Ill 





P R E F A C E. 



FRANCIS BACON was born on the 22nd of January, 1560-1, 

 at York House in the Strand, the residence of his father 

 Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. Sixty 

 years later, Ben Jonson sang of him as 



England s high Chancellor ; the destined heir. 

 In his soft cradle, to his father s chair. 



His mother, Anne Cooke, whose eldest sister was married to 

 Lord Burleigh, was his father s second wife, and had borne 

 him two children. Anthony, the friend and correspondent of 

 Essex, was two years older than Francis. Of their childhood 

 nothing is known. In April, 1573, when Francis was little 

 more than twelve years old, the two brothers were entered 

 as fellow-commoners at Trinity College, Cambridge, and ma 

 triculated between the loth and i3th of June in the same year. 

 They were placed under the care of Dr. Whitgift, Master of the 

 College, who found this distinguished position not inconsistent 

 with holding the Deanery of Lincoln, a Canonry at Ely, and the 

 Rectory of Teversham ; having, however, previously resigned 

 the Regius Professorship of Divinity. From an account-book 

 which he kept, and which was published by the late Dr. Mait- 

 land in the British Magazine (vols. xxxii. xxxiii), we glean 

 the meagre facts of Francis Bacon s University career. We 

 learn, for instance, that during the period of his residence in 

 College, from April 5, 1573, to Christmas 1575, the Master s 

 parental care supplied him with so many pairs of shoes, a bow 

 and quiver of arrows, that there was oil bought for his neck, 

 and certain money paid to the * potigarie \\hen he was sick, 

 and for meat probably as he was recovering, that he had a 



