The Winding Stair: Francis Bacon, His Rise and Fall

by Daphne Du Maurier

  Whether King James, who left Edinburgh on his way south on April 5th, actually received and read the letter, assuredly one of hundreds from his loyal and aspiring subjects, is not recorded. Its existence was common gossip in London, however, for John Chamberlain wrote to Dudley Carleton, ‘Tobie Matthew has been sent with a letter to the King from Master Bacon, but I doubt neither the message nor the messenger were greatly welcome’. Young Matthew, known to have Catholic sympathies despite his father’s bishopric, might not, after all, have been the wisest emissary to approach the new King, who had been bred in the Scottish kirk, but Francis, susceptible himself to the charms of his close friend, and aware that his sovereign—if rumour was correct—liked a handsome face and a shapely leg, may have thought this was a risk worth taking.

  He had one other ally who had gone north to meet the King, and this was the poet John Davies, later to be Attorney-General in Ireland. The letter Francis addressed to him is chiefly remarkable for its concluding sentence, when, having desired Mr. Davies to ‘impress a good conceit and opinion of me, chiefly in the King’, he ended, ‘So desiring you to be good to concealed poets, I continue, your very assured, Fr. Bacon.’ So it was not only his closest associates, like Tobie Matthew, who knew how he sometimes spent his leisure hours…

  Meanwhile, he had a weightier composition in hand, which was a draft of a proclamation to be read to the King on his arrival in England. It would be anonymous, of course, but might be considered by the Council and subsequently used with no reference to himself. This he sent to the Earl of Northumberland, meaning to call with it in person; but having ‘taken some little physic’ he announced his intention of waiting upon the noble lord the following morning. If the physic was the purge which Francis recommended for opening the liver—‘Take rhubarb two drams, steep them in claret wine burnt with mace, and wormwood one dram, steep it with the rest, and make a mass of pills with syrup acetos simplex’—it was as well he decided to postpone his visit a further twenty-four hours. In the event, the proclamation was never used.

  The King’s progress through England to his capital was a leisurely one. He was entertained at many of the great houses on his way south. The Earl of Shrewsbury welcomed him at Worksop, the Earl of Rutland at Belvoir Castle, and so to Burghley, residence of the second Lord Burghley (father to Lady Elizabeth Hatton), on to Huntingdon and Hertfordshire, and finally to Sir Robert Cecil’s estate Theobalds, before going to the Tower of London to await his coronation. His Queen, Anne of Denmark, did not accompany him, nor did any of the royal family; they were to follow later. Somewhere along the route Francis went to greet him, bearing a letter from the Earl of Northumberland, but where is not known. It was most likely at Theobalds, no great distance from Gorhambury.

  He recorded his first impression of the new monarch to the Earl.

  ‘I would not have lost this journey,’ he wrote, ‘and yet I have not that for which I went. For I have had no private conference to any purpose with the King, and no more hath almost any other English. For the speech his Majesty admitteth with some noblemen is rather matter of grace than of business… After I had received his Majesty’s first welcome, I was promised private access; but yet, not knowing what manner of service your Lordship’s letter might carry, for I saw it not, and well knowing that primeness in advertisement is much, I chose rather to deliver it to Sir Thomas Erskins, than to cool it in my hands, upon expectation of access. Your Lordship shall find a prince the farthest from the appearance of vainglory that may be, and rather like a prince of the ancient form than of the latter time. His speech is swift and cursory, and in the full dialect of his country; and in point of business, short; in point of discourse, large. He affecteth popularity by gracing such as he hath heard to be popular, and not by any fashions of his own. He is thought somewhat general in his favours, and his virtue of access is rather because he is much abroad and in press, than that he giveth easy audience about serious things. He hasteneth to a mixture of both kingdoms and nations, faster perhaps than policy will conveniently bear. I told your Lordship once before, that (methought) his Majesty rather asked counsel of the time past than of the time to come. But it is early yet to ground any settled opinion.’

