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THE LAW OF PEACHAM'S CASE.

Coke, because that is not written. He will not write it to James, because James knows better, and it would be in evidence, so he qualifies it with "(as I partly understood).” "Whereupon he said (which I noted well) that his brethren were wise men, and that they might make a show as if they would give an opinion as was required, but the end would be that it would come to this, they would say they doubted of it and so pray advice with the rest. To this I answered that I was sorry to hear him say so much, lest it might come to pass that some, that loved him not, might say, that, that which he had foretold, he had wrought." Bacon sends this paragraph with an inductive compliment to himself, and surely it is deserved, for subtlety was never carried further. If Coke does not lead the judges, he may be accused to the King that he had caused the judges to oppose him, to justify his own prophecy. Is not this a masterstroke of policy?

This is the end of his first meeting with Coke.

But he has met him a second time, and this second meeting is even of more importance. Bacon arms himself with all the precedents. They are unluckily obliged to proceed on the statute 25 Ed. III: "the imagining and compassing the death and final destruction of our lord the King," but "to lock him in as much as I could, (I proposed) that there be four manners whereby the death of the king is compassed and imagined.

"1. By plot.

"2. By disabling his title.

"3. By subjecting his title to the pope.

"4. By disabling his regiment (his régime) and making him appear incapable or indign to reign.

QUALIFICATIONS FOR PLACE. ·

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"These I insisted on with more efficacy and edge, authority of law and record, than I can now express."

Coke is not to be entrapped into this crime. His honesty is neither to be cheated, nor his intellect beguiled. He listens, takes notes, questions Bacon's interpretation of the law, and in answer to the insinuation that the King would think him backward if he did not give his opinion promptly, answered, that when the other judges had given their opinion he would be ready with his.

The letter concludes by pointing out another mode of raising money, as a qualification for the Chancellorship. The previous letter suggested one scheme, by confiscation. James is very poor, always in debt, will indeed do anything for money, so desperate is his need. There is now another plan which cannot fail to make so useful a servant profitable to the King. Some one has obtained a grant of a forest worth 30,000l. for 4007. under colour of a defective title. This is no other than Lady Shrewsbury, whose husband Gilbert has been brought before the Privy Council two years before, with a view to deprive him of his dignity in Ireland-a lady who might be fined in the Star Chamber for instance, to the tune of perhaps 50,000. But Bacon has gained this knowledge extrajudicially, perhaps from the Lord Treasurer; and though he is willing to seem active by thus divulging a secret, would not wish it known, so he asks James to keep the knowledge from that nobleman.

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TORTURE INEFFECTUAL.

CHAPTER XVIII.

JAMES recommended that in Owen's case "the same course of private coercion of the Judges" should be followed; for it was not clear whether Owen could be dragged within the law, and so murdered with a show of justice or not. Bacon thinks (letter of February 11th) it is not necessary; that there is "sufficient evidence" in his case, clearly proving that he was aware that in Peacham's case there was not, and that it was murder he was contemplating, not punishment. He has by this time taken Coke apart again, and asked him for his opinion "after the rest were gone," when "I told him all the rest were ready." Another untruth. Coke would give no answer. Then Bacon concludes: "I have tossed this business in omnes partes." On the 14th February Coke has given in, in his own handwriting, his opinions, which Bacon incloses to the king with the comments " Oportuit hæc fieri," and "Finis autem nondum." On the 28th February he announces that although the Bishop of Bath and Wells has been doing his best to intimidate Peacham, he has not been successful in wringing from the poor greyheaded old man, broken by his recent tortures, anything

A FALSE PASSAGE.

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either to criminate himself or others, "neither doth Peacham alter in his tale touching Sir John Sydenham."

By way of illustrating how unlucky Mr. Dixon's invention is, and that his fabrications do not unfortunately, or by good luck tally with history, here is his version.

"How Peacham lies and swears, now accusing others, and now himself, anon retracting all that he has said, denying even his handwriting and his signature, one day standing to the charge against Sydenham, next day running from it altogether; how he is sent down into Somersetshire, the scene of his ignoble ministry, to be tried by a jury of men, who will interpret his public conduct by what they know of his private life; how he is found guilty by the twelve jurors and condemned by Sir Lawrence Tanfield and Sir Henry Montagu, two of the most able and humane jurors on the bench; how his sentence is commuted by the crown into imprisonment during the King's pleasure, and how he ultimately dies in Taunton jail, unpitied by a single friend, I need not pause to tell."

A witty modern writer in going through Covent Garden Market heard a man, vending asparagus, point it out to the notice of the crowd with the recommendation, "That them ere is a hexcellent grass." It struck him that the sentence was unmatchable, in pronunciation and grammatical construction, as an example of incorrect English. Perhaps it is. Similarly I will aver that a statement containing more wilful misstatements and more ignorant misstatements, cannot be produced in literature. In the first five lines. there are no less than nine deliberate inaccuracies. truth of the rest of the sentence I will presently test.

The

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THE INFORMERS' TESTIMONY.

But we have it in Bacon's own hand repeatedly, that it was impossible to make the man contradict himself.

On the 9th or 10th of March Peacham is again racked, stretched, as Chamberlain pleasantly calls it. In all the agony of torture he does not swerve from the main facts; he denies, however, that the writing was his-whether with truth or without, cannot, alas! now be known. Perhaps the sermon was not in his own hand-had been merely foisted into his study by a spy and an informer. One of the witnesses, perhaps the only witness, against him, is examined again on the 10th. He states that what he has already declared about Peacham before the Lords of the Privy Council, before my Lord of Canterbury, was wholly out of fear, and to avoid torture."

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This man knows so little of the unhappy victim of his accusation as to be able to affirm only that he was tall of stature, and "can make no other description of him," and finally denieth to set his hand to this examination. So, although Bacon with his tools, Crew and Yelverton, have found an informer to their purpose, they cannot get him to effect what they want.

In King James's own hand there is a statement of Peacham's case. From this it appears that the sermon containing the alleged treasonable passages was found with a mass of other papers in a box without a lid; that, though Peacham confessed he might preach it in the end, yet it would only be after "all the bitterness had been taken out."

All Bacon's efforts so far have been of no avail. To frighten the old man, perhaps actually to torture him, what Bacon calls a false fire has been made in