When Francis Bacon wrote to the Peers that he was “a broken reed,” he was no longer seeking to defend each particular cause. He had just conceded that the accusations of bribery, taken together, were well founded. A few weeks earlier, the Lord Chancellor of England had stood at the very centre of an institution wherein suitors hoped to obtain justice. Now, the House of Lords was calling upon him to answer for presents received whilst suits were still pending before him.
The first tale to reach the Commons turned upon a sum of one hundred pounds. One Awbrey had a suit before the Chancery; grown weary of delays, he borrowed the money and repaired to Gray’s Inn in the company of Sir George Hastings and Mr Jenkins. The two gentlemen delivered the sum to Bacon. Upon coming forth, they told Awbrey that the Chancellor had thanked him and assured him that he would succeed. Yet the order subsequently made in his cause proved adverse to him. Hastings acknowledged having carried the money and having intimated that it was meant to assist Awbrey. The promise, if indeed it had been made as the petitioner understood it, had therefore failed to purchase the longed-for decree.
The petition of Edward Egerton introduced another scene and a weightier sum. Having already presented Bacon with a piece of plate valued at fifty-two pounds, he sent four hundred pounds by the hands of Hastings and Sir Richard Young, at a moment when a cause concerning him was still depending. It was reported to him that the Chancellor had at first hesitated, deeming the gift too great, but had subsequently accepted it as an acknowledgement of past services. Egerton claimed to have heard that Bacon undertook to assist him in his lawful suits. The messengers confirmed that they had transported the purse, whilst maintaining they knew nothing of its contents.
Egerton’s dispute was already entangled in a web of recognizances, arbitrations, and intermediaries. A decree by Bacon had been challenged; a bond of six thousand marks was intended to bind the parties to his arbitration. Following Edward Egerton’s refusal to abide by the award, Sir Rowland commenced proceedings to have it confirmed. A divine, Doctor Field, was then alleged to have offered Egerton to set an intrigue in motion toward Bacon, holding out the promise that a considerable sum would be distributed among those who solicited his cause. Before the committee of inquiry, an intermediary admitted he could no longer recall the precise figure, but affirmed it exceeded what any cause could ever merit in any court whatsoever. These figures spoke not merely of a gift: they constituted a second litigation waged around the first.
The investigators summoned Hastings. According to his testimony as recorded by Borrow, Bacon took him aside privately and urged him to dissuade Awbrey from lodging a complaint, seeing that he held sway over him. Hastings showed the petition to the Chancellor; the latter promised that justice should be done, yet Awbrey obtained no redress. When Hastings later told him he would have to answer for the affair, Bacon replied that he would deny it upon his honour. These were grave words, uttered by a man who had himself delivered the money: the Commons had to weigh both the gifts received by the Chancellor and the credit of the intermediaries who had borne them.
The two initial petitions did not stand alone. Touching Lady Wharton, a clerk of the Chancery related that the lady had conveyed him in her carriage to Bacon’s residence to stay the enrolment of an order that would have dismissed her suit. She thereafter obtained a hearing and a favourable decree. Another witness maintained that she had delivered one hundred pounds in a purse of her own making, followed by another two hundred before the decree was fully concluded. Borrow records a jest attributed to Bacon concerning the difficulty of refusing the handiwork of so fair a lady; in this narrative, the light retort does not obscure the alleged consequence: the money had preceded the decree.
Sir John Trevor, other litigants, and persons whose names recurred throughout the dockets were mentioned in their turn. Clerks and retainers spoke of gifts amounting to several hundred pounds, of silverware, a cabinet, household furnishings, interest-free loans, and monies paid after decisions had been handed down. Bacon was later to draw a distinction between what he held he had received after a cause had ended, what he styled a loan, and what he confessed to having accepted whilst proceedings were still in progress. Such a distinction might avail him in his personal defence; it could not remedy the condition of a court wherein suitors were left to wonder which gift would be taken for gratitude, and which for the price of a hearing.
On the 19th of March, when the Lords took up the matter, Bacon wrote to them pleading that he was too ill to attend their debates. He prayed that the Peers would maintain a good opinion of him until the charges were heard, that he might be granted time to consult counsel and frame an answer, and that he might have leave to cross-examine the witnesses. He also called to mind the vast number of orders pronounced each year, and the danger that the mere accumulation of complaints might suffice to condemn him. The House replied that they intended to proceed according to the rules of justice, and bade him prepare his defence.
On the 24th of April, the Prince laid before the Lords a submission from Bacon. He stated that he had discovered in the articles delivered against him sufficient matter to move him to abandon his defence and throw himself upon the House. Yet he still refrained from confessing to any specific bribe; he omitted to say how he had come by knowledge of each accusation, and appeared to palliate some among them. The Lords deemed his confession imperfect. On the following day, they demanded a categorical answer: would he make a defence, or would he confess?
Bacon chose confession, with a single reservation. He would acknowledge each article, he explained, yet desired leave to correct those particulars wherein the grievance outstripped the facts. The Peers gave him until the 30th of April. In his detailed answer, he confessed to having received gifts from persons whose causes were pending, notably in the suits of Egerton, Wharton, Trevor, Fisher, and Hansby. He likewise admitted to presents accepted after decisions had been rendered and to several interest-free loans, while continuing to maintain that certain items had been overvalued or that certain monies had merely been lent. He confessed to the fault of extortions committed by his servants, which he had failed to oversee. In the end, he acknowledged that even according to his own account, there had been great corruption and neglect.
A committee of the Peers waited upon him to enquire whether he acknowledged this submission to be his own, and whether he would stand by it. He replied that it was his act, his hand, and his heart, and once more likened himself unto a broken reed. The House saw in these words the final abandonment of his defence. The King caused the Great Seal to be sequestered and committed to other hands on the 1st of May. On the 3rd of May, the Commons prayed judgment against the late Chancellor at the bar of the House of Lords. Bacon, sick in bed, did not appear in person.
The sentence was severe: a fine of forty thousand pounds, imprisonment in the Tower during the King’s pleasure, perpetual disability from holding public office or sitting in Parliament, and banishment from the verge of the Court. James I later caused him to be enlarged and granted him a pension. A subsequent pardon remitted his civic disabilities and other penalties. Bacon never resumed his seat; his infirmities stood in the way, and he died in 1626. Awbrey had been obliged to borrow the hundred pounds carried to the Chancellor. Yet the decree had gone against him. In that first petition lay already the full misery of the suitor: having paid in the hope of a justice that should never have been bought, only to be forced to denounce his own bribe in order to be heard at last.