Bacon, CXXXVI. Vol. V. Certain historians have remarked, that there was something, in the behaviour of Somerset before his trial, singular and mysterious; and that his master likewise seemed to labour under a secret anxiety of mind, equally surprising. The earl, they pretend, said aloud in the Tower, that the king durst not bring him to a trial. Others reject this account as a downright calumny, invented merely to fix a black and cruel imputation on that prince's memory: or affirm at least that it was founded only in popular rumour and malicious conjecture. But that there was more in it than conjecture, may be proved by undoubted authority; by some original letters of Sir Francis Bacon, then Attorney General, and particularly employed in this very affair. Those letters have, I think, escaped the observation of all our writers: I shall therefore quote from them such passages as may serve to throw some light on this dark transaction; though not enough perhaps to discover the darker motives that influenced the king's and the earl's behaviour in it. Ba James himself selected certain persons to examine Somerset with all secrecy, and marked out to them the particular articles on which they were to interrogate him. They had withal orders to work upon his obstinate temper by every method of persuasion and terror: to give him now hopes of the king's compassion and mercy; and now to assure him that the evidence was full to convict him, so as there needed neither confession nor supply of examination. con, who was one of them, adds that they found his deportment sober and modest, different apparently from other times. In another letter he has these remarkable words: "That same little charm "which may be secretly infused into Somerset's ear some hours before his trial, was excellently well thought of by his majesty only I could wish it a little enlarged; for if it be no more but to spare his blood, he hath a kind of proud humour that may "over-work the medicine." All this was to be done with much caution and privacy; for the very ser 66 66 66 jeants, appointed to manage part of the trial, were not yet in the secret how the king would have it carried on: and therefore Bacon, to cover from them what he knew of the matter, desired that some general heads of direction might be sent to them all. From hence it appears that James shewed an extreme solicitude about the earl's behaviour, and the event of this affair. To what can it be attributed? His affection for Somerset was extinguished: and he lay under the strongest obligations of public honour and justice not to screen, from the censure of the law, a man whose guilt was of the most crying enormity. The earl's standing mute, or denying that guilt, especially as the proofs of it were strong and pregnant, could bring no possible imputation on his name. Why then all this dark practice? all these artifices of the persons who examined him, only to make him submit to be tried, and to keep him in due temper during his trial? There is still more. James Bacon, ordered his Attorney General to forecast and put in Vol. V. writing every possible case with regard to the trial, and accompany them with his own opinion on each; that no surprise might happen, but that things duly foreseen might have their directions and remedies in readiness. Accordingly Sir Francis Bacon sent a writing of that purport, on which there are several observations in the king's own hand. I will only quote one passage from it: "All these points of 66 66 mercy and favour to Somerset are to be understood "with this limitation; if he do not, by his contemptuous and insolent carriage at the bar, make "himself incapable and unworthy of them." The king's remark in the margin is in these words: "That 66 danger is well to be foreseen, lest he upon the one "part commit unpardonable errors; and I on the "other part seem to punish him in the spirit of "revenge." Somerset was not to be tried for any offence against the king; but for the barbarous murder of a private man and his friend. What then means the contemptuous carriage that is so much apprehended? What are the unpardonable errors it may Letter CXXXVIII. Court of K. James I. p. 106. lead him to commit? If he reflected on a master, to whom he had been so much obliged, only for giving him up to a fair and equal trial, to a trial by many circumstances rendered inevitable; that would, in the opinion of all mankind, only aggravate his crime, and furnish a new motive to that master for letting the sentence of justice pass upon him in all its rigour. After these particulars, I may venture to mention a fact related by Sir Antony Weldon, who says, that when the lieutenant of the Tower, Sir George More, came and told the earl he must prepare for his trial on the morrow, he absolutely refused to appear unless they dragged him to it by violence; adding, that the king durst not bring him to trial. Astonished at such rash and dangerous expressions, the lieutenant, though it was then midnight, went and demanded an audience of the king, to inform him of what had passed. James, upon hearing his story, burst into a passion of tears, and entreated More to use his utmost skill upon his prisoner and soothe him, by whatever means, into proper temper