when their causes were on the point of coming to an hearing: it was a thing of course, not considered in the nature of a bribe, being universally known, and deemed an usual or honorary perquisite.' In the course of Bacon's trial, Mr. Alford, an eminent member of the House of Commons, observed, that in the legyer-book of his family, there were entries of thirty shillings, paid to a secretary, and ten pounds to a lord Chancellor for his pains in hearing a cause, and that, in his opinion, such gratuities were customary.* The extent of this practice of receiving presents may be partly estimated by the following extract from Miss Aikin's Account of the Reign of Elizabeth—' an authority,' says the writer from whom we borrow the quotation, the less suspicious, as that lady has exercised her gifts with great diligence against lord Bacon':-'The ministers of a sovereign, who scrupled not * Journals of the Commons, I, 573. to accept of bribes from parties engaged in law suits, for the exertion of her own interest with the judges, could scarcely be expected to exhibit much delicacy on this head. In fact, the venality of the court of Elizabeth was so great, that no public character appears even to have professed a disdain of the influence of gifts and bribes ; and we find lord Burleigh inserting the following among rules moral and prudential, drawn up for the use of his son Robert, when "Be sure to keep some great man thy friend, but trouble him not for trifles. Compliment him often. Present him with many, yet small gifts, and of little charge. And if thou have cause to bestow any great gratuity, let it be some such thing as may be daily in his sight." Miss Aikin then quotes the following letter of Hutton, archbishop of York, to the lord treasurer Burleigh: I am bold at this time to inform your lordship, what ill success I had in a suit for a pardon for Miles Dawson, semi young: - 9 nary priest, whom I converted wholly the last summer from popery. Upon his coming to church, receiving the holy communion, and taking the oath of supremacy, I and the council here, about Michaelmas last, joined in petition to her majesty, for her gracious pardon, and commended the matter to one of the masters of requests, and writ also to Mr. Secretary to further it, if need were, which he willingly promised to do. In Michaelmas term nothing was done; and therefore in Hilary Term, I being put in mind, that all was not done in that court for God's sake only, sent up twenty French crowns of mine own purse, as a remembrancer of the poor man's pardon, which was thankfully accepted of.'* * 'It was usual,' says Barrington, in his Observations on Magna Charta, p. 22, 'to pay fines anciently for delaying law proceedings even to the extent of the defendant's life; sometimes they were paid to expedite process and to obtain right; and in some cases, the parties litigant offered part of what they were to recover to the crown. Madox, in his History of the Exchequer, Again, it should be observed, that although lord Bacon was punished for bribery and corruption, yet, if by corruption we mean the giving of unrighteous judgments, then assuredly (as Bacon most solemnly protested,) he was not guilty of that crime. Soon after the appointment of Williams, dean of Westminster, to be lord Keeper, all the orders of his predecessor supposed to have been corruptly made, were referred to him by the Parliament to be reviewed;* and after undergoing the severe scrutiny of one who collects, likewise, many instances of fines for the King's favour; and particularly of the dean of London's paying twenty marks to the King, that he might assist him against the bishop, in a law suit. William Stutevill presented to king John three thousand marks, for giving judgment with relation to the barony of Mowbray, which Stutevill claimed against William de Mowbray.' And from Burnet we learn, that Charles the Second, whilst appeals were hearing in the House of Lords, used to go about and solicit particular lords, for appellant or respondent.-Barrington's Observations on Ancient Statutes, p. 23. • Hacket's Scrinia Reserata, p. 53. undoubtedly was no friend to Bacon, and possibly his greatest enemy, (for we strongly suspect that he counselled the King or Buckingham to compel lord Bacon to abandon his defence and make submission,) yet we are assured by Rushworth-himself a barrister—that though gifts rendered him suspected for injustice, yet never any decree made by him was reversed as unjust, as it hath been observed by some knowing in our laws.'* It is likewise affirmed by * Rushworth's Historical Collections, vol. 1, p. 31. Having adverted to the complaint, made in king James's reign, that there did not exist any appeal from chancery, Carte, the historian, informs us that 'this grievance (if it were one,) was soon redressed by the House of Lords, to which the discontented suitors, enraged at the loss of their causes, applied for relief against Bacon's decrees, as supposed to be made by corruption; but they were found too just to be reversed, and these first precedents seemed to establish that House's jurisdiction in receiving and determining appeals from the Court of Chancery.'-Carte's Hist. of England, vol. 4, p. 77. This work is the foundation of Hume's more elegant and philosophical, but not more authoritative and authentic, history. |