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 THE 
 
 Bacon Society 
 
 INCORPORATED.
 
 "Ex LibriS 
 0. K. OGDEN 
 
 THE EARLY LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 LORD BACON. 
 
 NEWLY STUDIED 
 BY 
 
 PARKER WOODWARD. 
 
 London : 
 
 Gay and Bird, 
 
 2 2, Bedford Street, Strand, W.C. 
 
 MCMII.
 
 ? R VNTVF.J>.Srn-y oy p , r jp^j^^j^ 
 
 Z 94-f S^NTA BAUBARA 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THIS little work is mainly argumentative, and in all prolonged 
 arguments some points may be strong and others weak, 
 yet the general case presented may be powerful enough 
 to carry prima, facie conviction to the unprejudiced. 
 
 That is all I ask. As to such copies as my publishers may 
 think fit to send to the Press, let me say I do not seek a review, 
 unless my reviewer is first willing to read the book from cover 
 to cover and deal mainly with the strong points. I am not 
 prepared to acquiesce in mere flippant abuse exceeding the limits 
 of fair criticism. While I trust by the sale of some copies of 
 this little work to recoup the expense of research and publication, 
 my primary object is not to make money by it ; so I request any 
 critic not prepared to write fairly, to let this pamphlet alone. 
 To the scholarly man some apology is due. My poor style 
 and grammatical and constructional weaknesses may cause 
 occasional irritation. For this may I be excused. I have 
 neither the time nor the capacity for literary achievement and 
 it is no pleasure to me to come into the open and face the 
 prepossessions of a great many literary men. I take up the 
 subject because of my keen interest and belief in the unpopular 
 side of the question. Have we or have we not yet known our 
 greatest Englishman ? 
 
 Many expressions of doubt, uncertainty, and speculation must 
 necessarily be found in my sketch, though, perhaps, not more than 
 in Mr. Sydney Lee's speculations concerning the life of William 
 Shakespeare, which has been called the best book of its year. 
 
 Lastly, may I remind Baconians and everybody else of the 
 fact that Lord Bacon had a youth as well as an old age. To 
 test the authorship of early Elizabethan writings by comparison 
 with works written by his Lordship after his fiftieth year is not 
 a final disposition of the matter. I have followed the lead of 
 Dr. Rawley, Stephens, Pope, Lord Macaulay, and later writers 
 in entitling him " Lord Bacon " instead of " Francis Bacon, Baron 
 Verulam, Viscount St. Alban." The title is convenient even if 
 not correct. 
 
 PARKER WOODWARD. 
 
 King Street, Nottingham.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Epistle Dedicatory - - - - - - vii 
 
 NOTANDA ---.... xi 
 
 Lord Bacon's Early Life : — 
 
 Preliminaries as to Parentage - - - - i 
 
 (i.) The Assertion as to Parentage - - 2 
 
 (ii.) The Parentage of Robert, Earl of Essex - 8 
 
 Francis as a Boy, 1560-1 to 1576 - - - 16 
 
 1579 ------- 20 
 
 1580 ---... 22 
 
 1581 30 
 
 1582 - - - • - . - . 31 
 
 1583 34 
 
 1584 35 
 
 1585 37 
 
 1586 - - - - - - 41 , 
 
 1587 43 
 
 1588 45 
 
 1589 47 
 
 1590 SO 
 
 1591 52 
 
 1592 56 
 
 1593 63 
 
 1594 -..-.. 69 
 
 1595 73 
 
 1596 78 
 
 postscripta : — 
 
 Biographical Difficulties - - - - - 80 
 
 Thomas Nashe ------ 83 
 
 A Few other Mysteries - - - - - 86 
 
 The Attack on Mrs. Gallup - - - - 88 
 
 "The Anatomy of Melancholy" - - - - 91 
 
 English Bards and Scotch Revienvers - - - 98
 
 €pi$tk Dedicatory. 
 
 TO THE GENTLE READER. 
 
 THE ONLIE BEGETTER OF THESE INSUING 
 
 GLEANINGS— ALL HAPPINESS 
 
 PROMISED 
 
 BY 
 
 OUR EVER LIVING POET 
 
 WLSHETH 
 
 THE WELL WISHING ADVENTURER 
 
 IN SETTING FORTH. 
 
 BY the "gentle reader" I mean the bustHng journaHst, 
 who has necessarily and quickly to apply smatterings 
 of knowledge and his prepossessions to the discussion 
 of many subjects involving research and thought, for which 
 time will not admit. I also include the expert who, with 
 the best intentions, has steeped himself in traditional views, 
 and whose disposition, unless he can summon sufficient 
 strength of mind, is to waive new studies of his favourite 
 subject. 
 
 Mainly, however, I want to appeal to every man and 
 woman of reasonable culture who may feel interested and 
 desirous of hearing whatever may be fairly advanced on a 
 subject of much difficulty. 
 
 An American gentleman, and, more recently, an American 
 lady, have successively assured us, though not to demonstra- 
 tion, that they have discovered and deciphered certain 
 communications from a deceased Lord Chancellor of England, 
 whose memory is burdened with a savoury name and a 
 somewhat unsavoury reputation. 
 
 The story communicated has for certain of its objects the 
 dispossession of the name and clearance of the reputation. 
 
 But its chief importance to us at the present day con- 
 sists in a claim to literary authorship, vast in extent and
 
 Epistle Dedicatory. 
 
 significance ; one which, if true, will involve the re-writing of 
 several biographies and the re-distribution and sorting of a 
 great deal of literary matter. 
 
 For the moment critics, upon whose veracity and care 
 we have hitherto felied, have alleged that they have found 
 sufficient corroborative indications of the existence of a cipher 
 as to amount to 2, primd facie proof, and they are calling upon 
 the lady to complete her proofs to demonstration. 
 
 Eminent critics, on the other hand, assert that they have 
 carefully tested and find no corroboration, and impeach either 
 the honour or the intellectual soundness of the discoverers. 
 
 The majority of us need not concern ourselves with the 
 technical question at issue. It will very promptly be settled 
 one way or another. 
 
 In the meantime, as a matter of intellectual pastime, I 
 want to take Mrs. Gallup upon her honourable assurance 
 that the story she writes has been genuinely deciphered, and 
 to see how the biography of Lord Bacon for the first thirty- 
 six years of his life may be re-written, having regard to the 
 alleged new facts and circumstances we are to take into 
 account. 
 
 I have for mental recreation during some years taken 
 much interest in one of the disputed claims of authorship, 
 which, if the cipher be shewn to be a hallucination or a 
 literary fraud, will still remain for settlement. I have read 
 and possess many volumes of criticism containing an accumu- 
 lation of strong points for what is known as the Baconian 
 theory, accompanied by others which are probably untenable. 
 One curious fact about these writings is that they are largely 
 independent protests which have been raised and shaped 
 from time to time against the titular notion, and are not the 
 result of organized working or collaboration. 
 
 I refer more particularly to the works of Messrs. Wigston, 
 Reed, Theobald, White, Donnelly and James, of Mrs. Pott, 
 and of many others whose scattered writings appear in the 
 pubhcations of the Bacon Society. These works have never
 
 Epistle Dedicatory. 
 
 attained general circulation, and the ordinary reader is there- 
 fore unaware of the weight of accumulated criticism and 
 evidence which can be brought to bear. I have read and 
 possess much of the literature on the other side — " The Life 
 of Shakespeare," by Mr. Lee ; the articles of Mr. Fiske, Mr. 
 Madden, Mr. Collins, the Quarterly Reviewer, Mr. Leslie 
 Stephen, and many others. Mrs. Gallup's book and the 
 interest it excited caused me to dip deeply into the history 
 of the period 1500 to 1600, and to read the biographies and 
 works of those whose authorship is questioned or involved. 
 
 Taking the biographies of Lord Bacon, by Mr. Spedding, 
 Mr. Montagu, Mr. Dixon, Dr. Rawley, and the writer in the 
 " Dictionary of National Biography," which, so far as they 
 deal with the first thirty years of the life, are singularly short 
 and uninforming, I have drafted a new biography of Lord 
 Bacon to the age of about thirty-six, and in doing so have 
 endeavoured to see how far the cipher story finds support 
 from, or is contradicted by, uncontested facts. 
 
 I have written as one whose investigations have led him 
 to accept the assurances Mrs. Gallup gives as to her truth- 
 fulness, and also the truth, save as to possible slips of memory 
 or transcription, of the deciphered statements. 
 
 The works I have mainly consulted comprise, besides 
 some of those mentioned, the Spenser Society's publications 
 (including the lives and works of Spenser, Harvey, Nash, 
 Sidney, and Greene), Bullen's " Peele," Dyce's "Marlowe," 
 Fairholt's "Lilly," Arber's "Watson," " Webbe," " Putten- 
 ham and Lily," Boas' " Kyd," Fleay's "History of the 
 English Drama," Dodsley's Plays, Bourne's " Memoir of 
 Sidney," Nichols' " Progresses of Elizabeth," Hazlewood's 
 " Essays on English Poets," St. John's " Raleigh," Froude's 
 History, Strickland's " Life of Elizabeth," Devereux's " Lives 
 of the Earls of Essex," Craik's " Romance of the Peerage," 
 and the Will of Sir .Nicholas Bacon. 
 
 I have endeavoured to follow my usual practice in 
 preparing Briefs for Counsel by putting the facts into
 
 Epistle Dedicatory. 
 
 chronological order as far as I have been able, and doubtless in 
 doing so have committed errors. 
 
 If Mrs. Gallup's theory does not stand the tests, much of 
 this work will be " Love's Labour Lost " ; but it may be useful 
 as shewing the order in which the writings appeared, and like 
 other failures, form stepping stones for another's success. 
 
 If, on the other hand, her honour is vindicated, the 
 obscurity of " Watson," " Lily," Kyd, Marlowe and Greene will 
 be explained, and the difficulties research has disclosed of 
 marrying Shakespeare to his verse, Spenser to his pubHcations, 
 and the life of George Peele to his poems, will be set at rest. 
 
 I have made the divisions into years do duty for chapters. 
 
 My acknowledgments are due to Mr. E. Weidlich, of 36, 
 Palace Road, Upper Norwood, S.E., for his very careful 
 researches at the British Museum and the State Record Office 
 on my behalf. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 PARKER WOODWARD. 
 
 King Street, 
 
 Nottingham. March, 1902.
 
 NOT AN DA to be read carefully. 
 
 " What men desire should be true they arc most inclined to 
 believe. The understanding therefore rejects things difficult as 
 being impatient of enquiry." 
 
 Lord Bacon. 
 
 *' He that will be secret must be a dissembler in some degree."" 
 
 Same — " Essay of Simulation." 
 
 " No other person is cogniza't of the work save my foster-brother^ 
 Anthony; my owne brother, Robert; Ben Jonson, my friend, adviser, 
 and assistant ; and our private secretary ; yet for the exterior part 
 wc imploie many amanuenses, for we can keepe severall employed 
 when reading our plays for our finall review, or when assembling 
 the parts." 
 
 Deciphered from First Folio Shakespeare. 
 
 " In all the workcs that I published in my owne (so-call'd) 
 name, or that of others — Spenser, Greene, Pcele, Marlowe have 
 sold me theirs — two or three others I have assumed upon certaine 
 occasions such as this, beside th' one I beare among men." 
 
 Deciphered from '■^ Ben Joiison," 1616 Folio. 
 
 " Several small works under no name won worthy praise . Next 
 in Spenser's name, also, they ventured into an unknown world. 
 When I at length, having written in divers stiles, found three, 
 who for sufficient reward in gold, added to an immediate rcnownc 
 as good pens, willingly put forth all workes which I had compos'd, 
 
 I was bolder." 
 
 Deciphered from " Novum Organum" 1620. 
 
 " I have lost therein a present fame that I may out of anie 
 doubt recover it in our owne and othe' lands after manie a long 
 yeare. I think some ray — that farre offe golden morning — will 
 glimmer ev'n into the tombe where I shall lie, and I shall know 
 that wisdome led me thus to wait unhonour'd as is meete until in 
 the perfected time — which the Ruler that doth wisely shape our 
 ends, rough hew them how we will, doth ev'n now know — my 
 
 justification bee complete." 
 
 From same. 
 
 " Had we no secret labours to perform, gladly would we listen 
 
 for th' footfalls of Death, the somber herald." 
 
 From same. 
 
 xi
 
 Notanda. 
 
 " Do not inflate plain things into marvels, but reduce marvels 
 to plain things, " 
 
 Lord Bacon. 
 
 " For ciphers, they are commonly in letters or alphabets, but 
 may be in words. The kinds of ciphers, besides the simple ciphers 
 with changes and intermixtures of nulls and non-significants, are 
 many, according to the nature or rule of the infolding — wheel- 
 ciphers, key-ciphers, doubles, &c The highest degree 
 
 whereof is to write ' omnia per omnia,' which is undoubtedly 
 possible with a proportion quintuple as most of the writing in- 
 folding to the writing infolded, and no other restraint whatsoever. 
 This art of ciphering hath for relation an art of deciphering, 
 by supposition unprofitable, but as things are, of great use. For 
 suppose that ciphers were well managed, there be multitudes of 
 them which exclude the decipherer," 
 
 Lord Bacon — '■^Advancement of Learning'''' {Tradition). 
 
 " Another diversity of method there is ... , and that is 
 enigmatical and disclosed. The pretence whereof is to remove the 
 vulgar capacities from being admitted to the secrets of knowledges, 
 and to reserve them to selected auditors or wits of such sharpness 
 
 as can pierce the veil. " 
 
 From same. 
 
 " For my name and memory I leave it to Men's Charitable 
 Speeches and to Foreign Nations and the Next Ages." 
 
 From Lord Bacon's Wiii.
 
 LORD BACON'S 
 EARLY LIFE. 
 
 Preliminaries as to Parentage. 
 
 WITHOUT waiting for the settlement of the very 
 relevant typographical question as to whether the 
 Elizabethan quartos and folios disclose a cipher 
 arrangement of the italic fonts, I have ventured to preliminaries 
 take Mrs. Gallup upon her honour, and to endeavour, in the 
 light of the story deciphered, to supply much that is missing 
 from the existing biographies of his lordship. 
 
 The questions of his true parentage, and of the parentage 
 of Robert, second Earl of Essex, are not at this date very 
 important, though material. I am concerned mainly with 
 Lord Bacon, the author. But it will be necessary to deal 
 shortly with the evidences which to my mind support the 
 cipher assertions, inasmuch as the truth or falsity of the other 
 portions of the cipher story is involved. 
 
 as to Parentage.
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 The Assertion 
 as to Parentage. 
 
 (I.) — The Assertion 
 as to Parentage. 
 
 I do not propose to repeat many details to be found in 
 history, having done that elsewhere ; but I propose here to 
 indicate what these evidences are, and where any person 
 interested in checking my statements may find them. 
 
 The Princess Elizabeth, when placed in the Tower, had 
 no expectation of coming out alive. We may judge of her 
 hereditary tendencies by what we know of the conduct and 
 disposition of Henry VIII., her father. Some evidence that 
 Elizabeth had acquired those characteristics is afforded by the 
 State documents as to the Sir Thomas Seymour intrigue while 
 Edward VI. was on the throne. For this see the article by 
 Dr. E. A. Freeman in the " Quarterly Review " of 1854. He 
 says : " The details of Seymour's courtship of EHzabeth are 
 somewhat extraordinary, and must have surpassed even the 
 ordinary grossness of the age. ... It does not say 
 much for EHzabeth that proceedings of this kind did not 
 hinder him from winning her affections. She acknowledged 
 that she would have married him could he have obtained the 
 consent of the Council." As to the proceedings in the Tower 
 the cipher story is, of course, second hand, and the difficult 
 conditions of the word cipher necessarily involved extrava- 
 gance of statement. For the account of the Tower imprison- 
 ment a reference should be made to what Miss Strickland 
 says about Elizabeth and Dudley in her " Lives of the Queens 
 of England." I quote one extract : " Considering the 
 intriguing temper of both, it is probable that, notwithstanding 
 the jealous precautions of their respective gaolers, some sort 
 of secret understanding was established between them at this 
 period." 
 
 As to Elizabeth's conduct when she had succeeded
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 to the throne, we have very graphic and trustworthy testimony 
 in the letters of the Venetian and Spanish ambassadors. 
 They can be found in Froude's " History of England," sup- 
 plemented by his article in "Eraser's Magazine," 1861. The Assertion 
 
 . as to Parentage. 
 
 These reports to foreign courts were private diplomatic com- 
 munications upon a matter of State importance, which 
 necessarily had to be true to the knowledge, information, or 
 belief of the persons making them. The following documents 
 should be referred to : — 
 
 1 8th April, 1559. — Letter of Feria : — "Lord Robert has 
 come so much into favour that he does whatever he 
 pleases with affairs, and it is even said that Her 
 Majesty visits him in his chamber day and night." 
 
 — April, 1559. — Second letter of Feria : — " Sometimes she 
 appears to want to marry him (the Arch Duke Ferdi- 
 nand), and speaks like a woman who will only accept 
 a great Prince ; and then they say she is in love with 
 Lord Robert, and never lets him leave her." 
 
 loth May, 1559. — Letter of Schafanoya, Ambassador of 
 the Doge of Venice: — " Meanwhile my Lord Robert 
 Dudley is in very great favour and very intimate with 
 Her Majesty." 
 
 November, 1559. — Letter, Bishop De Quadra to Philip, 
 King of Spain : — " I have heard from a certain person 
 who is in the habit of giving me veracious news, that 
 Lord Robert had sent to poison his wife. Certainly 
 all the Queen has done with us and with the Swede, 
 and will do with all the rest in the matter of her 
 marriage, is only to keep Lord Robert's enemies and 
 the country engaged with words until this wicked 
 deed of killing his wife is consummated. I am told 
 some extraordinary things about this intimacy." 
 
 3
 
 as to Parentage. 
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 7th March, 1560. — Same to same: — " Lord Robert is the 
 worst young fellow I ever encountered. He is heart- 
 less, spiritless, treacherous and false. There is not 
 The Assertion a man in England who does not cry out upon him as 
 
 the Queen's ruin." 
 
 15th March, 1560. — Same to same: — "Things are in a 
 strange state. The Catholics look only to your 
 Majesty. Lord Robert says that if he lives a year he 
 will be in another position from that he holds. Every 
 day he presumes more and more ; and it is now said 
 he means to divorce his wife." 
 
 13th August, 1560. — Calendar of State Papers (Report to 
 Burleigh, the Prime Minister) as to the open assertions 
 of Mother Dowe, of Brentwood, concerning the con- 
 dition of the Queen. 
 
 nth September, 1560. — Letter, De Quadra to Parma. 
 This is an important letter from which I here quote : 
 " She has made Lord Robert Dudley Master of the 
 Government, and of her own person. . . . She 
 herself was shutting herself up in the Palace to the 
 peril of her health and life . . . they were think- 
 ing of destroying Lord Robert's wife. They had 
 given out that she was ill ; she was very well and was 
 taking care not to be poisoned." 
 
 8th September, 1560, Amy, the wife of Dudley, was found 
 dead at her residence, Cumnor Hall. See the Free- 
 man article as to this, Dudley, who was less than a 
 day's ride from Cumnor, did not attend the inquest, nor 
 did he attend his wife's funeral. The coroner's jury 
 never gave a verdict. See Mr. Froude's conclusion 
 upon the evidence. If the cipher story is true, the 
 death of Amy Robsart, followed by a secret marriage, 
 was essential to save the critical situation of a much 
 more important personage. 
 
 4
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 September, 1560. — See Froude's History as to a 
 rumoured private betrothal of the Queen and Dudley. 
 The historical rumour fixes the place of betrothal as 
 the house of Lord Pembroke. The cipher says the The Assertion 
 
 as to Parentage. 
 
 house of Lord Puckering, Sir Nicholas Bacon con- 
 ducting the ceremony, and Lord Puckering and Lady 
 Bacon being the only witnesses. If the cipher story 
 is merely a fraudulent and clever following of history, 
 why is not the name of Pembroke introduced.'^ If it 
 be true, then Lord Bacon in quoting from memory 
 may have confused Puckering with Sir William Picker- 
 ing — an elderly, rich, and dissolute bachelor, one of 
 the Queen's friends and suitors about this period. 
 
 November, 1560. — Letter, Jones to Throckmorton, the 
 English Ambassador in Paris (see Hardwick Papers). 
 Jones reported that he interviewed the Queen at 
 Greenwich, that she looked ill and harassed, and as 
 to the death of Dudley's wife, said, " The matter has 
 been tried in the country and found to the contrary 
 of that that was reported, that Lord Robert was at 
 the Court, and none of his at the attempt at his wife's 
 house, and that it fell out as should neither touch his 
 honesty nor her (the Queen's) honour." 
 
 The next evidence is only material on account of its 
 pecuHarity. It is the Register of St. Martin's-in-the- 
 Fields, London, of the baptism, on the 25th January, 
 1560 (which means 1 560-1, the legal year not termina- 
 ting till the 25th March), of Mr. Franciscus Bacon. A 
 friend has carefully inspected the register for me. 
 The first part is in one hand-writing and the rest in 
 smaller writing and paler ink. It is as follows: — 
 " 1560, Jan. 25. — Baptizatus fuit Mr. Franciscus 
 Bacon | filius Dm Nich° Bacon Magni, Anglie sigilli 
 custodis." Why should the word " Mr." be used 
 in the register of an infant's baptism.^ There is 
 
 5
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 no evidence of the exact day of birth, though 
 
 biographers agree in fixing the 22nd January, 1 560-1. 
 
 This is also the date of a Commission to Archbishop 
 
 The Assertion Parker and others signed by EHzabeth. The date 
 
 as to Parentage. . -i i i r • 
 
 upon a document is not necessarily the day of its 
 signature, as we sohcitors well know. There are 
 no other documents of, or near, this date signed by 
 Elizabeth, though the signature of a dozen documents 
 at or about this period would not negative a birth. 
 Mr. Andrew Lang's statement in the "Times" that 
 Elizabeth witnessed a stage play on i8th January, 
 1 56 1, is found by that gentleman to be incorrect as to 
 year. The play was Sackville's " Ferrex and Porrex," 
 and performed a year later, viz., i8th January, 1561-2. 
 
 22nd January, 1 560-1, is also the date of a letter from 
 De Quadra reporting that Sidney, who married Lord 
 Robert's sister, had offered that if the King of Spain 
 would give his countenance to a marriage between the 
 Queen and Dudley, they would restore the Catholic 
 religion. De Quadra adds : " Some say she is a 
 mother already, but this I do not believe." 
 
 23rd February, 1 560-1. — Letter, De Quadra to Philip. 
 He reports that on the 13th Dudley personally 
 repeated to De Quadra the assurance which Sidney 
 had made, and at a subsequent date (probably close 
 to the 23rd, as De Quadra would be bursting to tell 
 the news) the Queen made a confession to him. I 
 now quote from Mr. Froude's article in " Eraser's 
 Magazine," 1861 : " The details of that strange meet- 
 ing one would be curious to know, but the Bishop 
 this time kept the mystery of the confessional sacred. 
 The sum of what passed came generally to this, that 
 Elizabeth admitted that she was no angel." If the 
 Queen had given birth to a child on the 22nd January, 
 the probabilities are that she would be physically 
 
 6
 
 as to Parentage. 
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 in a low condition and also mentally depressed 
 about the period of the interview with De Quadra. 
 The difficulties of her position, the open hostility of 
 the Protestant party, the breach with Burleigh, and The Assertion 
 the indignation aroused by the suspicious circum- 
 stances attending the death of Dudley's wife, would 
 lead the Queen to turn once more to the Roman 
 Catholic Church and to Philip, as the lay head of it, 
 just as she had done on a former occasion following 
 her illness in June, 1554. De Quadra, usually 
 graphic in his letters, appears to have reported only 
 what he felt to be absolutely necessary having regard 
 to the obligations of a confessor. 
 
 I may have laid undue stress upon the presump- 
 tion as to the bodily condition of the Queen at this 
 period. She may not have been as strong as many 
 of the Indian women of Brazil, who are related to 
 be back again at their toil within a day following 
 motherhood, and yet she may have been well 
 enough to attend to State correspondence without 
 any real interruption.
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 Earl of Essex. 
 
