I desire not from your Majesty means, nor place, nor employment, but only after so long a time of expiation, a complete and total remission of the sentence of the Upper House, to the end that blot of ignominy may be removed from me, and from my memory and posterity, that I die not a condemned man, but may be to your Majesty, as I am to God, _nova creatura_." But the pardon never came.

Sir John Bennett, who had been condemned as a corrupt judge by the same Parliament, and between whose case and Bacon's there was as much difference, "I will not say as between black and white, but as between black and gray," had got his full pardon, "and they say shall sit in Parliament." Lord Suffolk had been one of Bacon's judges.

"I hope I deserve not to be the only outcast." But whether the Court did not care, or whether, as he once suspected, there was some old enemy like Coke, who "had a tooth against him," and was watching any favour shown him, he died without his wish being fulfilled, "to live out of want and to die out of ignominy." Bacon was undoubtedly an impoverished man, and straitened in his means; but this must be understood as in relation to the rank and position which he still held, and the work which he wanted done for the _Instauratio_.

His will, dated a few months before his death, shows that it would be a mistake to suppose that he was in penury.

He no doubt often wanted ready money, and might be vexed by creditors.