menu_book Chapter 12

CHAPTER VI. 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 always 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 judgments 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. As 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 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 has 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 sumerum, with me is that I may not be made altogether unprofitable to do your Majesty's service or honor. 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 deliberate 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 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 Bennet, 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

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 Aubrey'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 honor,

upon my oath. The other was that he had given an opinion in favor of some claim of the Masters and Chancery, for which he received £1,200, and with which he said that all the judges agreed, an assertion which all the judges denied. Of these charges there was no contradiction.

FOOT NOTE. Commons Journals, March 17, April 27, 3, 560, 594 to 6. END FOOT NOTE. 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 omnipotentium, as the Divines speak, but per protostatum, suavatur, Your Majesty will graciously save me from a sentence with the good liking of the House, and that cup may pass for 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 an example for these four hundred years as any further 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 dispatch 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

account of judgment, while emphatically warning inferior judges against yielding to the temptation, he seems really to have continued unconscious of any wrongdoing, 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 defense. 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 the 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 rumor, 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, say.

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 Party's particular confession, or to have the Parties to hear the charge, and we to hear the Party's 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. "'Will 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. In 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. The book, indeed, in the Commons, from historic precedence, 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 £40,000.

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 was no appearance that it was the result of any plot or combination against him.

He was involved, accidentally, it may be almost said, in the burst of anger excited by the intolerable dealings of others. The indignation provoked by Mitchell and Mame Pesson and their associates at that particular moment found Bacon in its path, doing as it seemed in his great seal 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 was 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 authorizing 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 at 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. 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 by which his advice as against the King's honour had been refused to Savok. 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 a 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 would 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 his privy counsellor 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 unrivaled, 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 instoratio magna, instorare pares, instora legis justitiamke prius.

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 And he insisted, while 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 everyone 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 five hundred pounds 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 in Buckingham.

And this was the least. Money was raised by the sale of officers and titles. For twenty thousand pounds, having previously offered ten thousand pounds in vain, the Chief Justice of England, Montague, became the Lord Mandeville and Treasurer. The bribe was sometimes disguised.

A man became a Privy Counselor like Cranfield, or a Chief Justice like Laye. 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 someone 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. It 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 the 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 had been since Sir Nicholas 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. He might have gone on to add the wisest counsellor, and yet none on whom rested heavier blame, none of whom England might more justly complain. Good counsels given, submissive acquiescence in the worst, this is the history of his statesmanship.

Bacon, whose eye was everywhere, was not sparing of his counsels. On all the great questions of the time he has left behind abundant evidence, not only of what he thought, but of what he advised. And in every case these memorials are marked with the insight, the independence, the breadth of view, and the moderation of a mind which is bent on truth.

He started, of course, from a basis which we are now hardly able to understand or allow for, the idea of absolute royal power and prerogative which James had enlarged and hardened out of the kingship of the Tudors, itself imperious and arbitrary enough, but always seeking with a tact of which James was incapable to be in touch and sympathy with popular feeling. But it was a basis which in principle every one of any account has yet held or professed

to hold, and which Bacon himself held on grounds of philosophy and reason. He could see no hope for orderly and intelligent government, except in a ruler whose wisdom had equal strength to assert itself. And he looked down with incredulity and scorn on the notion of anything good coming out of what the world then knew or saw of popular opinion or parliamentary government.

But when it came to what was wise and fitting for absolute power to do in the way of general measures and policy, he was for the most part right. He saw the inexorable and pressing necessity of putting the finance of the kingdom on a safe footing. He saw the necessity of a sound and honest policy in Ireland.

He saw the mischief of the Spanish alliance in spite of his curious friendship with Gondomar. And detected the real and increasing weakness of the Spanish monarchy which still awed mankind. He saw the growing danger of abuses in church and state which were left untouched, and were protected by the punishment of those who dared to complain of them. He saw the confusion and injustice of much of that common law of which the lawyers were

so proud, and would have attempted if he had been able to emulate Justinian and anticipate the cold Napoleon by a rational and consistent digest. Above all, he never ceased to impress on James the importance, and if wisely used, the immense advantages of his parliaments. Himself, for a great part of his life an active and popular member of the House of Commons,

he saw that not only was it impossible to do without it, but that if fairly honorably honestly dealt with, it would become a source of power and confidence which would double the strength of the government both at home and abroad. But of all this wisdom nothing came. The finance of the kingdom was still ruined by extravagance and corruption in a time of

rapidly developing prosperity and wealth. The wounds of Ireland were unhealed. It was neither peace nor war with Spain. And hot infatuation for its friendship alternated with cold fits of distrust and estrangement. Abuses flourished and multiplied under great patronage.

The King's one thought about Parliament was how to get as much money out of it as he could with as little other business as possible. Bacon's councils were the prophecies of Cassandra in that so prosperous but so disastrous reign. All that he did was to lend the authority of his presence in James's most intimate councils to policy and courses of which he saw the unwisdom and the perils.

James and Buckingham made use of him when they wanted. But they would have been very different in their measures and their statesmanship if they had listened to him. Marabos said what of course had been said before him, « Un nouveau dans la partie executive de la vie humaine qu'est par le caractère. »

This is the key to Bacon's failures as a judge and as a statesman. And why, knowing so much more and judging so much more wisely than James and Buckingham, he must be identified with the misdoings of that ignoble reign. He had the courage of his opinions. But a man wants more than that.

He needs the manliness and the public spirit to enforce them, if they are true and salutary. But this is what Bacon had not. He did not mind being rebuffed. He knew that he was right and did not care. But to stand up against the King, to contradict him after he had spoken, to press an opinion

or a measure on a man whose belief in his own wisdom was infinite, to risk not only being set down as a dreamer but the King's displeasure, and the ruin of being given over to the will of his enemies, this Bacon had not the fibre or the stiffness or the self-assertion to do. He did not do what a man of firm will and strength of purpose, a man of high integrity,

of habitual resolution, would have done. Such men insist when they are responsible and when they know that they are right, and they prevail or accept the consequences. Bacon, knowing all that he did, thinking all that he thought, was content to be the echo and the instrument of the cleverest, the foolishest, the vainest, the most pitiably unmanly of

English kings.