Aug. 6.

VI. 14. understand that she is likewise pleased to divide the fine of Mr. Catesby between Mr. Francis Bacon, Sir Arthur 1601. Gorges, and Captain Carpenter, at Ostend, in this sort following, for which you are likewise to prepare some such assurance to be passed from the Queen as the person may receive those sums, every one pro rata, out of every portion as it is assigned to be paid at several times, namely, to Mr. Bacon the sum of a thousand two hundred pounds; to Sir Arthur Gorges a thousand two hundred pounds; and to Captain Carpenter the rest; for doing whereof these presents shall be your warrant.

THOMAS EGERTON.

BUCKHURST.

NOTTINGHAM.

SHREWSBURY.

WORCESTER.

KNOLLYS.

ROBERT CECIL.

JOHN FORTESCUE.

Fancy Coke's delight in passing an assurance for twelve hundred pounds to Francis Bacon!

15. One actor in the drama which has shaken London slips mysteriously from public view. Flung into the Tower with Essex and Danvers, as of equal guilt, Lord Monteagle is neither put with them on trial for his life, nor, in the various public investigations, are the damning facts of his having sent for Augustine Phillips and of having paid the Globe comedians to play the deposition of Richard II. on the very eve of the rising, allowed to escape Coke's lips in a public court. That Phillips was sent for to Essex House, and was there paid money

15. Phillips' Examination, Feb. 18, 1601, S. P. O.; State Trials, i. 1445.

1601.

to change the play at the Blackfriars theatre, are facts VI. 15. too grave for the prosecution to conceal; but when Coke rises, with the comedian's evidence in his hand, he drops the name of Lord Monteagle from the sworn depositions, inserting that of Meyrick in its place! Meyrick is hanged, Monteagle only fined.

Cecil must have his reasons for this strange suppression, this cruel substitution: reasons which become clear from Monteagle's share in the more terrible drama of the Powder Plot.

16. Lord Campbell writes, and many others have written, as though it would have been right for Bacon to have shirked his part in this great act of justice. Yet this can hardly be his serious meaning. To put Bacon in the wrong, the objector must prove Essex to have been acting in his right. This, it may be safely asserted, they can never do. If all writers must agree that England was justified in crushing with swift, stern hand this peculiarly hideous and unnatural plot, by what path of reasoning can we come to a conclusion that one of the Queen's Counsellors, called to his duty by the Crown, was not right?

In Bacon's place, we must assume that Lord Campbell would have done his duty as Bacon did. There is no second course for honest men. Bring the case down. Lord Campbell has had many clients: men who have paid him fees far larger than the patch of meadow tossed to Bacon by the Earl. Imagine events arming the papal powers once more against England; hostile fleets off the coast; O'Donnel or M'Mahon at the head of a successful host in Connaught; Zouaves swarming in Cork; our colonies menaced with fire and sword; a gang of ruffians,

16. Campbell's 'Lives of the Chancellors,' iii. 37, 39.

Aug.

1601. Aug.

VI. 16. spawn of the stews and prisons, abroad in London; the Queen's cousin of Hanover plotting with all those rebels and fanatics against her crown and life; a foreign league resolving to put down our free constitution and our Protestant faith; imagine, under all these circumstances of alarm, one of Lord Campbell's former clients, a man for whose personal character he felt no respect and whose political conduct he held in abhorrence, joining with John Mitchell, Dr. Cullen, and the disbanded remnants of the Pope's brigade in open rebellion against the law, in rousing the dregs of the city, in shedding innocent blood at Charing Cross; would not Lord Campbell, under such provocations, do his duty as a lawyer and as a man?

Oct.

This was Bacon's case. He owed nothing to Essex that could have tempted even a weak man to take the wrong side instead of the right side. He owed allegiance to his country and to truth. He was as much the Queen's officer, armed with her commission, bound to obey her commands, as her Captain of the Guard. He had no part in the Earl's crime, and utterly abhorred his means, his associates, and his ends. To have done more than he did in the conduct of this bad drama might have been noble and patriotic; to have done less would have been to act like a weak girl, not like a great man.

17. That the bearing of Francis Bacon throughout these mournful events is just and noble, is the public verdict of his time. Lord Campbell talks of his fall in popularity. "For some time after Essex's execution Bacon was looked upon with great aversion." But, in truth, he never loses for a day the hearts of his countrymen. Of this the proofs are incontestable. While the

17. Campbell's' Bacon,' iii. 43; Willis, Not. Parl.,' 149.

RETURNED FOR IPSWICH AND ST. ALBANS. 129

1601.

Oct.

spirits of men are yet warm with remembrance of the VI. 17. scenes at Tyburn and on Tower Hill, writs travel down. into the shires for a new Parliament. Now, therefore, comes the proof how far he has fallen. If he be thought of with aversion, as Lord Campbell says, here are the means, the opportunities, and the scenery for a condign revenge. The scot and lot men of Elizabeth are not nice. A candidate cross to the moods of squire and freeman often finds himself burned in straw, pelted with foul eggs, or drummed by humorous rogues from the county town. Do the friends of Lord Essex rise on his adversaries? Is the drum beaten against Raleigh, or the stone flung at Bacon? Just the reverse. The world has not been with the rebellious Earl; and those who have struck down the papist plot are foremost in the ranks of the new Parliament. Four years ago Bacon had been chosen to represent Ipswich, and the chief town of Suffolk again ratifies its choice. But his public acts have won for him a second constituency in St. Albans. Such a double return-always rare in the House of Commons-is the highest compliment that could have been paid to the purity and popularity of his political life.

K

CHAPTER VII.

1603.

April.

THE NEW REIGN.

VII. 1. 1. NOR is Bacon's popularity a tide at the ebb. The Queen dies. A King comes in who knows not Joseph, nor the principles of Joseph. James has secretly promised peace to Spain. A man of weak nerve and small quick brain, fond of his ease, a friend of dogmatic controversies and a stranger to religion, he can neither tolerate nor understand the passionate fervour of the realm for this foreign war. By war he sees that he may offend the Jesuits and the Pope, men who can put poison into his wine or sharpen against him an assassin's knife. What are the Dutch to him, that he should offend for them the masters of a hundred legions and twenty secret fraternities? Why, these Dutch are in arms against lawful kings! England, it is true, has undertaken their defence, and, in league with Henri Quatre, she has for many years past commanded in their towns and camps. But the treaties of Elizabeth, he says, are not his treaties, nor can he hold himself bound by the acts of a woman and a fool.

But the desertion of a cause which every man between the four seas possessing high spirit and sound faith feels to be his own, is not the act of a day. A path must be prepared. The eager spirits must be dispersed or stunned, the great fighting-men must be crushed or bribed. Cecil adopts this policy of peace, which suits his genius and secures to himself the foremost place. Nottingham is won by a youth

1. King's MSS. 123; Harl. MSS. 532.