6 INTRODUCTION. 



Lad six children by his former marriage, and by his 

 second wife two sons, Antony and Francis, of whom 

 Antony was about two years the elder. The family 

 home was at York Place, and at Gorhambury, near St. 

 Albans, from which town, in its ancient and its 

 modern style, Bacon afterwards took his titles of 

 Yerulam and St. Albans. 



Antony and Francis Bacon went together to Trinity 

 College, Cambridge, when Antony was fourteen years 

 old and Francis twelve. Francis remained at Cam 

 bridge only until his sixteenth year ; and Dr. Rawley, 

 his chaplain in after-years, reports of him that &quot; whilst 

 he was commorant in the University, about sixteen 

 years of age (as his lordship hath been pleased to im 

 part unto myself ), he first fell into dislike of the philo 

 sophy of Aristotle ; not for the worthlessness of the 

 author, to whom he would ascribe all high, attributes, 

 but for the uiifruitfulness of the way, being a philo 

 sophy (as his lordship used to say) only strong for 

 disputatious and contentions, but barren of the pro 

 duction of works for the benefit of the life of man ; in 

 which mind he continued to his dying day.&quot; Bacon 

 was sent as a youth of sixteen to Paris with the ambas 

 sador Sir Amyas Paulet, to begin his training for the 

 public service ; but his father s death, in February, 

 1579, before he had completed the provision he was 

 making for his youngest children, obliged him to 

 return to London, and, at the age of eighteen, to settle 

 down at Gray s Inn to the study of law as a profession. 

 He was admitted to the outer bar in June, 1582, and 

 about that time, at the age of twenty-one, wrote 



