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sary, for without the church they had not God's service, XIII. and no church was near them for nearly four or five miles, truly I could not get the contribution of one farthing. Lord! how are the times altered! It was not so when St. Paul's church in London and other cathedrals were built. God's will be done!"

When Bacon got the Seals his friends and admirers clothed York House for him with plate, arras, furniture, and pictures; some sending books, some money, some cups of silver and gold. In the crowd of presents came Egerton's ewer and purse; came as an expression of gratitude and friendship. No reference was made when they were given to any future act; nor had the Chancellor any knowledge of Egerton's having a suit in court. facts are stated in the House by Sir Richard Young.

These

In Aubrey's case it is clear that the fee was paid in the usual way; openly paid; paid by advice of his own counsel; paid to the proper officer of the court. It is no less clear that the Lord Chancellor could have no special personal knowledge of this payment. He does not keep the accounts of his court. Hastings tells the House of Commons that though he paid in Aubrey's money he never mentioned to the Chancellor Aubrey's name. The truth of this story is confirmed in a singular way. When Bacon, on his sick couch, first hears of this payment by Aubrey of a hundred pounds, he pronounces it a lie, and declares that he shall deny it on his honour before the world. He is not aware that it was paid to his clerk.

16. Such charges are too flimsy to stand alone. Except the tools of Coke, of Cranfield, and of Buckingham, men who have received their cue, and the herd who, without opinions

16. A Collection of the Proceedings, &c., Mar. 17, 1621.

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of their own, are ever to be found on the stronger side, no one in the House of Commons pretends to believe that such facts establish a case against the Lord Chancellor fit to be sent before the House of Lords. Heneage Finch, Recorder of London, next to Coke himself the most learned jurist in the House, declares that the evidence brought in support of the accusation frees the Lord Chancellor from blame.

17. Churchill now comes up. Meautys protests that a dismissed servant, an extortioner, a forger, with no hope of escaping pillories and jails except by lies against the Chancellor, shall not be heard against his lord. But Coke and Phillips get him sent, together with a wretch named Keeling, a low solicitor, a partner in Churchill's villanies, to the committee, which comprises the Chancellor's most eager foes. In secret, and without cross-examination, Churchill and Keeling tell their tales, and the hostile members of the committee frame their grand indictment, charging Bacon with bribery and fraud.

The cases on which they count are in number twentytwo. It is amazing they should be no more. In his four years of Chancery business, Bacon has pronounced about seven thousand verdicts; each verdict must have hurt some man in fame or purse; must, by a law of nature, have seemed to the losing man unjust. Does any one love the judge who has pronounced against him? Would the most upright judge feel easy on having to put his honour or estate at the mercy of a jury, each of whom had been mulcted in his court? Yet out of these seven thousand sufferers, the skill of Coke and the roguery of Churchill

17. A Collection of the Proceedings, &c., Mar. 20, 21, 1621; Com. Jour., i. 564.

can only frame an accusation of twenty-two particulars, not one of them to the point!

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18. At first the Chancellor only smiles. Charges against the court over which he sits he expects to hear, and will Mar. 20. be glad to consider; charges against himself personally he knows must be malignant and he supposes must be vain. The Council guards the high place he fills with as much care as it guards the Crown. The fate of Lord Clifford and Lady Blount is before the slanderer's eye; and a word from the King or from Buckingham would send Churchill to be whipped through Cheap and fettered in the Clink. When he finds the case go on, he expresses to Buckingham his indignation at the course of Coke: "Job himself, or whoever was the justest judge," he writes, "by such hunting of matters against him as hath been used against me, may for a time seem foul. If this is to be a Chancellor, I think, if the Great Heath, nobody would take it up." But he is not alarmed. "I know I have clean hands and a clean heart."

Seal lay upon Hounslow

19. As the case proceeds—as Ley, and Coke, and Cranfield, all the tools of Lady Buckingham, take part in it— he begins at length to perceive the bearing of the charge and the purpose of his enemies. The facts of the accusation are nothing, the fact of it is much. As he lies sick at York House, or at Gorhambury, hearing through his friend Meautys of the moil and worry about him in the House of Commons, he jots on loose scraps of paper at his side his answers and remarks. These scraps of paper are at Lambeth Palace. Their contents are embodied in letters to

18. Council Reg., Dec. 30, 1617, Mar. 17, 27, 1618, June 19, 1619, Jan. 20, 1620; Bacon to Buckingham, in Montagu, 33.

19. Bacon Memoranda, Lambeth MSS. 936, fol. 116.

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XIII. Buckingham, to the House of Lords, and to the King: yet they possess an original and abiding interest in their first rude drafts; a stamp of honesty and sincerity which the eye cannot help but see or the heart but feel. On one of these sheets he writes:

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"There be three degrees or cases, as I conceive, of gifts or rewards given to a judge.

"The first is of bargain, contract, or promise of reward, pendente lite. And this is properly called venalis sententiæ, or baratrîa, or corruptelæ munerum. And of this my heart tells me I am innocent; that I had no bribe or reward in my eye or thought when I pronounced any sentence or order.

"The second is—a neglect in the judge to inform himself whether the cause be fully at an end or no what time he receives the gift, but takes it upon the credit of the party that all is done, or otherwise omits to inquire.

"And the third is-when it is received, sine fraude, after the cause is ended; which it seems, by the opinions of the civilians, is no offence."

Only the first of these three cases, a contract to defeat justice for a personal gain, implies moral guilt or invites legal censure.

Bacon adds:

"For the first, I take myself to be as innocent as any babe born on St. Innocent's day in my heart.

"For the second, I doubt in some particulars I may be faulty.

"And for the last, I conceive it to be no fault."

20. The evidence produced against him, as Heneage Finch has told the House of Commons, proves his case

20. A Collection of the Proceedings, &c., Mar. 20, 21, 1621; Com. Jour., i. 563, 578.

and frees him from blame. Of the twenty-two charges of corruption, three are debts-Compton's, Peacock's, and Vanlore's: two of these, Compton's and Vanlore's, debts on bond and interest. Any man who borrows money may be as justly charged with taking bribes. One case, that of the London Companies, is an arbitration, not a suit in law. Even Cranfield, though bred in the city, cannot call their fee a bribe. Smithwick's gift, being found irregular, has been sent back. Thirteen cases-those of Young, Wroth, Hody, Barker, Monk, Trevor, Scott, Fisher, Lenthal, Dunch, Montagu, Ruswell, and the Frenchmen-are of daily practice in every court of law. They fall under Bacon's third list, common fees, paid in the usual way, paid after judgment has been given. Kennedy's present of a cabinet for York House has never been accepted, the Chancellor hearing that the artisan who made it has not been paid. Reynell, an old neighbour and friend, gave him two hundred pounds towards furnishing York House, and sent him a ring on New Year's day. Everybody gives rings, everybody takes rings, on a New Year's day. The gift of five hundred pounds from Sir Ralph Hornsby was made after a judgment, though, as afterwards appeared, while a second, much inferior cause, was still in hearing. The gift was openly made, not to the Chancellor, but to the officer of his court. The last case is that of Lady Wharton; the only one that presents an unusual feature. Lady Wharton, it seems, brought her presents to the Chancellor herself; yet even her gifts were openly made, in the presence of the proper officer and his clerk. Churchill admits being present in the room when Lady Wharton left her purse; Gardner, Keeling's clerk, asserts that he was present when she brought the two hundred pounds. Even Coke is staggered by proofs which prove

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