1620. Nov.

XII. 8. has been comic as a play. Falling in love with Lady Effingham, he proposes to her, and is about to marry her, when the news reaches Lady Buckingham, who instantly warns her miserable dependent that if he hopes to thrive at court he must give up Lady Effingham, and marry a young person who is certainly poor in purse, but rich enough for two in friends. Cranfield takes the wife offered to him, with a seat at the Privy Council, and a promise of one of the highest places in the sovereign's gift.

To lure him on, James Ley is made a baronet, and a special act under the Sign Manual remits to him the usual fees for the escutcheon of the bloody hand.

These promotions, moreover, are but stepping-stones to place. What great offices can be got?

9. A beginning has been made with the White Staff. Suffolk was unpopular. The father of Lady Somerset, an avowed Roman Catholic, a suspected pensioner of Spain, he was hated while in power with such bitterness of hate, that when Buckingham's tools charged him with extortion, false dealing, bribery, and embezzlement, to none of which accusations he lay fairly open, no one felt either surprise or pity at the fate of this pernicious peer; and when the Court of Star Chamber, with the sham proofs of his guilt before it, deprived him of the Staff, fined him thirty thousand pounds, and flung him during pleasure into the Tower, the whole country, which knew him to be a Papist and believed him to be a spy, felt the sentence which deprived him of power to do harm run through its veins—a shock of joy.

9. Proceedings against the Earl of Suffolk, Nov. 13, 1619, S. P. O.

10. The profits of this transaction only kindle the greed XII. 10. Yelverton's turn comes next.

for more.

If not a Puritan in religion, Sir Henry Yelverton has generally spoken and voted with the Puritan party. A man of good parts and unbending character, he has lived on friendly terms with Bacon, with whom he kept his terms at Gray's Inn and served in the House of Commons. His popularity in the House, like the popularity of Bacon, kept him out of office. In the debates, for many years, his name stood side by side with that of Bacon, with whom he spoke for the subsidies and for the Union. The same breeze of favour brought them both into power. When Bacon became Attorney-General he used his influence to procure the Solicitorship for Yelverton. Since then they have acted constantly together, most of all so in the effort to prevent Frances Coke from being forced to marry a man she could not love. Buckingham and the faction of Buckingham have never liked Yelverton. They have not been able to forget the circumstances of his rise, to forgive the obstinacy of his demeanour, or the way in which he has exercised towards them his power. When Bacon got the Seals, Sir James Ley, who wanted to succeed him as Attorney, offered to pay Buckingham ten thousand pounds for the post. Lady Buckingham supported the lover of her niece; but the King, when he put the Seals into Bacon's hands, himself passed the patent of office to Yelverton; who refused to contract an obligation to Villiers, though urged by Archbishop Abbott and the Duke of Lenox to conciliate the chief authority in the bedchamber and the closet. Yelverton's offences are that he has been very manly, and that he occupies a very high post.

10. Bacon's Notes, Lambeth MSS. 936, fol. 133; Chamberlain to Carleton, June 28, 1620, S. P. O.; Archæologia, xv. 27.

S

1620.

Nov.

XII. 11.

1620. Νον. 10.

11. Unhappily, in the exercise of powers not well defined, he has given an advantage to his hot and unscrupulous enemy Coke. A new charter has been lately passed to the city of London, with clauses favourable to the citizens, which Coke has no trouble in persuading James trench on the prerogatives of his Crown. It is not pretended that Yelverton took money for inserting these clauses, though it is admitted for the defence that in putting them into the charter he went beyond his powers. Sir Henry submits his error to the King's judgment. Such a course suits neither Buckingham nor Coke, who want his fine and the profits on his place. Cited into the Star Chamber, over which Bacon, as Lord Chancellor, presides, Yelverton admits his indiscretion, and Bacon, who cannot deny his fault, essays to soften his judges. The notes for his speech, written in his own hand, remain at Lambeth Palace. They stand as under:

66

BACON'S NOTES ON YELVERTON'S CASE.

