Bacon

by R. W. Church

"MR. BACON,—I can neither expound nor censure your late actions, being ignorant of all of them, save one, and having directed my sight inward only, to examine myself. You do pray me to believe that you only aspire to the conscience and commendation of bonus civis and bonus vir; and I do faithfully assure you, that while that is your ambition (though your course be active and mine contemplative), yet we shall both convenire in codem tertio and convenire inter nosipsos. Your profession of affection and offer of good offices are welcome to me. For answer to them I will say but this, that you have believed I have been kind to you, and you may believe that I cannot be other, either upon humour or my own election. I am a stranger to all poetical conceits, or else I should say somewhat of your poetical example. But this I must say, that I never flew with other wings than desire to merit and confidence in my Sovereign's favour; and when one of these wings failed me I would light nowhere but at my Sovereign's feet, though she suffered me to be bruised with my fall. And till her Majesty, that knows I was never bird of prey, finds it to agree with her will and her service that my wings should be imped again, I have committed myself to the mire. No power but my God's and my Sovereign's can alter this resolution of

"Your retired friend,
"ESSEX."

But after Essex's mad attempt in the city a new state of things arose. The inevitable result was a trial for high treason, a trial of which no one could doubt the purpose and end. The examination of accomplices revealed speeches, proposals, projects, not very intelligible to us in the still imperfectly understood game of intrigue that was going on among all parties at the end of Elizabeth's reign, but quite enough to place Essex at the mercy of the Government and the offended Queen. "The new information," says Mr. Spedding, "had been immediately communicated to Coke and Bacon." Coke, as Attorney-General, of course conducted the prosecution; and the next prominent person on the side of the Crown was not the Solicitor, or any other regular law officer, but Bacon, though holding the very subordinate place of one of the "Learned Counsel."

It does not appear that he thought it strange, that he showed any pain or reluctance, that he sought to be excused. He took it as a matter of course. The part assigned to Bacon in the prosecution was as important as that of Coke; and he played it more skilfully and effectively. Trials in those days were confused affairs, often passing into a mere wrangle between the judges, lawyers, and lookers-on, and the prisoner at the bar. It was so in this case. Coke is said to have blundered in his way of presenting the evidence, and to have been led away from the point into an altercation with Essex. Probably it really did not much matter; but the trial was getting out of its course and inclining in favour of the prisoner, till Bacon—Mr. Spedding thinks, out of his regular turn—stepped forward and retrieved matters. This is Mr. Spedding's account of what Bacon said and did:

"By this time the argument had drifted so far away from the point that it must have been difficult for a listener to remember what it was that the prisoners were charged with, or how much of the charge had been proved. And Coke, who was all this time the sole speaker on behalf of the Crown, was still following each fresh topic that rose before him, without the sign of an intention or the intimation of a wish to return to the main question and reform the broken ranks of his evidence. Luckily he seems to have been now at a loss what point to take next, and the pause gave Bacon an opportunity of rising. It can hardly have been in pursuance of previous arrangements; for though it was customary in those days to distribute the evidence into parts and to assign several parts to several counsel, there had been no appearance as yet of any part being concluded. It is probable that the course of the trial had upset previous arrangements and confused the parts. At any rate so it was, however it came to pass, that when Cecil and Essex had at last finished their expostulation and parted with charitable prayers, each that the other might be forgiven, then (says our reporter) Mr. Bacon entered into a speech much after this fashion:

