reign, thanks are due, next after Arthur Chichester, to Francis Bacon. Yet Lord Campbell, a statesman and a lawyer, has not one word on this theme! VIII. 21. 1613. 22. Two years of fag and moil cure James of his Oct. 27. ambition to be thought the best scribe in Christendom. Dissolving the commission of the Treasury, he gives the Staff to Northampton. He brings Winwood forward as Secretary of State; but ere passing his commission under the Seal, James raises his great competitor for that post a step in his profession; Coke going up to the King's Bench, Hobart to the Common Pleas, and Bacon to the Attorney's place. Coke huffs at the King's Bench, a court of higher dignity than the Common Pleas, but of fewer fees. James has to interfere. "This is all your doing, Mr. Attorney," says the irascible Lord Chief Justice; "it is you that have made this great stir." With the light laugh that has so often maddened Coke, he answers, "Your lordship all this while hath grown in breadth; you must needs now grow in height, or you will be a monster." 23. Lord Campbell sees in these promotions, not the Nov. natural changes brought about by time, such as every year occur at the bar, but a mean trick, a court intrigue, an affair of secret letters, of back-stairs interest, in short, a dodge and a cheat! To this reading of events may be opposed the judgments of those among Bacon's contempo 22. Chamberlain to Carleton, Oct. 14, 27, 1614, S. P. O.; Grant Book, 102; Bacon's Apophthegms in Resuscitatio, 38. 23. Mem. of Burgesses chosen for more than one place, April, 1614, S. P. O. Bacon's biographers have been misled about his seat in 1614 by an erroneous conjecture of Willis (Not. Parl., iii. 173). There is a list of the Parliament of 1614 among the valuable MSS. at Kimbolton Castle, for which, as for many other courtesies, I am indebted to the obliging friendship of his Grace the Duke of Manchester. VIII. 23. 1614. Mar. raries who know him best, the electors of the University of Cambridge, the members of the House of Commons. Their judgments, happily for us, are given in a very conspicuous and decisive way. Bacon's first advice to the Crown in his new office is to abandon its irregular, unproductive methods of raising funds, inventions of the Meercrafts and Overreaches of the court; to call a new Parliament to Westminster, to explain frankly the political situation, and to trust the nation for supplies. The advice, though hotly opposed by Northampton and the whole gang of Spanish pensioners, men paid to provoke hostility between the Commons and the Crown, so far prevails that writs go down into the country. For thirteen years Bacon has represented Ipswich in the House of Commons. Ipswich clings to him with the love of a bride. But Cambridge, a more splendid and gracious constituency, claims him for its own. In the ambition of a public man there is nothing more pure than the wish to represent in Parliament the University at which he has been trained; nor is there for the scholar and the writer any reward more lofty than the confidence implied in the votes of a great constituency of scholars and gentlemen. In Bacon's case there are peculiar obstacles. He left Cambridge early and in disdain; he has kept no friendly intercourse with its dons; the business of his intellectual life has been to destroy the grounds on which its system of instruction stands. Yet the members of the University feel that as a writer and a philosopher he is not only the most brilliant Cambridge man alive, but the most brilliant Englishman who ever lived. They elect him. The burgesses of Ipswich also elect him. The burgesses of St. Albans also elect him. Such a return is unprecedented in parliamentary annals. Only the most popular TRIPLE RETURN TO PARLIAMENT. 183 23. and patriotic candidates are rewarded in this Parlia- VIII. ment by double returns. Sandes is elected for Hendon and Rochester, Whitelocke for Woodstock and Corffe Castle. No one save the new Attorney-General can boast of a triple return. Of course he sits for Cambridge; a fact, overlooked by his biographers from Rawley to Lord Campbell, which connects his fame in a gentle and gracious form with the political history of Cambridge. 1614. Mar. 24. Nor is this gracious confidence of his University the April. most striking proof of popularity which he now receives. When the Houses meet in April, a whisper buzzes round the benches that the elections for Cambridge, Ipswich, and St. Albans are null and void. No man holding the office of Attorney-General has ever been elected to serve in Parliament: and some of the members seem resolved that so powerful an officer of the Crown never ought to sit, and never shall sit, in that House. The Attorney-General is the Crown trier; he sets the law in motion; he gathers the evidence, weighs the words, sifts the facts for prosecution. Unless scrupulous beyond the virtue of man, such an officer, hearing everything, noting everything, forgetting nothing, may become, in a House of Commons bent on free speech as its sacred right, the worst of inquisitors and tyrants. He shall not sit. Yet, notwithstanding their jealousy of power, the representative gentlemen of England have no heart to put the wisest and best among them to the door. They seek for precedents, that he may sit. No case is on the rolls. An Attorney-General, chosen after his nomination, cannot sit by precedent. What then? They waive their right. They take him as he is. Crown lawyer or not 24. Chamberlain to Carleton, April 14, 1614, S. P. O.; Com. Jour., i, 456; Statutes of the Realm, iv. 1207. VIII. 24. 1614. This Crown lawyer, he is Sir Francis Bacon. As Sir Francis Bacon he shall sit. But the case shall stand alone. tribute paid to personal merit and public service must April. not be drawn, say the applauding members, into a precedent dangerous to their franchise. He is the first to sit, he must be the last. That an exception in favour of the new AttorneyGeneral should have been made by men so hostile to the court that they broke up atl ast without passing a single bill which the Crown could assent to, is most strange. The results are yet more strange. As if to witness to the latest generations the profound estimation in which Bacon was held by a House of Commons which had known him closely for thirty years, and which had seen him vote and act under every form of temptation that can test the virtue and tax the genius of a public man, this exception, made in his favour solely, became the rule for his successors and for succeeding times. Once only has the restriction been referred to in the House. That was in the case of his immediate successor. Since his time the presence of the Attorney-General among the representatives of the people has been constant. This fact suggests not only that a change has taken place in public thought, but that the character of the Crown official has undergone a change. Such is the truth. Before Bacon's day the AttorneyGeneral was the personal servant of the prince: from Bacon's day he has been the servant of the State. Bacon was the first of a new order of public men. The fact is scarcely less creditable to his political purity than the composition of the Novum Organum is glorious to his intellectual powers. Bad men kill great offices. Good men found them. THE PAPAL LEAGUE. 185 CHAPTER IX. IX. 1. ST. JOHN AND PEACHAM. 1. IF Lord Campbell has not one word to say on Bacon's part in the plantation of Virginia, in the regeneration of Ulster, he has room for page after page of statement, more or less false in fact, wholly false in spirit, on the examination into the contempt of Oliver St. John, and on the trial for libel of Edmond Peacham. Happy the great lawyer who in passionate times can give up office with no worse recollection on his soul than having conducted two such cases for the Crown! 2. First of Oliver St. John. In the session of 1614, as in every session when he was out of office, Bacon puts his strength to the supplies. The day which he has so long feared has come; the Papal powers, united over the corpse of Henri Quatre, have formed their league; Spinola's Pandours and Walloons are crushing out the free, industrial, and religious life of the Lower Rhine. A dozen cities lift their hands for help. Battalions clash down the passes of the Alps and the Pyrenees, armadas ride in the roads of Sicily and in the bays of Spain. The English fleet is rotting in port. Only ten or twelve ships are in commission; four in the Thames or the Downs, one or two at Portsmouth and Plymouth, four in the Irish seas. The Crown is deep in debt. To a man not mad with jealousy of power such a political situation must be intolerable, and it is intolerable 1. Campbell, Life of Bacon, iii. 62-66. 2. St. John to Mayor of Marlborough, Oct. 11, 1614, S. P. O. 1614. Oct. 11. |