duties, an opportunity to eradicate error accident- | he holds his peace from good things, he wounds ally presented itself. Amongst the criminal in- himself." formations filed in the Star Chamber by his pre- The exertions of Bacon and of the king's friends decessor, he found a charge against two obscure being, however, of no avail, the king, seeing no persons for the crime of duelling. Of this oppor- hope of assistance, in anger dissolved the parliatunity he instantly availed himself, to expose the ment, and committed several of the members who nature of these false imaginations of honour, by | had spoken freely of his measures. which, in defiance of virtue, disregard of the law, and contempt of religion, vice and ignorance raise themselves in the world upon the reputation of courage; and high-minded youth, full of towardness and hope, such as the poets call "aurora filii," sons of the morning, are deluded by this fond disguise and puppetry of honour.

This violence, instead of allaying, increased the ferment in the nation; (June, 1634;) and, unable to obtain a supply from parliament, and being extremely distressed for money, several of the nobility and clergy in and about London, made presents to the king; and letters were written to the sheriffs and justices in the different counties, and to magistrates of several corporations, informing them what had been done in the

similar bounty would be from the country.

Amongst others, a letter was sent to the mayor of Marlborough in Wiltshire, where Mr. Oliver St. John, a gentleman of an ancient family, was then residing, who wrote to the mayor on the 11th of October, 1614, representing to him that this benevolence was against law, reason, and religion, and insinuating that the king, by promoting it, had violated his coronation oath, and that, by such means as these, King Richard the Second had given an opportunity to Henry the Fourth to deprive him of his crown; desiring, if he thought fit, that his sentiments should be communicated to the justices who were to meet respecting the benevolence.

The king's great object in summoning a parliament was the hope to obtain supplies; a hope which was totally defeated by a rumour that seve-metropolis, and how acceptable and seasonable ral persons, attached to the king, had entered into a confederacy, and had undertaken to secure a majority to enable him to control the house. To pacify the heat, Bacon made a powerful speech, in which he ridicules the supposition that any man can have embarked in such a wild undertaking as to control the Commons of England: to make a policy of insurance as to what ship shall come safe home into the harbour in these troubled seas; to find a new passage for the king's business, by a new and unknown point of the compass: to build forts to intimidate the house, unmindful that the only forts by which the king of England can command, is the fort of affection moving the hearts, and of reason the understandings of his people. He then implores the house not to listen to these idle rumours, existing only in the imagination of some deluded enthusiast, who, like the fly upon the chariot wheel, says, "What a dust do I raise! and, being without foundation or any avowed author, are like the birds of paradise, without feet, and never lighting upon any place, but carried away by the wind whither it listeth. Let us then," he adds, "instead of yielding to these senseless reports, deliberate upon the peri-tempt; but they all agreed that the benevolence lous situation in which the government is placed: and, remembering the parable of Jotham, in the case of the trees of the forest, that when question was, whether the vine should reign over them? that might not be ;-and whether the olive should reign over them? that might not be, let us consider whether we have not accepted the bramble to reign over us. For it seems that the good vine of the king's graces, that is not so much in esteem and the good oil, whereby we should relieve the wants of the estate and crown, is laid aside; and this bramble of contention and emulation, this must reign and rule amongst us."

For this letter, Mr. St. John was tried in the Star Chamber on the 15th of April, 1615; when, the attorney-general appearing, of course, as counsel for the crown, the defendant was fined £5000, imprisoned during the king's pleasure, and ordered to make submission in writing.

So deeply were the judges impressed with the enormity of this offence, that some of the court thought the crime of a higher nature than a con

was not restrained by any statute; and the lord chancellor, who was then, as he supposed, on his death-bed, more than once expressed his anxiety that his passing sentence upon Mr. St. John might be his last act of judicial duty.

Such was the state of the law and of the opinion of justice which at that time prevailed! The dissatisfaction which existed in the community, at the state of the government, now manifested itself in various modes, and was, according to the usual efforts of power, attempted to be repressed by criminal prosecutions. Amongst others, the attorney-general was employed in the Having examined and exposed all the argu- prosecution for high treason of a Mr. Peacham, ments, he concluded by saying; "Thus I have a clergyman between sixty and seventy years of told you my opinion. I know it had been more age; of Mr. Owen, of Godstow in Oxfordshire, a safe and politic to have been silent; but it is gentleman of property and respectability; and of more honest and loving to speak. When a man | William Talbot, an Irish barrister, for maintainspeaketh, he may be wounded by others; but as 'ing, in different modes, that, if the king were

excommunicated and deprived by the pope, it was | private; whether it were a good answer to deny lawful for any person to kill him.

it, otherwise than if it were propounded at the table. To this he said, that the cases were not alike, because this concerned life. To which I

The prosecution against Peacham was for several treasonable passages in a sermon, found in his study, but never preached, and never intend-replied, that questions of estate might concern ed to be preached.

