|
Essex was convicted. Bacon made no effort to save him, though the Queen's
feelings were such that he might have pleaded his benefactor's cause, possibly
with success, certainly without any serious danger to himself. The unhappy
nobleman was executed. His fate excited strong, perhaps unreasonable feelings of
compassion and indignation. The Queen was received by the citizens of London
with gloomy looks and faint acclamations. She thought it expedient to publish a
vindication of her late proceedings. The faithless friend who had assisted in
taking the Earl's life was now employed to murder the Earl's fame. The Queen had
seen some of Bacon's writings, and had been pleased with them. He was
accordingly selected to write A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons
attempted and committed by Robert Earl of Essex, which was printed by authority.
In the succeeding reign, Bacon had not a word to say in defense of this
performance, a performance abounding in expressions which no generous enemy
would have employed respecting a man who had so dearly expiated his offences.
His only excuse was, that he wrote it by command, that he considered himself as
a mere secretary, that he had particular instructions as to the way in which he
was to treat every part of the subject, and that, in fact, he had furnished only
the arrangement and the style.
We regret to say that the whole conduct of Bacon through the course of these
transactions appears to Mr. Montagu not merely excusable, but deserving of high
admiration. The integrity and benevolence of this gentleman are so well known
that our readers will probably be at a loss to conceive by what steps he can
have arrived at so extraordinary a conclusion: and we are half afraid that they
will suspect us of practicing some artifice upon them when we report the
principal arguments which he employs.
In order to get rid of the charge of ingratitude, Mr. Montagu attempts to show
that Bacon lay under greater obligations to the Queen than to Essex. What these
obligations were it is not easy to discover. The situation of Queen's Counsel,
and a remote reversion, were surely favors very far below Bacon's personal and
hereditary claims. They were favors which had not cost the Queen a groat, nor
had they put a groat into Bacon's purse. It was necessary to rest Elizabeth's
claims to gratitude on some other ground; and this Mr. Montagu felt. "What
perhaps was her greatest kindness," says he, "instead of having hastily advanced
Bacon, she had, with a continuance of her friendship, made him bear the yoke in
his youth. Such were his obligations to Elizabeth." Such indeed they were.
Being the son of one of her oldest and most faithful Ministers, being himself
the ablest and most accomplished young man of his time, he had been condemned by
her to drudgery, to obscurity, to poverty. She had depreciated his acquirements.
She had checked him in the most imperious manner, when in Parliament he ventured
to act an independent part. She had refused to him the professional advancement
to which he had a just claim. To her it was owing that, while younger men, not
superior to him in extraction, and far inferior to him in every kind of personal
merit, were filling the highest offices of the State, adding manor to manor,
rearing palace after palace, he was lying at a spunging-house for a debt of
three hundred pounds. Assuredly if Bacon owed gratitude to Elizabeth, he owed
none to Essex. If the Queen really was his best friend, the Earl was his worst
enemy. We wonder that Mr. Montagu did not press this argument a little further.
He might have maintained that Bacon was excusable in revenging himself on a man
who had attempted to rescue his youth from the salutary yoke imposed on it by
the Queen, who had wished to advance him hastily, who, not content with
attempting to inflict the Attorney-Generalship upon him, had been so cruel as to
present him with a landed estate.
Again, we can hardly think Mr. Montagu serious when he tells us that Bacon was
bound for the sake of the public not to destroy his own hopes of advancement,
and that he took part against Essex from a wish to obtain power which might
enable him to be useful to his country. We really do not know how to refute such
arguments except by stating them. Nothing is impossible which does not involve a
contradiction. It is barely possible that Bacon's motives for acting as he did
on this occasion may have been gratitude to the Queen for keeping him poor, and
a desire to benefit his fellow-creatures in some high situation. And there is a
possibility that Bonner may have been a good Protestant who, being convinced
that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church, heroically went through all
the drudgery and infamy of persecution, in order that he might inspire the
English people with an intense and lasting hatred of Popery. There is a
possibility that Jeffreys may have been an ardent lover of liberty, and that he
may have beheaded Algernon Sydney, and burned Elizabeth Gaunt, only in order to
produce a reaction which might lead to the limitation of the prerogative. There
is a possibility that Thurtell may have killed Weare only in order to give the
youth of England an impressive warning against gaming and bad company. There is
a possibility that Fauntleroy may have forged powers of attorney, only in order
that his fate might turn the attention of the public to the defects of the penal
law. These things, we say, are possible. But they are so extravagantly
improbable that a man who should act on such suppositions would be fit only for
Saint Luke's. And we do not see why suppositions on which no rational man would
act in ordinary life should be admitted into history.