and submission. This More undertook to do, and by a stratagem effected it. Weldon affirms he had this story from the lieutenant's own mouth: and though he is a partial writer, and indulges himself in a humour of licentious scandal, the authentic vouchers I have produced render his anecdote not improbable. Other circumstances, mentioned by those who have professedly written of this reign, I therefore omit, and shall only add, that there is in the Cabala a letter to king edit. 1691. James from Somerset after his condemnation, of a very peculiar turn. He desires that his estate may be continued to him entire, in a style rather of expostulation and demand than of humility and supplication and through the affected obscurity of some expressions, one may discover, that there was an important secret in his keeping of which the king dreaded a discovery. The issue was, that James continued to him a pension of four thousand pounds a year, as long as he lived. Cabala, p. 204. Prince Henry died in the year 1612, universally lamented. His excellent qualities had endeared him to the love and expectations of all England. Ger manicus was not more the darling of the Roman people and the untimely death of both those princes was universally believed to have been procured by poison. He had expressed, on all occasions, an abhorrence of minions, and an utter contempt of Somerset he had even declared a firm resolution, to humble both him and the family into which he was allied, if ever he came to reign. Whether the unaccountable transaction I have been relating has any reference to the death of this amiable prince, or whe ther it does not point rather to an affair of a very different nature, the reader is left to determine. Villiers, now without a rival in the king's affections, was every day receiving new proofs of his bounty; at the same time that he more than shared with him the exercise of his authority. In the course of a few years he was made Gentleman of the bedchamber, Master of the horse, Knight of the garter, earl, marquis and duke of Buckingham, Chief justice in eyre of all the forests, and lord High Admiral of England. One of those prodigies of fortune, who rise now and then upon the world, as the vulgar imagine of comets, at once to astonish and scourge it a signal instance of the wantonness of sovereign power, and how far it may insult human kind in exalting and adorning what it should neglect or contemn. He drew He drew up after him an obscure kindred, numerous and indigent, bestowed on them places of trust and profit, married them into the noblest families, and graced them all with dignities, which were to be supported at the common expence of a whole people; to whom if any one of them was merely harmless, it was his utmost praise. After having read, not only what the enemies of this favourite have said against him, but all that his partizans have alledged on his behalf, I do not find, during the whole time of his influence under two reigns, an influence supreme and unbounded, that he ever projected one scheme for the benefit of his country, or ever executed one underત VOL. I. Bacon, Cabals, p. 219. taking to its honour; the only great criterion by which we ought to judge those men that administer the public. The breaking off the Spanish match at last was solely a sacrifice to his own vanity and resentment. On the caprice of this youth, however, the first and ablest men in the kingdom were to depend entirely, for their access at court, for their advancement, for any opportunity of being able to serve their country and their sovereign. Sir Francis Bacon was sensible of this, and courted his friendship with a particular application. But he must have felt all the servitude and disagreeableness of his situation, when, to be well with the king, he found it necessary to turn steward to the estate newly bestowed on this young man; to study the ways and means of improving his lands, and of rendering his places most profitable to him. It is true he found his account in this service; as it proved the surest means of his own preferment: but, to a great and worthy mind, preferment so meanly obtained is disgrace, only a little disguised and gilded over. The Lord Chancellor Egerton, broken with age and infirmities, had often petitioned the king to be dismissed from his laborious employment. He was now seventy-seven years old, and had presided in the court of chancery from the year 1596, with an unblemished reputation as a judge in private cases; but his public conduct had been always framed to the directions of the court with an obsequiousness of dangerous example in one, who held so great and important a trust. To this high dignity Sir Francis Bacon privately aspired: and as it was the utmost scope of his ambition, he had aimed all his endeavours in the king's service to merit it at his hands. He took care, at the same time, to strengthen his pretensions by the credit of Buckingham. His ambition even made him descend to artifices, that are as common in courts, as they are mean and unwarrantable; for he endeavoured to ruin in the king's good opinion such men as the voice of the public might probably design to the same office, and whom he therefore considered as his rivals. He was parti |