a purse of £100, having at different times received from her, pendente lite, £310.1

On another occasion a French Wine Company had promised him £1,000 if he could break down a combination of vintners who refused to buy their wines; and he attempted to gratify them by persuading the vintners. But afterwards, the business being referred to him by the King, as a matter that concerned royal customs, Bacon took up the matter more peremptorily, and imprisoned some of the most obstinate of the vintners; after which he received his thousand pounds. There is no proof of corruption in this, nor in any case that came before Bacon (except that of Dr. Steward's nephew quoted above); but there is abundant proof of a culpable inattention to ordinary rules of self-respect, and a strong suspicion that his extreme readiness to believe that what was convenient was also right, disposed him not to look too carefully into the sources of his receipts,

§ 40 THE LORD CHANCELLOR'S FALL

When the King declared that he "had grounded his judgment upon others who had misled him," all knew that the Lord Chancellor was now implicated. But he had not yet had an opportunity of defending himself against any specific charge when (14 March) a suitor presented a petition to the House of Commons, stating that, two years and a half before, the Lord Chancellor had received money from him for the better despatch of a pending suit. Conscious, but as yet only half conscious, that his conduct would not bear investigating, Bacon wrote on the same day to Buckingham:

Hounslow Heath, nobody would take it up. But the King and your Lordship will, I hope, put an end to these miseries one way or other. And in troth that which I fear most is lest continual attendance and business together with these cares, and want of time to do my weak body right this spring by diet and physic, will cast me down; and then it will be thought feigning or fainting. But I hope in God I shall hold out. God prosper you."

A second accusation, of receiving money pendente lite, having been brought against the Lord Chancellor immediately after the first, the Commons (19 March), desired a conference with the Lords, "having found abuses in certain eminent persons." Under this sudden shock Bacon's health gave way, and the examination of witnesses proceeded in his absence. Although he had desired that his defence might be reserved to him, a letter which he wrote to the King on the 25th shows that he was gradually giving up all hope of defence. He still protests against being supposed to have perverted justice, and to have taken bribes as a "depraved habit;" but he admits that he may have partaken of the abuse of the times; finally, he makes himself an oblation to the King to "do with me as may best conduce to the honour of your justice, the honour of your mercy, and the use of your service, resting as clay in your Majesty's gracious hands."

The strange feature in this letter is that the writer appears to be sincerely and honestly under the impression that he is a single-hearted patriot, and quite amazed at the hostile feeling that he found rising up against him in both Houses.

"When I enter into myself, I find not the materials of such a tempest as is comen upon me. I have been (as your Majesty knoweth best) never author of any immoderate counsel, but always desired to have things carried suavibus modis. I have been no avaricious oppressor of the people. I have been no haughty, or intolerable, or hateful man, in my conversation or carriage. I have inherited no hatred from my father, but am a good patriot born. Whence should this be?"

