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xlii
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 charitable 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 at once. On the 4th of June he wrote to thank the King and Buckingham for his release. On the 7th[1] 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

  1. ↑ The date usually given to this letter, ‘June 1,’ is obviously incorrect. Mr. Spedding informs me that it should be ‘June 7.’
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