of colts riding on horseback,-was believed on the unsupported testimony of a boy, who thus took away the lives of his grandmother and others of his near relations. The principal witnesses against one of the witches were three of her own children, one of them a girl of nine years old, and another a youth who was brought into court in a state of extreme weakness from the consequences of a long and most severe imprisonment, and probably of further cruelties. This youth was himself convicted afterwards on the testimony of his little sister, and suffered death.

To prove one of the prisoners a witch, evidence was admitted of its having been the opinion of a man not in court that she had turned his beer sour; -and, against another, that her brother-in-law, an old gentleman then dead, used often to ride a mile or two about to avoid passing her door. To prove the charge of murder by witchcraft, it was thought sufficient to attest, that the deceased on his death-bed had declared his belief that he owed his death to the prisoner; without specifying any means of injury employed by her, except perhaps some threat or malediction. Great stress, too, was in some cases laid on the bleeding of the corpse at the approach of the sorceress,—a fact which persons were readily found to attest on oath a.

Bacon, after his disgrace, addressed to king James a proposal for occupying himself in preparing a di

2

See the trials of the Lancashire witches in the Somers Tracts, vol. ii. 3rd edition.

gest

gest of the laws, with suggestions of various alterations and amendments. This great man was doubtless capable of taking a philosopher's view of the subject of legislation; but, considering the narrow prejudices and arbitrary principles of the king, and the habitual subserviency of the chancellor, it cannot be matter of regret that this project, owing perhaps to the death of James soon after, was never carried into effect.

CHAPTER

CHAPTER XX.

1620, 1621.

Affairs of Bohemia.-Negotiations of James.-Embassies of sir H. Wotton.-His verses on the queen of Bohemia.Levies for the war in Germany.-Earl of Oxford.—James attempts to impose a benevolence.-Negotiations of lord Herbert of Chirbury.—Behaviour of a French embassy.— Preparations for a parliament.-Letter of Bacon.-Proclamation.-Prohibition of talking of state affairs.—King's speech.-Prosperous state of Bacon.—His private life,— studies,-powers of conversation.-The commons accuse him to the lords.-Easter recess.-Alarm of Villiers and the monopolists.-Dissolution of parliament advised.Williams dissuades it.-Bacon's submission to the lords.He is deprived of the seals.-Sentence upon him.-Remarks on his case. -Treachery of the king and Villiers towards him. His after-life and death.

THE affairs of the king of Bohemia now became an object of interest which absorbed all others. The people loudly cried out for war in support of the protestant cause and of a family so nearly allied to the blood royal of England;-James remained firmly decided on the preservation of peace; and his council was divided. Gondomar, by his cajolery and his bribes, maintained the king, the favorite and the greater number of the courtiers and officers of state, especially those catholicly inclined, in the interests of the house of Austria: the archbishop,

that

that spirited nobleman William earl of Pembroke, the duke of Lenox and the marquis of Hamilton inclined to the opposite party.

In the course of the summer, the emperor proclaimed the ban of the empire against the palatine, and the duke of Bavaria and the other catholic princes of Germany prepared to execute the sentence, while the princes of the protestant league took arms to resist it. Prince Maurice put himself in motion on the same part; while Spinola raised a formidable force in Flanders, the object of which was not declared. These measures roused king James to extraordinary activity,-in negotiation. His majesty had already two ambassadors in Bohemia; sir Richard Weston a secret catholic, afterwards lord-treasurer and earl of Portland, and sir Edward Conway secretary of state, a mere soldier, thrust into civil offices purely by the favor of Buckingham: in addition to these negotiators he now dispatched sir Thomas Edmonds for Brussels, to obtain an explanation from the archduke Albert of the object of Spinola's levies. The archduke referred the ambassador to Spinola himself, who acted, he said, by directions from the king of Spain with which he was unacquainted. Spinola, on his part, affirmed that his orders were still sealed; but added, that if Edmonds would accompany him in his march to Coblentz, he should there be able to give him satisfaction; a proposal which the ambassador found himself obliged to accept, probably not without a full perception of the mockery put upon himself and

his master. His negotiations with several of the secondary powers of Germany were intrusted by James to sir Henry Wotton.

The advancement of this accomplished diplomatist had by no means corresponded with the hopes which the professions of favor and affection made him by James on his first arrival in England were fitted to inspire. On the contrary, he had passed some years unemployed in a state of disgrace, from which he recovered with difficulty, and the reported cause of which is sufficiently remarkable to deserve to be recounted. When sir Henry first went in a diplomatic capacity to Italy, in passing through the city of Augsburgh, he fell into company with some men of letters known to him on his former travels, by one of whom he was requested, after the German manner, to write a sentence in his album. Wotton, somewhat incautiously, transcribed into the book the following pleasant definition of an ambassador:"An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie for the good of his country." Eight years afterwards, this unfortunate sentence was by some chance discovered by that malignant and scurrilous man of letters Jasper Scioppius; who was a vehement partisan of the church of Rome, and at that time engaged in writing a book against king James. He eagerly seized upon it and inserted it in his work as a proof of a laxity of morals among the protestants in general, and in the king of Great Britain in particular, equal to that with which the jesuits were reproached under the name of equivocation. The

circum