vote him supplies to the amount he wished; in the other, he was personally present at the torturing of a poor old Somersetshire clergyman for having written a sermon-which, however, he had never preached-justifying insurrection under certain cir

cumstances.

At this time Bacon showed his keen prevision and skill in reading the signs of the times, by severing the ties of friendship binding him to the King's "reigning" favourite-Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset-and espousing the cause of the rising one-George Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham. His foresight was justified. Somerset fell along with his Countess, both steeped in the infamy of the Overbury murder; Villiers rose like a rocket over the ruined splendour of his predecessor, being materially assisted by Bacon in the early stages of his upward course. Bacon's allusion to royal"favourites" in his Essay on "Ambition," is esteemed to refer to James's partiality for them. With characteristic servility he so far palliates the practice with the words: "It is accounted by some a weakness in princes to have favourites; but it is of all others the best remedy against ambitious great ones."

Whatever services Bacon rendered, Buckingham amply repaid them, in exerting his influence to pro

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cure rapid promotion for him. In June 1616 Bacon was sworn in of the Privy Council, and in March 1617, on the retirement of Lord Brackley, he was appointed Keeper of the Great Seal. The address delivered by him before his Court on taking his seat was characterised by lofty nobility of sentiment and dignified oratory. On the official ladder only one step now remained for him to mount, and that one he was not long in ascending. In January 1618 he was appointed Lord Chancellor of England. Other honours were showered on him. In July of the same year he was raised to the peerage as Lord Verulam, the designation being taken from the Latin name of St. Albans, near which town his estate of Gorhambury was situated.

Possessed now of a very large income, he maintained great power and state in his household arrangements. January 1620 saw him entering his 60th year, and he celebrated the occasion at York House by a gathering of his friends, whose congratulations he received with manifest pleasure. Ben Jonson was of the party, and commemorated the scene in lines at once flattering and felicitous. -In October 1620 he published the Novum Organum,~ or the New Instrument for the Interpretation of Nature and the Discovery of Truth a volume which, in the words of Macaulay, drew forth the warmest expressions of admiration from the ablest

men in Europe; while a further honour was conferred on him in January of the succeeding year, when he was created Viscount St. Albans.

He had now reached the pinnacle of greatness. Higher he could not rise. Honours, dignities, wealth, praise, public esteem all were his. But, alas, with these, there must have been the humiliating consciousness of shameful acts of tyranny committed at the instigation of James and Buckingham. He consented to the death of Raleigh-the greatest Englishman of his age next to Shakespeare and himself; he deserted his own friend, AttorneyGeneral Yelverton, when the latter was tried for inserting unauthorised clauses in the charter of the City of London; he supported the Spanish alliance, when he had already advocated a treaty, offensive and defensive, with the Netherlands, and although he knew the heart of the nation loathed everything associated with Spain; he approved of oppressive "Monopolies" by which the people were unjustly taxed, and he permitted Buckingham to influence the course of justice in the Chancery Courts. There is a passage in his Essay "On Negotiating," beginning: "It is better dealing with men in appetite1 than with those that are where they would be. If a man deal with another upon conditions, the start of 1 "Men in appetite"=men whose desires have not been gratified.

first performance is all," et seq.,1 which seems to be written with designed obscurity, yet which is undoubtedly a protest against the degrading servility he had been obliged all his life to display, first towards the Cecils and then towards James and his favourites.

But the day of reckoning, if long delayed, came at last. Parliament, after being unsummoned from 1614 to 1621, had at length to be convoked, and among the first acts of the Commons was to table a demand for reform in connection with the oppressive Monopoly-patents, under cover of which Buckingham and his creatures had pillaged the nation. From these, instigated by Bacon's enemy, Coke, whose dismissal from the Chief-Justiceship of the Queen's Bench he had effected during his Attorney-Generalship, the Commons passed on to criticise the state of the Courts of Justice, and direct charges of accepting bribes were tabulated against the Chancellor. Bacon, scenting mischief in Coke's attitude, tried to urge the King to resistance with words that read strangely prophetic of the fate of Charles I. eight and twenty years thereafter: "Those that will strike at your Chancellor, it is much to be feared will strike at your Crown."

But all was in vain. The King could do nothing beyond imprisoning Coke, for Bacon had practically

1 P. 206.

no defence to offer. The evidence against him was overwhelming. Yet this was the man who in his Essay "On Judicature" had expressed such lofty sentiments on the necessity for unbiassed justice. The whole paper is his condemnation, but more especially these sentences: "Above all things integrity is their (judges') portion and proper virtue . . one foul sentence doth more hurt than many foul examples, for these do but corrupt the stream, the other corrupteth the fountain. . . . The place of justice is a hallowed place, and therefore not only the bench but the foot-pace and precincts and purprise thereof ought to be preserved without scandal and corruption." 1

2

The Chancellor at last came to recognise his case as hopeless, and probably under the influence of feelings such as he describes in his Essay "On Wisdom for a Man's Self," which contains obvious references to the relations formerly existing between the King, Buckingham, and himself-for the practice of bribe-taking was general, from the King on the throne to the lowest lackey in his service-he wrote

a letter throwing himself on the mercy of his peers, evidently hoping that James and Buckingham would save him to save themselves. The epistle manifests a strange mingling of pathos and petulance, of noble aspirations after greater purity in "the fount of