Doubts being entertained both of the fact with respect to the intention to preach, and of the law, supposing the intention to have existed, recourse was had to expedients from which, in these enlightened times, we recoil with horror.

thousands of lives; and many things more precious than the life of a particular; as war and peace, and the like."

By this reasoning Coke's scruples were, after a struggle, removed, and he concurred with his bre thren in obedience to the commands of the king. From the progress which knowledge has made, during the last two centuries, in the science of

To discover the fact, this old clergyman was put upon the rack, and was examined "before torture, in torture, between torture, and after tor-justice and its administration, mitigating severity, ture," but no confession was extorted, which was instantly communicated by Bacon to the king.

abolishing injurious restraints upon commerce, and upon civil and religious liberty, and preserving the To be certain of the law, the king resolved to judicial mind free, almost, from the possibility of obtain the opinions of the judges before the pro-influence, we may, without caution, feel disposed secution was commenced. For this purpose, the to censure the profession of the law at that day attorney-general was employed to confer with Sir for practices so different from our own. Passing Edward Coke, Mr. Sergeant Montague to speak out of darkness into light, we may for a moment be with Justice Crooke, Mr. Sergeant Crew with dazzled, and forget the ignorance from which we Justice Houghton, and Mr. Solicitor with Justice have emerged; an evil attendant upon the proDodderidge, who were instructed by Bacon that gress of learning, which did not escape the obthey should presently speak with the three judges, servation of Bacon, by whom we are admonished, before he could see Coke; and that they should that "if knowledge, as it advances, is taken withnot in any case make any doubt to the judges, as out its true corrective, it ever hath some nature of if they mistrusted they would not deliver any venom or malignity, and some effects of that opinion apart, but speak resolutely to them, and venom, which is ventosity or swelling. This only make their coming to be, to know what time corrective spice, the mixture whereof maketh they would appoint to be attended with the pa- knowledge so sovereign, is charity; of which pers. The three judges very readily gave their the apostle saith, If I spake with the tongues opinions; but with Sir Edward Coke the task of men and angels, and had not charity, it were was not easy for his high and independent spirit but as a tinkling cymbal.'” refused to submit to these private conferences, contrary, as he said, to the custom of the realm, which requires the judges not to give opinion by fractions, but entirely and upon conference; and that this auricular taking of opinions, single and apart, was new and dangerous.

The answer to this resistance, Bacon thus relates in a letter to the king: "I replied in civil and plain terms, that I wished his lordship, in my love to him, to think better of it; for that this, that his lordship was pleased to put into great words, seemed to me and my fellows, when we spake of it amongst ourselves, a reasonable and familiar matter, for a king to consult with his judges, either assembled or selected, or one by one. I added, that judges sometimes might make a suit to be spared for their opinion till they had spoken with their brethren; but if the king upon his own princely judgment, for reason of estate, should think it fit to have it otherwise, and should so demand it, there was no declining; nay, that it touched upon a violation of their oath, which was to counsel the king without distinction, whether it were jointly or severally. Thereupon I put him the case of the privy council, as if your majesty should be pleased to command any of them to deliver their opinion apart and in

For having thus acted in obedience to the king's commands, by a compliance with error sanctioned by the practice of the profession, Bacon has, without due consideration, been censured by a most upright, intelligent judge of modern times, who has thus indirectly accused the bar as venal, and the bench as perjured.

To this excellent man posterity has been more just; we do not brand Judge Foster with the imputation of cruelty, for having passed the barbarous and disgraceful sentence upon persons convicted of high treason, which was not abolished till the reign of George the Fourth; nor do we censure the judges in and before the time of Elizabeth for not having resisted the infliction of torture, sanctioned by the law, which was founded upon the erroneous principle that men will speak truth, when under the influence of a passion more powerful than the love of truth; nor shall we be censured, in future times, for refusing, in excessive obedience to this principle, to admit the evidence of the richest peer of the realm, if he have the interest of sixpence in the cause; no has Sir Matthew Hale been visited with the sin of having condemned and suffered to be executed, a mother and her daughter of eleven years of age, for witchcraft, under the quaint advice of Si, (F)

The same course of private consultation with the judges would have been adopted in the case of Owen, had not the attorney-general been so clear in his opinion of the treason, as to induce him to think it inexpedient to imply that any doubt could be entertained.

