Welcoming Him To The Earth

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Regarded as an the pioneers of Victorian age philosophy and statesman; one of the forerunners of contemporary scientific thinking, Bacon was born on January 22, 1561, at York House, in the Strand, Charing Cross located in London and also the official residency of Lord Keeper, which authorized him as a youngster to flatter Queen Elizabeth by asserting his age as 'just two years younger than your Majesty's happy reign'. In return, she called him her 'young Lord Keeper' in reference to his father, Sir Nicholas Bacon, who was the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. Francis later described him as 'plain, direct, and constant, without . . . doubleness'.

Lady Anne Cooke, Francis’ mother and Sir Nicholas’ second wife, was the scholarly but onerous daughter of Edward VI's tutor (Sir Anthony Cooke) to the Tudor royal family. Lady Anne Cooke was also sister-in-law to Sir William Cecil (Lord Burghley). She was gracefully skilled in the Greek and Latin tongues', firm in personality, jovial in spirit, and resolutely Calvinist in religion. Her sway and guidance upon her elder son, Antony, and upon Francis can by a hair's breadth be puffed up and glorified. From her the latter almost certainly originated his energy, his roundaboutness, and his significance of purpose.

Francis was remarked as the chief figure of the English Renaissance. His advocacy of "active science" influenced the culture of the English-speaking world because through the families of both his parents he had important connections with the political and cultural life of Tudor England. He was baptised at St Martin-in-the-Fields on 25 January 1561. As an adolescent he showed more than extraordinary assurance and engrossed the attention of Queen Elizabeth, who christened him as her ‘young Lord Keeper’ and ‘baby Solomon’.

He was prearranged for a privileged private education by the most excellent and paramount of teachers of the time, which took place primarily at York House, the Lord Keeper’s London dwelling—a blossoming nucleus of State commerce with the purpose of adjoining York Place, the Queen’s Palace of Whitehall. It is believed that junior Bacon received education at home only, in the starting years of his life due to bad health. He received tuitions from John Walsall who was a graduate of Oxford with a strong affinity towards Puritanism. He did not take these privileges lightly; he, in fact, worked hard to gain knowledge and respected all that were around him.

In the holidays the family lived at Sir Nicholas’ countryside dwelling of Gorhambury, St Albans, where quite a lot of scenes in the early Shakespeare play ‘Henry VI’ were laid. There were also tours with the Court, visiting the many country granges and citadels of the Queen and her sycophants. Here also he became disappointed with the Aristotelian philosophy as being unrewarding and leading only to result less controversy.

Francis was almost unquestionably present at an assortment of Court entertainments, such as the customary Christmas merriment and the two great entertainments of 1575 because of his father’s soaring office and his other family connections (his uncle, Sir William Cecil, later Lord Burghley, was the Queen’s Secretary of State until 1573 when he was made the Queen’s Lord Treasurer) These latter entertainments, which were fundamental events in the Queen’s sovereignty, were the Arcadian Woodstock Tournament presented by Sir Henry Lee, the Queen’s Champion, and the extravagant Kenilworth Entertainment laid on for the Queen at Kenilworth Castle by her beloved, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. The Woodstock Tournament was the predecessor of the annual Accession Day Tournaments, at the same time as the Kenilworth Entertainment was planned by Leicester to win over the Queen asking her to marry him, the offer which she eventually turned down. Twenty years later Francis was to integrate some of what he observed at the Kenilworth Entertainment in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which he wrote specially for the wedding of his niece, Elizabeth Cecil, when she married William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, in January 1595.

In April 1573, just when he was twelve, with the ‘new star’ radiating away in the outer space, Francis Bacon entered Trinity College, Cambridge University and was accompanied by his elder brother Anthony. They were already educated in the Classics and could read, write and speak Latin, Greek, French, Italian and Spanish effortlessly. They also mastered at Hebrew. After they were admitted they were placed under the direct charge and tuition of the Master of Trinity, Dr John Whitgift, and wedged in rooms under his roof. (Whitgift afterwards became Archbishop of Canterbury, and was the power that approved the licence to bring out Venus and Adonis in 1593.) Their colleagues and friends at Cambridge included John Lyly, William Clerke, Edmund Spenser, Philemon Holland and Gabriel Harvey—the latter being their instructor in public speaking and poetry as well as being a member of Sir Philip Sydney’s group of philosopher-poets, the English ‘Areopagus’.

Altercation with Aristotelianism:

While he was still an apprentice at Cambridge, Francis became meticulously disenchanted with the Aristotelian system of thought and teaching. Bacon later on illustrated his instructors as "Men of sharp wits, shut up in their cells of a few authors, chiefly Aristotle, their Dictator." This was possibly the commencement of Bacon's refutation of Aristotelianism and Scholasticism and the new Renaissance Humanism. Bacon seemed to be alluding to those who had taken the influence of Aristotle as the preliminary point and then went on to "exhibit" many incongruous, but commonsensical conclusions. When such a system of power and influence was taken to its coherent end, then the disapproval of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo was foreseeable and well anticipated.

