1617. July. 1. IN striding over Coke's head to the Mace and Seals, XI. 1. Bacon puts the crown to his many offences against that wealthy and vindictive foe. Their lives have been spent in a daily contest for rank, love, place, and power. Up to the present year Coke has been able to keep in front. He made more money, he won Lady Hatton, he first got office under the Crown. He went up to the Common Pleas while Bacon was fighting for his promotion at the bar. Before the great philosopher was commissioned as AttorneyGeneral, the great jurist had been seated on the King's Bench. For the three years and four months that Bacon, as Attorney, waited in the Council ante-room, Coke sat at the board. The scene is now changed, the characters reversed. Within a few weeks Coke has been degraded from the Council to make way for Bacon, and reduced from the King's Bench that his rival may feel the insolent joy of refusing to accept his place. humiliation has now been capped by Bacon filching from him, at the very moment of his negotiation with Villiers, the Mace and Seals, without paying for them one shilling of those irregular sums which he himself was told he must lay down. Such a success enrages the miser even more than it galls the man. The 1. Council Reg., Nov. 4, 1613; Yelverton to Bacon, Sept. 3, 1617, Lambeth MSS. 836. XI. 2. 2. How can he drag this rival down? 1617. July. too easy. Gain the favourite. to men in power. The way is but Virtue is no protection He has been thrown. Egerton only escapes an ignominious fall by the approach of death. The story of Egerton's latter days has never yet been told. As an illustration of the time, it is in the highest degree important for a clear comprehension of his successor's fall. As Egerton grew old a host of lawyers and ecclesiastics began to crave the Seals; conspicuous among these were Bilson and Bennett, Hobart and Coke. The Great Seal, though held like the White Staff during pleasure, changed hands so rarely that the possession was regarded as one for life. Pickering, Hatton, Bromley, Nicholas Bacon, kept the Seals to the last, as Northampton, Salisbury, Dorset, and Burghley kept the Staff. The rule applied to every office in the Household and the State. Now this appearance of a permanent possession gave to each holder of office a vested right in it, which had a market value. No man ever yielded his place without being paid for it, any more than a colonel of the line gives up his commission without his price. Death only could deprive him. As Egerton would not die though he had held the Seals longer than any Chancellor since the Conquest, nor yield his place except on reasonable terms of surrender, those who meant to make a purse by the transfer began to brood over the possibility of forcing him to yield by means of a criminal prosecution. A sentence in the House of Lords would be legal death. Once it were pronounced the Seals would fall into the King's gift. This was a new and perilous game to 2. Sherborne to Carleton, Feb. 23, 1617, S. P. O.; Lovelace to Carleton, Mar. 11, 1617, S. P. O. 1617. play; but the plan seemed easy, the profits vast. A trial XI. 2. might be made. Any old lawyer, learned in the vices of the times, could get up an accusation. Buckingham could secure a majority in the House of Lords. The temptations which drew Buckingham into this odious and criminal course were very great. Sir John Bennett offered for the Seals no less a sum than thirty thousand pounds. 3. This scheme of a criminal information quickened into life on Egerton's refusal to pass under the Seal some patents in which the Villiers family had a share. Famous among these was a grant to Sir Giles Mompesson for the manufacture of gold and silver thread. Everybody wore lace. In the comic writers of James's reign, in Jonson, in Webster, in Massinger, the young gallants strut in lace-not in the tawdry stuff sold by Autolycus as a present from country lads to country lasses-but in glinting silver and gold; the metals dropping in threads from the ruff, or wrought into the doublet and hose, the cloak and cap. Venice could not supply the want. The price of gold and silver lace ran high; and the profits of the trade all went abroad. A Licenser of Inns, Sir Giles Mompesson, a man of energy and wealth, conceived a scheme for introducing this profitable manufacture into England. There were serious difficulties. Silver and gold were scarce; sometimes not to be bought except on ruinous terms. The patent under which he was to work must not alone protect his trade, but allow him to take up gold and silver for his need, even the coin of the realm. By giving two of Buckingham's brothers a share in the business, Mompesson hoped to secure protection for his enterprise. 3. Sign Manuals, vi. 109; Com. Jour., i. 530-576.. July. XI. 4. 1617. July. 4. Blind to the lights of trade, Egerton refused to seal this grant. Not that he perceived and lamented the true evil of monopolies; every profession was then a guild ; and without a monopoly there could be no trade. The grocer, the perfumer, the vintner, the tailor, was each invested in a charter or a patent. Egerton, during his long reign as Chancellor, passed hundreds of patents, some of them far more mischievous than the one for enabling the London spinners to rival their Venetian brethren in the production of gold and silver thread. His repugnance to it sprang from the contempt of an old man for new fripperies of dress and show, and from a fear that Mompesson would ruin the Crown by withdrawing the coinage from circulation into trade. 5. Buckingham was furious. Urged by his own vexation and by his complaining brothers, he swore to ruin the old Chancellor. Agents sneaked about the Inns of Court speaking evil of the great lawyer, now on his bed of death, provoking all who had suffered wrongs, or who fancied they had suffered wrongs, in his court, to rise up against the tyrant. Men soon answered to the call. A blameless life, a sick bed, were no protection against this outrage. One said he had given money into the court; another said he had given a ring, a cabinet, a piece of plate. In substance and form these tales were true, in spirit and intention they were false. Charges enough were gathered: charges more numerous, said Sir William Lovelace, than those which had recently crushed Coke; charges as flimsy and as fatal, I may add, as those which four years later served to overwhelm Egerton's successor. Buckingham sent to the sick man's 4. Chamberlain to Carleton, Mar. 8, 1617, S. P. O. room the news of this flagitious inquisition and its tri- XI. 5. umphant close; it is greatly to be feared that the blow broke the old man's heart. 6. It needs no magician to see that he who nearly slew Egerton might just as easily slay the successor of Egerton. Buckingham is cheated of his profit; for though Bacon pays to Egerton eight thousand pounds for the surrender of his legal rights, not a shilling of this money flows into the favourite's purse. The Villiers people are not pleased with a Chancellor who refuses to push their fortunes and feed their pride; nor is Buckingham a man to forget that, if Egerton had been chased into the House of Lords, as Coke had been into the Star Chamber, he might have put into his own pocket from the transaction a good many thousand pounds. 7. The loss is great. It is Coke's business to show Villiers how it may be recovered. Bacon is not robust nor likely to live long. He works too much, and lives too well, for vegetable length of days. Gout racks his joints; being the first beggar, as he jests, who ever had it. If he dies, well; if not, he may be ruined. Coke, who begins by collecting scandals against him, whispers to the favourite that the new Chancellor is no true friend to him; that he is not zealous for the advancement of Sir Christopher Villiers and Sir John Villiers; that he has been already false to Somerset, and may end by playing false with his Lordship. Buckingham lies open to such hints; his family more open to the direct persuasion of angels and double 6. Chamberlain to Carleton, Mar. 11, 1617, S. P. O.; Gerard to Carleton, Mar. 20, 1617, S. P. O. 7. Yelverton to Bacon, Sept. 3, 1617, Lambeth MSS. 936; Carleton to Chamberlain, May 24, 1617, S. P. O. 1617. July. |