Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/336

Bacon sons, and of the jealousy with which she regarded her authority over them long after they had reached manhood, they all give ample proof. She is always fiercely rebuking them for disregard of her wishes, and seeking to keep herself informed of all the details of their daily life. Plays and masques were abominations to her; the nonconformists she admired, and in one long letter to Lord Burghley she prayed that they might be treated fairly. All her letters are interspersed with lavish quotations from Greek and Latin. Her mind gave way during the later years of her protracted life. 'She was but little better than frantic in her age,' writes Bishop Goodman in his 'Court of James I,' i. 285 (cf. Life, iv. 217). But she lived on little noticed until 1610. A letter from Bacon, dated 27 Aug. 1610, invites Sir Michael Hicks to 'the mournful occasion' of her funeral ( Letters and Life, iv. 216-18). When her illustrious son drew up his own last will, its second clause ran: 'For my burial, I desire it may be in St. Michael's Church, near St. Albans — there my mother was buried' (ibid. vii. 539).

 BACON, ANTHONY (1558–1601), diplomatist, and friend of the Earl of Essex, was born in 1558, probably at Gorhambury, Hertfordshire. He was the elder of the two sons of Sir Nicholas Bacon, lord keeper, by his second wife, Ann, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke. The younger son was the great Francis Bacon. From infancy Anthony was in very delicate health. In a letter dated 17 June 1560 his father writes of his recovery from a dangerous fever. At fourteen his sight was in danger. Throughout his life he was lame. On 5 April 1573 he and his brother Francis went into residence at Trinity College, Cambridge, as fellow-commoners. They matriculated on 10 June, and shared the same rooms. Their tutor was John Whitgift, master of the college and afterwards archbishop of Canterbury. They remained at Cambridge till Christmas 1575, but between August 1574 and the following March the plague kept them from the university. They were both diligent students, but Whitgift's accounts of the money spent 'for Anthonie beeing syck' between 1573 and 1575 prove his studies to have been repeatedly interrupted by serious illness. In June 1576 the two brothers were admitted 'ancients' (being the sons of a judge) of Gray's Inn. In February 1578-9 their father died, and Anthony succeeded to much of his landed property in Hertfordshire and Middlesex. The estate of Gorhambury in the former county was bequeathed to his mother for her life, with remainder to himself. His half-brother, Nathaniel Bacon, Sir Nicholas's second son by his first marriage, disputed these bequests; but the quarrel, on being referred to Lord Treasurer Burghley, the husband of Lady Bacon's sister, Mildred, and thus Anthony's uncle by marriage, was settled in Anthony's favour.

Late in 1579 Bacon set out, at Lord Burghley's suggestion, on a long continental tour in search of political intelligence. He stayed for some time at Paris, and there, to the alarm of his relatives—all sturdy protestants—he made, for diplomatic purposes, the acquaintance of William Parry, LL.D., an English catholic refugee, who was executed for treasonable conspiracy in London in 1585. Bacon began, very soon after his arrival on the continent, to correspond regularly with Walsingham, and in 1580 he entertained at Paris one of Walsingham's secretaries, Nicholas Faust, who became his most intimate friend and correspondent. In August 1580 Anthony removed to Bourges, whence he wrote two very affectionate letters to his uncle Burghley (14 Jan. and 13 Feb. 1580-1; Cal. State Papers, 1581-90, pp. 2, 5), but the corrupt life led by the inhabitants of the city induced him to hurry thence to Geneva. There he lodged in the house of Theodore Beza, who esteemed him so highly as to dedicate, 'out of respect to him,' his 'Meditations' to his mother, Lady Bacon, and to send to Lord Burghley for presentation to the university of Cambridge an ancient copy of the Pentateuch in six languages ('s Annals, III. i. 110, ii. 197). Early in 1582 he was staying at Lyon, whence he journeyed to Montpellier at Toulouse. In May of that year he received permission through Faunt to remain abroad for three years longer. He afterwards proceeded to Marseilles and to Bordeaux, where he was living at the close of 1583. Thence he forwarded letters addressed by the Duke de Montmorenci to Elizabeth, and she expressed to him, through the Earl of Leicester, her satisfaction in having 'so good a man as you to have and receive letters by' (7 Oct. 1583). Bacon used his influence at Bordeaux to improve the position of the protestants there, an undertaking in which, as he wrote to his old tutor, Whitgift, then archbishop of Canterbury, he ran the risk of personal danger, and he made the acquaintance of