368

INTELLECTUAL DIRECTNESS.

He goes on to beg the place, and point out how it may be accomplished. Next to disparage possible competitors.

"If you take my Lord Coke, this will follow: first, your Majesty shall put an overruling nature into an overruling place, which may breed an extreme; next, you shall blunt his industry in matters of finance which seemeth to aim at another place. And, lastly, popular men are no sure mounters for your Majesty's saddle. If you take my Lord Hubbard, you shall have a judge at the upper end of your council board and another at the lower end, whereby your Majesty will find your Prerogative pent. If you take my Lord of Canterbury, I will say no more, but the Chancellor's place requires a whole man. And to have both jurisdictions spiritual and temporal in that height, is fit but for a King."

There is no modesty about Sir Francis. No shame about blasting other men's characters. He goes without scruple, like Richard the Third, and as intellectually and passionless, straight to his point. He does not hate these

men.

He simply would brush them away like flies. How well balanced is the last sentence to ruin my Lord of Canterbury! no waste of words, but the happy suggestion that he might be a dangerous subject. That will settle my Lord of Canterbury much better than abuse. We shall have more of this wise defamation by-and-by.

He proceeds to give his own qualifications. He has interest, and with those parliament men, who are "cardo rerum," he will pack the bench. "It is as an overseer over judges, as a planter of fit justices, that Bacon knoweth his duty, and that it concerns the King to be advised.* "If God calls the Chancellor," Bacon is ready, with all

* Cabala.'

the warrants and commissions prepared-everything, in fact, to enable him to step into the dying man's shoes. But he is not dead yet; gets better directly. Indeed, the wish was father to the thought. Nor is he to die for two years, so that Bacon will have still some time anxiously to wait.

At this time, moreover, to add to Bacon's labours, a quarrel has sprung up between Coke and Ellesmere, the Chancellor, as to the superior jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery. Bacon, of course, sides with the Chancellor against Coke; and on the 15th of February—that is, three days after Bacon wrote his last letter-there is an allusion to the quarrel in his correspondence. In this letter that is, of the 15th-printed 35 Vol. XII. of Montagu, I am compelled to place a very harsh construction. I regret it the more that the meaning is not obvious, but doubtful-very vaguely expressed. But after careful consideration it seems open to the imputation of suggesting that, as Ellesmere is recovering and likely to be soon out of danger, and as the quarrel continues, it were better for the cause of justice that another Chancellor should be appointed. Directly, of course, it does not say this. It is not likely that it would. Such a step would neither be consonant with Bacon's nature, nor wise under the circumstances. The step would be perilous. It hints merely that while the sickness of the Chancellor is mending, the sickness of his court is getting worse; and that the cure of the one will be easier than the other. then hoped that community of service would have hindered. his Majesty's servants from quarrelling.

He

"But pardon

370

ATTEMPT TO OVERAWE JUDGES.

me, I humbly pray your Majesty, if I have too reasonable thoughts."

On the 21st, he launches another long letter at the King, containing much information on the law of the contest between the King's Bench and Chancery Courts, and among other things, a reason why my Lord Coke should be disgraced at this time.

This letter contains a clever disparagement of Coke in the style already indicated, but without any great finesse, pretending to no animosity, but at the same time bent on disparagement. "Lord Coke was perchance not privy to the insult thus thrown on the King's prerogative by the slight given to Chancery, which James has long since made a personal matter, though I confess it be suspicious. His error was rather that he did not divert it in some good manner. At the same time the insult to the Chancellor, at the time he was supposed to be dying, was barbarous.” "Nor should the defiance of the Court of Chancery (which is the court of your absolute power) pass lightly, or end only in some formal atonement, but used to strengthen your prerogative, according to the rules of monarchy."

How basely, how slavishly, how wickedly, how traitorously to his oath, Bacon here advised the King, to the violation of the law, and to the injury of the subject, is here seen. But the next passages are even worse:

"If it is true, as it is reported, that the puisne judges did stir in this business, I do think that judge worthy to lose his place. There can be no better thing, at this time; nothing more likely to conduce to the King's welfare, than upon a just and fit occasion to make some

CULMINATING INIQUITY.

371

example against the presumption of a judge, in causes that concern your Majesty, whereby the whole body of those magistrates may be contained in better awe," the example being bettered, spite of any injustice to the individual, by such a person being "rude (like Coke), and that no man cares for."

If the King should doubt his power in such a case to punish a judge for giving an adverse verdict, for being just; in opposition to his own interest, for being honest and upright, Bacon knows of a precedent. He will not say that there be any in fault (God forbid !), yet he thinks "that the very presumption of going so far in such a case worthy of a punishment once before applied; the judges having once, to answer before Elizabeth on their knees, and Lord Wrey, being then chief justice, was deprived of his dignity, and stripped of his robes;-" slipped his collar" is the Baconian phrase. This admirable suggestion, and doubtless, in Bacon's eyes, "excellent precedent," deserving, like many others from the same source, to be enshrined in Machiavelli's Prince, winding up with the advice, emphatically expressed, that the King should keep the judges in their places, limit their jurisdictions, and punish them for contumacy.

St. John was tried on the 15th of April, 1615, Bacon prosecuting as Attorney-General.* In his duty as advocate

* It will very possibly be found that one or two of the letters in this book have been attributed to a year preceding or succeeding that in which they were written. On this point no previous biographer serves as a guide. In Lord Campbell and Mr. Montagu, occurrences are placed as transpiring in different years, which are actually alluded to in the same letter. Twelve months is presumed to have elapsed between the trials of St. John and Peacham and the Chancellor's illness,

372

THE ACCUSATION OF ST. JOHN.

he is bound to urge everything that he can against Mr. St. John; but he in no way impeaches him either in reputation, character, or fame. He states that he is, "as it seems, of an ancient house and name; his offence, that he hath upon advice-not suddenly by his pen, nor by the slip of his tongue; not privately, or in a corner, but publicly, as it were, to the face of the King's ministers and justices—slandered and traduced the King our sovereign, the law of the land, the parliament, and infinite particulars of his Majesty's worthy and loving subjects. Nay, the slander is of that nature, that it might seem to interest the people in grief and discontent against the state. Whence might have ensued matter of murmur and sedition. that it is not a simple slander, but a seditious slander, like to that the Poet speaketh of calamosque armare veneno,' a venemous dart that hath both iron and poison.'”

So

This is the opening. After some irrelevant matter, he proceeds to say that this Benevolence is not a Benevolence pure and simple: "You may take it, if you will, as an advance or provisional help until a future parliament, or as a gratification simply, without any relation to a parliament; you can noways take it amiss. The letters were

yet Bacon, in a note to the King, speaks of both as pending. By Mr. Montagu's mode of editing the letters, confusion is even worse confounded. Indeed he seems to have given up the task of arrangement in despair; while the frequently incorrect dates he has assigned have much increased the difficulty of followers in the same path. As a consequence of all this irregularity, it is difficult for any one to ascertain whether Ellesmere was once or twice at the point of death. Lord Campbell fixes his illness in 1616; yet Bacon's letter of January 29, 1614, vol. xvi., p. 165, Montagu, mentions his imminent danger, and this is merely one of several instances.