NOT ES 7. X X A A A A . 



th contract his views into the little point of self-interest, and equally steel the 



art against the rebukes of conscience, or the sense of true honour. 



&quot; Bacon, having undertaken the service, informeth his majesty in a letter 

 ddressed to him, that with regard to three of the judges whom he nameth, he 

 ad small doubt of their concurrence. Neither, saith he, am I wholly out 

 of hope, that my Lord Coke himself, when I have in some dark manner put him 

 in doubt that he shall be left alone, will not continue singular. These are 

 plain naked facts, they need no comment. Every reader will make his own 

 reflections upon them. I have but one to make in this place. This method of 

 forestalling the judgment of a court in a case of blood then depending, at a time 

 too when the judges were removeable at the pleasure of the crown, doth no 

 honour to the persons concerned in a transaction so insidious and unconsti 

 tutional, and at the same time greatly weakeneth the authority of the iudo-- 

 ment.&quot; 



In a tract entitled An Enquiry into the conduct of a late Right Honourable 

 Commoner, 4th edit. Lond. 1766, 8vo. p. 1, the same observation is thus 

 repeated : &quot; In the tide of almost every great man s life there is commonly one 

 period, which is not only more remarkable than the rest, but conveys with it 

 strong characteristic marks of the complexion of him to whom it belongs. Thus 

 the great Bacon, when he saw the only road to preferment was through Buck 

 ingham, attached himself to that favourite, and undertook to second the views 

 of the crown. We read of his excessive pliancy in transactions wholly below 

 his rank and character ; particularly several attempts to corrupt and bias the 

 judges in causes which the King or his minister had much at heart. Avarice, 

 says Mr. Justice Foster (who in his discourse on high treason has recorded 

 these instances of his baseness) , 1 think, was not his ruling passion. But, 

 whenever a false ambition, ever lestless and craving, over- heated in the pursuit 

 of the honours which the crown alone can confer, happeneth to stimulate an 

 heart otherwise formed for great and noble pursuits, it hath frequently betrayed 

 it into measures full as mean as avarice itself could have suggested to the 

 wretched animals who live and die under her dominion. For these passions, 

 however they may seem to be at variance, have ordinarily produced the same 

 effects. Both degrade the man ; both contract his views into the little point of 

 self-interest, and equally steel the heart against the rebukes of conscience, or 

 the sense of true honour. Whoever is at the pains of reading Bacon s life, will 

 find that from the moment of his attaching himself to Villiers, Duke of Buck 

 ingham, his character takes a new turn. We see no more of the firm friend, 

 nor honest man ; both are sunk in the scandalous instrument of a favourite, 

 without honour, and of a court without veracity; and Villiers and he were 

 afterwards impeached by the Commons. The King indeed endeavoured to save 

 Villiers ; but Bacon was sacrificed. It is true he had been made a lord, but 

 he was sequestered from parliament ; and the pangs of his conscience were 

 evidenced by every passage of his future life.&quot; 



NOTE AAAA. 



Biographia, p. 3853. He lived in a private frugal manner, being resolved to 

 dispose of his great estate in some important charity. But before he had fixed 

 upon any particular plan for carrying that design into execution, he was greatly 

 alarmed in the year 1608, with the news of a design to raise him to the peerage, 

 in the view of laying him thereby under an obligation to make King Charles I. 

 then Duke of York, his heir. Upon the first notice that came to his ears of 

 this project, he immediately put a stop to it. (a) 



() The project was laid before King James by Sir John Harrison, who had 

 proposed it to Mr. Sutton ; but as soon as he heard what was doing at court, he 

 dispatched the following letter to the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere and the Lord 

 [Treasurer Salisbury, both feoffees for his intended hospital : 



11 May it please your Lordships,! understand that his majesty is possessed 



