-hiding his face with one hand, with the other he delivered to them that bauble for which "he had sullied his integrity, had resigned his independence, had violated the most sacred obligations of friendship and gratitude, had flattered the worthless, had persecuted the innocent, had tampered with Judges, had tortured prisoners, and had wasted on paltry intrigues all the powers of the most exquisitely constructed intellect that has ever been bestowed on any of the children of men.”+

On the 2d of May the House of Lords resolved to proceed to judgment next day, "wherefore the gentleman usher and the serjeant-at-arms were commanded to go and summon the Viscount St. Alban to appear here in person to-morrow morning by nine of the clock." They reported that, having repaired to York House, they found him sick in bed, and that he had declared he feigned not this for an excuse, for that if able he would willingly have obeyed the summons, but that it was wholly impossible for him to attend. The Lords readily sustained the excuse, and resolved to proceed to sentence in his absence. He was thrown into great consternation when he heard of this, and made a last effort to obtain the interposition of the King in his favour, that so the cup might pass from him." He thus concludes his letter, perhaps not in the best taste :-" But because he that hath taken bribes is apt to give bribes, I will go further and present your Majesty with a bribe; for if your Majesty give me peace and leisure, and God give me life, I will present you with a good History of England, and a better Digest of your Laws."

The King could not interpose, and, on the 3d of May, final judgment was pronounced. The proceeding began by the Attorney General reading the articles, and the confession. The question was then put, "whether the Viscount St. Alban was guilty of the matters wherewith he was charged?" and it was agreed that he was guilty, nemine dissentiente. The punishment was then considered, and there being a majority, by means of the Bishops, against suspending him from all his titles of nobility during life there was unanimity as to the rest of the sentence, and a message was sent to the Commons "that they were ready to give judgment against the Lord Viscount St. Alban if the Commons should come to demand it." In the mean time the Peers robed, and the Speaker soon after coming to the bar, "demanded judgment against the Lord Chancellor as his offences required."

The Lord Chief Justice declared the sentence to be, "1. That the Lord Viscount St. Alban should pay a fine of 40,0007; 2. That he should be imprisoned in the Tower during the King's pleasure;

† Macauley's Essays, vol, 349. What a contrast between Bacon's feelings now and those with which he surveyed the great Seal when he carried it home to Gray's Inn, and wrote his first letter signed F. Bacon. C S.!" There might be a very instructive set of prints referring to those remote times, entitled "The Lawyers Progress," the two most remarkable of which would be his "selling himself to the Devil,”—and " Mephistoheles coming to enforce the terms of the bargain."

3. That he should be for ever incapable of holding any public office, place, or employment; 4. That he should never sit in parliament, nor come within the verge of the Court."

Thus was deservedly fixed the ineffaceable brand of public infamy upon the character of this most extraordinary man. Although, there were none bold or weak enough to defend these transactions in the times when they could be best examined and appreciated, we are told by some of his amiable admirers in the nineteenth century, that he was made a sacrifice to the crimes of others, and that he was free from all legal and moral blame. While I can easily forgive such well-meant efforts produced by a sincere admiration of genius, I cannot but lament them,—and the slightest attention to fact must show them to be futile.

It is affirmed that there is an undisclosed mystery in the course which Bacon adopted of making no defence. But he pleaded guilty for this plain reason, that he had no defence to make. Whoever will submit to the trouble of comparing the charges and the evidence, will see that they are all fully substantiated.* Instead of questioning the veracity of the witnesses, he circumstantially admits their statements; and the qualified denials to which he at first resorted, when accurately examined, will be found quite consistent with his final confession. He knew that he had no contradictory evidence to offer, and further investigation would only have made his delinquency more aggravated and more notorious. We must believe then that repeatedly and systematically he received money and articles of value from the parties in causes depending before him, which he was aware they presented to him with a view to influence his judgment in their favour. I presume it is not disputed that this in point of law amounts to judicial bribery, subjecting the Judge to be prosecuted for a high misdemeanour; and the only question that can be made is, whether it implies moral turpitude?

