Bacon had hitherto resolutely denied the deeds with which the public voice reproached him; but the blow was too bold and the accusations too plainly specified for him to be able to resist the evidence any longer. His eloquence, the marvellous resources of his mind, the brilliancy of his genius, all failed him with the decline of court favor. He felt himself abandoned by the king, who had never had any liking for him, the servility of Bacon not succeeding in veiling his intellectual superiority. The Duke of Buckingham coveted his offices for some of his own dependents. The great chancellor was stricken with sickness, he took to his bed and asked for time to prepare his defence. It was not a defence, but a general confession which he caused to be presented on the 24th of April to the House of Lords. Being pressed with questions, he avowed one after another all the shameful actions of which he was accused, palliating them as well as he was able and asking mercy of his judges. "The poor gentleman," wrote a contemporary, "elevated formerly above pity, has now fallen below it; his tongue, which was the glory of his time for eloquence, is like a forsaken harp hung upon the willow, while the waters of affliction flow over upon the banks." The abasement was complete. The Lords had spared this great criminal the humiliation of appearing at their bar, but a deputation repaired to his residence in order to cause the authenticity of the writing and the circumstantial confession to be certified. "It is my act, my hand, my heart. Oh my Lords, spare a broken reed!" sobbed the great philosopher, the brilliant genius, the profound thinker who is still one of the glories of England. Moral character had been lacking to these intellectual gifts.
Bacon was condemned to lose all his offices and to pay a fine of forty thousand pounds sterling, which was remitted by the king, for he was in no condition to discharge it. His imprisonment was commuted into exile within his estates. It was forbidden him during his lifetime to approach the court, to sit in Parliament, or to serve his country in whatever capacity it might be.
No punishment could be more bitter to Bacon. Confined to his country seat, he revised his former works, his Essays, his Novum Organum, or New Philosophy, his two books on the Progress of Science. He caused them to be translated into Latin; he even wrote a History of Henry VII.; but his heart was still in court and in public life. He only asked to reappear upon that scene from which he had been so ignominiously expelled, and he harassed the King, Prince Charles, and the Duke of Buckingham with his petitions. None gave ear to him, none replied to him; his temper became embittered, his health became impaired, and this great mind, fallen so low, was extinguished in 1626, five years after his disgrace. He died at the age of sixty-five.
The affairs of the Elector-Palatine, who had become King of Bohemia, were becoming more and more serious. The five thousand Englishmen sent by King James, ill-paid and poorly commanded, had rendered little service. The embassies with which he importuned all the powers interested exerted no influence. The throne of Bohemia, like the hereditary states of Prince Frederick, had been taken from him, and, driven from Germany, he had been compelled to take refuge at the Hague with his wife and children, there to live upon a pension allowed him by the Dutch; but his father-in-law, King James, had conceived a project which was, he thought, calculated at least to re-establish his son-in-law in the Palatinate. He counted in this affair upon the influence of Spain.
In spite of the national opposition to a Catholic marriage for the heir to the throne, and notwithstanding the recent petitions of Parliament to this effect, King James, who had moreover quarrelled with the House of Commons and had caused several of its members to be arrested, continued his negotiations with Philip IV. for the marriage of Prince Charles with the Infanta, Donna Maria. For nearly twenty years the King of England had, in common with Spain, dreamed of this alliance, which he at length regarded as on the point of being realized. The scheme had been proposed more than once in the shape of a union between Prince Henry with the Infanta Anne; the prince had died and the Infanta had married the King of France. The King of Spain, Philip III., had at first appeared favorable to the marriage, but on his death-bed he recommended his son Philip IV. to make his sister an empress by uniting her to her cousin the Emperor Ferdinand. King James did not know of the last wish of the dying king, but he hoped to find the new Spanish sovereign more accommodating than his father. After endless negotiations and journeys to and fro, after Catholic pretensions on the part of Spain, and displays of pecuniary avidity on that of King James, who threatened to break off everything, an almost complete understanding had been arrived at in the month of January, 1623: the Infanta was to preserve the free exercise of her religion; the English Catholics were to enjoy a practical, if not legal, toleration; the payments of the dowry of two millions of crowns were arranged, the dispensation of Rome was expected, and people spoke of celebrating the marriage by proxy through the ambassador forty days after the arrival of that important document. Everything appeared propitious. Lord Digby, Earl of Bristol, ambassador at Madrid, wrote to the king, "I do not wish to inspire by uncertain reasons a vain hope in your Majesty, but I can inform you that the court of Spain openly manifests its intention of giving you real and prompt satisfaction. If this is not really their design, they are more false than all the devils in hell, for they could not make more protestations of sincerity nor more ardent vows."