  A cautious appraisal, fully justified during the next months as far as Francis himself was concerned, for he remained in the same position that he had held under the late Queen, one of the Learned Counsel, which in fact meant no particular duty in the legal field. Indeed, King James made few innovations on succeeding, preferring to let those who had served his predecessor and held authority under her advise him, though, reasonably enough, he kept a number of his own Scottish friends about him at Court.

  Had Anthony Bacon lived he would doubtless have received some greater mark of favour than his brother, because of his secret correspondence with the King through the years, for one of the first acts of condescension on the part of the monarch was to free the Earl of Southampton from the Tower, where he had been imprisoned since the execution of the Earl of Essex, and to welcome to Court Lady Rich, the late earl’s sister, and others of his family. Young Robert Devereux, the earl’s son, now Earl of Essex in his turn, was to complete his education beside Prince Henry, the King’s eldest son. It was unlikely, in the circumstances, that any of these would have kind words to say of Francis Bacon about the Court. Nor did the Earl of Northumberland appear to make much attempt to speak on his behalf.

  The only sign of favour came in July, at the time of the coronation—which was held in pouring rain on the 23rd—when Mr. Francis Bacon, along with three hundred others, was knighted at Whitehall, presumably for services to the Crown during the previous reign. What the new knight thought of the coronation itself he did not record. Plague had broken out in the city, and the ride from the Tower of London to Westminster could not take place. King James and his consort Queen Anne went by river to the Palace of Westminster, where the crowd could not see them, and then on foot to the abbey. In the abbey itself it seems that the King, whether from nerves or from a natural disinclination for ceremony, shocked the assembly by permitting Philip Herbert, later Earl of Montgomery, when paying homage, to kiss him on the cheek, and instead of rebuking the young courtier laughed and gave him a playful tap. Times had changed indeed.

  The coronation over, the King and Queen retired to Woodstock, for fear of the plague, and Sir Francis Bacon, knowing that months of unemployment in the political and legal field lay before him, withdrew to Gorhambury. What now? What lay ahead? Work, yes, some of his ideas for the future of mankind put down on paper at last. He would have ample time for it, and time to write a paper on the union of England and Scotland; a paper, addressed to the King, on the subject of how to reconcile the dissensions at present threatening to tear apart the Church; and a work in Latin, Temporis Partus Masculus (The Masculine Birth of Time), of which he completed only two chapters, but which was a forerunner of his later thought. Here he wrote as an older man would if addressing a younger, criticising Plato, Aristotle, scholasticism, and the philosophies of the Renaissance. None of them was spared. Of Aristotle he wrote that he ‘composed an art of madness and made us slaves of words’, of Plato that he produced ‘scraps of borrowed information polished and strung together’, and of Galen, the Greek physician, that he had cut short the patient’s hopes and the physician’s labours. ‘Take your Arabian confederates with you, those compounders of drugs, hoaxing the public with their bogus remedies.’ Did he, one wonders, blame his brother Anthony’s death on the taking of too much physic of the wrong sort? ‘But I hear you ask,’ he continued, ‘can everything taught by all these men be vain and false? My son, it is not a question of ignorance, but ill-luck. Everyone stumbles on some truth sooner or later… A pig might print the letter A with its snout in the mud, but you would not on that account expect it to go on and compose a tragedy… On waxen tablets you cannot write anything new until you rub out the old. With the mind it is not so: you cannot rub out the old until you have written in the new.’

 
Looking about him at Gorhambury, with much still to settle there and his mother now confined mostly to her own rooms and unable to give any sort of direction to the household, Francis reminded himself that next year he would be forty-three and still a bachelor. Elizabeth Hatton, wife to the Attorney-General, was now one of the circle of ladies surrounding Queen Anne. No other woman had ever attracted him as she had done. As for seeking a bride amongst the unmarried daughters of other noblemen about the Court, this was out of the question. Of modest fortune with debts still unpaid, despite his estate of Gorhambury, and without promotion in his profession of the law, he was no great catch. Nor, for that matter, had his fastidious eye ever lighted upon one who might be said to suit his particular taste.

