The Winding Stair: Francis Bacon, His Rise and Fall Read online

  Francis Bacon’s advice on trade with colonies and foreign nations is particularly fascinating to the reader of the present day. ‘Let the foundation of a profitable trade be thus laid, that the exportation of home commodities be more in value than the importation of foreign, so we shall be sure that the stocks of the kingdom shall yearly increase, for then the balance of trade must be returned in money or bullion… Let us advance the native commodities of our own kingdom, and employ our countrymen before strangers: let us turn the wools of the land into cloths and stuffs of our own growth, and the hemp and flax growing here into linen cloth and cordage, it would set many thousand hands on work… And of all sorts of thrift for the public good, I would above all others commend to your care the encouragement to be given to husbandry, and the improving of lands for tillage… In the last place, I beseech you take into your serious consideration that Indian wealth, which this island and the seas thereof excel in, the hidden and rich treasure of fishing… I may truly say to the English, go to the pismire thou sluggard. I need not expound the text; half a day’s sail with a good wind will show the mineral, and the miners.’

  Francis went on to advise his pupil about behaviour at Court, not to interpose himself in matters proper to the officers of the household, yet to be vigilant in seeing the King was not abused. ‘But neither in jest nor earnest must there be countenance or ear given to flatterers or sycophants, the bane of all Courts. They are flies who will not only buzz about in every ear, but will blow and corrupt every place where they light.’

  He concluded by warning George Villiers: ‘You serve a gracious Master and a good, and there is a noble and a hopeful Prince, whom you must not disserve; adore not him as the rising sun in such a measure, as that you put a jealousy into the father, who raised you; nor out of the confidence you have in the father’s affections, make not yourself suspected of the son; keep an equal and a fit distance, so you may be serviceable to both… Thus may you long live a happy instrument for your King and Country; you shall not be a meteor, or a blazing star, but stella fixa, happy here, and more happy hereafter.’

  It might be thought that this letter of advice would have been work enough for the Attorney-General during his leisure hours at Gorhambury that summer of 1616; but no, his mind was ever active; nor must he give way to that fatal habit of ‘sleeping after dinner or at 4 o’clock’. Why not set about revising the whole system of the law in England, which would not only benefit the country but, if the King agreed to the suggested amendments, would prove an added thorn in the flesh of Lord Chief Justice Coke, who had been suspended from office since June for holding certain questionable doctrines of law of which neither his Majesty nor the Council approved? This was the official reason given for the suspension. The Lord Chief Justice had also bungled in the Somerset affair, with his unsubstantiated accusation of treasonable actions on the part of the earl.

  Francis’s pen, or those of his scribes, was always busy, with advice to George Villiers, amendments of the law, an essay or two, some revision of the great work in progress, the Novum Organum, and perhaps a glance back at one of his unpublished Latin works, A Description of the Intellectual Globe or the Theory of the Heaven. Possibly it was some motion of the planets that brought about the lassitude of afternoon and not the light meal, improperly digested and followed by exercise, up through the grounds to the woods and gardens, his young attendants more exhausted than he was himself, for there was nothing that refreshed him so much as walking in his garden. ‘There ought to be gardens for all the months in the year… In July come gillyflowers of all varieties; musk roses, the lime tree in blossom, early pears, and plums in fruit… In August come plums of all sorts in fruit, apricots, pease, barberries, filberts, musk-melons, monkshoods of all colours…’ He was not so partial to ornamental water as he had been a few years past. ‘For fountains, they are a great beauty and refreshment; but pools mar all, and make the garden unwholesome, and full of flies and frogs…’ One can see him waving his tall hat at the buzzing insects, or fluttering his handkerchief. ‘The main matter is so to convey the water, as it never stay… that the water be never by rest discoloured, green, or red, or the like, or gather any mossiness or putrefaction. Besides that, it is to be cleansed every day by the hand: also some steps up to it, and some fine pavements about it doth well. As for the other kind of fountain, which we may call a bathing-pool, it may admit much curiosity and beauty, wherewith we will not trouble ourselves.’

  His young gentlemen were evidently not encouraged to splash about in the Gorhambury pools. Such pastimes bordered on sluttery…

  All in all, it was a pleasant long vacation, and a year he could look back upon with satisfaction. The trial of the Earl of Somerset, which might have had unfortunate implications for his Majesty, had been conducted fairly and honourably; Somerset had been removed with his life spared, his lady likewise. The new favourite Viscount Villiers promised well, and, if he heeded the advice given him, could not harm the monarch—rather the reverse—and would prove an invaluable associate. Prince Charles’s boyish dislike would soon be overcome; the jet of water he had turned upon the favourite at Greenwich had been no more than a prank, although the King had boxed his ears for the offence. Charles would be invested as Prince of Wales in November, and this solemn occasion would help him to grow up.

