Chronicles of an Old Inn; Or, A Few Words about Gray's Inn

by Andrée Hope

There seems little reason now to doubt that the gifts the Chancellor was accused of taking had been enforced, and received by these underlings.

It was these lamentable gifts that had caused him to be suspected of injustice, and yet it was subsequently proved that his decrees had been made for the most part with so much equity, that not one of them was ever reversed as unjust.

"It was peculiar to this man," says one of his numerous biographers, "to have nothing narrow or selfish in his composition. He gave away without concern whatever he possessed, and believing other men to be of the same mould, he received with as little consideration."

This opinion is probably correct in the main, but the greatest admirers of this talented and in many respects exceptionally great man, must admit that, ere he could have become unmindful of the honourable fealty he owed to his dead friend, the greed of power must have been strong in his heart, and that it was a selfish reluctance to take trouble that made him disregard one of the most stringent duties of the great, not only to be just themselves, but to ascertain that injustice is not practised by their subordinates.

After a short period of imprisonment the fallen Chancellor was released from the Tower. The King ultimately remitted his fine; and, after the death of James, he was again summoned to attend Parliament in the first year of the reign of Charles I., but never again after his degradation did Bacon take part in active life.

At first, indeed, after his release from prison, he found himself in extreme poverty. All he valued in this world had gone from him. Place, position, money, and, above all, that consideration from others which had been so dear to his heart.

So great at one time was his pecuniary distress, that he wrote a pathetic letter to King James, entreating His Majesty's assistance. "Lest," as he expresses it, "he should be reduced to carry a wallet, and after having lived only to study, be forced to study to live."

Notwithstanding the sorrowfulness of the letter, there lurks within it a vein of the humour that rendered him so delightful a companion, and through it all can be perceived the indomitable spirit of the man, that, even in the bitterest moment of his shattered fortunes, rose superior to the ruin that had overtaken him.

The energy that had made him so powerful in his public career did not desert him in his retirement.

With all the ardour of his great heart, he loved his country home, his quiet lodgings in Gray's Inn, and the studies to which, during the last years of his life, he wholly devoted himself. It was at this period that he wrote some of his most important English and Latin works; and from these it is evident that his thoughts were as free, and as vigorous, as they had ever been during the earliest and most brilliant years of his career.