice, even worse than they; and when he threw up all attempt at defence, and his judges had his hand to an unreserved confession of corruption, both generally, and in the long list of cases alleged against him, it is not wonderful that they came to the conclusion, as the rest of the world did, that he was as bad as the accusation painted him—a dishonest and corrupt judge. Yet it is strange that they should not have observed that not a single charge of a definitely unjust decision was brought, at any rate was proved, against him. He had taken money, they argued, and therefore he must be corrupt; but if he had taken money to pervert judgment, some instance of the iniquity would certainly have been brought forward and proved. There is no such instance to be found; though, of course, there were plenty of dissatisfied suitors; of course the men who had paid their money and lost their cause were furious. But in vain do we look for any case of proved injustice. The utmost that can be said is that in some cases he showed favour in pushing forward and expediting suits. So that the real charge against Bacon assumes, to us who have not to deal practically with dangerous abuses, but to judge conduct and character, a different complexion. Instead of being the wickedness of perverting justice and selling his judgments for bribes, it takes the shape of allowing and sharing in a dishonourable and mischievous system of payment for service, which could not fail to bring with it temptation and discredit, and in which fair reward could not be distinguished from unlawful gain. Such a system it was high time to stop; and in this rough and harsh way, which also satisfied some personal enmities, it was stopped. We may put aside for good the charge on which he was condemned, and which in words he admitted—of being corrupt as a judge. His real fault—and it was a great one—was that he did not in time open his eyes to the wrongness and evil, patent to every one, and to himself as soon as pointed out, of the traditional fashion in his court of eking out by irregular gifts the salary of such an office as his.

Thus Bacon was condemned both to suffering and to dishonour; and, as has been observed, condemned without a trial. But it must also be observed that it was entirely owing to his own act that he had not a trial, and with a trial the opportunity of cross-examining witnesses and of explaining openly the matters urged against him. The proceedings in the Lords were preliminary to the trial; when the time came, Bacon, of his own choice, stopped them from going farther, by his confession and submission. Considering the view which he claimed to take of his own case, his behaviour was wanting in courage and spirit. From the moment that the attack on him shifted from a charge of authorising illegal monopolies to a charge of personal corruption, he never fairly met his accusers. The distress and anxiety, no doubt, broke down his health; and twice, when he was called upon to be in his place in the House of Lords, he was obliged to excuse himself on the ground that he was too ill to leave his bed. But between the time of the first charge and his condemnation seven weeks elapsed; and though he was able to go down to Gorhambury, he never in that time showed himself in the House of Lords. Whether or not, while the Committees were busy in collecting the charges, he would have been allowed to take part, to put questions to the witnesses, or to produce his own, he never attempted to do so; and by the course he took there was no other opportunity. To have stood his trial could hardly have increased his danger, or aggravated his punishment; and it would only have been worthy of his name and place, if not to have made a fight for his character and integrity, at least to have bravely said what he had made up his mind to admit, and what no one could have said more nobly and pathetically, in open Parliament. But he was cowed at the fierceness of the disapprobation manifest in both Houses. He shrunk from looking his peers and his judges in the face. His friends obtained for him that he should not be brought to the bar, and that all should pass in writing. But they saved his dignity at the expense of his substantial reputation. The observation that the charges against him were not sifted by cross-examination applies equally to his answers to them. The allegations of both sides would have come down to us in a more trustworthy shape if the case had gone on. But to give up the struggle, and to escape by any humiliation from a regular public trial, seems to have been his only thought when he found that the King and Buckingham could not or would not save him.

But the truth is that he knew that a trial of this kind was a trial only in name. He knew that, when a charge of this sort was brought, it was not meant to be really investigated in open court, but to be driven home by proofs carefully prepared beforehand, against which the accused had little chance. He knew, too, that in those days to resist in earnest an accusation was apt to be taken as an insult to the court which entertained it. And further, for the prosecutor to accept a submission and confession without pushing to the formality of a public trial, and therefore a public exposure, was a favour. It was a favour which by his advice, as against the King's honour, had been refused to Suffolk; it was a favour which, in a much lighter charge, had by his advice been refused to his colleague Yelverton only a few months before, when Bacon, in sentencing him, took occasion to expatiate on the heinous guilt of misprisions or mistakes in men in high places. The humiliation was not complete without the trial, but it was for humiliation and not fair investigation that the trial was wanted. Bacon knew that the trial would only prolong his agony, and give a further triumph to his enemies.

