8 DR. RAWLEY'S LIFE OF BACON. 



this present honourable lord 1 9 did ever bear the title of Lord 

 Chancellor. His dignities were first Knight, then Baron of 

 Verulam ; lastly. Viscount St. Alban ; besides other good 

 gifts and bounties of the hand which His Majesty gave him, 

 both out of the Broad Seal and out of the Alienation Office 2 , to 

 the value in both of eighteen hundred pounds per annum ; 

 which, with his manor of Gorhambury, and other lands and 

 possessions near thereunto adjoining, amounting to a third part 

 more, he retained to his dying day. 



Towards his rising years, not before, he entered into a mar- 

 ried estate, and took to wife Alice, one of the daughters and 

 coheirs of Benedict Barnham, Esquire and Alderman of Lon- 

 don; with whom he received a sufficiently ample and liberal 

 portion in marriage. 3 Children he had none ; which, though 

 they be the means to perpetuate our names after our deaths, yet 

 he had other issues to perpetuate his name, the issues of his 

 brain ; in which he was ever happy and admired, as Jupiter was 

 in the production of Pallas. Neither did the want of children 

 detract from his good usage of his consort during the inter- 

 marriage, whom he prosecuted with much conjugal love and 

 respect, with many rich gifts and endowments, besides a robe of 

 honour which he invested her withal ; which she wore unto her 

 dying day, being twenty years and more after his death. 4 



The last five years of his life, being withdrawn from civil 

 affairs 5 and from an active life, he employed wholly in contem- 



1 Sir Edward Hyde, made Lord Chancellor June 1. 1660. This clause was added 

 in 1661 ; the leaf having been cancelled for the purpose. 



2 Here the paragraph ended in the first edition. The rest was added in 1661. 



8 It appears, from a manuscript preserved in Tenison's Library, that he had about 

 2201, a-year with his wife, and upon her mother's death was to have about 1407. a-year 

 more. 



4 By the " robe of honour" is meant, I presume, the title of viscountess. It appears 

 however that a few months before Bacon's death his wife had given him some cause 

 of grave offence. Special provision is made for her in the body of his will, but revoked 

 in a codicil, "for just and great causes," the nature of which is not specified. Soon 

 after his death she married Sir John Underwood, her gentleman-usher. She was buried 

 at Eyworth in Bedfordshire on the 29th of June 1650. 



* On the 3rd of May 1621, Bacon was condemned, upon a charge of corruption to 

 which he pleaded guilty, to pay a fine of 40,OOOZ. ; to be imprisoned in the Tower 

 during the king's pleasure ; to be for ever incapable of sitting in parliament or holding 

 office in the state ; and to be banished for life from the verge of the court. From that 

 time his only business was to find means of subsistence and of satisfying his creditors, 

 and to pursue his studies. 



His offence was the taking of presents from persons who had suits in his court, in some 

 cases while the suit was still pending ; an act which undoubtedly amounted to corruption 

 as corruption was defined by the law. The degree of moral criminality involved in it is 

 not so easily ascertained. To judge of this, we should know, First, what was the under- 

 standing, open or secret, upon which the presents were given and taken, for a gift, 

 though it be given to a judge, is not necessarily in the nature of a bargain to pervert 



