XIII. 20. 1621. Mar. so much; for who in his senses can suppose that the Lord Chancellor would have done an act known to be illegal and immoral in the company of a registrar and a clerk? It is clear that a thing which Bacon did under the eyes of Gardner and Churchill must have been in his mind customary and right. It is no less clear that if Bacon had done wrong, knowing it to be wrong, he would never have braved exposure of his fraud by turning Churchill into the streets. Thus, after the most rigorous and vindictive scrutiny into his official acts, and into the official acts of his servants, not a single fee or remembrance traced to the Chancellor can, by any fair construction, be called a bribe. Not one appears to have been given on a promise; not one appears. to have been given in secret; not one is alleged to have corrupted justice. 21. Very few knights or burgesses take part in the debate on one side Cranfield, Coke, and Phillips; on the other side Sackville, Meautys, and Heneage Finch make nearly all the list. This charge against Bacon is regarded by citizens and country gentlemen as a mere theme for lawyers-a charge of technical corruption more than of moral guilt. They may very well stand aloof when Coke and Finch, the two most eminent lawyers in the House, express on it the most diverse views. Coke construes every fee into a bribe: Finch denies that any fee can be called a bribe unless it can be shown to have been taken as part of a contract to pervert justice. Finch does not admit of Bacon's three distinctions: he only knows of fees and bribes. A fee paid at an improper time is not a bribe; for how, he asks, can a judge retain in his recollection the 21. Com. Jour., i. 564-67; Proceedings, &c., Mar. 20, 21, 1621. name of every suitor in his court? The House consents to let the case go up to the Lords, though as an inquiry, not as an impeachment. If they wish the system of Fees amended, as they wish that of Patents, of Protections, of Pardons, of Personal Service, or of Wards and Liveries amended, they do not load the Chancellor with a personal charge. Otherwise Coke. They want to cleanse the court; he to destroy the judge. They see a grievance in the Chancery, as they see one in the Rolls, the Wards, and the King's Bench; he finds the most noxious grievance in the Lord Viscount St. Albans, holder of the Great Seal. 22. To drag the House of Lords on the way down which they have thus far lured the House of Commons, the gang of conspirators procure from James a commission for Sir James Ley to execute the office of Lord Chancellor. Though not a peer, such a commission will make Ley the leader and spokesman of the peers. Seeing what means are used against him, Bacon is warned by a friend to look about him. He calmly answers, "I look above." 23. He knows now that his ruin is meant that the peers who are to try him will pronounce as Buckingham points. Two or three learned independent men may protest by their votes or absence against these scandalous proceedings; the majority, who wish to dance at Whitehall-to enjoy the favourite's smiles and partake the gifts of his masterwill have to speak and act under the eyes of Prince Charles, who is not so much Buckingham's partisan as his slave. It is with Ley and Williams not a question of Bacon's guilt so much as of his place. But his own courtesy and generosity blind him to the vile motives of his persecutors. 22. Lords' Jour., iii. 51. 23. Bacon to James, Mar. 25, 1621; Montagu, 999. XIII. 21. 1621. Mar. XIII. 23. 1621. Mar. Mar. 19. In the loose sheets at his bedside, and afterwards in letters "When I enter into myself, I find not the materials of That eye, so quick to see the power of truth, the beauty of nature, cannot see that it is crime enough that he has vexed Lady Buckingham by his independence, and that Williams wants his place. Yet, knowing his own heart, he can say with honest pride: "I praise God for it, I never took penny for any benefice or ecclesiastical living. "I never took penny for releasing anything I stopped at the Seal. "I never took penny for any commission, or things of that nature. "I never shared with any reward for any second or inferior profit." 24. Ley presides over the peers. On the House resolving themselves into committee, a preliminary fight takes place, which shows the strength of this Villiers gang. When the House is in committee, it is the rule that the Lord Chancellor shall move to his place and sit as a simple peer. Ley, therefore, drops from the woolsack to 24. Lords' Jour., iii. 55; Lambeth MSS. 936, fol. 146. URGED BY THE KING TO SUBMIT. 289 the back benches, where he must sit, while the Lords are in committee, as a mere assistant, without a vote. His friends propose that he shall resume the chair, even while the House is in committee; and after a strong opposition, though the Prince and Buckingham are present to support their friends, these last carry their proposal, and Ley resumes the chair. This vote decides Bacon's fate. In a private interview James now urges the Chancellor to trust in him; to offer no defence; to submit himself to the peers; to trust his honour and his safety to the Crown. It is only too easy to divine the reasons which weigh with Bacon to intrust his fortunes to the King. He is sick. He is surrounded by enemies. No man has power to help him, save the sovereign. He is weary of greatness. Age is approaching. In his illness he has learned to think more of heaven and less of the world. His nobler tasks are incomplete. He has the Seals, and the delights of power begin to pall. To resist the King's advice is to provoke the fate of Yelverton, still an obstinate prisoner in the Tower. Nor can he say that these complaints against the courts of law, against the Court of Chancery, are untimely or unjust. So far as they attack the court, and not the judge, they are in the spirit of all his writings and of all his votes. In his soul, he can find no fault with the House of Commons, though the accidents of time and the machinations of powerful enemies have made him, the Reformer, a sacrifice to a false cry for reform. XIII. 24. 1621. Mar. 25. In answer to a statement sent to him from the April 28. Lords, he confesses, as the King has begged him to confess, to the receipt of the several fees and gifts, and to a trust in the servants of his court, often most unwise. 25. Lords' Jour., iii. 99, 100. U 1621. ! April 28. 374 XIII. Most of the cases fall under his third division; two or 25. three under his second; none under his first. Beyond this point his confession and submission do not run. If he takes to himself some share of blame, he takes to himself no share of guilt. He pleads guilty to carelessness, not to crime. But he points out, too, that all the irregularities found in his court occurred when he was new in office, strange to his clerks and registrars, overwhelmed with arrears of work. The very last of them is two years old. For the latter half of his reign as Chancellor, the vindictive inquisition of his enemies, aided by the treachery of his servants, has not been able to detect in his administration of justice a fault, much less a crime. May 3. Fine, imprison 26. The peers condemn. The Villiers faction move to suspend during life his titles of nobility. Abbott and the bench of bishops oppose this motion. ment, loss of office, are the forms of a political sentence; degradation from nobility is a moral censure. One is only loss of power, the other is loss of honour. A majority of two defeats this scheme of adding infamy to punishment. The second motion passes. Ley has the satisfaction of declaring to his partizans in the House of Peers that the greatest man who ever sat upon its benches is ignominiously expelled, deprived of the Seals, fined forty thousand pounds, and cast into the Tower. 26. Chamberlain to Carleton, May 2, 5, 1621, S. P. O.; Lords' Jour., iii. 105. |