The Spaniards could scarcely be absolved from the reproach of double-dealing in this affair; for notwithstanding appearances, the two negotiations in favor of the Elector-Palatine and the Prince of Wales did not make progress. The towns of the Palatinate, which still held out for their hereditary prince, were falling by degrees into the hands of the emperor without Spain intervening in any manner, and the dispensation of Rome did not arrive. A strange and chivalrous project suddenly arose in the mind of Prince Charles, suggested, it is said, by Buckingham, who had himself conceived it upon a proposal of the Duke Olivarez, first and all-powerful minister in Spain. Why not go himself to Madrid to conquer and bring back the Infanta? Why not put an end to this interminable negotiation by the act of an amorous, headstrong prince? King James consented to the scheme after much hesitation and even after tears. He had the matter at heart; his self-love was at stake. The prince set out secretly, accompanied by Buckingham.
The undertaking was hazardous, and it appeared even more so than it was. When it was known in England that the prince had departed, and with what object, the emotion and uneasiness were great. Public agitation communicated itself to the king. "Do you think," he said to his keeper of the seals, Bishop Williams, "that this knight-errant journey will succeed?" "Sire," said the bishop, "if my Lord Marquis of Buckingham treat the Duke Olivarez with great consideration, remembering that he is the favorite in Spain, and if the Duke Olivarez is very polite and careful towards my Lord Marquis of Buckingham, remembering that he is the favorite in England, the prince your son may pay his addresses happily to the Infanta; but if the duke and the marquis mutually forget what they both are, it will be very dangerous for the design of your Majesty. God will that neither one nor the other will fall into that error."
The far-seeing good sense of the bishop keeper of the seals had not deceived him. The whims and vanity of Buckingham encountering the Spanish haughtiness, were to be as a rock to this frail bark. The undertaking had succeeded well: the prince and the favorite had traversed Paris and France under an incognito, which was penetrated on several occasions, and they had arrived safe and sound at Madrid on the 17th of March, 1623, "more gay than they had ever been in their lives." This chivalrous freak, the imprudent straightforwardness of the proceeding for a moment appeared to seduce the Spaniards. "It only remains for us to throw the Infanta into his arms," Count Olivarez exclaimed, and the prince, putting aside all mystery, was sumptuously received at the court of Spain, admitted to the presence of the Infanta, and entertained with hopes of a speedy triumph. Appearances were soon to give way to reality. The months elapsed, the Prince of Wales and Buckingham were still at Madrid. The demands of Pope Gregory XV. became every day more extensive, and the situation more treacherous. The three sovereigns reciprocally demanded an act of respect for religious liberty, which in the main and on principle neither of them recognized nor intended to grant. The King of England wished his son to marry a Catholic princess, while remaining exclusively Protestant himself, his son, and his people. The King of Spain desired that his daughter and all her personal servants should remain openly Catholics, while living in a Protestant family and among a Protestant people, while he himself absolutely excluded all Protestants from his realm. The Pope claimed for the Catholics of England full liberty of conscience, while peremptorily refusing the same privilege to the Protestants throughout his dominions, and called upon the King of England to return, together with his people, to the yoke of the only true and sovereign Church.