398

BACON'S OPINION OF LAWYERS.

vocation, of any men, since the law or lawyers never can be respected, if the King be not reverenced, it doth therefore best become the judges of any, to check and bridle such impudent lawyers, and in their several benches to disgrace them that bear so little respect to the king's authority and prerogative.

He

Bacon has a private enmity against Coke. has kept it fairly in check-has always behaved with temper and discretion till the time for its exhibition was ripe. Soon after Bacon had been seized and sent to a sponging-house for debt, Coke insulted Bacon openly in the Exchequer on the first day of term; Bacon has written down the abuse in its precise words. Coke had commenced by saying, "If you have any tooth against me, Mr. Bacon, pluck it out." Perhaps he had been apprised of Bacon's underhand attempts to supplant him, and the epithet used of him to the Queen. He tells Bacon that it were good to clap a capias utlagatum upon his back, in allusion to his late arrest, Bacon retorting Mr. Attorney, was on an old scent.

Through all their career, striving against each other, the hate has no doubt continued. Bacon has at last his revenge. By making his quarrel the King's, he has procured Coke's disgrace. He is even made the instrument of his rival's public rebuke, condemnation, and disgrace. He has long studiously misrepresented his acts. Now on public grounds, and openly, Sir Edward is reduced. But the trials of the Overbury murderers, the Earl and Countess of Somerset, are not over, and Coke is required to conduct them, so that he is not to be finally disgraced yet; Bacon being disinclined (perhaps from a sense of his in

sufficiency) to the justiceship; and aiming at the Chancellorship, and there being no other judge fit to take the post. Bacon objects to Montagu sitting as judge, who has so long been only his follower. So the Chief Justice is in disgrace till November, when on the first opening of term, as we have seen, Bacon urges James to punish still further and disgrace him to the uttermost by loss of place and fine. The monarch is inclined to be merciful. 'Tis his head that is weak not his heart, and he is sorry even to disgrace his old servant, who has done so little to annoy him. But Bacon will have it so, and the King consents. By-and-by, James will bitterly repent this concession to private malice, for Captain Coke, of the Long Parliament, as the King will call him, will frame a law or two, which will put an end to notions of Prerogative for But this is yet in the womb of time.

ever.

Coke's expulsion from office is the sequence of the singular enmity which had arisen between these most distinguished men. From their complete antagonism of characters, there was from the first hardly the possibility of their agreeing; but since the commencement of their career, their rivalry in the same pursuits has of course widened the breach.

The Royal pedant applies to Bacon. What does he propose? The reply is prompt. "Not mercy;" and to point out how easily the judge's place may be supplied. On the 13th November he sends to the King a form of discharge for my Lord Coke from his place of Chief Justice of your Bench. He sends also a warrant to be signed by the King, empowering the Chancellor to nominate another Lord Chief Justice. The name

400

PACKING THE BENCH.

is left blank. Bacon suggests his creature Montagu for the post, the man who helped him so well in Peacham's case. "If your Majesty, without too much harshness, can continue the place within your own servants, it is best." Montagu is one of these. Coventry is not. He is a pupil of Coke's. Coke may try, being condemned for matters in his Reports, to gain time. Bacon will have prompt measures. The King consents. Here are his reasons for his servant's disgrace: "His Majesty has noted in him a turbulent courage towards the liberties of his church and state ecclesiastical, towards his prerogative royal, and towards all his other high courts" — the Star Chamber, Chancery, Admiralty Court of the Duchy, all of them undoubtedly more or less unconstitutional in their jurisdiction; and, lastly, that he had given offence by his exposition of the law in cases of high treason.

It has been so usually the case to accept Bacon's own version, on account of its apparent moderation, of Coke's character, that from time immemorial, he has been made the subject of condemnation and censure. I am not inclined to deny that Coke had much that was unamiable in his character. I will go further, and say that if he had been conciliatory, we were in poor plight as a nation now. The indebtedness of this realm to Coke has never yet been defined. It can hardly be overestimated. He was eminently acrimonious in manner: he was still popular-not on account of his politeness certainly, or his liberality, or his good temper. Then why was it? Every fault he had, was calculated to lower him in the world's esteem. All his peculiarities were framed to excite animosity and ridicule. He was the direct and absolute opposite of

AIDS TO POPULARITY.

401

Bacon in this. Bacon's eloquence and fascination of manner were irresistible. Bacon's temper was perfectly under control. Bacon was always courteous, conciliatory, elegant. Coke was a tedious talker, fond of parading his law and his learning, irascible and overbearing to his counsellors, coarse and vulgar to every poor wretch brought before him for trial. That he was popular there is abundant proof. Here, in the King's letter, announcing his final disgrace, is the King's own declaration. "His Majesty, in his princely wisdom, hath made two special observations of him; the one that he having in his nature not one part of those things which are popular in men, being neither civil, nor affable, nor magnificent, he hath made himself popular, by design only, in pulling down government." Here we see that his Master acknowledges him to be popular, and cannot account for it.

Without making any pretence to sagacity, if James and his adviser had only discovered one reason, they might have ceased to wonder. No one sued to him for justice in vain. He was a just judge. Spite of all his disagreeableness of manner, his character commanded respect and honour, where it neither invited affection nor regard. But here is an additional insight into Coke's character:

"Whereas his Majesty might have expected a change of him when he made him his own, by taking him to be of his council, it made no change at all, but to the worse, he holding on all his former channel, and running separate courses from the rest of his council, and rather busying himself in casting fears before his council, concerning

402

CREATURES AND COURTIERS.

what they could not do, then joining his advice to what they should do."

What testimony could be more eloquent than this? The King gave him a place to make him his creature. Creature and courtier are very like. Coke is no more manageable. He is even worse than before. And he frightens the other creatures by telling them their acts were against law. Frightening them with spectres of law and hobgoblins of Bracton and Fortescue. That wicked old lawyer, damaging the nerves of the obsequious sycophants, bent on supporting to the uttermost, the fiction of the King's prerogative.

Coke falls.

Bacon stamps on his prostrate foe. He does what he has already done with Essex-makes merry over his misery. He cannot publish slander against Coke, for Coke is alive to resent it. This he can only do by writing and bequeathing his letters to posterity. But he can insult his enemy in his fall, and this he does. He pens a long letter to Sir Edward of mockery and insult, some quotations from which (from its length) can alone be supplied. He commences with that profanity to which he in his allusions.

was prone

EXTRACTS FROM BACON'S LETTER TO COKE AFTER

HIS FALL.*

"God, therefore, before his Son that bringeth mercy, sent his servant, the trumpeter of repentance, to prepare the way before him, making it smooth and straight, and as it

* In Montagu, vol. vii., p. 296, may be read the whole of this letter, as revised by Bacon, and at length.