Francis Bacon MP (1561 - 1626)

Ancestors

Francis Bacon was a politician during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James VI & I, and Lord Chancellor of England. He was one of the founders of modern philosophy, for which he is best known today.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Beginning 1.2 Elizabeth and Essex 1.3 King James 1.4 Philosophy 1.5 Bibliography 2 Research Notes 2.1 Note on Parentage 3 Sources

Biography

Beginning

Shortly after the reign of Queen Elizabeth I began, Francis Bacon was born at York House on the Strand in London, on 22 January 1560/1, the youngest son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, and his second wife Anne Cooke. ^[1] He was baptized 25 January 1560/1 at St Martin-in-the-Fields.^[2]

As a son of the Lord Keeper and nephew of the queen's Secretary of State, William Cecil, whose wife was sister to his mother, Francis grew up at the center of state power and was clearly expected to succeed to it in his own turn. The queen visited at Sir Nicholas's house at Gorhambury, Hertfordshire, where he would have seen her at eleven years old, and may on occasion have called him her "young Lord Keeper". ^[3]

Francis and his three-years-older brother Anthony were educated in their childhood by tutors, who were generally also the family's chaplains - chosen perhaps for their puritan orthodoxy rather than strictly as scholars.^[4] When Francis was twelve, the brothers were sent to Trinity College Cambridge^[5], where they lived under the particular governance of the Master, John Whitgift. According to Bacon's later comments, it was at Cambridge that he developed an aversion to over-reliance on the authority of Aristotle, and first conceived the notion that a better method might be found.^[6]

Leaving Cambridge, the brothers were admitted on 27 June 1576 to Gray's Inn^[7] de societate magistrorum, i.e. as "ancients" by virtue of their father's status. Young Francis Bacon did not remain at Gray's Inn to study law; he was sent instead to France as an apprentice in statecraft in the train of ambassador Sir Amias Paulet. (Older brother Anthony was perhaps considered too sickly for such travel; he seems to have remained at Gray's Inn.)

Twenty years afterward, Francis Bacon wrote to his cousin Robert Cecil recalling the day he took his leave of the queen on his departure with the embassy, allowed to kiss her hand as the official mark of her favour, accepting him into her service.^[8] His duties in France were the various tasks of a secretary, which he fulfilled well enough to earn the recommendation: "Mr Francis Bacon is of great hope, endowed with many good and singular parts; and if God give him life will prove a very able and sufficient subject to do your Highness good and acceptable service."^[9] But everything changed forever in February 1578/9 when Sir NIcholas Bacon unexpectedly died, leaving Francis almost unprovided for.^{[10] [11] [12]}

Sir Nicholas's death should not have been unexpected, and he had not properly prepared for it in his Will. The three sons of his first marriage had already been amply provided for, and he left a sufficient bequest to Anthony, but Sir Nicholas had not yet acquired the property with which he meant to endow his youngest, most promising son. At his death, there were the expenses of his exorbitant funeral, there were numerous legacies in his Will, and there were debts to be paid, all with the funds intended to benefit Francis. The two oldest brothers, far from coming forward to share their wealth, contested the terms of the Will leaving property to Anthony, and it was left to their uncle Cecil, now Lord Burghley, to arbitrate as overseer - in Anthony's favor.^{[13] [14]}

Here lies the seed of the great tragedy of Francis Bacon's life. He was bred up for his first eighteen years through Sir Nicholas's influence with a high sense of entitlement. With his father gone, he expected his even more powerful uncle to take that place. But Burghley, with a promising son of his own to raise up, delivered more empty promises than assistance, while Francis Bacon spent the prime years of his life in a limbo of expectation, pleading and importuning for the advancement to high places which was never given. He wrote to Burghley after perhaps ten years: ^[15] "And if your Lordship will not carry me on . . . I will sell the inheritance that I have, and purchase some lease of quick revenue, or some office of gain that shall be executed by deputy, and so give over all care of service, and become some sorry book-maker or a true pioner in that mine of truth . . ." Burghley did, finally, on 16 November 1589, procure for him the reversion of the clerkship of the Star Chamber - a remunerative post of £1600/year, not likely soon to become vacant, but which could be sold - just what Bacon had requested to allow him to devote himself to his philosophy.^{[16] [17]} However, he persisted instead in his quest for advancement to higher levels.

