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 commonly called upon in such prosecutions.  He was not employed by Cecil in the Winchester trials of Raleigh, Grey, and Cobham, three years afterwards, nor in those connected with the Gunpowder Plot.  He was called upon now because no one could so much damage Essex; and this last proof of his ready service was required by those whose favour, since Essex had gone hopelessly wrong, he had been diligently seeking.  And Bacon acquiesced in the demand, apparently without surprise.  No record remains to show that he felt any difficulty in playing his part.  He had persuaded himself that his public duty, his duty as a good citizen to the Queen and the commonwealth, demanded of him that he should obey the call to do his best to bring a traitor to punishment.

Public duty has claims on a man as well as friendship, and in many conceivable cases claims paramount to those of friendship.  And yet friendship, too, has claims, at least on a man’s memory.  Essex had been a dear friend, if words could mean anything.  He had done more than any man had done for Bacon, generously and nobly, and Bacon had acknowledged it in the amplest terms.  Only a year before he had written, “I am as much yours as any man’s, and as much yours as any man.”  It is not, and it was not, a question of Essex’s guilt.  It may be a question whether the whole matter was not exaggerated as to its purpose, as it certainly was as to its real danger and mischief.  We at least know that his rivals dabbled in intrigue and foolish speeches as well as he; that little more than two years afterwards Raleigh and Grey and Cobham were condemned for treason in much the same fashion as he was; that Cecil to the end of his days—­with whatever purpose—­was a pensioner of Spain.  The question was not whether Essex was guilty.  The question for Bacon was, whether it was becoming in him, having been what he had been to Essex, to take a leading part in proceedings which were to end in his ruin and death.  He was not a judge.  He was not a regular law officer like Coke.  His only employment had been casual and occasional.  He might, most naturally, on the score of his old friendship, have asked to be excused.  Condemning, as he did, his friend’s guilt and folly, he might have refused to take part in a cause of blood, in which his best friend must perish.  He might honestly have given up Essex as incorrigible, and have retired to stand apart in sorrow and silence while the inevitable tragedy was played out.  The only answer to this is, that to have declined would have incurred the Queen’s displeasure:  he would have forfeited any chance of advancement; nay, closely connected as he had been with Essex, he might have been involved in his friend’s ruin.  But inferior men have marred their fortunes by standing by their friends in not undeserved trouble, and no one knew better than Bacon what was worthy and noble in human action.  The choice lay before him.  He seems hardly to have gone through any struggle.  He persuaded himself that he could not help himself, under the constraint of his duty to the Queen, and he did his best to get Essex condemned.