Mr. Montagu's notion that Bacon desired power only in order to do good to
mankind appears somewhat strange to us, when we consider how Bacon afterwards
used power, and how he lost it. Surely the service which he rendered to mankind
by taking Lady Wharton's broad pieces and Sir John Kennedy's cabinet was not of
such vast importance as to sanctify all the means which might conduce to that
end. If the case were fairly stated, it would, we much fear, stand thus: Bacon
was a servile advocate, that he might be a corrupt judge.
Mr. Montagu maintains that none but the ignorant and unreflecting can think
Bacon censurable for anything that he did as counsel for the Crown, and that no
advocate can justifiably use any discretion as to the party for whom he appears.
We will not at present inquire whether the doctrine which is held on this
subject by English lawyers be or be not agreeable to reason and morality;
whether it be right that a man should, with a wig on his head, and a band round
his neck, do for a guinea what, without those appendages, he would think it
wicked and infamous to do for an empire; whether it be right that, not merely
believing but knowing a statement to be true, he should do all that can be done
by sophistry, by rhetoric, by solemn asseveration, by indignant exclamation, by
gesture, by play of features, by terrifying one honest witness, by perplexing
another, to cause a jury to think that statement false. It is not necessary on
the present occasion to decide these questions. The professional rules, be they
good or bad, are rules to which many wise and virtuous men have conformed, and
are daily conforming. If, therefore, Bacon did no more than these rules required
of him, we shall readily admit that he was blameless, or, at least, excusable.
But we conceive that his conduct was not justifiable according to any
professional rules that now exist, or that ever existed in England. It has
always been held that, in criminal cases in which the prisoner was denied the
help of counsel, and above all, in capital cases, advocates were both entitled
and bound to exercise a discretion. It is true that after the Revolution, when
the Parliament began to make inquisition for the innocent blood which had been
shed by the last Stuarts, a feeble attempt was made to defend the lawyers who
had been accomplices in the murder of Sir Thomas Armstrong, on the ground that
they had only acted professionally. The wretched sophism was silenced by the
execrations of the House of Commons. "Things will never be well done," said Mr.
Foley, "till some of that profession be made examples." "We have a new sort of
monsters in the world," said the younger Hampden, "haranguing a man to death.
These I call bloodhounds. Sawyer is very criminal and guilty of this murder." "I
speak to discharge my conscience," said Mr. Garroway. "I will not have the blood
of this man at my door. Sawyer demanded judgment against him and execution. I
believe him guilty of the death of this man. Do what you will with him." "If the
profession of the law," said the elder Hampden, "gives a man authority to murder
at this rate, it is the interest of all men to rise and exterminate that
profession." Nor was this language held only by unlearned country gentlemen. Sir
William Williams, one of the ablest and most unscrupulous lawyers of the age,
took the same view of the case. He had not hesitated, he said, to take part in
the prosecution of the Bishops, because they were allowed counsel. But he
maintained that, where the prisoner was not allowed counsel the Counsel for the
Crown was bound to exercise a discretion, and that every lawyer who neglected
this distinction was a betrayer of the law. But it is unnecessary to cite
authority. It is known to everybody who has ever looked into a court of
quarter-sessions that lawyers do exercise a discretion in criminal cases; and it
is plain to every man of common sense that, if they did not exercise such a
discretion, they would be a more hateful body of men than those bravoes who used
to hire out their stilettoes in Italy.
Bacon appeared against a man who was indeed guilty of a great offence, but who
had been his benefactor and friend. He did more than this. Nay, he did more than
a person who had never seen Essex would have been justified in doing. He
employed all the art of an advocate in order to make the prisoner's conduct
appear more inexcusable and more dangerous to the State than it really had been.
All that professional duty could, in any case, have required of him would have
been to conduct the cause so as to ensure a conviction. But from the nature of
the circumstances there could not be the smallest doubt that the Earl would be
found guilty. The character of the crime was unequivocal. It had been committed
recently, in broad daylight, in the streets of the capital, in the presence of
thousands. If ever there was an occasion on which an advocate had no temptation
to resort to extraneous topics, for the purpose of blinding the judgment and
inflaming the passions of a tribunal, this was that occasion.
