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1621.

Feb.

XIII. 9. penal laws too harsh already, will not consent to inflame the country, at such a time, by a new proclamation; the penalties are strong, and in the hands of the magistrates; he sees no need to spur their zeal by royal proclamations or the enactment of more savage laws. Here is a chance for Coke. Raving for gibbets and pillories in a style to quicken the pulse of a Brownist, men who are wild with news from Heidelberg or Prague believe in his sincerity and partake his heat. To be mild now, many good men think, is to be weak. In a state of war philosophy and tolerance go to the wall; when guns are pounding in the gates, even justice can be only done at the drum-head.

10. Feeding these fiery humours, Coke gets the ear of an active section of the House, who push him on, their orator of hate, as in happier times they have made his great compeer their advocate of charity and peace. Coke pours on them his gall. No one in the House yet dreams of attacking persons under cover of a wish to expose abuses. Even in the case of Mompesson, whose manufacture of gold and silver thread is supposed by country gentlemen to have raised the price of beer, they declare in their first petition to the King that they want measures of redress, not injury to particular men. But a moderation that might end in a real good to the country is foreign to the nature and designs of Coke.

11. Sure of the ears of a sect, Coke suggests, as a branch of the Grievances, that inquiry should be made

10. Request concerning Sir Giles Mompesson, Feb. 27, 1621, S. P. O.; Locke to Carleton, Feb. 24, 1621, S. P. O.

11. Chamberlain to Carleton, May 10, 1617, S. P. O.; Ordinances made by the Rt. Hon. Sir Francis Bacon for the better Administration of Justice in the Court of Chancery, 1642; Locke to Carleton, Feb. 24, 1621, S. P. O.; Com. Jour., i. 519, 525.

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into abuses in the courts of law, with a view to limit the duration and cost of suits, more especially in the Chancery and the Court of Wards. Doubts arise on this as to whether Parliament has any power over the King's courts; when Bacon, though he fears and distrusts Coke, and complains to the King of his insolence, meets the inquiry with open heart. The Commons are helping to do his work. Reform of the law, and of the courts of law, has been his theme for thirty years. When he got the Seals, his very first speech in Chancery proposed a scheme for removing abuses in fees and suits. His rules for conducting business were in themselves the best of reform bills. More than all, he has introduced into that slow and despotic court the substantial amendments of patience, courtesy, and speed. Not a cause is on the lists unheard. Vices remain; vices of form, of persons, of constitution; vices too strong for a single man, however prompt and powerful, to subdue. If the House of Commons have any search to make into his court he offers them full leave; if they have anything to say on it he bids them freely speak their mind. Without this leave they could not move one step. Blind to the plot against him, the Chancellor knows no cause why he should fear their search.

12. While Coke, under cover of the public good, is slowly sliming round his prey, the Chancellor, called by his place to decide between the quarrels of two peers, has the honourable misfortune to offend in a peculiar manner the pride of Lady Buckingham and her obedient clan.

This scheming mother has fixed her eyes on Elizabeth Norreys, daughter of Francis Baron Norreys of Rycote,

12. Lords' Jour., iii. 19, 20; Locke to Carleton, Feb. 16, 21, 1621, S. P. O.; Chamberlain to Carleton, Mar. 30, 1621, S. P. O.

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as a wife for her son Kit. Elizabeth is rich, for her mother was an heiress, and she is an only child. To soften Lord Norreys, he has been created Viscount Thame and Earl of Berkshire. But these Villiers peers, these Purbecks and Berkshires, gall the more ancient nobles. Berkshire either pushes or strikes Lord Scrope, a haughty peer, whose ancestors have been in the House of Lords since the days of Edward the First. The eleventh baron of his line complains of this rude and upstart earl. Berkshire being in the wrong, Bacon, despite his known connexion with the Villiers people, has the courage to send him to the Fleet prison till he repents his sally and apologises to Lord Scrope.

In a few days Berkshire, on submission to Scrope, regains his freedom, and returns to his seat; making for the upright Chancellor one vindictive enemy the more.

