ommons against the Lord Chancellor, not of straining the
prerogative, or of conniving at his servants' misdoings, but of being
himself a corrupt and venal judge. Two suitors charged him with
receiving bribes. Bacon was beginning to feel worried and anxious, and
he wrote thus to Buckingham. At length he had begun to see the meaning
of all these inquiries, and to what they were driving.

"MY VERY GOOD LORD,--Your Lordship spake of Purgatory. I am now in
it, but my mind is in a calm, for my fortune is not my felicity. I
know I have clean hands and a clean heart, and I hope a clean house
for friends or servants. But Job himself, or whosoever was the
justest judge, by such hunting for matters against him as hath been
used against me, may for a time seem foul, specially in a time when
greatness is the mark and accusation is the game. And if this be to
be a Chancellor. I think if the great seal lay upon Hounslow Heath
nobody would take it up. But the King and your Lordship will, I
hope, put an end to these miseries one way or other. And in troth
that which I fear most is lest continual attendance and business,
together with these cares, and want of time to do my weak body
right this spring by diet and physic, will cast me down; and then
it will be thought feigning or fainting. But I hope in God I shall
hold out. God prosper you."

The first charges attracted others, which were made formal matters of
complaint by the House of Commons. John Churchill, to save himself, was
busy setting down cases of misdoing; and probably suitors of themselves
became ready to volunteer evidence. But of this Bacon as yet knew
nothing. He was at this time only aware that there were persons who were
"hunting out complaints against him," that the attack was changed from
his law to his private character; he had found an unfavourable feeling
in the House of Lords; and he knew well enough what it was to have
powerful enemies in those days when a sentence was often settled before
a trial. To any one, such a state of things was as formidable as the
first serious symptoms of a fever. He was uneasy, as a man might well be
on whom the House of Commons had fixed its eye, and to whom the House of
Lords had shown itself unfriendly. But he was as yet conscious of
nothing fatal to his defence, and he knew that if false accusations
could be lightly made they could also be exposed.

A few