"'In speaking of this late and horrible rebellion which hath been in the eyes and ears of all men, I shall save myself much labour in opening and enforcing the points thereof, insomuch as I speak not before a country jury of ignorant men, but before a most honourable assembly of the greatest Peers of the land, whose wisdoms conceive far more than my tongue can utter; yet with your gracious and honourable favours I will presume, if not for information of your Honours, yet for the discharge of my duty, to say thus much. No man can be ignorant, that knows matters of former ages—and all history makes it plain—that there was never any traitor heard of that durst directly attempt the seat of his liege prince but he always coloured his practices with some plausible pretence. For God hath imprinted such a majesty in the face of a prince that no private man dare approach the person of his sovereign with a traitorous intent. And therefore they run another side course, oblique et à latere: some to reform corruptions of the State and religion; some to reduce the ancient liberties and customs pretended to be lost and worn out; some to remove those persons that being in high places make themselves subject to envy; but all of them aim at the overthrow of the State and destruction of the present rulers. And this likewise is the use of those that work mischief of another quality; as Cain, that first murderer, took up an excuse for his fact, shaming to outface it with impudency, thus the Earl made his colour the severing some great men and councillors from her Majesty's favour, and the fear he stood in of his pretended enemies lest they should murder him in his house. Therefore he saith he was compelled to fly into the City for succour and assistance; not much unlike Pisistratus, of whom it was so anciently written how he gashed and wounded himself, and in that sort ran crying into Athens that his life was sought and like to have been taken away; thinking to have moved the people to have pitied him and taken his part by such counterfeited harm and danger; whereas his aim and drift was to take the government of the city into his hands and alter the form thereof. With like pretences of dangers and assaults the Earl of Essex entered the City of London and passed through the bowels thereof, blanching rumours that he should have been murdered and that the State was sold; whereas he had no such enemies, no such dangers: persuading themselves that if they could prevail all would have done well. But now magna scelera terminantur in hæresin; for you, my Lord, should know that though princes give their subjects cause of discontent, though they take away the honours they have heaped upon them, though they bring them to a lower estate than they raised them from, yet ought they not to be so forgetful of their allegiance that they should enter into any undutiful act; much less upon rebellion, as you, my Lord, have done. All whatsoever you have or can say in answer hereof are but shadows. And therefore methinks it were best for you to confess, not to justify.'"

Essex was provoked by Bacon's incredulous sneer about enemies and dangers—"I call forth Mr. Bacon against Mr. Bacon," and referred to the letters which Bacon had written in his name, and in which these dangerous enmities were taken for granted. Bacon, in answer, repeated what he said so often—"That he had spent more time in vain in studying how to make the Earl a good servant to the Queen and State than he had done in anything else." Once more Coke got the proceedings into a tangle, and once more Bacon came forward to repair the miscarriage of his leader.

"'I have never yet seen in any case such favour shown to any prisoner; so many digressions, such delivering of evidence by fractions, and so silly a defence of such great and notorious treasons. May it please your Grace, you have seen how weakly he hath shadowed his purpose and how slenderly he hath answered the objections against him. But, my Lord, I doubt the variety of matters and the many digressions may minister occasion of forgetfulness, and may have severed the judgments of the Lords; and therefore I hold it necessary briefly to recite the Judges' opinions.'

"That being done, he proceeded to this effect:

"'Now put the case that the Earl of Essex's intents were, as he would have it believed, to go only as a suppliant to her Majesty. Shall their petitions be presented by armed petitioners? This must needs bring loss of property to the prince. Neither is it any point of law, as my Lord of Southampton would have it believed, that condemns them of treason. To take secret counsel, to execute it, to run together in numbers armed with weapons—what can be the excuse? Warned by the Lord Keeper, by a herald, and yet persist! Will any simple man take this to be less than treason?'

"The Earl of Essex answered that if he had purposed anything against others than those his private enemies, he would not have stirred with so slender a company. Whereunto Mr. Bacon answered:

"'It was not the company you carried with you but the assistance you hoped for in the City which you trusted unto. The Duke of Guise thrust himself into the streets of Paris on the day of the Barricades in his doublet and hose, attended only with eight gentlemen, and found that help in the city which (thanks be to God) you failed of here. And what followed? The King was forced to put himself into a pilgrim's weeds, and in that disguise to steal away to scape their fury. Even such was my Lord's confidence too, and his pretence the same—an all-hail and a kiss to the City. But the end was treason, as hath been sufficiently proved. But when he had once delivered and engaged himself so far into that which the shallowness of his conceit could not accomplish as he expected, the Queen for her defence taking arms against him, he was glad to yield himself; and thinking to colour his practices, turned his pretexts, and alleged the occasion thereof to proceed from a private quarrel.'