Elizabeth and Essex

Francis Bacon was not idle and not afraid of hard work. Finding himself with one real asset, his membership at Gray's Inn, he applied himself to the law and was admitted early to the bar in 1582 (Elizabeth later claimed it was due to her intervention - "Did I not pull him over the bar?" - perhaps through Burghley's influence).^{[18] [19]} and named Bencher in 1586, Reader (again early) the following year.^[5]

Bacon also entered Parliament, which became a lifetime career. He was Member for Bossiney (1581), Weymouth (1584), Taunton (1586), Liverpool (1589), Middlesex (1593), Ipswich (1597, 1601, 1604), Cambridge University (1614). These positions, as was the custom of the time, were obtained through family influence, not Burghley alone, but the 2nd Earl of Bedford, John Whitgift, and Francis Walsingham.^[20]

It was in Parliament, in March 1593, that Bacon himself impaired his own prospects for high office, when the queen called for a tax subsidy to meet a renewed threat from Spain (this being only five years after the Great Armada). Bacon rose to oppose, not the subsidy itself, but the schedule of payments, as being an onerous burden on smallholders.^{[21] [22]}

For impossibility, the poor man's rent is such as they are not able to yield it, and the general commonality is not able to pay so much upon the present. The gentlemen must sell their plate and the farmers their brass pots ere this be paid. . . . The danger is this: we shall thus breed discontentment in the people. And in a cause of jeopardy, her Majesty's safety must consist more in the love of her people than in their wealth."

It was a good speech. It was a principled speech. And the queen, not used to being thwarted, was furious. She sent for Burghley, who was furious. Bacon replied that he was only serving his conscience.^[23] The queen was unmoved and unforgiving of his non-apology, and he was forbidden the court.

But about that time, Francis Bacon had turned in a different direction to seek preferment: to the queen's newest favorite, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, a rash and ambitious young man who promised to obtain the vacant office of Attorney-general for Francis Bacon. The queen, who did not like being excessively importuned, did not take this well, being still offended over the subsidy bill. The post went to a better-qualified man who would soon become Bacon's great rival and enemy: Sir Edward Coke.^[24] Essex then laid siege to the lower office of Solicitor-general, but still in vain, as the queen said in irritation, "I would seek all England for a Solicitor rather than take him."^[25] In 1597, Bacon's prospects were so poor that he was arrested for debt.^[26]

Anthony Bacon, being returned to England crippled by gout and debt, had became Essex's devoted and loyal follower,^[27] but his brother was becoming alarmed by the Earl's rashness toward the queen, with whom he was able to reconcile after 1595. He much later wrote, "I know but one friend and one enemy that my Lord hath; and that one friend is the Queen, and that one enemy is himself."^[28] Rashness and ambition eventually led Essex, first to failure in Ireland, then to the block for treason in 1601.^[29]

Francis Bacon, known to be a close advisor of Essex, was endangered by association, and his brother Anthony Bacon, now crippled and bedridden, even more so. Francis Bacon had by that time sufficiently repaired his relations with the queen as to be named one of her (unpaid) Learned Counsel. It was natural that he be called to take part in Essex's prosecution. For this, he has been accused of disloyalty.^[30] But Essex's armed rebellion was inexcusable, and refusal would surely have endangered both himself and his brother, who was never called or even seriously mentioned in all the proceedings, perhaps in consequence. This may suggest where Bacon's real loyalty lay, if not, as he later declared in his self-serving "Apology"^[31], to the crown. He also can not have disliked the opportunity to show himself an advocate superior to his rival Sir Edward Coke, who spoke before him.^{[32] [33]} The queen was so pleased with Bacon's performance at the trial (and displeased with Coke's) that she ordered him to write the official Declaration of the events, to be presented to the public.^[34]

King James

After Elizabeth died on 24 March 1603, ^[35] Francis Bacon joined the horde of hopeful courtiers streaming north to meet James, King of Scotland on his progress to assume the old queen's throne. Bacon's hope of royal favor rested on his late brother Anthony, who had corresponded with the Scottish king and passed on information from the English court on behalf of his patron Essex.^[36] It was at about this time that Bacon composed his "Apology", attempting to justify his prosecution of Essex. James was gracious in a minor way, bestowed a small pension on Anthony's brother and included him, on 23 July, in one of the mass knighting events that opened his reign. But unfortunately for Sir Francis's hopes for work as a Learned Counsel, legal affairs had been placed by James firmly in the hostile grasp of Sir Edward Coke.^[37]