'Sorry for the person, being a gentleman that I lived with in Gray's Inn, served with when I was Attorney, joined with since in many services, and one that ever gave me more attributes in public than I deserved; and, besides, a man of very good parts, which with me is friendship at first sight, much more joined with an ancient acquaintance. But, as a judge, I hold the offence very great, and that without pressing measure; upon which I will only make a few observations, and so leave it. First, I observe the danger and consequence of the offence; for if it be suffered that the Learned Counsel shall practise the art of multi

11. Lambeth MSS. 936, fol. 133; Yelverton's Speech in the Star Chamber, Nov. 10, 1620, S. P. O.; Locke to Carleton, Nov. 11, 1620, S. P. O.; Dom, Papers, cxvii. 76.

1620.

Νον.

plication upon their warrants, the Crown will be destroyed XII. 11. in small time. The Great Seal, the Privy Seal, Signet, are solemn things, but they follow the King's hand. It is the bill drawn by the Learned Counsel that leads the King's hand. Next, I note the nature of the defence; as, first, that it was error in judgment. For this, surely, if the offence were small though clear, or great but doubtful, I could hardly sentence it. For it is hard to draw a straight line by steadiness of hand, but it could not be the swerving of the hand. And herein I note the wisdom of the law of England, which termeth the highest contempts and excesses of authority misprisions, which (if you take the sound and derivation of the word) is but mistaken. But if you take the use and acceptation of the word, it is high and heinous contempt and usurpation of authority. Whereof the reason I take to be, and the same excellently imposed, for that main mistaking it is ever joined with contempt; for he that reveres will not easily mistake; but he that slights and thinks of the greatness of his place more than of the duty of his place will soon commit misprisions."

Coke, furious at the sound of such mild, soft words, demands from the Court a sentence of imprisonment for life and a fine of six thousand pounds. Even the judges of the Star Chamber will not go his length. They condemn Yelverton to a fine of four thousand pounds.

12. Two great offices, the Treasury and the AttorneyGeneralship, are now for sale. Buyers crowd in; for this system of ruining men in order to vend their posts is new, and no one yet perceives that to purchase a great office is to be in future the first step towards destruction.

12. Apophthegms in Resuscitatio, 42; Locke to Carleton, Dec. 2, 1620, S. P. O.

Dec.

1620. Dec.

XII. 12. Montagu bids for the Staff; and as the purchase, if made, will cause him to leave the King's Bench, Lady Buckingham promotes his suit, that she may raise Ley to the rank of Lord Chief Justice and marry him to her pauper niece. On going down to Newmarket to see the King, Montagu calls to tell Bacon he hopes to bring back with him the Staff. "Take heed what you do, my Lord," says the Chancellor; "wood is dearer at Newmarket than at any other place in England." The Treasury, with the title of Mandeville, costs Sir Henry Montagu no less than twenty thousand pounds.

13. Coventry buys the Attorney's office, and Heath becomes Solicitor in his place. At both ends Buckingham makes his profit. Not to speak of present bribes, he so arranges the game that these two removals bring him, or save him, eight hundred pounds a-year. Lady Buckingham presents the King's Bench to Ley.

These profits and promotions edge the tooth for more.

14. In the crowd of able and unscrupulous men who wait in the ante-room of Villiers, and who build their fortunes on him, there is none more able or more unscrupulous than Sir Lionel Cranfield. He had risen from the grade of a London apprentice, through the useful and unclean offices of a receiver, a contractor, and a surveyor of public income, to the rank of a Knight, a member of Parliament, and a Master of Requests, before he got introduced to the Villiers gang. His life, indeed, has been a study

13. Woodford to Nethersole, Feb. 2, 1621, S. P. O.; Chamberlain to Carleton, Feb. 3, 1621, S. P. O.

14. Doquets, April 1, 1605, Dec. 20, 1607, May 31, 1610; Sign Manuals, No. 49; Minute, Undated Papers of 1607, xxviii. 81; Northampton to Lake, Aug. 12, 1612, S. P. O.; Winwood to Lake, Mar. 29, 1617, S. P. O.; Brent to Carleton, Jan. 31, 1618, May 29, 1619, S. P. O.; Nethersole to Carleton, Jan. 18, 1620, S. P. O.