For the Lords, who were to be the judges, had by their Committees taken the matter out of the hands of the Commons, the original accusers, and had become themselves the prosecutors, collecting and arranging evidence, accepting or rejecting depositions, and doing all that counsel or the committing magistrate would do preliminary to a trial.
There appears to have been no cross-examining of witnesses on Bacon's behalf, or hearing witnesses for him--not unnaturally at this stage of business, when the prosecutors were engaged in making out their own case; but considering that the future judges had of their own accord turned themselves into the prosecutors, the unfairness was great.

At the same time it does not appear that Bacon did anything to watch how things went in the Committees, which had his friends in them as well as his enemies, and are said to have been open courts.

Towards the end of March, Chamberlain wrote to Carleton that "the Houses were working hard at cleansing out the Augaean stable of monopolies, and also extortions in Courts of Justice.

The petitions against the Lord Chancellor were too numerous to be got through: his chief friends and brokers of bargains, Sir George Hastings and Sir Richard Young, and others attacked, are obliged to accuse him in their own defence, though very reluctantly.

His ordinary bribes were L300, L400, and even L1000....