The year 1606 brought significant changes to Sir Francis Bacon's life, beginning with his marriage, on 10 May 1606,to Alice Barnham, age 14, daughter and co-heir of alderman Benedict Barnham, on whom Sir Francis had designs since she was 11 - or, more likely, on her inheritance. ^[38] Many historians^[39] have doubted that the marriage was ever consummated, and there were no children of the union. But one comment made about the wedding suggests the seed of further troubles, as he was "clad from top to toe in purple, and hath made himself and his wife such store of fine raiments of cloth of silver and gold that it draws deep into her portion."^[40] His mother had always complained of his extravagant tendencies,^[41], but for much of his life, poverty and debt had kept him from much indulging them. The spectacle of his wedding suggested that this was about to change.

Bacon had also begun to exercise greater influence in Parliament, generally advocating for positions promoted by the king. In 1606 the great debate was over the Union of England and Scotland and the naturalization of Scottish immigrants to England. In this matter, Bacon stood alone against Parliamentary opposition, becoming a champion of the royal prerogative - a term very dear to James' heart. Sir Edward Coke, on the other hand, was a champion of the law, even to informing James that the king himself was subject to the law.^[42] Sir Edward Coke had moved up the from Attorney-general's post to become Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas. On 25 June 1607, Sir Francis Bacon was rewarded, at long last, with the Solicitorship.^[43] The next year,1608, he finally succeeded to the clerkship of the Star Chamber - the reversion of which he had never sold.^[44] He was now master of a good income, with which he could have paid off his debts and lived a comfortable life.^[45] It was not to be.

In the years following his succession to the Solicitorship, Sir Francis began an accelerated plan to importune for additional and higher office, writing memoranda regarding the methods for this.^{[46] [47]} In 1611, he wrote to the king suggesting himself as the next Attorney-general.^[48] He soon began to work actively against Sir Edward Coke, who was finally removed from the bench in 1616 for failing to sufficiently respect the king's prerogative over the judges, ^[42] leaving more room for the advancement of Bacon, who was named Attorney-general in 1613.^[44]

At this same time, Bacon was courting King James' new favorite, George Villiers, soon to be known as Buckingham, whom Bacon addressed in terms of shameful obsequiousness, in thanks for a promise of advancement to the rank of Lord Chancellor.^[49] His addresses, however, may have been effective, as he became in rapid succession: privy councillor (1616), Keeper of the Great Seal (his father's office) (1617) and finally Lord Chancellor (1618), being also then raised to the peerage as Baron Verulam. In 1621, his rank was increased when he became Viscount St Alban.^[44]

During this period, Bacon began to spend excessively. In January 1614, he presented a masque at court on the occasion of the Princess Elizabeth's wedding, at a cost of £2000. One court observer wrote that "he feasts the whole University of Cambridge this Christmas. . . . He carries a great port as well in his train, as in his apparel and other ways, and lives at great charge, and yet he pretends he will take no fees . . ."^[50] John Aubrey (who did not know Bacon) wrote: "When his lordship was at his county house at Gorhambury, St Albans seemed as if the Court were there, so nobly did he live."^[51] This was doubtless also the time when he was spending great sums on building and landscaping at Gorhambury, including the old Roman city of Verlumium nearby, from which he took his baronial title.

Bacon's household likewise was bloated with retainers. A memorandum from 1618 lists over a hundred, including dozens of "gentleman ushers" and "gentleman waiters". ^[52] After his death, an anecdote related the account of a person who had been to see the Lord Chancellor, and while in his study saw two separate gentleman servants come into the room and fill their pockets with money from his chest. When the visitor informed Bacon, "he shook his head; and all that he said was, 'Sir, I cannot help myself.'"^[53] The relationships between Bacon and his servants were clearly warped by some factor unexplained, but which must have been a serious drain on his finances. It is impossible not to recall Lady Anne Bacon's bitter diatribe against her son's servants in 1593: "yet so long as he pities not him self but keepeth that bloody (Henry) Percy, as I told him then, yea, as a coach companion and bed companion, a proud, profane, costly fellow, whose being about him I verily fear the Lord God doth mislike."^[54]