Why then resort to arguments which, while they could add nothing to the strength
of the case, considered in a legal point of view, tended to aggravate the moral
guilt of the fatal enterprise, and to excite fear and resentment in that quarter
from which alone the Earl could now expect mercy? Why remind the audience of the
arts of the ancient tyrants? Why deny what everybody knew to be the truth, that:
a powerful faction at Court had long sought to effect the ruin of the prisoner?
Why above all, institute a parallel between the unhappy culprit and the most
wicked and most successful rebel of the age? Was it absolutely impossible to do
all that professional duty required without reminding a jealous sovereign of the
League, of the barricades, and of all the humiliations which a too powerful
subject had heaped on Henry the Third?
But if we admit the plea which Mr. Montagu urges in defense of what Bacon did as
an advocate, what shall we say of the Declaration of the Treasons of Robert,
Earl of Essex? Here at least there was no pretence of professional obligation.
Even those who may think it the duty of a lawyer to hang, draw, and quarter his
benefactors, for a proper consideration, will hardly say that it is his duty to
write abusive pamphlets against them, after they are in their graves. Bacon
excused himself by saying that he was not answerable for the matter of the book,
and that he furnished only the language. But why did he endow such purposes with
words? Could no hack writer, without virtue or shame, be found to exaggerate the
errors, already so dearly expiated, of a gentle and noble spirit? Every age
produces those links between the man and the baboon. Every age is fertile of
Oldmixons, of Kenricks, and of Antony Pasquins. But was it for Bacon so to
prostitute his intellect? Could he not feel that, while he rounded and pointed
some period dictated by the envy of Cecil, or gave a plausible form to some
slander invented by the dastardly malignity of Cobham; he was not sinning merely
against his friend's honor and his own? Could he not feel that letters,
eloquence, philosophy, were all degraded in his degradation?
The real explanation of all this is perfectly obvious; and nothing but a
partiality amounting to a ruling passion could cause anybody to miss it. The
moral qualities of Bacon were not of a high order. We do not say that he was a
bad man. He was not inhuman or tyrannical. He bore with meekness his high civil
honors, and the far higher honors gained by his intellect. He was very seldom,
if ever, provoked into treating any person with malignity and insolence. No man
more readily held up the left cheek to those who had smitten the right. No man
was more expert at the soft answer which turneth away wrath. He was never
charged, by any accuser entitled to the smallest credit, with licentious habits.
His even temper, his flowing courtesy, the general respectability of his
demeanor, made a favorable impression on those who saw him in situations which
do not severely try the principles. His faults were--we write it with
pain--coldness of heart, and meanness of spirit. He seems to have been incapable
of feeling strong affection, of facing great dangers, of making great
sacrifices. His desires were set on things below wealth, precedence, titles,
patronage, the mace, the seals, the coronet, large houses, fair gardens, rich
manors, massy services of plate, gay hangings, curious cabinets, had as great
attractions for him as for any of the courtiers who dropped on their knees in
the dirt when Elizabeth passed by, and then hastened home to write to the King
of Scots that her Grace seemed to be breaking fast. For these objects he had
stooped to everything and endured everything. For these he had sued in the
humblest manner, and, when unjustly and ungraciously repulsed, had thanked those
who had repulsed him, and had begun to sue again. For these objects, as soon as
he found that the smallest show of independence in Parliament was offensive to
the Queen, he had abased himself to the dust before her, and implored
forgiveness in terms better suited to a convicted thief than to a knight of the
shire. For these he joined, and for these he forsook, Lord Essex. He continued
to plead his patron's cause with the Queen as long as he thought that by
pleading that cause he might serve himself. Nay, he went further; for his
feelings, though not warm, were kind; he pleaded that cause as long as he
thought that he could plead it without injury to himself. But when it became
evident that Essex was going headlong to his ruin, Bacon began to tremble for
his own fortunes. What he had to fear would not indeed have been very alarming
to a man of lofty character. It was not death. It was not imprisonment. It was
the loss of Court favor. It was the being left behind by others in the career of
ambition. It was the having leisure to finish the Instauratio Magna. The Queen
looked coldly on him. The courtiers began to consider him as a marked man. He
determined to change his line of conduct, and to proceed in a new course with so
much vigor as to make up for lost time. When once he had determined to act
against his friend, knowing himself to be suspected, he acted with more zeal
than would have been necessary or justifiable if he had been employed against a
stranger. He exerted his professional talents to shed the Earl's blood, and his
literary talents to blacken the Earl's memory.
