Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/98

84 his brother had shared the emolument, let him also share the punishment. But this was safely said, for Villiers was already abroad out of the reach of parliament; and means were not long wanted to let Mompesson escape out of the custody of the sergeant-at-arms. Mitchell was not so fortunate; he was secured and lodged in the Tower.

In these prosecutions Coke was extremely active, for he saw a prospect of taking a signal revenge on Bacon, who had not only supplanted him, but insulted him in his fall. Bacon was notoriously mixed up with the corruptions of the court of chancery; and Coke informed the commons that it was not within their jurisdiction to punish offenders not of their own house, and that they could punish all offences against the state in co-operation with the lords. Accordingly they invited the upper house to take cognisance of these offences, with which they readily coupled, and sentenced Mompesson and Mitchell to be degraded from their knighthood, fined, and imprisoned. James, who had done his best to screen the offenders, then, in a fit of affected patriotism, expressed his indignation at having had his credulity imposed on by these men, and by an illegal stretch of prerogative converted Mompesson's sentence into perpetual banishment. Buckingham, the guiltiest party of all, did not quite escape observation. Yelverton, the attorney-general, who was accused of participation in these illegal practices, and who was condemned to severe fines and imprisonment for life, boldly accused Buckingham, before the house of lords, of his master share in them. But that favourite was too strongly fortified by the royal favour, and by those who must have fallen with him, to be seriously endangered. But lesser men did not escape so well. Sir John Burnet, judge of the prerogative court, was impeached, as well as Dr. Field, bishop of Llandaff, for bribery and corruption. Burnet was charged with having granted administration of wills for money, contrary to law; but he escaped his punishment by obtaining time to prepare his defence, during which parliament was prorogued; but he was afterwards fined twenty thousand pounds in the star-chamber, for which, however, he obtained a pardon. Field of Llandaff had bound a suitor in chancery to pay him over six thousand pounds, if he obtained his suit for him, through Buckingham. At the entreaty of the arch-bishop, however, he, too, escaped, under pretence of being left to the dealing of the church.



But the great offender, at whom Coke and others were directing their main efforts, was the lord chancellor Bacon. Bacon had managed to make his way from an obscure position to the highest honours of the state. He was not only lord chancellor of the kingdom, and a baron, but of late was become lord viscount St. Albans. Besides this elevation, he possessed a far higher one in the fame of his philosophical works; and had he possessed as much real greatness of mind as talent, might have stood in the admiration of posterity as Milton does—poor, but glorious beyond the tinsel glory of courts; and it might have been said of him as of the great poet—

But Bacon, who had placed his name high on the scroll of immortality by his genius, was destined, like Lucifer, to become more notorious by his fall than by his standing. Brilliant as were his powers, superb as were his accomplishments, he had not hesitated to trail his finest qualities through the mire of courts and corruption, in the eager quest of worldly distinction. He had risen, perhaps, more by his base flatteries, and his calumnious envy of his contemporaries, than