done was contrary to law and equity; and to let the King himself discharge the prisoners upon a petition from the City. By this course the City was gratified; the King, in place of being convicted of oppression, was enabled to do a gracious and popular act; the sufferers were relieved; and all question concerning the legal extent of the prerogative was avoided. It is to be observed also that though it took so prominent a place among the grievances when the Committee got hold of it, the case does not appear to have raised any clamour at the time. The impossibility of fixing the date proves that and within two months of the meeting of Parliament, when the Learned Counsel (Coke being one) were making their list of monopolies "likely to be stirred in by the Lower House," they did not include this. So it cannot have been making much noise at that time.

Upon the whole I am inclined to think that if Bacon had been put upon his defence on these charges he would have come off better than his accusers expected. But we shall never know; for before the enquiry reached that stage a very different and much worse matter came out against him, which brought his public career to a sudden and disastrous close.

3

THE Committee of Grievances had not been long at their work when complaints were brought before them of abuses in the Courts of Justice; and especially the Court of Chancery: where the Registrars were accused of moving and drawing up orders themselves, and fathering them upon some counsellor-at-law.1 John Churchill appears to have been the principal offender in this way, and the principal accuser also. For having been himself detected in some such practices, and "sequestered from his office, with danger of further punishment," he resolved "not to sink alone," but to offer full confessions with regard to everybody else as well as himself. The date of his sequestration is not stated, but since upon the first mention of him which I find in the Journals (28 February), he is represented as having confessed these things to the Committee of Grievances, I suppose it had taken place before, and was Bacon's own act. The import of his confession was reported to the House on the 2nd March, and the practice voted a great grievance. But we hear no more of it for some time; for Churchill's revelations pointed at nobler game. The discovery of such abuses in the administration of his own Court, though made by himself, showed that Bacon was at fault in the art of government,-the more because administrative reform was one of his favourite aspirations,—but it did not touch his private character otherwise. The disposition to "think men honest that but seem to be so," is a fruitful source of abuses in all departments, and yet can hardly be reckoned a discredit to the owner. Large allowance would have been readily made to him on

1 Proceedings and Debates, vol i.

109. p.

2 Chamberlain to Carleton, March 24.

3 Proceedings and Debates, ubi sup. (The date 21 Feb. a misprint).

VOL. VII.

Р

that score; and that there were any other blots on his own tables, strange as it may seem, it certainly does seem, that for a full fortnight after that confession was made to the Committee he had no suspicion whatever. His feeling on the subject a fortnight before may be gathered from the following paragraph in Sir Edward Sackville's report from the Committee for Courts of Justice on the 17th of February

"Offered from the Lord Chancellor that any man might speak freely anything concerning his Court."

The letter to Matthew which I have already referred to2 cannot be exactly dated. But it was evidently written after the last; which was itself written in answer to a communication, probably from Brussels about the 7th of March. It is a reply to a second letter from the same person on the same subject, in which the receipt of the reply to the first was not acknowledged or implied, and may therefore have crossed it on the way. If the words have not been altered, it must have been written while Bacon was still Chancellor, in full action, and apparently in good spirits. And if it was written before the 14th, it cannot I think have been many days before; if after, not many days after.

Sir,

[TO MR. MATTHEW.3]

I have received your letter, wherein you mention som passages at large, concerning the Lord you know of. You touched also that point in a letter which you wrote upon my Lord's going over; which I answered, and am a little doubtful whether mine ever came to your hands. It is true that I wrote a little sullenly therein; how I conceived that my Lord was a wise man in his own way, and perhaps thought it fit for him to be out with me; for at least I found no cause thereof in myself. As for the latter of these points, I am of the same judgment still; but for the former, I perceive by what you write that it is merely some misunderstanding of his. And I do a little marvel at the instance, which had relation to that other crabbed man. For I conceived that both in passing that book, and (as I remember) two more, immediately after my Lord's going over, I had shewed more

Sir Tobie Matthew's Collection, p. 34. Headed "My Lord of St. Alban's Bacon, to the same humble servant employing him to do a good office with another great man."