Unfortunately for the progression of science, because the "controversial and tricky beliefs and philosophy of Aristotle" (geocentricity) was integrated "with the remains of religious conviction and faith," the only reasonable winding up was that heliocentricity (reference system where the sun is at the centre) was a sacrilege. By way of dissimilarity, it was interesting to note that while Aquinas used the "doctrine of analogy" to explain how one may possibly understand God; Bacon used fictitious comparison to elucidate how we may comprehend nature. As a feedback to this, and stimulated with farsighted visualization as to what to do to develop material, his grand scheme was formed—an enlightenment identical to the radiance of the constellations glowing overhead. For him it was like a religious beginning or arousing, instructing to him his vocation in life. In, 1575 less than three years later at Christmas, with nothing more left that the university could teach him, he and Anthony left Cambridge, carrying with them the embryo of a plan by means of which Francis’ Grand Idea might be set in motion and progressively achieved. In this Anthony was an enthusiastic associate, even though for the next fifteen years their particular paths would detach them physically for most of the time. Bacon’s studies safeguarded him to the conviction that the techniques and results of science as run through then were completely wrong. He thus took the Aristotelian philosophy as unprofitable, argumentative and incorrect in its objective.

Gray’s Inn:

Next, he began to study law at Gray's Inn, but his studies were interrupted for 2 1/2 years while he served with Sir Amias Paulet, the English ambassador to France. He and his brother, Anthony moved into de societate magistrorum at Gray's Inn on 27th June, 1576. While he was aged fifteen Francis and Anthony who was aged seventeen, passed into as law students at one of the four Inns of Court in London, to tag along their father’s footprints.

Other adherents of that erudite Society incorporated the Earl of Southampton (to whom Venus and Adonis and Lucrece were consecrated), Francis and Anthony’s uncle, Lord Burghley (upon whom the Shakespeare character of Polonius is modelled), Lord Strange (in whose company of players the actor Shakespeare played), William Herbert (later Earl of Pembroke to whom the First Folio of the Shakespeare Plays was dedicated), Sir Francis Walsingham (founder of the Elizabethan secret service, and a patron and employer of poets and dramatists), Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (a patron of writers and actors as well as a poet in his own right), and Sir Philip Sydney (a renowned poet and leader of the Areopagus of English lawyer-poets until his premature death on the battlefield in 1586). Five months later on 21 November 1576 Francis and Anthony were granted access to the Grand Company of Ancients by Order of Pension dated as sons of a judge, which gave them certain civil liberties. Conversely, by that time Francis was overseas on the continent.

Tour with Amias Paulet:

For nearly the next three years after landing in Calais on 25 September 1576 and acting as a residual in France with the French Court, this was presently at the time when, on one side, the French State was functioning in a disorder because of fraudulent and delicate management, and erstwhile, the French Renaissance was even so at its pinnacle, with its poets, writers and artists reinvigorated and denigrated by the French monarchy. Throughout this period Bacon was delegated by Paulet with an imperative assignment to the Empress, and for this purpose, in June 1578 he went back to England momentarily. In October 1579, Sir Amias Paulet was summoned up but Francis sustained on his errands at the French Court. All through his tenure of three years there he travelled with the French Court to Blois, Tours, Poitiers, Fontainebleau and Chenonceaux, as well as residing in Paris where the French Court was generally located. He completed several kinds of hazardous journey during the period of August-September 1577, and in the subsequent year he emerged to have been on a voyage with Catherine de Medici (Queen consort of France from 1547 until 1559, as the wife of King Henry II of France) and Marguerite de Navarre’s (the queen consort of Henry II of Navarre) to the south of France, where he featured in the Court of Love revelry and celebrations at Nérac.

Demise of His Father:

On 17 February 1579, after his return from Nérac, Francis hallucinated about his father’s country house in Gorhambury, Herfordshire being smeared all over with mortar deep black in colour. In view of the fact that Gorhambury was essentially layered white and recognized as the ‘White House’ or ‘White Temple’, this was a portentous delusion. In truth, Sir Nicholas Bacon passed away three days later at his official home in London, York House owing to a chill he had caught. As soon as reports of the demise arrived in Paris, Francis without more ado set about supervising his return dwelling, turning up in England on 20 March 1579, regrettably just a week after Sir Nicholas’ memorial service.

Aspiration, consciousness of his capabilities, and the levelheaded anticipation that his maternal associations, the significant Cecils, would be obliging, led him to request his uncle, Lord Burghley, for public office. But none of either Elizabeth's chief minister or the Queen herself buoyed him up. In the dissertation 'Of Great Place', Bacon soon after manifested on the fascination for distinction and prominence which then afflicted him. Living out the wishes of his departed father and his uncle Lord Burghley, who was acting as loco parentis (legal responsibility of a person or organization to take on some of the functions and responsibilities of a family) towards him and Anthony until their individual near-term of age and maturity, Francis came into Gray’s Inn to study law.

While he was in the Inn he was doling out contemplative thoughts he had experienced to regret the obsequiousness and conniving, embracing his ascent he quoted the following:

"It is a strange desire, to seek power and lose liberty, or to seek power over others and to lose power over a man's self The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains, and it is sometimes base; and by indignities men come to dignities. The standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall or at least an eclipse, which is a melancholy thing."

In May 1580, he began his habitation with advantage of ‘out of the ordinary admittance’ in accordance to his healthiness, which explained that he was at liberty from the compulsion of taking charge of Commons. On the word of Francis’s mother, Lady Anne, the justification of Francis’ extraordinary admittance was that he underwent digestive disorders caused by not going to bed on time, and then preoccupied about virtue knowing when he should sleep, and then in outcome of this waking up late from sleep. The ‘extraordinary admittance’ signified that Francis could settle on his food regime and take meals in the assembly room in Fulwood House on which he went half with Mr. Fulwood. Nonetheless, law was not something which appealed to Francis with great significance. It was not what he sought after to do, and he was also the one who expressed the same when he wrote soon after that ‘the Bar will be my bier’.

In the upcoming years he clued-up Dr William Rawley, his rabbi, assistant and his associate, that law was to nothing but an accessory to him. It was not his something of a major interest, even though according to Rawley, ‘he obtained to great excellence in law’ and ‘in the discipline of the grounds and anonymity of law he was outstripped by none’.

