What, however, are the facts? When the first proceedings were taken against Essex in the Star Chamber, Bacon absented himself from the Court, his excuse to the Queen being, he said, “Some indisposition of body.” His actual letter to Elizabeth explains that his absence was compelled by threats of violence on the part of the Earl’s followers, whom he openly charges with a purpose to take the Queen’s life. “My life has been threatened, and my name libelled. But these are the practices of those ... that would put out all your Majesty’s lights, and fall on reckoning how many years you have reigned.” Abbott considers that we need not accuse Bacon of deliberately intending by these words to poison the Queen’s mind against his former friend, while Professor Gardiner adduces this imputation as a proof that Bacon was liable to “occasional ill-temper.” Contemporary judgment did not so interpret the wording of the excuse. The treacherous nature of the insinuation provoked a feeling of amazement and anger. That his brother Anthony believed Bacon to be capable of so great vileness is evident, and even Lord Cecil, the Earl’s greatest enemy, wrote to Francis begging him to be, as he himself was, “merely passive, and not active,” in insuring the fallen Favourite’s utter ruin. In the face of these warnings and remonstrances, Bacon wrote to the Queen expressing his desire to serve her in the second stage of the proceedings against Essex. He asked that an important rôle might be assigned to him, but although he was only entrusted with a subsidiary part, he performed his task so adroitly as to earn the deep resentment of the friends of Essex. Within a fortnight of the Earl’s liberation Bacon again offered his services to Essex, who accepted them!