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INTERCEDES FOR THE SOMERSETS.

211

8. When Somerset has been sent to the Tower-when the Howards are cast down from their bad eminence, and the flagitious Spanish clique seems broken by their fall-Bacon's voice is raised for clemency. When he has done his duty as Attorney-General, he remembers his privileges as a Christian and a man. Life enough has been taken. Helwys, Weston, Franklin, Anne Turner, all the more active agents in the deed, are gone. The Countess has a baby at her breast-that little girl who born in shame, will live to become the mother of William Lord Russell. She has confessed her guilt, she has been awfully punished, and the remnant of her years is doomed to obscurity and shame. The Earl maintains his innocence; the world has not been satisfied of his guilt. Humanity and Law alike concede to him the protection of every doubt. Bacon's counsel to the Crown must be allowed to be pure. He owes nothing to Somerset in the past he can have nothing to hope from him in the time

to come.

9. He has some domestic and rather humorous trials of his own. Sir John and the lady in Worcester break his rest. Having put his scorn upon Lord Eure, and worried him into selling his place to Lord Gerard; having got, with the help of Gervase Babington, Bishop of Worcester, a grant from the Crown to restore his pool; having finished his house in the middle of Westwood Park, and given a banquet to Lord and Lady Compton and their train in honour of the event, which has been the talk of neighbouring shires, the warm old knight, having no one left to

8. Bacon to James, April 28, 1616.

9. Council Reg., Mar. 7, 1615; Dom. Papers James the First, lxxxvii. 67, S. P. O.; Wotton, i. 186.

X. 8.

1616.

May.

1616. May.

X. 9. fight with, has begun to fuss and wrangle with his wife. The widow, on her side, is now perverse. Sir John has to turn her out of doors. When she leaves the park and rides up to town, her clothes and trinkets, sent on before her, are stolen on the way. In the full belief that Sir John has caused her to be plundered, Lady Pakington sends her wrongs to the Privy Council, and begs to have a general warrant of search for her stolen trunks. This piece of domestic comedy stands solemnly recorded in the Council-books :

March the seventh, 1615.

Present:

George Abbott, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Thomas Howard Earl of Suffolk, Lord Treasurer.

Edward Somerset Earl of Worcester, Lord Privy Seal.
William Herbert Earl of Pembroke, Lord Chamberlain.
The Earl of Dunfermline.

The Bishop of Winchester.

Lord Knollys.

Sir Ralph Winwood, First Secretary of State.

A GENERAL WARRANT DIRECTED TO ALL HIS MAJESTY'S

PUBLIC OFFICERS.

"Whereas complaint hath been made unto us by the Lady Pakington, wife to Sir John Pakington, knight, that, having occasion to repair to London, and sending up divers trunks of apparel and other necessaries for the use of her person, the same was carried aside, and as yet detained from her, to her great hindrance and prejudice. These are therefore to will and require you to make search in all places where you shall be directed by this bearer for apparel belonging to the Lady Pakington, and the same

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being found to cause it to be delivered to this bearer for X. 9. her use."

1616.

This warrant to search for Lady Pakington's hoods May. and jerkins, fans, ruffs, and farthingales, is signed by the Archbishop, the Lord Treasurer, and the rest!

10. It may for charity be hoped the poor lady finds her trunks, though the Council-books say no more about them. Certain it is that when she again goes home to Westwood Park she nags and frets Sir John, and not Sir John alone. Two of her girls are now married, and she does her very worst to make their husbands as miserable as her own. How Mervin Touchet bears her tongue we are not told; but this young lord being rather crazed, and exceedingly vicious and tyrannical, it is likely enough that he submits, as such men do, to the woman's cold, dry, dogged will. Not so Francis Bacon, who insists, to her surprise and rage, on being the master in his own house. When she tries on him the arts which have sometimes roused, but more frequently have tamed Sir John, he tells her in the plainest words to mind her own business, and mind it better than she has done. He even shuts his door upon her when he finds her naught. If she hints in her own sweet way that, should he turn his wife out of the house, as she supposes he soon will, now that he has turned his deaf side to her mother's counsels, she will receive her back from him, and give her, the poor outraged thing, a home, Bacon quietly reminds her that, considering what is passed, and who has been already cast off once, it is more likely that she will come to beg a room at Gorhambury than that Lady Bacon will need to seek one at Westwood Park.

10. Montagu, xiii. 63.

X. 10.

1616.

May.

This letter is in Montagu; but though curious to the last degree, it has passed unnoticed the eye of every writer of Bacon's life, because the relation of Bacon to Lady Pakington has not been known. I reproduce it in connexion with the domestic facts to which it belongs, and which it helps to explain.

TO MY LADY PAKINGTON, IN ANSWER TO A MESSAGE BY HER SENT.

MADAM,

You shall with right good will be made acquainted with anything that concerneth your daughters, if you bear a mind of love and concord, otherwise you must be content to be a stranger unto us; for I may not be so unwise as to suffer you to be an author or occasion of dissension between your daughters and their husbands, having seen so much misery of that in yourself. And above all things I will turn back your kindness, in which you say you will receive my wife if she be cast off; for it is much more likely we have occasion to receive you being cast off, if you remember what is passed. But it is time to make an end of those follies, and you shall at this time pardon me this one fault of writing to you; for I mean to do it no more till you use me and respect me as you ought. So, wishing you better than it seemeth you will draw upon yourself,

I rest yours,

FR. BACON.

11. The merciful part which Bacon, as Attorney-General, plays in the release of Sir William Monson and Sir

11. Waad's Statement, Sept. 1615, S. P. O.; Coke's Memorandum, Sept. 11, 1615, Jan. 8, 1616, S. P. O.; James to the Commissioners, Oct. 21, 1615, S. P. O.; Coke to the King, Dec. 4, 1615, S. P. O.; Sir Thomas Monson to Coke, Dec. 5, 1615, S. P. O.

INTERCEDES FOR THE MONSONS.

215

1616.

Thomas Monson from the Tower, having escaped the X. 11. researches of Basil Montagu, has escaped the criticisms of Lord Campbell. Yet the facts of this interference embrace a continuation of the duel with Coke, and are essential to an understanding of some of the remoter causes of Bacon's fall.

In the first warm days of discovery the two Monsons were flung into the Tower. The proof would have gone hard against them. They were Papists. They were friends of Northampton. They were intimate

with Lady Somerset. Sir William Monson was the secret agent of the Spanish Ambassador. Sir Thomas had been the means of placing Weston in Overbury's cell. Any actual participation in the murder has never yet been proved against either of them; yet in the flush and anger of the public, more could have been brought against them than any twelve Protestant jurors would have asked in order to their condemnation. Guildhall would have pronounced them guilty, as King's Bench had pronounced Anne Turner guilty, and Coke would most gladly have sent them to the gallows or the block.

But Bacon feels that, now the King has resolved to pardon Somerset and his guilty wife, the Monsons cannot be put to death without shocking all reasonable, conscientious men. They are Catholics; but he cannot treat their religion as a crime. Coke is furious. As one of the four commissioners for the prosecution, he has made a vast collection of secret papers on the subject; these papers he refuses to give up; and from threats which he has used on hearing that he may be baulked of his prey, it is feared that in his fury he may send them to the

press.

May.

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