Thomas Brown, one of the first physicians and | but, some of the judges doubting whether it was philosophers of his, or, indeed, of any time, who treason, he was not executed. was devoting his life to the confutation of what he deemed vulgar errors! nor will the judges of England hereafter be considered culpable for having at one session condemned and left for execution six young men and women under the age of twenty, for uttering forged one pound notes; or for having, so late as the year 1820, publicly sold for large sums the places of the officers of their

courts.

To persecute the lover of truth for opposing established customs, and to censure him in after ages for not having been more strenuous in opposition, are errors which will never cease until the pleasure of self-elevation from the depression of superiority is no more. "These things must continue as they have been; so too will that also continue, whereupon learning hath ever relied, and which faileth not: justificata est sapientia a filiis suis."

His speeches against Owen and Talbot, which are preserved, are in the usual style of speeches of this nature, with some of the scurrility by which the eloquence of the bar was at that time polluted.

ne dubitare aliquâ de re, videretur, priding themselves in pulling down magistrates, and chanting the psalm, Let us bind the kings in chains, and the nobles in fetters of iron." "

During this year an event occurred, which ma terially affected the immediate pursuits and future fate of Sir Francis Bacon,-the king's selection of a new favourite.

When speaking of the king's clemency, he says, "The king has had too many causes of irritation: he has been irritated by the Powder Treason, when, in the chair of majesty, his vine and olive branches about him, attended by his nobles and third estate in parliament, he was, in the twinkling of an eye, as if it had been a particular doomsday, to have been brought to ashes, and Bacon, unmoved by the prejudice, by which dispersed to the four winds. He hath been irriduring his life he was resisted, or the scurrilous tated by wicked and monstrous libels, and by the libels by which he was assailed, went right on-violence of demagogues who have at all times ward in the advancement of knowledge, the only infested, and in times of disturbance, when the effectual mode of decomposing error. Where he scum is uppermost, ever will infest society; confisaw that truth was likely to be received, he pre-dent and daring persons, Nihil tam verens, quam sented her in all her divine loveliness. When he could not directly attack error, when the light was too strong for weak eyes, he never omitted an opportunity to expose it. Truth is often silent as fearing her judge, never as suspecting her cause. In his letter to the king, stating that Peacham had been put to the torture, he says, "Though we are driven to make our way through questions, which I wish were otherwise, yet I hope the end will be good" and, unable at that period to counteract the then common custom of importuning the judges, he warned Villiers of the evil. "By no means," he says, "be you persuaded to interpose yourself, either by word or letter, in any cause depending, or like to be depending in any court of justice, nor suffer any other great man to do it where you can hinder it, and by all means dissuade the king himself from it, upon the importunity of any for themselves or their friends; if it should prevail, it perverts justice; but if the judge be so just, and of such courage, as he ought to be, as not to be inclined thereby, yet it always leaves a taint of suspicion behind it: judges must be as chaste as Cæsar's wife, neither to be, nor to be suspected to be unjust; and, sir, the honour of the judges in their judicature is the king's honour, whose person they represent."

George Villiers, a younger son of Sir George Villiers and Mary Beaumont, on each side well descended, was born in 1592. Having early lost his father, his education was conducted by Lady Villiers, and, though he was naturally intelligent and of quick parts, more attention was paid to the graces of manner and the lighter accomplishments which ornament a gentleman, than the solid learning and virtuous precepts which form a great and good man. At the age of eighteen he travelled to France, and, having passed three years in the completion of his studies, he returned to the seat of his forefathers, in Leicestershire, where he conceived an intention of settling himself in marriage; but, having journeyed to London, and consulted Sir Thomas Gresham, that gentleman, charmed by his personal beauty and graceful deportment, advised him to relinquish his intention, and try his fortune at court. Shrewd advice, which he, without a sigh, obeyed. He sacrificed his affections at the first temptation of ambition.

