which his other
friends either had not dared to attempt or had not been able to obtain."

But, though Bacon had his pardon, he had not received permission to come
within the verge of the Court, which meant that he could not live in
London. His affairs were in great disorder, his health was bad, and he
was cut off from books. He wrote an appeal to the Peers who had
condemned him, asking them to intercede with the King for the
enlargement of his liberty. "I am old," he wrote, "weak, ruined, in
want, a very subject of pity." The Tower at least gave him the
neighbourhood of those who could help him. "There I could have company,
physicians, conference with my creditors and friends about my debts and
the necessities of my estate, helps for my studies and the writings I
have in hand. Here I live upon the sword-point of a sharp air,
endangered if I go abroad, dulled if I stay within, solitary and
comfortless, without company, banished from all opportunities to treat
with any to do myself good, and to help out my wrecks." If the Lords
would recommend his suit to the King, "You shall do a work of charity
and nobility, you shall do me good, you shall do my creditors good, and
it may be you shall do posterity good, if out of the carcase of dead and
rotten greatness (as out of Samson's lion) there may be honey gathered
for the use of future times." But Parliament was dissolved before the
touching appeal reached them; and Bacon had to have recourse to other
expedients. He consulted Selden about the technical legality of the
sentence. He appealed to Buckingham, who vouchsafed to appear more
placable. Once more he had recourse to Gondomar, "in that solitude of
friends, which is the base-court of adversity," as a man whom he had
"observed to have the magnanimity of his own nation and the cordiality
of ours, and I am sure the wit of both"--and who had been equally kind
to him in "both his fortunes;" and he proposed through Gondomar to
present Gorhambury to Buckingham "for nothing," as a peace-offering. But
the purchase of his liberty was to come in another way. Bacon had
reconciled himself to giving up York House; but now Buckingham would not
have it: he had found another house, he said, which suited him as well.
That is to say, he did not now choose to have York House from Bacon
himself; but he meant to have it. Accordingly, Buckingham let Bacon know
through a friend of Bacon's, Sir Edward Sackville, that the price of his
liberty to liv