But the reader will find in the conclusion of this very letter an answer to the question, "Whence should this be?" For, with perfect truth, he adds this appeal to the King: "I have been ever your man, and counted myself but an usufructuary of myself, the property being yours." This was one reason why many in the House of Commons were not ill-pleased to see the great Chancellor's fall; he had, indeed, chosen to be "the King's man," and not "the nation's man." Dispassionate and sensible political observers like Chamberlain had feared him as a "dangerous instrument," and had remarked on his "new doctrine" as to the King's Prerogative; and, in a manner all the more dangerous to the liberties of the people because it was suavibus modis, he was gradually subjecting the Judges to the Crown, and steadily amplifying in the interests of the King those very powers which true lovers of English freedom desired to see gradually extinguished. Moreover, men of common sense and ordinary morality were outraged by the contrast between the Lord Chancellor's professions and actions. Never had any man lectured the judges upon a judge's duties with more dignity and authority than he; and yet on the very day when he was teaching them to "keep their hands clean," he was making an order in a case in which he had taken gifts from suitors pendente lite. Again, in the matter of the Monopolies, he had shut his eyes to facts; he "had shown himself a friend" to the Favourite's friends, and had allowed himself (though in company with others) to certify both to the legality and to the expediency of Patents, which in the opinion of the House of Commons at all events-he ought to have known to be, if not illegal, at least inexpedient, and to which the King himself declared that he would never have assented if he had not been "misled" by his counsellors. Lastly-though this the House of Commons did not know, nor perhaps did even Coke suspect he had deliberately perverted justice in at least one case in the Court of Chancery, brow-beaten by the importunity of Buckingham. But what was known and patent to all was quite enough to make all lovers of justice and national liberty earnestly desire that an example should be made of the highly-gifted man who had sinned against these two great causes. It was not Coke's enmity, nor Cranfield's resentment for past slights, it was Bacon's own conduct and policy that stirred up this storm in the Lower House against one whom almost all admired as much as they condemned. And no doubt many felt that in striking down the Lord Chancellor they were indirectly establishing a precedent for something like ministerial responsibility. Bacon, in 1607 (see above, p. 140), defending in his high style the Prerogative which the King derived from God Himself, and maintaining that the King was not "accomptable to Law," had stigmatized as a democratic innovation, an attempt of the Parliament in old days to "depose the Lord Chancellor" as if he were an officer "of the State and not of the King." The Commons were not sorry now to show the Lord Chancellor that he would have done well to consider himself an officer of the State, as well as an officer of the King. But this he had never done. In particular instances he had sacrificed the nation to the King's Favourite, and he had in all instances tried to go as far as possible in the direction of magnifying the King's power to the detriment of the nation; for these things they could not definitely attack him; but indirectly they could punish him for these, by punishing relentlessly the definite acts that brought him under the charge of corruption.

What answer the King returned to the Lord Chancellor's letter we do not know; but on the following day (26 March), going to the House of Lords, James left judgment wholly to them, declaring his readiness to carry their sentence into execution, and to "strike dead" the three Monopolies principally complained of. Meanwhile, as Bacon's illness increased upon him, he made his will (10 April), bequeathing his soul to God above, his body to be buried obscurely, his name to the next ages and to foreign nations. A slight token is left to Prince Charles, who is also to have the offer of the reversion of Gorhambury and Verulam; but no mention is made of the King or of Buckingham. It is possible that at this critical moment Bacon felt that his trust and devotion had not been rewarded with the protection which they deserved. At the same time he composed a prayer, in which, while making a general confession of "innumerable sins," he also protests that he has been free from certain specified faults, and concludes with this particular confession:

"Besides my innumerable sins, I confess before thee that I am debtor to thee for the gracious talent of thy gifts and graces, which I have neither put into a napkin, nor put it (as I ought) to exchangers, where it might have made best profit, but misspent it in things for which I was least fit; so as I may truly say, my soul hath been a stranger in the course of my pilgrimage."

Recovering from his illness, he made notes for an interview with the King which was to take place on 16 April; and there is a passage in these notes which, though cancelled by the writer, clearly shows that he felt his judicial conduct would not bear inspection. He begins by distinguishing three kinds of bribery, 1st, bargain, or contract for reward, to pervert justice pendente lite; 2nd, where the judge conceives the case to be at an end, but does not take sufficient care to ascertain this; 3rd, when the cause is really ended. As to the third class, he conceived it to be no fault, though now, he adds, he is willing to be better informed; as to the second, he fears in some particulars he may be faulty. But as to the first class-where at least we might have expected unqualified denial-he seems to have felt that whatever his motives might have been, his actions exposed him to the charge of corruption. This at least is a natural inference from some cancelled words in the MS. :

"But, for the first of them, I take myself to be as innocent as any born upon St. Innocent's day in my heart. [And yet perhaps, in some two or three of them, the proofs may stand pregnant to the contrary].1 For the second, I doubt in some particulars I may be faulty; and, for the last, 1 conceived it to be no fault; but therein I desire to be better informed that I may be twice penitent, once for the fact and again for the error."

In a subsequent letter to the King (21 April), begging that "the cup may pass from him," he beseeches the King, if not by direct use of the Prerogative, at least by indirect influence, to quash the proceedings against him. The surrender of the Seal, accompanied by a general submission, will surely, he thinks, be a sufficiently severe punishment. The conclusion of his letter indicates that the writer (possibly in anticipation of the King's intervention) has almost recovered his self-complacency.