Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu/24

Rh son. Many of his kinsmen held distinguished positions and filled them with credit to themselves and the nation. Lady Bacon was left a widow as a comparatively young woman, so that we naturally hear more of her family in the history of her famous son, than of his half-brothers and half-sisters, who were considerably older. But what has come down to us of his relations with these elder Bacons helps materially to reconstruct his environment. The Elizabethans were great builders. The Wars of the Roses ended forever in England the necessity of building for protection from hostile neighbors, and the policy of internal peace fostered by the Tudors enabled Englishmen to accumulate wealth. Landholders under Queen Elizabeth could afford to build beautiful homes, and they liked to surround themselves with the new luxuries brought to their notice in England by the travellers, especially by the travellers in France and Italy. In domestic architecture, two of these luxuries were glass windows, which often fill up the side of a room in an Elizabethan house, and spacious gardens encircling the entire building and adorned with all sorts of devices, some original and some more or less crudely adapted from formal gardens abroad. Sir Nicholas Bacon, though not a rich man, built two houses. Redgrave, Guilford, Suffolk, where he had married his first wife, was without gardens, and so limited in size that Queen Elizabeth visiting her Lord Keeper there told him his house was too small. "No, Madam," replied Sir Nicholas, "my house is not too small for me, but your Majesty has made me Rh