It is certain that his conduct excited at the time great and general
disapprobation. While Elizabeth lived, indeed, this disapprobation, though
deeply felt, was not loudly expressed. But a great change was at hand. The
health of the Queen had long been decaying; and the operation of age and disease
was now assisted by acute mental suffering. The pitiable melancholy of her last
days has generally been ascribed to her fond regret for Essex. But we are
disposed to attribute her dejection partly to physical causes, and partly to the
conduct of her courtiers and ministers. They did all in their power to conceal
from her the intrigues which they were carrying on at the Court of Scotland. But
her keen sagacity was not to be so deceived. She did not know the whole. But she
knew that she was surrounded by men who were impatient for that new world which
was to begin at her death, who had never been attached to her by affection, and
who were now but very slightly attached to her by interest. Prostration and
flattery could not conceal from her the cruel truth, that those whom she had
trusted, and promoted had never loved her, and were fast ceasing to fear her.
Unable to avenge herself, and too proud to complain, she suffered sorrow and
resentment to prey on her heart till, after a long career of power, prosperity,
and glory, she died sick and weary of the world.
James mounted the throne: and Bacon employed all his address to obtain for
himself a share of the favor of his new master. This was no difficult task. The
faults of James, both as a man and as a prince, were numerous; but insensibility
to the claims of genius and learning was not among them. He was indeed made up
of two men, a witty, well-read scholar, who wrote, disputed, and harangued, and
a nervous, drivelling idiot, who acted. If he had been a Canon of Christ Church
or a Prebendary of Westminster, it is not improbable that he would have left a
highly respectable name to posterity; that he would have distinguished himself
among the translators of the Bible, and among the Divines who attended the Synod
of Dort; and that he would have been regarded by the literary world as no
contemptible rival of Vossius and Casaubon. But fortune placed him in a
situation in which his weakness covered him with disgrace, and in which his
accomplishments brought him no honor. In a college, much eccentricity and
childishness would have been readily pardoned in so learned a man. But all that
learning could do for him on the throne was to make people think him a pedant as
well as a fool.
Bacon was favorably received at Court; and soon found that his chance of
promotion was not diminished by the death of the Queen. He was solicitous to be
knighted, for two reasons which are somewhat amusing. The King had already
dubbed half London, and Bacon found himself the only untitled person in his mess
at Gray's Inn. This was not very agreeable to him. He had also, to quote his own
words, "found an Alderman's daughter, a handsome maiden, to his liking." On both
these grounds, he begged his cousin Robert Cecil, "if it might please his good
Lordship," to use his interest in his behalf. The application was successful.
Bacon was one of three hundred gentlemen who, on the coronation-day, received
the honor, if it is to be so called, of knighthood. The handsome maiden, a
daughter of Alderman Barnham, soon after consented to become Sir Francis's lady.
The death of Elizabeth, though on the whole it improved Bacon's prospects, was
in one respect an unfortunate event for him. The new King had always felt kindly
towards Lord Essex, and, as soon as he came to the throne, began to show favor
to the House of Devereux, and to those who had stood by that house in its
adversity. Everybody was now at liberty to speak out respecting those lamentable
events in which Bacon had borne so large a share. Elizabeth was scarcely cold
when the public feeling began to manifest itself by marks of respect towards
Lord Southampton. That accomplished nobleman, who will be remembered to the
latest ages as the generous and discerning patron of Shakespeare, was held in
honor by his contemporaries chiefly on account of the devoted affection which he
had borne to Essex. He had been tried and convicted together with his friend;
but the Queen had spared his life, and, at the time of her death, he was still a
prisoner. A crowd of visitors hastened to the Tower to congratulate him on his
approaching deliverance. With that crowd Bacon could not venture to mingle. The
multitude loudly condemned him; and his conscience told him that the multitude
had but too much reason. He excused himself to Southampton by letter, in terms
which, if he had, as Mr. Montagu conceives, done only what as a subject and an
advocate he was bound to do, must be considered as shamefully servile. He owns
his fear that his attendance would give offence, and that his professions of
regard would obtain no credit. "Yet," says he, "it is as true as a thing that
God knoweth, that this great change hath wrought in me no other change towards
your Lordship than this, that I may safely be that to you now which I was truly
before."
