Some scandalous abuses were brought to light in the Chancery.

They showed that "Bacon was at fault in the art of government," and did not know how to keep his servants in order.

One of them, John Churchill, an infamous forger of Chancery orders, finding things going hard with him, and "resolved," it is said, "not to sink alone," offered his confessions of all that was going on wrong in the Court.

But on the 15th of March things took another turn.
It was no longer a matter of doubtful constitutional law; no longer a question of slack discipline over his officers.

To the astonishment, if not of the men of his own day, at least to the unexhausted astonishment of times following, a charge was suddenly reported from the Committee to the Commons against the Lord Chancellor, not of straining the prerogative, or of conniving at his servants' misdoings, but of being himself a corrupt and venal judge.