Bacon — 13 - Chapter 7A

CHAPTER VII. BACON'S LAST YEARS.

[1621-1626. ] The tremendous sentences of those days, with their crushing fines, were often worse in sound than in reality.

They meant that for the moment a man was defeated and disgraced.

But it was quite understood that it did not necessarily follow that they would be enforced in all their severity.

The fine might be remitted, the imprisonment shortened, the ban of exclusion taken off.

At another turn of events or caprice the man himself might return to favour, and take his place in Parliament or the Council as if nothing had happened.

But, of course, a man might have powerful enemies, and the sentence might be pressed.

His fine might be assigned to some favourite; and he might be mined, even if in the long run he was pardoned; or he might remain indefinitely a prisoner.

Raleigh had remained to perish at last in dishonour.

Northumberland, Raleigh's fellow-prisoner, after fifteen years' captivity, was released this year.

The year after Bacon's condemnation such criminals as Lord and Lady Somerset were released from the Tower, after a six years' imprisonment.

Southampton, the accomplice of Essex, Suffolk, sentenced as late as 1619 by Bacon for embezzlement, sat in the House of Peers which judged Bacon, and both of them took a prominent part in judging him.

To Bacon the sentence was ruinous.

It proved an irretrievable overthrow as regards public life, and, though some parts of it were remitted and others lightened, it plunged his private affairs into trouble which weighed heavily on him for his few remaining years.

To his deep distress and horror he had to go to the Tower to satisfy the terms of his sentence.

"Good my Lord," he writes to Buckingham, May 31, "procure my warrant for my discharge this day.

Death is so far from being unwelcome to me, as I have called for it as far as Christian resolution would permit any time these two months.

But to die before the time of his Majesty's grace, in this disgraceful place, is even the worst that could be."

He was released after two or three days, and he thanks Buckingham (June 4) for getting him out to do him and the King faithful service--"wherein, by the grace of God, your Lordship shall find that my adversity hath neither _spent_ nor _pent_ my spirits."

In the autumn his fine was remitted--that is, it was assigned to persons nominated by Bacon, who, as the Crown had the first claim on all his goods, served as a protection against his other creditors, who were many and some of them clamorous--and it was followed by his pardon.

His successor, Williams, now Bishop of Lincoln, who stood in great fear of Parliament, tried to stop the pardon.

The assignment of the fine, he said to Buckingham, was a gross job--"it is much spoken against, not for the matter (for no man objects to that), but for the manner, which is full of knavery, and a wicked precedent.

For by this assignment he is protected from all his creditors, which (I dare say) was neither his Majesty's nor your Lordship's meaning."

It was an ill-natured and cowardly piece of official pedantry to plunge deeper a drowning man; but in the end the pardon was passed.

It does not appear whether Buckingham interfered to overrule the Lord Keeper's scruples.

Buckingham was certainly about this time very much out of humour with Bacon, for a reason which, more than anything else, discloses the deep meanness which lurked under his show of magnanimity and pride.

He had chosen this moment to ask Bacon for York House.

This meant that Bacon would never more want it.

Even Bacon was stung by such a request to a friend in his condition, and declined to part with it; and Buckingham accordingly was offended, and made Bacon feel it.

Indeed, there is reason to think with Mr. Spedding that for the sealing of his pardon Bacon was indebted to the good offices with the King, not of Buckingham, but of the Spaniard, Gondomar, with whom Bacon had always been on terms of cordiality and respect, and who at this time certainly "brought about something on his behalf, which his other friends either had not dared to attempt or had not been able to obtain."

But, though Bacon had his pardon, he had not received permission to come within the verge of the Court, which meant that he could not live in London.

His affairs were in great disorder, his health was bad, and he was cut off from books.

He wrote an appeal to the Peers who had condemned him, asking them to intercede with the King for the enlargement of his liberty.

"I am old," he wrote, "weak, ruined, in want, a very subject of pity."

The Tower at least gave him the neighbourhood of those who could help him.

"There I could have company, physicians, conference with my creditors and friends about my debts and the necessities of my estate, helps for my studies and the writings I have in hand.

Here I live upon the sword-point of a sharp air, endangered if I go abroad, dulled if I stay within, solitary and comfortless, without company, banished from all opportunities to treat with any to do myself good, and to help out my wrecks."

If the Lords would recommend his suit to the King, "You shall do a work of charity and nobility, you shall do me good, you shall do my creditors good, and it may be you shall do posterity good, if out of the carcase of dead and rotten greatness (as out of Samson's lion) there may be honey gathered for the use of future times."

But Parliament was dissolved before the touching appeal reached them; and Bacon had to have recourse to other expedients.

He consulted Selden about the technical legality of the sentence.

He appealed to Buckingham, who vouchsafed to appear more placable.

Once more he had recourse to Gondomar, "in that solitude of friends, which is the base-court of adversity," as a man whom he had "observed to have the magnanimity of his own nation and the cordiality of ours, and I am sure the wit of both"--and who had been equally kind to him in "both his fortunes;" and he proposed through Gondomar to present Gorhambury to Buckingham "for nothing," as a peace-offering.

But the purchase of his liberty was to come in another way.

Bacon had reconciled himself to giving up York House; but now Buckingham would not have it: he had found another house, he said, which suited him as well.

That is to say, he did not now choose to have York House from Bacon himself; but he meant to have it.