 (II.)— The Parentage of Robert, 
 Earl of Essex. 
 
 The intimacy between the Queen and Lord Robert 
 Dudley continued. The De Quadra letters in Froude's 
 History should be closely read for the period 1 560-1 to 1567, 
 of Robert, togethcr with Devereux's " Lives of the Earls of Essex," and 
 
 Craik's " Romance of the Peerage." Melville's account of his 
 visit to the Court about this time is also instructive. Dr. 
 Lingard's History is accused of representing a prejudiced 
 Roman Catholic view, but statements of this kind are not 
 likely to be told by friendly historians. 
 
 In 1564 Lord Robert was created Earl of Leicester, and 
 was the recipient of large grants of money and offices. 
 
 At the accession of EHzabeth Lord Hereford was a young 
 man, his wife being Lettice Knollys, daughter of Sir Francis 
 Knollys, whose wife was first cousin to the Queen and chief 
 woman of her bed-chamber. The Herefords were in poor 
 circumstances, and had a country seat at Chartley, at which 
 place all the Hereford children were born. Netherwood, 
 Herefordshire, is stated to have been the birthplace of Robert, 
 and he is stated to have been born on loth November, 1567. 
 Mr. Devereux can find no record of the baptism. According 
 to Mr. Froude, an important letter from the Earl of Essex, 
 containing terms of a proposed marriage with the Archduke 
 of Austria, was in London on loth November, but it was not 
 until the nth December that Elizabeth collected herself to 
 reply. This reply was evasive, and she sought a personal 
 interview with the Archduke, a course naturally involving con- 
 siderable delay in a period before railways. 
 
 In 1570 a Norfolk gentleman named Marsham was con- 
 demned to lose his ears for saying, " My Lord of Leicester 
 had two children by the Queen." 
 
 8
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 In 1 57 1 a statute was passed for rendering it penal to speak 
 of any other successor to the crown than the issue of the body 
 of the Queen. Miss Strickland says Elizabeth refused to 
 have the word " lawful " annexed. The same year the Manor """T*^ Parentage 
 
 ^ of Robert, 
 
 of Marks Hall, near Braintree, in Essex, was bestowed by Eari of Essex. 
 the Queen on Lord Hereford. In 1572 he was created Earl 
 of Essex and Knight of the Garter. In 1573 he was sent 
 to Ireland, and a curious financial arrangement entered into 
 with him by the Queen. In 1575 the Queen's gifts to 
 Leicester totalled to ^50,000, and he entertained her most 
 sumptuously at Kenilworth. The Queen proceeded from 
 there to the house of Lady Essex at Chartley, and from that 
 place wrote to the Earl of Essex agreeing to make him Earl 
 Marshal of Ireland. To this letter she added, " Deem, there- 
 fore, cousin mine, that the search of your honour with the 
 danger of your breath hath not been bestowed on so ungrate- 
 ful a prince that will not both consider the one and reward the 
 other." In November of that year he returned to England 
 and came to London. See Mr. Devereux's pages as to the 
 pressure he was bringing on the Queen both as to money 
 matters and dignities. He embarked on his return to Ireland 
 in July. In September he and a guest, supping at a wine 
 merchant's house in Dublin, were seized with illness. 
 " Leicester's Commonwealth " (a book published shortly after 
 this) is alleged to be a tissue of libels upon Leicester, but it 
 gives a full account, with names, of the circumstances of Essex's 
 death, alleging that he was deliberately poisoned. Robert 
 was brought up at Chartley till January, 1577, when he was 
 sent to Trinity College, Cambridge. He spent his Christmas 
 hohdays at the Court. See Broughton's account of the inci- 
 dent as to keeping his hat on in the Presence Chamber. 
 
 In 1578 Leicester secretly married the widow of the first 
 Earl of Essex. When it came to the Queen's knowledge he 
 was imprisoned at .Greenwich Castle and his wife forbidden 
 the Court. 
 
 In 1 581 Robert left Cambridge, and in 1583 was living at
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 Lanfey, Pembrokeshire, and it was only on the Earl of 
 Leicester's pressure that he returned to Court. 
 
 In 1585 he went with Leicester on the expedition to 
 The Parentage Hollaud. In his abscnce, Chartley, the Essex family seat, was 
 
 Eari**orEssex. used by EHzabeth as a place for the semi-imprisonment of 
 Mary, Queen of Scots. 
 
 In May, 1587, Leicester resigned the post of Master of the 
 Horse in favour of Essex. It was worth ^1,500 per annum — 
 a large sum in that day. Essex was constantly with the 
 Queen. Bagot wrote : " When she is abroad nobody near her 
 but my Lord of Essex, and at night my Lord is at cards or 
 one game or another with her." Essex would then be about 
 twenty years of age, and the Queen was fifty-four. The con- 
 duct of Elizabeth towards Robert, and his towards her, was 
 that of mother and son. The instances of this are numerous. 
 
 Leicester died in 1588, and the Queen immediately sold his 
 estates by auction. His will contained an adulation of the 
 Queen, and a bequest to her of a valuable jewel. To Robert 
 he left Leicester House, his best suit of armour, his 
 two best horses, and a George and Garter, in the hope that he 
 should wear it shortly. Before the year was out Essex was 
 appointed a Knight of the Garter. 
 
 Essex's stratagems from time to time to steal away from the 
 Court, and the Queen's efforts to get him back, should be 
 noted. 
 
 In Robert Gary's Memoirs are one or two interesting 
 particulars, such as, " The beginning of Spring, after Sluce 
 (Sluys) was beseiged, and my Lord of Essex stole from Court 
 with intent to get to Sluce if he could, the Queen sent me 
 after him commanding me to use the best means, if I could 
 find him, to persuade him to return to Court." " The next 
 year, which was 1578, was the journey of Portugal, where my 
 Lord of Essex stole from Court to go that journey." " The 
 next journey I undertook was into France with my Lord of 
 Essex (1591). We lay before it (Gournay) some ten days, in 
 which time there came letters out of England to my Lord of
 
 The Parentage 
 of Robert, 
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 Essex to command him presently to repair for England." 
 " At my Lord's coming to Court, whereas he expected nothing 
 but Her Majesty's heavy displeasure, he found it clean con- 
 trary, for she used him with that grace and favour that he 
 stayed a week with her, passing the time in jollity and feasting, ^ari of Essex. 
 and then, with tears in her eyes, she showed her affection to 
 him, and for the repair of his honour gave him leave to return 
 to his charge again." Gary goes on to say that Essex 
 knighted him at Dieppe. Gary says further, " I delivered him 
 the Queen's letter; then he said, 'Worthy cousin, I know by 
 herself how you prevailed with her, and what a true friend I 
 had of you, and which I shall never forget.' " The term 
 " cousin " is curious ; Gary being a son of Lord Hunsdon was 
 second cousin to the Queen, and, ergo, to Essex, or else Essex 
 used a form of speech only used by a sovereign addressing a 
 nobleman. 
 
 To go back a little in my story, in 1589 Essex asked 
 permission of the Queen to join a small fleet starting from 
 Plymouth to attack the coast of Spain. The Queen refused 
 to let him go. In spite of this, he went on horseback from 
 London to Plymouth and succeeded in getting away, although 
 both Lord Huntingdon and Sir Francis Knollys had been sent 
 after him by the Queen in order to stop him. Later on the 
 Queen wrote to Knollys and Drake that if Essex had reached 
 the fleet they were forthwith to send him back safely. Was 
 this the conduct of a lover or a mother? Essex, however, 
 insisted upon staying, and joined in a landing party. For 
 his share in allowing Robert to join the expedition the Queen 
 ordered Sir Roger Williams to be put to death, see St. John's 
 "Life of Raleigh," Vol. L page 196, which quotes a letter, Wal- 
 singham to Windebank, May 2nd, 1589, State Paper Office. 
 Essex returned to England in June, and, going direct to her 
 room, just mud-stained from his journey, soon made peace with 
 the Queen. At this time he was in debt to the extent of 
 ^22,000. In 1590 he succeeded Leicester to the "farm of sweet 
 wine." The same year he was secretly married to the widow of
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney. The Queen, according to Mr. Devereux, 
 
 was highly incensed when the marriage came to her knowledge. 
 
 " Then her anger knew no bounds against Essex, not merely 
 
 The Parentage bccausc hc took 3. wifc ivitkout askiup- ker consent, but for 
 
 of Robert. <5> ' 
 
 Earl of Essex. marrying, as she said, beloiv his degi'-eey Mr. Devereux goes 
 on to observe : " One would have thought that the daughter of 
 so distinguished and upright a public servant as Sir Francis 
 Walsingham might have been esteemed a fair match even for 
 Lord Essex." 
 
 The journey (of which Sir Robert Cary writes) in 1591 
 was when Essex was urged to take some troops to help 
 Henry IV. of France. The Queen opposed his going. 
 Eventually, after he had shown his displeasure by absenting 
 himself from Court, Essex had his own way. Towards the 
 close of that year Sir Francis Darcy was sent by the Queen 
 to France with " peremptory orders for Robert's immediate 
 return," and on Sir Robert Carey coming to England with 
 news from Essex to the Queen, she flew into a great passion 
 against the Earl, vowing she would make him an example if 
 he did not come home forthwith. He is then allowed to be 
 present at the siege of Rouen, but " provided he is not to put 
 himself in danger." It is curious, as Mr. Devereux remarks, 
 " that the honourable Privy Council should be employed in 
 zvriting orders to a General to keep out of harms way." Again 
 and again was Essex urged to return home, and he appears to 
 have found it necessary to come over to England a second 
 time to persuade the Queen to allow him to stay longer in 
 Normandy. Why was the old lady troubling so much about 
 him? At the close of the year 1591, before his return, he 
 sent a challenge to one Villiers, the Governor of Rouen, 
 inviting him to a duel. The Queen hearing of this, a letter 
 was written from the Council that, owing to his position, he 
 had no business to engage in such a duel. On the 9th 
 December the Council again wrote that, " Hearing some 
 infection had broken out in his own familiar company, they 
 heartily desired him to return from such danger to his person
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 as they fear may happen from the increase of such infection." 
 The following year, 1592, Essex resided entirely at the Court. 
 The next year Parliament was summoned. Mr. Devereux 
 writes : " The position of Essex at this time was one to make '^^^ Parentage 
 
 ^ of Robert, 
 
 an older head giddy. He was courted by the young nobles ; Eari of Essex. 
 
 looked up to by all military men as their leader and patron ; 
 the Puritan party considered him as their protector, while the 
 Roman Cathohcs looked to him to obtain toleration. He was 
 the idol of the populace, while the Queen could scarce bear his 
 absence from her side." In this year the Queen's age would 
 be about sixty, while Robert was twenty-six. The following 
 year Essex was still resident at Court, and we find him pressing 
 for the appointment of Francis as Attorney-General, or, faihng 
 that, as Sohcitor-General, and the result of a long struggle was 
 that Sir Henry Coke was made Attorney-General in 1594, and 
 Sergeant Fleming, after a further long delay, Solicitor-General. 
 At this time Essex seems to have taken a very prominent part 
 in the management of the Queen's affairs. In 1596 Essex was 
 engaged with the fleet in a war with Spain. On his return, 
 to the great joy of the Queen, there was considerable con- 
 troversy as to the conduct of the expedition he had just 
 returned from. At this time, says his biographer, the Earl 
 had touched the pinnacle of his fortunes. His popular reputa- 
 tion was vastly increased, and therein lay the danger of his 
 position. The Queen became envious and jealous of his 
 popularity. In February, 1597, Robert was ill, but the Queen 
 visited him. R. White wrote on the 25th of that month: 
 " Full fourteen days hath my L. of Essex kept his chamber. 
 Her Majesty has, I heard, resolved to break him of his 
 will and pull down his great heart ; who found it a thing 
 impossible, and says he holds // fi'o^n his mother s side!' 
 
 In March Essex wanted to go into Wales, and the Queen 
 objected. Eventually he went on a visit to the ports, and his 
 letters to the Queen are full of affection. One from Wey- 
 mouth concludes : " And know mc to be the most yotir own of 
 all your maj. creatures." 
 
 13
 
 of Robert, 
 Earl of Essex 
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 In October Charles Lord Howard was created Earl of 
 Nottingham, and he being Lord Steward of the Household had 
 precedence over Essex. Robert accordingly demanded to 
 The Parentage havc thc patent altcrcd, and in the meantime refused to go 
 
 to Court. Eventually, to appease Essex, he was on i8th 
 December created Earl Marshal of England. In 1598 there 
 was further trouble between the Queen and Essex as to the 
 marriage of Lord Southampton, and the relations between them 
 were somewhat strained. 
 
 In March, 1599, Essex at the head of a big expedition, 
 went to Ireland as Lieutenant-Governor. This was not, how- 
 ever, until after he had as a condition of his going, negotiated 
 with the Queen for his release from various debts due to the 
 Crown. He had very full powers to deal with all Irish affairs. 
 Difficulties soon arose. Essex, against the Queen's wish, 
 appointed the Earl of Southampton General of the Horse. 
 In August, Essex wrote to the Queen complaining of his exile. 
 However, in September he returned to London, and imme- 
 diately sought the Queen. A day or two afterwards he was 
 summoned before the Council, and charged with having con- 
 temptuously disobeyed Her Majesty's directions, and written 
 presumptuous letters to her. Over this matter the Court 
 divided openly into two parties, one following the lead of 
 Robert Cecil, the other that of Essex, and finally the Queen 
 committed him to the custody of the Lord-Keeper at York 
 House. In November, Essex was still a captive, and Sir John 
 Harrington about this time spoke of an interview he had with 
 the Queen, who complained that she was no Queen, and that 
 Essex was above her, and wanted to know who gave him 
 authority to come back so soon. Says the biographer, " The 
 storms raised in the Royal atmosphere by the name of Essex 
 were probably aggravated by what took place without. The 
 popular voice ivas loud in his favour. The severity of the 
 Queen was blamed. The clergy preached in his vindication, 
 and prayed for him ; pamphlets were published ; papers were 
 found on the walls and scattered about the palace praising him, 
 
 14
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 and libelling his supposed enemies." At this time he was 
 seriously ill, and Elizabeth secretly visited hivi. In June, 
 Essex, having partially recovered his health, was brought 
 before a tribunal of eig^hteen commissioners at York House. "^^^ parentage 
 
 ° _ of Robert, 
 
 Their verdict was practically that he be confined a prisoner Eari of Essex. 
 during Her Majesty's pleasure. On the 26th August, Essex 
 again had his liberty but was not permitted to approach the 
 Court. He failed to recover favour with the Queen, with the 
 result that from sorrow and repentance, he gave himself up to 
 rage and rebeUion. He used insulting expressions regarding 
 her. He opened Essex House to all comers. A large number 
 of discontented persons continually assembled there, while 
 Puritan divines preached sermons there almost daily to large 
 congregations of people. At the beginning of 1601 he was 
 plotting with his friends to obtain forcible control of the Queen 
 and Court, with the intention of requiring the Queen to give 
 up her then advisers, and surround herself with his friends. 
 His attempt failed, and as is well known, he was subsequently 
 beseiged in his own house, and finally surrendered. He was 
 tried for his rebellion and sentenced to death. During the 
 week following, the Queen first signed the warrant for execu- 
 tion and then sent to countermand it. In the absence of 
 expressions of submission, which appear to have been sent 
 but intercepted, and under the influence of Raleigh and Cob- 
 ham, she sent orders to execute the warrant. Thereupon (25th 
 February, 1601) Essex was executed in private on account of 
 his popularity with the people. So powerful was the feeling in 
 his favour, that after his death the Queen ivas no longer 
 received ivith cheers, but was received with silence ivhen she 
 appeared in public, and her Ministers insulted. The Queen 
 died on 24th March, 1603. This is a digression from the main 
 subject, but persons desirous of testing the cipher story may 
 look further into the matter. 
 
 15
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 Francis as a boy, 
 1560=1 to 1576. 
 
 According to the cipher story, the child, Francis, was taken 
 charge of from birth by Lady Anne Bacon, and brought up as 
 her own son in company with the young son, Anthony, of her 
 Francis as a boy. qwu marriagfe with Sir Nicholas. 
 
 1560.1 to 1576. 
 
 From his birth until he was about eight years old, he must 
 have resided with his foster-parents at York House, fronting 
 to the Strand, London, and having a large garden reaching 
 all the way to the Thames. Francis was well educated, as 
 might be expected of the foster-child of a clever woman like 
 Lady Anne, and there is a tradition that he was taught to 
 read and speak Latin from a very early age. In this way a 
 youth fond of reading would be as readily able to read Latin 
 authors as an ordinary boy would a newspaper. Tradition 
 also relates that at about the age of four he was brought to 
 the Court, and in answer to a question by the Queen as to 
 his age made a clever reply. 
 
 In August, 1568, Sir Nicholas, according to Nichols' 
 " Progresses," completed the erection of a mansion upon his 
 estate at Gorhambury, near St. Albans. At this date the 
 Queen was at St. Albans, and no doubt went to view it. From 
 this period until Francis went to Cambridge, his time was 
 doubtless passed partly at York House and partly at Gorham- 
 bury. In July, 1572, the Queen again visited Gorhambury, 
 being this time entertained by Sir Nicholas. It was probably 
 on this occasion that the terra-cotta busts of Sir Nicholas, his 
 wife, and Francis were sculptured. In March, 1572-3, the 
 Queen once more visited Gorhambury, and it was probably 
 then arranged that Francis should go with Anthony to 
 Cambridge. At any rate there they went the following month, 
 and were placed under the charge of Dr. Whitgift at Trinity 
 
 16
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 Hall. The Queen visited Gorhambury again in June of that 
 year. Francis remained at Trinity Hall until probably Sep- 
 tember, 1574, when the University was closed, on account of 
 plague, for a period of six months. The vacation may have 
 been spent in London and at Gorhambury. Returning to 
 Cambridge in 1574-5 he remained till the following December. 
 He appears to have rapidly learnt all that Cambridge could 
 teach him, and to have there formed a friendship with a tutor 
 of Law and Rhetoric named Gabriel Harvey, who was interest- 
 ing himself in a scheme for adding English to the subjects 
 taught at Cambridge. Roger Ascham, the Queen's old tutor, 
 had been prominent in this movement. Harvey was, more- 
 over, a poet and a close student of the technical construction 
 of poetry. 
 
 According to the cipher story, Francis would appear to have 
 spent a good portion of his time from December, 1575, to 
 September, 1576, at the Court, and that the courtiers, or some 
 of them, were uncertain whether Francis was a bastard child 
 of Sir Nicholas who had been adopted by his wife, or a son 
 of the Queen and Leicester, a certain formation of his eyes 
 being like the Earl of - Leicester's, while in the hanging of his 
 nether lip his face resembled the Queen. 
 
 The Queen, according to her biographers, and to the 
 cipher story, was a highly educated woman, who always devoted 
 a portion of the day to reading. She was a good classical 
 scholar, and could also speak and write in French and Italian. 
 It is probable that the boy's studies in these languages were 
 carefully fostered, and to such books as were available in that 
 day he had ready access. As a delicate youth, no doubt 
 rough sports were not attractive to him, and he was a great 
 reader. He probably took for his recreations archery and 
 falconry. 
 
 The cipher tells of young Lady Scales who, repeating a 
 rumour that Francis- was the son of the Queen, it resulted in 
 the Queen making a passionate attack upon the young 
 woman, and states that on Francis trying to appease her the 
 
 D I 7 
 
 Francis as a boy, 
 1560>1 to 1576.
 
 Francis as a boy, 
 1560-1 to 1576. 
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 Queen, in violent language, made it known to him that the 
 rumour was true. The cipher story also mentions a pathetic 
 interview by Francis with Lady Anne Bacon, whom he 
 had always, up to that time, believed to be his mother, and 
 whom he sometimes subsequently addressed as " mother," 
 and referred to as "mother" in his last will. From the 
 day of his birth she had been the only person to behave to 
 him as such. 
 
 In view of the above-mentioned trouble at the Court, 
 Francis was sent abroad in September, 1576, being taken 
 charge of by Sir Amyas Paulet, the Queen's Ambassador 
 to France. Francis was with the French Court succes- 
 sively at Paris, Blois, Tours, and Poictiers, and would 
 be brought in contact with the poets and learned men 
 of France, and be able to perfect himself in the French 
 language, possibly in Italian also. In this manner he 
 was occupied two years, at some period of which he fell in 
 love with Margaret, the beautiful Queen of Navarre, an 
 accomplished lady, but eight years older than himself. 
 In Rawley's " Life of Bacon " Francis is said to have 
 returned to England once on a mission to the Queen during 
 his stay. The cipher tells of his re-visiting England with a 
 proposal to the Queen and Earl Leicester that he should be 
 allowed to contract an engagement with Queen Margaret, then 
 or about to be divorced from her husband. This was not 
 agreed to, says the story (the synopsis of which is my 
 authority), and he was sent back to France. It may have been 
 on the occasion of this visit to England that the portrait of 
 Francis, by Hilliard, which is dated in 1578, was painted. If 
 his parents wanted his portrait the opportunity was a natural 
 one. I notice that the Queen's portrait by the same artist 
 was in the same year presented by her to Sir Nicholas Bacon, 
 who had sumptuously entertained her at Gorhambury the 
 previous year. Around the portrait of Francis are Latin words 
 expressing the painter's wish that he could " paint his mind." 
 On 1 2th December, Sir Nicholas Bacon, who was an old 
 
 18
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 man and had been much enriched by the Queen, made 
 
 and pubHshed an elaborate Will, wherein he made full 
 
 provision for his first family, his widow and his child, Anthony 
 
 Bacon, but left nothing whatever to Francis. I obtained a ^ItoTt^isji!"'' 
 
 copy from Somerset House, where it may be seen. The 
 
 suggestion in Rawley's " Life " that Francis took a share, as 
 
 one of five brothers, in a sum of money set apart to purchase 
 
 an estate, will not hold water. There was no intestacy and 
 
 there were not five brothers. Sir Nicholas had three sons and 
 
 three daughters. Go and examine his original will. Ask at 
 
 the same time for that of Francis, and you will find it was taken 
 
 from the Registry and never returned. 
 
 t9
 
 The Early Lite of Lord Bacon. 
 
 1579. 
 
 On 20th February, 1578-9, Sir Nicholas died. On the 
 
 20th March following, Francis returned to England bearing 
 
 a despatch from Sir Amyas Paulet to the Queen, in which 
 
 1579. Francis was mentioned as " of great hope, endowed with many 
 
 good and singular parts." 
 
 In the period of months from his going back to France to 
 his return to England on the above date, the cipher states 
 that he visited Italy. In February he was in Paris, and had 
 some premonition of the death of Sir Nicholas. 
 
 I think it will be found that the first work by Francis 
 was " Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit " (" my first counterfeit "). 
 Judging by the epistle dedicatory to " Euphues and His 
 England" (Arber reprint, page 214), I infer that the 
 "Anatomy of Wit" was written in December, 1578 (hatched 
 in the hard winter with the Alcyon), and that the manuscript 
 was entrusted to Sir William West. It was entered on the 
 Stationers' Register on December 2nd of that year, and 
 probably published two or three months after his final return 
 from Paris (20th March, 1578-9). He appears to have added 
 to the book a few letters while it was going through the press, 
 one of them being " Euphues to Botonio to take his exile 
 patiently," which I submit to be a copy of a letter to his foster- 
 brother Anthony, who at this date was required to go and live 
 abroad. The work was published in the name of John Lyly. 
 There are lilies on the British Crown, and there is in 
 Elizabethan books much allusion to this notable emblem. In 
 the address to the book he says : " He that cometh in print 
 because he would be knowen is like the fool that cometh into 
 the market because he would be seen. I am not he that 
 seeketh praise for his labour, but pardon for his offence."
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacofi. 
 
 The little book consists of a veiled account of some personal 
 
 love experiences, a translation from Plutarch on education, 1579. 
 
 a discussion concerning the Deity, and the letters already 
 
 referred to. The biographers cannot find any John Lily 
 
 whose career corresponds. 
 
 2t
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 1580. 
 
 Bacon's next venture into print took the form of a number 
 of Eclogues, partly in imitation of Virgil, entered on the 
 Stationers' Register in December, 1579, and published in 
 January, 1579-80, under the title of the " Shepheard's Calen- 
 1580. dar." The book was published anonymously in the 
 
 name of " Immerito," and dedicated to Philip Sidney. 
 The verses exhibit the young writer's skill in a variety 
 of metres. 
 
