CERTIFICATE OF BACON AND YELVERTON CONCERNING SIR It may please your most excellent Matie, According to your pleasure signified to me your Attorney by word of mouth, we have considered of the state of Sir Thomas Mounson's case, and what is fit further to be done in it. And we are of opinion, First, that it is altogether unfit to have a proceeding to a trial, both because the evidence itself (for so much as we know of it) is conjectural, as also for that to rip up those matters now will neither be agreeable to the justice nor to the mercy formerly used by your Majesty towards others. Secondly, to do nothing in it is neither safe for the gentleman nor honourable (as we conceive) for your Majesty, whose care of justice useth not to become faint or weary in the latter end. Therefore we are of opinion that it is a case fit for your Majesty's pardon, as upon doubtful evidence, and that Sir Thomas Mounson plead 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; wherein the very reading of the pardon which shall recite the evidence to be doubtful and conjectural, added to his own protestations, is as much for the reputation of the gentleman as we think convenient, considering how things have formerly passed. Hereupon we have advised with the Lord Chancellor, whom we find of the same opinion. All which nevertheless we in all humbleness submit to your Majesty's better judgment. Your M.'s most humble and most bounden servants, FR. BACON. 7th of December, 1616. This advice was acted upon. The King ordered Bacon to draw up a pardon for Sir Thomas Monson, which was accordingly done. The preamble ran as follows: 1 S. P. Dom. James I. vol. 89, no. 65. Written in the hand of one of Bacon's men. Signatures original. Date inserted apparently by Yelverton. "Cumque honori Regis maxime conveniat res et causas pervestigare, ne per defectum inquisitionis innocens condemnetur vel nocens absolvatur, quandoquidem evidentiæ et probationes criminum unde præfatus Thomas Mounson miles et Baronettus (ut perfertur) indictatus existit, minime certæ et plenæ sed dubiæ et conjecturales existant, etc. Sciatis igitur quod nos tam pietate quam justitiâ moti, perdonavimus," etc. On the 12th of February 1616–7 Sir Thomas appeared at the bar of the King's Bench, delivered up his pardon, and when it had been read addressed the Court. The substance of his speech was a solemn protestation of his innocence. The preamble of the pardon itself admitted that the proofs and evidences were insufficient. "Which testimony of record (he said) though it might abundantly satisfy any impartial judgment, yet for the more full and ample clearing of my reputation to the world, which next my conscience to God I hold the dearest thing to me in this life, I do here before him who knoweth the secrets of all hearts, in the face of this high seat of Justice, profess and protest that I am guiltless of the blood of that man for which I stand here indicted, guiltless of the fact, guiltless of the procurement thereof, guiltless of the privity or consent thereto, directly or indirectly." The Chief Justice (Sir H. Montagu) acknowledged in his reply that the case was exceptional, and a protestation of innocency legitimate. "It is true, as you say, that every pardon is an implied confession of the fact; but yours is not so, but is a declaration of your innocency. Your pardon is not a pardon of grace according to the common form, but is granted tam pietate quam justitia moti, as the pardon itself says.' And so the matter ended. 5. It is about this time that we have the first news of an anonymous letter, famous in its day and still worth preserving, but holding a position in our literature much above its right, and due to a misconception. On the 21st of December 1616, Chamberlain writes to Carleton, after sending the latest news about Sir Edward Coke, 66 'There is a discourse abroad by way of advice to him. By that little I saw of it, it is worth the having, and I have wished Mr. Sherburn to get it for you, and told him the mean, though I cannot do it myself."" 1 1S. P. Dom. James I. vol. 90, no. 62. 2 Id, vol. 89, no. 87. On the same day Sherburn himself writes "I am bold to send you this paper which I think is not yet come to your hands, being the advice of a concealed friend to Sir Edward Cooke. The truth and plainness which he useth maketh it the better liked, and I am of opinion your Lordship will be well pleased in reading the same." On the 22nd of February, in answer apparently to some inquiry as to the authorship of the paper, Chamberlain writes again: 66 I forgot in my last to signify all I could learn touching the author of that discourse to the Lord Cooke. Some father it upon Mr. Attorney, some upon Josuah Hall or Dr. Hayward, and some upon one of those you name; but certainty we have none.' A correspondent of Tobie Matthew's, writing to him before his return to England about the miscarriage of a packet with which he had been charged from "Mr. Attorney" (that is, Bacon), adds at the end of his letter, "I here send you for your pastime a Letter Consolatorie, which was written to the great judge upon his disgrace; nor is it an ill one in my opinion, where the passion of zeal does not sway the writer; but there he is as absurd as any prentice would make a shift to be."3 The paper alluded to in each case is one of which there are many contemporary copies scattered about in collections, under various titles, and all without any name subscribed. Though of some value for the light it throws upon the state of political parties and opinions at the time, I should not myself have thought it worth any particular notice if the blank left for the name of the writer had not been filled up by somebody with the name of Bacon, and secured for it (with the general consent of editors, biographers, and critics) a place among his works. When a writing has been once printed with a man's name, to show that there is no sufficient reason for supposing that it was his is not thought enough: you are expected to show sufficient reason for concluding that it was not: and though I do not admit the challenge to be fair, I am willing in this case to accept it. With the help of what has gone before, I think I can show that whoever the author of this paper may have been, he cannot have been Bacon; but I must waste a little ink and paper upon it. For the general consent of editors in printing it as his, we are indebted I believe to an inadvertency on the part of Robert Stephens. In 1648, more than thirty years after the time when it was written, a volume appeared with the title of "Remains of the Right 1 S. P. Dom. James I. vol. 89, no. 88. 