"To this" (adds the reporter) "the Earl answered little. Nor was anything said afterwards by either of the prisoners, either in the thrust-and-parry dialogue with Coke that followed, or when they spoke at large to the question why judgment should not be pronounced, which at all altered the complexion of the case. They were both found guilty and sentence passed in the usual form."

Bacon's legal position was so subordinate a place that there must have been a special reason for his employment. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, on the part of the Government, Bacon was thus used for the very reason that he had been the friend of Essex. He was not commonly called upon in such prosecutions. He was not employed by Cecil in the Winchester trials of Raleigh, Grey, and Cobham, three years afterwards, nor in those connected with the Gunpowder Plot. He was called upon now because no one could so much damage Essex; and this last proof of his ready service was required by those whose favour, since Essex had gone hopelessly wrong, he had been diligently seeking. And Bacon acquiesced in the demand, apparently without surprise. No record remains to show that he felt any difficulty in playing his part. He had persuaded himself that his public duty, his duty as a good citizen to the Queen and the commonwealth, demanded of him that he should obey the call to do his best to bring a traitor to punishment.

Public duty has claims on a man as well as friendship, and in many conceivable cases claims paramount to those of friendship. And yet friendship, too, has claims, at least on a man's memory. Essex had been a dear friend, if words could mean anything. He had done more than any man had done for Bacon, generously and nobly, and Bacon had acknowledged it in the amplest terms. Only a year before he had written, "I am as much yours as any man's, and as much yours as any man." It is not, and it was not, a question of Essex's guilt. It may be a question whether the whole matter was not exaggerated as to its purpose, as it certainly was as to its real danger and mischief. We at least know that his rivals dabbled in intrigue and foolish speeches as well as he; that little more than two years afterwards Raleigh and Grey and Cobham were condemned for treason in much the same fashion as he was; that Cecil to the end of his days—with whatever purpose—was a pensioner of Spain. The question was not whether Essex was guilty. The question for Bacon was, whether it was becoming in him, having been what he had been to Essex, to take a leading part in proceedings which were to end in his ruin and death. He was not a judge. He was not a regular law officer like Coke. His only employment had been casual and occasional. He might, most naturally, on the score of his old friendship, have asked to be excused. Condemning, as he did, his friend's guilt and folly, he might have refused to take part in a cause of blood, in which his best friend must perish. He might honestly have given up Essex as incorrigible, and have retired to stand apart in sorrow and silence while the inevitable tragedy was played out. The only answer to this is, that to have declined would have incurred the Queen's displeasure: he would have forfeited any chance of advancement; nay, closely connected as he had been with Essex, he might have been involved in his friend's ruin. But inferior men have marred their fortunes by standing by their friends in not undeserved trouble, and no one knew better than Bacon what was worthy and noble in human action. The choice lay before him. He seems hardly to have gone through any struggle. He persuaded himself that he could not help himself, under the constraint of his duty to the Queen, and he did his best to get Essex condemned.

And this was not all. The death of Essex was a shock to the popularity of Elizabeth greater than anything that had happened in her long reign. Bacon's name also had come into men's mouths as that of a time-server who played fast and loose with Essex and his enemies, and who, when he had got what he could from Essex, turned to see what he could get from those who put him to death. A justification of the whole affair was felt to be necessary; and Bacon was fixed upon for the distinction and the dishonour of doing it. No one could tell the story so well, and it was felt that he would not shrink from it. Nor did he. In cold blood he sat down to blacken Essex, using his intimate personal knowledge of the past to strengthen his statements against a friend who was in his grave, and for whom none could answer but Bacon himself. It is a well-compacted and forcible account of Essex's misdoings, on which of course the colour of deliberate and dangerous treason was placed. Much of it, no doubt, was true; but even of the facts, and much more of the colour, there was no check to be had, and it is certain that it was an object to the Government to make out the worst. It is characteristic that Bacon records that he did not lose sight of the claims of courtesy, and studiously spoke of "my Lord of Essex" in the draft submitted for correction to the Queen; but she was more unceremonious, and insisted that the "rebel" should be spoken of simply as "Essex."