 Before passing from 1579 I ought to note that the " Mirror 
 of Modesty," dedicated to the Countess of Derby, was this 
 year entered on the Stationers' Register anonymously. 
 Two or three years later it was published in the name 
 of Greene. I ought also to note that the anonymous 
 writer of " The Arte of English Poesie " states that in 1579 he 
 gave the Queen a series of poems entitled " Partheniades." 
 The " Arte " has been attributed to someone named Putten- 
 ham, but on very slender evidence indeed, and it may turn 
 out to have been written by Francis, and to be " the English 
 Poet" referred to in the Harvey correspondence. 
 
 A few months later, in 1580, he published " Euphues and 
 His England," dedicated to the Earl of Oxford, the Lord 
 Chamberlain, a relative of the Lady Scales who was the 
 object of the assault by the Queen. From the dedica- 
 tion to that book I infer that it was written in France 
 after his visit to England in 1578. It contains a descrip- 
 tion of Court Hfe, has, at page 462, a reference to the Queen 
 of Navarre and her favourite flower, the marigold, and con- 
 cludes with a very elaborate eulogy of the Queen of 
 England. I should not be surprised to find in one or two 
 of the works of this period some short experimental trial
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 of biliteral cipher writing. Having invented it in 1578 he 
 was likely to put it to an early test. His next publica- 
 tion was " Three Letters of Notable Contents." They 
 were not entered on the Stationers' Register, and consisted 1580. 
 
 of one letter dated 9th April, 1580, and two written between 
 9th April and 19th June, 1580. This was followed by a 
 pamphlet called " Two letters of Notable Contents," pubHshed 
 later in 1580. The date of this publication would doubtless 
 be after July, when Spenser (whose name Francis states in 
 cipher he used for valuable consideration) was well on his 
 way to Dublin, a place reckoned in days' journeys further off 
 than Cuba is to.-day. This accounts for letters dated in 1579 
 being published later than those dated in 1580. 
 
 Immerito writes on i6th October, 1579, evidently in reply 
 to a letter from Harvey urging him to go on with his publica- 
 tions : " First I was minded for awhile to have intermitted the 
 uttering of my writings, lest by overmuch cloying their noble 
 ears I should gather a contempt of myself, or else seem rather 
 for gain or commodity to do it for some sweetness that I have 
 already tasted." To intermit implies a previous uttering, or 
 publication. It is dated from Leicester House, where Francis 
 would naturally visit, more particularly as since the death of 
 Sir Nicholas Bacon York House would be closed or tenanted 
 by some members of the first family. Immerito, in the same 
 letter, states : " Your desire to hear of my late being with 
 Her Majesty must die in itself " ; and later on he twice refers 
 to the Court, which shews that he was on excellent terms 
 there. 
 
 The 1579 letters, not published until 1580, contain one 
 solitary reference to Spenser, viz., the word " Edmontus," 
 appearing in some Latin verse written by Immerito, and on 
 the title page of some copies are printed the words " Ed. 
 Spenser." Harvey, in his reply, dated 23rd October, 1579, 
 uses the words, " For- all your vowed and long experimented 
 secrecy," and refers to the compact between Sidney, Dyer and 
 Immerito to proclaim opposition to the current practice of 
 
 23
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 rhyming. Later comes a curious phrase as to Immerito's 
 intimation that he may have to go abroad again to France 
 and Italy. Harvey says, " My Lord's honour, the expecta- 
 1580. tion of his friends, his own credit and preferment, tell me he 
 must have a special care and good regard of employing his 
 travel to the best." 
 
 The next printed letter, 9th April, 1580, Immerito to 
 Harvey, is mostly concerned wFth technical points in the art 
 of poetry. It indicates the existence of beginnings of the 
 " Faerie Queene," shews a free use of Hollinshed's Works, 
 and that Immerito had written a work called " Dreams," having 
 a glosse Hke the glosse to the " Shepheard's Calendar." (I 
 deal with this work later.) The next letter, Harvey to 
 Immerito, mainly concerns itself with an earthquake on 6th 
 April, 1580. The deferential attitude of Harvey to Immerito 
 should be noted : " I imagine your magnificenza will hold us 
 in suspense," then a sentence as to his own work, " which my 
 anti-cosmopolita, though it greeve him, can best justify, 
 remaining still, as we say, in statu quo, and neither an inch 
 more forward nor backward than he was fully a twelve months 
 since in the Court at his last attendance upon my Lorde there " ; 
 which I take to mean since the time the unfinished manuscript 
 was in the possession of Immerito for perusal. Passing to 
 Harvey's letter of a date between April 6th and June 19th, 
 1580, I suggest for consideration that the "bold satirical libel 
 lately devised at the instance of a certain worshipful Hertford- 
 shire gentleman of mine old acquaintance," may be a friendly 
 skit on Francis himself, who, as a boy, was frequently resident 
 in St. Albans, Herts. The Latin words which follow, " In 
 Gratium quorundum Illustrium Anglo-francitalortivi,'' etc., 
 seem to be an allusion to Immerito's stay in France. This is 
 a part of the " libel " : — 
 
 " Everyone A per se A his termes and braveries in print, 
 Delicate in speech queynte in araye ; conceited in all points 
 In Courtly guyles a passing singular odde man 
 For Gallantes a brave Mirrour a Primrose of Honour 
 
 24
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 A Diamond for nonce, a fellow peerless in England 
 Not the like Discourser for Tongue and head to be found out : 
 Not the like resolute man for great and serious affrayes 
 Not the like Lynx to spie out secrets and privities of States, 
 Eyed like to Argus, Earde like to Midas, nosd like to Naso. 
 
 None do I name but some do I know that a peece of a twelvemonth 
 Hath so perfited outly and inly both body both soule 
 That none for sense and senses half matchable with them." 
 
 There is nothing of a libellous nature in the above verse. 
 Harvey further on writes of his having already addressed a 
 " certain pleasurable and moral politic natural mixed device 
 to his most Honorable Lordshippe." Of the two letters to 
 Immerito subsequent to ist August, 1580, the first complains 
 of his having, without permission, printed and published 
 certain of Harvey's verses. But he complains very gently 
 although obviously displeased. Why (upon the traditional 
 assumption) should Harvey be so deferential to the " poor 
 scholar of Pembroke Hall." I quote certain of his references 
 to Immerito : — • 
 
 " Magnifico Signor Benevolo." 
 "Your Good Mastershipp." 
 " Your delicate Mastershipp." 
 
 " Alas ! they were hudled and, as you know, bungled up 
 in more haste than good speed, partially at the urgent and 
 importunate request of a honest, good-natured and worshipp- 
 ful yotmg gentlemafi who I knew, being privy to all circum- 
 stances and very affectionate towards me or anything of my 
 doing would for the time accept of them." 
 
 " I beseech your Benivolenza what more notorious and 
 villanous kind of injury could have been devised against me 
 by the mortallest enemy I have in this whole world } " 
 
 " If it chance to come once out . . . now good Lorde 
 how will' my right worshippful and thrice-venerable masters 
 of Cambridge scorne at the matter? " 
 
 E 25 
 
 1580.
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 " Take my leave of your Excellencie's feet and betake your 
 gracious Mastershipp, &c." 
 
 " I commend myself and mine own goodly devices, . . . 
 1580. the stars and your most provident wisdom, so disposing, to 
 whose invincible and fatal resolutions I humble and submit 
 myself." 
 
 The above style of expression is repeated in the next 
 letter: — 
 
 " What tho' II Magnifico Segnior Immerito Benivolo hath 
 noted this amongst his poHtical discourses and matters of State 
 and Government." 
 
 " Hath your monsieurship." 
 "Your good masterships worship." 
 '* I beseech your gallantship." 
 
 " You cry out of a false and treacherous world ; . . . 
 did not Abel live in a false and treacherous world ? " 
 
 " For myself I recount it one sovereign point of my feHcity 
 in general and some particular, contentment of mind, that I 
 have such an odd friend in a corner, so holiest a youth in the 
 city, so true a gallant in the Court, so tozvard a lawyer, and 
 so witty a gentleman, that both for his rare pregnancy in 
 conceit and will gladly for his singular forwardness in courtesy, 
 &c." 
 
 " Foolish is all younkerly learning, without a certain 
 manly discipline. As if indeed for the poor boys only, and 
 not much more for well-born and noble youth were suited the 
 strictness of that old system of learning and teaching." 
 
 " Good Lord, you a gentleman, a courtie7' and youth ^ and 
 go about to revive so old, and stale, and bookish opinion 
 (that the first age was the golden age) dead and buried many 
 hundred years." 
 
 " You suppose us students happy, and think the air 
 preferred that breatheth on these same great learned philo- 
 sophers and profound clerks. . . . Would to God you 
 were one of these men but a sennight." 
 
 26
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 I end a careful examination of the Harvey correspondence 
 in the Hght of the cipher story with the conclusions that Harvey 
 was addressing a high-born youth, a courtier, a law student, 
 to whom he was most deferential, that this youth can hardly 1580. 
 have been a student himself in the sense of a long stay at 
 the University ; and that this young man, with all his wit and 
 ability, was already tired and weary of things. I am dis- 
 posed to think that Harvey addressed Immerito as a noble- 
 man, and that the term "good Lord" twice used is not an 
 expletive, nor the words Lordship and " my Lorde " merely 
 bantering expressions. 
 
 In 1579 Spenser, at the age of twenty-six or twenty-seven, 
 would not be a youth in the eyes of Harvey, aged about thirty ; 
 but Francis was only in his twentieth year. Nor can I under- 
 stand how Spenser, the poor scholar — notice above how 
 distantly Harvey writes of " the poor boys " — could have made 
 such progress after 1576 as to be a gallant attending at 
 Court in 1579. Recollect he was the son of a journeyman 
 tailor at a period when Court favour was practically confined to 
 the well-born. Moreover, if the tailor's son, helped to the 
 University, and then a courtier, was Immerito, and had there- 
 fore made quick progress, why was he so discontented and 
 sighing after a golden age? Why, after being seven years 
 a student, and passing his degrees, should he surprise Harvey 
 with a wish to be one? Such a remark from Francis after 
 only a short three years of Cambridge, without taking degrees, 
 followed by the excitement of two or three years in the French 
 and English Courts, would be much more natural. In one of 
 the later letters from Harvey is the jocular suggestion that 
 Immerito might shortly be sending one of Lord Leicester's, 
 or Earl Warwick's, or Lord Riche's players to get him to write 
 a comedy or interlude for " the theatre, or some over-painted 
 stage whereat thou and thy lively copemates in London may 
 laugh," &c. If this was something more than a jest, how 
 came the poor serving scholar to obtain such a very free hand 
 as to warrant the suggestion of his ability to order other 
 
 27
 
 
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 people's servants about? Upon the cipher hypothesis there 
 is nothing extraordinary in Francis being at Leicester House 
 and ordering the doings of the players belonging either to his 
 1580. father or uncle Ambrose, or even those belonging to Lord 
 Rich. 
 
 To turn back to the Harvey-Immerito letters, in one of 
 them Immerito uses to Harvey some words of the quotation, 
 " Onine tiUlit punctuni qui rniscuit tUile diilcir This will be 
 afterwards found used as a motto in the works published under 
 the name of Greene. 
 
 It must not be supposed that these works of Francis' were 
 simply part of a large output of similar literature at this 
 period of Elizabeth's reign. Examination of the Stationers' 
 Registers or Arber's Reprint of the Registers for this 
 period will show that except for these works English litera- 
 ture was practically non-existent. 
 
 Before passing from the work called " Euphues and His 
 England," reference should, by any reader following my state- 
 ments book in hand, be made to Ascham's " Schoolmaster " 
 for the meaning of the word " Euphues." Ascham was the 
 Queen's old tutor. 
 
 Page 462 of the Arber Reprint of " Euphues and His 
 England" contains a reference to the Queen of Navarre and 
 her favourite flower, the marigold. With that Queen, as with 
 the Enghsh Queen (and I may add with Francis also), there 
 was a curious commingling of piety and frivolity. 
 
 Later in 1580, Francis pubhshed a work called " Mamillia," 
 and was evidently working with great energy at a variety of 
 subjects. 
 
 Attention should at this stage be given to the four letters 
 which appear in Mr. Spedding's " Life of Bacon." The first, 
 dated nth July, 1580, to Mr. Doyley (who had taken Anthony 
 Bacon abroad), written from Gray's Inn, shews that Francis 
 had been settled down at his lodgings there, and indicates 
 what a firm man of the world at that date he had 
 become, though not quite twenty years old. The next 
 
 28
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 letters are dated i6th and i8th September, 1580; the first 
 
 to Lady Burleigh and the second to her husband. In both 
 
 of these (as in a later letter to Lord Walsingham, he presses 
 
 the recommendation of his "suit," and points out how incon- 1580. 
 
 grjwus it is foi^ a person i7t his position to be employed in 
 
 studying the common laws. I venture to think that Francis is 
 
 here pressing for his proper recognition by the Queen. 
 
 The next letter, 1 8th October, to Burleigh, seems to be one 
 carefully written for submission to the Queen with a view to 
 appease anger which his importunity had aroused. He had 
 evidently been promised that something satisfactory should 
 occur in the future, and that in the meantime he was to be con- 
 sidered in the Queen's service, and to have a satisfactory 
 monetary allowance. Francis signs these three letters in a very 
 curious way, not characteristic of any other of his letters so far 
 as I have noticed, namely, " B. Fra.," as though to persons in 
 the secret of his parentage he did not know what name to sign. 
 Except the allowance from the Queen it is abundantly clear 
 that Francis at the age of twenty had nothing to Hve on. 
 The Bacon family had no responsibility and he was entirely 
 a pensioner on the Queen's bounty. 
 
 29
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 1581. 
 
 Mr. Spedding can tell us nothing more about Francis until 
 15th April, 1582. I suggest, however, that he meanwhile 
 pubHshed, under the name of Thomas Watson, a translation 
 1581. into Latin of Sophocles' "Antigone," that he pushed along 
 
 with other work, and pubHshed another edition of the 
 " Anatomy of Wit," having important variations of the text. 
 A second edition of the " Shepheard's Calendar," with cor- 
 rections which Dr. Grosart thinks certain that " Spenser " (the 
 inverted commas are mine) oversaw, was also published this 
 year. The Pembroke Hall poor scholar, quietly copying 
 documents in Dublin at this time, little anticipated a time when 
 some literary gentlemen would be poring reverently over the 
 only bit of his original work vouchsafed to the next ages: — 
 " Vera copia, Edm. Speser." He, like the young butcher from 
 Stratford, who became an actor, saved money, and subse- 
 quently started brewing and malting, never sought any of this 
 fuss. It is all the glosse of the critic's " eye in a fine frenzy 
 rolling." The literary " witch-doctor " has made him " fetish," 
 saying, " Behold, here is another ' long juju,' come and dance 
 round him." Lord Bacon expressly deprecates this idolatry, 
 and points the danger of becoming anybody's disciple. Think 
 for yourself and go and accomplish some original work was 
 his advice. 
 
 If the gentle reader will pardon this digression I conclude 
 my notes as to this year with the observation that Francis was 
 doubtless still working upon cantos of the " Faerie Queen," 
 and preparing the two plays produced before the Queen in the 
 following January. 
 
 30
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 1582. 
 
 The first play was " The Arraignment of Paris," described 
 as " his first increase," doubtless his first attempt at play 
 writing. It was performed by the chapel children before the 
 Queen. Like "The Shepheard's Calendar" it is pastoral in 1582, 
 
 style, and contains a variety of metres. The play was printed 
 and published anonymously in 1584, and subsequently ascribed 
 to Peele. The other play, probably " Campaspe," also per- 
 formed by the chapel children before Her Majesty, was also 
 printed in 1584, but whether anonymously or not I do not 
 know. It contains the Hne, 
 
 " Be content to live unknown, and die unfound." 
 
 In the play of " The Misfortunes of Arthur," performed in 
 1587, there is the line, 
 
 " Yea, though I conqueror die, and full of fame, 
 Yet let my death and parture rest obscure." 
 
 And further on, 
 
 "But let my carcase lurk; yea, let my death be aye unknown." 
 
 In his draft Will Francis directed that his body should be 
 buried obscurely. 
 
 In this year, 1582, Mr. Spedding thinks Francis wrote for 
 the Queen " Notes on the present state of Christendom." He 
 published, under the name of Watson, the " Passionate 
 Century of Love," which I infer to be the work called 
 " Dreams " mentioned in the Immerito to Harvey letter of 
 9th April, 1580. It has a very important and learned glosse, 
 and is a collection of Sonnets after the style of various Italian 
 and other Sonnet writers. Many of the Sonnets are likely 
 
 31
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 to have been written about Margaret of Navarre. No. 9 refers 
 to her favourite flower, the marigold ; No. 45 is afterwards 
 used in the Spanish Tragedy; and No. 54 is a marvellous 
 1582. word-picture of Queen Elizabeth. In support of the conten- 
 tion that Watson was a pseudonym of Francis, read the 
 account Anthony A. Wood, the Oxford, biographer, gives of 
 him — " Thomas Watson, a Londoner born, did spend some 
 time in this University, not in logic and philosophy, as he 
 ought to have done, but in the smooth and pleasant studies 
 of Poetry and Romance, afterwards retiring to the Metropolis. 
 Studied common law at riper years. . . . He had written 
 other things of that nature or strain, and something pertaining 
 to pastoral, which I have not yet seen." Says Mr. Arber, 
 " We may guess him to have been born about the time of 
 Queen Elizabeth's accession. . . . His pubHcations tell 
 us in one way or another that he was of gentle blood, born in 
 London . . . and that before 1581 he sojourned some 
 while at Paris," 
 
 In July the young poet caused some offence to the Queen 
 and to Burleigh, and in the name of John Lyly (read what 
 Anthony A. Wood has to say about Lyly in " Athenae 
 Oxoniensis ") he wrote to Burleigh. I give an extract — " It 
 hath pleased my Lord, upon what colour I cannot tell, certain 
 I am upon no cause, to be displeased with me, the grief whereof 
 is more than the loss can be. But seeing that I am to live 
 in the world, I must also be judged by the world, for that an 
 honest servant must be such as Caesar would have his wife, 
 not only free from sin, but from suspicion. ... It may 
 be many things will be objected, but if anything can be proved 
 I doubt, I know your Lordship will soon smell devises from 
 simplicity, truth from treachery, factions from just service. 
 And God is my witness, before whom I speak, and before 
 whom for my speech I shall answer, that all my thoughts con- 
 cerning my Lady have been ever reverent, and almost religious. 
 How I have dealt God knoweth and my Lady can conjecture, 
 so faithfully, as I am unspotted for dishonesty, as a suckhng 
 
 32
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 from theft. This conscience of mine niaketh me presume 
 to stand to all trials, either of accounts, or counsel, in the one 
 I never used falsehood, nor in the other dissembhng." 
 
 This year Francis was called to the bar, but did not practise. 1 582. 
 
 He doubtless was engaged in writing the plays performed at 
 the Christmas revels before Her Majesty in 1582-3. These 
 would seem to have been " Sappho," and possibly " Sir 
 Clyomen." He also published a revised and corrected edition 
 of " Euphues and his England." 
 
 33
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon, 
 
 1583. 
 
 In 1583 Francis published in the name of Robert Greene 
 two stories, namely, " Arbasto," dedicated to Lady Talbot, and 
 also called " The Anatomic of Fortune," and " Mamillia " 
 1583. (second part). His movements this year are, according to Mr. 
 Spedding, slightly indicated by the correspondence between 
 Anthony and Mr. Faunt. This shews him as studying at 
 Gray's Inn, occasionally visiting Gorhambury, and at times 
 attending at Court (not the Law Courts). According to Mr. 
 Faunt he had not time to speak to him when he called. There 
 is a likeHhood of his beginning to write other plays this year. 
 The " Birth of Merlin," amongst others, has never found a 
 parent. I notice that it contains some legal expressions such 
 as " his body but a tenement at will." 
 
 I venture the suggestion that Francis supplied all the plays 
 prepared and performed for the entertainment of the Queen ; 
 but it is not necessary to clear up exactly whether the plays 
 appeared on New Year's Day, Twelfth Day, Candlemas Day, 
 or Shrove Tuesday. They were mostly performed in the 
 afternoon. 
 
 34
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 1584. 
 
 He may have this year provided the plays of " Sehmus " 
 and " Mucedorus." These are pure guesses of mine, but as I 
 think the narrative is now capable of being put into shape, 
 others, who are better able to judge, will give the matter 1584. 
 further consideration. 
 
 Under the name of Greene were probably published " The 
 Mirror of Modesty," already alluded to, " Morando," dedicated 
 to Phihp, Earl of Arundel, and a translation from the 
 French entitled " Gwedonius, the Garde of Fancie." In- 
 terested by the appearance of a Latin play by Dr. Gager, called 
 " Dido," produced at Oxford this year for the entertainment of 
 Prince Alesco, Francis would appear to have written his own 
 play of " Dido, Queen of Carthage," though it was not printed 
 until 1594, and then anonymously. It has since been attri- 
 buted to Marlowe. In November a new Parliament was 
 summoned by the Queen, and Francis was elected M.P, by the 
 burgesses of Melcombe, in Dorsetshire ; he was also returned 
 for the pocket constituency of Gatton, belonging to Lord 
 Burleigh. 
 
 Let me ask those gentlemen willing to ponder these matters 
 seriously to ask themselves how it was that a young student 
 of the age of twenty-four, without local influence, without 
 private property or any other ostensible means of support 
 than an allowance from the Queen, could get into Parliament? 
 Clearly he was placed there, and by powerful interests. It 
 may be said that he was the nephew and nominee of Lord 
 Burleigh, which may be a sufficient reply, but taken with other 
 circumstances his election to Parliament seems to have been 
 no ordinary matter. 
 
 35
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 As shewing what a " free and independent " elector was in 
 1584. those days, reference may be made to Nichols' " Progresses," 
 
 which gives a letter from Leicester to the Burgesses of 
 Andover, requesting them to elect his nominee, and suggest- 
 ing that they might send the return to him and he would fill 
 in the name of the member ! 
 
 36
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 1585. 
 
 The Parliament was called in consequence of several plots 
 for the assassination of Queen Elizabeth having been detected. 
 Earl Leicester formed an association of subjects of all 
 degrees, the members of which bound themselves to defend 1585. 
 the Queen from her enemies, foreign or domestic, and to 
 prosecute to the death any person by whom or for whom 
 violence should be offered to her hfe, and to hold such person 
 for ever incapable of the crown. Francis appears to have 
 made a brilliant speech in Parliament with reference to the 
 Queen's safety. Fleetwood, the Recorder of London, writing 
 about it said, " Before this time I never heard in Parliament 
 the like things uttered. They were magnalia regni." 
 
 Early this year Francis addressed a long letter of caution 
 to the Queen with reference to the attempts to poison her then 
 recently discovered. It also deals in a masterly way with other 
 affairs of State. The letter begins very curiously — " Care, 
 one of the natural and true bred children of unfeigned affection, 
 awaked with these late wicked and barbarous attempts, 
 would needs exercise my pen to your sacred Majesty." I ask 
 myself, " Where were the Queen's responsible ministers ? and 
 what justified Francis, a young man of twenty-five, in taking 
 upon himself to advise the Queen on affairs of State } " If 
 the cipher story be true I can understand both the cryptic 
 reference with which the letter commences, and the fact of his 
 intrusion upon her public affairs. 
 
 None of us can at this date entirely realise what a spoilt 
 and difficult woman Queen Elizabeth was. Accustomed to 
 the most extravagant adulation, capable of ungovernable 
 passion, holding in her hands the liberties and lives of her 
 subjects — even her secretaries and ministers knelt in her 
 
 37
 
 The Early Lif^ of Lord Bacon. 
 
 presence — one can never sufficiently appreciate what it meant 
 to be out of favour with Her Majesty. Hentzner's account of 
 his visit to the Enghsh Court about 1596, which appears in 
 1585. Nichols' " Progresses,"' should be referred to. 
 