211

1620-1.] BACON'S IGNORANCE OF HIS OWN DANGER. readiness than many times I use in like cases. But to conclude, no man hath thought better of my Lord than I have done. I know his virtues, and namely that he hath much greatness of mind, which is a thing almost lost amongst men: nor can any body be more sensible and remembering than I am of his former favours; so that I shall be most glad of his friendship. Neither are the past occasions in my opinion such as need either reparation or declaration; but may well go under the title of nothing. Now I had rather you dealt between us than any body else, because you are no way drenched in any man's humour. Of other things at another time; but this I was forward to write in the midst of more business than ever I had.

If "my Lord" was Digby, as I suppose, the circumstances suit well with the date I have assigned to this letter. For Digby and Matthew were both at Brussels during the greater part of March. From the beginning of April to the middle of May, Digby was in England and Matthew still abroad. And the letter cannot, if correctly printed, have been written later than April, 1621; for unless "I use " is a mistake for "I used," it must have been written while Bacon still held the seals. Yet we find in it no hint of any personal apprehension; though he was standing on the very brink of such a downfall as has scarcely a parallel in history. unexpected reverses of fortune, involving loss of means of life, and life itself, are common enough. who believed himself to be setting an example for low, of zeal, integrity, and fidelity in the discharge of all his public duties, to find himself suddenly convicted, on evidence which could not but seem conclusive, of corruption in the highest seat of justice, and condemned to serve for the example which all men were hereafter to shun,-and this without any warning from within of the danger in which he stood-was such a fall as neither guilty ambition nor injured innocence ever suffered. Guilt could not fall from such a height: innocence could not sink to such a depth.

Sudden and place, power, But for a man others to fol

I know nothing more inexplicable than Bacon's unconsciousness of the state of his own case, unless it be the case itself. That he, of all men, whose fault had always been too much carelessness about money who though always too ready to borrow, to give, to lend, and to spend, had never been either a bargainer or a grasper or a hoarder and whose professional experience must have continually reminded him of the peril of meddling with any thing that could be

construed into corruption,-that he should have allowed himself on any account to accept money from suitors while their cases were before him, is wonderful. That he should have done it without feeling at the time that he was laying himself open to a charge of what in law would be called bribery, is more wonderful still. That he should have done it often, and not lived under an abiding sense of insecurity-from the consciousness that he had secrets to conceal, of which the disclosure would be fatal to his reputation, yet the safe keeping did not rest solely with himself,-is most wonderful of all. Give him credit for nothing more than ordinary intelligence and ordinary prudence-wisdom for a man's self-and it seems almost incredible. And yet I believe it was the fact. The whole course of his behaviour, from the first rumour to the final sentence, convinces me that not the discovery of the thing only, but the thing itself, came upon him as a surprise; and that if anybody had told him the day before that he stood in danger of a charge of taking bribes, he would have received the suggestion with unaffected incredulity. How far I am justified in thinking so the reader shall judge for himself; for the impression is derived solely from the tenor of the correspondence which will be laid before him in due order.

2.

In the beginning of March,1 Bacon had been warned by one of his friends that he was likely to be charged by a discontented suitor with having, about two years and a half before, taken a sum of money from him for the better dispatch of a suit which was then in progress. And it was said that, though professing at the time to be ready to deny the imputation, he was so far disturbed by the threat that he took measures to get it retracted or forborne. But whatever measures he took, they were ineffectual; for on the 14th Christopher Awbry presented a petition to the House, in which the story was told. It was referred at once to the Committee for Courts of Justice. And on the same day Bacon wrote the following letter to Buckingham: the date of which-a matter in this case of some importance is ascertained by the docket; which Dr. Birch, who first printed it, appears to have overlooked; and which though not the original docket (for the fly-leaf is gone) was probably copied from the original.

Gardiner, vol. i. p. 432.