Francis’s ardour in life was fictitious and enlightening, and dedicated to the comprehension of his ostentatious Idea. Though he was considered as an intelligent, ambitious, arrogant, cold and calculating individual by the commoners he had been both dazed and stirred by what he felt and came across in France. The French Federal Court was debauched and its government was shady, but on the other hand its culture was refined and glorious, however English culture at that time was uncivilized, foul mouthed and the English language was yet a remorseful hotchpotch of almost unfathomable parlance. Francis’s operation, consequently, was to generate, with the assistance of others well-matched to the chore, a superlative English lingo and background just as the French poets and philosophers had fashioned theirs, but one that would endorse high merit and ideologies, not immorality, and would be a means of expression for the new possibilities of thinking and innovation that he wanted to push forward. He wanted to do this as a sacrament to both his motherland and his empress, to craft Elizabeth’s sway even more magnificent and impressive than it might usually have been, and to set aside a legacy for potential epoch to assemble upon. His plan was, accurately, a reformation of all forms of arts and innovations based upon the appropriate nitty-gritty and one which, by way of a unique technique that he was to experiment out and then educate, could multiply to other countries for the benefit of the entire humankind. It was beyond doubts an imposing concept.

To assist him in his didactic and enriching accomplishments he sought help from his uncle Lord Burghley to exercise manipulation with the Empress on his recommendation in acknowledgment of his individual proficiency and conditions, with the intention of the fact that he might have not only imperial support but also a stand through which he could have adequate power and earnings, devoid of practicing law, to grant him ‘commandment of more wits’ The Queen, who was concerned in the French Conservatoire, did influence her consent and sanction, and gave Francis to consider that such a place would be set up for him; but, other than ethical and spoken support, in this ‘uncommon and impracticable suit’ he was certain to get together with petite accomplishments.

For the next fifteen years Francis was to be kept on a string with reference to his suit. Nonetheless, allotting himself unequivocally to his great mission and recurrently being boosted by guarantee of backup from both Burghley and the Queen, Francis engrossed himself in his literature and his learning of human nature and the nature of all things, as well as studying law. From this time on, he began to ring the bell that ‘called the wits together’—and there were many.

Around the World:

On 27 June 1582, Francis Bacon was called to the Bar as Utter Barrister but wanted to have remained a brief-less barrister for a additional twelve years, in anticipation of being strained by the state of affairs in 1594 to take up some Court briefs and beseech at the King’s Bench in the Courts of Westminster. Conversely during this time, and in fact right up to her death in 1603, the Queen on numerous occasions asked for Francis’ guidance and used his flair to illustrate various reports and papers for her on difficult matters—religious, political and legal. Francis also helped in the congregation of political intelligence, helped by his brother Anthony who first started going abroad in 1578 on missions as a spy, terminating with wandering Europe from 1579 to 1592 as the Queen’s Intelligencer at Burghley’s request. The head of Intelligence was the Queen’s Secretary of State, Sir Francis Walsingham, who had set up one of the most efficient intelligence networks then in existence, with a training school in London. (Walsingham had succeeded Lord Burghley as Secretary of State in 1573 when Burghley became the Queen’s Lord Treasurer.)

A specially-prepared 12-month tour of Italy, Spain, Germany and Denmark, was arranged to monitor life and assemble information, both for the Queen and for his own purposes. For the planning of the journey Francis was aided by his brother Anthony, who was able to advice, set up contacts and organizes a route. Anthony returned briefly from France to England in November-December 1580 for this purpose, and then was sent back again to the continent, remaining abroad for the next eleven years (except for one visit to England in 1588) gathering political intelligence.

In the springs of 1581, Francis left England for some time and came back home at Gray’s Inn by the beginning of April 1582. On his return to England he prepared a testimony of his activities and findings for Lord Burghley and the Queen. This report, including additional information from his brother Anthony and Nicholas Faunt, was presented to the Queen as a State Paper named "Notes on the Present State of Christendom". The countries covered included all of France, Italy and Spain, Austria, Germany, Portugal, Poland, Denmark and Sweden. Florence, Venice, Mantua, Genoa and Savoy and were dealt with in most detail. Some of this information was used in the Shakespeare plays. (These Notes were not made available to the public until 1734.)

Cryptography appealed to Francis and he helped Burghley and Walsingham with decrypting various correspondences. He also conceived some new secret messages, one of his most primitive works being the bilateral cipher which he invented in his formative years while he was located at Paris, which later on became the foundation of the Morse code and the binary code of all computer technology today.

Parliamentarian:

In 1581, Francis started his thirty-six years of Parliamentary service as a Member of Parliament. Erstwhile he seemed to have led the life fairly of a courtier and partly of a loner, and until 1587 he laid low, except that in March 1584 he visited Scotland, and on 10th February 1586 he became a Bencher of Gray’s Inn.

On 23 November 1587, nearly two years later, Francis was chosen a Reader of Gray’s Inn. As a Reader he was sanctioned his own private chambers. In fact, just two days previous to this, confirming a grant made nine years earlier, numerous buildings were leased to Anthony and Francis Bacon for a term of fifty years, with leave to add additional rooms (which Francis eventually did). These buildings contained the actual chambers of Sir Nicholas Bacon, which had been kept for Edward and Anthony Bacon’s use. By then Edward, Francis’ and Anthony’s half-brother, had finish studying law and had got the lease of Twickenham Park from the Queen, as well as having estates somewhere else. Since Anthony was still abroad, this meant that Francis had the access to unhampered use of all the chambers, both to live in and to chase his great project. Expediently, the Great Library of Gray’s Inn was nearby to and on the same level as Francis' chambers.