  No, if he must—and it well might be politic to do so, in order to have a hostess to grace his table at Gorhambury and appear with him in London—then he would choose one who would not only bring him a dowry but whom, if tender enough in years, he could mould to his own will and fancy. She must have looks, a good presence, a quick mind, and an ability to adapt to any suggestion he might put to her. She must be agreeable to his younger friends, such as Tobie Matthew, and to certain of his servants and devoted adherents who flocked about him at Gray’s Inn and Gorhambury, scribbling at his dictation, and must accept his manner of life as perfectly natural. Approaching middle age, he was not going to change for any bride whom he chose to honour as Lady Bacon. He would be generous to such a one, and show her great kindness and affection. He had always liked the young, preferring them to his contemporaries; indeed, imagination was ready to take wing at the thought of such an innovation to his household—an untutored maid, eager to learn. There would be little jealousies at first, perhaps, among his willing scribes which he could smooth away, all adding to the flavour of novelty, and as time went on there would be new depth, new harmony.

  Earlier that year, when dining at his old home York House with Thomas Egerton, Lord Ellesmere, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal for the past seven years, he renewed acquaintance with the widow of Alderman Benedict Barnham, who had been Member of Parliament for Yarmouth and had died in 1597. His widow Dorothy had made haste the following year to marry Sir John Packington of Hampton Lovett in Worcestershire, well known as a great character about the Court in the preceding reign, and nicknamed ‘Lusty’ Packington. The Queen, amused at his antics, had made him a Knight of the Bath. Lusty Packington found on his marriage that he had four young stepdaughters to take on as well as a bride. Besides a manor in Suffolk which belonged to his wife, and the estate in Worcestershire, Sir John had a lodging in the Strand, hence his and his wife’s presence that evening at York House.

  Visits between the Packingtons and Francis Bacon were exchanged. Francis was introduced to Lusty’s four stepdaughters, a lively quartet, and was told they would each inherit £6,000 and an annual £300 in land from the late Alderman Barnham, which sums would come to their husbands when they married. The second daughter, Alice, was the most striking of the sisters, with a quick tongue suggesting a certain intelligence that would ripen with years. Francis was so impressed with what he saw, after a few encounters, that in a letter to his cousin, now Lord Cecil, in July, before the coronation, he declared that it was his intention ‘to marry with some convenient advancement’. He continued with some words about his prospective knighthood, which he said he would be content to have, and then told his cousin, ‘I have found out an alderman’s daughter, an handsome maiden, to my liking.’

  What Lord Cecil thought of the prospective match is unrecorded. Preoccupied with affairs of state and arrangements for the coronation, he was doubtless relieved that cousin Bacon had lowered his sights and was not aiming at some scion of the nobility. Let him marry his alderman’s daughter if he desired, and fortune so favoured him. Francis omitted to tell Lord Cecil that Alice Barnham, in July of 1603, was just eleven years old.

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  It was fortunate for Francis that his services as Learned Counsel were not required during the summer and autumn of 1603, or he might have found himself once more speaking for the Crown against such persons as Lord Cobham, Sir Walter Ralegh and others, who had been arrested on charges of desiring to overthrow the government, and even dispossess King James and place his cousin Lady Arabella Stuart upon the throne. How much truth there was in the allegations it is difficult to judge. Several Jesuits and Catholic priests were hanged, but Ralegh, despite the venomous attack upon him by Attorney-General Edward Coke, did not suffer the supreme penalty. Nor did Lord Cobham; both were imprisoned in the Tower.

  Ralegh had never been a favourite with the citizens of London, but now he became a popular hero, as the ill-fated Earl of Essex had once been. It is a curious trait in the English character that a man has only to be imprisoned, no matter what the offence, for a wave of sympathy to go to him, and his accusers to feel the backlash of dislike or even hatred. Francis had known the force of this in 1601 when Essex was condemned to death. Now he may have experienced some grim satisfaction in the realisation that his rival Edward Coke bore the full burden of public animosity, even though the victim had escaped the block.