At the height of Bacon's eminence as Lord Chancellor, Sir Edward Coke struck back from Parliament in March 1621, bringing a case of bribery in the conduct of his office against him. Bacon could have argued that he had done only what everyone else had always done, he could have argued that the bribes in question had been put into the hands of his servants, not his own. Instead, he confessed. "I have not hid my sin as did Adam, nor concealed my faults in my bosom."^[55]

Although the House of Lords proclaimed Bacon's guilt, his sentence was in the hands of the king, amounting in the end to deprivation of office. So that, at long last, he had the enforced leisure to spend on his great philosophical project, notwithstanding that his magnum opus of the set, the Novum Organum, had already been published in 1620. With this exception, the works for which he is now remembered were written during this philosophic quinquennium. But although his books might sell and receive praise, this activity could not reduce his debts. So he continued at the same time to importune the king, then the new king Charles I, and always Buckingham, by all of whom he was ignored. He was never returned to public office.^[56] Aubrey wrote: "On his being in disfavor, his servants suddenly went away; he compared them to the flying of the vermin when the house was falling."^[57]

Bacon's wife, also, apparently declined to join him in his exile, preferring to live in London. On 19 December 1625, he cut her out of his Will, "for great and just causes" that may have involved adultery on her part, as eleven days after his death she married one of his gentleman-ushers, John Underhill.^[58]

Bacon died 9 April 1626, under circumstances insufficiently explained, according to biographers.^[59] His debts amounted to about £20,000 against assets of £7000. His Will ^[60] had carefully made provision for the disposal of his goods and his papers, but the executors, six in number, refused to act, as did the supervisor named by him, Buckingham, who was not, it seems, his "true friend". Letters of administration were finally granted 18 July 1628 and proved only the prelude to prolonged litigation, during which some of his papers were lost.^[61]

Francis Bacon, Viscount St Alban, was buried as he had requested in the church of St Michael at St Albans, where his mother already lay. A large monument there shows him seated in philosophic contemplation, with the inscription:

Francis Bacon

Baron of Verulan, Viscount St. Albans

or, by more conspicuous titles,

of Science the Light, of Eloquence the Law,

sat thus.

Who after all Natural Wisdom

And Secrets of Civil Life he had unfolded

Nature's Law fulfilled--

Let Compounds be dissolved! In the year of our Lord 1626, aged 66.

Of such a man, that the memory

might remain,

Thomas Meautys

living his Attendant, dead his Admirer,

places this Monument.

His body, however, is missing, as explained by Aubrey: "This October 1681, it rang over all of St. Albans that Sir Harbottle Grimston, Master of the Rolles, had removed the coffin of this most renowned Lord Chancellour to make room for his owne to lye-in the vault there at St. Michael's Church."^[62]

Philosophy

Francis Bacon was one of the founders of modern philosophy, especially the British empiricist version. He was a generation before Descartes; Thomas Hobbes was one of his secretaries. While he has also been considered a founder of modern science, it would be more accurate to consider him an original philosopher of science and a founder of the scientific method; he lit a path for subsequent scientists to follow. In the Novum Organum" (the title references Aristotle's Organon, or "Instrument" - his work on logic), Bacon stated, "Men have sought to make a world from their own conception and to draw from their own minds all the material which they employed, but if, instead of doing so, they had consulted experience and observation, they would have the facts and not opinions to reason about, and might have ultimately arrived at the knowledge of the laws which govern the material world."

It is interesting to contrast Bacon with Descartes, as both thinkers sought to break the hold of scholastic Aristotelianism on the process of learning, both employing a method of doubt. Descartes writes in his first Meditation: "Reason now leads me to think that I should hold back my assent from opinions which are not completely certain and indubitable just as carefully as I do from those which are patently false. So, for the purpose of rejecting all my opinions, it will be enough if I find in each of them at least some reason for doubt." While in The Advancement of Learning Bacon says: ”If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.”

Bacon rejected the method of deducing facts from general axioms generated by mind and reason alone while doubting the evidence of the senses, instead proposing a method of generating axioms by induction from sensory evidence and experiment. In Cogitata et Visa, "Thought and Seen", "he compares deductive logic as used by the scholastics to a spider's web, which is drawn out of its own entrails, whereas the bee is introduced as an image of scientia operativa (applied science.)"^[63]

His goal was understanding of the laws of nature, which he considered under the name of "Forms." The method "derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried." ^[64]

In the <Novum Organum, the heart of his method, he proposed four classes of Idols from which thinkers should learn to liberate their minds:^[63] This is perhaps the best-known part of Bacon's philosophy.

