ing kept as any one.

It was evident that the countess had been prevailed on to confess, and
that the utmost pains had been used to get Somerset himself to follow
her example, though, much to the king's vexation, he held out, and
rendered a trial necessary. On this trial, however, there was nothing
like satisfactory evidence--the peers were prepared to convict, and
they did so on a few trifling attestations, which gave them a
plausible excuse for their verdict. The illustrious Bacon aided the
king in his object. He had on other occasions shewn abject servility
to James--using towards him such expressions of indecorous flattery as
these: 'Your majesty imitateth Christ, by vouchsafing me to touch the
hem of your garment.' He was attorney-general, and had in that
capacity to conduct the prosecution. Seeing distinctly the king's
inclination, he sent a letter to him, praying, 'First, that your
majesty will be careful to choose a steward [meaning a lord
high-steward to preside at the trial in the House of Lords] of
judgment, that will be able to moderate the evidence, and _cut off
digressions_; for I may interrupt, but I cannot silence; the other,
that there may be special care taken for ordering the evidence, not
only for the knitting but the list, and, to use your majesty's own
words--the _confining_ of it. This to do, if your majesty vouchsafe to
direct it yourself, that is the best; but if not, I humbly pray you to
require my lord chancellor, that he, together with my lord
chief-justice, will confer with myself and my fellows that shall be
used for the marshalling and _bounding_ of the evidence, that we may
have the help of his opinion, as well as that of my lord
chief-justice; whose great travails as I much commend, yet this same
_pleropluria_, or overconfidence, doth always subject things to a
great deal of chance.'

The full significance of these cautious expressions about confining
and bounding the evidence, was not appreciated until the discovery of
some further documents, relating to this dark subject, a few years
ago. The expressions were then found to correspond with others,
equally cautious, in Bacon's correspondence. Thus he talks of
supplying the king with pretexts that 'might satisfy his honour for
sparing the earl's life;' and in another place he says: 'It shall be
my care so to moderate the matter of charging him, as it might make
him not odious beyond the extent of mercy.'

The drift of all this is, in