What followed? Bacon devised a plan to secure the Earl’s re-instatement in the Royal favour. The artifice employed was to bring before the notice of Elizabeth, a correspondence--ostensibly between Essex and his brother Anthony--exhibiting the loyalty and love of the former for the Queen. The letters were composed by Bacon, and while they are interesting as specimens of the author’s literary power, and are illustrative of his “chameleonlike instinct of adapting his style to his atmosphere,” they were calculated, by the interpolation of artful passages, to advance the interests of Bacon, rather than those of Essex, with the Queen. It is significant also that the demeanour which Bacon in these letters caused the Earl to assume, he used against him when Essex was subsequently arraigned for treason. Unless we are prepared to accept the statements of Bacon in this connection, it is impossible to view his participation in this second trial without a feeling of the deepest abhorrence. Bacon had no right to be in Court at all. As one of the “learned counsel,” his presence was not required, but in the capacity of “friend of the accused,” his evidence could not fail to be greatly damaging to the Earl’s case. He proffered his evidence, not only with readiness, but with a ferocious efficacy. We have no evidence beyond Bacon’s own word--the word of a man who was striving to put the best complexion on a foul act of treachery--that he deprecated the task. “Skilfully confusing together” the original proposal, and the abortive execution of Essex’s outbreak, he insisted that the rising, which in truth was a sudden after-thought, was the result of three months’ deliberation, and he concentrated all his efforts on proving that Essex was “not only a traitor, but a hypocritical traitor.” No other piece of evidence adduced at the trial had greater weight in procuring the verdict against the Earl. Bacon subsequently pleaded in extenuation of his behaviour that he was acting under pressure from the Crown, but we have the knowledge that on the first occasion he had offered his services, and we can only conclude that at the price of sacrificing the friend who had loaded him with kindnesses, he had determined to make this trial a stepping-stone to Royal favour. To serve this end, friendship, honour, obligation were brushed aside; for, as Bacon has said in one of his essays, the man who wishes to succeed “must know all the conditions of the serpent.” The price Bacon received for the blood of Essex was £1,200, or £6,000 in our currency. “The Queen,” he wrote to a friendly creditor, “hath done somewhat for me, though not in the perfection I hoped.” Bacon had, it is fair to infer from this remark, betrayed his friend; had, in fact, delivered him to the headsman for the hope of pecuniary reward. [Illustration: Fr. verulam Cano _Vansomer._]