Bacon: My Lord, may it please your Grace, whatsoever my Lord of Essex hath here denied, in my conceit it seemeth to be small. I speak not to any ordinary jury but to prudent, grave, and wise peers, and this I must needs say: it is evident that you, my lord of Essex, had planted a pretence in your heart against the government, and now, under colour of excuse, you must lay the cause upon particular enemies.

You put me in remembrance of one Pisistratus, that was come into a city and doting upon the affections of the citizens unto him (he having a purpose to procure the subversion of a kingdom, and wanting aid for the accomplishing) thought it the surest means for the winning of the hearts of the citizens to him. And so in that hope entered the city and cut his body over-thwart, to the end they might conjecture he had been in danger. And so by this means held the same conceit as you and your ‘complices did, entering the city of London, persuading yourselves, if they had undertaken your cause, all would have gone well on your side.

And now, my Lord, all you have said or can say in answer to these matters are but shadows, and therefore, methinks, it were your best course to confess and not to justify.

Essex: May it please your Lordship, I must plead Mr. Bacon for a witness, for when the course of private persecution was in hand and most assailed me, then Mr. Bacon was the man that proffered me means to the Queen and drew a letter in my name and in his brother, Sir Nicholas Bacon’s name, which letter he purposed to show the Queen.

And Gosnal was the man that brought them unto me; wherein I did see Mr. Bacon’s hand pleaded as orderly, and appointed them out that were my enemies as directly as might be. Which letters I know Mr. Secretary Cecil hath seen, and by him it will appear what conceit he held of me, and no otherwise than he here coloureth and pleadeth the contrary.

Bacon: My Lord, I spent more hours to make you a good subject than upon any man in the world besides. But since you have stirred up this point, my Lord, I dare warrant you will not blush, for I did but perform the part of an honest man, and ever labored to have done you good, and to no other end. For what I intended for your good was wished from the heart, without touch of any man’s honour.

Essex: Well my Lord, I do here protest before the living God than an honourable, grave, and wise councilor hath lamented and grieved at that courses he hath seen taken, and therewith hath wished himself often dead, and this I speak upon credible and honourable information. But I can prove thus much from Sir Robert Cecil’s own mouth. That he, speaking to one of his fellow councilors, should say that none in the world but the Infanta of Spain had the right to the Crown of England.