 Proceeding with our narrative, it is important to mention 
 that another candidate for the affections of the Queen, so far 
 as she was capable of maternal affection, was at this date in 
 full popularity. I refer to her second son, Robert, Earl of 
 Essex. x\s I have already stated, he was at this period con- 
 tinually wdth the Queen, and for him she showed considerable 
 fondness. The younger son, moreover, had spent the greater 
 portion of his time at the Court. As to the legitimacy of his 
 birth there could be no question, while Francis was, on the 
 other hand, only legitimate in name, and at the same time 
 a continuous reminder of a very dark blot on the Queen's 
 history. An adulterine bastard is a person born in wedlock 
 but declared a bastard by Act of Parliament or legal decree of 
 a Court. The first course was impossible without the Queen's 
 assent, the second inapplicable to a Prince. Francis' claim 
 to be a legitimate son was therefore good law\ 
 
 The elder of the two young men had only made occasional 
 visits to the Court ; the other had spent his life in active 
 association with the Queen and Leicester. I do not want to 
 labour this unduly, but the distinction must be noticed. 
 
 About the Spring of this year. Earl Leicester gave an 
 entertainment to the Queen at Oxford, in the course of which 
 the play of " Hamlet," which Francis had in the previous 
 year been caught, so says the cipher, teaching to some players, 
 was publicly acted. Let us assume it very likely that 
 " Hamlet " then performed was nothing like the " Hamlet " 
 as we know it in its final and revised state. 
 
 In October, Leicester (who had, says the word cipher, 
 
 offended the Queen) was appointed to lead an expedition of 
 soldiers into the Low Countries in support of the Flemish and 
 
 Dutch inhabitants. In Court circles (see Strickland) it was 
 
 considered a banishment. Young Robert, Earl of Essex,
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 at the request of his father, and doubtless with the consent 
 of his mother, accompanied the expedition. Leicester also 
 took his players with him, and the play of " Hamlet " was 
 performed by them at some of the towns he visited. 1585. 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney, in a letter to Walsingham in 1586 (see 
 Fox-Bourne's " Life "), speaks of a letter which he had for- 
 warded by "Will, the Earl of Leicester's jesting player." I 
 wonder whether this is the individual referred to by Francis in 
 the Spenser lines, " Our pleasant Willie, ah, is dead of late." 
 
 Mr. Spedding is in difficulty with a letter of 25th August, 
 1585, from Francis to Walsingham (see Vol. L "Life"). I 
 copy part of the letter — " It may please your honour to give me 
 leave amidst your great and diverse business, to put you in 
 remembrance of my poor suit, leaving the time unto your 
 honour's best opportunity and commodity. I think the 
 objection of my years will wear away with the length of my suit. 
 The very stay doth in this respect concern me, because I am 
 thereby hindered to take a course of practice which, by the 
 leave of God, if Her Majesty like not of my suit, I must and 
 will follow ; not for any necessity of estate, but for my credit's 
 sake which, I know, by living out of action, will wear. I 
 spake, when the Court was at Theballs, to Mr. Vice- 
 Chamberlain (Sir Christopher Hatton), who promised me 
 his furderance ivhich I did lest he mottght be made for 
 some other. If it may please your honour, who, as I hear, 
 hath great interest in him, to speak with him in it, I think he 
 will be fast mine." I take this letter Fo mean that Francis, 
 who never missed a point, thought it a favourable opportunity, 
 while Leicester was out of favour, to get to know from 
 the Queen whether she really intended to formally recognise 
 him as her heir and successor to the throne or not. 
 
 His real interests had now become largely literary, and if 
 the Queen declined to recognise him he should take a course 
 of his own. My conjecture is that he meant to go back to 
 France amongst his old friends, work along at his literature, 
 and wait the course of events. He declined to be bottled up 
 
 39
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon 
 
 at Gray's Inn any longer. He thought Walsingham might 
 use his influence with Hatton before the latter's interest had 
 been secured (possibly by Leicester) in favour of young Robert. 
 1585. The literary works written or pubhshed by Francis this 
 
 year would probably comprise : the play " Gallathea," and 
 another of the Lyly plays for performance by the children 
 before the Queen, but not actually performed, owing to 
 children's performances being prohibited (see Fleay's 
 " Chronological History of the Drama ") ; the work " Plane- 
 tomachia," published in the name of Greene and dedicated to 
 Leicester ; while in the name of Watson he translated one of 
 Tasso's poems, " Aminta." 
 
 Francis was at an early date friendly with the City Alder- 
 men. For the Pageant of Sir Woolstan Dixie, the Lord 
 Mayor, on 29th October, he wrote the short device pubhshed 
 in the name of Peele. It will be noticed that later in life he 
 borrowed money from another Alderman, Sir John Spencer, 
 and later still married an Alderman's daughter. 
 
 40
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 1586. 
 
 This year a Commission was formed by Act of Parliament 
 charged with the special care of the Queen, and having power 
 to pass sentence of death against any pretender by whom, or 
 for whom, any attempt should be made against her life. It 1586. 
 was in this year that Mary Queen of Scots was tried for being 
 accessory to a projected assassination of Queen Elizabeth. 
 The same year also saw the death of Sir Philip Sidney, for 
 whom Francis entertained great affection. Sidney was 
 mortally wounded at Zutphen. 
 
 During the Autumn another ParHament was summoned, 
 and to this Francis was elected M.P. for Taunton. 
 
 The works produced during the year would probably 
 include the plays of " Locrine " and " Hiren, the Fair Greek," 
 and a translation of the " Raptse Helence " of Coluthus, dedi- 
 cated to the Duke of Northumberland and published in the 
 name of Watson. 
 
 Mr. Spedding finds one letter from Bacon in this year, 
 namely, one to Burleigh, dated from Gray's Inn, 6th May, 
 1586. Burleigh appears to have lectured him about some late 
 motion of " mine owne," which Francis replied was only put 
 forward for the purpose of " Yes " or " No," and all that he 
 wanted was an ease in coming within bars, and not any 
 extraordinary or singular note of favour. He begs to assure 
 Burleigh that he is not naturally proud and arrogant, and that 
 he has generally been misunderstood. Francis was evidently 
 climbing down. 
 
 A book entitled " Discoveries in English Poetrie " was 
 published this year in the name of William Webbe. I have a 
 strong notion that this was written by Francis, but I am assured 
 by a gentleman very familiar with Bacon's acknowledged works, 
 
 o 41
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 that I am wrong as to this. Still, nothing appears to be known 
 about Webbe, and as the treatise is so much the sort of thing 
 that Francis, in his strong desire to instruct as well as amuse, 
 1586. would be likely to write, I at present hold to my opinion. In 
 fact it seems to be a reply to criticisms upon the poetry in the 
 " Shepheard's Calendar." I may add that he would seem to 
 have been friendly with a William Web, for whom, in 1591, 
 he wrote a device when Lord Mayor. 
 
 42
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 1587. 
 
 On loth February, 1586-7, Francis was moved to the 
 Benchers' or Readers' table at Gray's Inn. This may have 
 involved some improvement both in dignity and the quality of 
 the food served. It does not seem to have been a step of any 1587, 
 importance. 
 
 The Parliament to which Francis had been elected the 
 previous year was dissolved on the 23rd March, 1586-7, and 
 Mr. Spedding can tell us little or nothing about the philosopher 
 during that year. Guided by the cipher assertions, however, 
 we can surmise that Francis was very busy writing plays, 
 novels, and pamphlets. A section of his philosophical work, 
 entitled " The Greatest Birth of Time," appears to have been 
 written about this period, as also " Penelope's Web," 
 dedicated to Margaret, Countess of Cumberland, and her sister 
 Ann, Countess of Warwick; " Euphues, His Censure to 
 Philautus " ; and " Pandosto, or the Triumph of time " (Time 
 the daughter of Truth), dedicated to the Earl of Cumberland. 
 These writings were published in the name of Greene, and I 
 think we may trace to this period another tract called " Greene's 
 Farewell to Folly." I have been able to purchase prints or 
 reprints of most of the works I refer to, but with regard to 
 Greene, I have had to rely upon the local Free Reference 
 Library, from which the books are not lent out, so I have not 
 been able to peruse leisurely a good deal of the work published 
 in this name. I imagine that the " Euphues' Censure to 
 Philautus," which is dedicated to the Earl of Essex, relates to 
 something passing between Francis and Sir Philip Sidney 
 before the latter's death. 
 
 The plays written at this period probably comprised 
 " Alphonsus, King of Arragon," " Orlando Furioso," and 
 " Tamburlaine " (ist and 2nd parts). Some of this work, of 
 
 43
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 course, may have been done in the previous year. " Tambur- 
 1587. laine " was pubhshed anonymously in 1590, and " Alphonsus " 
 and "Orlando" in 1591 and 1592 respectively, in the name 
 of Greene. 
 
 44
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 1588. 
 
 On the 28th February, 1587-8, Revels were held at Gray's 
 Inn, and Francis was associated in the production of a play 
 by the students called " The Misfortunes of Arthur," being, 
 like the " Birth of Merlin," founded upon the Arthurian legend. 1588. 
 
 Two children's plays were performed before the Queen on 
 New Year's Day and Candlemas Day respectively, at 
 Greenwich. " Gallathea," written some years before, appears 
 to have been one, and " Endymion " the other. Mr. Fleay 
 says there is an allegory in one of these plays relating to the 
 Queen, Leicester, and the Countess of Sheffield and others, 
 but I have had no opportunity of studying it (see Fairholt's 
 "Collection of Lyly's Plays"). 
 
 On 20th July, 1588, the Spanish Armada appeared in the 
 English Channel. By the middle of August it had been 
 defeated, but another encounter was looked forward to as 
 likely to take place in the Spring of the following year. For 
 his share in the defence Leicester was made Lord Lieutenant 
 of England and Ireland — an office, as Miss Strickland remarks, 
 that would have invested him with greater power than any 
 sovereign of this country had ever ventured to bestow upon a 
 subject. He, however, died a few weeks afterwards, where- 
 upon the Queen seized all his estates and caused them to be 
 sold by auction to satisfy her claims for money lent. 
 
 In November the Queen summoned a new Parliament, 
 but it did not meet until the following February. Francis was 
 elected M.P. for Liverpool. 
 
 His other writings during this year would appear to be 
 " Perimides, the Blacksmith," dedicated to Gervase Clifton ; 
 " Alcida," dedicated to Sir Charles Blount ; and " The Spanish 
 Masquerado," dedicated to the Sheriff of London ; all 
 pubUshed in the name of Greene. The plays written for 
 
 45
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 performance by the players would probably comprise " Doctor 
 Faustus " (first printed in 1604 in the name of Marlowe, then 
 deceased), " David and Bathshebe," and " The Battle of 
 1588. Alcazar" (some years later printed in the name of Peele), and 
 " Friar Bacon " (afterwards printed in the name of Greene). 
 
 In this, or the previous year, was written " The Spanish 
 Tragedy," afterwards ascribed to Kyd. " Faire Em " can be 
 assigned to about the same period. Mr. Richard Simpson 
 seems before his lamented death to have made a near guess 
 at truth when he stated in the prospectus to his " School of 
 Shakspere " that some, at least, of the so-called spurious or 
 doubtful plays assigned to him by tradition might be found to 
 be early productions of his pen. 
 
 46
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 1589. 
 
 " Loves Metamorphosis " and " Mother Bombie " seem to 
 have been the plays written for the children to perform before 
 the Queen at the New Year and Candlemas festivities. 
 
 On the 4th February Parliament met, and Francis appears 1589. 
 to have taken a prominent part in its deliberations. He 
 served on the most important Committees, spoke on the most 
 important Bills, and arranged between the Commons and the 
 Queen the terms upon which double subsidies were to be 
 granted. Parliament was dissolved at the end of March. 
 Francis was elected a Reader at Gray's Inn. Whether that 
 is equivalent to the position of Bencher to-day I do not know, 
 but it was evidently a step upwards. 
 
 Amongst the Harleian MSS. is a transcript (probably tran- 
 scribed by Stephens in 1734, see Spedding's "Life," Vol. L, 
 at page 16) of a petition by John Lyly to the Queen's Majesty 
 (see the Arber Reprint of Lyly's Works). There is no date, 
 and why it was transcribed I do not quite follow, but as far as 
 Francis may now be said to have had any distinctive style, 
 seeing that he was a master of many styles, I should say that 
 it smacks of his composition. In effect this is what he says: 
 " Here I have been looking after the Court entertainments for 
 ten years past, and nothing has been done for me. I was led 
 to suppose that I should have the reversion of the position of 
 Master of the Revels (Tylney, the Master appointed in 1579, 
 held ofhce until October, 1601), and nowe I knowe not what 
 Crabb took me for an Oyster, that in the midst of your sun- 
 shine of your most gratious aspect hath thrust a stone between 
 the shells to eate me alive that only live on dead hopes. If 
 your sacred Majestic ,thinke me unworthy, and that after ten 
 years' tempest, I must att the Court suffer shipwrack of my 
 tyme, my wittes, my hopes, vouchsafe in your never-erring 
 
 47
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 judgement some Plank or rafter to wafte me into a Country 
 wherein my sadd and settled devocion I may in every corner of 
 a thatche Cottage write prayers in stead of plaies, prayer for 
 1589. y^^^ longe and prosprous life, and a repentance that I have 
 played the foole so longe." That being the petition, the 
 response was made in October of the same year, when a grant 
 was made to him of the office of Clerk to the Council of the 
 Star Chamber. This was something, although Francis would 
 have to wait until the then occupant were dead before deriving 
 any benefit. The office, however, being of a valuable nature 
 (^i,6oo a year), it could be sold or mortgaged. 
 
 The " Lyly " plays number six, possibly seven. 
 
 On the separate author assumption, the Lillie who in 1584 
 owed 23s. lod. to Magdalen College for daily food, or the 
 other LilHe who was M.P. from 1589 to 1601, had not, in the 
 ten years mentioned in the Petition, overworked himself as a 
 dramatic author. 
 
 In April, Sir John Norris started with an expedition, con- 
 sisting of 180 vessels and 21,000 men, for Portugal. The 
 occasion was one of considerable excitement, and to celebrate 
 it Francis wrote a short poem called " A Farewell." This and 
 another poem, " The Tale of Troy," were then published 
 together in the course of the year under the name of Peele. 
 The other writings this year would probably be " Menaphon," 
 which has an oft quoted introduction by Nashe. This is also 
 called "Arcadia," and seems to have been suggested by the 
 pubhcation of Sidney's " Arcadia " in the previous year. 
 I extract a prefixed verse in praise of the author — 
 
 " Of all the flowers, a Lillie one I lov'd. 
 When labouring beauty brancht; itself abroade, 
 But now old age his glorie hath remov'd, 
 And Greener objects are my eyes' aboade." 
 
 " Ciceronis Amor," dedicated to Lord Strange, afterwards Earl 
 of Derby ; " The Orpharion," dedicated to Robert Carey ; all 
 afterwards published in the name of Greene; and probably 
 
 48
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 the plays "Edward L," "Edward II.,'' "Arden of Paver- 
 sham," and "The Jew of Malta." He is believed by Mr. 
 Spedding to have composed for Sir Francis Walsingham, the 
 Foreign Secretary, an important letter described as the 1589. 
 
 " Scrinia Sacra," written in explanation of the Queen's pro- 
 ceedings towards the Catholics and Puritans respectively. He 
 also wrote " An Advertisement touching the controversies of 
 the Church," and a short poem in the name of Peele, called 
 " Eclogue Gratulatory," on the safe return of Essex. 
 
 49
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 1590. 
 
 This year seems to have been full of events. In February 
 his uncle Ambrose, the Earl of Warwick, died, followed by the 
 death in April of his friend. Sir Francis Walsingham. He 
 1 590. wrote " The Woman in the Moon " and " Midas " for perform- 
 ance by the children before the Queen at her usual Christmas 
 festivities, but the plays were satirical in tone, and indicated 
 that he was either getting bolder or feeling somewhat desperate. 
 At any rate the children's performances, so far as the Paul's 
 School boys were concerned, were prohibited from this date, 
 
 " The Faerie Queene " (ist part) was at last, ten years after 
 it had been projected, published this year. It is dedicated to 
 the Queen, and to it are appended Sonnets to fourteen of the 
 chief noblemen of the Court, including the Lord Treasurer, the 
 Lord Keeper, the Lord Chamberlain, High Admiral, Master 
 of the Horse, Secretary of State, and one to the Ladies of the 
 Court. These Sonnets, says Dr. Grosart, and I agree with 
 him, in practically every case contain touches declarative of 
 some personal intercourse as between persons on terms of 
 familiarity. You will notice these Sonnets are appended, not 
 prefixed. No doubt the " Faerie Queene," being a big pro- 
 duction, had been in the hands of the printers for some time. 
 There is no evidence that " the little man with short hair, little 
 band, and little cuffs," as Aubrey describes the person who was 
 sent to Ireland, was ever over in 1590 in connection with the 
 publication of this poem, and of course on the footing of the 
 truth of the cipher story there is no need to press this point. 
 Before passing from the subject of these Sonnets, it is rather 
 curious that in the following year Nashe, in " Piers Pennilesse," 
 apologises for the omission from the " Faerie Queene " of a 
 Sonnet to Earl Derby, formerly Lord Strange, and actually 
 writes one ! There is something very odd about Nashe with 
 
 so
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 which I have had httle time to deal, but which I hope will 
 be taken up by other investigators. 
 
 On the death of Sir Francis Walsingham, Francis, in the 
 name of Watson, dedicated to him a Latin Eclogue entitled 1590. 
 " Mehbaeus." He also translated it into English Eclogues. 
 His reason for doing this was because on a previous occasion 
 Abraham Fraunce, in turning into English exameters Francis' 
 translation into Latin of Tasso's "Amintas," neglected to 
 acknowledge the source. Francis, as Watson, also Englished 
 some Italian madrigals. This work he dedicated to his brother, 
 the Earl of Essex, who would then be at the age of twenty- 
 three. 
 
 Francis was now approaching the zenith of his powers, and 
 seeing that works on shorthand had been pubHshed, I appre- 
 hend that he was then beginning to put it into practice, and to 
 have several assistants working for him. 
 
 On the Queen's Accession Day, 17th November, Sir 
 Henry Lee, the Master of the Armourie, had been accustomed 
 to direct an annual exercise of arms at the Tilt Yard, West- 
 minster, and this year the ceremony was special owing to Sir 
 Henry having to give up the Mastership through age and 
 growing infirmity. Francis composed for the occasion a 
 special commemorative verse, " Polyhymnia," published in the 
 name of George Peele, with a dedication to Lord Compton, 
 one of the Knights at Tilt. For this, also, Francis wrote the 
 beautiful poem, " His golden locks time hath to silver turned." 
 
 The plays produced this year probably comprised early 
 states of " King John," " Henry VL" (ist part), " Edward HL," 
 and " Titus Andronicus," while the works and pamphlets 
 published comprised " The Royal Exchange " (translated from 
 the Italian and dedicated to the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs), 
 " Never too late " (which is slightly autobiographical, dedicated 
 to Thomas Burnaby), and " The Mourning Garment " (dedi- 
 cated to the Earl of Cumberland), all under the name of 
 Greene. 
 
 51
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 1591. 
 
 The plays written for the Queen's festivities this year would 
 appear to have been " Love's Labour's Won " (" Much Ado 
 about Nothing "), " The Two Gentlemen of Verona," and 
 1591. probably another chronicle play. 
 
 William Shaxper or Shakspere (the reputed author), a 
 butcher's apprentice, married at the age of eighteen, in 1585 
 the father of twins, and in 1586, according to Mr. Sidney Lee, 
 trudging on foot to London by way of Oxford, had not at that 
 date been heard of in connection with any plays. After the 
 dogmatic way in which Mr. Lee has written Shakspere's Life, 
 I feel less under the need of apologizing for being a little dog- 
 matic myself. I have not yet examined these plays for their 
 legal knowledge (I must leave that to somebody else), but as 
 a solicitor who has taken up " on spec " the case of the unfor- 
 tunate and much derided Lord Bacon, I can only smile when I 
 read in Mr. Lee's book, " The Life of Shakespeare," " His 
 accurate use of legal terms may be attributed in part to his 
 observation of the many legal processes in which his father 
 was involved, and in particular to early intercourse with 
 members of the Inns of Court." Verily the red herring of 
 which Nashe, in his " Lenten Stuffe," writes so eloquently, 
 has been dragged before the noses of our leading literati to 
 some tune if we are to accept this statement as coincident with 
 reasonable experience. Under the name of Greene Francis 
 published his " Farewell to Folly," dedicated to Robert Carey, 
 son of Lord Hunsdon ; " Francesco's Fortunes," containing 
 further autobiography in the form of a minute description of 
 Paris, a criticism of the French Court and Society, and 
 sketches of refined life at Lyons ; and " A Notable Discovery 
 of Cosenage." He also published this year, under the name 
 of Spenser, " Complaients," comprising various poems, some 
 
 52
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 of them written in earlier years. He also wrote for publication, 
 but did not publish, a poem descriptive of the Court, which he 
 entitled " Colin Clout's Come Home Again " (see Grosart's 
 Spenser). 159L 
 
 I now ask my reader, in following these remarks, to take 
 in hand a copy of the " Complaients." Note first how in 
 the dedication he tries to explain the inconsistency and diffi- 
 culty of a man in Ireland publishing in this country. The first 
 " Complaient " is entitled the " Ruines of Time," and is 
 dedicated to his cousin Mary, Countess of Pembroke, 
 " Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother." The poet sings in the 
 character of the Spirit of Verlame, which is an allusion to old 
 Verulam, upon the site of which St. Albans and Gorhambury 
 (his foster-mother's home) were built. The poem refers feel- 
 ingly to the death of his father, the Earl of Leicester, and his 
 uncle Ambrose, Earl of Warwick. Addressing the widow of 
 the latter, he says, " Thy Lord shall never die the whiles this 
 verse shall Hve, and surely it shall live for ever." Francis, in 
 his other writings, was very confident of the eternity of his 
 verse. He next alludes to his aunt, the wife of Sir Henry 
 Sidney, and her two clever children. Lady Mary, to whom 
 he dedicates the verse (and who in 1590 translated " Anthony," 
 one of Garnier's plays), and Sir Philip Sidney, also an author. 
 The poem was doubtless written this year, because it alludes 
 to the death of Walsingham (Good Melibae), which only took 
 place in the previous year. The next poem, " The Teares 
 of the Muses," is dedicated to Lady Strange, afterwards 
 Countess of Derby, and would appear to have been written 
 between 1586 and this year. I base my view upon the allusion 
 in the poem to the death of Will, the Earl of Leicester's jesting 
 player, who, according to Sidney's letter to Walsingham, was 
 alive in 1586 — 
 
 " And he, the man whom nature's self had made 
 To mock herself, and truth to imitate, 
 With kindly counter under mimic shade, 
 Our pleasant Willie, ah, is dead of late." 
 
 53
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 The next " Complaient " is entitled " Virgil's Gnat " (long 
 since dedicated to the Earl of Leicester), and was probably 
 written between 1578 and, 1588. For the second time I draw 
 159L attention to the curious dedication: — 
 
 " Wrong'cl, yet not daring to express my paine 
 To you, great Lord, the causer of my care, 
 In cloudie teares my case I thus complaine 
 Unto yourself that only privie are." 
 
 Francis was probably alluding to the difficulties in the way 
 of his proper recognition by the Queen, owing to his father's 
 marriage, in 1578, with the widow of the first Earl of Essex. 
 
 The next " Complaient," entitled " Mother Hubbard's 
 Tale," is dedicated to Lady Compton. She was one of the 
 daughters of Sir John Spencer, of Althorpe. The poet, in the 
 dedication, states the poem to have been composed long since 
 " in the raw concept of my youth." Seeing that the poem con- 
 tains a bitter satire upon Sir Christopher Hatton as the " Ape," 
 I doubt whether the volume was pubHshed until after that 
 courtier's death, which occurred on 20th November of this year. 
 In order to understand the contempt in which Francis held 
 him those interested should read the correspondence between 
 Hatton and Dyer, to be found, I think, in the " Life and Times 
 of Sir C. Hatton," by Nicholas. A son is never well affected 
 to his mother's lover. He wrote another poem this year as a 
 sort of elegy. It is under the mask of " Greene," and is 
 entitled " A Maiden's Dream." The dedication is to Lady 
 Elizabeth, wife of Hatton's nephew. Sir William Hatton. 
 