From that time onwards we learn that Francis was regularly associated with other gentlemen of Gray’s Inn in devising and presenting masques and entertainments at Gray’s Inn and the royal Court at Greenwich, and writing speeches and devices to be used in the Queen’s Accession Day Tilts.

Francis’ movements tended to oscillate between Gray’s Inn, the royal Court when he was in attendance on the Queen, and Twickenham Lodge. The latter was situated in Twickenham Park, the Crown property leased by Edward Bacon, with land leading down to the River Thames immediately opposite the Queen’s palace of Richmond. The lodge with its park was a tranquil and beautiful place where Francis could write in peace, together with his friends and ‘good pens’. It was almost certainly here and at Gray’s Inn that Bacon began writing, in 1588, the extraordinary series of plays that were later (from 1598 onwards) published under the pseudonymous mask of ‘William Shakespeare’. Edward seemed to have allowed Francis the use of Twickenham Lodge whenever he wanted, and in November 1595 Francis took over the lease himself. Gorhambury, the fine country house and estate at St Albans, although owned by Anthony Bacon, was, under the terms of Sir Nicholas Bacon’s will, Lady Anne Bacon’s home and residence until she should die. It was, in any case, rather far from London, whereas Twickenham Park was close to the city and linked to it by river. All the main royal palaces and noblemen’s houses in or just outside London, from Greenwich to Hampton Court Palace, fronted onto this one great Thames thoroughfare. Twickenham Lodge was thus an ideal place. Francis had the use of it and part of its park until 1607, when the lease was surrendered to Lucy, Countess of Bedford, and the new owner.

The Spanish Armada approached the coast of England in July1588 and suffered defeat, and thereafter took place the Earl of Leicester’s fever and death in September. Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, took on the responsibility of his step-father, becoming Elizabeth’s principal favourite, and Leicester House became Essex House.

In 1591, Francis appeared to have almost given up his fruitless suit with Burghley and the Queen, threatening that if his Lordship would not carry him on he would sell the small inheritance he had in order to purchase some means of quick revenue, and thereby give up all care of service to Burghley and the Queen in order to become some ‘sorry bookmaker or a true pioneer in that mine of truth which (Anaxagoras) said lay so deep’. Suspecting Burghley’s motives, Francis tried to make it absolutely clear to his uncle that just as he had vast contemplative ends so he had moderate civil ends, and that he did not ‘seek or affect any place whereunto any that is nearer unto your Lordship shall be concurrent’. In this Francis was particularly referring to his hunchback cousin, Robert Cecil, Burghley’s son by his second wife, Mildred, the sister of Lady Ann Bacon. Besides being Lord Treasurer and Master of the Court of Wards, the most lucrative office in the land, Burghley was doing his best to advance Robert as high and as quickly as possible to a similar status, although unlike Francis (and Burghley himself) Robert had no official legal training. Not without cause it was the smart but wily Robert Cecil who, seen from the point of view of Francis Bacon, provided the character study for the hunchback King Richard in the Shakespeare play of Richard III.

Richard III was written in 1591 and first performed in 1592. One of Francis’ main accomplishments in his work was not only to study human nature and raise the level of people’s consciousness, but to improve people’s moral behaviour and purge corruption from wherever it might lurk—including corruption in high places. His belief was to find out truth and practice philanthropy; and, like the Ancients, to teach wisdom through entertainment. One of the main points about the Shakespeare plays is that they hold a mirror up to human nature, so that both good and bad might be seen for what they are and what they do. Each character in the plays embodies qualities and characteristics drawn from real life, and sometimes the analogies go close to the bone. Increasingly, from 1591 onwards, the Shakespeare plays subtly attacked or satirised the abuses and weaknesses of the Cecil combo and others, even the Queen, as well as of society in general.

However, Francis did bear on serving the Queen with his legal and political advice, and with the use of his writing implement, and about this time (perhaps in retort to his letter to Burghley threatening to retire) she made him Queen’s Counsel Extraordinary—an honorary, unpaid position with duties that were not clearly defined, except that examining prisoners suspected of treason or other grave offences, protecting the Queen’s interests and drawing up official reports were some of the services Francis was called upon to perform. Furthermore, it was about this time that the Queen asked Francis to lend a hand to Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, as an advisor.

Francis had in actuality already struck up a good companionship with Essex. The Earl at that time was the chief beloved of the Queen and, with his spotless appeal and valour, well-liked with the people. Francis set out to help Essex in every way doable, believing him to be ‘the fittest instrument to do well to the state’. Essex in turn guaranteed to help Francis, such as with his suit to the Queen and in getting hold other patronage. Eventually this turned out to be a hazardous blunder for Francis. Essex’s disposition was so impetuous and haughty that rather than helping Francis he made matters worse over and over again, with the Empress and he conflicting like armed commandment. Burghley and Robert Cecil came to abominate him, ensuing in their admitted policy of doing their paramount to obstruct the progression of any of his friends, including the Bacon brothers. Most significantly, on the other hand, it was with the crowd of writers that were connected with or were to become allied with Essex and his friends that Francis had already taking forward his legendary accomplishments.

