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Notes In 1610 the fourth session of James’ first parliament met. Despite Bacon’s advice to him, James and
the Commons found themselves at odds over royal prerogatives and the king’s embarrassing
extravagance. The House was finally dissolved in February 1611. Throughout this period Bacon
managed to stay in the favour of the king while retaining the confidence of the Commons.
In 1613, Bacon was finally appointed attorney general, after advising the king to shuffle judicial
appointments. As attorney general, Bacon successfully prosecuted Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset
and his wife, Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset for murder in 1616. The so-called “Prince’s
Parliament” of April 1614 objected to Bacon’s presence in the seat for Cambridge and to the
various royal plans which Bacon had supported. Although he was allowed to stay, parliament
passed a law that forbade the attorney-general to sit in parliament. His influence over the king
had evidently inspired resentment or apprehension in many of his peers. Bacon, however, continued
to receive the King’s favour, which led to his appointment in March 1617 as the temporary Regent
of England (for a period of a month), and in 1618 as Lord Chancellor. On 12 July 1618 the king
created Bacon Baron Verulam, of Verulam, in the Peerage of England. As a new peer he then
styled himself as “Francis, Lord Verulam”.
Bacon continued to use his influence with the king to mediate between the throne and Parliament
and in this capacity he was further elevated in the same peerage, as Viscount St Alban, on 27
January 1621.
Lord Chancellor and Public Disgrace
Bacon’s public career ended in disgrace in 1621. After he fell into debt, a Parliamentary Committee
on the administration of the law charged him with twenty-three separate counts of corruption. To
the lords, who sent a committee to enquire whether a confession was really his, he replied, “My
lords, it is my act, my hand, and my heart; I beseech your lordships to be merciful to a broken
reed.” He was sentenced to a fine of £40,000 and committed to the Tower of London during the
king’s pleasure; the imprisonment lasted only a few days and the fine was remitted by the king. [12]
More seriously, parliament declared Bacon incapable of holding future office or sitting in parliament.
He narrowly escaped undergoing degradation, which would have stripped him of his titles of
nobility. Subsequently the disgraced viscount devoted himself to study and writing.
There seems little doubt that Bacon had accepted gifts from litigants, but this was an accepted
custom of the time and not necessarily evidence of deeply corrupt behaviour. [13] While
acknowledging that his conduct had been lax, he countered that he had never allowed gifts to
influence his judgement and, indeed, he had on occasion given a verdict against those who had
paid him. The true reason for his acknowledgement of guilt is the subject of debate, but it may
have been prompted by his sickness, or by a view that through his fame and the greatness of his
office he would be spared harsh punishment. He may even have been blackmailed, with a threat
to charge him with sodomy, into confession.
The British jurist Basil Montagu wrote in Bacon’s defense, concerning the episode of his public
disgrace:
Bacon has been accused of servility, of dissimulation, of various base motives, and
their filthy brood of base actions, all unworthy of his high birth, and incompatible
with his great wisdom, and the estimation in which he was held by the noblest spirits
of the age. It is true that there were men in his own time, and will be men in all times,
who are better pleased to count spots in the sun than to rejoice in its glorious brightness.
Such men have openly libelled him, like Dewes and Weldon, whose falsehoods were
detected as soon as uttered, or have fastened upon certain ceremonious compliments
and dedications, the fashion of his day, as a sample of his servility, passing over his
noble letters to the Queen, his lofty contempt for the Lord Keeper Puckering, his open
dealing with Sir Robert Cecil, and with others, who, powerful when he was nothing,

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