 The " Ruines of Rome," " Visions of the World's Vanity," 
 and " Visions of Bellay," are doubtless earlier poems. 
 " Muioptomos " was dedicated to Lady Elizabeth Carey, wife 
 of the eldest son of the Queen's cousin. Lord Hunsdon, and 
 appears to have been written about 1590. For the entertain- 
 ment of the Queen at Theballs, Francis seems to have written 
 some speeches for Robert Cecil, who was then doing a good 
 deal of his father's work, and whom Francis desired to pro- 
 pitiate. The speeches were first printed by Nichols in his 
 
 54
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 " Progresses," from a MS. transcript, and the initials of the 
 transcriber (George Peele) being written at the end, the Httle 
 work was naturally attributed to Peele. 
 
 Francis wrote the Lord Mayor's Pageant for the 29th 1591 
 
 October of this year. The Lord Mayor was WiUiam Web, 
 or Webbe. As he and Sir Woolstan Dixie (for whom Francis 
 wrote the Lord Mayor's Pageant in 1585) married sisters, this 
 may have been the fulfilment of a friendly promise. Moreover 
 Web had probably allowed Francis to use his name when 
 publishing the "Discourse of English Poetrie " in 1586. 
 
 It is possible that the satire in " Mother Hubbard's Tale " 
 may have been aimed at the Frenchman Simier, whom the 
 Queen, I think, used to call her " Ape." This may explain 
 the more kindly attitude towards Hatton shewn in " A Maiden's 
 Dream." 
 
 55
 
 The Early Lifa of Lord Bacon. 
 
 1592. 
 
 On the first day of this year Francis, in the name of 
 
 Spenser, pubhshed a poem called " Daphnaida," which was a 
 
 lament for the death of Douglas Howard, w^fe of Sir Arthur 
 
 1592. Gorges. The poem is dedicated to her mother. Lady Helena, 
 
 Marquise of Northampton. 
 
 This is a most interesting year in the career of Francis. 
 His father, the Earl of Leicester; his uncle, Ambrose, Earl 
 of Warwick ; his cousin and intimate friend, Sir Philip Sidney ; 
 his friend, Sir Francis Walsingham ; and his antipathy. Sir 
 Christopher Hatton, were all dead. Burleigh was getting very 
 old, and affairs of State had drifted very much into the hands 
 of the Queen herself and her son Robert. Mr. Spedding can- 
 not find out how the acquaintance between Bacon and the Earl 
 of Essex began. He traces no allusion to it earUer than 
 February this year, by which time, he says, it had ripened into 
 intimacy. Francis was, however, kept steadily in the back- 
 ground. What passed between Essex and himself we shall 
 never entirely know. As a speculation from me will not matter, 
 even if it be wrong, I venture upon consideration of the 
 documents at and subsequent to this period, to make a guess. 
 My guess is that Francis had begun to perceive how utterly 
 hopeless any recognition of his claims to the throne had then 
 become. He saw that the Queen, in her old age and in her 
 own curious way, was dotingly fond of the Earl of Essex. She 
 w^as nevertheless still beset by the difficulties of her own 
 creation. Although almost at her sixtieth year she was still 
 posing before her people as a virgin ; her bosom was still 
 exposed according to the habits and customs of unmarried 
 ladies of that period. The chances, therefore, at that date that 
 she would admit a relationship, which many around her doubt- 
 less well understood, were becoming remote. I should say 
 
 56
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 that Francis, by this time, had formed the settled conclusion 
 that the Queen would wait until her death before declaring her 
 successor, and that successor would most likely be Robert. 
 He accordingly would decide to discontinue the prosecution 1592. 
 of his own claims, and tell Essex that under all the circum- 
 stances it would be better for the State that he, Robert, a 
 popular idol and leader of men, should succeed to the throne 
 on the death of their mother. Francis would probably argue : 
 " The circumstances attending my birth are very awkward. 
 The witnesses of the marriage ceremony are dead, and a dying 
 declaration of the Queen on the subject might not be accepted 
 by the people to whom I am comparatively unknown. Under 
 these circumstances, and more especially since I have taken 
 upon myself the tremendous task of endeavouring to improve 
 our language and literature, and the training and knowledge 
 of our race, I shall be quite content to go on with my present 
 studies if I can secure some position of permanent and 
 sufficient income to enable me in comfort to prosecute my own 
 work. There is less difficulty with respect to your birth, and 
 I am quite willing to aid you in the direction of affairs of State ; 
 but if I withdraw in this way you must secure for me a suitable 
 office of good salary as quickly as you can." A great deal of 
 support to this view is to be found in Bacon's apology concern- 
 ing Essex. 
 
 I consider that it was in this state of mind, and upon this 
 understanding, that Francis penned the memorable letter to 
 Burleigh, the draft of which appears in the Supplement to 
 Rawley's " Resuscitatio." It begins : " My Lord, with as much 
 confidence as mine own honest and faithful devotion unto your 
 service, and your honourable correspondence unto me and my 
 poor estate can breed in a man, do I commend myself unto 
 your Lordship. / wax now somewhat ancient ; one and thirty 
 years is a great deal of sand in the hour glass. My health, 
 I thank God, I find confirmed, and I do not fear that action 
 shall impair it, because I account my ordinary course of study 
 and meditation to be more painful than most parts of actions 
 
 I 57
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 are. / ever bear a mind (in some middle place that I could 
 discharge) to serve her Majesty ; not as a ■}nan born under 
 Sol that loveth honour ; nor under Jupiter, that loveth business 
 2592. (fo'>' the contemplative planet carrieth me away wholly); but 
 
 as a man born under an excellent Sovereign, that deserveth the 
 dedication of all men's abilities. . . . Again, the meanness 
 of my estate doth somewhat move me ; for though I cannot 
 accuse myself that I am either prodigal or slothful, yet my 
 health is not to spend, nor my course to get. Lastly, I confess 
 that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate 
 civil ends, for I have taken all knowledge to be my province ; 
 and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one 
 with frivolous disputations, confutations and verbosities, the 
 other with blind experiments and auricular traditions and 
 impostures, hath committed so many spoils, I hope I should 
 bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and 
 profitable inventions and discoveries ; the best state of that 
 province. This, zvhether it be ctcriosity or vain glory, or 
 nature, or (if 07ie take it favourably) phi lanthropia, is so fixed 
 in my mind as it cannot be removed. And I do easily see that 
 place of any reasonable countenance doth bring commandment 
 of 7jwre wits than of a mans own, zvhich is the thing I greatly 
 affect. And for your Lordship, perhaps you shall not find 
 more strength and less encounter in any other. And if your 
 Lordship shall find now, or at any time, that / do seek or 
 affect any place whereunto any that is nearer unto your Lord- 
 ship shall be concurrent^ say then that I am a most dishonest 
 man. And if your Lordship cannot carry me on, I will not do 
 as Anaxagoras did, who reduced himself with contemplation 
 unto voluntary poverty ; but this I will do : 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 pioneer in that mine of truth, which 
 (he said) lay so deep . . . from my lodging at Gray's 
 Inn." 
 
 58
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 Anthony Bacon arrived in England at the beginning of 
 this year, and the foreign news brought by him may have been 
 the cause of Francis writing the lengthy article entitled 
 " Observations on a Libel " (see Spedding's " Life ") for trans- 1592. 
 mission abroad as a reply to the attacks which had been made 
 upon the Queen and her Ministers by Father Parsons in a 
 pamphlet entitled " Responsio ad edictum Reginae Anghae." 
 
 The plays written this year were probably " Soliman and 
 Persida " for the Earl of Sussex's players, " Henry VL" (2nd 
 part), and " Richard IL" Francis for the first play adapted 
 from a novel by Wootton called " Courtly Controversy," and for 
 the others probably dictated from Hollingshed's Chronicles. 
 Like Mr. Shaw at the present day, when wanting to compose 
 quickly he dictated in blank verse. (I had better explain that 
 I am not entirely serious in this remark.) The other works 
 pubhshed this year comprised, under the name of Greene, in 
 February some pamphlets, and in July a novel called " Philo- 
 mela," stated in the preface to have been written some time 
 ago, and having a dedication to Lady Bridget Fitzwalter, wife 
 of the eldest son of the Earl of Sussex. In the same month 
 (July) a parnphlet, chaffing his old friend Gabriel Harvey for 
 the part he took in a recent reception of the Queen at Saffron 
 Walden, was published. In August he published, as Greene, 
 " Black Books Messenger," and translated and dictated to an 
 assistant a little work by Tasso, called " The Householder's 
 Philosophy." 
 
 I am tolerably certain that Francis was at this time, if not 
 earlier, well helped by a staff of men capable of writing a sort 
 of shorthand, who afterwards transcribed their work. During 
 August he was at his Lodge at Twickenham Park, to which, 
 says Mr. Spedding, he had betaken himself with some of his 
 lawyer friends (Masters Dunch, Cecil, Gosnold, and Field) 
 upon a flying report of " the sickness " (the plague). He asked 
 Dr. Andrews, aften^^ards a famous bishop, and Mr. Phillips, a 
 decipherer of the Foreign Office, to join him. The Queen at 
 this time was going on one of her Progresses, including 
 
 59
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 Croydon, at which place the players performed " Summer's 
 Last Will and Testament." Francis, in his letter to Phillips, 
 says, " I have excused myself of this progress, if that be to 
 1592. excuse to take liberty where it is not given." 
 
 In view of his recent serious resolutions, Francis, at this 
 date, made up his mind to close his career as Greene, and, in 
 doing so, to take advantage of the opportunity it afforded for 
 "improving the occasion." On 20th September, 1592, he 
 pubHshed Greene's " Groatsworth of Wit," which contains, 
 in an introduction, rebukes of three of his assistants, viz., 
 Marlowe, Peele and Lodge. Judging by the circumstances 
 of the death of Marlowe in the following year; judging, 
 moreover, by the efforts of Peele to get money from 
 Burleigh in 1595 by an offer of verses which had been 
 put out in his name six years before, and by the 
 tradition as to the nature of the disease which ended in his 
 death, I gather that these two men were rapidly becoming 
 impossible, and yet Francis was, to a certain extent, in their 
 hands. The general alarm at the report of the plague, 
 coupled with the warning that he then administered, might 
 turn them to better courses. About Lodge we know very little. 
 He probably was not past praying for, and appears to have 
 been subsequently sent on a voyage. I expect these men had 
 much to do with writing out parts for the players and giving 
 hints as to the mode of performance. It is in this introduction 
 that we have the first printed reference to Shakspere, namely, 
 as an actor of some fussiness and self-importance. " The only 
 Shake-scene." His next pamphlet followed within a few days, 
 and was entitled " Greene's Vision," written at the instant of 
 his death, it being a prose account of interviews successively 
 with the spirits of Chaucer, Gower, and Solomon. It contains 
 an apology for much that Francis had written under the name 
 of " Greene." In the preface, he says, " Many things I have 
 wrote to get money, which I could otherwise wish to be 
 suppressed." I hope that, whoever may take upon himself 
 the publication and co-ordination of the complete works of 
 
 60
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 Lord Bacon will give heed to that wish. For biographical 
 purposes it is necessary to quote somewhat lengthily from the 
 Vision " : "I will begin from henceforth to hate all such 
 foUies, and to write of matters of some import, either moral, 1592. 
 
 to discover the course of virtue, how man shall direct his life 
 to the perfect felicity, or else to discourse as a naturalist of 
 the perfection that nature hath planted in her creatures, thereby 
 to manifest the excellent glory of the Maker, or some poHtical 
 axioms or canonical precepts, that may both jointly and par- 
 ticularly profit the Commonwealth. . . . They which 
 hold Greene for a patron of love and a second Ovid, shall now 
 think him a Timon of such hneaments and a Diogenes that 
 will bark at every amorous pen." Then follows a vision of 
 Solomon, who makes a speech, and " Greene " goes on to say : 
 " And this he spake with such a majesty that the terror of his 
 countenance affrighted me, and I started and awoke and found 
 myself in a dream ; yet, gentlemen, when I entered into the 
 consideration of the vision and called to mind not only the 
 counsel of Gower and the persuasions of Solomon, a sudden 
 fear attended every limb, and I felt a horror in my conscience 
 for the foUies of my pen, whereupon, as in my dream so awake, 
 I resolved peremptorily to leave all thoughts of love, and to 
 apply my wits as near as I could to seek after wisdom so highly 
 commended by Solomon ; but howsoever the direction of my 
 studies shall be limited me, as you have had blossoms of my 
 wanton fancies, so you shall have the fruits of my better 
 labours." The " Repentance of Robert Greene," published at 
 the end of the year, completed the trilogy of pamphlets in 
 which Francis, as " Greene," took leave of the world. The 
 way " Greene " is metaphorically put to death is exquisite 
 fooling. I trust after this interval of over three hundred years 
 our literary leaders in matters Elizabethan will see the joke. 
 
 On 4th December Gabriel Harvey pubhshed his " Four 
 Letters of Notable Contents," to further mix up and mystify the 
 matter. 
 
 For the usual Tilt Yard ceremonies Francis wrote a some- 
 
 61
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 what grave device consisting of serious speeches. It has been 
 1592 called " A Conference of Pleasure." I fail to understand why. 
 
 His own speeches are one in praise of knowledge, and another 
 in praise of the Queen. 
 
 The plays written this year were perhaps the " Pinner of 
 Wakefield " and " The Old Wives' Tale." 
 
 62
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 1593. 
 
 In February of this year a new Parliament met, to which 
 Francis was returned as M.P. for Middlesex. This Parliament 
 at an early age got to cross purposes with the Queen. To the 
 Speaker's petition for hberty of speech she allowed only 1593. 
 liberty to vote. The members who introduced a petition 
 requesting a settlement of the question of the succession to 
 the Crown she committed to prison. The next important 
 question was the vote of a subsidy. This time the Queen 
 demanded treble the usual supply, and asked that it should be 
 collected during one year. Now, as Mr. Spedding says, 
 although the practice of voting only one subsidy at a time had 
 once before been broken, it was with an intimation that the case 
 was extraordinary, and with the proviso that it should not be 
 taken for a precedent. Another difficulty arose because the 
 House of Lords proposed to join the Commons in fixing and 
 voting the amount. Francis, while wiUing to vote the 
 necessary money, claimed the ancient privilege of the House 
 of Commons to vote supplies apart from the House of Lords. 
 He further opposed the collection of a treble subsidy in one 
 year, on the ground that it would cause great discontent and 
 unsettle the kingdom. I am disposed to think that his objec- 
 tions were entirely in the interests of the Throne. To what 
 extent, however, England has been saved by the gallant fight 
 made by Francis for the privileges of the House of Commons 
 we do not know, nor whether, apart from the protest which 
 Francis made, the people of England would have quietly 
 acquiesced in the collection from them of a treble subsidy in 
 one year. 
 
 Francis carried his point as to the House of Commons, but, 
 on the other question, although he eventually gave way, he 
 incurred the intense displeasure of the Queen. Just consider 
 
 63
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 what this self-willed, passionate, spoilt monarch would be 
 likely to say and do when the son she ignored, and yet feared, 
 ventured to lead the House of Commons in opposition to her 
 1593. will. I am disposed to think she went so far as to cut off his 
 allowance. She was just the sort of woman to say, " This 
 young half-bastard, half-son of mine has had the impertinence to 
 attempt to stop my supplies from Parliament; I will stop his 
 and see how he likes it." 
 
 " O, how wretched is that poor man who hangs on princes' favour." 
 
 Francis, for many a month afterwards, was denied the 
 Court ; his explanations were not received, and, judging by his 
 borrowings of large amounts from various sources, and even of 
 small amounts from Anthony Bacon, was deprived of his Court 
 allowance. His letters to Burleigh and the Earl of Essex are 
 in a mutilated state, and we have the unexpected fact of both 
 Robert Cecil and Thomas Cecil urging their father. Lord 
 Burleigh, to do something for Francis. His own letters to the 
 Queen confirm this. What he at this period really wanted was 
 not the Solicitor-Generalship, nor subsequently the position 
 of Attorney-General, but that a reconciliation should - be 
 brought about, and that he should be restored to the good 
 opinion of the Queen. He had mortgaged his Star Chamber 
 reversion, and could not pay the half-year's interest. Anthony 
 came to the rescue by trying to realise his estate at Markes, 
 for which the concurrence of Lady Anne, who had a life 
 interest, was necessary. As usually happens, when people are 
 " hard up," the application to her to help in this matter only 
 resulted in complaints as to the extravagance or want of thrift 
 on the part of the apphcant. Lady Anne's grumble was that 
 Francis was keeping a lot of men who were wasting his money. 
 In July, Anthony and Francis negotiated the sale of another 
 estate belonging to Anthony to Alderman Sir John Spencer, of 
 Crosby Hall. 
 
 Mr. Spedding quotes several letters from Lady Anne Bacon 
 about this period. One in April refers to some " enigmatical 
 
 64
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 folded writing " by Francis, which she did not understand. In 
 another letter she speaks of Francis in these words : " He was 
 
 his father's first ." Mr. Spedding cannot make out the 
 
 last word, but thinks it is " chis," and therefore writes it 1593. 
 " choice." Was it " child " I wonder, and was Lady Anne 
 accidentally letting the cat out of the bag? I do not wish to 
 magnify the point, but the letter should be carefully examined 
 before it may be considered disposed of. 
 
 As a natural result of all his trouble, Francis, who was never 
 strong, became ill at Twickenham, as his letter to Lady Paulet 
 discloses. He still, however, assisted Essex and Anthony in 
 Foreign Office affairs, which, in the absence of a regular 
 Foreign Secretary, they appear to have attended to. Francis 
 was evidently the decipherer and adviser, drafting letters, and 
 generally taking skilled charge of work nominally performed 
 by Essex. From further letters adduced by Mr. Spedding, I 
 find confirmation of the view that Francis really did not want 
 the position either of Solicitor-General or Attorney- General 
 but having regard to his serious pecuniary difficulties some 
 salaried appointment was essential to save the situation. We 
 can see by this and later correspondence how eager Essex was 
 to procure his brother any salaried post which became vacant. 
 He was doubtless sorry for his brother, and anxious to carry 
 out the understanding between them that some appointment of 
 middle position should be procured for Francis, in which he 
 might be decently maintained while prosecuting his literary 
 schemes. 
 
 The theatres were closed most of this year on account of 
 the plague, and it is natural that, owing to illness and trouble, 
 very little dramatic work was accomplished by Francis. He 
 wrote a poem called " The Honour of the Garter," on the 
 occasion of the Earl of Northumberland being installed Knight 
 of the Garter at Windsor on the 26th June. This was inscribed 
 in the name of Peele, who subsequently made it the pretext 
 for drawing a gratuity from the Earl of Northumberland in 
 respect of it. 
 
 K 65
 
 1593. 
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 " The Honour of the Garter " (which my reader should refer 
 to) contains the following reference to the young Earl of 
 Southampton : — 
 
 " Then the brave Earls of Stafford and Southampton, 
 Whose successors for his sake that lives 
 And now survives in honour of that name, 
 To whom my thoughts are humble and devote. 
 Gentle Wriothesley, Southampton's star, 
 I wish all fortune that in Cynthia's eye : 
 Cynthia, the glory of the Western world. 
 With all the stars in her fair firmament. 
 Bright may he rise and shine immortal." 
 
 For information about Southampton I am indebted to Mr. 
 Sidney Lee's " Life of Shakespeare," according to which he was 
 born in 1573. When he was eight years old his father died 
 and he succeeded to the title and a rich inheritance. He 
 became a royal ward of Court. At the age of twelve he went 
 to St. John's College, Cambridge, and graduated M.A. in 1589. 
 In 1590 he was a student at Gray's Inn. I do not know 
 whether it was the practice in those days for a rich young fellow 
 to become a pupil in the Chambers of some learned Counsel, 
 but if so I have a pretty strong opinion that he " read " with 
 Francis. At this date he would be twenty years of age. We 
 further learn that the young man was (very naturally under 
 such circumstances) devoted to literature, and that John Florio 
 was in his pay. 
 
 The next month a poem was printed and published entitled 
 " Venus and Adonis," with a dedication by Shakes-peare to 
 Southampton. It is called " The first heir of my invention." 
 It was certainly the first time that an idealised, or any other 
 form of our Stratford friend's name, had ever appeared in 
 print. The origin of the invented term " shake-speare " can be 
 seen in " The Shepheard's Calendar " Glosse, for October, and 
 also in the " Faerie Queen," Book II., Canto 8, and in 
 other places in the same poem. The poem of "Venus and 
 Adonis " was published by Field, himself a native of 
 
 66
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 Stratford, and Francis may have sold the poem out and out 
 to Shaksper, who by this time would have made money out 
 of his share as co-venturer in the theatre upon the side of the 
 Thames. In the alternative, I should say that Francis was in 1593. 
 bad straits for money. Marlowe was dead, having been killed 
 in a brawl on the ist June that year; Greene was, of course, 
 " defunct " ; Peele was both unrehable and unassociated with 
 this style of verse, so that the name of another player was used 
 for a consideration, as indicated in the cipher story. One other 
 name might possibly have been used, namely, Thomas Kyd, 
 but he was in disgrace with the authorities under circumstances 
 which are stated by Professor Boas in his recently published 
 " Life and Works of Kyd." It appears from the Professor's 
 researches that about May some threats, or as they were then 
 called, "libels" against the Dutch residents in London had been 
 posted on the walls of the Dutch cemetery. The Star Chamber 
 Council employed Commissioners to enquire into the libels 
 and arrest offenders. Amongst those arrested were Marlowe 
 and Kydde, both of whom had been in the employment of 
 Francis in some form or other. Marlowe, while out on bail 
 was killed in a brawl (ist June). Kydde appears to have 
 cleared himself of the charge of being concerned in the Dutch 
 libels, but in his possession was found a portion of a Unitarian 
 tract, at that time deemed atheistical, and he was in trouble 
 on that account. Professor Boas brings to light a letter of 
 excuse purporting to have been written by Kydde in extenua- 
 tion. I am quite prepared to concede that Kydde wrote it if 
 my reader will agree that Francis, who was always drafting 
 letters for other people, composed it. Judging by the 
 facsimile which Mr. Boas publishes, the writing is just what 
 one would have expected from a scrivener's clerk. Kydde's 
 father was a scrivener, viz., a person whom solicitors would at 
 the present day call a law stationer, and it is likely that the son 
 followed the same -occupation. It will be noticed in the 
 facsimile that the writer left spaces for words and quotations 
 he could not read (a useful practice followed by engrossing 
 
 67
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 clerks to this day). The difficult words and quotations are 
 filled in by another hand. This suggestion explains the 
 erudition in the letter, which otherwise is somewhat difficult to 
 1593. account for. It contains two quotations from Cicero, an author 
 much quoted by Francis in his acknowledged works. The 
 "Greene" pamphlet in 1589, " Ciceronis Amor," dealt with 
 an incident in the Latin author's career. The Kyd letter 
 is also a useful corroboration of the cipher story as to the fact 
 of Marlowe " bearing naine to serve my Lord,'' which I take to 
 mean that Francis had been writing plays in Marlowe's name. 
 Gabriel Harvey, years before, in addressing young Francis as 
 " Immerito," called him a " Lord," and from what the cipher 
 discloses as to Francis it is not unreasonable that he should 
 use the like expression about himself in composing a letter 
 for his assistant to write. 
 
 All the other assistants being thus unavailable, Francis 
 would seem to have for the first time used the name of another 
 of the players as pseudo author of a poem of the " Greene " 
 class, which, in July, his necessities compelled him to sell. 
 
 The plague doubtless accounts for the absence this year of 
 any special ceremonies in the Tilt Yard at Westminster on 
 the Queen's Accession Day. 
 
 At Christmas the name " Shakspere " for the first time 
 appears in the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber as 
 appearing with Burbage as a member of the Lord Chamber- 
 lain's company before the Queen. I cannot name the plays ; 
 probably old ones were revived. 
 
 68
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 1594. 
 
