Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu/59

Rh Nothing was left to do but to pronounce judgment. Bacon was summoned before the House of Lords May 3 to receive sentence, but he was too ill to appear. It was voted unanimously that the Lord Chancellor Bacon should pay a fine of £40,000; that he should be forever incapable of holding office, or of sitting in Parliament; that he should be imprisoned in the Tower during the King's pleasure; and that he should not come within the verge of the Court, that is, within a range of twelve miles round the King's residence in London. By a majority of two he was allowed to retain his titles. On the 31st of May Bacon was imprisoned in the Tower, and wrote the same day to Buckingham begging for a warrant for his release. In this letter, in the same sentence in which he acknowledged "the sentence just, and for reformation sake fit," he declared that he was "the justest Chancellor that hath been in the five changes since Sir Nicholas Bacon's time." The King ordered Bacon's release at once, as we learn from a letter of thanks to Buckingham, dated June 4. Subsequently the fine was remitted by transferring it from the King to persons named by Bacon, in trust for Bacon. The rest of the sentence stood, except that in about a year he was allowed to return to London.

It had been a rise to vast power and influence. It was a fall full of shame and ignominy. Bacon was too great a man, however, not to be great still even in disgrace. He retired to Gorhambury, and there for the remaining five years of his life he Rh