He had always loved splendor and pomp, he had always spent more than he could afford.  Now he was accused of taking bribes, that is, he was accused of taking money from people and, instead of judging fairly, of judging in favor of those who had given him most money.  He was accused, in fact, of selling justice.  That he should sell justice is the blackest charge that can be brought against a judge.  At first Bacon could not believe that any one would dare to attack him.  But when he heard that it was true, he sank beneath the disgrace, he made no resistance.  His health gave way.  On his sick-bed he owned that he had taken presents, yet to the end he protested that he had judged justly.  He had taken the bribes indeed, but they had made no difference to his judgments.  He had not sold justice.

He made his confession and stood to it.  “My lords,” he said, “it is my act, my hand, my heart.  I beseech your lordships be merciful to a broken reed.”

Bacon was condemned to pay a fine of 40,000 pounds, to be imprisoned during the King’s pleasure, never more to have office of any kind, never to sit in Parliament, “nor come within the verge of the Court.”

“I was the justest judge that was in England these fifty years,” said Bacon afterwards.  “But it was the justest censure in Parliament that was these two hundred years.”

Bacon’s punishment was not as heavy as at first sight it seems, for the fine was forgiven him, and “the king’s pleasure,” made his imprisonment in the Tower only a matter of a few days.

And now that his life was shipwrecked, though he never ceased to long to return to his old greatness, he gave all his time to writing and to science.  He spent many peaceful hours in the garden that he loved.  “His lordship,” we are told, “was a very contemplative person, and was wont to contemplate in his delicious walks.”  He was generally accompanied by one of the gentlemen of his household “that attended him with ink and paper ready to set down presently his thoughts."*

J.  Aubrey.

He was not soured or bitter.  “Though his fortunes may have changed,” says one of his household,* “yet I never saw any change in his mien, his words, or his deeds, towards any man.  But he was always the same both in sorrow and joy, as a philosopher ought to be.”

Peter Boerner, his apothecary and secretary.

Bacon was now shut out from honorable work in the world, but he had no desire to be idle.  “I have read in books,” he wrote, “that it is accounted a great bliss to have Leisure with Honour.  That was never my fortune.  For time was I had Honour without Leisure; and now I have Leisure without Honour.  But my desire is now to have Leisure without Loitering.”  So now he lived as he himself said “a long cleansing week of five years.”  Then the end came.