Page images
PDF
EPUB

deliver the same to Coke and the Judges. The omission of Yelverton's name is ominous; and soon afterwards (October 14) Mr. Attorney is again complained of as mismanaging Suffolk's

case.

In other ways, Yelverton now came into collision with the Favourite; and this time it was in connection with a Monopoly, or Monopoly Patent, for making gold and silver thread, enjoyed by a Company in which Sir Edward Villiers, the half-brother of the Favourite, had invested £4,000 and therefore had a considerable interest. In theory (see below, p. 286) a Monopoly was supposed to be for the good of the people (very much like our modern Patents) by encouraging inventions; and in days when bullion was believed to constitute the only real wealth of a nation, the Government might fairly claim to supervise so important a manufacture and to encourage a Company which engaged to manufacture thread from imported gold. But in practice this Monopoly resulted in nothing but resistance on the part of merchants and oppression on the part of the Government. Proceedings against the recalcitrant goldsmiths in the Court of Exchequer were instituted in 1617, but abandoned, as they were certain to fail. Hereupon the King wrote from Scotland to Yelverton ordering him summarily to imprison the offenders; but this letter Yelverton "kept by him, thinking the King not well informed." In March, 1618, both the manufacture and the profits were taken into the King's hands. This transference was made at Bacon's suggestion, and his motive-or at least one motive-is obvious. Sir Edward Villiers was to receive £500 a year out of the profits in return for his investment; and Christopher Villiers, another brother of the Favourite's, was to receive £800 a year out of the profits for no reason at all. However much therefore Bacon may have been influenced by considerations of political economy and high policy, few will doubt that one object of this suggested transference was to bring money into the pockets of the brothers of the Favourite, by taking the Monopoly under the direct protection of the Government and making it a paying concern.

The Lord Chancellor accordingly now took up the cause of the Government Monopoly with a most oppressive energy. Against the goldsmiths-who urged that they had made gold thread many years before the existence of the Company with whom the Monopoly had originated-he raked up an old Act of Henry VII. expressly forbidding goldsmiths to melt gold and silver except for special objects, amongst which the manufacture of gold and silver thread had not been mentioned. This obsolete statute placed the goldsmiths at Bacon's mercy; and he showed them none. But as repeated seizures of instruments and imprisonments of artificers still failed to suppress competition, a fresh commission was issued (October, 1618) to hunt offenders down; and to this body the notorious Mompesson was added, a friend and kinsman of Buckingham's, whose energy in suppressing offences against his own Patent for inns promised equal success in suppressing offenders against the gold-thread Monopoly. The Commissioners were authorised to institute prosecutions before the Star Chamber; and a prosecution was accordingly instituted, but dropped. Thus for the second time legal proceedings had been abandoned; first, in the Court of Exchequer, and now in the Star Chamber; yet the seizures and imprisonments were as frequent as ever.

At this time (1619) a new coercive measure was suggested to James by Bacon and Montague (the Chief Justice of the King's Bench). The goldsmiths and silk mercers were to be forced to enter into bonds not to sell their wares to unlicensed persons. Mompesson told the silk mercers that, if they refused to seal these bonds, "all the prisons in London should be filled, and thousands should rot in jail." This persistent oppression had now gone to such unprecedented lengths that Yelverton, who had hitherto gone with Bacon and Montague, began to hang back. Sir Edward Villiers, naturally alarmed for his pension, which depended upon the profits of the manufacture, made a personal appeal to the Attorney-all would be lost, he said, if Yelverton did not help him. Yelverton was afraid to disoblige the Favourite's brother; but he also had a conscience which-not being the conscience of a philosopher or a political economist or a great person-entertained some fears of carrying oppression beyond customary limits. He therefore determined to throw the whole responsibility upon Bacon, as the official who was the main mover in the whole business. To oblige Villiers, he committed the mercers to prison; to satisfy his conscience, he declared that, unless the Lord Chancellor confirmed the commitment, he would instantly release them. Having gone thus far-and being probably convinced that he was acting from the purest motives and simply for the good of the nation-Bacon was not the man now to shrink back; after hearing what the mercers had to say, he recommitted them to prison. The whole of the City was at once in an uproar; bail was offered in £100,000; and a deputation proceeded to the King, who at once released the prisoners. Even those who are most familiar with Bacon's extraordinary blindness to inconvenient truths must marvel that this series of abuses and oppressions could not open his eyes to the fact that there must be something wrong in his theory and conduct. Instead of now abolishing the Monopoly and the tyrannical Commission, a Proclamation was issued justifying the system on grounds of high national policy1: and the abuses and oppressions went on as before; unlicensed goods were still seized; bonds were still forced upon the silk mercers; the bullion which was to have been imported was not imported; the coin of the realm was melted down; the City was exasperated; and all-if we set aside high national policy as being an inadequate explanation of this persistent oppression for the purpose of obtaining £500 a year for one Villiers and £800 a year for another. There is only one refreshing circumstance in the whole of this miserable businessthese leeches of the Commonwealth gained next to nothing. What Edward may have received we do not know, but the Government manufacture proved so complete a failure that the sum total of Christopher's receipts did not exceed £150 during the whole existence of the Monopoly. If however the Favourite's brothers were disappointed, that was not Bacon's fault: no one could accuse Bacon that he had allowed public opinion, or the Laws of England, or self-respect, or considerations of the King's interest in maintaining a good feeling between him and his subjects, to stand in the way of obliging the brothers of Buckingham. Yelverton, not Bacon, was to blame: and Yelverton must now be sacrificed on the Favourite's altar. Very ominous was it for the poor Attorney that the Lord Chancellor wrote (February, 1620)-perhaps in reference to some protests of Yelverton against his own unconstitutional courses and against the impolicy of further exasperating the City-" Mr. Attorney groweth pert with me of late, and I see well who they are that maintain him."