3.1.1 Idols of the Tribe The Idols of the Tribe have their origin in the production of false concepts due to human nature, because the structure of human understanding is like a crooked mirror, which causes distorted reflections (of things in the external world).

3.1.2 Idols of the Cave The Idols of the Cave consist of conceptions or doctrines which are dear to the individual who cherishes them, without possessing any evidence of their truth. These idols are due to the preconditioned system of every individual, comprising education, custom, or accidental or contingent experiences.

3.1.3 Idols of the Market Place These idols are based on false conceptions which are derived from public human communication. They enter our minds quietly by a combination of words and names, so that it comes to pass that not only does reason govern words, but words react on our understanding.

3.1.4 Idols of the Theatre According to the insight that the world is a stage, the Idols of the Theatre are prejudices stemming from received or traditional philosophical systems. These systems resemble plays in so far as they render fictional worlds, which were never exposed to an experimental check or to a test by experience.

The Organum was only one part of Bacon's proposed work the Instauratio Magna (The Great Renewal). The plan, however, was far too extensive and ambitious to be completed in his lifetime and under the limitations of science at that time. Bacon still believed, for example, in the ether. He was a thinker well in advance of his own time, yet still subject to its limitations, and his own.

Bibliography

A complete bibliography of Bacon's works can be found here: Bibliography

Research Notes

His name appears on The Second Charter of Virginia; May 23, 1609.

Note on Parentage

Francis Bacon has been the object of spurious theories that purport to establish him as the son of Queen Elizabeth I. Bacon is not alone in being the object of such speculation. Other supposed sons of Elizabeth have been the Earl of Oxford, the Earl of Essex, and the Earl of Southampton. A summation of the most prominent of these theories can be found here: Wiki. Another unsupported theory, is that Bacon was responsible for all of Shakespeare's plays and poems, as an effort to teach proper English to the English peoples, and as a way to draw their attention away from the King James Bible. The name Shakespeare is theorised to be a play on words, 'The pen is mighter than the sword'. These theories don't carry a great deal of support, and are requested not to be placed into the main portion of this biography.

