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Rh death. It was Bacon's duty as a loyal citizen to abhor the crime. But condemnation of the crime is a very different thing from taking part in the prosecution and helping to bring an old friend to the block. That contemporary opinion did not approve of Bacon's course is clear from the testimony of Bacon himself. Even before Essex's affairs had reached their climax, he said one day to the Queen in a burst of "passion" very unusual for him, "A great many love me not, because they think I have been against my Lord of Essex; and you love me not, because you know I have been for him." And either he smarted under the censure of public opinion, or his conscience twitted him, for when both Elizabeth and Essex were dead, and there could be no answer to his statements, he wrote his Apology in Certain Imputations concerning the late Earl of Essex (1604).

If Bacon hoped to win advancement by acting as an unsworn counsel of the Queen against the Earl of Essex, he was disappointed, for there was no change in his political circumstances during the life of Queen Elizabeth. His material circumstances were improved in 1601 by the death of his brother Anthony, to whom he was probably more sincerely attached than to any other person.

With the accession of James I, Bacon's position began to mend. In August, 1604, his office as one of the learned counsel was confirmed, and for the first time a salary of £60 a year was attached to it. One of the first acts of sovereignty of James I was the conferring of knighthood on a mob of gentlemen at Rh