  There were various minor affairs to be dealt with during the new term, but the most important was the business of the Lord Chief Justice and his future. Lord Coke had published reports of some hundreds of cases decided in the courts of law, and in these reports he had set down as law doctrines inconsistent, so it was claimed, with the rights of the King, the church and the courts. He had been commanded to correct or withdraw all such matter as might be considered false or objectionable, and had meanwhile been suspended from his office. On October 2nd, by the King’s command, Lord Chancellor Ellesmere and the Attorney-General called upon him to hear whether he now retracted these errors. Coke was summoned three times before the Council to give an explanation of his reports, and the points of dispute were then forwarded to the King.

  The Attorney-General, who might have been expected to tackle his old opponent with severity, ‘used him with more respect than the rest’, so Chamberlain reported on October 26th. ‘As for divers speeches he gives out in his favour—as that of a man of his learning and parts is not every day found nor so soon made as marred.’

  Francis had not been so mild at the preliminary hearings the previous June, when the Lord Chief Justice had first been suspended; but that he had respect for his one-time rival is evident from a paragraph which he wrote in his Proposal for Amending the Laws of England during the long vacation, in which he said, ‘Had it not been for Sir Edward Coke’s Reports—which, though they may have errors, and some peremptory and extra-judicial resolutions more than are warranted, yet they contain infinite good decisions and rulings over cases—the law by this time had been almost like a ship without ballast.’

  Another reason for greater leniency in October may well have been that Francis had been impressed by the conduct of Coke’s wife Lady Hatton, who, according to Chamberlain, had stood her husband in good stead by ‘soliciting at the council table, wherein she hath done herself a great deal of honour’. Lady Hatton, who had been on bad terms with the Lord Chief Justice throughout their nineteen years of married life, had thus shown him some loyalty when he was in trouble.

  However, it was to no avail. The King, for reasons of his own—perhaps because of the Lord Chief Justice’s interference before the Somerset trail, or because he was known to have questioned the royal prerogative—was determined to replace him, and Coke was removed from his office in the third week of November. He received the news, Chamberlain reported, ‘with dejection and tears’. Sir Henry Montague, at the Attorney-General’s suggestion, was sworn in as his successor. As for Lady Hatton, her loyalty to her husband had been but temporary, and she removed herself and her belongings from his house at Stoke, while her abandoned spouse retir
ed to his estate in Norfolk.

  Both out of the way, the Attorney-General could attend to other pressing business, but first a word to Viscount Villiers, who appears to have been suffering from a chill the very same day that Chief Justice Coke was removed from office.

  ‘My very good Lord,

  ‘I am much troubled in mind, for that I hear you are not perfectly well, without whose health I cannot joy, and without whose life I desire not to be… Good my Lord, once again have care of your health; and learn what Cardanus saith, that more men die of cold after exercise than are slain in the wars. God ever keep you.

  ‘Your Lordship’s true and much devoted servant.’

  Sent with a present of fruit, perhaps, from Gorhambury, medlars, or flowers such as hollyhocks, and ‘roses that come late’.

  Then forward to business, with a speech in the Star Chamber against duels, for a gentleman and a peer of the realm had quarrelled, the peer protesting that he had been libelled and that the gentleman was at fault. The Attorney-General made swift work of the pair of them. ‘The swelling tumours that arise in men’s proud affections must be beaten flat with justice, or else all will end in ruin… Will you have the sacrifices of men, not of bulls or oxen?’ Both duellists felt the rough edge of the Attorney-General’s tongue, and although the gentleman was obliged to pay a modest fine, the nobleman was warned. ‘God forbid the privileges of the peers should privilege them to wrong any man: yet there ought a distinction to be kept, and because he is a peer his wrong is the greater.’

  Next Francis Bacon turned his attention to securing a pardon from his Majesty for the last of the accused persons who had been held in the Tower at the time of the Somerset affair, Sir Thomas Monson. The Lord Chancellor was consulted, and on December 7th the Attorney-General and his Solicitor-General (Sir Henry Yelverton) submitted that ‘it is a case fit for your Majesty’s pardon, as upon doubtful evidence, and that Sir Thomas Monson pleads the same publicly, with such protestations of his innocency as he thinks good, and so the matter may come to a regular and just period.’ (The pardon was, in fact, formally acknowledged by the King’s Bench early in the following February.)

  Just before Christmas an anonymous letter of advice to the late Lord Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke began to circulate about town, causing general interest and speculation as to the author. Some were inclined to think the writer was the Attorney-General, and certain historians since have held the same view. But the writer, who had strong Puritan sympathies and possessed views on state and political matters quite contrary to those of the Attorney-General, could not possibly have been Francis Bacon, according to his biographer Spedding. Style, language, outlook, all were different, and the supposition seems to have come about because a copy of this letter—of which there were many in circulation at the time it was printed—was found amongst Francis Bacon’s papers in 1648, and appeared in a volume entitled Remains of the Right Honourable Francis Lord Verulam. Chamberlain, who one might think would have been among the first to pick upon Francis Bacon as the author, had this to say soon after the paper was printed: ‘I forgot in my last to signify all I could learn touching the author of that discourse to the Lord Coke. Some father it upon Mr. Attorney, some upon Joshuah Hall or Dr. Hayward, and some upon any one of those you name; but certainly we have none.’

