Majesty.
Shall their petitions be presented by armed petitioners? This must
needs bring loss of property to the prince. Neither is it any point
of law, as my Lord of Southampton would have it believed, that
condemns them of treason. To take secret counsel, to execute it, to
run together in numbers armed with weapons--what can be the excuse?
Warned by the Lord Keeper, by a herald, and yet persist! Will any
simple man take this to be less than treason?'

"The Earl of Essex answered that if he had purposed anything
against others than those his private enemies, he would not have
stirred with so slender a company. Whereunto Mr. Bacon answered:

"'It was not the company you carried with you but the assistance
you hoped for in the City which you trusted unto. The Duke of Guise
thrust himself into the streets of Paris on the day of the
Barricades in his doublet and hose, attended only with eight
gentlemen, and found that help in the city which (thanks be to God)
you failed of here. And what followed? The King was forced to put
himself into a pilgrim's weeds, and in that disguise to steal away
to scape their fury. Even such was my Lord's confidence too, and
his pretence the same--an all-hail and a kiss to the City. But the
end was treason, as hath been sufficiently proved. But when he had
once delivered and engaged himself so far into that which the
shallowness of his conceit could not accomplish as he expected, the
Queen for her defence taking arms against him, he was glad to yield
himself; and thinking to colour his practices, turned his pretexts,
and alleged the occasion thereof to proceed from a private
quarrel.'

"To this" (adds the reporter) "the Earl answered little. Nor was
anything said afterwards by either of the prisoners, either in the
thrust-and-parry dialogue with Coke that followed, or when they
spoke at large to the question why judgment should not be
pronounced, which at all altered the complexion of the case. They
were both found guilty and sentence passed in the usual form."

Bacon's legal position was so subordinate a place that there must have
been a special reason for his employment. It is difficult to avoid the
conclusion that, on the part of the Government, Bacon was thus used for
the very reason that he had been the friend of Essex. He was not