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 soth 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 



