Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/107

Rh to his majesty likewise, for his grace and favour. Your lordships humble servant and suppliant, ", Canc."

This confession and submission being read, it was agreed that certain lords do go unto the lord chancellor, and show him the said confession; and tell him that the lords do conceive it to be an ingenuous and full confession, and demand whether it be his own hand that is subscribed to the same; and their lordships being returned, reported, that the lord chancellor said, "It is my act, my hand, my heart. I beseech your lordships, be merciful unto a broken reed." On the 2d of May, the seals having been sequestered, the House resolved to proceed to judgment on the next day.

In this interval, on the evening of the 2d of May, the chancellor wrote to the king, "to save him from the sentence, to let the cup pass from him; for if it is reformation that is sought, taking the seals will, with the general submission, be sufficient atonement."

These his last hopes were vain: the king did not, he could not interpose.

On the 3d of May the Lords adjudged, "that, upon his own confession, they had found him guilty: and therefore that he shall undergo fine and ransom of forty thousand pounds; be imprisoned in the Tower during the king's pleasure; be forever incapable of any office, place, or employment in the state or commonwealth; and shall never sit in parliament, nor come within the verge of the court." Thus fell, from the height of worldly prosperity, Francis, Lord Chancellor of Great Britain. The cause of his having deserted his defence he never revealed. He patiently endured the agony of uncommunicated grief. He confidently relied upon the justice of future ages. There are, however, passages in his writings whre his deep feeling of the injury appear.

In the Advancement of Learning we are admonished that, "Words best disclose our minds when we are agitated,

for, as Proteus never changed shapes till he was straitened and held fast with cords, so our nature appears most fully in trials and vexations." By observing his words in moments of agitation, the state of his mind is manifest.

When imprisoned in the Tower, he instantly wrote to Buckingham, saying, "However I have acknowledged that the sentence is just, and for reformation sake fit, I have been a trusty, and honest, and Christ-loving friend to your lordship, and the justest chancellor that hath been in the five changes since my father's time." In another letter, "God is my witness, that, when I examine myself, I find all well, and that I have approved myself to your lordship a true friend, both in the watery trial of prosperity, and in the fiery trial of adversity:" "I hope his majesty may reap honour out of my adversity, as he hath done strength out of my prosperity." "For the briberies and gifts wherewith I am charged, when the book of hearts shall be opened, I hope I shall not be found to have the troubled fountain of a corrupt heart, in a depraved habit of taking rewards to pervert justice; howsoever I may be frail, and partake of the abuses of the time," was his expression in the midst of his agony.

In a collection of his letters in the Lambeth Library there is the following passage in Greek characters;

In his will, he says, "For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and the next ages."

These words, not to be read till he was at rest from his labours, were cautiously selected, with the knowledge which he, above all men, possessed of the power of expression, and of their certain influence, sooner or later, upon society.

The obligation to silence, imposed upon Bacon, extended to his friends after he was in the grave.

Dr. Rawley, his first and last chaplain, says, "Some papers touching matters of estate, tread too near to the heels of truth, and to the times of the persons concerned." Archbishop Tennison says, "The great cause of his suffering is to some a secret. I leave them to find it out by his words to King James: 'I wish that as I am the first, so I may be the last of sacrifices in your times:' and when, from private appetite, it is resolved that a creature shall be sacrificed, it is easy to pick up sticks enough from any thicket whither it hath strayed, to make a fire to offer it with."

From these observations it may be seen, that there was a conflict in the minds of these excellent men between their inclination to speak and their duty to be silent. They did not violate this duty; but one of his most sincere and grateful admirers, who, although he had painfully, but sacredly, preserved the secret from his youth to his old age, at last thus spoke:

"Before this could be accomplished to his own content, there arose such complaints against his lordship, and the then favourite at court, that for some days put the king to this quere, whether he should permit the favourite of his affection, or the oracle of his council, to sink in his service; whereupon his lordship was sent for by the king, who, after some discourse, gave him this positive advice, to submit himself to his House of Peers, and that, upon his princely word, he would then