Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/337

 Montaigne, the essayist. After some fifteen months sojourn at Bordeaux, he removed to Bearn, where he visited Henry of Navarre; and met Lamhert Daneau, an eminent protestant theologian, better known as Danæus. Daneau dedicated to Anthony his commentary on the minor prophets, which was published at Geneva in 1586; and in the 'Epistola Dedicatoria' speaks with affectionate admiration not only of Anthony himself, but of his father, Sir Nicholas, and of his half-brother, Edward. Early in 1585 Bacon settled at Montauban, and for the five following years lived on close terms of intimacy with Navarre's counsellors, the leaders of protestant France. In 1590 he was driven from Montauban by the persecution of Madame du Plessis, who desired him to marry her daughter, and he retired for a second time to Bordeaux. He subsequently made friends with Anthony Standen, an English catholic—well known as a spy of Walsingham—who was at the time in prison at Bordeaux on suspicion of holding treasonable correspondence with Spain. Bacon's influence with the English government procured his release in 1591, and Standen was afterwards one of Bacon's many regular correspondents. At the end of 1591 Bacon returned to England, where he arrived in very poor health in February 1591-2. During his continental tour Bacon had corresponded regularly with Walsingham's secretary, Faunt, with his brother, and with the English agents in various parts of Europe. Very many of these letters are extant in manuscript, and prove him to have utilised every opportunity of obtaining information on foreign politics.

But his mother and brother had by no means approved of his long absence, and Lady Bacon had exerted all her influence with the English ministers to induce them to recall him earlier. She had feared the effects on his religious opinions of his intimacy with foreign papists, and had found his vast expenditure a severe strain upon her own resources, and his health a continual source of anxiety. As early as 1583 she, with Francis Bacon and Walsingham, had entreated him to leave Bordeaux for England on account of 'the troubled state of France' and 'the sickly state of his body.' In 1586 Walsingham sent Anthony a message of recall from the queen, but this was disregarded. In 1589 Lady Bacon contrived to have Anthony's servant, Lawson, who brought despatches to Burghley, arrested on suspicion of being a papist, and Bacon had to send a friend. Captain Allen, to England to reassure her on this point. His subsequent relations with Anthony Standen confirmed in his mother's eyes her worst suspicion of his religious instability. In his pecuniary difficulties there was more substantial ground for Lady Bacon's dissatisfaction, Anthony was clearly living beyond his means. In 1584 Francis drafted in his behalf a power of attorney enabling persons in England to raise money on his landed property. While at Montauban he was constantly borrowing money of the King of Navarre and of his counsellors, and his mother declared at the time that 'she had spent her jewels to supply him, and had borrowed the last money she had sent him of seven different persons.'

But Lady Bacon's anger cooled as soon as she heard of her son's arrival in England, and she desired Faunt, an undoubted protestant, to conduct him to his brother's lodgings at Gray's Inn. Soon afterwards she addressed to him a series of letters which prove how sincere was her interest in his physical and spiritual welfare. In August 1592 he stayed with her at Gorhambury, but gout prostrated him there, and he was unable to pay his respects to Queen Elizabeth—a duty that he never found an opportunity of performing later, and thus fatally injured his chances of preferment. When Bacon sought the favour of his uncle. Lord Burghley, in the hope of securing a post at court, he was disgusted to receive nothing but fair words—such words, according to his own account, as 'make fools fain, and yet even in these no offer or hopeful assurance of real kindness, which I thought I might justly expect at the lord treasurer's hands, who had inned my ten years' harvest into his own barn without any halfpenny charge.' In February 1592-3 he was returned to parliament as M.P. for Wallingford, and did not increase his influence with his powerful relative by opposing a government bill imposing new penalties on recusants.

Early in 1593 he took the decisive step of entering the service of the rival of the Cecils, the Earl of Essex [see, second Earl of Essex, 1567-1601], to whom, he says, he found (1592) his brother 'bound and in deep arrearages,' and in whom he recognised 'rare virtues and perfections.' Francis, in his 'Apologie &hellip; concerning the late Earle of Essex,' claimed to have been the author of this arrangement ( Life, iii. 143). Anthony—'being' (in his brother's words) 'a gentleman whose ability the world taketh knowledge of for matters of state, especially foreign'—undertook in Essex's behalf to obtain earlier foreign intelligence than the queen's advisers were in the habit of receiving, and the earl hoped to secure the royal favour permanently by