That there was any plot against Bacon, and much more that Buckingham to save himself was a party to it, is of course absurd. Buckingham, indeed, was almost the only man in the Lords who said anything for Bacon, and, alone, he voted against his punishment. But considering what Buckingham was, and what he dared to do when he pleased, he was singularly cool in helping Bacon. Williams, the astute Dean of Westminster, who was to be Bacon's successor as Lord Keeper, had got his ear, and advised him not to endanger himself by trying to save delinquents. He did not. Indeed, as the inquiry went on, he began to take the high moral ground; he was shocked at the Chancellor's conduct; he would not have believed that it could have been so bad; his disgrace was richly deserved. Buckingham kept up appearances by saying a word for him from time to time in Parliament, which he knew would be useless, and which he certainly took no measures to make effective. It is sometimes said that Buckingham never knew what dissimulation was. He was capable, at least, of the perfidy and cowardice of utter selfishness. Bacon's conspicuous fall diverted men's thoughts from the far more scandalous wickedness of the great favourite. But though there was no plot, though the blow fell upon Bacon almost accidentally, there were many who rejoiced to be able to drive it home. We can hardly wonder that foremost among them was Coke. This was the end of the long rivalry between Bacon and Coke, from the time that Essex pressed Bacon against Coke in vain to the day when Bacon as Chancellor drove Coke from his seat for his bad law, and as Privy Councillor ordered him to be prosecuted in the Star Chamber for riotously breaking open men's doors to get his daughter. The two men thoroughly disliked and undervalued one another. Coke made light of Bacon's law. Bacon saw clearly Coke's narrowness and ignorance out of that limited legal sphere in which he was supposed to know everything, his prejudiced and interested use of his knowledge, his coarseness and insolence. But now in Parliament Coke was supreme, "our Hercules," as his friends said. He posed as the enemy of all abuses and corruption. He brought his unrivalled, though not always accurate, knowledge of law and history to the service of the Committees, and took care that the Chancellor's name should not be forgotten when it could be connected with some bad business of patent or Chancery abuse. It was the great revenge of the Common Law on the encroaching and insulting Chancery which had now proved so foul. And he could not resist the opportunity of marking the revenge of professional knowledge over Bacon's airs of philosophical superiority. "To restore things to their original" was his sneer in Parliament, "this, Instauratio Magna. Instaurare paras—Instaura leges justitiamque prius."[5]

The charge of corruption was as completely a surprise to Bacon as it was to the rest of the world. And yet, as soon as the blot was hit, he saw in a moment that his position was hopeless—he knew that he had been doing wrong; though all the time he had never apparently given it a thought, and he insisted, what there is every reason to believe, that no present had induced him to give an unjust decision. It was the power of custom over a character naturally and by habit too pliant to circumstances. Custom made him insensible to the evil of receiving recommendations from Buckingham in favour of suitors. Custom made him insensible to the evil of what it seems every one took for granted—receiving gifts from suitors. In the Court of James I. the atmosphere which a man in office breathed was loaded with the taint of gifts and bribes. Presents were as much the rule, as indispensable for those who hoped to get on, as they are now in Turkey. Even in Elizabeth's days, when Bacon was struggling to win her favour, and was in the greatest straits for money, he borrowed L500 to buy a jewel for the Queen. When he was James's servant the giving of gifts became a necessity. New Year's Day brought round its tribute of gold vases and gold pieces to the King and Buckingham. And this was the least. Money was raised by the sale of officers and titles. For L20,000, having previously offered L10,000 in vain, the Chief-Justice of England, Montague, became Lord Mandeville and Treasurer. The bribe was sometimes disguised: a man became a Privy Councillor, like Cranfield, or a Chief-Justice, like Ley (afterwards "the good Earl," "unstained with gold or fee," of Milton's Sonnet), by marrying a cousin or a niece of Buckingham. When Bacon was made a Peer, he had also given him "the making of a Baron;" that is to say, he might raise money by bargaining with some one who wanted a peerage; when, however, later on, he asked Buckingham for a repetition of the favour, Buckingham gave him a lecture on the impropriety of prodigality, which should make it seem that "while the King was asking money of Parliament with one hand he was giving with the other." How things were in Chancery in the days of the Queen, and of Bacon's predecessors, we know little; but Bacon himself implies that there was nothing new in what he did. "All my lawyers," said James, "are so bred and nursed in corruption that they cannot leave it." Bacon's Chancellorship coincided with the full bloom of Buckingham's favour; and Buckingham set the fashion, beyond all before him, of extravagance in receiving and spending. Encompassed by such assumptions and such customs, Bacon administered the Chancery. Suitors did there what people did everywhere else; they acknowledged by a present the trouble they gave, or the benefit they gained. It may be that Bacon's known difficulties about money, his expensive ways and love of pomp, his easiness of nature, his lax discipline over his servants, encouraged this profuseness of giving. And Bacon let it be. He asked no questions; he knew that he worked hard and well; he knew that it could go on without affecting his purpose to do justice "from the greatest to the groom." A stronger character, a keener conscience, would have faced the question, not only whether he was not setting the most ruinous of precedents, but whether any man could be so sure of himself as to go on dealing justly with gifts in his hands. But Bacon, who never dared to face the question, what James was, what Buckingham was, let himself be spellbound by custom. He knew in the abstract that judges ought to have nothing to do with gifts, and had said so impressively in his charges to them. Yet he went on self-complacent, secure, almost innocent, building up a great tradition of corruption in the very heart of English justice, till the challenge of Parliament, which began in him its terrible and relentless, but most unequal, prosecution of justice against ministers who had betrayed the commonwealth in serving the Crown, woke him from his dream, and made him see, as others saw it, the guilt of a great judge who, under whatever extenuating pretext, allowed the suspicion to arise that he might sell justice. "In the midst of a state of as great affliction as mortal man can endure," he wrote to the Lords of the Parliament, in making his submission, "I shall begin with the professing gladness in some things. The first is that hereafter the greatness of a judge or magistrate shall be no sanctuary or protection of guiltiness, which is the beginning of a golden world. The next, that after this example it is like that judges will fly from anything that is in the likeness of corruption as from a serpent." Bacon's own judgment on himself, deliberately repeated, is characteristic, and probably comes near the truth. "Howsoever, I acknowledge the sentence just and for reformation's sake fit," he writes to Buckingham from the Tower, where, for form's sake, he was imprisoned for a few miserable days, he yet had been "the justest Chancellor that hath been in the five changes that have been since Sir Nicolas Bacon's time." He repeated the same thing yet more deliberately in later times. "I was the justest judge that was in England these fifty years. But it was the justest censure in Parliament that was these two hundred years."