xl PREFACE, 
upon the mercy of the Lords. A few days later (April 22), 
Bacon, who had ascertained privately the particulars of the 
charge, wrote to the Lords: ‘I find matter sufficient and 
full, both to move me to desert my defence, and to move 
your Lordships to condemn and censure me.’ Why he thus 
avoided the trial is a mystery which has never yet been 
solved. He wished to resign the Seal, urging as a motive 
for clemency, ‘ Neither will your Lordships forget, that there 
are vitia temporis as well as vitia hominis; and the beginning 
of reformation hath the contrary power to the pool of 
Bethesda; for that had strength to cure him only that was 
first cast in, and this hath strength to hurt him only that is 
first cast in; and, for my part, I wish it may stay there and 
go no farther.’ His confession was regarded as insufficient, 
and it was ordered that the articles of the charge, now in- 
creased in number to twenty-three, should be laid before 
‘him. On the 30th of April his full confession, with the 
answers to the articles in detail, was read before the Lords. 
‘I do plainly and ingenuously confess,’ he says, ‘that I am 
guilty of corruption, and do renounce all defence.’ As after 
the severe self-examination which he underwent, he did not 
find himself blameless, it would be doing an ill service to his 
memory to excuse him. But, in confessing himself guilty of 
corruption, we must have regard to his own language. That 
Bacon took bribes for the perversion of justice no one has 
ventured to assert. Not one of the thousands of decrees 
which he made as Chancellor was ever set aside. None of 
his judgements were reversed. Even those who first charged 
him with accepting money admitted that he decided against 
them. What his own opinions were concerning judicial 
bribery we know from many passages in his writings, and 
it would argue him a hypocrite of the deepest dye to suppose 
that he openly practised what he as openly denounced. 
In his speech in the Common Pleas (May 3, 1617) to Justice 
Hutton, he admonishes him: ‘That your hands, and the 
hands of your hands (I mean those about you) be clean, 
and uncorrupt from gifts, from meddling in titles, and from 