There can be no doubt that men are to be judged by the standard of their own age. It would be very unjust to blame persons who were engaged in the sixteenth century in burning witches or heretics, as if these acts of faith had occurred in the reign of Queen Victoria: and if it can be shown that judicial bribery was

* It may be said that his decree in Egerton v. Egerton was confirmed by Lord Coventry, but this was on the express ground that both parties had acquiesced in the decree; and it was then found as a fact, that "the matter alleged in the parliament against the said Lord Viscount St. Alban's, that he the said Viscount St. Alban's had received from the said Edward Egerton (plaintiff), and after from the said Sir Rowland Egerton (defendant), several sums of money before making the said decree, appeareth to be true."-Reg. Lib. 19 Nov. 1627. 3 Car. I.-Lord Hale accounts for the introduction of appeals to the House of Lords in equity cases from the notorious misconduct of Bacon as a judge: "The Lord Verulam being Chancellor made many decrees upon most gross bribery and corruption, for which he was deeply censured in the Parliament of 18 Jac. And this gave such a discredit and brand to the decrees thus obtained, that they were easily allowed; and made away at the parliament of 3 Cur. for the like attempt against decrees made by other Chancellors."-Hale's Jurisdiction, ch. xxxiii.

considered a innocent practice in Bacon's time, he is to be pitied, and not condemned. But the House of Commons who prosecuted him, the House of Lords who tried him, and the public, who ratified the sentence, with one voice pronounced the practice most culpable and disgraceful. He had no private enemies; he had not, like Strafford, in the next age, strong party prejudices to encounter; he was a favourite at Court, and popular with the nation, who were pleased with the flowing courtesy of his manuers, and proud of his literary glory. Yet there was a national cry for his punishment, and no solitary individual stood forward to vindicate his innocence, or to palliate the enormity of his guilt. Look back to the time when similar charges were unjustly brought against the virtuous Sir Thomas More. He demonstrated that they were all unfounded in fact, but he allowed that he might have been properly punished if they could have been established by evidence.

As a proof of the public feeling upon the subject, it might be enough to give an extract from an energetic sermon of Hugh Latimer, who continued to be much read in the reign of James, and who, preaching against bribery, says, I am sure this is scala inferni, the right way to hell, to be covetous, to take bribes, and pervert justice. If a Judge should ask me the way to hell, I would show him this way. First, let him be a covetous man; let his heart be poisoned with covetousness. Then let him go a little farther, and take bribes; and, lastly, pervert judgment. Lo, there is the mother, and the daughter, and the daughter's daughter. Avarice is the mother; she brings forth bribe-taking, and bribetaking perverting of judgment. There lacks a fourth thing to make up the mess, which, so help me God, if I were a judge, should be hangum tuum, a Tyburn tippet to take with him; an it were the Judge of the King's Bench, my Lord Chief Justice of England, yea, an it were my Lord Chancellor himself, to Tyburn with him! He that took the silver basin and ewer for a bribe, thinketh that it will never come out. But he may now know that I know it, and I know it not alone; there be more beside me that know it. Oh, briber and bribery! He was never a good man that will so take bribes. It will never be merry in England till we have the skins of such."

But from his own mouth let us judge him. Sic cogitavit Franciscus de Verulamio: “For corruption; do not only bind thine own hands or thy servant's hands from taking, but bind the hands of suitors also from offering. For integrity used doth the one; but integrity professed, and with a manifest detestation of bribery doth the other: and avoid not only the fault, but the suspicion."*

The crime of judicial bribery had been practised like perjury and theft, but it was evidently held in abhorrence ;—and there

never has been a period in our history, when, the suitors in a Court of justice and the Judge being the parties spoken of, an historian could have said, "Corrumpere et corrumpi seculum vocatur.”

