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X. 12.

1616.

May.

12. The advocates of mercy hie to the King. James commands Bacon to require from Coke the surrender of all these documents for his Majesty's use. The AttorneyGeneral thereupon writes to the Lord Chief Justice:---

MY LORD,

BACON TO COKE.

I received yesternight express commandments from his Majesty to require from your Lordship, in his Majesty's name, all and every such examinations as are in your Lordship's hands of Sir William Monson for his Majesty's present service. Therefore, I pray your Lordship either send them presently, sealed up, by your servant, or, if you think it needful, I will come to you myself and receive them with mine own hands. I rest, your Lordship's loving friend, to command,

FR. BACON.

This Tuesday, at seven o'clock in the morning, 16th of April, 1616.

Imagine the rage of Coke! No evidence to connect Sir William with the murderous scenes in the Tower has been discovered, while the proofs of his connexion with the Spanish Ambassador, and of his disbursements of money to the partisans of Spain, are of a kind not to be produced by the King in a court of law.

13. Sir Thomas Monson's case is far more difficult than Sir William's; for Sir Thomas was in daily communication with Helwys when the poisons were being given, and his warm recommendation of Weston first encou

12. Bacon to Coke, April 16, 1616, S. P. O.; Carew to Roe, Jan. 18, 1617, S. P. O.

13. Coke to the King, Feb. 8, 1616, S. P. O.; Queries by Coke, Feb. 1616, S. P. O.; Chamberlain to Carleton, June 8, 1616, S. P. O.

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1616.

May.

raged Helwys to permit and then to share the crime. Yet X. 13. a careful examination of the mass of evidence in the State Paper Office must convince a lawyer that Monson was no worse than Northampton's tool and dupe. He was guilty of Romanism: a crime which Coke, and many bigots like Coke, would have punished with the drop. He was guilty, too, of grave indiscretion and of crawling subserviency towards Northampton. How could the Crown lawyers deal with such a case? Monson had undergone a public examination, not a public trial. Coke would have his life.

14. But while the two Monsons lie in the Tower, each loud in his denial of guilt, yet scared in soul by the violence and injustice of his adversaries, Cake himself, the most eager and malicious of those adversaries, crashes down suddenly from his high place.

That command to give up the confessions and examinations of Sir William must have gone to the quick; as it not only robs him of the power to bully and hang a man for whose creed he has no tolerance, but takes from him a case in which he feels a lawyer's pride, to give it over to one whom of all living men he most loathes and fears. This wrong he resents in word and deed. Seeing scorn and insult on the brow of a prince from whom he hoped to win smiles and bounty, he droops into discontent and opposition. In the great case of Commendams he comes into fatal collision with the King.

15. The case of Commendams, on the law of which Egerton and Bacon differ from Coke, may be explained

14. Carew to Roe, Jan. 18, 1617, S. P. O.

15. Storia del Concilio Tridentino, 1629; Collier's Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, vii. 389; Council Reg., June 6, 1616.

June.

1616.

June.

X. 15. in a few words. A living in commendam was in the same position as a ward in custody; it was committed to some one's care. The custom of such holdings in the church arose in troublous times, when a Genseric was in Rome or an Attila in Gaul; then sees and parishes, left without occupants, were given in commendam to the nearest bishop or the nearest priest. In time the Popes discovered in this system of holding sees or livings a means of rewarding a loyal friend or buying off a formidable foe. In England, too, the plan had its use and its abuse. Some of the livings were so rich, while some of the sees were so poor, that a clergyman might lose in worldly state by his translation to the bench of spiritual peers. Such a fact, it is obvious, must have limited the choice of the Crown, in case of vacancy among the bishops, to the lower or less fortunate ranks of the clergy—a limitation not to be desired or endured, had not the Crown, when succeeding to the rights of the Holy Chair, inherited the power of granting livings in commendam. Yet such a power was open to grave abuse. Paulo Sarpi has denounced the evils which it brought upon Roman Catholic communities, where a Pope's bastard or a Cardinal's nephew, under the title of a holder in commendam; swept the revenues of a province into his private purse.

While Coke is in his rage, the case of a living held in commendam comes before the King's Bench. It is a private cause; but Serjeant Chibborne, in the course of his speech, goes out of his way to contest the King's power to grant commendams at all. Fearful lest the angry Chief Justice may pronounce a verdict touching the Crown, without the Crown being heard in its defence, James mounts a messenger for London commanding Bilson and Winwood

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1616.

June.

to attend the next sitting of the Court of King's Bench X. 15. and report to him the arguments there used. Winwood being sick, Bilson, Bishop of Winchester, is the sole witness; but his report alarms the King in high degree, for he hears Chibborne contend that the Crown has no power to grant livings or sees in commendam save in cases of extreme need; and that no such need can arise in England, where no man is bound to keep hospitality beyond his means.

16. Informed by Bilson of what has passed in the King's Bench, James sees the gravity of his position, and commands Bacon to write and require Coke to put off the further hearing of this case until he, the King, can come to town and consult the judges. This command a servant carries from Gray's Inn to the Lord Chief Justice's room in Serjeants' Inn; when Coke, who is just setting out for Westminster Hall, sends his own man to Gray's Inn to beg that Mr. Attorney will give to each of the twelve judges a copy of his note.

Coke's presence has been required in the Court of Chancery to assist in hearing a case for the Crown; but setting the immediate duty of the day aside, defying the royal command, as conveyed through Bacon, he goes down to Westminster, takes his seat in the King's Bench, and calls the forbidden case. After a further hearing he takes the judges to his rooms in Serjeants' Inn, where he persuades them to sign a letter to the King, throwing the blame of his disobedience on Bacon, whose request for a postponement of the trial they condemn as contrary to law and to the oaths of a judge.

16. The Judges to James, April 27, 1616, S. P. O.; James to the Judges, Council Reg., June 6, 1616.

X. 17.

1616. June.

June 6.

17. James reads this letter with amazement. If his rage against Coke, and his fears of encroachment, do not lure him one day sooner from his dogs and deer, he pens a smart rebuke to the judges, who, when they see how the tide sets, begin to feel heartily ashamed of what they have signed. They know, indeed, that the reasons given by Coke are a mere pretence; that Bacon's letter was sent by command; that the Crown has power by law to grant livings in commendam; and that to delay the hearing until James could arrive in town and lay his arguments before them would neither interfere with justice nor disturb their oaths. All these points of the case the King sets forth in his note with unsparing ire. He ends by once again, in his own words and in his own name, insisting that the hearing shall be stayed, referring them, with a good sense of which he is seldom capable, to his Attorney-General for his opinions on particular points.

All

18. Ambling to town for the Whitsun games, he sends for his twelve judges to the palace. Of the many comedies played in that superb political theatre, few have been so droll as this trial of the judges by the King. the great officers of state are present; the King himself, Archbishop Abbott and Bishop Bilson, Lord Chancellor Egerton and Lord Treasurer Suffolk, Winwood Secretary of State, and Zouch Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, together with a host of inferior councillors and clerks. Bacon stands there to defend himself. Coke, a member

of the Privy Council, takes his seat.

The men whose lives have been one long duel, who have pleaded in the same courts, who have made love to the same

17. Council Reg., June 6, 1616.
18. Council Reg., June 6, 1616.

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