FRANCIS BACOK 



571 



that Bacon himself signed, " Peacham was exam- 

 ined before torture, in torture, between tortures, 

 and after torture." The ease of the luckless would- 

 be pulpit libeler need not be pursued in detail fur- 

 ther. Though a mighty fuss was made about it, the 

 very record of which covers nearly forty pages of 

 Spedding, 1 it is enough to say here that Peacham 

 was tried for treason at Taunton, found guilty 

 and left for death — the jail-fever, however, not 

 the gallows, killing him a few months afterward. 

 It is surely startling to find Bacon assisting in 

 person at the torture of a fellow-creature only 

 thirteen years before torture was unanimously 

 declared by the judges to be contrary to law ; yet 

 his admirers preserve their equanimity. "All we 

 know," pleads Mr. Spedding, " is, that he did not 

 refuse to be present at an examination under tort- 

 ure." Even if this were so, it could not much 

 avail Bacon ; but I submit that we know more. 

 We know that he busied himself greatly about 

 Peacham's case, taking the management of the 

 process of screwing a prse-judicial expression of 

 opinion out of the judges concerning it. We know 

 that he wrote lightly, not to say unfeelingly, to 

 the king regarding it : " It grieveth me exceed- 

 ingly that your majesty should be so much trou- 

 bled with this matter of Peacham, whose raging 

 devil seemeth to be turned into a dumb devil." 

 Bacon was always sensitive to the sorrows of kings 

 and great placemen. We know that five years 

 later, on being called upon to deal with " one Pea- 

 cock charged with an attempt to infatuate the 

 king's judgment by sorcery," and finding Peacock 

 too possessed by a dumb devil, this chancellor of 

 Nature's laws recommended torture. His own 

 words are : " I make no judgment yet, but will go 

 on with all diligence ; and, if it may not be done 

 otherwise, it is fit Peacock be put to the tort- 

 ure. He deserveth it as well as Peacham did." 2 

 But, another admirer urges, Bacon was doing no 

 more than his duty in seeing Peacham tortured ; 

 he was first law-officer of the crown, and, as such, 

 was bound to carry out his instructions. " Why, 

 Hal, 'tis my vocation ! Hal, 'tis no sin for a man 

 to labor in his vocation ! " 



Bacon's conduct as lord-keeper and lord- 

 chancellor I have left myself little room to dis- 

 cuss. I am not aware that fault has been found 

 with his general discharge of the duties of his 

 office, and posterity seems to have acquiesced in 

 his own judgment of himself : "I was the justest 

 judge that was in England these fifty years." 

 The two broad blemishes — to use the very mild- 

 est term possible regarding them — on his judicial 

 1 Spedding, vol. v., pp. 90-128. 2 Ibid., vol. vii , p. 77. 



career are, that he too often listened to Bucking- 

 ham's one-sided applications on behalf of suitors 

 in his court, and that he had what Shakespeare 

 calls " an itching palm " — a few hundred pounds 

 slipped into his hand by a litigant seldom found 

 its way back to its original owner. Here is a 

 sample of Buckingham's letters : " Lest my often 

 writing may make your lordship conceive that 

 this letter has been drawn from me by importu- 

 nity, I have thought fit, for preventing of any such 

 conceit, to let your lordship know that Sir John 

 Wentworth, whose business I now recommend, 

 is a gentleman whom I esteem in more than an 

 ordinary degree. And therefore I desire your 

 lordship to show him what favor you can for my 

 sake in his suit, which his majesty hath referred 

 to your lordship : which I will acknowledge as a 

 courtesy unto me." ' With regard to the second 

 blemish, Bacon himself, when impeached, pleaded 

 guilty to twenty-seven circumstantially stated in- 

 stances of taking gifts from suitors. But it is 

 alleged that his guilt in these two particulars, 

 crimson as its dye looks to the carelessly glanc- 

 ing spectator, fades into a comparatively neutral 

 tint before a searching examination. Neither of 

 his aberrations marred the character of his deci- 

 sions ; he read Buckingham's letter or took the 

 suitor's money or cabinet, and then decided ac- 

 cording to the merits of the case and the law that 

 ruled it ; no charge of having perverted justice 

 was ever made against him ; the Commons them- 

 selves, while arraigning him as a corrupt judge, 

 never questioned even the soundness of a single 

 decision. Moreover, most of the gratuities — that 

 is the happy euphemism — " were received after 

 the cause had been ended, and without relation 

 to any precedent promise ; " and the accepting 

 such gratuities, Bacon, to use his own words, 

 " conceived to be no fault." And to crown all, 

 the chancellor's oath contained no clause against 

 corruption ; and corruption in a chancellor was 

 not forbidden by either the written or unwritten 

 law of England. These are the leading features 

 of the case for the defense. 



Many topics of great interest connected with 

 the subject still remain ; but I must be satisfied 

 with a mere indication of one or two of them. 

 Bacon's love of management, which he himself 

 describes as "a middle thing between art and 

 chance," strikes one very often in watching his 

 ways. He took a pleasure in laying little traps, 

 generally harmless ; in arranging for a longish 

 pedigree of events, in which the last was the 

 thing sought; in aiming with a great show of 

 1 Spedding, vol. vii., p. 6. 



