Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/373

Bacon sions were issued to the judges, and they were required to take the oath in the name of the people instead of in the king's name. Bacon and five of his brethren 'were not satisfied to hold ' on these terms, and had the courage to resign their seats. The other six judges, after some hesitation, agreed to hold office,'provided that by act of the commons the fundamental laws be not abolished' (ibid. 378). After his resignation Bacon lived in retirement until his death on 22 Aug. 1657. Over his grave in St. Gregory's Church, Norwich, a handsome monument was raised by his eldest son Francis, who became reader in Gray's Inn in 1662. By his wife Elizabeth, daughter of William Robinson, he had several children, but the family has long been extinct (, Baronetage, i. 2).

[Foss's Judges of England, and works cited above.]  BACON, JOHN. [See .]

BACON, JOHN (d. 1321), judge, is first mentioned as acting in the capacity of attorney to Queen Eleanor in 1278-9, and is described in certain indentures of the exchequer, dated 1288, as 'clericus Regis' and 'custos rotulorum et brevium de Banco' and 'Regis thesauriarius et camerarius,' his business being to keep a list of the cases argued in the common pleas, and to transmit records thereof, and also 'pedes chirographorum,' i.e. memoranda of fines levied throughout the country, to the treasurers and chamberlains of the exchequer, of the receipt of which the indentures already mentioned were acknowledgments. The 'chirographa,' or fines in question, were fictitious suits, by means of which it was the custom to bar entails and convey the landed property of married women. Bacon seems to have held this post as late as 1309. In 1291 he was entrusted with the charge of Ledes Castle in Kent (a royal residence). In 1313 he was appointed to a justiceship of the common pleas, and in the same year we read of his being retained in London to advise the king upon some important matters. In 1314 he was made one of the commissioners of oyer and terminer for the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, to try certain assessors and collectors of the revenue charged with breach of trust. In 1315 William de Beresford, the chief justice of the common pleas, being suddenly summoned to the king, the business of the court devolved upon Thrikingham and Bacon exclusively. We may conjecture that it was not very promptly or efficiently despatched, for it was but a short time since he had been enjoined to pay a more diligent attention to duty. In 1317 he was summoned with the rest of the judges to parliament at Lincoln, but the invasion of the Scots in that year caused the postponement of the parliament sine die. In 1320 he was placed on a commission to try certain persons charged with debasing and counterfeiting the coinage in the counties of Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk, and in 1321 upon another directed to inquire into offences committed by sheriff's and other legal functionaries under colour of their official duties in the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, and Huntingdon. He appears to have died in this year, Stonore being appointed justice of the common pleas in his place. He had landed property in Reston, Hemingston, Cleydon, and Akenham, places all of them in the county of Suffolk, and also in Essex, and at Shouldham in Norfolk.

[Devon's Issues of the Exchequer, i. 98; Kals. and Invs. of the Exch. iii. 97-112; Abbrev. Rot. Orig. i. 65; Purl. Writs, ii. div. ii. pt. i. 40, 100, 155, 174, 176, 179, 181, 220, pt. ii. 3, 60, 79, 98, 136. 137, 147, 152, 154, 302; Cal. Rot. Pat. 56, 69, 75, 88.]  BACON, JOHN, R.A. (1740–1799), sculptor, was born in Southwark, 24 Nov. 1740. He was the son of a cloth worker of that place, and the descendant of an old Somersetshire family. At the age of fourteen Bacon was apprenticed to a Mr. Crispe, of whom there is but little known except the fact that the young artist modelled groups of figures for him, and was employed in painting upon his plates and dishes. After two years of this service Bacon was able to make all the models required for Crispe's factory. His term of apprenticeship expired in 1762. The accounts of his later connection with Coades's artificial stone works are vague. 'By his art,' says Redgrave, 'he was the means of restoring Coades's manufacture, then falling into disuse.' Anyhow, in 1762 and afterwards, we find him at work in this 'lithodipra' factory, and may believe the repeated assurances that he did much to improve the invention, and stood high in favour with his employers. 'Groups and statues as large as life, coats of arms, sculptured key-stones, wreaths of flowers, and all that species of work known by the general name of ornamental, were here modelled and burnt.' Whilst still an apprentice Bacon gained (1758) a premium from the Society of Arts for a small figure of Peace. Nine times altogether he secured the award of this society, obtaining on one occasion fifty guineas for an emblematic figure of 'Ocean.' On the foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768 Bacon entered