THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER.
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rendered the more remarkable to us by the circumstance that Bacon , who had no official duty to perform,and had lived on terms of private friendship with Essex, was one of the most active of the lawyers opposedto him on this trial. It is not pleasant to mention the infirmities of such a man as Bacon ; and the mostafflicting local association we can find for the reign of James I. is, that he, then Yiscount St. Alban’s andLord High Chancellor of England, was impeached by the Commons at the bar of the House of Lords ,and was obliged to confess, with shame and sorrow, that his hands—the hands of the first judge in theland—were unclean. None have shewn brighter in our history in a literary sense, and as a philosophernone surpassed him. His was a commanding genius, yet in a full and explicit confession he admittedthe twenty-three articles of corruption with which he was charged (in 1621), and threw himself on themercy of his Peers. Pope, in allusion to him, says bitterly,
“ If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shin’d,
“ The greatest, wisest —meanest of mankind!”*
In the reign of Charles I. (1626), the Earl of Bristol appeared in the House of Lords , thoughforbidden by the king to attend, and accused the Duke of Buckingham of high treason. The mostinteresting judicial business which the Peers had to perform during this reign, consisted in the trials ofthe Earl of Strafford and of Archbishop Laud , both of whom were condemned by very small majoritiesin very thin Houses. Seven Peers alone voted on Laud’s trial. At this time the Co mm ons wereparamount, and their will could not be gainsaid. Hence they passed a vote, declaring it treason in aking to levy war against his Parliament ; and appointing a high court of justice to try Charles for thistreason, they sent the vote up to the Peers. The Upper House had then become of no account, and veryfew of its members were in the habit of attending. On that day there was rather a fuller attendancethan usual, there being sixteen Peers present, who immediately and unanimously rejected the vote of theCommons, and adjourned themselves for ten days. Before the ten days had passed, the King had beentried and beheaded. When the Peers met again, according to adjournment, they entered upon business,and sent down some votes to the Commons, of which the latter took no notice; but a few days afterwardsthey passed a vote that “ they would make no more addresses to the House of Peers , nor receive any from“ them ; and that that House was useless and dangerous, and was therefore to be abolished.”
Cromwell created several Lords, and wished to have an Upper House; but none of the old Peerswould attend his summonses, and the attempt was altogether a signal failure. Sir Arthur Hazelrig andsome others of the new Peers preferred to sit in the House of Commons which refused to acknowledge thejurisdiction of the other House .
The Lords resumed their functions without opposition in the Parliament which recalled Charles II .
In all probability the number of Peers had never been greater than at the accession of James I. ,by which time the Tudor dynasty had repaired the diminution occasioned by the wars of the Boses.
* This great man, however, has by his writings conferred so vast a benefit on mankind, that it is a kind of moral justice to his reputation and memory topardon him, as did James I. , ‘in consideration of the profitable employment of his time in the study of philosophy/ and advancing his species so far in the scaleof intellectual superiority.