1 The words of the Proclamation, says Professor Gardiner, from whom this sketch is taken (History, iv. 9-19) "may fairly be taken as Bacon's defence of himself."

It was not long before Yelverton gave his adversaries a handle against him. In drawing up a charter for the City of London he had inadvertently inserted clauses for which he was unable to produce a warrant. The worst that could be charged against him was that he had misunderstood the King's verbal directions. But his enemies determined to proceed to the severest measures, and the Council advised that his offer of submission by letter be refused, and that an information be laid against him in the Star Chamber on 27 October. On the 24th of October Bacon made notes of his intended remarks upon the case, in which he meets the Attorney's plea (that he has merely committed an error of judgment) by declaring that the highest contempt and excess of authority is termed by the law of England "misprision" or "mistaking," whereof he takes the reason to be that "mistaking" is ever joined with contempt; "for he that reveres will not easily mistake; but he that slights and thinks more of the greatness of his place than of the duty of his place, will soon commit misprisions."

One feels that there is something of hypocrisy in the whole conduct of this trial, as though every one did not know that Yelverton's real offence was that he had always refused to cringe to Buckingham. But Bacon's behaviour is peculiarly cold-blooded and ungrateful. Yelverton had faithfully stood by him, almost alone, when the King and the Favourite were ready to crush him, and when all the Court had turned against him; and whatever might have been his faults of carelessness in the present instance, no one accused the Attorney of corruption. Yet when the case came on, and when "the bill was opened by the King's Sergeant briefly, with tears in his eyes

...

and Mr. Attorney, standing at the Bar amid the ordinary Counsellors, with dejected looks, weeping tears, and a brief, eloquent, and humble oration, made a submission, acknowledging his error, but denying the corruption"--the Lord Chancellor

endeavoured to resist the merciful proposal of the majority of the Councillors, viz., to defer proceedings till his Majesty was informed of the Attorney's submission:

"This," he writes to Buckingham, was against my opinion, then declared plain enough; but put to votes and ruled by the major part, though some concurred with me. I do not like of this course, in respect that it puts the King in a strait; for either the note of severity must rest upon his Majesty if he go on; or the thanks of clemency is in some part taken away, if his Majesty go not on. I have cor unum et via una, and therefore did my part as a judge and the King's Chancellor. What is further to be done I will advise the King faithfully when I see his Majesty and your Lordship. But before I give advice I must ask a question first."

On 8th November the Chancellor announced that the King would not interfere with the course of justice, so that the hearing of the case must continue; and on the 11th he thus announces the termination to Yelverton's great enemy:

"MY VERY GOOD LORD,

"Yesternight we made an end of Sir Henry Yelverton's cause. I have almost killed myself with sitting almost eight hours. But I was resolved to sit it through. He is sentenced to imprisonment in the Tower during the King's pleasure, the fine of £4,000, and discharge of his place, by way of opinion of the Court, referring it to the King's pleasure. How I stirred the Court I leave it to others to speak: but things passed to his Majesty's great honour. I would not for anything but he had made his defence; for many chief points of the charge were deeper printed by the defence."

§38 THE PUBLICATION OF THE "NOVUM ORGANUM"

Foreign politics occupy, just now, little of the Lord Chancellor's time. But in a Short view of Great Britain and Spain (1619) he had drawn up reasons against an alliance with Spain, which compare amusingly with the paper drawn up in 1617, in favour of it. Two years before, he had advocated the alliance on the ground of the peace of Christendom, the extinction of religious animosity, and the destruction of piracy. Now he inveighs against Spain as an empire whose policy has been bloody, corrupting, treacherous, and unnatural; cruel to Christendom, while negligent of infidels and pirates. Between England and

« PreviousContinue »