Accordingly, Buckingham let Bacon know through a friend of Bacon's, Sir Edward Sackville, that the price of his liberty to live in London was the cession of York House--not to Buckingham, but of all men in the world, to Lionel Cranfield, the man who had been so bitter against Bacon in the House of Commons.

This is Sir Edward Sackville's account to Bacon of his talk with Buckingham; it is characteristic of every one concerned: "In the forenoon he laid the law, but in the afternoon he preached the gospel; when, after some revivations of the old distaste concerning York House, he most nobly opened his heart unto me;

wherein I read that which augured much good towards you.

After which revelation the book was again sealed up, and must in his own time only by himself be again manifested unto you.

I have leave to remember some of the vision, and am not forbidden to write it.

He vowed (not court like), but constantly to appear your friend so much, as if his Majesty should abandon the care of you, you should share his fortune with him.

He pleased to tell me how much he had been beholden to you, how well he loved you, how unkindly he took the denial of your house (for so he will needs understand it); but the close for all this was harmonious, since he protested he would seriously begin to study your ends, now that the world should see he had no ends on you.

He is in hand with the work, and therefore will by no means accept of your offer, though I can assure you the tender hath much won upon him, and mellowed his heart towards you, and your genius directed you aright when you writ that letter of denial to the Duke.

The King saw it, and all the rest, which made him say unto the Marquis, you played an after-game well; and that now he had no reason to be much offended.

"I have already talked of the Revelation, and now am to speak in apocalyptical language, which I hope you will rightly comment: whereof if you make difficulty, the bearer can help you with the key of the cypher.

"My Lord Falkland by this time hath showed you London from Highgate.

_If York House were gone, the town were yours_, and all your straitest shackles clean off, besides more comfort than the city air only.

The Marquis would be exceeding glad the Treasurer had it.

This I know; yet this you must not know from me.

Bargain with him presently, upon as good conditions as you can procure, so you have direct motion from the Marquis to let him have it.

Seem not to dive into the secret of it, though you are purblind if you see not through it.

I have told Mr. Meautys how I would wish your Lordship now to make an end of it.

From him I beseech you take it, and from me only the advice to perform it.

If you part not speedily with it, you may defer the good which is approaching near you, and disappointing other aims (which must either shortly receive content or never), perhaps anew yield matter of discontent, though you may be indeed as innocent as before.

Make the Treasurer believe that since the Marquis will by no means accept of it, and that you must part with it, you are more willing to pleasure him than anybody else, because you are given to understand my Lord Marquis so inclines; which inclination, if the Treasurer shortly send unto you about it, desire may be more clearly manifested than as yet it hath been; since as I remember none hitherto hath told you _in terminis terminantibus_ that the Marquis desires you should gratify the Treasurer.

I know that way the hare runs, and that my Lord Marquis longs until Cranfield hath it; and so I wish too, for your good; yet would not it were absolutely passed until my Lord Marquis did send or write unto you to let him have it; for then his so disposing of it were but the next degree removed from the immediate acceptance of it, and your Lordship freed from doing it otherwise than to please him, and to comply with his own will and way."

It need hardly be said that when Cranfield got it, it soon passed into Buckingham's hands.

"Bacon consented to part with his house, and Buckingham in return consented to give him his liberty."

Yet Bacon could write to him, "low as I am, I had rather sojourn in a college in Cambridge than recover a good fortune by any other but yourself."

"As for York House," he bids Toby Matthews to let Buckingham know, "that _whether in a straight line or a compass line_, I meant it for his Lordship, in the way which I thought might please him best."

But liberty did not mean either money or recovered honour.

All his life long he had made light of being in debt; but since his fall this was no longer a condition easy to bear.

He had to beg some kind of pension of the King.

He had to beg of Buckingham; "a small matter for my debts would do me more good now than double a twelvemonth hence.

I have lost six thousand by the year, besides caps and courtesies.

Two things I may assure your Lordship.

The one, that I shall lead such a course of life as whatsoever the King doth for me shall rather sort to his Majesty's and your Lordship's honour than to envy; the other, that whatsoever men talk, I can play the good husband, and the King's bounty shall not be lost."

It might be supposed from the tone of these applications that Bacon's mind was bowed down and crushed by the extremity of his misfortune.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

In his behaviour during his accusation there was little trace of that high spirit and fortitude shown by far inferior men under like disasters.

But the moment the tremendous strain of his misfortunes was taken off, the vigour of his mind recovered itself.

The buoyancy of his hopefulness, the elasticity of his energy, are as remarkable as his profound depression.

When the end was approaching, his thoughts turned at once to other work to be done, ready in plan, ready to be taken up and finished.

At the close of his last desperate letter to the King he cannot resist finishing at once with a jest, and with the prospect of two great literary undertakings-- "This is my last suit which I shall make to your Majesty in this business, prostrating myself at your mercy seat, after fifteen years service, wherein I have served your Majesty in my poor endeavours with an entire heart, and, as I presumed to say unto your Majesty, am still a virgin for matters that concern your person and crown; and now only craving that after eight steps of honour I be not precipitated altogether.

But because he that hath taken bribes is apt to give bribes, I will go furder, and present your Majesty with a bribe.

For if your Majesty will give me peace and leisure, and God give me life, I will present your Majesty with a good history of England, and a better digest of your laws."