During Elizabeth’s reign Bacon had sought repeatedly for high office, but had been blocked by Burleigh and perhaps also by the queen’s own shrewdness in judging men.  With the advent of James I (1603) Bacon devoted himself to the new ruler and rose rapidly in favor.  He was knighted, and soon afterwards attained another object of his ambition in marrying a rich wife.  The appearance of his great work, the Advancement of Learning, in 1605, was largely the result of the mental stimulus produced by his change in fortune.  In 1613 he was made attorney-general, and speedily made enemies by using the office to increase his personal ends.  He justified himself in his course by his devotion to the king’s cause, and by the belief that the higher his position and the more ample his means the more he could do for science.  It was in this year that Bacon wrote his series of State Papers, which show a marvelous grasp of the political tendencies of his age.  Had his advice been followed, it would have certainly averted the struggle between king and parliament that followed speedily.  In 1617 he was appointed to his father’s office, Lord Keeper of the Seal, and the next year to the high office of Lord Chancellor.  With this office he received the title of Baron Verulam, and later of Viscount St. Alban, which he affixed with some vanity to his literary work.  Two years later appeared his greatest work, the Novum Organum, called after Aristotle’s famous Organon.

Bacon did not long enjoy his political honors.  The storm which had been long gathering against James’s government broke suddenly upon Bacon’s head.  When Parliament assembled in 1621 it vented its distrust of James and his favorite Villiers by striking unexpectedly at their chief adviser.  Bacon was sternly accused of accepting bribes, and the evidence was so great that he confessed that there was much political corruption abroad in the land, that he was personally guilty of some of it, and he threw himself upon the mercy of his judges.  Parliament at that time was in no mood for mercy.  Bacon was deprived of his office and was sentenced to pay the enormous fine of 40,000 pounds, to be imprisoned during the king’s pleasure, and thereafter to be banished forever from Parliament and court.  Though the imprisonment lasted only a few days and the fine was largely remitted, Bacon’s hopes and schemes for political honors were ended; and it is at this point of appalling adversity that the nobility in the man’s nature asserts itself strongly.  If the reader be interested to apply a great man’s philosophy to his own life, he will find the essay, “Of Great Place,” most interesting in this connection.