After a business of this kind, fines and forfeitures flowed in abundantly, and were "usually bestowed on deserving servants or favoured suitors by way of reward;" and Bacon came in for his share. Out of one of the fines he received £1200. "The Queen hath done something for me," he writes to a friendly creditor, "though not in the proportion I had hoped," and he afterwards asked for something more. It was rather under the value of Essex's gift to him in 1594. But she still refused him all promotion. He was without an official place in the Queen's service, and he never was allowed to have it. It is clear that the "Declaration of the Treason of the Earl of Essex," if it justified the Government, did not remove the odium which had fallen on Bacon. Mr. Spedding says that he can find no signs of it. The proof of it is found in the "Apology" which Bacon found it expedient to write after Elizabeth's death and early in James's reign. He found that the recollection of the way in which he had dealt with his friend hung heavy upon him; men hesitated to trust him in spite of his now recognised ability. Accordingly, he drew up an apology, which he addressed to Lord Mountjoy, the friend, in reality half the accomplice, of Essex, in his wild, ill-defined plan for putting pressure on Elizabeth. It is a clear, able, of course ex parte statement of the doings of the three chief actors, two of whom could no longer answer for themselves, or correct and contradict the third. It represents the Queen as implacable and cruel, Essex as incorrigibly and outrageously wilful, proud, and undutiful, Bacon himself as using every effort and device to appease the Queen's anger and suspiciousness, and to bring Essex to a wiser and humbler mind. The picture is indeed a vivid one, and full of dramatic force, of an unrelenting and merciless mistress bent on breaking and bowing down to the dust the haughty spirit of a once-loved but rebellious favourite, whom, though he has deeply offended, she yet wishes to bring once more under her yoke; and of the calm, keen-witted looker-on, watching the dangerous game, not without personal interest, but with undisturbed presence of mind, and doing his best to avert an irreparable and fatal breach. How far he honestly did his best for his misguided friend we can only know from his own report; but there is no reason to think that he did Essex ill service, though he notices in passing an allegation that the Queen in one of her angry fits had charged him with this. But his interest clearly was to make up the quarrel between the Queen and Essex. Bacon would have been a greater man with both of them if he had been able to do so. He had been too deeply in Essex's intimacy to make his new position of mediator, with a strong bias on the Queen's side, quite safe and easy for a man of honourable mind; but a cool-judging and prudent man may well have acted as he represents himself acting without forgetting what he owed to his friend. Till the last great moment of trial there is a good deal to be said for Bacon: a man keenly alive to Essex's faults, with a strong sense of what he owed to the Queen and the State, and with his own reasonable chances of rising greatly prejudiced by Essex's folly. But at length came the crisis which showed the man, and threw light on all that had passed before, when he was picked out, out of his regular place, to be charged with the task of bringing home the capital charge against Essex. He does not say he hesitated. He does not say that he asked to be excused the terrible office. He did not flinch as the minister of vengeance for those who required that Essex should die. He did his work, we are told by his admiring biographer, better than Coke, and repaired the blunders of the prosecution. He passes over very shortly this part of the business: "It was laid upon me with the rest of my fellows;" yet it is the knot and key of the whole, as far as his own character is concerned. Bacon had his public duty: his public duty may have compelled him to stand apart from Essex. But it was his interest, it was no part of his public duty, which required him to accept the task of accuser of his friend, and in his friend's direst need calmly to drive home a well-directed stroke that should extinguish chances and hopes, and make his ruin certain. No one who reads his anxious letters about preferment and the Queen's favour, about his disappointed hopes, about his straitened means and distress for money, about his difficulties with his creditors—he was twice arrested for debt—can doubt that the question was between his own prospects and his friend; and that to his own interest he sacrificed his friend and his own honour.