1615. Jan. 18. IX. 12. treasonable (as is conceived), and being examined thereupon refuseth to declare the truth in those points whereof he hath been interrogated. For so much as the same doth concern his Majesty's sacred person and government, and doth highly concern his service, to have many things yet discovered touching the said book and the author thereof, wherein Peacham dealeth not so clearly as becometh an honest and loyal subject. These shall be therefore in his Majesty's name to will and require you and every of you to repair with what convenient diligence you may unto the Tower, and there to call before you the said Peacham, and to examine him strictly upon such interrogatories concerning the said book as you shall think fit and necessary for the manifestation of truth; and if you find him obstinate and perverse, and not otherwise willing or ready to tell the truth, then to put him to the manacles as in your discretion you shall see occasion; for which this shall be to you and every of you sufficient warrant." 13. That these instructions were obeyed by the commissioners there is no room to doubt. A man of gentle heart may regret that commands so savage and so futile should proceed from the English Crown; but while grieving that our ancestors were either less wise or less compassionate than ourselves, no candid mind will consent to assess the fault of an entire generation on the character of a single man. A belief that truth must be sought by help of the cord, the maiden, and the wheel, was in the opening years of the seventeenth century universal. It had come down with the codes and usages of antiquity, sustained by the practice of every people on the civilized globe; most of all by the practice of those wealthy and illustrious 13. Dom. Papers James the First, lxxx. 6, 26, 38. 1615. Jan. Feb. communities which had kept most pure the traditions IX. 13. of Imperial Roman law. Men who agreed in nothing else, agreed in seeking truth through pain. Nations which fought each other to the knife over definitions of grace, election, and transubstantiation, had a common faith in the possibility of discovering truth by the rack, the pincers, and the screw. There were torture-chambers at Osnaburgh and Ratisbon no less hideous than those of Valladolid and Rome. The same hot bars, the same boots, the same racks, were found in the Piombi and the Bastile, in the Bargello and the Tower. Nor was the Church one whit more gentle or enlightened than the civil power. Cardinals searched out heresy in the flames of the Quemadero, as the Council of Ten tracked treason in the waves of the Lagune. Bacon was not more responsible for the universal practice than for the particular act. To have set himself against the spirit of his time he must have mounted St. Simeon Stylites' column, or shrunk into St. Anthony's cave. If he chose to live among men, he must discharge the duties of a man. There lies a deep gulf between acts of duty and acts of the will. One who from morbid mind, or from love of pain, must follow the death-cart to Tyburn, is not performing a noble or necessary deed; yet the chaplain who has to recite the prayer, the sheriff who has to signal the drop, go free from blame. So in truth with Bacon. If he were present at the question of Peacham, he was there as one of a commission acting under special commands from the Privy Council. It is silly to say he was responsible for what was done. He was not chief of the commissioners. He was not even a member of the high body in whose name they spoke. His official superiors, Winwood and Cesar, were on the spot. Does Lord Campbell think the Attorney IX. 13. General should have declined to act with them, thrown up his commission, and refused to obey the Crown? 1615. Feb. 14. Bear in mind the age in which he lived. The cry of pain, the gasp of death, were no such shocks to the gentle heart as they would be in a softer time. Men had been hardened in the Smithfield fires. Minds were infected by the atrocities of Papist plots. The ballads sung in the streets were steeped in blood, and the plays which best drew audiences to the Globe theatre were those in which fewest of the characters were left alive. Hamlet, Pericles, Titus Andronicus, were the Shakesperean favourites. No man is known to have felt any sickness of the heart in presence of judicial torture. Egerton often saw men on the rack. Winwood stood by while Peacham, under torture, told his tale. James was present when Fawkes was stretched. A feeling, it is true, was beginning to quicken in society against this use of the rack. Both Coke and Bacon disapproved its use; but this merciful sentiment of a few jurists and philosophers was unshared by the multitude of men who made the laws. Until the Crown should see fit to abandon this old plan of seeking truth through crushed feet and dislocated joints, the officers of the Crown had no choice but to read their commission and execute their trust. 15. This truth is so clear that it ought to need no illustration. Take fact from our own time. More than one living judge is supposed to be adverse to trial by jury. Yet the judges sit in courts where property and life are daily exposed to the mercy of a dozen illogical and prejudiced men. Are they responsible for the wrong done? Again, it is conceivable that a judge might feel uneasy on the score of capital punishments. It is POSSIBLE CASE OF LORD CAMPBELL. 199 1615. Feb. inconceivable that any judge on the Bench would refuse IX. 15. to hang a Palmer or a Rush so long as the law continues to declare wilful murder worthy of death. Bacon told the King that he misliked the use of torture in judicial inquiries. He told him so in this very case of Peacham. Further than that expression he could not go. Bacon's case in 1860 may possibly become Lord Campbell's case in 1960. Let the public heart go on softening for a hundred years, fast as it has softened from the early days of John Howard, and the whole civilized world may come by 1960 to regard the strangling of a human being, on any pretext whatever, as a monstrous crime. Would such a change of public feeling lay Lord Campbell open to the charge of judicial murder? Would it be just in a writer of that compassionate age to relate with "horror" that Lord Campbell prostituted eminent parts and sullied an honourable name by sitting for many years in a court of justice where life was taken in the name of law, with his own lips delivering man after man, and even woman after woman, to be strangled in presence of a brutal crowd, by a wretch who received his blood-money for every loathsome job? Would it be fair to say that Lord Campbell in his thirst for blood took the life of Sarah Chesham, a poor woman sentenced to death on circumstantial proof, who protested her innocence with the rope round her throat? Would it be fair to say that with savage glee he ordered Emma Mussett to be strangled on pretence of child-murder, even though obliged to confess that the evidence was full of doubt? Would it be honest in the writer of a future century to say that in 1860 Lord Campbell stood alone on the bench in his resolute practice of hanging women-while, under such humane judges as Crompton and Cresswell, the lives of Celestina Sommers 1615. IX. 15. and Elizabeth Harris, criminals of whose guilt no man could doubt, were spared? We think the writer who should say this, or anything like this, in 1960, would be as unfair to Lord Campbell as Lord Campbell has been to Francis Bacon. Feb. Aug. Aug. 31. 16. How Peacham lies and swears, now accusing others, and now himself, anon retracting all that he has said, denying even his handwriting and his signature, one day standing to the charge against Sydenham, next day running from it altogether; how he is sent down into Somersetshire, the scene of his ignoble ministry, to be tried by a jury of men who will interpret his public conduct by what they know of his private life; how he is found guilty by the twelve jurors and condemned by Sir Lawrence Tanfield and Sir Henry Montagu, two of the most able and humane judges on the bench; how his sentence is commuted by the Crown into imprisonment during the King's pleasure; and how he ultimately dies in Taunton jail, unpitied by a single friend, I need not pause to tell. 17. After sentence of death has been recorded against him, he offers to tell the truth, if the King will only spare his life. The written confession, twice signed by his hand, which remains in the State Paper Office, tells in his own words how he came to utter that lie about Sir John Sydenham. A question being put to him: "He answereth that all the said words wherewith he charged Sir John Sydenham were first written by himself, this examinate, only; and, afterwards hearing these same 16. State Trials, ii. 870; Diary of Walter Yonge, 27; Chamberlain to Carleton, Feb. 9, Mar. 2, Aug. 24, 1615, S. P. O.; Council Reg., July 12, 1615. 17. Peacham's Examination, Aug. 31, 1615, S. P. O. |