The novelist and scriptwriter John Lyly, a Cambridge University associate from the same time as the Bacon brothers, entered the facility of the Earl of Oxford as Oxford’s secretary from 1580 onwards, writing plays for Oxford’s Boys from 1583 to 1590. The approach of Love’s Labour’s Lost was derived from Lyly’s romance, Eupheus, the Anatomy of Wit, published in 1578. Lyly eventually became one of Anthony Bacon’s ‘good pens’ at Essex House. However later, he was alleged of being a spy at Essex House, acting for Burghley

Oxford, the heritable Lord Great Chamberlain who was raised as a ward of Burghley, was well-known as a poet and comical writer as well as being a benefactor of poets and dramatists, and of his own acting investments, Oxford’s Boys and Oxford’s Men. His unsympathetic conduct of his wife, Anne Cecil, Burghley’s daughter, became a substance of great apprehension to the assembly of family and friends, as well as to the Queen, who between them manufactured a concluding get-together of the pair. A great deal of All’s Well That Ends Well, finished in 1598, ten years after 1588( Anne’s death ) and seven years after Oxford’s second wedding to Elizabeth Trentham in 1591, is principally based upon Oxford’s nuptials to Anne. In 1594 the play’s label was first recorded in Francis Bacon’s private notebook, the Promus of Formularies and Elegancies.

Home Sweet Home:

In February 1592 Anthony Bacon returned home from the continent. Anthony, whom Francis called his ‘closest brother’ and ‘comfort’, shared Francis’ desires. His foremost love was fiction and, like his brother, he was an undisclosed poet, recognized only as such to his close-friends, as exposed in their letters to him. But his wit and his talents as a multi-linguist were much in stipulation, and he put them at the service of the Queen and Burghley, who sent him on his twelve-year mission. All the time he was abroad he kept in constant communication with his brother Francis as well as with his uncle and Sir Francis Walsingham. Anthony Bacon’s foreign relations were wide-spread and he enjoyed friendship with many recognized people.

When Anthony returned to England he joined Francis at Gray’s Inn, and started to transfer all his energy and financial resources into his brother’s venture at the same time while continuing his intelligence work. Together the brothers fashioned a scrivenery of secretaries and writers to support them, dealing with political aptitude, cryptography, translations of correspondence and books in foreign languages and the classics, invention of new words, and literature generally. The Shakespeare plays took off in earnest.

Francis was the chief counsellor and friend, and in charge of the Queen’s treasury and the lucrative Court of Wards and in particular observation and love, and used him ‘in her greatest causes’. Francis’ official and financial situation could and should have been different, as also Anthony’s: they had both served the Queen and Burghley faithfully and interminably.

But this did not last long. Thanks to Francis’ rhetoric skills and influence, the proposals of the Queen’s Government were discarded on this legitimate issue. Elizabeth was livid and Francis was made to feel her annoyance, being denied right of entry to her being there, which till then he had enjoyed with an unusual freedom. She told him ‘that he must nevermore look to her for any favour or promotion’.

Such a majestic step hastened a foremost catastrophe for Francis, who aided himself and his literary exertion mainly by loans and credit; and, although assisted by his mother and Anthony, who sold two of their holdings to lend a hand to Francis. He was determined by obligation to exercise law acutely. Therefore on 25 January 1594 Francis asserted his first case in the King’s Bench, with others to tag along. His first earnest was so thriving that Burghley, satisfied with Francis as a legal representative and burdened by his own family who had taken misfortune on Francis’ quandary, embarked on to make a statement ‘where it might do him the most good’.

In the meanwhile, the Queen played a fixture of chastisement or remuneration with Francis, trying to make him her accomplish in all ways, including the Parliamentary one. In 1594 the spot of Attorney-General fell available and was kept unoccupied for a whole year, and numerous times it was notified to Francis that the Queen might assign him to this post and that it was only his demeanour in Parliament that stood in the way. Essex, keen to help Francis, admonished the Queen to employ him to this position. But Francis would not withdraw, and there were other components stirring. Robert Cecil put forward to Essex that if Sir Edward Coke, the Solicitor-General, were to be selected as Attorney-General, which he felt the Queen would favour, then conceivably Francis might be at ease with the lesser position of Solicitor-General as an alternative. But Essex denied. As Essex saw it, his own standing was at pledge. The consequence was that the Attorney-Generalship went as a replacement for to Coke, and Francis was also detoured for the office of Solicitor-General.

Essex was affronted by this outcome, feeling it as a material of smugness, and imparted on Francis a piece of land in Twickenham in reimbursement for what he felt was his failure to aid his friend. Francis was able to hoist money on the land to relieve his condition (which later he sold).

But, in spite of the fact that Francis thought of self-effacing to Cambridge with a pair of men to complete his life, issues between him and the Queen did perk up that year. In the summer the Queen chose him as one of her Counsel cultured in the Law and bestowed on him some property in Somerset at a nominal rent. He then wrote The Device of the Indian Prince, crammed with gratifying and toadying references to the Queen, which helped to bring her together to Essex. Then, on 17 November 1594, for her celebration on Accession Day, ‘The Device’ was abetted by Essex and took place at York House. It was so successful that her Majesty was extremely pleased.

Beneficiaries were a frequent problem, as Francis’s scheme was expensive and he never had sufficient wealth. His brother Anthony was the main supply of his help on this matter. The comradeship between the two siblings, and the struggle they went in the course of being strained year after year to raise loans from usurers, and the concluding liquidation of Anthony on his brother’s behalf, was strongly reflected in the Shakespeare play, The Merchant of Venice. In the play Antonio was a good send-up of Anthony, who did trade abroad (but in intelligence rather than merchandise) and who hazarded all for his brother’s sake; and Bassanio of Francis, whose ‘Portia’ he sought after was, in a philosophical sense, Wisdom on her Mountain of Beauty (‘Belmont’), and in a personal sense, his rich cousin, Lady Hatton (see below). Many times either one or the other brother had to attend court and pay the forfeits demanded for late repayment of the loans. Being a lawyer and ‘learned in the law’, Francis often pleaded his own case. He was even arrested for debt at one time (September 1598), unjustly as it happened, because of the maliciousness of a particular debtor, and had to be rescued from the awful possibility of incarceration in the Fleet(When Burghley died in 1598, Robert continued as Secretary of State, maintaining his position of power.)