How Southampton received these apologies we are not informed. But it is certain
that the general opinion was pronounced against Bacon in a manner not to be
misunderstood. Soon after his marriage he put forth a defense of his conduct, in
the form of a Letter to the Earl of Devon. This tract seems to us to prove only
the exceeding badness of a cause for which such talents could do so little.
It is not probable that Bacon's Defense had much effect on his contemporaries.
But the unfavorable impression which his conduct had made appears to have been
gradually effaced. Indeed it must be some very peculiar cause that can make a
man like him long unpopular. His talents secured him from contempt, his temper
and his manners from hatred. There is scarcely any story so black that it may
not be got over by a man of great abilities, whose abilities are united with
caution, good humor, patience, and affability, who pays daily sacrifice to
Nemesis, who is a delightful companion, a serviceable though not an ardent
friend, and a dangerous yet a placable enemy. Waller in the next generation was
an eminent instance of this. Indeed Waller had much more than may at first sight
appear in common with Bacon. To the higher intellectual qualities of the great
English philosopher, to the genius which has made an immortal epoch in the
history of science, Waller had indeed no pretensions. But the mind of Waller, as
far as it extended, coincided with that of Bacon, and might, so to, speak, have
been cut out of that of Bacon. In the qualities which make a man an object of
interest and veneration to posterity, they cannot be compared together. But in
the qualities by which chiefly a man is known to his contemporaries there was a
striking similarity between them. Considered as men of the world, as courtiers,
as politicians, as associates, as allies, as enemies, they had nearly the same
merits, and the same defects. They were not malignant. They were not tyrannical.
But they wanted warmth of affection and elevation of sentiment. There were many
things which they loved better than virtue, and which they feared more than
guilt. Yet, even after they had stooped to acts of which it is impossible to
read the account in the most partial narratives without strong disapprobation
and contempt, the public still continued to regard them with a feeling not
easily to be distinguished from esteem. The hyperbole of Juliet seemed to be
verified with respect to them. "Upon their brows shame was ashamed to sit."
Everybody seemed as desirous to throw a veil over their misconduct as if it had
been his own. Clarendon, who felt, and who had reason to feel, strong personal
dislike towards Waller, speaks of him thus: "There needs no more to be said to
extol the excellence and power of his wit and pleasantness of his conversation,
than that it was of magnitude enough to cover a world of very great faults, that
is, so to cover them that they were not taken notice of to his reproach, viz., a
narrowness in his nature to the lowest degree, an abjectness and want of courage
to support him in any virtuous undertaking, an insinuation and servile flattery
to the height the vainest and most imperious nature could be contented with. . .
. It had power to reconcile him to those whom he had most offended and provoked,
and continued to his age with that rare felicity, that his company was
acceptable where his spirit was odious, and he was at least pitied where he was
most detested." Much of this, with some softening, might, we fear, be applied to
Bacon. The influence of Waller's talents, manners, and accomplishments, died
with him; and the world has pronounced an unbiased sentence on his character. A
few flowing lines are not bribe sufficient to pervert the judgment of posterity.
But the influence of Bacon is felt and will long be felt over the whole
civilized world. Leniently as he was treated by his contemporaries, posterity
has treated him more leniently still. Turn where we may, the trophies of that
mighty intellect are full in few. We are judging Manlius in sight of the
Capitol.
