Anne (Cooke) Bacon (1528 - 1610)

Ancestors

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Education 1.2 Marriage and Children 1.3 Religion 1.4 At Court 1.5 Letters 1.6 Death 1.7 Note: 1.8 Sources

Biography

Education

Anne Cooke was born about 1528, the second of five daughters of courtier Sir Anthony Cooke and his wife Anne Fitzwilliam.^[1] Anthony Cooke was a scholar of the New Learning. Because of his demonstrated erudition and skill as an educator, Lord Seymour, the Lord Protector of King Edward VI, engaged him as one of the young king’s tutors. Anthony Cooke taught his own children, and while his two surviving sons showed less aptitude, his daughters all became adept scholars as well as strong adherents to the reformed religion. In the first biography of Anne’s son Francis Bacon, published in 1657 by his chaplain, William Rawley, Anne was described as a "choice lady, and eminent for piety, virtue and learning; being exquisitely skilled, for a woman, in the Greek and Latin tongues".^[2] The primary impulses of her life were religion and family.

Marriage and Children

By 1553 Anne Cooke was nearing age 25 and unwed. She was solicited by Cambridge Fellow Walter Haddon, but she chose instead Nicholas Bacon, a recent widower with six children. They were married February 1553.^[1] It was outwardly a strange choice, as Nicholas Bacon was then over forty years old, an age when he was growing corpulent and unable to speak at length without pausing to catch his breath, and afflicted with gout and kidney stone. On the other hand, he was a colleague of her brother-in-law William Cecil, with great expectations in the court of Edward VI.^[3]

It was apparently a happy match. He wrote poems to her celebrating the happiness of their union as they sat together, companionably reading their favorite Latin authors. Although there were several early failed pregnancies, Lady Anne Bacon had two surviving sons: Anthony, b. 1558, d. unwed 1601; and the illustrious Lord Francis, b. 1561, d. without issue 1626. She has been best known to history by her letters to them, especially after the death of Sir Nicholas, 20 February in 1578/9.^{[1] [4]}

Religion

Anne Cooke was born when the protestant reformation was just beginning to spread in England. The principles of Christian humanism in which she was raised taught that the ultimate purpose of learning was to further the spread of the reformation.^[5] Command of the ancient languages was important to the protestant reformers for providing vernacular access to the Gospels. Translation became a particular interest of Anne Cooke, and about 1548 she published several translations of sermons from the Italian reformer Ochino, some dealing with the protestant doctrine of predestination:

The .xv. Sermon: Whether it be good or euell to beleue that we are elect. Some saye that it is euell to beleue that we are electe, bycause, that as the beleif to be reprobate, bringeth men in dispeyr so y• belief of elecciō, is cause of presumpciō But the iust & the holy flye both ye one & the other extremiti. They are not exalted in pre¦sūpcion, beleuing to be elect: nor fallen in ye bottomles pytte of dyspeyre, wyth beleif of dampnacion, but kepe the meane waye, e∣uer standing betwene both.^[6]

Her best-known publication was her 1564 translation from the Latin of Bishop John Jewel’s Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, an argument countering Catholic opposition to the English Church as then established under Queen Elizabeth.

. . .how shall we say to these folk (Catholics), I pray you, what manner of men be they, and how is it meet to call them, which fear the judgment of the Holy Scriptures, that is to say, the judgment of God Himself, and do prefer before them their own dreams, and full cold inventions; and, to maintain their own traditions, have defaced and corrupted, now these many hundred years, the ordinances of Christ, and of the Apostles?^[7]

But within ten years, the opposition to the Established Church was coming from the other direction, spurred by the English protestants who had absorbed more extreme reformist practices in European exile during the reign of Catholic Mary I (1553-1558). One of these was Anne’s father Sir Anthony Cooke^[8], who undoubtedly influenced his daughter to become increasingly involved in the movement to purify the church. The failure of this to happen must have contributed greatly to her frustration in her later years.^[9]

At Court

Sir Anthony’s Cook’s position at court during the reign of Edward VI enabled him to secure places for his daughters. About 1547 Anne Cooke was a gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber of Princess Mary Tudor.^[10] Mary’s court under the protestant Edward VI was Catholic. It seems surprising to find the thoroughly protestant Anne Cooke among them, but her loyalty to Mary was such that, after the death of Edward VI in July 1553, upon learning that Mary intended to overturn the succession of the throne to the protestant Jane Grey, she rode to Norfolk, where Mary had just proclaimed herself Queen, to pledge her support.^[1] Although her motive is not clear, the move proved fortuitous if not foresightful. After Mary took power, Anne was able to use her influence to see her father and husband set free from the Tower, where they had been sent for supporting Jane Grey.^[11]

Beginning in 1553, Lady Anne Cooke (Bacon) can be found on the lists of Queen Mary’s Ladies in Waiting.^{[12] [13]} Apparently, Queen Elizabeth was not much taken with Anne Cooke Bacon, as she was not appointed to a position in the queen's new court after 1559. ^[14]Nonetheless, she was frequently later at court, as her husband rose in influence to become one of the queen’s primary advisors.