In 1597, Francis had a paperback published under his own name of ‘Francis Bacon’ for the first time, this being the first edition of his Essays, which he devoted with fondness to his ‘warm and treasured Brother’, Anthony, referring to Anthony as ‘you that are next myself’.

Besides his deep love for Anthony—his sibling, pal, co-writer and associate in his ostentatious plan—Francis was also smitten of his cousin, Elizabeth Cecil, Burghley’s grand-daughters, with used to flirt when younger. He sustained his amity with Elizabeth after she tied the knot to Sir William Hatton in 1594 and the friendship deepened over the years. When Elizabeth was widowed in 1597 Francis courted her sincerely, asking for her hand in matrimony. She had been left a very well-heeled youthful female by her late spouse, and so marriage with her could impart a double refinement and resolve Francis’ monetary inconvenience. But this time too disenchantment was in store for Bacon, and once again Sir Edward Coke, now Attorney-General and well-to-do, won the day.

In February 1601, when all this was at its climax with Essex’s unsuccessful effort to raise an fortified insurgence against the Queen and her regime, which led to his prosecution for disloyalty and consequent execution on, 25th February 1601, the Bacon brothers were devastated. Both of them had been misled for several years by Essex, who had been secretly plotting and preparing his insurrection, and they only learnt the full truth during and after the trial. Both brothers had worked hard to try to prove the supposed innocence of Essex, and Francis did all he could to mediate with the Queen on Essex’s behalf, right up to the end, at the expense of his own relationship with her. Francis was ordered by the Queen to take part in the trial as her Counsel Learned, to assist the State Prosecutor. As if these tragic events were not enough, a few months after Essex’s execution Anthony, who had not been well, was reported to have died on 27th May 1601).

Queen Elizabeth passed away just two years later (24 March 1603), and in July 1603 King James VI of Scotland was crowned the King James I of England. Anthony Bacon had over the years done some good service for the Scottish king, and Francis, who pleaded his case as a ‘concealed poet’ who was for the most part one with his brother in ‘endeavour and duties’, was helped by King James as a result. In Queen Elizabeth’s reign Francis had been continually by-passed in terms of being given a position where he could command both a sufficient income and influence for the needs of his great project, and his service under the Tudor queen had gone largely unpaid, except for the promise of the reversion of the position of Clerk to the Star Chamber when it became vacant, the granting under favourable terms of the lease of Twickenham Park, which became Francis’ favourite retreat and home for his scrivenery, the lease of the Rectory of Cheltenham, and the payment of a fee of £1200 for his services at Essex’s trial. With James, after a cautious start, it was to be different.

The Stuart king soon came to rely on Francis’ exceptional talents and to recognise them officially; but, as with Elizabeth, it was primarily in the highways and byways of law that he drew Francis’ services to him, although Francis eventually became the principal adviser to the King on all matters. (Not that James always took notice of the advice: if he had done so more often, many unfortunate situations might have been avoided, including the mismanagement and rape of Ireland.)

Francis’ philanthropic literary work in the reign of Elizabeth, and the largely unpaid legal work for his sovereign, had left him in dire straits financially. Anthony had died with debts that had to be paid, whilst Francis had his own debts, to cover which his Twickenham Park lease was mortgaged. The literary work was still continuing and had to be supported, and meaningful and sufficient patronage was still not forthcoming. Therefore, even though he inherited the manors and estates of Gorhambury from his brother, which brought a modicum of financial security, Francis still needed to earn a reasonable income, even if it meant practising law more fully and trying to obtain an official position in the King’s service.

First Francis was knighted on 23 July 1603, along with three hundred others at Whitehall, two days before the coronation of King James and his Queen, Anne of Denmark, in Westminster Abbey. Then, a year later, in August 1604, he was confirmed by letters patent as a member of the King’s Counsel Learned with a pension of £40 per annum. It was at this time that he started writing the tracts that were the forerunners of his Great Instauration, and his first version of The Advancement of Learning, to be published in October 1605. He also met in 1603 Alice Barnham, a wealthy alderman’s daughter, ‘a handsome maiden,’ to whom he took a liking with a view to marriage when she was old enough (she was only eleven years old when they first met). A little over two years later, on 10 May 1606, when she was fourteen and he forty-five, they married. She brought with her a dowry of £6000 plus an annual income of £220, which Francis allowed her to keep for herself, whilst he settled on her a further income for life of £500 per annum. Francis treated his wife with much connubial love and of high opinion, and for all the years of their marriage (i.e. until his death) they appear to have lived together happily, in peace and contentment, and with style.

Attorney General:

On 26 October 1613 he became the Attorney-General, and on 9 June 1616 a Privy Councillor. With the Attorney-Generalship Francis became far more fully engrossed in the King’s business, with little time for writing any more. What little time he had for literary matters he mainly dedicated to perfecting the writing and presentation of his New Method, the first two books of which he wrote in Latin and published in 1620 as the Novum Organum. Henry VIII thus became the last Shakespeare play to be written (c.1612-13), and even that was with the collaboration of John Fletcher.