13. Free from the personal malevolence and from the virtuous starts which harass Coke, bent on pleasing his great patroness and on winning a rich reward, Cranfield goes straight and swift to the point; attacking Bacon, Montagu, and Yelverton by name, and proclaiming that he does so from a sense of duty to the King. Some one speaks of abuses in the Courts of Wards. Cranfield springs to his feet, and with brazen brow admits the existence of abuses in his court, but impudently declares that the corruptions of the Court of Chancery far exceed the corruptions in the Court of Wards.

14. Time has now come for the Villiers faction to show their game. While Cranfield and Churchill have been

13. Com. Jour., i. 525, 535; Locke to Carleton, Mar. 3, 1621, S. P. O. 14. Council Reg., Mar. 11, 1621; Com. Jour., i. 552, 555; Lords' Jour., iii. 42, 50.

ACCUSED IN THE COMMONS.

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279 hunting the dens of London for accusations against the Chancellor, Buckingham has been frequent in his calls at York House. Bacon is sick, and nigh to death. Pains rack his head, and gout torments his feet. Yet up to the 11th of March he continues to meet the Council, sitting face to face with Coke and Cranfield, who watch his looks and weigh his words with all the vigilance of spite. At length the treachery of Buckingham grows too plain for even Bacon's eyes to blink. If the House of Commons is slow to strike, it must be whipped into the mood for framing accusations and demanding victims. So Coke brings down Mar. 13. a message to the Commons, the most extraordinary and the most criminal ever sent down by a subservient House of Peers. Coke tells the burgesses that the King is pleased with what they have done and what they are doing; that the King advises them to strike while the iron is hot, not to rest content with shadows, but to demand real sacrifices. He tells them, too, that Buckingham has fallen in love with Parliaments; that he urges them to go on, and gives up his brother, a partner with Mompesson, to their wrath. No one mistakes the drift and scope of these words. Up to the date of this extraordinary and wicked speech, no one has breathed a word against Bacon's fame. Chancery, not the Chancellor, has been in fault. Now the plot breaks.

Two days after Coke's message, Sir Robert Phillips, chairman of the committee, informs the House that two witnesses, Kit Aubrey and Edward Egerton, are ready to make complaints against the Lord Chancellor. These men come up to the bar and tell their tale.

Aubrey, having a suit in Chancery against Sir William Brounker, says he was advised by his counsel to send a present of a hundred pounds to the court; which money

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XIII. he paid to Sir George Hastings, who thanked him for it in his master's name, and wished him better speed in his suit. Egerton, feeling grateful to the Lord Chancellor for a service done to him while Bacon was Attorney-General, sent him, on his going to live at York House, through the hands of Sir George Hastings and Sir Richard Young, a basin and ewer, together with a purse of four hundred pounds.

Mar. 13.

Each complains that, though he paid his money, he took nothing by his gift.

15. Such charges against the Lord Chancellor are in the last degree frivolous. Fees and gifts like Aubrey's and Egerton's are common as sun and rain. A barrister or a judge, set apart from the world, with no salary from the State, receives, as a rector or a prelate might receive in his day of furnishing or feasting, aid from the public and from his friends. Indeed, the higher clergy growl that the great lawyers get a larger share of this help in need than the zealous servants of God. Bishop Goodman has a curious paragraph in point:

"I did once intend," he says, "to have built a church; and a lawyer in my neighbourhood did intend to build himself a fair house, as afterward he did. One sent unto him to desire him to accept from him all his timber; another sent unto him to desire him that he might supply him with all the iron that he spent about his house. These men had great woods and iron-mills of their own. The country desired him to accept of their carriage. What reason had this man not to build? Truly I think he paid very little but the workmen's wages. Whereas, on the contrary, in the building of my church, where it was so neces

15. Goodman's Memoirs, i. 295-6; A Selection of the Proceedings of the House of Commons against the Lord Verulam, Lord Chancellor of England, Mar. 15, 17, 19, 1621; Com. Jour., i. 552-563.

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