2 Id. vol. 90, no. 79. 3 Matthew's Collection of Letters, p. 101. Honourable Francis Lord Verulam," etc., and this letter appeared in it. From the "Remains" it was promoted to the "Cabala' a volume of superior character in other respects, but equally without any responsible editor or any traces of intelligent editorial supervision. On the authority of the "Remains" and the "Cabala" together, it was included by Stephens in his "Letters and Memoirs of Sir Francis Bacon" (1702); but with one material and unjustifiable alteration introduced either by himself or his printer. Though the editors both of the "Remains" and the "Cabala" must be understood as assuming that it was written by Bacon, they both printed it as they found it, with a blank in the place of signature; showing that it was not written in the writer's name. Stephens inserted Bacon's name at the bottom, and thereby not only settled the question of authorship but gave it the character of an ordinary letter from one man to another; and this without notice of the innovation. Having once appeared in that form in a collection of that authority, it is not surprising that it continued to keep its place among Bacon's letters, which have not hitherto been studied either by editors or critics or biographers with attention enough to suggest the difficulty. How Stephens himself came to overlook it, is less easy to explain. He was in general so careful and intelligent an editor and so well-informed a man, that to a modern reader who has taken pains to understand this letter it may well seem strange that he was not struck with the absurdity of supposing that Bacon wrote it. But the absurdity was not so obvious then as it is now. The history of the affairs to which it relates was not so easy of access, the correspondence which contains it having for the most part remained unpublished till after Stephens's death; and I am not sure that he had the means of understanding the nature of the transactions to which the writer of the letter alludes. It was owing to the style (which has a strong character of its own, quite unlike Bacon's) that I was myself first led, in spite of the signature, to question the authorship. But when I came to examine the sense and understand the allusions, I found the matter still more conclusive than the style. It will be obvious even on a cursory reading that the writer, though he had some grudges against Coke on personal grounds, sympathised with him in his political action and regarded him as the champion of the Commonwealth; which could never have been Bacon's case. A sense of former ungracious usage, and a certain satisfaction at the opportunity now presented of repaying it by a lecture which though wholesome would be disagreeable, gives flavour to his criticism; but no part of the blame is bestowed upon the spirit, purpose, or policy of any of Coke's recent proceedings all which he entirely approves and applauds,-blaming only the ill management which had caused the ill success. He begins with an apology for the liberty he is about to take in speaking plainly. At other times, he says, he has not been able to do so safely; but affliction is sent from Heaven to plough the heart and prepare it to receive the seed of wisdom and bring forth the increase of grace; and "supposing this to be the time of his affliction" he will take advantage of it to perform the office of a true friend, and tell him his faults. Then follows a careful enumeration and exposition of the defects which mar his virtues; as a habit of speaking without listening, of preferring his own arguments though they be the weaker, of expatiating out of his element, of "cloying his audience when he would be observed," of conversing with none but underlings, and with them only as a schoolmaster with scholars, of praising and disgracing upon slight grounds, of unseemly jesting at men in public, of making the law lean too much to his opinion, and of spending his wealth upon himself: in all which general censures Bacon, though he would have expressed them differently, would probably have concurred substantially. But from this the writer proceeds to a particular criticism of Coke's management of the Overbury business, and so enables us to judge (being so well acquainted as we now are with all the details) how much he knew about it and where he got his information. As there is some obscurity in the style at this part-which I attribute to a not unreasonable apprehension of the Star Chamber, before which an unambiguous avowal of the opinions implied would probably have been visited with a fine for scandalising the Government-I give the whole passage as it stands. "In your last, which might have been your best, piece of service to the State, affecting to follow that old rule which gives Justice leaden heels and iron hands, you used too many delays till the delinquents' hands were loose and yours bound; in that work you seemed another Fabius, but there the humour of Marcellus would have done better: what need you have sought more evidence than enough? Whilst you pretended the finding out of more, missing your aim you discredited what you had found. The best judgments think, though you never used such speeches as are fathered upon you, yet you might well have done it and done but right. For this crime was second to none but the powder-plot. That would have blown up all at a blow, a merciful cruelty. This would have done the same by degrees, a lingering but as sure a way: one by one might have been culled out till all opposers had been removed. Besides, that other plot was scandalous to Rome, making popery odious in the sight of all the world: this hath been scandalous to the truth of the gospel, ever since the first |