 In January, 1593-4, Francis was still out of favour with the 
 Queen, and had not been appointed to any office. Accordingly 
 he turned his attention to pleading at the Law Courts. On 
 25th January he appeared in the Queen's Bench for the heir 1594. 
 of Lord Cheyney against the purchasers of his land, and 
 acquitted himself so well that Burleigh sent his Secretary to 
 "congratulate unto him the first fruits of his public practice," and 
 to ask for a note of " his case and the chief points of his plead- 
 ing to the end he might make report thereof where it might do 
 him most goody He held briefs again on the 5th and 9th. 
 The account given by Mr. Henry Gosnold quoted by Mr. 
 Spedding, is worth reading. It is clear that for Francis to 
 appear and plead in the Courts was no ordinary matter. It was 
 expected that several noblemen would put in an attendance. 
 However, there was a good assemblage of learned judges, who 
 showed him extraordinary respect. This strikes me as a 
 curious commencement for one who, according to tradition, 
 was only a young barrister of thirty-three. It rather indicates 
 the sort of interest which might be taken were the Prince of 
 Wales at the present day to be known to be making his first 
 public speech than the incident of a comparatively obscure 
 barrister conducting his first case. 
 
 About 30th March, Francis wrote a letter to the Earl of 
 Essex, which seems to have been intended for the Queen's 
 perusal. In that letter he refers to his intention " With this 
 disgrace of my fortune, and yet with that comfort of the good 
 opinion of so many honourable persons, to retire myself with 
 a couple of men to Cambridge (evidently economising in the 
 matter of assistants), and there spend my life in my studies and 
 contemplations without looking back." I cannot see how 
 Francis was being disgraced by not receiving an appointment 
 
 69
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 for which he admitted in later letters others were equally fit. 
 His disgrace was something much more than this. 
 
 On the 19th April Francis went down to Greenwich, where 
 1594. the Court was being held, hoping that the Queen would allow 
 him to interview her, but he was not successful. He returned 
 to London, and was again engaged in the Law Courts. 
 
 In May the poem of " Lucrece " was entered in the 
 Stationers' Register, and later on published by Field, with a 
 dedication to the Earl of Southampton signed by " W. Shakes- 
 peare." Whether this was another out and out purchase by 
 Field and his fellow villager, it is impossible to say, although, 
 from what we can gather of Shakespere's character, he may 
 have bought the poem and dedication for an inclusive sum. 
 Still the cipher goes no further than to say that Shakespere's 
 name was used for a consideration. In this, or perhaps more 
 probably, the previous year, a curious pamphlet, entitled " The 
 Unfortunate Traveller," by Thomas Nashe, is also dedicated 
 to Southampton. He says : " A dere lover and cherisher you 
 are, as well of the lovers of Poets as of Poets themselves. 
 Amongst their sacred number I dare not ascribe myself, though 
 now and then I speak English." 
 
 In July, Francis was still without permission to attend Court, 
 and we find him, with the help of Anthony, borrowing money 
 for a journey he was about to take North. Whether he was 
 going to Scotland to see King James we cannot tell, but seeing 
 that a play of his, entitled " King James IV. of Scotland " was 
 licensed in May of this year, it is possible that he had some 
 scheme for forcing the Queen's hand, in which King James 
 may have been expected to assist, and that he took the play 
 in his pocket as a present. However, Francis was taken ill 
 at Huntingdon, and got no further along the Great North Road 
 from London ; but he made use of his proximity to Cambridge 
 to visit the University and take up his M.A. Judging by one 
 of Nashe's allusions to Gabriel Harvey, they probably met once 
 more at Cambridge. 
 
 August found Francis at work examining prisoners in the 
 
 70
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 Tower suspected of plotting against the Queen, his work being 
 
 under direct retainer from her Majesty ; see his letter of 20th 
 
 July — " Nothing under mere impossibility could have detained 
 
 me from earning so gratious a vail as it pleased your Majesty 1594. 
 
 to give me." The same period shows him pressing Anthony 
 
 to provide another ^150. During the Autumn Anthony is 
 
 still engaged in borrowing money and lending it to Francis, 
 
 who, up to the end of the year, was still denied the Court, and, 
 
 what is equally probable and more serious, was not being paid 
 
 an allowance from the Queen. 
 
 It is to this year that Mr. Sidney Lee, in the " Dictionary 
 of National Biography," ascribes John Lyly's second petition 
 to the Queen, akhough Mr. Arber puts it at 1593. The trans- 
 cript is amongst the Harleian MSS., and commences as 
 follows: — " Most gratious and dread soveraigne, tyme cannot 
 worke my peticions, nor my peticions the tyme. After many 
 years' service it pleased your Majesty to except against Tents 
 and Toyles, I wish that for Teants I might putt in Tenements, 
 so should I be eased of some Toyles. Some lande, some good 
 fines, or forfeitures that shall fall by the just fall of these most 
 false traitors, that seeing that nothing will come by the Revells, 
 I may prey upon the Rebells. Thirteene years your hignes 
 servant but yet nothing. Twenty friends, that though they say 
 they wilbe sure, I find them sure to be slowe. A thowsand 
 hopes but all nothing, a hundred promises but yet nothing. 
 Thus, casting upp the Inventary of my freinds, hopes, promises, 
 and tymes, the summa totaHs amounteth to just nothing. My 
 last will is shorter than myne invencion ; but three legacies : 
 patience to my Creditors, Melancholic without measure to my 
 friends, and beggerie without shame to my family .... 
 The last and the least, that if I bee borne to have nothing, I 
 may have a protection to pay nothinge, which suite is like his 
 that haveing folloued the Court tenn years for recompence of 
 his service committed a Robberie and tooke it out in a pardon." 
 
 The allusion to the rebels was doubtless to Dr. Lopez and 
 others, who were accused of and eventually condemned for a 
 
 71
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 conspiracy to poison the Queen. Francis drew up a report 
 about Lopez and his treason, although Mr. Spedding cannot 
 fix an exact date when it was written. Shortly before Decem- 
 1594. ber his assistant, Thomas Kydde, died (see Professor Boas). 
 Towards the latter end of December Francis took part in 
 the Christmas revels of the students of Gray's Inn. These 
 commenced on the 20th and lasted until the 28th, on which 
 night the " Comedy of Errors " was performed by the players. 
 As there had been considerable overcrowding at this perform- 
 ance, the lawyers decided to have a " graver conceit " performed 
 in the January following. " Romeo and Juliet " may probably 
 also be assigned to this year. 
 
 72
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 1595. 
 
 Accordingly, on 3rd January, 1594-5, a device known as 
 " The Order of the Helmet " was performed at Gray's Inn. 
 Many great personages were invited and came, and when the 
 guests were seated, the Prince of the Revels came in full state 1595. 
 
 and took his throne. Various persons were invested with a 
 collar of the Knighthood of the Helmet, the articles of the 
 Order were read, and each in turn kissed the helmet in token 
 of his vow to keep them inviolate. The articles, which are 
 given in Mr. Spedding's book, are well worth reading, and are 
 followed by a series of speeches : one Counsellor advising the 
 exercise of war ; a second, the study of philosophy ; a third, 
 the eternisement and fame by buildings and foundations ; a 
 fourth, absoluteness of state and treasure ; a fifth, advising 
 virtue and a gracious government ; a sixth, persuading 
 pastimes and sports. Mr. Spedding sees in this device the 
 germ of the notions which Francis carried out to completion 
 in his " New Atlantis, or Solomon's House." Now that the 
 " New Atlantis " has been proved by Mr. Wigston and others 
 to be identical with Heydon's " Land of the Rosicrucians," it 
 is likely that the same device was related to the scheme of 
 secret societies developed into the Freemason and Rose Cross 
 brotherhoods. 
 
 The Prince of the Revels above referred to was entitled 
 the Prince of Purpoole, and was enthroned with great 
 ceremony. 
 
 Francis exhibited peculiar fondness for the kingly colour. 
 On the occasion of his marriage, in 1606, he was thus arrayed. 
 " Purple from cap to shoe," states the chronicler of the event. 
 
 On the 26th January was entered in the Stationers' Register 
 the play of " Cornelia." It was translated from the French of 
 Gamier and dedicated to Lady Bridget Ratcliffe, then 
 
 L 73
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 Countess of Sussex, being probably written for her husband's 
 strolHng players. It is stated to have been the work of a 
 "winter's week," and is signed T. K. It is the only play 
 1595. published in these initials, and as Kyd was dead before the 
 " winter's week " it was written, was foisted on to him, a 
 practice with reference to recently deceased persons followed 
 by Francis on other occasions. The writer in the dedication 
 referred to, after saying that the play was the work of a 
 " winter's week " (thus shewing wonderfully rapid powers of 
 translating and dictating), goes on to promise better travail 
 in the summer with the tragedy of " Portia." It is a curious 
 fact that later in the year was produced " The Merchant of 
 Venice," which is the nearest approach to a tragedy of " Portia " 
 Elizabethan times afford. 
 
 Gamier, in 1568, wrote the " Tragedie de Porcie," but I 
 am unable to say whether it is the foundation for any portion 
 of " The Merchant of Venice." If so, it is noteworthy how 
 the name which is derived from the Porcii or keepers of swine 
 {vide Miss Young) is ideahsed to Portia. 
 
 Mr. Spedding begins his account of this year with an 
 interesting undated letter from Francis to Essex. The 
 reference in it to the " waters of Parnassus " indicates that 
 Essex well knew Francis to be a poet. We also learn from 
 this letter that Francis had not only ceased to be keen for the 
 appointment of SoHcitor-General, but had very little hope of 
 it. On 25th January, though Francis was sent for to the 
 Court, he was not seen by the Queen, and he wrote to Anthony 
 a graphic account of what passed. Referring to money 
 matters, it looks as though he may have been again in receipt 
 of a small allowance from the Queen. This is the interpreta- 
 tion I have put upon the words : " received so little thence 
 where I deserved best." The letter also shews his determina- 
 tion to be more careful then ever of his money, and to sell off 
 " those small things I have " with as much expedition as may 
 be, and then go abroad. He refers to the fact that he is short 
 of work for some of his assistants, " idle pens," and asks 
 
 74
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 Anthony to send something for them to copy. In a letter to 
 Sir Robert Cecil, he says : " Wheresoever her Majesty shall 
 appoint me to live I shall truly pray for her Majesty's preserva- 
 tion and felicity," thus shewing his natural obligation to 1595. 
 conform to her wish in this respect. Again, in writing to 
 Burleigh on 21st March, he (quite out of accordance with our 
 traditional view) indicates that he has no wish to folloiv the 
 practice of a lawyer except so far as it might be necessary to 
 serve the Queen on occasions. Later on, in a letter to his 
 friend Greville, he explains how weary he is of all this business. 
 
 In another letter to Burleigh in July he expresses himself 
 to be perfectly contented were a fit man, such as Sergeant 
 Fleming, appointed to the vacant office. If his mother 
 appointed a good man he had not another word to say. 
 In September a letter to the Lord Keeper shows that 
 although not appointed to any office he is at this time 
 employed as Counsel for the Queen in a number of legal 
 matters. Again in October he writes that as the Queen 
 is about to appoint a Solicitor his own legal service will 
 not be needed, though if she require him in any particular 
 matter, his willing service will be available. In November 
 Sergeant Fleming was given the vacancy. The Earl of 
 Essex, much mortified that his efforts had proved in- 
 effectual, gave Francis an estate of the value of ^^ 1,800. 
 About the same period the Queen leased Twickenham Park to 
 him for twenty-one years, to date from Michaelmas, 1624, when 
 the lease to Edward Bacon expired. Another letter to Essex 
 alludes to his intention not to follow the practice of the law. 
 In this letter occurs a phrase which recalls the line in one of 
 the Shakespeare plays — 
 
 " For there was never yet philosopher 
 That could endure the tooth-ache patiently." 
 
 Amity with the Queen being now somewhat restored, we 
 find Francis, on the 17th November, once more writing the 
 
 75
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 device for the ceremonies of the Tilt Yard at Westminster. It 
 was called " The Device of the Indian Prince." 
 
 The plays written and produced this year in addition to 
 1595. " The Merchant of Venice," would probably comprise " Love's 
 
 Labour's Lost " (see the pamphlet by Mr. James, of 2,7, Tenby 
 Street, Birmingham) and "Richard III." With regard to 
 " The Merchant of Venice " it is possible, as it was not 
 printed until 1600, that in the meantime additions had 
 been made with reference to the " hard Jew " who caused 
 Francis to be arrested for debt in 1598; but this again 
 is a point I do not think it necessary to lay great stress 
 upon. Of the " small things " which Francis, in his letter 
 to Anthony, expressed an intention of selhng this year, 
 the following were pubhshed under the name of Spenser, 
 viz., " The Amoretti," dedicated to Sir Robert Needham ; 
 " Astrophel," dedicated to Sidney's sister ; " CoHn Clout Home 
 Again," dedicated to Sir Walter Raleigh ; and the beautiful 
 poem, " The Epithalamion." " The Anglo Feriae, or Eng- 
 land's Holidays," written under the pseudonym of Peele, was 
 not printed, but circulated in MS. It celebrates the events 
 of 17th November of this year, was dedicated to the Countess 
 of Huntingdon, and certain passages were obliterated before 
 publication. What was the reason for the obliteration? 
 
 After this year Peele disappears from the scene, and nothing 
 new was printed under the name of either Lyly, Watson, 
 Greene, Kydde, or Marlowe. Before passing to the next 
 year, notice should be made of a poem written by W. Har 
 called the " Epicidium," which contains these lines — 
 
 " You that have writ of chaste Lucretia, 
 
 Whose death was witness of her spotless hfe, 
 Or penned the praise of sad Corneha, 
 
 Whose blameless name hath made her fame so rife." 
 
 As this poem was connected with the death of the wife of 
 a Lord Mayor, and the W. Herbert who might have written 
 it was then recently dead, I ascribe it to Francis, and disagree 
 
 76 
 
 I
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 with Mr. Boas in his opinion that it is a reference to two 
 dramatists. " Cadwallader," being a long poem published in 1595. 
 
 1604 by a mysterious William Harbert, has been examined 
 for me at the British Museum and reported to be Baconian. 
 
 77
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 1596. 
 
 As the previous year had ended in improved relations with 
 the Queen, I am disposed to think the New Year's festivities 
 were provided with another play from Francis, probably " Mid- 
 1596. summer Night's Dream." 
 
 In January Francis wrote one or two letters of advice to the 
 Earl of Rutland, about to travel abroad. The first letter is 
 dated from Greenwich, where the Christmas festivities were 
 usually held. In the Spring, says Dr. Grosart, the Ladies 
 Somerset, two daughters of the Earl of Worcester, were 
 married. Francis, to celebrate the occasion, composed a 
 beautiful poem entitled the " Prothalamium " (Spenser). A 
 letter of 12th March shews him to be in serious monetary diffi- 
 culties. On 50th April, the Mastership of the Rolls became 
 vacant, and Essex, from Plym.outh (whence he was starting 
 upon an expedition), immediately wrote letters to the Lord 
 Keeper, to Lord Buckhurst, and to Sir John Fortescue, 
 requesting them to do their best to push the claims of Francis 
 to the vacancy. Essex was away during the summer and 
 returned about September. 
 
 Francis wrote to him in October a very careful letter of 
 advice as to the best course to take in order to keep on good 
 terms with the Queen. He pointed out to Robert that he was 
 becoming too popular, and was likely for this reason to cause 
 offence to the Queen, who desired to be thought supreme. 
 
 On the ist September Francis had dedicated from Green- 
 wich his "Four Hymns of Love and Beauty" (Spenser) to 
 his aunt, the Countess of Warwick, and her sister, the Countess 
 of Cumberland. The following is an extract from the dedica- 
 tion : — "Accept this my humble service in lieu of the great 
 graces and honourable favours which ye daily shew unto me." 
 The relations of Francis with the Queen being now much 
 
 78
 
 The Early Life of Lord Bacon. 
 
 improved, I should not be surprised to find that his attendance 
 at Greenwich in September was in connection with the pro- 
 duction of plays, which I think included the one with the 
 significant title of " All's Well that Ends Well." Other plays 1596. 
 this year would be " Henry IV." (2nd part) and " The Merry 
 Wives of Windsor." 
 
 It appears by a letter from Anthony Bacon to his mother, 
 of 31st December, that Francis, during the holidays, received 
 " gratious usage and speech from the Queen," and presented 
 her with a tract on the Common Laws. 
 
 This year was also the date of the MS. entitled " The Veue 
 of Ireland," which looks to me to be a very careful summary 
 for the Queen and her advisers of the state of things in that 
 country, and the suggestion of remedies. He would probably 
 write it for her during the absence of Essex in Spain, and was 
 doubtless based upon the " Irish Collection " referred to in his 
 letter to Anthony of 25th January, 1594-5. It contains what 
 seems like an allusion to Essex, " upon whom the eye of all 
 England is fixed, and our last hopes now rest," and gives ample 
 indication that the writer was a skilled civil and criminal lawyer 
 and conveyancer. 
 
 The " Prothalamion " contains an autobiographical refer- 
 ence : — 
 
 " To mery London, my most kindly nurse 
 That to me gave this life's first native source ; 
 Though from another place I take my name — 
 An house of ancient fame." 
 
 According to the cipher Francis was born at Windsor Castle 
 and taken away in a box by Lady Ann Bacon to her residence 
 (York House), London. 
 
 79
 
 POSTSCRIPTA. 
 
 Biographical difficulties. 
 
 At the end of the year 1596 I close my attempt to recon- 
 struct the biography of Lord Bacon. From that date very 
 much more is known and recorded of his sayings and doings. 
 Biographical jj^g inner history of the period 1597 to 1626 will, however, 
 
 difficulties. ^ ^ . 1-11 
 
 need close study and incorporation with what is already 
 publicly recorded. The great tragedies and events of the 
 second half of his lifetime are subjects for a far, far abler pen 
 than mine. Moreover, at the date at which I close my sketch, 
 Francis had parted company with the masks of his early life. 
 The fictitious names of Thomas Watson, John Lyly, Immerito 
 and WilHam Webbe were no longer used. Of substantive 
 persons who sold to him the use of their names, Peele, 
 Marlowe, and Greene were dead. Kidd's name was only 
 appropriated after his death, and that but once. 
 
 Shaksper and Spenser alone were living; the former was 
 becoming prosperous, while the latter was still in the wilds of 
 Ireland, only returning in December, 1598, to die in poverty 
 the following month in consequence of the ruin of his home 
 at Kilcolman. 
 
 In bringing to a close what have been very hard labours, 
 I ask myself once more, Cui bono ? Are the bulk of the 
 English race really anxious for the truth, or are they indifferent 
 or incredulous, and, as Lord Bacon says, " impatient of 
 inquiry " } I admit that the investigator, unless he is prepared 
 for a long and patient examination, will repeatedly find 
 stumbling-blocks in the way of his acceptance of the cipher 
 story. The very letters and public acts of Francis Bacon and 
 Robert, Earl of Essex, Anthony Bacon, Lord Burleigh and 
 others, at first sight seem absolutely opposed to the cipher 
 view, but when we consider the spies which beset these people, 
 and when we reahse that any incautious admission in writing 
 meant danger to the parties concerned, one may be able to 
 
 80
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 understand the incongruity between the intimacy known to be 
 existing between Francis and Robert, and the strict formahty 
 of their correspondence. Again, we must not forget that we 
 are admitted to the perusal of only the selected letters. They 
 were sifted in Lord Bacon's lifetime, sifted again by Rawley 
 after his death ; winnowed again were .the letters obtained from 
 the Cabala, a second edition of which was published in 1663. 
 Cabala is a Hebrew word signifying secret knowledge, and, 
 according to an old Dictionary, is also the name given to a 
 skill or science practised by modern Jews in discovering 
 mysteries and expositions from the numbers that letters of 
 words make. They were sifted once more when Stephens pub- 
 lished, in 1702, his first collection of "Letters and Memories 
 of Sir Francis Bacon." Pope's " Iliad," please note, was 
 pubHshed in 171 5, and we are told his " Essay on Man " was 
 much indebted to Bolingbroke. When Stephens published 
 his second collection in 1734 from Lord Bacon's MSS. he tells 
 us in his preface (I quote from Spedding's " Life," Vol. L, page 
 16) that even at that time, more than one hundred years after 
 the death of Lord Bacon, there were MSS. " fit to be trans- 
 cribed and so preserved if not divulged." 
 
 There are some persons who, always wanting disputes 
 settling for them by some authority, have quoted Mr. 
 Spedding's opinion as final upon questions relating to the life 
 of Lord Bacon. This is not fair to Mr. Spedding. It is true 
 that he, like Mr. Montague before him, devoted the best part 
 of a lifetime to the preparation of an adequate biography of 
 Lord Bacon and an enumeration of his works, coupled, in the 
 case of Mr. Spedding, with a vindication of his character from 
 the aspersions of Lord Macaulay ; but Mr. Spedding had only 
 access to the documents at fourth hand, many catalogued were 
 unaccountably missing, and he had not the indication and 
 guide as to matters into which his research would have been 
 directed had the cipher story appeared in his day. It is 
 accordingly no derogation from the brilliancy of Mr. Spedding's 
 work that he had to labour very much in the dark. 
 
 M 81 
 
 Biographical 
 difficulties.
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 Just before writing these lines I was reading Pasquil's 
 
 "Apologie," titled-paged to Thomas Nashe. A brave, 
 
 strenuous, and devoted fight was made by that writer for the 
 
 Biographical unity of the Protestant Church ; ae^ainst schism and dissent. 
 
 difficulties. T -1 ' 1 • 1 
 
 Like the tactics mostly adopted towards Baconian questions by 
 antagonists of the present day, he tried to kill dissent by the 
 powerful weapon of ridicule (a weapon never more mightily 
 wielded in this country than by Nashe). Said Nashe : — " Con- 
 tention is a coale, the more it is blowne by a dysputation the 
 more it kindleth : I must spit in their faces to put it out." 
 But we know that the mighty effort failed, and the dissent which 
 split religious worshippers over a period of 250 years, into 
 many sections, has only during the last fifty years begun the 
 movement back again towards concentration and religious 
 unity. 
 
 82 
 
 I
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 Thomas Nashe. 
 
 Before long someone will be interested in telling us more 
 about Nashe. Is it only coincidence that his birth is stated 
 to have been in November, 1567 — the date given of the 
 birth of Robert, Earl of Essex, and that he is stated to have Thomas 
 
 Nashe. 
 
 belonged to the Hereford Nashes (not Hertford, as Dr. Grosart 
 erroneously states). Netherwood, where Robert is alleged to 
 have been born, is in Hereford. Nashe is not heard of after 
 1600, nor is he claimed by Francis as one of his masks; but 
 " Nashe " does seem to entertain many notions in common with 
 other masks claimed in the cipher story, and he frequently 
 mentions his abiHty to change his style. The cipher claims 
 that Francis was able to make a style specially applicable to the 
 writings published under the name of a particular mask. Look- 
 ing at the matter superficially, I fail to notice any very appre- 
 ciable difference between the Nashe pamphlets and the 
 following: — (i) "A Quip for an Upstart Courtier," printed in 
 the name of Robert Greene (which, however, is the least like) ; 
 (2) " Papp with a Hatchet," which also appeared in the Mar- 
 tinist controversy. The latter pamphlet is referred to by 
 Gabriel Harvey as being by Lyly. On the British Museum 
 print is marked in pencil, " attributed to T. Nashe and J. Lyly." 
 If we cannot materially distinguish the style, arguments, and 
 objective of the various pamphlets, we may have stumbled 
 across a piece of inner history not intended for revelation. In 
 the short extract obtained for me at the British Museum, I 
 find the dedication to be signed, " Double V." This may 
 associate it with the mask " Webbe " used for the *' Discourse of 
 Enghsh Poetry," published about the same date. It also 
 contains indications that the writer was acquainted with law 
 terms, and took the part of the stage players. There is a 
 sentence : " Faith, thou wilt be caught by the style. What 
 care I to be found by a style ? " And again : " They will rove 
 
 83
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 at thee and anatomize thy hfe from the cradle to the grave," 
 which reminds me oi the epigram which Mr. Spedding attri- 
 butes to Lord Bacon, entitled, " The World is a Bubble," and 
 Thomas finally there is the same quotation : " What atheist more foole 
 
 Nashe. 
 
 that saies in his heart there is no God," etc., to be found both 
 in Lyly's " Euphues " and Bacon's " Essay on Atheism." 
 
