xiii PREFACE. 
the civilians, is no offence.’ In another draft he adds this 
comment: ‘For the first, I take myself to be as innocent 
as any born on St. Innocents’ day in my heart. For the 
second, I doubt in some particulars I may be faulty. And 
for the last, I conceived it to be no fault.’ 
Such is Bacon’s own interpretation of his confession, and 
we are bound to accept it, for it is borne out by twenty-two 
of the articles of the charge. To the twenty-third article, 
that he had given way to great exactions by his servants, ‘he 
confessed it to be a great fault that he had looked no better 
to his servants.’ With this confession, we may leave his 
name and memory, as he left it in his will, ‘to men’s charit- 
able speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next ages.’ 
The verdict can hardly be other than that he pronounced 
himself: ‘I was the justest judge that was in England these 
fifty years; but it was the justest censure in Parliament that 
was these two hundred years.’ This censure, pronounced on 
the 3rd of May by the Lords, was that he should pay a fine of 
40,000/, and be imprisoned in the Tower during the King’s 
pleasure; that he should thenceforth be incapable of holding 
any office in the State, or of sitting in Parliament; and that he 
should not come within the verge of the Court. He had 
resigned the Seal to the King on the 1st of May. It had 
been decided by a majority of two that his titles were not to 
be taken from him, But the sentence of imprisonment was 
partially carried out, evidently to his great astonishment. On 
the 31st of May he was taken to the Tower, and instantly 
wrote a passionate letter to Buckingham, ‘Good my Lord, 
procure the warrant for my discharge this day.’ The order 
must have been given atonce. On the 4th of June he wrote to 
thank the King and Buckingham for his release. On the 7th® he 
dated a letter to the Prince of Wales from Sir John Vaughan’s 
house at Parson’s Green, whither he had been allowed to 
retire. On the 9th, Chamberlain writes to Carleton that the 
© The date usually given to this letter, ‘ June 1,’ is obviously incorrect. 
Mr. Spedding informs me that it should be ‘ June 7,’ 