Under the reign of James, Bacon grew rapidly in fortune and favor. In 1604 he
was appointed King's Counsel, with a fee of forty pounds a year; and a pension
of sixty pounds a year was settled upon him. In 1607 he became
Solicitor-General, in 1612 Attorney-General. He continued to distinguish himself
in Parliament, particularly by his exertions in favor of one excellent measure
on which the King's heart was set, the union of England and Scotland. It was not
difficult for such an intellect to discover many irresistible arguments in favor
of such a scheme. He conducted the great case of the Post Nati in the Exchequer
Chamber; and the decision of the judges, a decision the legality of which may be
questioned, but the beneficial effect of which must be acknowledged, was in a
great measure attributed to his dexterous management. While actively engaged in
the House of Commons and in the courts of law, he still found leisure for
letters and philosophy. The noble treatise on the Advancement of Learning, which
at a later period was expanded into the De Augmentis, appeared in 1605. The
Wisdom of the Ancients, a work which, if it had proceeded from any other writer,
would have been considered as a masterpiece of wit and learning, but which adds
little to the fame of Bacon, was printed in 1609. In the meantime the Novum
Organum was slowly proceeding. Several distinguished men of learning had been
permitted to see sketches or detached portions of that extraordinary book; and,
though they were not generally disposed to admit the soundness of the author's
views, they spoke with the greatest admiration of his genius. Sir Thomas Bodley,
the founder of one of the most magnificent of English libraries, was among those
stubborn Conservatives who considered the hopes with which Bacon looked forward,
to the future destinies of the human race as utterly chimerical, and who
regarded with distrust and aversion the innovating spirit of the new schismatics
in philosophy. Yet even Bodley, after perusing the Cogitata et Visa, one of the
most precious of those scattered leaves out of which the great oracular volume
was afterwards made up, acknowledged that in "those very points, and in all
proposals and plots in that book, Bacon showed himself a master-workman"; and
that "it could not be gainsaid but all the treatise over did abound with choice
conceits of the present state of learning, and with worthy contemplations of the
means to procure it." In 1612 a new edition of the Essays appeared, with
additions surpassing the original collection both in bulk and quality. Nor did
these pursuits distract Bacon's attention from a work the most arduous, the most
glorious, and the most useful that even his mighty powers could have achieved,
"the reducing and recompiling," to use his own phrase, "of the laws of England."
Unhappily he was at that very time employed in perverting those laws to the
vilest purposes of tyranny. When Oliver St. John was brought before the Star
Chamber for maintaining that the King had no right to levy Benevolences, and was
for his manly and constitutional conduct sentenced to imprisonment during the
royal pleasure and to a fine of five thousand pounds, Bacon appeared as counsel
for the prosecution. About the same time he was deeply engaged in a still more
disgraceful transaction. An aged clergyman, of the name of Peacham, was accused
of treason on account of some passages of a sermon which was found in his study.
The sermon, whether written by him or not, had never been preached. It did not
appear that he had any intention of preaching it. The most servile lawyers of
those servile times were forced to admit that there were great difficulties both
as to the facts and as to the law. Bacon was employed to remove those
difficulties. He was employed to settle the question of law by tampering with
the judges, and the question of fact by torturing the prisoner.
Three judges of the Court of King's Bench were tractable. But Coke was made of
different stuff. Pedant, bigot, and brute as he was, he had qualities which bore
a strong, though a very disagreeable resemblance to some of the highest virtues
which a public man can possess. He was an exception to a maxim which we believe
to be generally true, that those who trample on the helpless are disposed to
cringe to the powerful. He behaved with gross rudeness to his juniors at the
bar, and with execrable cruelty to prisoners on trial for their lives. But he
stood up manfully against the King and the King's favorites. No man of that age
appeared to so little advantage when he was opposed to an inferior, and was in
the wrong. But, on the other hand, it is but fair to admit that no man of that
age made so creditable a figure when he was opposed to a superior, and happened
to be in the right. On such occasions, his half-suppressed insolence and his
impracticable obstinacy had a respectable and interesting appearance, when
compared with the abject servility of the bar and of the bench. On the present
occasion he was stubborn and surly. He declared that it was a new and highly
improper practice in the judges to confer with a law-officer of the Crown about
capital cases which they were afterwards to try; and for some time he resolutely
kept aloof. But Bacon was equally artful and persevering. "I am not wholly out
of hope," said he in a letter to the King, "that my Lord Coke himself, when I
have in some dark manner put him in doubt that he shall be left alone, will not
be singular." After some time Bacon's dexterity was successful; and Coke,
sullenly and reluctantly, followed the example of his brethren. But in order to
convict Peacham it was necessary to find facts as well as law. Accordingly, this
wretched old man was put to the rack, and, while undergoing the horrible
infliction, was examined by Bacon, but in vain. No confession could be wrung out
of him; and Bacon wrote to the King, complaining that Peacham had a dumb devil.
At length the trial came on. A conviction was obtained; but the charges were so
obviously futile, that the Government could not, for very shame, carry the
sentence into execution; and Peacham, was suffered to languish away the short
remainder of his life in a prison.
Previous |
Critical And Historical Essays, Volume II
| Next
Critical And Historical Essays, Volume II, Thomas Babbington Macaulay,
1843 |
|
Add/Correct a Link