St. John was therefore (April, 1615) condemned; but he escaped the severe penalties imposed by the Star Chamber by a submission not less intemperate in its servility than his original intemperate protest. The Benevolence did not bring in what had been hoped. The labour of nine months produced little more than £23,000; the City of London gave £10,000 rather than lend £100,000; and the bishops and courtiers gave £13,500: but the total amount in two years amounted to little more than £66,000, and this though the Council had used every exertion and taken the utmost advantage of the condition of affairs abroad and the dangers that threatened the King's allies. Some counties protested, and appealed to the Act of Richard III.; others gave little or nothing; others gave less than they promised: in every county the sheriffs were told that the King would have no difficulty in obtaining a Supply if he would call a Parliament. The ill-feeling aroused by the sudden dissolution of the last Parliament appears in the course of another trial at this time (1615) in which Bacon prosecuted for the Crown. During the search of the house of a clergyman named Peacham, consequent on some ecclesiastical charge, a sermon was found predicting, or suggesting, that the people might rise against oppressions; that the King might die like Ananias or Nabal; and that the Prince might be slain by those who dreaded the calling back of the crown-lands. The sermon had neither been published nor preached; but it was deemed by the King's advisers to imply a conspiracy, and Peacham was put to the torture (Jan. 1615). "In the highest cases of treasons," wrote Bacon in 1603, " torture is used for discovery and not for evidence;" that is to say, for the disclosure of information about other conspirators, but not for evidence against the accused; for he adds that "by the laws of England no man is bound to accuse himself." But a majority of the judges decided-so says the report of the trial that Peacham's offence, even though proved, did not amount to treason, much less to the highest treason; and the interrogatories upon which Peacham was examined were of such a nature that, if he had answered them in the affirmative, he would have "accused himself." It is therefore doubtful whether Bacon could consistently have justified the use of torture in this case and for such a purpose. He was not indeed responsible for the issue of the warrant for torture; but he was AttorneyGeneral and one of the examiners to whom the warrant was addressed, and a protest from him might have had weight. Such evidence as we have, goes to prove that Bacon saw no reason for protesting. Recommending (in 1620) the application of torture to one Peacock, probably mad, who was accused of having "practised, or pretended, to have infatuated the King's judgment by sorcery," he writes to the King, "he deserveth it as well as Peacham did." In any case the wretched Peacham, after being examined in Bacon's presence "before torture, in torture, between torture, and after torture," upon interrogatories which assumed his guilt, revealed absolutely nothing; and two days afterwards Bacon's comment to the King is that the man's "raging devil seemeth to be turned into a dumb devil." At the time when Bacon wrote these words he had doubts whether the Judges would hold Peacham's guilt to amount to treason; he hopes "the end will be good. But then every man must put to his helping hand." In other words he trusts that Peacham will be convicted of treason; but the Judges must lend their help and must be unanimous. The King was about this time in a paroxysm of panic, not even venturing to sleep without a barricade of beds around him; and his alarm induced him to command, and Bacon unhesitatingly to adopt, unprecedented measures to secure a verdict. In order to prevent Coke from influencing the Judges against the Court, it was decided, in taking their opinion as to the treasonableness of Peacham's conduct (if proved), to consult them separately, and not, as usual, jointly. The result of this will be, so Bacon hopes, that "my Lord Coke himself, when I have in some dark manner put him in doubt that he will be left alone, will not continue singular." Great pressure was put upon all the Judges to induce them to deliver the opinion desired by the Court. The King himself drew up a paper of vehement argument, asseverating that "the only thing the Judges can doubt of is of the delinquent's intention," and if the Judges can doubt of that, in the face of the evidence, "happy then are all desperate and seditious knaves, but the fortune of the Crown is more than miserable. Quod Deus avertat." The gratitude of every Englishman is due to Coke for the protest that he made against "the particular and auricular" taking of the opinions of the Judges, as "not being according to the custom of the realm." That the Judges should allow themselves to be consulted by the Crown collectively about a pending case appearing to affect the Crown's interests may seem to us unfair in the extreme; yet it was at least sanctioned by custom, and only beginning to be deemed irregular.1 But that the Judges should be consulted secretly and separately was a novel abuse which James himself appears to have been the first to suggest, and could have but one object, to bias or intimidate them more effectually by depriving them of the power of collective consultation and action. Both at the Council Table and in his interview with Bacon, Coke protested against this innovation, declaring "that Judges were not to give opinion by fractions, but entirely; according to the vote whereupon they should settle in conference" (January, 1615). In this case he was overborne; but his resistance seems to have not been without effect. The King was so much in love with his new stratagem for brow-beating the Judges in detail, that he gave instructions that the same course should be taken in another criminal case which came on next month; but both the Lords of the Council, and the Learned Counsel ("holding it, on a case so clear, not needful") did not attempt to coerce Coke a second time to "auricular