Sources

1. ↑ Spedding, James. The Letters and Life of Francis Bacon. vol 1, p. 1. London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1861-74. Spedding
2. ↑ A register of baptisms, marriages, and burials in the parish of St. Martin in the Fields, in the county of Middlesex, p. 11. London:Mitchell & Hughes, printers, 1898-1936. Bacon
3. ↑ Spedding, p. 2. Spedding
4. ↑ Tittler, Robert. Nicholas Bacon: the Making of a Tudor Statesman. p. 61 and 212-13. London: Cape, 1976. p. 61 pp. 212-13
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1} Venn, J. A. Alumni Cantabrigienses, vol I. London, England: Cambridge University Press, 1922-1954. p. 64. Bacon
6. ↑ Spedding, p. 4.Spedding
7. ↑ The Register of Admission to Gray's Inn, 1521-1889. Foster, Joseph, ed. London: Hansard Pub Union, p. 48, folio 650. Register
8. ↑ Jardine, Lisa and Stewart, Alan. Hostage to Fortune: The Troubled Life of Francis Bacon.pp. 42-43 . New York: Hill and Wang, 1999.
9. ↑ Jardine & Stewart, p. 66.
10. ↑ Tittler, pp. 190-192. Tittler
11. ↑ Spedding, p. 8. Spedding
12. ↑ Jardine & Stewart, pp. 67-69.
13. ↑ TNA: PROB 11-61-123
14. ↑ Jardine & Stewart, pp. 67-72.
15. ↑ Spedding, pp. 108-109. Spedding
16. ↑ Spedding pp. 102-103. Spedding
17. ↑ Jardine & Stewart, p. 123.
18. ↑ Spedding, pp. 58-60. Spedding
19. ↑ Bowen, Catherine Drinker. Francis Bacon: The Temper of a Man. p. 50. Little, Brown and Company, 1963. Bowen
20. ↑ History of Parliament Online: Bacon, Francis (1561-1626. HOP
21. ↑ Spedding, p. 223. Spedding
22. ↑ Jardine & Stewart, pp. 143-145.
23. ↑ Jardine & Stewart, p. 144.
24. ↑ Spedding, pp. 228.229. Spedding
25. ↑ Jardine & Stewart, p. 168.
26. ↑ Jardine & Stewart, pp. 198-9.
27. ↑ Jardine & Stewart, p. 131.
28. ↑ Jardine & Stewart, p. 196.
29. ↑ Wikipedia: Essex's Rebellion. Wikipedia
30. ↑ Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 02: Bacon, Francis (1561-1626) by Thomas Fowler. DNB
31. ↑ Abbott, Edwin Abbott, 1838-1926. Bacon And Essex: A Sketch of Bacon's Earlier Life. Appendix: pp. 1-21. London: Seeley, Jackson, & Halliday, 1877. Apology
32. ↑ Spedding, vol. 2, pp 225 - 226. Spedding vol 2
33. ↑ Jardine & Stewart, pp. 240-250.
34. ↑ Spedding, vol. 2, p. 249. Spedding vol 2
35. ↑ Wikipedia: Elizabeth I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_I
36. ↑ Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 02: Bacon, Anthony by Sidney Lee DNB-Anthony
37. ↑ Jardine & Stewart, p. 275.
38. ↑ Spedding, vol. 3, pp. 290-292. Spedding vol 3
39. ↑ Bacon, Sir Francis (1561-1626) HOP-2
40. ↑ Jardine & Stewart, pp. 288-291.
41. ↑ Jardine & Stewart, p. 29.
42. ↑ ^{42.0 42.1} Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 11: Coke, Edward by George Paul Macdonell DNB-Coke
43. ↑ Spedding, vol 3, pp. 292-293 & 362. pp. 292 p. 362
44. ↑ ^{44.0 44.1 44.2}
45. ↑ Spedding, vol. 4, p. 21. Spedding vol 4
46. ↑ Spedding, vol. 4, p. 40 ff. Spedding, vol 4
47. ↑ Jardine & Stewart, p. 300.
48. ↑ Spedding, vol. 4, p. 231. Spedding vol 4
49. ↑ Speding, vol. 5, p. 245. Spedding vol 5
50. ↑ Jardine & Stewart, pp. 343-344.
51. ↑ Aubrey, John. Brief Lives. Omnibus Edition. Langley Press, 2017, p. 95.
52. ↑ Jardine & Stewart", pp. 417-418.
53. ↑ Jardine & Sewart, pp. 462-463.
54. ↑ The Letters of Lady Anne Bacon. 17 April 1593. #44. Cambridge University Press, 20 March 2014. Lady Anne Bacon
55. ↑ Spedding, vol. 7, p. 243, 251-262. p. 243 p. 251
56. ↑ Jardine & Stewart, pp. 473-501.
57. ↑ Aubrey, p. 98.
58. ↑ Jardine & Stewart, pp. 500 & 512.
59. ↑ Jardine & Stewart, pp. 502-511.
60. ↑ Spedding, vol. 7, pp. 539-545. Spedding, vol 7
61. ↑ Spedding, vol. 7, pp. 551-552. Spedding vol 7
62. ↑ Aubrey, p. 93.
63. ↑ ^{63.0 63.1} Klein, Jürgen and Guido Giglioni, "Francis Bacon", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) Stanford
64. ↑ Novum Organum, Book I, Aphorism XIX.

• "England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/NPKY-WHG : accessed 02 Mar 2014), Ann Cooke in the entry for Francis Viscount St. Albans Bacon, 22 Jan 1561.
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1992. 15th ed.
• Burke, Sir John Bernard, "A Genealogical History of the Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited, and Extinct Peerages of the British Empire," New ed. (London, England: Harrison, 1883)

See also:

• Wikipedia:Francis_Bacon|Francis Bacon on Wikipedia]
• 'Michael Faraday - a Sandemanian and Scientist' by Geoffrey Cantor
• Bacon, Francis (1561–1626) - Biography, Critical Reception
• "Hostage to Fortune The Troubled Life of Francis Bacon" by Lisa Jardine and Alan Stewart
• The Story of Lord Bacon's Life by W. Hepworth Dixon, 1862