FRANCIS BACON was born among great events, and brought up among the persons who had to deal with them. It was on the 22d of January, 1560-1, while the young Queen of Scotland, a two-months' widow, was rejecting the terms of reconciliation with England which Elizabeth proffered, and a new Pope in the Vatican was preparing to offer the terms of reconciliation with Rome which Elizabeth rejected, — that he came crying into the world, the youngest son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, and Ann, second daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, an accomplished lady, sister-in-law to the then Secretary of State, Sir William Cecil. There is no reason to suppose that he was regarded as a wonder- ful child. Of the first sixteen years of his life indeed nothing is known that distinguishes him from a hundred other clever and well-disposed boys. He was born at York House, his father's London residence, opening into the Strand (not yet a street) on the north, and sloping pleasantly to the Thames (not yet built out) on the - Advice given by Sir Henry Neville on the same Contrast between the two. Death of Sir Thomas Fleming, Chief Justice of the King's Bench. - Bacon recommends Sir H. Hobart for his Successor. Attempt to introduce Parlia- mentary Government into Ireland. - Creation of new Boroughs. -Election of Sir John Davies as Speaker. - Refusal of the Ro- man Catholic Members to serve. Reference to the King. -Com- missioners appointed to investigate Complaints.- Report of the Commissioners; and orders issued thereupon. - The seceding Members consent to serve. - Coke made Chief Justice of the King's Bench: Hobart, of the Common Pleas : Bacon, Attorney General: Yelverton, Solicitor General. Letter of Thanks to the King. Dissolution of the Marriage between the Earl of Essex and Lady Frances Howard. - Her Marriage to Rochester, created Earl of Somerset for the Occasion. - Bacon's Complimentary Of- fering of the "Masque of Flowers." - Probable Motive and Occa- sion. Prevalence of Duels. - Proclamation against them by the FRANCIS BACON AND HIS TIMES. BOOK I. CHAPTER I. A. D. 1560-1584. ETAT. 1-24. FRANCIS BACON was born among great events, and brought up among the persons who had to deal with them. It was on the 22d of January, 1560-1, while the young Queen of Scotland, a two-months' widow, was rejecting the terms of reconciliation with England which Elizabeth proffered, and a new Pope in the Vatican was preparing to offer the terms of reconciliation with Rome which Elizabeth rejected, that he came crying into the world, the youngest son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, and Ann, second daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, an accomplished lady, sister-in-law to the then Secretary of State, Sir William Cecil. There is no reason to suppose that he was regarded as a wonderful child. Of the first sixteen years of his life indeed nothing is known that distinguishes him from a hundred other clever and well-disposed boys. He was born at York House, his father's London residence, opening into the Strand (not yet a street) on the north, and sloping santly to the Thames (not yet built out) on the ith. Sometimes there, and sometimes at Gorhambury Hertfordshire, he passed his infancy; the youngest of eight children-six by a former marriage. In April, 1573, he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, a little earlier than was then usual, being twelve years and three months old. There he resided in the same rooms with his brother Anthony (his own brother, two years older than himself), studying diligently, until Christmas, 1575; apparently with only one considerable interval (i. e. from the latter end of August, 1574, to the beginning of March), when the University was dispersed on account of the plague. On the 27th of the following June he and his brother Anthony were admitted "de societate magistrorum" of Gray's Inn; that is, I suppose, ancients; a privilege to which they were entitled as the sons of a judge. If we add that during his residence at Cambridge he was rather sickly, as appears by the frequent payments to the "potigarie" in Whitgift's accounts, and that his talents or manners had already been remarked by the courtiers, and drawn him the special notice of the Queen herself, who would often talk with him and playfully call him the young Lord Keeper, we have all that is known about him for the first fifteen years and nine months of his life. Brief however and barren as this record appears, it may help us, when studied by the light which his subsequent history throws back upon it, to understand in what manner and in what degree the accidents of his birth and education had prepared him for the scene on which he was entering. When the temperament is quick and sensitive, the desire of knowledge strong, and the faculties so vigorous, obedient, and equably developed that they find almost all things easy, the mind will commonly fasten upon the first object of interest that presents itself, with the ardor of a first love. Now these qualities, which so eminently distinguished Bacon as a man, must have been in him from a boy; and if we would know the source of those great impulses which began to work in him so early and continued to govern him so long, we must look for it among the circumstances by which his boyhood was surrounded. What his mother taught him we do not know; but we know that she was a learned, eloquent, and religious woman, full of affection and puritanic fervor, deeply interested in the condition of the Church, and perfectly believing that the cause of the Nonconformists was the whole cause of Christ. Such a mother could not but endeavor to lead her child's mind into the temple where her own treasure was laid up, and the child's mind, so led, could not but follow thither with awful curiosity and impressions not to be effaced. Neither do we know what his father taught him; but he appears to have designed him for the service of the State, and we need not doubt that the son of Elizabeth's Lord Keeper, and nephew of her principal Secretary, early imbibed a reverence for the mysteries of statesmanship, and a deep sense of the dignity, responsibility, and importance of the statesman's calling. It is probable that he was present more than once, when old enough to observe and understand such matters, at the opening of Parliament, and heard his father, standing at the Queen's side, declare to the assembled Lords and Commons the causes of their meeting. It is certain that he was more than once in the immediate presence of the Queen herself, smiled on by the countenance which was looked up to by all the young and all the old around him with love and fear and reverence. Everything that he saw and heard; the alarms, the hopes, the triumphs of the time; the magnitude of the interests which depended upon her government; the high flow of loyalty which buoyed her up and bore her forward; the imposing character of her council, a character which still stands out distinctly eminent at the distance of nearly 1 He was nine years old when the Bull of Excommunication was published and the Rebellion in the North broke out. |