Bacon, doubtless, sometimes decided against those who had bribed him but this was inevitable where, as occasionally happened, he had received bribes from both sides, or where the bribing party was flagrantly in the wrong, or a common-law Judge had been called in to assist, or where, from the long list of bribes, they could not be all borne in recollection at the moment when the decision was to be pronounced. We are told, indeed, that the offence could not by possibility be committed by him, on account of the purity of his character; but ought we not rather to judge of his character from his actions, than of his actions from his character? Evidence of "habit and repute," I fear, would not be in favour of this defendant. Notwithstanding his gigantic intellect, his moral perceptions were blunt, and he was ever ready to yield to the temptation of present interest. When he received the Great Seal he was still harassed by debts which he had imprudently contracted, and, instead of then trying to discharge them, his love of splendor involved him in increased difficulties. His secretaries and servants found a ready resource in the offers made by the suitors, and when it was once understood that money was available,―till the catastrophe occurred, the system was carried to such a pitch that even eminent counsel, at their consultations, recommended a bribe to the Chancellor.* His confession ought to be received as sincere, even out of regard to his reputation; for, although the taking of bribes by a Judge be bad, there would be still greater infamy in a man acknowledging himself to be guilty of a series of disgraceful offences which he had never committed, merely to humour the caprice of a king or a minister. But it is absurd to suppose that James and Buckingham would not cordially have supported him if he could have been successfully defended;-for setting aside friendship and personal regard, which, in courts, are not much to be calculated upon,--they had no object whatever to gain by his ruin,-and it would have been most desirable in their eyes, if possible, to have repulsed the first assault of the Commons on a great officer of the Crown, and to have prevented a precedent which they distinctly foresaw would be dangerous to the royal prerogative,-which was soon actually directed against Buckingham himself, though ineffectually, and which did mainly assist in the prosecution of a favourite of the son of James, and in bringing on the ruin of his dynasty.

I have thought it becoming to make these observations in vindication of the great principles of right and justice: but I now have a more pleasing task,-to record the composure, the industry, the energy displayed by Bacon after his fall, and the benefits he continued to confer by his philosophical and literary labours on his

* See Aubrey's case in the impeachment. 2 St. Tr. 1101.

country,-though I must again be pained by pointing out instances of weakness and meanness by which he still tarnished his fame.

CHAPTER LVI

CONCLUSION OF THE LIFE OF LORD BACON.

But

Ir Bacon's illness had been feigned when proceedings were pending against him,-after his sentence it was real and alarming-and for some time he could not have [MAY, 1621.] been removed from York House without hazard of his life. the first burst of mental agony having expended. itself, he recovered his composure, and his health improved. There was a disposition, creditable to all parties, to show him all the consideration and forbearance consistent with the substantial interests of justice. But the sentence of the house of Peers could not be treated as a nullity although it might be mitigated by the prerogative of mercy in the Crown.

On the last day of May he was carried a prisoner to the Tower. To save him the humiliation of marching through the Strand and the principal streets of the city in custody of tipstaves,-a procession contrasting sadly with that which he headed when he proudly rode from Gray's Inn at the head of the nobility and Judges to be installed as Lord Keeper in Westminster Hall,―a barge was privately ordered to the stairs of York House, and, the tide suiting early in the morning so that London Bridge might be conveniently shot, he was quietly conducted by the Sheriff of Middlesex to the Traitor's Gate, and there, with the warrant for his imprisonment, delivered to the Lieutenant of the Tower. A comfortable apartment had been prepared for him; but he was overcome by the sense of his disgrace. He might have had some compunctious visitings when he recognised the scene of Peacham's tortures, and we certainly know that he could not bear the thought of spending even a single night near those cells—

"With many a foul and midnight murder fed." He instantly sat down and wrote the following letter to Bucking

ham :

Good my Lord,-Procure the warrant for my discharge this day. Death, I thank God, is so far from being unwelcome to me, as I have called for it (as Christian resolution would permit) any time these two months. But to die before the time of his Majesty's grace, and in this disgraceful place, is even the worst that could be; and when I am dead, he is gone that was always in one tenour a true and perfect servant to his Master, and one that was never author of any immoderate, no, nor unsafe, no (I will say it,) nor unfortunate counsel, and one that no temptation could