1615.

words delivered unto him by Sir John Sydenham, they IX. 17. were, to this examinate, a confirmation of that which he had formerly written. And, being further asked how he could so strongly father those words upon Sir John Syden- Aug. 31. ham, seeing he now confesseth himself to be the author, and Sir John Sydenham but only to confirm him in them, he answereth that, when he made this answer, he understood not that distinction betwixt the author and confirmer, but that they were both taken for one to his understanding. And, being asked as before, what was his reason and end in charging Sir John Sydenham, he answereth he did it to satisfy his Majesty and the Lords with the truth."

Being asked his motives and intentions in writing the pamphlet:

"He answereth that, first, it was compiled without any knowledge of evil (?) on his part, either against the King or estate; and, secondly, after good and advised deliberation, he would have taken out all the venom and poison thereof, before ever he would have published the same. And, being asked in what manner he would have published it— either by preaching it, or delivering copies of it, or by printing it-he protesteth that his intent was never either to publish, or to give copy, or to print, but only in private, for his own study, to reduce it into heads, that he might make use thereof for such particulars as he out of the text observed, whensoever he should have occasion to speak of any such matter, when all the evil was taken out."

He pronounces this a true confession; saying he should abhor telling a lie to his sovereign, and should think himself guilty of his own blood if he kept back anything

IX. 17. after having been promised his life for revealing the

1615. Sept.

truth.

18. One more charge. Bacon, it has been said, not only stands by while the prisoner undergoes examination, but, on the King's command, consults the judges as to whether this crime of seditious writing amounts to treason by the law. In the wake of Macaulay, Lord Campbell says that a private consultation with the judges was an act most scandalous and most unusual. The scandal of such proceedings may be matter of opinion; their frequency is beyond denial. The Kings of England always enjoyed, and constantly exercised, the right of consulting their judges on the statutory bearing of political crimes. These judges had always been the King's judges; holding their commissions at his pleasure; bound by their oaths to advise him on points of law. Macaulay says there is no instance of the Crown privately consulting with the bench: "Bacon was not conforming to an usage then generally admitted to be proper. He was not even the last lingering adherent of an old abuse. It would have been sufficiently disgraceful to such a man to be in this last situation. Yet this last situation would have been honourable, compared with that in which he stood. He was guilty of attempting to introduce into the courts of law an odious abuse, for which no precedent could be found." Why, the law-books teem with precedents. One will serve for a score. It happens, indeed, that there is one precedent so strange in its circumstances, and so often the subject of legal and historical comment, that it is amazing how it could have slipped the recollection of any lawyer,

18. Macaulay's Essay on Bacon; Campbell's Life of Bacon, iii, 65,

and most of all a lawyer writing of the times of James IX. 18. the First.

19. Peacham's arrest occurred in 1614. In 1612, Bartholomew Legate, a poor Arian preacher, of simple nature and extreme dogmatic views, was tried by a consistory of divines then sitting at St. Paul's, condemned for ten separate heresies, and sentenced to be burnt alive. King, his ordinary, turned him over to the secular arm. But, as an Act of the first year of Elizabeth had repealed the Statute of Heresy, leaving errors of faith to the more merciful ruling of the common law, a question arose as to whether the Crown had power to execute this abominable sentence of the divines. James thought he had full powers. The judges were consulted one by one. Abbott instructed Egerton how to act; and the Lord Chancellor conferred in private with his legal brethren, Williams, Croke, and Altham being sounded by him or by his orders. As they all agreed that James, despite the repeal of the Statute of Heresy, had power to burn, the King, on their authority, issued his warrant under the sign manual to Egerton, Egerton sent his writ to the sheriff, and thus, without condemnation in any civil court, Bartholomew Legate perished in the Smithfield flames.

This is the precedent Macaulay seeks.

20. It is right to add that the Privy Council abandoned all proceedings against Paulett and Berkeley at an early date, and that Sydenham was restored to his freedom purged in fame. It is also right to add that the notion of

19. Chamberlain to Carleton, Feb. 26, Mar. 25, 1612, S. P. O.; Sign Manuals, i. No. 15; Egerton Papers, 447.

20. Council Reg., Mar. 26; Chamberlain to Carleton, Mar. 2, 1615, S. P. O.

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Sept.

1615.

IX. 20. treating Edmond Peacham as though he were in some sort a Puritan martyr is an aberration of the modern biographical mind. The Puritan writers say nothing for him; he has no place in the pages of Toulmin or of Neale. He was degraded by a Puritan Archbishop, prosecuted and condemned by a Puritan Secretary of State.

Sept.

1. LORD CAMPBELL accuses Bacon of having fawned on Somerset in his greatness, of having abandoned him in his fall. Part of this accusation was made by Coke; not all of it; and in a whisper, not in boldly-spoken words. A glance at the facts, as they stand in the registers of the Privy Council and the archives of the State Paper Office, will suffice, it is thought, to convince an impartial reader that Bacon's course through these proceedings against the Earl and Countess of Somerset was in the highest degree noble and humane. Such a reader will see that he was neither obsequious to Somerset in his pride, nor insolent to him in his disgrace.

2. Somerset had not been friendly to Bacon's suit. Not that the young Scottish favourite was wholly wanting in sympathy for merit. His own abilities were not vast, nor his tastes, except in dress, refined; yet he was very far from being the abject creature that Lord Campbell says. Abject of nature he was not; guilty of murder More than one popular poet found in

he was not.

1. Campbell, iii. 66; Yelverton to Bacon, Sept. 3, 1617, Lambeth MSS. 936.

2. Bacon to Carr, Nov. 14, 1612, S. P. O. Mr. Amos, in his Great Oyer of Poisoning, 1846, and Dr. Rimbault, in his Introduction to the Miscellaneous Works of Sir Thomas Overbury, 1856, have thrown light on the story of Somerset; but the true history can be traced in its minute details nowhere save in the State Papers of 1612-15. These papers are far too numerous to cite.

X. 1.

1615.

Sept.