 Few seem to have noticed that on page 234 in Nashe's 
 " Lenten Stuffe," printed 1599, is to be found the word 
 " honorificabilitudinitatibus," which is also to be found in 
 " Love's Labour's Lost." The " Lenten Stuffe " will probably 
 turn out to contain secret history. Another odd reference is 
 contained in the dedication to " Humphrey, King of the 
 Tobacconists," which reads as follows : " Most courteous un- 
 learned lover of Poetry and yet a Poet thy selfe, of no lesse 
 price then H. S. that in honour of Maidmarrian gives sweete 
 Margera for his Empresse." Lord Bacon called one section of 
 his " Novum Organum " " Valerius Terminus with annotations 
 by Hermes Stella." If Hermes Stella = H. S. = Lord Bacon, 
 then the reference to Margera may be a reference to Margaret 
 of Navarre, and indirectly a confirmation of the cipher story. 
 
 Nashe's " Unfortunate Traveller," to the preface of which 
 I draw attention, is possibly the document of a secret 
 Society, just as, in my opinion, is the " Hypercritica," to be 
 found in Hazlewood's " Ancient Critical Essays on English 
 Poetry." Nashe's style is exceedingly coarse in places. In 
 "Christ's Tears over Jerusalem," printed 1593, he bids "a 
 hundred unfortunate farewells to fantasticall satirism," just as 
 " Greene," in the previous year, had apologised for " lascivious 
 pamphleting." Bear in mind that Francis was at this time 
 only aged thirty-two. He found his attempt to kill Martinism 
 by ridicule had failed. In 1599, when Francis had attained 
 to considerable power in the State, I am disposed to think he 
 decided that the marigold (Margaret's flower), mentioned in 
 the " Unfortunate Traveller," should close its petals ; the 
 pamphlets be withdrawn. At any rate in that year the 
 "authorities" directed "All Nashe's bookes and Dr. Harvey's
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 bookes be taken wheresoever they may be found, and that none 
 of the same be ever printed hereafter." This may account for 
 the fact of no claim being made in the cipher to the authorship 
 of Nashe. The speculation, if tenable, reveals the true author- Z^°T^^ 
 ship of the play of " Summer's last Will and Testament," played 
 in 1592 before the Queen at Croydon. It, moreover, explains 
 the presence of " The Isle of Dogs (fragment) by Thos. Nashe, 
 Inferior plaie " on the contents list outside of the MS. cover 
 found amongst the Northumberland MSS., which list also 
 named two Shakespeare plays and a number of Lord Bacon's 
 acknowledged writings. My conclusions are that Lord Bacon 
 purposely suppressed the Nashe writings so that his philosophi- 
 cal works should not be prejudiced in public favour by the 
 brilliant and powerful, though coarse and erratic productions 
 under the style of " Nashe." 
 
 The long word mentioned on the previous page is stated 
 by Dr. Piatt, of Lakewood, New Jersey, to make the following 
 Anagram: — "Hi ludi tuiti sibi Fr. Bacono nati," meaning, 
 " These plays entrusted to themselves proceeded from Francis 
 Bacon." A Quarterly Reviewer finds fault with the Latin and 
 the translation, but whether rightly I am unable to judge. 
 This discovery was earlier in date than the Bihteral Cipher 
 deciphered by Mrs. Gallup. 
 
 85
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 A few other 
 Mysteries. 
 
 I. — One matter of some mystery. Archbishop Tenison, 
 writing in " Baconiana," said, referring to Lord Bacon, " His 
 Lordship owned it under his hand (this is evidently a reference 
 A few other ^-q Bacon's letter to King James, March 23rd, 1620) that he 
 was frail, and did partake of the abuses of the times ; and 
 surely he was a partaker of their severities also. The great 
 cause of his sti^ffering is to some a secret. I leave them to 
 find it out by his words to King James : ' I wish that as I am 
 the first so I may be the last of sacrifices in your times, and 
 whe7i from private appetite it is resolved that a creattire shall 
 be sacrificed, it is easy to pick up sticks enough from any 
 thicket, whither it hath strayed, to make a fire to offer it 
 with.' " Dr. Rawley judged " some papers touching matters 
 of estate (State) to tread too near to the heels of truth and to 
 the times of the persons concerned." 
 
 2. — Robert, Earl of Essex, was confined in the Tower 
 before his execution. I have already drawn attention to the 
 words " Robart Tidir," an inscription clearly cut over the 
 doorway of the small cell at the foot of the stairs in the 
 Beauchamp Tower, see the Tower Guide Book. If this be an 
 indication of the cell in which Robert, Earl of Essex was 
 confined, we have an important confirmation of the cipher 
 allegation as to his parentage. 
 
 3. — Robert Devereux, third Earl of Essex, was, prior to 
 Cromwell, the most prominent leader of the Parliamentary 
 forces against Charles L Wood says: — "James L never 
 affected him . . . whether from that instinct or secret 
 prediction that divine fate often imprints in apprehension 
 whereby he did foresee in him, as it were, a hand raised against 
 his posterity, may be a notation not a determination. But the 
 King never liked him, nor could he close with the Court." 
 
 86
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 4. — In Archbishop Tenison's " Baconiana," 1679, is 
 stated: — " The fairest and most correct edition of this book in 
 Latin is that in foHo printed at London Anno 1623. And 
 whosoever would understand the Lord Bacon's cypher, let him 
 consult that accurate edition ; for in some other editions which 
 I have perused, the form of the letters of the alphabet in which 
 much of the mysterie consisteth, is not observed ; but the 
 Roman and Italic shapes of them are confounded." 
 
 A few other 
 Mysteries. 
 
 8»
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 The AttacR on 
 Mrs. Gallup. 
 
 The attack in the columns of The Times on the 
 bona fides of Mrs. Gallup, in which we have the singular 
 circumstance of The Times leader writer twice summing up 
 The attack on and giving judgment against Mrs. Gallup without waiting for 
 any communication from her, may have been answered 
 before this is printed. It is not likely if the charges are 
 unjustified that she will rest under imputations of literary 
 fraud which have been very freely made, and which, if hbels, 
 the persons making them are doubtless preparing to answer for. 
 But as to some of the points urged against her, she may 
 necessarily be as much in the dark as her interlocutors. 
 Should she effectually survive the technical tests the philogical 
 queries may have to be left to the philologists, and it will be 
 odd to find that several words of early date have escaped the 
 contributors to the Dictionary edited by Dr. Murray. 
 
 With regard, however, to the allegation of Americanisms, 
 it may turn out that some words of Elizabethan origin have 
 survived in the United States, though become obsolete or 
 differently spelt here. 
 
 The following notes may be of some use in seeking to clear 
 up some of the objections brought forward : — 
 
 I . — " Surcease of sorrow " is mentioned in Mr. Candler's 
 article in the " Nineteenth Century." Like that gentleman, 
 the words, when I read them in the cipher story, at once 
 recalled to me E. A. Poe's poem of the " Raven," but turning 
 to my dictionary I found " surcease " quoted from Bacon's 
 " Advertisement touching the Controversies of the Church," 
 while the antithesis " unceasing sorrowe " occurs on page i6o 
 of the " Biliteral Cipher Story," second edition. " Surcease of 
 sorrow " is a very poetical expression, and I am less surprised 
 at two poets using the phrase than I was to find in a book of 
 
 88
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 genealogies of persons in the United States named Spalding, 
 that someone of exactly my name, comprised of two words 
 only, lived and, let me hope, flourished in the States about a 
 hundred years ago. 
 
 2. — The alleged mistake as to Davidson. The cipher 
 story in which the reference to Davidson and the noblemen 
 who " led him to his death," is made, was deciphered from 
 Lord Bacon's " Treatise of Natural History," not published 
 until nine years after his death. Rawley, in a note at the end 
 of the cipher story, expressly draws attention to the existence 
 of errors. Before I grounded any imputation arising from the 
 discrepancy between the cipher story and what we have hitherto 
 accepted as a correct historical account, I think two sugges- 
 tions should have consideration: — (a) That Lord Bacon was 
 dictating from an overloaded memory at a late period of his 
 life, and this may have been just one of those errors of recol- 
 lection common to great brain workers under similar circum- 
 stances. (7?) Another view is that the words may poetically 
 express Lord Bacon's way of looking upon the degradation, 
 collapse, and eventual death of a man who had been one of 
 the Queen's principal ministers, whose life was forfeit, although 
 his punishment only took the form of imprisonment, heavy fine, 
 and dismissal from the prominent position he held, 
 
 3. — The alleged crib from Pope. Mr. Marston seeks to 
 
 destroy Mrs. Gallup's reputation by alleging that she borrowed 
 
 from Pope's versed translation of the " Iliad " for the purpose 
 
 of framing the English prose " Iliad," alleged to be by Lord 
 
 Bacon, and deciphered from the 1628 edition of Burton's 
 
 " Anatomy of Melancholy." The lines of Pope he particularly 
 
 singles out are — 
 
 "The bold Ormenian and Asterian bands. 
 In forty barques Eurypylus commands, 
 Where Titan hides his hoary head in snow, 
 And where Hyperia's silver fountains flow." 
 
 I have already, pointed out in TAe Times that " Titan/' 
 " hoary headed," and " silver fountains," were not new expres- 
 sions at the time Pope wrote, as they are used in Shakespeare. 
 
 The attack on 
 Mrs. Gallup.
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 My next note is that the MS. from which the cipher was 
 
 instructed must have been in existence in 1628, that is to say, 
 
 for two years after Lord Bacon's death. If my reader will 
 
 The attack on tym ^0 the deciphering- in Mrs. Gallup's book, it will be seen 
 
 Mrs. Gallup. r , . . 
 
 that no secret of Lord Bacon's life is disclosed in the IHad 
 decipher, and there was nothing, therefore, to necessitate the 
 destruction, though there may have been for the suppression, 
 of a very valuable and interesting MS. 
 
 In 1702 Stephens pubhshed his first collection of the 
 writings of Lord Bacon. Pope published the first volume of 
 his "Iliad" in 171 5. In 1734 the Harleian MSS., relating 
 to Lord Bacon, were overhauled a second time by Stephens, 
 who even then referred to MSS. as fit to be transcribed, and 
 so preserved if not divulged (see Spedding's " Life," Vol. I., 
 page 16). Pope absorbed freely from BoHngbroke for his 
 " Essay on Man," so it is not unreasonable to expect that he 
 made enquiry for other versions of the " Iliad " with a view to 
 the fine finish and polish for which his verse is celebrated. If 
 he were with this object permitted access to a manuscript 
 expressly directed " not to be printed," it is to his credit that 
 the case of plagiarism against him turns out to be so slight. 
 
 4. — Two or three critics write learnedly about digraphs, 
 and seem to imagine that once a cipher is known it should 
 be capable of being read with ease. I was always under the 
 opposite impression and the belief that the art of writing in 
 cipher and deciphering required long study and practice. 
 Even Lord Bacon himself in writing (Adv. L.) about the very 
 ciphers, refers to " changes " and to " intermixtures of nulls 
 and non-significants." Surely the digraph must necessarily be 
 appropriated according to the best discretion of the decipherer, 
 having due regard to the other letters obtained. 
 
 5. — Mrs. Gallup has pubhshed (Gay and Bird, Bedford 
 Street, W.C.) the "Tragedy of Anne Boleyn," with refer- 
 ences to all the works whence the sentences are taken. I 
 challenge anybody to produce an equally good play by 
 similar excerpts from literature. 
 
 90
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 "The Anatomy 
 of Melancholy." 
 
 The following notes may be of some use to any investigator 
 desiring to look into the question of the authorship of the 
 " Anatomy of Melancholy." 
 
 In the British Museum are two copies of a book of about 
 350 pages i2mo, called the " Treatise of MelanchoHe," the first 
 printed 1587, and the second 161 3. My examiner reports that 
 they are identical throughout, but that in the former about 
 twenty pages are missing. The author is stated to be 
 T. Bright. In 162 1 was published " The Anatomy of Melan- 
 choly" by Democritus, Junior. At the end is an apologetical 
 index, found only in this edition, subscribed Robert Burton 
 and dated " from my studie in Christ Church, Oxon." (Robert 
 Greene used to date " from his window in Clare Hall.") Later 
 editions in folio followed in 1624, 1628, 1632, 1638, 165 1-2, 
 1660, and 1676. The fourth edition (1632) differs from the 
 third, and the fifth (1638) from the fourth. The " Dictionary 
 of National Biography " can tell us very little about Bright. 
 He is stated to have been with Walsingham at the English 
 Embassy in Paris at the time of the massacre, was M.D. in 
 1579, at Cambridge in 1585, and when he died in 1616 directed 
 his body to be buried where God pleased. Judging from this 
 indication I should infer that he was a member of the Rosy 
 Cross brotherhood, the members of which appear to have 
 adopted the practice of directing that their bodies at death 
 should be buried obscurely. He was the reputed author of 
 a work on shorthand, and my impression is that he was one 
 of the " idle pens " referred to by Francis in his letter of 25th 
 January, 1594-5, to his foster-brother Anthony. Judging from 
 this letter and the scheme of the " New Atlantis," Bright would 
 seem to have been employed at Cambridge in extracting from 
 the books in the libraries there a " collection " of notes, facts 
 
 91 
 
 "The Anatomy 
 of Melancholy.'
 
 of Melancholy. 
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 and opinions with a view to their subsequent incorporation in 
 treatises and dictionaries. Burton was similarly engaged at 
 Oxford at a later period as the 1621 edition shews. 
 'The Anatomy The practicc sct ou foot by Lord Bacon of forming these 
 
 " collections " seems to have had a very natural origin. 
 
 As to a less degree is the custom amongst lawyers at the 
 present day when an Elizabethan lawyer had obtained all 
 material facts from his client, he would himself, or by his assis- 
 tants, " collect " together notes of all statutes, cases, and 
 treatises applicable to the case. Upon this "collection" of 
 facts and authorities he advised his chent or argfued his Brief. 
 Lord Bacon applied this system, necessary to a lawyer in a day 
 before Digests, to the acquisition of knowledge generally. 
 Having selected the subject, he or his assistant would collect 
 from books and other sources all information and opinions of 
 learned persons applicable to it. The " collection " would be 
 afterwards edited or dealt with in an essay, summary, or other 
 appropriate writing. 
 
 The date of the birth of Robert Burton is stated to have 
 been February 8th, 1576-7, and of his death, 25th January, 
 1639-40. By his will he bequeathed to Christ Church the 
 right to make a choice from his books, and there are bequests 
 of books to members of the College and various Oxford friends. 
 He adds : " If anie bookes be left lett my executors dispose of 
 them with all such bookes as are written with my own hands 
 and half my Melancholy copie, for Crips hath the other halfe." 
 Mr. A. H. BuUen, from whose introduction to Shilleto's 
 edition of 1896 I quote, very pertinently enquires why a copy 
 of the " editio princeps " is not to be found in the College 
 Library, which only possesses a copy of the second edition 
 bearing Burton's inscription. Let me first note the distinction 
 which Burton makes between books wTitten with his own hands 
 and the Melancholy copy. If my reader will follow the dates 
 it will be seen that when the " Treatise of IMelancholy " was 
 printed. Burton was only ten years old. The second edition 
 appeared in 1613; Bright died in 1615. The 1621 edition 
 
 92
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 seems to have been a thorough revision of the Treatise after 
 more full and complete " collections " of facts had been made. 
 The address to the reader is anonymous, the writer using the 
 noin de phtme Democritus, Junior. At the end is a philo- ...j-j^^ Anatomy 
 logical index found only in this edition, subscribed Robert °^ Melancholy. 
 
 Burton, who at this date would be of the age of forty- four, and 
 had, I expect, been engaged in preparing a " collection " from 
 the Oxford Library. Books passed from Burton which seem 
 to have curiously reached the Bodleian Library, although not 
 referred to in his Will, are a confirmation of this view. Says 
 Wood: — "The library bequeathed (.^) consists of all the 
 historical, political, and poetical tracts of his own time with 
 a large collection of miscellaneous accounts of murders, 
 monsters, and accidents. In short, he seems to have pur- 
 chased indiscriminately everything that was published, which 
 accounts for the uncommon treasures of Paul's Churchyard 
 which are now to be found in the Oxford Vatican." 
 
 I draw the attention of investigators to the observations 
 made by Mr. Donnelly as to the " Anatomy " in the second 
 volume of the " Great Cryptogram " at page 968. The refer- 
 ence to Verulam and St. Albans, and the pages devoted to 
 a preliminary sketch for a new " Atlantis," should be studied. 
 In a superficial perusal of Mr. Shilleto's volumes I note 
 curious references on the following pages: — 15, 54, 63, 86, 
 107, 109, no, 112, 113, 130, 135 (Rosy Cross), 175, 233, 
 and 315 of Vol. I., and 117, 119, 128, 132, 180, 199, 210, 
 216, 218, 243, 251, 254, 272, 291, and 319 of Vol. IIL 
 Several years ago a Birmingham gentleman read a paper 
 before the Birmingham Literary Society in support of the 
 Baconian authorship of the Shakspeare Plays. The MS. of 
 this paper, lent to me by a mutual friend, was my first introduc- 
 tion to the controversy. This gentleman points out that pages 
 151 and 299 of Vol. II. refer to events which happened in 
 1633 and 1634, and suggests that to be a difficulty in the way 
 of Baconian authorship. I am disposed to think the explana- 
 tion is that at Lord Bacon's desire the collection was added to 
 
 93
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 and brought up to date, which would account for Burton's 
 
 possession of half the " Melancholy copie," being probably a 
 
 portion of the 1632 edition, as corrected and revised for Cripps, 
 
 "The Anatomy tj^g printer, of the 16^8 edition. No revision, however, or 
 
 of Melancholy." . . 
 
 addition appears to have been made later than the edition 
 of 1638, owing, no doubt, to the incongruity of adding anything 
 subsequent to Burton's death. I give below the report of a 
 comparison I caused to be made in the British Museum 
 between the " Treatise " of Bright and the " Anatomy " 
 attributed to Burton: — 
 
 A Comparison of T. Bright's 
 
 ** Treatise of Melancholie,'* with Robert Burton's 
 
 '* Anatomy of Melancholy.** 
 
 The epistle "to the Reader," six pages in Bright and 
 ninety-seven pages in Burton, gave me no result. 
 
 The text of Bright fills about 350 pages i2mo, the text of 
 Burton about 700 large 4to. The latter consists, by about 
 three-fourths, of extracts of other authors (I should say about 
 2,000 of them are mentioned by name) in Latin as well as in 
 the English translation, and the print being in large and small 
 Roman type and large and small itaHcs, it is exceedingly 
 difficult to follow the thread of the later composition. I 
 therefore decided to use the edition 1821, in two volumes of 
 about 600 pages each, which is identical with the edition of 
 1 65 1, and in which the Latin extracts are relegated to the foot 
 notes. I was struck by the following passages : — 
 
 BRIGHT. BURTON. 
 
 " The purest part which we call " Blood is a hot, sweet temperate 
 
 in comparison and in respect of the red humour whose office is to 
 
 rest, bloud is temperate in quality nourish the whole body to give it 
 
 and moderate in substance exceed- strength and colour being dispersed 
 
 ing all the other parts in quantitie, by the veins through every part 
 
 if the body be of equal temper, of it. And from it spirits are 
 
 made for nourishment of the most first begotten." 
 temperate parts and ingendring of 
 spirits." 
 
 94
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 BRIGHT. 
 
 " The second is Fkume, next the 
 blood in quantitie, of a waterie 
 nature cold and moyst, apt to be 
 converted into the substance of 
 pure blood if nature fail not in 
 her working ordained for nourish- 
 ment of moyster parts." 
 
 BURTON. 
 
 " Pituita, or Phlegm, is a cold 
 and moist humour, begotten of the 
 colder part of the chylus in the 
 liver ; his office is to nourish and 
 moisten the members of the body." 
 
 " The Anatomy 
 of Melancholy.' 
 
 " The third is Melancholie,, of 
 substance grosse and earthie, cold 
 and drie in regard to the other, in 
 quantitie inferior to fieiane, fit nutri- 
 ment for such parts as are of like 
 temper." 
 
 " The fourth Choler fierie hate 
 and driest of qualitie, thin in 
 substance, least in quantitie, and 
 ordained for such parts as require 
 subtiller nourishment and are tem- 
 pered with greater portion of the 
 fierie element." 
 
 " Melancholy, cold and dry, thick 
 black and sour, begotten of the 
 more foeculent part of nourish- 
 ment, and purged from the spleen, 
 is a bridle to the other two hot 
 humours, blood and choler, pre- 
 serving them in the blood and 
 nourishing the bones." 
 
 " Choler is hot and dry, bitter, 
 begotten of the hotter parts of the 
 chylus, and gathered to the gall : 
 it helps the natural heat and senses 
 and serves to the expelling of 
 excrements." 
 
 (Page II.) " Mercuric is not 
 made of every tree." 
 
 (Page 6.) " Beef and venison 
 incline to melancholie." 
 
 " fish to fleume " 
 
 (I., 191.) "Ex omni ligno non 
 fit Mercurius," 
 
 (I., 95.) " Beef, to breed gross 
 melancholy blood ; all venison is 
 melancholy." 
 
 (I., 97.) " Fish breed little and 
 humorous nourishment, Savanarola 
 adds cold moist and Isaac phleg- 
 matick." 
 
 " hony and butter to Choler " 
 
 (I., loi.) " Spices cause hot 
 melancholy as cloves hony and 
 sugar also all sharp and soure 
 things as fat and oyl etc." 
 
 95
 
 ' The Anatomy 
 of Melancholy." 
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 BRIGHT. 
 
 (Page 31.) " Herbes. Of these 
 kinds Coleworts Beete arid Cabage 
 ingender a melancholy juice." 
 
 (Page 35.) " Of drinks eschew 
 red wine and whatsoever Beere, 
 Ale, or Cider is not cleere and well 
 fined and also if it be tart and 
 sour." 
 
 BURTON. 
 
 (I., 98.) " Amongst herbs I find 
 coleworts gourds cowcumbers dis- 
 allowed but especially cabbage.'' 
 
 (I., 1 01.) " All black ivmes are 
 hurtful to such as are of choleric 
 complexion." 
 
 " Cider, Perry are both cold and 
 windy drinks and for that cause 
 to be neglected." 
 
 '"''Beer if it be over new or over 
 stale or not sod, sharp or sour 
 is most unwholesome." 
 
 (Page 43.) " This spirit is the 
 chief insinnnent and immediate 
 (intermediate) whereby the soule 
 bestoweth the exercise of her 
 faculty in her bodie, that passeth 
 to and fro in a moment." 
 
 (I., 21.) Spirit is a most subtle 
 vapour and the instriunent of the 
 soul to perform all his actions ; a 
 common tye or medium betwixt 
 the body and the soul." 
 
 (Page 321.) "The carbuncle for 
 virtue the chief of stones. The 
 Calcedonie, of power to put away 
 fear. The Ruby against fearful 
 dreams. The Jacinth a great 
 clearer of the heart. The Tur- 
 quoise a comforter of spirits. The 
 Chrysophars of like virtue. The 
 Corneole a mitigator of anger. 
 The Chalydonie or Szvallozvstone, 
 against madness." 
 
 (II., 97.) " Granatus an im- 
 perfect kind of Rt/by, hung about 
 the neck resisteth sorrow and 
 re-creates the heat, /acint/i has 
 the same properties. In the belly 
 of a stvallotv there is a stone 
 found called Chelidonius Lunaticks. 
 There is a kind of onyx called a 
 Chaleidonye which has the same 
 qualities." 
 
 (Page 301.) "Which agreement 
 betwixt consent of Musique and 
 affection of the mind, when 
 Anstoxines perceaved, he thereby 
 was moved to think that the mind 
 was nothing else but a kind of 
 harmonie." 
 
 (I., 449 and 450.) Two pages 
 about music, concluding : " or else 
 the minde as some suppose har- 
 monically composed, is roused up 
 at the tunes of music." 
 
 96
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 BRIGHT. 
 
 (Page 313.) " The aire ought 
 to be thinne, pure and subtile, open 
 and patent to all windes in respect 
 of their temper especially to the 
 South and South East ; marrish, 
 mistie, foggy air to be eschued." 
 
 BURTON. 
 