Letters

Lady Anne Bacon was a prolific letter writer, although the fact that a preponderance of her surviving correspondence was addressed to her son Anthony Bacon has given her a reputation, not entirely deserved, as a nag and a scold. It is clear that Anne Bacon loved her son and cared for the welfare of his soul.

This one cheefest cownsell your Christian and Naturall mother doth geve yow even before the lorde. That above all wordly respects yow carie yourselff even at yowr first coming as one that doth unfeinedly posess the Tru Religion of christ and hath the love of the Truth nowby long continuance Fast settledin your hart^[15]

But Anthony gave ample reason for maternal disapproval in her eyes. His household was insufficiently godly, without regular preaching

I feare ther is no ordinary preaching ministery at fill Chelsy. I cannot tell you to lament "it" but both my sonnes me thinks do not cast For it where they dwell.^[16]

He ran heavily into debt, sold off his patrimony, and refused to make a marriage alliance.

Have you no hope of posterity? . . . Only my chydren cownted in the worlde unworthy their father’s care and providing for them.^[1]

In France, he consorted with Catholics

traitre to god and your contry and . . . Curst of god in all your actions since Mr Lawsons being with you.^[17]

and was probably charged with the capital crime of sodomy, yet refused to return home to his mother in England. Once returned at last, he allied himself with the Earl of Essex, against her advice, against his Cecil relatives in the government, and was probably at least aware of Essex’s plot against the queen.^[18]

Death

Lady Anne Bacon lived to about age 82. Her older son Anthony had died in 1601. Accounts of contemporaries claim that she grew "frantic" in old age,^[19] which suggests the possibility of dementia. The flow of her letters dwindled in these years.

She died in August 1610 and was buried in St Michael’s Church near her home of Gorhambury, St Albans. Her son Francis, at his request, was later buried next to her.^[20] His memorial dominates the church; hers can not now be found.

Note:

Some sources have claimed that Anne Cooke Bacon was the mother of Anne Bacon Woodhouse. This is not correct. Anne Bacon was the daughter of Nicholas Bacon and his first wife Jane Fernley.

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4} Bacon, Lady Anne Cooke. The Letters of Lady Anne Bacon. Gemma Allen, ed. Cambridge University Press, 1014.
2. ↑ Allen, Gemma. <The Cook Sisters</i>, Introduction. Manchester University Press, 2013. [1]
3. ↑ Landed Families of Britain and Ireland: Bacon of Redgrave, Gillingham and Raveningham, baronets.Bacon
4. ↑ Mair, Katherine Alice. Anne, Lady Bacon: A Life in Letters. PhD Thesis 2009.pdf. p. 8.
5. ↑ Mair, p. 13.
6. ↑ Ochino, Bernardino, 1487-1564., Bacon, Anne Cooke, Lady, 1528?-1610., Argentine, Richard, d. 1568. [2]
7. ↑ Jewel, John. The apology of the Church of England, tr. by Anne, lady Bacon. United Kingdom: n.p., 1859. [3]
8. ↑ History of Parliament Online: Appendix XI: The Role of the Marian Exiles. [4]
9. ↑ Mair, p. 14
10. ↑ Mair, p. 13.
11. ↑ Mair, pp. 14-15.
12. ↑ Merton, C. I. (1992)." Women who served Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth : Ladies, Gentlewomen and Maids of the Privy Chamber, 1553-1603" (Doctoral thesis). pp. 255 & 260. [5]
13. ↑ McIntosh, Marjorie Keniston. "Sir Anthony Cooke: Tudor Humanist, Educator, and Religious Reformer". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society Vol. 119, No. 3 (Jun. 12, 1975), p. 243, n. 69. [6]
14. ↑ Mair, pp. 14-15.
15. ↑ Mair, p 128
16. ↑ Mair p. 137
17. ↑ Mair, p.123.
18. ↑ History of Parliament Online: Anthony Bacon (1558-1601)Bacon
19. ↑ Mair, p. 20.
20. ↑ Mair, p. 20

See Also:

• Biographia Britannica, Or The Lives Of The Most Eminent Persons Who Have Flourished in Great Britain and Ireland From The Earliest Ages Down To Present Times, Volume The First, p. 369, Edward Gibson, Presented At The Court of King George, September 26, 1774, The University of Lausanne Collection.[7]

• Bentham, William. "The Baronetage of England ..." vol 1. Ipswich, Burrell and Bransby, 1801. [8]

• Project Continua: Anne Bacon [9]

• read more about Lady Bacon (Anne Bacon, Anne Cooke) (1528–1610) - BIOGRAPHY, MAJOR WORKS AND THEMES, CRITICAL RECEPTION

• History of Essex. The Liberty of Havering. Page 436 fn St Edward the Confessor, Romford

This person was created through the import of greenwald-millerGEDCOM.ged on 27 September 2010.