  A treatise that Francis did circulate at this time was A True Relation of a most desperate Murder, illustrated with woodcuts of the actual murder in Lincoln’s Inn and the suicide of the murderer (he hanged himself in jail before he could be brought to trial). The treatise had been written, possibly at Francis’s dictation, by his lawyer friend Mr. Nicholas Trott. ‘I have put a little pamphlet, prettily penned by one Mr. Trott, that I set on work touching the whole business,’ the Attorney-General informed Viscount Villiers; but doubtless such matters ‘were but toys’, for the Christmas festivities were upon them, a new honour was to descend upon the favourite, and on January 5th 1617 he was created Earl of Buckingham.

  It was Twelfth Night, and a masque was given. The new earl danced with the Queen. So did an earlier favourite, who had never quite made top grade, the Earl of Montgomery. The masque was repeated towards the end of the month when the Spanish ambassador was present, and there began to be talk of a royal betrothal, that of the newly invested Prince of Wales and the Infanta of Spain. Such a match, should it come about, was hardly likely to be popular, either with the people or with the House of Commons, for the Infanta was a Catholic. His Majesty was known to favour it, while the opinion of his Council was more reserved. In any event, an alliance between the two royal houses would take time to negotiate, and his Majesty himself had a more immediate project for which preparations were already under way—his first journey into Scotland since he had been crowned King of England in 1603.

  His departure was fixed for the second week in March, and while he was absent the business of the Crown and government must be carried on by the Council. Lord Ellesmere, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal and Lord Chancellor, had been ill since the new year, and was now confined to his room. He told the King he was too infirm to continue his duties, and begged to be replaced. On March 7th his Majesty, having personally visited the sick man at York House, gave the Great Seal of office as Lord Keeper to the Attorney-General, Sir Francis Bacon. That same evening the Earl of Buckingham received a letter.

  ‘My dearest Lord,

  ‘It is both in cares and kindness, that small ones float up to the tongue, and great ones sink down into the heart with silence. Therefore I could speak little to your Lordship today, neither had I fit time: but I must profess this much, that in this day’s work you are the truest and perfectest mirror and example of firm and generous friendship that ever was in court. And I shall count every day lost, wherein I shall not either study your well doing in thought, or do your name honour in speech, or perform you service in deed. Good my Lord, account and accept me

  ‘Your most bounden and devoted friend and servant of all men living,

  ‘Fr. Bacon. C.S.’

  Queen Elizabeth’s little Lord Keeper had risen to his father’s place.

  12

  Three days after he had become Lord Keeper of the Great Seal Francis Bacon went to visit his old friend Lord Ellesmere, whom he had succeeded, bearing with him a promise from the King that on his retirement he would shortly receive an earldom and a pension of £3,000 a year for the remainder of his life. The honour came too late. The aged statesman, who had combined the office of Lord Keeper with that of Lord Chancellor, could only murmur his thanks and ask that title and pension should be inherited by his son. Francis sat by his bedside, and assured him that his Majesty would respect his last request. Even he did not expect that the end would come so soon, but in less than half an hour Lord Ellesmere was dead.

  He had held his office for over twenty years, and was loved and respected by all who knew him. He had been a good and dear friend both to Francis and to his brother Anthony, and if Francis had wept when he visited his sick bed nearly a year ago—as he had told George Villiers in a postscript to a letter at that time—he undoubtedly did so again now.

  Lord Ellesmere died in York House, perhaps in the very bedroom where Francis and Anthony’s father Sir Nicholas Bacon had also died; and memories of those times, of his boyhood, of his father in his robes of state bearing the seal of office, must surely have filled Francis’s mind as he sat beside the dying man. No private memoranda, alas, exist for the year 1617. If they did once, they have disappeared, or been destroyed. But one thing is certain; Francis Bacon, now Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, determined this day that he would hold his office with the same dignity and respect as had not only his immediate predecessor, and Lord Keeper Puckering before him, but especially the man who had won the position on Queen Elizabeth’s accession to the throne in 1558, his own father.

  York House had been their home, the first home Francis ever knew. Here he had been born fifty-seven years ago. He could remember his mother presiding over the vast retinue
of servants, his father’s cousin Kemp acting as steward. There were ushers, waiters, servers, cooks, and superior officials forever in attendance, a chaplain, clerks… The impression now, in retrospect, was one of pageantry, of colour. There by the river steps he and Anthony would stand, watching the Thames tide seep over the mudflats to course past the palace of Whitehall, and at high flood, when the wind blew strong, the water would break against the defending wall and nearly breach it.