 In Burton the opinion is the 
 same, but the argument is spread 
 over 40 pages. 
 
 " The Anatomy 
 of Melancholy.' 
 
 (Page 252.) " You feel the 
 ivrath of God kindled against -your 
 soule and anguish of conscience most 
 tntollerable, and can finde {tiotivith- 
 standing continuall prayers and 
 incessant supplications made unto 
 the Lord), no release, and in your 
 own judgement stand reprobate 
 from God's covenant and voide of 
 all hope of his inheritance." 
 
 (II., 575.) God's heavy wrath 
 is kindled in their souls and not- 
 withstanding their continual prayers 
 and supplications to Christ Jesus, 
 they have no release or ease at all, 
 but a most intolerable torment and 
 insufferable anguish of conscience." 
 
 BRIGHT (Page 320.) 
 
 " His apparell would be decent 
 and comely and as the purse will 
 give leave somewhat for the time 
 somptuous." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. Hamlet, I., 3. 
 
 " Costly thy habit as thy purse 
 can buy. But not expressed in 
 fancy. Rich not gaudy. For the 
 apparel oft proclaims the man." 
 
 97
 
 English Bards 
 and Scotch 
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 English Bards and 
 Scotch Reviewers. 
 
 Articles hostile to Mrs. Gallup appear in the February 
 (1902) Monthly (Mr. Lang), Blackwood (anon.), and Fort- 
 nightly (Mr. Rait). I will try to answer the points raised, 
 but as general observations I would like to say, in dealing 
 Reviewers. with questions of fact it is first desirable to be unemotional ; 
 
 secondly, to give your name when making a charge of 
 fraud ; and thirdly, that when truth or falsity is concerned, 
 the fullest care should be exercised and alternative views 
 exhausted before imputations are made. 
 
 Beginning with Mr. Lang's criticisms in the Monthly, 
 I append my replies : — 
 
 I. — The printers were silent. 
 
 Answer — They have not 7'ecorded any suspicions. It is 
 possible for a man to be suspicious and yet not to 
 worry posterity about it. Printers were few. A 
 printer having to set his type quickly takes little 
 interest in his copy. Instructions as to the particular 
 fonts would be easy to follow, and after a short time 
 cease to excite remark. Confidential printers are as 
 conceivable as confidential clerks or other trusted 
 servants. 
 
 2. — The styles were different and yet resembled each 
 other. 
 
 Answer — By the keenly observant, particularly when 
 you know what to look for, individual characteristics 
 can be traced. An Orchardson might successfully 
 imitate Frith in one picture, Tadema in another, and 
 Turner in another, but yet betray his own style to 
 
 98
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 a close critic, particularly to anyone told who the 
 real artist was. 
 
 3. — That the marriage of Elizabeth and the birth of a 
 son on the 22nd of January, 1 560-1, is built upon 
 a fraudulent surmise from history^ and is contradicted 
 by fact. 
 
 Answer — History gives strong support to the story. 
 Ambassadors' letters, prior to 1560, show the 
 existence of a close intrigue between Dudley and 
 the Queen. The Mother Dowe assertion, of August, 
 was shared by many other people, as the document 
 shows. In September, Burleigh admitted to De 
 Quadra a guilty intimacy between Dudley and the 
 Queen ; also the Queen referred to Dudley's wife 
 being dead, or nearly so, four days before the un- 
 fortunate lady was found dead. The cipher story 
 does not follow the historical account of Mr. Froude, 
 but gives an entirely new reason for the murder. 
 The cipherer accepted one of many stories as to the 
 manner of her death, though the collected evidence 
 now points to a suicide in anticipation of what Amy 
 knew was about to happen. The cipher does not 
 follow Froude in suggesting a (September) secret 
 marriage at Lord Pembroke's, nor the De Quadra 
 story (of 20th November) of a marriage in the 
 presence of Dudley's brother and two ladies of the 
 Chamber. It speaks of a marriage solemnized by 
 Sir Nicholas Bacon at Lord Puckering's (Sir 
 William Pickering's ? ) in the presence of that 
 person and Lady Bacon. Surely, a forger would 
 have followed the book story. Certainly, the 
 death of ^ Dudley's wife, followed by a secret 
 marriage, was essential to save a situation which 
 might be inferred from Burleigh's admission, to 
 
 99 
 
 English Bards 
 and Scotch 
 Reviewers.
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 English Bards 
 and Scotch 
 Reviewers. 
 
 say nothing of the free assertion of Mother Dowe 
 and others. 
 
 Jones, reporting to Throgmorton his interview 
 with the Queen at Greenwich in November, says 
 that she looked ill and harassed, and said that none 
 of Dudley's people were " at the attempt" — this is a 
 curious remark — at Amy Dudley's house. 
 
 The suggestion that the Queen could not have 
 hunted on 3rd September, four and a half months 
 before 22nd January, 1 560-1, depends on the kind of 
 hunting. If it involved full galloping and jumping 
 five-barred gates, I give way. If it was like Miss 
 Strickland mentions, when, in 1557, it was accom- 
 plished with fifty archers on foot and twelve other 
 ladies on ajnbling palfreys, when the princess was 
 accorded the honour of "cutting the buck's throat" ; 
 or like La Mothe, the French Ambassador, described 
 in 1570, when the Queen was posted in a lodge in the 
 wilderness, " where toils were pitched, and she shot 
 six does with a crossbow " as they were driven past 
 her; there is nothing in the point. 
 
 Proceeding to i8th January, 1 560-1, Mr. Lang 
 was wrong in his letter to The Times. The 
 Queen did not witness a stage play on that day, but 
 a year later, as the household accounts show. She 
 did not write holograph letters on 20th and 22nd 
 January. The first, to Rutland, was a draft in 
 (possibly) Ascham's writing ; the second, a draft in 
 Cecil's writing. The commission, or letter, to Arch- 
 bishop Parker and others of 22nd January, has the 
 Queen's signature at the top, and was conceivably 
 one of a number of sheets signed and kept in stock 
 for State purposes. There is no evidence that De 
 Quadra personally saw the Queen later than the 
 first week in September. His letter of 22nd January
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 is dated from London. The cipher and history show 
 that the Queen was at Windsor. The State Calen- 
 dar's translation of his letter differs materially from 
 that of Mr. Froude, but both agree as to the general 
 impression then prevailing as to the Queen's con- 
 dition. Next, we have the intense eagerness of 
 Dudley and his brother-in-law and the Queen for a 
 marriage under the public auspices of King Philip. 
 For this they would restore the Roman Catholic 
 religion. Finally, at a date between 13th and 22nd 
 February, the Queen confessed to De Quadra, and 
 he, usually so graphic, only tells the King that she 
 admitted she was no angel. 
 
 English Bards 
 and Scotch 
 Revle'wers. 
 
 4. — The cipherer could not have been Lord Bacon, 
 because he was wrong in his law, and generally did 
 not know what he was writing about. 
 
 Answer — Says Vice-Chancellor Kindersley in re Don's 
 Estate, 27, Law Journal, Ch : at p. 102 : " in the 
 strictly technical sense of the term, ' bastard ' is one 
 not born in lawful wedlock," The cipherer, being 
 born in wedlock, subsequent to a marriage solemnized 
 after his father had become a widower, was not a 
 bastard. His parents were above the reach of the 
 Law Courts, and there was no ground in English 
 law for legal objection to his status, unless " Mrs. 
 Grundy" had a /oats standi to intervene. In law 
 the date of the marriage of his parents, even if as 
 early as the 9th September or as late as 21st 
 January, made no difference to his case, so it is no 
 reproach to the cipherer that he did not mention it. 
 That he called himself Prince of Wales hardly 
 shows inSfinity. He had, like George IV. and 
 Edward VII., a customary title, if not something 
 more, and if he was correctly only the first King 
 
 T.TBT?ARY 
 UNIVERSTTY OF CAIJFOPvNTA
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 English Bards 
 and Scotch 
 Revle'wers, 
 
 of the Dudley dynasty, our present King should 
 not be referred to as the eldest son of Queen 
 Victoria, but as of the " Coburg Gotha " line. 
 
 I think it may prove that Lord Bacon was right in 
 his law on this point also. Mr. Lang should refer to 
 the article " Prince " in the last " Encyclopaedia Brit- 
 annica." According to this, " The entail of Edward, 
 the Black Prince (as Prince of Wales), was to him and 
 his heirs, the first begotten sons of the Kings of Eng- 
 land." When a Prince of Wales succeeds to the 
 throne the principality in all cases merges at once in 
 the Crown, and can have no separate existence again, 
 except under a fresh creation. Would not the eldest 
 son of Queen Elizabeth, like the eldest son of Queen 
 Victoria, being a first begotten son of a " King," 
 become Prince of Wales under the original entail with- 
 out a fresh creation? 
 
 Again, why not Francis First? Blackie's Cyclo- 
 paedia gives Victoria L, and the " History of Suc- 
 cessions," dated 1653, writes of James L and Charles L 
 years before a second king of either name had been 
 crowned. 
 
 Coke, at the Essex trial, accused the Earl of Essex 
 as wanting to be Robert the First. 
 
 The confusion about William and Robert Cecil 
 is Mr. Lang's only. The cipherer mentions and 
 accurately describes Robert the son, the deformed 
 son, and him only. Francis and Robert were boys 
 together. Which was the elder is not known to 
 the biographers. 
 
 2. — Mary Stuart could never have been in Leicester's 
 house. 
 
 Answer — Her custodians were frequently moving her 
 from one residence to another. I agree with Mr- 
 Lang as to a possible date. It would be between
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 nth July and 23rd September, 1585, while her 
 custodian was Paulet, a dependent (says Miss Strick- 
 land) of the Earl of Leicester. In July and August, 
 Leicester (letter to Burleigh, 15th August) and the English Bards 
 Queen (see Nichols' " Progresses") were in London. alTiewert. 
 The word cipher play gives the Queen's Palace as 
 two of the scenes, the Tower for another. Mary 
 was able to ride on horseback even in 1586, when 
 she left Chartley for a time. A letter from the 
 French Ambassador states that Leicester's appoint- 
 ment, in 1585, to command in the Low Countries was 
 intended by Elizabeth as a sort of banishment. This 
 also agrees with the word cipher. I have already 
 dealt with the Davison incident. For elucidation 
 of the phrase " our Queen's last murther," will Mr. 
 Lang refer to Mr. Rait's article. 
 
 To show how easily mistakes can be made, I 
 notice that in copying out parallel passages for con- 
 trasting the cipher as to Lady Strafford with the 
 Melville account about Lady Stafford, Mr. Lang 
 writes "everybody" for " everie person." 
 
 Mistress Bacon did not make the pretence 
 alleged. The word cipher shows that in Court circles 
 she was credited with having adopted a bastard child 
 of Sir Nicholas. "A Catholic Daughter of France," 
 although his senior by eight years, could surely 
 marry a Protestant Prince (cipher story) after having 
 divorced her Protestant husband. There is nothing 
 extraordinary in a youth of eighteen falling in love 
 with a girl of twenty-six. 
 
 6. — The cipher is detected as copying from Pope's verse 
 translation of the Iliad. 
 
 Answer — I have already dealt with this. Let anyone 
 read the whole cipher translation, as I have done, 
 while someone else reads Pope's verse. If the 
 
 103
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 cipher be a certain crib as to one verse, and a few 
 
 scattered expressions, where does the rest come 
 
 from? My theory that Pope saw the MS. from 
 
 English Bards which, after Lord Bacon's death, the cipher was 
 
 and Scotch , 
 
 Reviewers. mstructed is further supported by the fact that the 
 
 two expressions "hoary headed" and "silver foun- 
 tains " are in the Shakespeare plays, and " silver 
 founts" in the cipher conveniently becomes "silver 
 fountains " in Pope's verse. 
 
 Pope, in his Introduction, refers to the translations 
 of Ogilby, Chapman, and Hobbes, which he un- 
 doubtedly referred to while making his own verse. 
 Did he use any other translations? In the British 
 Museum is the MS. of Pope's " Iliad." Unfortunately 
 the " bold Ormenian " passage is not there, and the 
 MS. occasionally differs from Pope's verse as it appears 
 in print. For instance, "And Eteon's Hills" in the 
 MS. becomes " Hilly Eteon," like Chapman's transla- 
 tion. 
 
 Chapman has : — 
 
 Peneleus and Leitus, all that Boetia bred, 
 Arcesilaus, Clonius, and Prothoenor led. 
 
 Pope's print: — 
 
 The hardy warriors whom Boetia bred, 
 Penelius, Leitus, Prothoenor led. 
 With these Arcesilaus and Clonius stand, 
 Equal in arms and equal in command. 
 
 Pope's MS.: — 
 
 The hardy warriors whom Boetia bred 
 
 Prothoenor 
 Bold CIoniuD Lck -t^e- and Peneleus led 
 Clonius Arcesilaus and Leitus stand 
 Equal in arms and equal in command. 
 104
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 Mrs. Gallup's deciphering done in the United 
 States from a book belonging to her pubHshers, and 
 before her visit to this country was accordingly not 
 indebted to the Pope MS. for the words "bold Engush Bards 
 
 — ,, . ,, , . - and Scotch 
 
 Glomus, which appear in the cipher passage which ReTiewers. 
 reads: — " Peneleus Leitus Prothoenor joined with 
 Arcesilaus and bold Clonius, equal in arms and in com- 
 mand, led Boetia's hosts, and there went with them 
 fifty sable shipps." 
 
 On the Marston theory I fail to understand how 
 Pope's line — 
 
 " And they whom Thebe's well built walls inclose," 
 
 should be rendered by — • 
 
 " In Hypothebae that well built city." 
 
 Another curious thing is that " silver Jardan " does 
 not appear in the Pope MS., and instead of " Of 
 Gnossus Lyctus," there is " From Gnossus Lyctus," as 
 in the cipher passage. 
 
 7. — The confession of Cuffe in 1 600-1, of Essex's letter 
 to King James, is inconsistent with Essex being son of 
 the Queen. 
 
 Answer— This " evidence " is the recollection of a servant 
 of what was written upon a sheet of paper in Essex's 
 possession at a date when he had quarrelled with the 
 Queen and was angling for assistance from Scotland. 
 
 Now let me turn to the Blackwood critic: — 
 
 8. — This writer is satisfied that the same hand could not 
 have written the " Faerie Queene " and the " Anatomy 
 of Melancholy," &c., &c. 
 
 Answer — The one was a poem and written before the age 
 • of thirty-six, the other an edited " collection " of useful 
 p 105
 
 Postscrlpta. 
 
 information commenced in 1587, added to and revised 
 
 from that date onwards. On this critic's assumption 
 
 the hand that wrote " Treasure Island " could not have 
 
 English Bards Written " Pulvis ct Umbra," nor the one which wrote 
 
 Reviewers. the " Formulse of Plane Trigonometry " compose 
 
 " Alice in Wonderland." 
 
 Greene did not call another part of himself " an 
 upstart crow." The word " its " was originally slang, 
 Hke " can't." It appears ten times in Shakespeare, nine 
 in the cipher, and over thirty times in Lord Bacon's 
 " Wisdom of the Ancients." The Bi-literal Cipher was 
 invented by Lord Bacon, not by Mrs. Gallup. 
 
 " Too youthful " is surely an excusable term. 
 Henry VIII. was much older than Anne Boleyn. On 
 such grounds does Blackwood's anonymous critic base 
 his charge of fraud. 
 
 Mr. Raifs Article : — 
 
 The points which Mr. Rait adduces are strong, and all the 
 stronger because of the fairness combined with firmness with 
 which they are stated. 
 
 I agree entirely with Mr. Rait in his observations upon the 
 Seymour incident of the word cipher. I cannot believe in a 
 young king of eleven years lecturing a sister aged sixteen upon 
 the subject in question. But instead of giving final judg- 
 ment upon this seemingly insuperable difficulty, I should call 
 upon the word decipherer for full details of the passages whence 
 the story is taken. Either the decipherer is misleading us, 
 or he has made a mistake. If neither, then has the cipherer 
 romanced or blundered or met with unexpected difficulties in 
 teUing his story. Clearly the cipherer would be writing of an 
 event many years old at the time of writing, as to which he had 
 to rely upon the recollection of Lady Anne Bacon. In the 
 same way, for his account of the execution of Mary Queen of 
 Scots, he would be dependent upon conflicting first or second 
 
 106
 
 English Bards 
 and Scotch 
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 hand accounts of eye-witnesses. Froude accepted the blood- 
 red robe tradition, and an imaginative man Uke Bacon would 
 be likely to do the same. That some diligent student search- 
 ing closely into the facts at a later period has come to a different 
 conclusion is not surprising, and he may be correct ; but that is Reviewers. 
 an insufficient ground for the suggestion of trickery. The 
 point as to the conversation by an Ambassador with Elizabeth 
 a few days before loth November, 1567, calls for enquiry. It 
 may turn out that the real date of birth was 1 562. At the same 
 time we must not place too much reliance upon what is called 
 history. Every fact must be dealt with upon its merits, and 
 is of no special or preferential value because it happens to be 
 recorded in a book of history. Mr. Rait's criticisms are timely 
 and necessary, but as the general subject is of national interest, 
 it is a reasonable request that he should take a spade and see 
 whether he cannot, by further research, satisfy some of his own 
 objections, or how far the decipherers may have been using 
 their imaginations in difficult passages. This is the true anti- 
 quarian spirit, without which no progress is possible. If the 
 archaeologists were always suspicious and endeavouring to 
 shew that the urns and lamps unearthed had been made 
 in Birmingham and afterwards hidden by some trickster, that 
 interesting branch of research would have long ago ended for 
 lack of inquirers. I have no acquaintance with Mrs. Gallup, 
 nor have ever communicated with her. The story she alleges 
 she has deciphered was as astonishing to me in the first 
 instance as to Mr. Rait. I read history and biography in the 
 light of it, and found much corroboration, particularly in the 
 works of " Spenser." A trickster has usually a motive. There 
 is no money in this discovery, all having been dead loss, yet 
 Mrs. Gallup goes on deciphering. By a stretch of possibility 
 she might have tricked up a story upon history, but not the 
 story produced; and certainly to have successfully included 
 biography as well would have been marvellous. 
 
 Of the thousands of people who read the magazine articles 
 and Times correspondence, there were, I learnt, hardly three 
 
 107
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 dozen who bought the Bi-literal Cipher story and sought to 
 
 study it for themselves. The majority of us have become so 
 
 accustomed to rely upon the judgments of the Press, and so 
 
 English Bards fearful of criticism, and the sort of ink-slingfine which frequently 
 
 and Scotch ... . 
 
 Reviewers, gocs by that uamc, that we shirk original work for fear of being 
 
 mistaken and " cut up." A recent journalist, in " slanging " 
 a scholarly and careful book, " Shakespeare Studies in 
 Baconian Light," by Dr. Theobald, apologised for his rudeness 
 on the ground that he was following an accepted fashion. 
 No fashion can waj'rant insult, and rudeness, and slander. 
 
 Surely the subject is vastly interesting. If one man, find- 
 ing his rightful chance of succession to the throne of England 
 — you will remember Elizabeth's curious, but now explicable 
 refusal to have the word " lawful " inserted before the 
 words "issue of the body" in the Act of 1571 — was 
 not to be realised, took upon himself the tremendous task of 
 founding a literature for his country, of scheming in a variety 
 of ways for the advancement and preservation of knowledge, 
 have we not, as Englishmen, just right to be glad to know the 
 true facts and to recognise our greatest genius? Does it 
 detract from that name to know that he, like all of us, had his 
 moments of weakness as well as of strength, his frailties, his 
 passions, his timidities, and love of life? But, as the Black- 
 wood critic wrote, people beHeve what they hope. The 
 Germans do not want the book of Mr. Conan Doyle nor the 
 truth about the Boer War. It is equally clear that most 
 Englishmen do not want the decipherings of Mrs. Gallup nor 
 the truth about certain Elizabethan authorships. 
 
 In the State Trials just published (Duckworth & Co.) 
 by Mr. H. L. Stephen, a Judge of the High Court of 
 Calcutta, Vol. III., I am glad to notice that in introducing 
 the singularly interesting contemporary account of the trial 
 of Robert, Earl of Essex, Mr. Stephen states with reference 
 to Bacon's action : — 
 
 " For Bacon to have refused his services to the Queen, 
 that is, to his country, would have resembled the refusal of 
 
 108
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 a soldier to fight for her. The confession of Essex's con- 
 federates revealed a state of things which made the 
 immediate trial of Essex a necessity .... and with 
 Bacon's knowledge of the case, and considering the necessity English Barda 
 
 ^ o y j^^j Scotch 
 
 of proving Essex's guilt, not only to the Court but to the Reviewers, 
 country, he had no choice but to appear in the trial. 
 Spedding's vindication of Bacon's conduct of the case is too 
 elaborate for me to indicate its nature here, but I may 
 perhaps be allowed to say that it seems to me to dispose 
 completely of Macaulay's attack." 
 
 Mr. Lang ought to re-read this trial, if only to notice 
 the following phrase used by Mr. Attorney Sir Edward 
 Coke : — 
 
 " But now by Codes Judgment he that thought to have 
 been King of England, Robert the first, is like to be now 
 Erie of Essex, Robert the last." 
 
 The courage and fine spirit displayed by Essex at his 
 trial was remarkable. 
 
 I draw Mr. Rait's attention to the fact that Judge 
 Stephen is a believer in the Essex ring story (see page 8i), 
 and gives some reasons for his belief. Whether the Judge 
 be a •' competent historian " I must leave to Mr. Rait. 
 
 Another book of interest to Baconians, just published 
 this year, is " The Problem of the Shakespeare Plays," by 
 Mr. G. C. Bompas (Sampson Low & Co.), and is absolutely 
 the most powerful compendium of arguments for Bacon's 
 authorship of the plays which has yet been written. If it be 
 true that Lord Bacon wrote the plays, the proofs are bound 
 to accumulate rapidly. Those collected and presented by 
 Mr. Bompas are, as a whole, unanswerable, and yet there 
 remains most valuable evidential material from other sources 
 enough to furnish another book of the same size. 
 
 I notice that Mr. Bompas' book is not entirely free from 
 errors, though on the whole accurate. While reading his 
 reference to the visit of the Queen, in 1600, to Bacon at 
 Twickenham, at which time Bacon says, " I had, though I 
 
 109
 
 Postscripta. 
 
 profess not to be a poet, prepared a sonnet directly tending and 
 alluding to draw on her Majesty's reconcilement to my Lord " 
 (Essex), it occurred to me to refer to the passage in " Merchant 
 English Bards Qf Venicc," Act iv. Sc. I, beginning " The quality of mercy is 
 Reviewers. not straiucd," and ending " When mercy seasons justice." 
 
 This forms a poem of fourteen lines applicable to the situation, 
 and inserted in a play printed for the first time in that year. 
 If this can be technically entitled a sonnet, it may be the verse 
 in question. Mr. Bompas (who has always been a very cour- 
 teous opponent of my views) adds a footnote on page 107, 
 possibly inserted to meet the susceptibilities of his publisher, 
 possibly ex abimdanti cauteld that his work, like Mr. Theo- 
 bald's, should not be associated with " cipher speculations." — "A 
 book lately published under the title of ' The Bi-literal Cipher 
 of Francis Bacon,' by Mrs. E. W. Gallup, of Chicago, has been 
 tested by the present author, who is satisfied that it is unworthy 
 of credence y Seeing that the cipher is the one big thing 
 in controversy at the present time, it was surely due to the 
 public to explain how Mr. Bompas conducted his test, and the 
 reasons for his satisfaction. The authoritative and final 
 destruction of Mrs. Gallup is what many people are waiting for, 
 but they will not accept the ipse dixit of Mr. Bompas any rjiore 
 than that of Mr. Sidney Lee. The footnote was not necessary, 
 and it may — with all respect it may — make this excellent book 
 look rather foolish some day. 
 
 The phenomena which Mr. Bompas notes as to Shakes- 
 peare and Marlowe, namely, of posthumous publication and the 
 posthumous writing of brilliant additions and revisions of the 
 works ascribed to them, is also common to certainly the works 
 ascribed to Greene, Spenser, and Kyd, and I think to those 
 ascribed to Peele also. Lord Bacon's practice of revising and 
 re-writing many times over, and year after year, the works of 
 which he admitted authorship, is well known.
 
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