The trial of Peacham took place at Taunton on the 7th of August, 1615, before the chief baron and Sir Henry Montagu. Bacon did not attend, The king had gradually withdrawn his favou. but the prosecution was conducted by the king's from Somerset, equally displeased by the haughsergeant and solicitor, when the old clergyman, tiness of his manners, and by an increasing gloom, who defended himself "very simply, although that obscured all those lighter qualities which had obstinately and doggedly enough," was convicted, formerly contributed to his amusement, a glooni

3. Councillors, and the council table, and the

4. Foreign negotiations and embassies.

5. Peace and war, both foreign and civil, and in that the navy and forts, and what belongs to them. 6. Trade at home and abroad. 7. Colonies, or foreign plantations. 8. The court and curiality.

soon after fatally explained. Although power- | fully attracted by the elegance and gayety of Vil-offices and officers of the kingdom. liers, yet James had been so harassed by complaints of favouritism, that he would not bestow any appointment upon him, until solicited by the queen and some of the gravest of his councillors. In 1613 Villiers was taken into the king's household, and rose rapidly to the highest honours. He was nominated cupbearer, received several lucrative appointments; the successive honours of knighthood, of a barony, an earldom, a mar-nuteness scarcely to be conceived, except by the quisite, and was finally created Duke of Buckingham.

Each of these subjects he explains, with a mi

admirers of his works, who well know his extensive and minute survey of every subject to which he directed his attention.

In the beginning of the year 1613, Sir Thomas Overbury was poisoned in the Tower by one Weston, of which crime he was convicted, received sentence of death, and was executed. In the

From the paternal character of Bacon's protection of the new favourite, it is probable that he had early sought his assistance and advice; as a friendship was formed between them, which continued with scarcely any interruption till the death, and, indeed, after the death of Bacon: 1a | progress of the trial suspicions having been excited friendship which was always marked by a series of the wisest and best counsels, and was never checked by the increased power and elevation of Villiers.

This intimacy between an experienced statesman and a rising favourite was naturally looked upon with some jealousy, but it ought to have been remembered that there was never any intimacy between Bacon and Somerset. In the whole of his voluminous correspondence, there is not one letter of solicitation or compliment to that powerful favourite, or any vain attempt to divert him from his own gratifications to the advancement of the public good; but in Villiers he thought he saw a better nature, capable of such culture, as to be fruitful in good works. Whatever the motives were in which this union originated, the records extant of the spirit by which it was cemented are honourable to both. In the courtesy and docility of Villiers, Bacon did not foresee the rapacity that was to end in his own disgrace, and in the violent death of the favourite.

About this period, Sir George Villiers, personally and by letter, importuned his friend to communicate his sentiments respecting the conduct which, thus favoured by the king, it would be proper for him to observe; and, considering these requests as commands, Bacon wrote a letter of advice to Villiers, such as is not usually given in courts, but of a strain equally free and friendly, calculated to make the person to whom it was addressed both good and great, and equally honourable to the giver and the receiver: advice which contributed not a little to his prosperity in life. It is an essay on the following jects:

against the Earl and Countess of Somerset, as having been deeply concerned in this barbarous act; their injudicious friends, by endeavouring to circulate a report that these suspicions were but an artifice to ruin that nobleman, the King commanded the attorney-general to prosecute in the Star Chamber Mr. Lumsden, a gentleman of good family in Scotland, Sir John Hollis, afterwards Earl of Clare, and Sir John Wentworth, who were convicted and severely punished. The speech of Bacon upon this trial is fortunately preserved.

Shortly after this investigation, so many circumstances transpired, all tending to implicate the Earl and Countess of Somerset, and so great an excitement prevailed through the whole country, that the king determined to bring these great offenders to trial; a resolution which he could not have formed without the most painful struggle between his duty to the public and his anxiety to protect his fallen favourite. His sense of duty as the dispenser of justice prevailed. Previous to the trial, which took place May, 1616, the same course of private consultation with the judges was pursued, and the king caused it to be privately intimated to Somerset, that it would be his own fault if favour was not extended to him: favour which was encouraged by Bacon, in a letter to the king, in which he says, "The great downfall of so great persons carrieth in itself a heavy judgment, and a kind of civil death, although their lives should not be taken. All which may satisfy honour for sparing their lives."

