t him with no valid defence. He at once pleaded
guilty to the charge. "I do plainly and ingenuously confess that I am
guilty of corruption, and do renounce all defence. I beseech your
Lordships," he added, "to be merciful to a broken reed." Though the
heavy fine laid on him was remitted by the Crown, he was deprived of the
Great Seal and declared incapable of holding office in the State or
sitting in Parliament. Fortunately for his after fame Bacon's life was
not to close in this cloud of shame. His fall restored him to that
position of real greatness from which his ambition had so long torn him
away. "My conceit of his person," says Ben Jonson, "was never increased
towards him by his place or honours. But I have and do reverence him for
his greatness that was only proper to himself, in that he seemed to me
ever by his work one of the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration,
that had been in many ages. In his adversity I ever prayed that God
would give him strength; for greatness he could not want." Bacon's
intellectual activity was never more conspicuous than in the last four
years of his life. He began a digest of the laws and a history of
England under the Tudors, revised and expanded his essays, and dictated
a jest-book. He had presented "Novum Organum" to James in the year
before his fall; in the year after it he produced his "Natural and
Experimental History." Meanwhile he busied himself with experiments in
physics which might carry out the principles he was laying down in these
works; and it was while studying the effect of cold in preventing animal
putrefaction that he stopped his coach to stuff a fowl with snow and
caught the fever which ended in his death.

[Sidenote: James clings to Spain.]

James was too shrewd to mistake the importance of Bacon's impeachment;
but the hostility of Buckingham to the Chancellor, and Bacon's own
confession of his guilt, made it difficult to resist his condemnation.
Energetic too as its measures were against corruption and monopolists,
the Parliament respected scrupulously the king's prejudices in other
matters; and even when checked by an adjournment, resolved unanimously
to support him in any earnest effort for the Protestant cause. A warlike
speech from a member at the close of the session in June roused an
enthusiasm which recalled the days of Elizabeth. The Commons answered
the appeal by a unanimous vote, "lifting their hats as high as they
could hold them," that for t