able to make it listen to his harsher
counsels, and from this time his hand appears in all that was done. The
first conference was a tame and dull one. The spokesmen had been slack
in their disagreeable and perhaps dangerous duty. But Coke and his
friends took them sharply to task. "The heart and tongue of Sir Edward
Coke are true relations," said one of his fervent supporters; "but his
pains hath not reaped that harvest of praise that he hath deserved. For
the referees, they are as transcendent delinquents as any other, and
sure their souls made a wilful elopement from their bodies when they
made these certificates." A second conference was held with the Lords,
and this time the charge was driven home. The referees were named, the
Chancellor at the head of them. When Bacon rose to explain and justify
his acts he was sharply stopped, and reminded that he was transgressing
the orders of the House in speaking till the Committees were named to
examine the matter. What was even more important, the King had come to
the House of Lords (March 10th), and frightened, perhaps, about his
subsidies, told them "that he was not guilty of those grievances which
are now discovered, but that he grounded his judgement upon others who
have misled him." The referees would be attacked, people thought, if the
Lower House had courage.

All this was serious. As things were drifting, it seemed as if Bacon
might have to fight the legal question of the prerogative in the form of
a criminal charge, and be called upon to answer the accusation of being
the minister of a crown which legal language pronounced absolute, and of
a King who interpreted legal language to the letter; and further, to
meet his accusers after the King himself had disavowed what his servant
had done. What passed between Bacon and the King is confused and
uncertain; but after his speech the King could scarcely have thought of
interfering with the inquiry. The proceedings went on; Committees were
named for the several points of inquiry; and Bacon took part in these
arrangements. It was a dangerous position to have to defend himself
against an angry House of Commons, led and animated by Coke and
Cranfield. But though the storm had rapidly thickened, the charges
against the referees were not against him alone. His mistake in law, if
it was a mistake, was shared by some of the first lawyers and first
councillors in England. There was a battle before him, but not a
hopeless one. "_Mo