In his speech upon the trial, Bacon gave a sub-clear and circumstantial account of the whole conspiracy against Overbury, describing the various practices against his life; but though he fully and fairly executed his duty as attorney-general, it was without malice or harshness, availing himself of an opportunity, of which he never lost sight, to recommend mercy; and though the friends of the new favourite were supposed to have

1. Matters that concern religion, and the church and churchmen.

2. Matters concerning justice, and the laws, and the professors thereof.

1 See Bacon's will.

So I ever remain your true and most devoted and obliged servant. -3d June, 1616."

been deeply interested in the downfall of Somerset, | whom I owe most after the king and yourself, and accused of secretly working his ruin, Bacon should be locked to his successor for any adgained great honour in the opinions of all men, by vancement or gracing of me. his impartial yet merciful treatment of a man whom in his prosperity he had shunned and despised. Early in this year, (1615, Æt. 55,) a dispute which occasioned considerable agitation, arose between the Court of Chancery and the Court of King's Bench, respecting the jurisdiction of the chancellor after judgment given in courts of law. Upon this dispute, heightened by the warmth and haughtiness of Sir Edward Coke, and the dangerous illness of the chancellor at the time when Coke promoted the inquiry, the king and Villiers conferred with Bacon, to whom and other emi-sual honour he was immediately congratulated by nent members of the profession, the matter was referred, and upon their report, the king in person pronounced judgment in favour of the lord chancellor, with some strong observations upon the conduct of Coke.

Pending this investigation, (1616, Et. 56,) Villiers, it seems, communicated to Bacon the king's intention either to admit him a member of the privy council, or, upon the death or resignation of the chancellor, to intrust him with the great seal, a trust to which he was certain of the chancellor's recommendation.

He was accordingly sworn of the privy council, and took his seat at the board on the 9th of June; it having been previously agreed that, though in general he should cease to plead as an advocate, his permission to give counsel in causes should continue, and that if any urgent and weighty matter should arise, that he might, with the king's permission, be allowed to plead. Upon this unu

the university of Cambridge.

Such were the occupations of this philosopher, who, during the three years in which period he was attorney-general, conducted himself with such prudent moderation in so many perplexed and difficult cases, and with such evenness and integrity, that his conduct has never been questioned, nor has malice dared to utter of him the least calumny.

He now approached his last act as attorneygeneral, which was of the same nature as the first, his prosecution of Mr. Markham in the Star Chamber, for sending a challenge to Lord Darcy.

Having thus discharged the duties of solicitor and attorney-general, with much credit to himself On the 3d of March, 1616-17, Lord Brackley, and advantage to the community, he, early in the then lord chancellor, being worn out with age and year 1615-16, expressed to Villiers his wish to be infirmities, resigned the great seal, and escaped, admitted a member of the privy council, from the for a short interval, from the troubles of the Court hope that he might be of service "in times which of Chancery, over which he had presided for did never more require a king's attorney to be thirteen years, amidst the disputes between this well armed, and to wear a gauntlet and not a high tribunal and the courts of common law, and glove." In consequence of this communication, the pressure of business, which had so increased the king, on the 3d of June, gave him the option as to have been beyond the power of any indieither to be made privy councillor, or the assur-vidual to control. ance of succeeding the chancellor. Bacon, for reasons which he has thus expressed in a letter to Villiers, preferred being sworn privy councillor:

On the 7th of the same month, the seals were delivered by the king to Sir Francis Bacon, with four admonitions: First, To contain the jurisdiction of the court within its true and due limits, without "Sir, the king giveth me a noble choice, and swelling or excess. Secondly, Not to put the gre: you are the man my heart ever told me you were. seal to letters patent, as a matter of course to follow Ambition would draw me to the latter part of the after precedent warrants. Thirdly, To retrench choice; but in respect of my hearty wishes that all unnecessary delays, that the subject might find my lord chancellor may live long, and the small that he did enjoy the same remedy against the hopes I have that I shall live long myself, and, fainting of the soul and the consumption of the above all, because I see his majesty's service estate, which was speedy justice. “Bis dat, qui daily and instantly bleedeth; towards which I cito dat." Fourthly, That justice might pass with persuade myself (vainly, perhaps, but yet in mine as easy charge as might be; and that those same own thoughts firmly and constantly) that I shall brambles, that grow about justice, of needless give, when I am of the table, some effectual fur-charge and expense, and all manner of exactions, therance, (as a poor thread of the labyrinth, which hath no other virtue but a united continuance, without interruption or distraction,) I do accept of the former, to be councillor for the present, and to give over pleading at the bar; let the other matter rest upon my proof and his majesty's pleasure, and the accidents of time. For, to speak plainly, I would be loath that my lord chancellor, to

might be rooted out so far as might be.

Thus was Francis Bacon, then in the fiftyseventh year of his age, created Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England.

In the joy of recent possession he instantly wrote to his friend and patron, the Earl of Buckingham, with a pen overflowing with the expression of his gratitude.