Finally, to restrict his political and legal service to the Crown, on 7 March 1617 the King appointed Sir Francis Bacon as his Lord Keeper of the Great Seal (the ‘keeper of the King’s conscience’), and straight away left him to act as his virtual regent in England whilst he departed for Scotland for a six-month visit—the first of his period of influence as King of Great Britain. Even with the King absent, Francis took his place in Chancery with splendid rite. In his procession to Westminster Hall he was escorted by 200 knights and gentlemen mounted on horse, together with lords of his Majesty’s Council, the nobility, courtiers and followers of the Queen and Prince of Wales, plus the judges and fellows of the Inns of Court. He himself was dressed in purple satin, as he was on his wedding day—normally a royal dispensation.

Having taken up his new position, Francis worked flat out to make up for the delays in Chancery caused by the sickness of his precursor, his old friend Lord Ellesmere, and by the workings of Chancery generally. He doubled the amount of time that he individually, together with his staff, were traditionally expected to spend on Chancery matters, in order to expedite and clear the causes of the court, although he made sure to reserve the depth of the vacations ‘for studies, arts, and sciences’, to which, he said in his initial speech, he was in his nature most focussed.

On 4 January 1618, after ten months of hard work later, King James bestowed the honour of Lord Chancellorship upon Francis. By this time Francis had moved into York House, the home of his father as Lord Keeper and of all subsequent Lord Keepers, and where his father had died and he had been born and bred. This was a home which meant a great deal to him and he set about making it into a stunning manor, repairing and furnishing it affectionately and generously, linking it by pipe to the City’s main water supply, structuring an aviary in its gardens, and installing in it a huge household of servants and retainers, dressed in his livery.

Appropriately, on 12 July 1618 his Majesty raised Francis to the honour, creating him Baron Verulam. Two and a half years later, on 3rd February 1621, in celebration of his 60th birthday and of over three years of faithful unstinting service as Lord Keeper and Chancellor, Francis was created Viscount St Alban by the King.

Detention:

Almost right away upon receiving the last title, at the height of his public glory, a plot which had been hatched against Lord St Alban by those who envied him and his position came to fruition. It fell upon Francis like a bombshell, even though friends such as Tobie Matthew had tried to warn him that something unsafe was taking place. The result of the plot led to Francis’ arraignment in Parliament during March-April 1621 on fictitious charges of dishonesty, to which the King, in order to move notice away from the profligate conduct of his favourite Buckingham and his own weak spot, ordered his Lord Chancellor to offer no defence and to plead guilty. On 3 May 1621 a sentence was given, where Francis was stripped of his office and banned from holding any further place of work, position or employment in the State or Commonwealth, or from sessions in Parliament. He was expatriated from the threshold of Court and fined a mammoth sum of £40,000 and locked up in the Tower of London.

Francis’ imprisonment at the end of May was, however, concise, and after a few days he was unconfined, although evacuated from London and commanded to retire to Gorhambury until the King’s pleasure should be further known. Gorhambury was a gorgeous and soothing place for vacations, but to live there month after month meant that he and his wife were cut off from society, from their friends, and he from his books and papers and helpers, and the stimulating company of other good minds. Francis longed to return to the metropolis and get moving with his writings, and he grieved greatly that his wife had to suffer on his behalf. He pleaded with the King to be allowed to return to London. He begged also for financial help in being able to at least live, having sold his plate and jewels and other commodities to pay his creditors and servants what he owed them, so that they should suffer as little as possible.

On 16 September 1621, King James issued a licence permitting Francis to return to London (but to lodge at Sir John Vaughan’s house, not York House, and only for six weeks), and on 20 September 1621 he assigned the fine of £40,000 to four trustees of Francis’ own choosing, which meant in effect that Francis was freed of its burden. Moreover, on 12 October 1621 King James signed a warrant for Francis’ pardon. From the historical evidence and the tone of Francis’ letters to Buckingham and the King, this pardoning of Francis would seem to have been because of an understanding Francis had with the King, as part of the agreement whereby he would plead guilty to the charges made against him: but nevertheless the damage was done and Francis’ good name was and remains to this day tarnished in the eyes of the world as a result.

Even after this Francis’ bitter experience was not yet over. Although the King had granted his pardon, the new Lord Keeper, Bishop Williams, delayed putting his seal on it. Until this was done Francis was still legally not a completely free man and, more to the point, was shut out of London (his six weeks at Sir John Vaughan’s house having elapsed) and could not return to his beloved York House. Eventually it was made known to Francis that the delay was caused by Buckingham, who desired York House for his own purposes. Until Francis surrendered it, he would not be given either his full pardon or his freedom. Francis tried every way he could not to lose his beautiful and convenient London home, with its strong sentimental value and into which he had poured so much of himself and his finances, but eventually he had to give way. In mid-March 1622 he surrendered York House to Buckingham, the Marquis contracting to buy the lease for £1,300. Immediately Francis’ pardon and freedom arrived, signed, sealed and delivered, and by November his pension and a grant from the petty writs, both of which had been illegally stopped, had been restored to him—but not without him having to borrow money from friends and write to the King as a supplicant in great extremity.

To begin with, sometime at the end of March 1622 Francis moved with his wife and household to a house in Chiswick, but this was only temporary; for by June that year they had taken up residence in Bedford House on the Strand. This now became their London home, Gorhambury still being their country abode and family estate, in Francis’ ownership (unlike Bedford House, which was leased).

