But the result of Bacon's ruin was that Buckingham was saved.

"As they speak of the Turquoise stone in a ring," Bacon had said to Buckingham when he was made Chancellor, "I will break into twenty pieces before you have the least fall." Without knowing what he pledged himself to, he was taken at his word.
At length the lightning fell.

During the early part of March, while these dangerous questions were mooted about the referees, a Committee, appointed early in the session, had also been sitting on abuses in courts of justice, and as part of their business, an inquiry had been going on into the ways of the subordinate officers of the Court of Chancery.

Bacon had early (Feb.

17th) sent a message to the Committee courting full inquiry, "willingly consenting that any man might speak anything of his Court." On the 12th of March the chairman, Sir R.
Philips, reported that he had in his hands "divers petitions, many frivolous and clamorous, many of weight and consequence." Cranfield, who presided over the Court of Wards, had quarrelled fiercely with the Chancery, where he said there was "neither Law, Equity, nor Conscience," and pressed the inquiry, partly, it may be, to screen his own Court, which was found fault with by the lawyers.