Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/70

 Thomas Brown, one of the first physicians and philosophers of his, or, indeed, of any time, who was devoting his life to the confutation of what he deemed vulgar errors! nor will the judges of England hereafter be considered culpable for having at one session condemned and left for execution six young men and women under the age of twenty, for uttering forged one pound notes; or for having, so late as the year 1820, publicly sold for large sums the places of the officers of their courts.

To persecute the lover of truth for opposing established customs, and to censure him in after ages for not having been more strenuous in opposition, are errors which will never cease until the pleasure of self-elevation from the depression of superiority is no more. "These things must continue as they have been; so too will that also continue, whereupon learning hath ever relied, and which faileth not: justificata est sapientia a filiis suis." Bacon, unmoved by the prejudice, by which during his life he was resisted, or the scurrilous libels by which he was assailed, went right onward in the advancement of knowledge, the only effectual mode of decomposing error. Where he saw that truth was likely to be received, he presented her in all her divine loveliness. When he could not directly attack error, when the light was too strong for weak eyes, he never omitted an opportunity to expose it. Truth is often silent as fearing her judge, never as suspecting her cause.

In his letter to the king, stating that Peacham had been put to the torture, he says, "Though we are driven to make our way through questions, which I wish were otherwise, yet I hope the end will be good:" and, unable at that period to counteract the then common custom of importuning the judges, he warned Villiers of the evil. "By no means," he says, "be you persuaded to interpose yourself, either by word or letter, in any cause depending, or like to be. depending in any court of justice, nor suffer any other great man to do it where you can hinder it, and by all means dissuade the king himself from it, upon the importunity of any for themselves or their friends; if it should prevail, it perverts justice; but if the judge be so just, and of such courage, as he ought to be, as not to be inclined thereby, yet it always leaves a taint of suspicion behind it: judges must be as chaste as Cæsar's wife, neither to be, nor to be suspected to be unjust; and, sir, the honour of the judges in their judicature is the king's honour, whose person they represent." The trial of Peacham took place at Taunton on the 7th of August, 1615, before the chief baron and Sir Henry Montagu. Bacon did not attend, but the prosecution was conducted by the king's sergeant and solicitor, when the old clergyman, who defended himself "very simply, although obstinately and doggedly enough," was convicted, but, some of the judges doubting whether it was treason, he was not executed.

The same course of private consultation with the judges would have been adopted in the case of Owen, had not the attorney-general been so clear in his opinion of the treason, as to induce him to think it inexpedient to imply that any doubt could be entertained.

His speeches against Owen and Talbot, which are preserved, are in the usual style of speeches of this nature, with some of the scurrility by which the eloquence of the bar was at that time polluted.

When speaking of the king's clemency, he says, "The king has had too many causes of irritation: he has been irritated by the Powder Treason, when, in the chair of majesty, his vine and olive branches about him, attended by his nobles and third estate in parliament, he was, in the twinkling of an eye, as if it had been a particular doomsday, to have been brought to ashes, and dispersed to the four winds. He hath been irritated by wicked and monstrous libels, and by the violence of demagogues who have at all times infested, and in times of disturbance, when the scum is uppermost, ever will infest society; confident and daring persons, Nihil tam verens, quam ne dubitare aliquâ de re, videretur, priding themselves in pulling down magistrates, and chanting the psalm, 'Let us bind the kings in chains, and the nobles in fetters of iron.'"

During this year an event occurred, which materially affected the immediate pursuits and future fate of Sir Francis Bacon,–the king's selection of a new favourite.

George Villiers, a younger son of Sir George Villiers and Mary Beaumont, on each side well descended, was born in 1592. Having early lost his father, his education was conducted by Lady Villiers, and, though he was naturally intelligent and of quick parts, more attention was paid to the graces of manner and the lighter accomplishments which ornament a gentleman, than the solid learning and virtuous precepts which form a great and good man. At the age of eighteen he travelled to France, and, having passed three years in the completion of his studies, he returned to the seat of his forefathers, in Leicestershire, where he conceived an intention of settling himself in marriage; but, having journeyed to London, and consulted Sir Thomas Gresham, that gentleman, charmed by his personal beauty and graceful deportment, advised him to relinquish his intention, and try his fortune at court. Shrewd advice, which he, without a sigh, obeyed. He sacrificed his affections at the first temptation of ambition.

The king had gradually withdrawn his favour from Somerset, equally displeased by the haughtiness of his manners, and by an increasing gloom, that obscured all those lighter qualities which had formerly contributed to his amusement, a gloom