in secret, and so a fame to slide, that the doubt was
only upon the publication, in that it was never published. For that (if
your majesty marketh it) taketh away or at least qualifieth the danger of
the example; for that will be no man's case."[17] Bacon's conduct in this
matter has been curiously misrepresented. He has been accused of torturing
the prisoner, and of tampering with the judges[18] by consulting them
before the trial; nay, he is even represented as selecting this poor
clergyman to serve for an example to terrify the disaffected, as breaking
into his study and finding there a sermon never intended to be preached,
which merely encouraged the people to resist tyranny.[19] All this lavish
condemnation rests on a complete misconception of the case. If any blame
attaches to him, it must arise either from his endeavour to force Coke to a
favourable decision, in which he was in all probability prompted by a
feeling, not uncommon with him, that a matter of state policy was in danger
of being sacrificed to some senseless legal quibble or precedent, or from
his advice to the king that a rumour should be set afloat which was not
strictly true.

Bacon's share in another great trial which came on shortly afterwards, the
Overbury and Somerset case, is not of such a nature as to render it
necessary to enter upon it in detail.[20] It may be noted, however, that
his letters about this time show that he had become acquainted with the
king's new favourite, the brilliant Sir George Villiers, and that he stood
high in the king's good graces. In the early part of 1616, when Thomas
Egerton, Baron Ellesmere (_c._ 1540-1617), the lord chancellor, was
dangerously ill, Bacon wrote a long and careful letter to the king,
proposing himself for the office, should it fall vacant, and stating as
frankly as possible of what value he considered his services would be. In
answer, he appears to have received a distinct promise of the reversion of
the office; but, as Ellesmere recovered, the matter stood over for a time.
He proposed, however, that he should be made a privy councillor, in order
to give him more weight in his almost recognized position of adviser to the
king, and on the 9th of June 1616 he took the oaths and his seat at the
council board.

Meanwhile, his great rival Coke, whose constant tendency to limit the
prerogative by law and precedent had made him an object of particular
dislike to James, had on two points come into open co