confession." From no point of view can Bacon's conduct in this trial be pronounced creditable. Setting aside the separate consultation of the Judges-which he must have known to be an innovation most dangerous to the liberties of the subject he was also guilty of advising the King to use deceit in every direction. He first proposes to deceive Coke by putting him in doubt "in some dark manner, that he will be left alone;" then the wretched prisoner (28 February, 1615) is to be deceived with 1 We have seen above (p. 176) how Sir Thomas More protested against the custom of summoning the Judges to the King's palace "to argue and discuss his matters in his own presence;" and a recent instance had shown how hard it was for them to resist such pressure. In a dispute between the High Commission Court and the Court of Common Pleas (1611) the Judges were first summoned before the Council; then this having proved fruitless, the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas were sent for separately, but remained unshaken; then all the other Judges were sent for, but still in vain; lastly the Judges of the King's Bench and the Barons of the Exchequer were summoned before the King himself, Coke and his colleagues of the Common Pleas being excluded; "before this ordeal some of those who were consulted gave way." -Gardiner, History, ii. 123. a false fire;" and lastly the public is to be deceived as to the opinion of the Judges, and to be told that the Judges agree that the Sermon contains treasonable matter, and hesitate as to their decision merely on the technical ground that it was not published. "I think also it were not amiss to make a false fire, as if all things were ready for his going down to his trial, and that he were upon the very point of being carried down, to see what that will work with him. "Lastly, I do think it most necessary, and a point principally to be regarded, that (because we live in an age wherein no counsel is kept, and that it is true there is some bruit abroad that the Judges of the King's Bench do doubt of the case that it should not be treason) it be given out constantly-and yet as it were in secret, and so a fame to slide--that the doubt was only upon the publication, in that it was never published." In Peacham's case, moreover, there were special circumstances of novel injustice. The Judges were required to hear all the arguments alleged, and the precedents, "selected,” as well as arranged, by the Counsel for the prosecution, without hearing anything that might be alleged on the other side. They were also pressed-Coke, certainly, and the rest apparently for an immediate answer. When Coke, after hearing all that Bacon had to say, desired him to leave the precedents with him that he might advise upon them, Bacon replied that the delay thus caused would be imputed to the Judge's backwardness rather than to the Attorney's negligence. Whatever may be the legal merits of the case, it is at least creditable to Coke's moral constancy that he delivered an opinion that Peacham's conduct did not amount to treason. This was also (according to the report of the trial), the opinion of many of the Judges; and Peacham, though condemned, was allowed to die in prison, which he did seven months afterwards. From the Attorney-General's management of Peacham's trial it is refreshing to turn to a little piece of Bacon's English, a specimen of his grand yet familiar style. It is from a speech -or rather notes of a speech-which he delivered about Michaelmas, 1614, in the Star Chamber on a case of deerstealing: and it exhibits him posing, in the character of Attorney, as the humble but loving defender of the King's comfort and pleasure, who has himself "noted" (no doubt as Clerk of the Council) the wholesome effect of the chase on his Majesty's deliberations and resolves. "My Lords, these offences of deer-hunting and stealing, and malefactors in parks, forests, and chases, I hold them in their nature great, though these instances are not the greatest. "1. Forests, Parks, and Chases, they are a noble portion of the King's Prerogative: they are the verdure of the King; they are the first marks of honour and nobility, and the ornament of a flourishing kingdom. You never hear Switzerland or Netherland troubled with forests. It is a sport proper to the nobility and men of better rank; and it is to keep a difference between the gentry and the common sort: and so I hold this fault not vulgar. "2. And are an excellent remedy against surcharge of people and too many of inhabitants, that the land through it grow not to sluttery. And these green spots of the King are an excellent ornament to the beauty of the realm. "3. They are excellent for the preservation of woods, and if the Druids and Ancients of England should now live, they would scarce get a cell or sacrarie under shady trees. It is parcel of the King's prerogative and such as formerly they would not communicate. So if it be not a royal flower of the Crown, it is a green leaf at the least. ... "4. Lastly Affectus Regis: the King's pleasure is known and should work in the King's subjects their due obedience in a thing not vulgar. It is excellent for the health, and one of the cheerfullest exercises for his Majesty when he doth withdraw himself from greater affairs. It is subdiale exercitium, and yet a kind of artificial solitude. And, as I have noted, many excellent resolutions and counsels some time came to this table out of the wood. Other sorts of robberies proceed upon necessity, and rape and battery upon passion: But this is a bravery, petulancy, wantonness, lustfulness, and riotousness of the people, to do as they think good; and in that respect the more severely to be punished." ... § 31 BACON'S PREPARATIONS FOR A NEW PARLIAMENT During the intervals of rest from his legal practice, Bacon appears to have given a good deal of thought to the consideration of the King's finances, and his relations with his subjects. In May, 1614, Chamberlain expresses the hope that the Commons "would not stand too stiff, but take some moderate course to supply him (the King) by ordinary means, |