NOTE GGG. 



The humble Submission and Supplication of the Lord Chancellor Bacon to 

 the House of Lords. 



May it please your Lordships, I shall humbly crave at your hands a benign 

 interpretation of that which I shall now write ; for words that come from wasted 

 spirits and oppressed minds are more safe in being deposited to a noble con 

 struction, than being circled with any reserved caution. 



This being moved (and, as I hope, obtained of your lordships) as a protec 

 tion to all that I shall say, I shall go on ; but with a very strange entrance, as 

 may seem to your lordships, at first ; for, in the midst of a state of as great 

 affliction as, I think, a mortal man can endure (honour being above life) ; I 

 shall begin with the professing of gladness in some things. 



The first is, that hereafter the greatness of a judge or magistrate shall be no 

 sanctuary or protection to him against guiltiness, which is the beginning of a 

 golden work. 



The next, that after this example, it is like that judges will fly from any thing 

 in the likeness of corruption (though it were at a great distance) as from a 

 serpent ; which tends to the purging of the courts of justice, and reducing them 

 to their true honour and splendour. And in these two points (God is my wit 

 ness) though it be my fortune to be the anvil upon which these two effects are 

 broken and wrought, I take no small comfort. But to pass from the motions of 

 my heart (whereof God is my judge) to the merits of my cause, whereof your 

 lordships are judges, under God and his lieutenant ; I do understand there 

 hath been heretofore expected from me some justification ; and therefore I have 

 chosen one only justification, instead of all others, out of the justification of Job. 

 For after the clear submission and confession which I shall now make unto 

 your lordships, I hope I may say, and justify with Job, in these words, I have 

 not hid my sin, as did Adam, nor concealed my faults in my bosom. This is 

 the only justification which I will use. 



It resteth, therefore, that without fig-leaves, I do ingenuously confess and 

 acknowledge that, having understood the particulars of the charge, not formally 

 from the house, but enough to inform my conscience and memory, I find matter 

 sufficient and full, both to move me to desert my defence, and to move your 

 lordships to condemn and censure me. Neither will I trouble your lordships 

 by singling these particulars, which I think might fall off. Quid te exempta 

 juvat spinis de pluribus uva 1 Neither will I prompt your lordships to observe 

 upon the proofs, where they come not home, or the scruple touching the credits 

 of the witnesses ; neither will I represent to your lordships how far a defence 

 might, in divers things, extenuate the offence, in respect of the time and 

 manner of the guilt, or the like circumstances ; but only leave these things 

 to spring out of your more noble thoughts and observations of the evidence 

 and examinations themselves, and charitably to wind about the particulars of 

 the charge here and there, as God shall put into your mind, and so submit 

 myself wholly to your piety and grace. 



And now I have spoken to your lordships as judges, I shall say a few words 

 unto you as peers and prelates, humbly commending my cause to your noble 

 minds and magnanimous affections. 



Your lordships are not simply judges, but parliamentary judges ; you have 

 a further extent of arbitrary power than other courts ; and, if you be not tied 

 by ordinary course of courts or precedents, in points of strictness and severity 

 much less in points of mercy and mitigation : and yet, if any thing which I 

 shall move might be contrary to your honourable and worthy end (the intro 

 ducing a reformation), I should not seek it. But herein I beseech your lord 

 ships to give me leave to tell you a story. 



Titus Manlius took his son s life for giving battle against the prohibition of 

 his general : not many years after, the like severity was pursued by Papirius 

 Cursor, the dictator, against Quintus Maximus, who being upon the point to 

 be sentenced, was, by the intercession of some particular persons of the senate, 

 spared ; whereupon Livy maketh this grave and gracious observation, Neque 