During his time of banishment from Court and forced retirement at Gorhambury (June 1621–March 1622) Francis would have been able to spend time on the final planning and organisation of the presentation of his Great Instauration to the world at large, gathering further material for his Natural History, the third part of his Great Instauration, and writing his revised and greatly enlarged final version of the Advancement of Learning. This latter work was to represent the first part of the Great Instauration, a portion of the second part (the Novum Organum) having already been published in 1620. Moreover, it was probably during the six weeks in London (September-October 1621) that he issued instructions for the collecting together of the Shakespeare plays and the purchasing of the publishing rights for them, so that they could be published collectively as his example of the fourth part of the Great Instauration—his working model or ‘machine’ as he called it, by which the data collected concerning natural, human and divine nature might be ‘set as it were before the eyes’. For this he had Ben Jonson to help him, one of his ‘good pens who forsake me not’. His other remaining ‘good pens’ included George Herbert, Thomas Hobbes, Peter Böener, Dr. William Rawley and Sir Thomas Meautys.

Once back in London the composition and translation into Latin of the Advancement of Learning went full steam ahead, although it was not until the autumn of 1623 that it was finally published (as the De Augmentis Scientiarum). The timing of this went hand in hand with the publication of the Shakespeare plays, the printing of which was set in motion early in 1622, probably under the supervision of Ben Jonson, and the publication of which occurred during the last two months of 1623 (as the Folio of William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories and Tragedies). Francis also busied himself at this time with researching and writing a history of the reign of King Henry VII, as part of his intended collection of histories of the later sovereigns of England, and with making a start on a collection of studies that would comprise his example of a Natural History. Both The History of the Reign of King Henry VII and the first of six essays on natural history (Historia Ventorum, ‘The History of Winds’) were published in 1622.

Francis always did his best to uphold his wife in a state befitting a viscountess, and had settled on her an appropriate income, in addition to her own private one, which she had always enjoyed throughout their marriage. This meant that by February 1623 Francis was again in financial difficulties. He tried to sell Gorhambury to Buckingham, but the Marquis was at that time about to embark for Spain with Charles, the Prince of Wales, to pursue the proposal for the marriage of the King of Spain’s daughter to the Prince. Failing to sell Gorhambury, Bedford House had to be given up, as being too expensive to run. This left Gorhambury as their only stately home, so that when in London Lady Bacon had to rely on staying with family or friends, whilst Francis retired to his ‘cell’, his chambers at Gray’s Inn, where he could carry on with his writings.

When the provostship of Eton fell vacant in April 1623, Francis applied to the King for the position, as it would have fulfilled his original desire to have a suitable position with a small but sufficient income to sustain him wherein he could ‘command wits and pens’ and oversee the education of bright young minds. But even in this he failed, the position having already been promised to another and King James being unable to believe that his ex-Lord Keeper and Lord Chancellor, who in title was a Viscount, would want to take up such a relatively humble position. The truth of the matter was, though, that beyond granting the pardon (which was never given in full, as Francis was denied being able to sit in parliament for the rest of his life), neither the King nor Buckingham did anything whatsoever to help Francis, other than to say friendly and encouraging things in answer to his letters and pleas.

So Francis remained at Gray’s Inn, writing copiously and urgently, and living at Gorhambury with his wife from time to time. Each year, usually in the summer months, he was subject to bouts of sickness, but always seemed to recover. He never lost his profound hope, his extraordinary mental faculties or his zest for completing his great work. Yet within three years he was to die, outliving by one year the King whom he had served so well, who died on 27 March 1625 and who was succeeded by his son Charles I.

Even though Francis never finished his work to his own contentment, yet by the time he died he had produced remarkable examples of the first four parts or stages of the Great Instauration (and maybe of the fifth and sixth, if we could but find or identify them), constructed a ‘treasure hunt’ to teach and train others, and set in motion a work that others could take up—a work that Francis knew would grow and evolve, and take many ages to complete.

In the early years of King James’ reign Francis had been able to continue writing the Shakespeare plays and other works. In addition, as his experiments began to bear fruit, he began to develop and publish his philosophical works under his own name of Bacon; but this he did carefully, a little at a time, not revealing the critical role of drama until his final 1623 version of the Advancement of Learning—the De Augmentis Scientiarum. Like the Novum Organum that he had published in 1620, this work was written in Latin, with the help of George Herbert, Ben Jonson and others—the reason being, as he said, so that other nations might have the benefit of reading it as well as his own countrymen, Latin being (at that time) the universal language of the learned.

During the early Jacobean period Francis had become directly involved with the Virginia Company and its schemes to colonise North America, sitting on its council together with the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery, and the Earl of Southampton. Moreover, Francis was largely responsible for drawing up, in 1609 and 1612, the two charters of government for the Virginia Colony. These charters were the beginnings of constitutionalism in North America and the germ of the later Constitution of the United States of America. The confidential report sent to the Virginia Company council members by William Strachey in 1609, concerning the shipwreck of the Company’s flagship, the Sea Adventurer, on the Bermudas, gave Francis some good material on which to base his account of the island and shipwreck in The Tempest, the so-called ‘last’ Shakespeare play.

The very last Shakespeare play, however, appeared to have been All is True, thought to have been written sometime between the end of 1612 and June 1613, when the Globe Theatre accidentally burnt down during a performance of the play. This play, or a later version of it, was first published in the 1623 Shakespeare Folio as The Life of King Henry the Eight, with certain additions which Francis wrote after his impeachment. These additions include the prologue and Cardinal Wolsey’s farewell speech, and details of Wolsey’s fall as Lord Chancellor and Keeper of the Great Seal, which are purposely mixed with details of Bacon’s own personal experience when he had the Great Seal taken from him, thus making a kind of signature.

During the last five years of his life he worked like a champion, gathering together, revising, polishing and finishing works already commenced, implementing or at least making a start on other projects already planned, and seeing his greatest works through publication, including the Shakespeare Folio of comedies, histories and tragedies. For all this he was helped by those ‘good pens’ of his who, after his fall, forsook him not—men whose names should be remembered with gratitude.