  Comparisons with the earlier trial in 1601 were bound to be made, and the moment was opportune to finish his Apologia concerning the late Earl of Essex, which he had begun the previous summer, in an attempt to seek a reconciliation with the earl’s family and close friends. A letter to the Earl of Southampton on his release from the Tower had brought no result, so, Francis decided, his only recourse was to write a full account of all that had taken place between himself and Essex, and between himself and Queen Elizabeth (with the exception of certain reservations concerning his brother Anthony). When it was finished he dedicated it to Lord Mountjoy—lover of several years’ standing of Penelope Rich, Essex’s sister—who since the coronation had been Duke of Devonshire. Mountjoy’s neck had been in considerable danger at the time of the late earl’s disgrace, but his success in the campaign against the Irish rebels had spared him from the suspicion of complicity.

  Printed early in 1604, the Apologia is believed to have been widely circulated. Unfortunately no record exists of what Francis’s contemporaries thought of it, more especially the members of the Essex family, though Penelope Rich, so greatly revered by Anthony Bacon, who was to marry the Duke of Devonshire the following year, must surely have read it.

  The ladies of the Court were fully occupied by the new year festivities at Hampton Court, and doubtless had no time to read political pamphlets, Queen Anne being a devotee of masques and extravaganzas. The masque which was performed, by Samuel Daniel, was entitled the ‘Vision of the Twelve Goddesses’. Her Majesty herself appeared as Pallas Athene, and Lady Rich, black-eyed, golden-haired, was Venus. Lady Bedford—whom Anthony Bacon’s French page Jacques Petit had once attended—played the part of Vesta. Another of the sparkling goddesses was Elizabeth Hatton, always in demand on these occasions. If Francis was a spectator, as seems probable, perhaps he thought of eleven-year-old Alice Barnham, as the goddesses danced and turned upon the floor, with ten-year-old Prince Henry, already a favourite with the ladies, being tossed from one to the other amid applause.

  But it seems that the older courtiers were not amused. There were too many Scots gentlemen in his Majesty’s entourage, with their uncouth accent, their laughter over-loud, their jests ribald, none of which did the monarch appear to think out of place. King James himself was doubtless glad to have a certain amount of relaxation before the more solemn business of a week later, when on January 14th, in an effort to reconcile the various religious factions, the lords of the Council and the bishops were summoned to appear before him at Hampton Court to discuss the future of the church in England and Ireland, and the Book of Common Prayer. The conference lasted three days, and it appears that the King made a very admirable opening speech; indeed, one of the ministers of religion, Dr. Montague, later wrote of ‘the King alone disputing with the bishops, so wisely, wittily and learnedly, with that pretty patience, as I think never man liv
ing heard the like’. It seems very probable that Francis’s paper on the Pacification and Edification of the Church of England, dedicated to his Most Excellent Majesty, had been read with more than usual care by the King. However, it was impossible to please everyone, and the upshot of the conference was that the King supported his High Church bishops, and the Puritans amongst the clergy found their demands dismissed, which boded ill for future pacification.

  This discontent found vent in the first Parliament of the new reign, which King James opened on March 19th. Many questions came to the forefront, the expenses of the royal household being one of them, and the privileges and prerogatives of the monarch. Those members of Parliament who held low-church or Puritan views tended to be the most adamant in favour of reform. The King believed himself supreme, ruling by divine right. His predecessor Queen Elizabeth may have had the same belief, but more than forty years of dealing with an English Parliament had taught her when to be firm and when to relent; and whatever her own feelings she knew that the monarch must appear to acquiesce to the demands of the faithful Commons. King James lacked this experience, and consequently found himself in some difficulty, instinctively supporting the Lords when discretion should have given a more gracious hearing to the Lower House.