The Winding Stair: Francis Bacon, His Rise and Fall
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The King of Denmark, who had also ‘drink taken,’ cleaned himself up and invited the lady to dance, but fell flat on his face and had to be carried to an inner room to recover. The Masque proceeded, each performer more tipsy than the last; some staggered and went to sleep, others were speechless and retired, as the Danish king had done, only to be violently sick in an outer hall, and the final mummer, representing peace, was so bellicose that she demanded battle of everyone in her path and struck them over the head with her olive branch. What the unfortunate host thought of it all history does not record, but the proverbial saying ‘turned in his grave’ would certainly have applied to his father, the great statesman Lord Treasurer Burghley.
As to Francis himself, he had hopes of a rise in status this month of July, the post of Solicitor-General being likely to fall vacant. His old rival Edward Coke had been promoted to the post of Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and the new Attorney-General was Sir Henry Hobart. However, Serjeant Doderidge, the Solicitor-General, continued to hold his place for the time being, thus bringing the usual disappointment to Learned Counsel Sir Francis Bacon. Nevertheless he was aware that changes might take place in the not too distant future, and had written letters to his Majesty, to Lord Salisbury and to the Lord Chancellor expressing his hopes.
In his letter to Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, who had first introduced him to the Packingtons, he makes the first reference to his marriage that occurs amongst his correspondence at this time. ‘And herewithal, my good Lord, I humbly pray your Lordship to consider that time groweth precious with me, and that a married man is seven years elder in his thoughts the first day. And therefore what a discomfortable thing is it for me to be unsettled still?’ He has a further allusion at the end of the letter. ‘But to conclude, as my honourable Lady your wife was some mean to make me change the name of another, so if it please you to help me, as you said, to change my own name, I can be but more and more bounden to you: and I am much deceived, if your Lordship find not the King well inclined, and my Lord of Salisbury forward and affectionate.’
There is no record of the answers Francis received, but there was certainly no change in his status at this time.
The second reference to his marital state comes in a letter to his cousin Sir Thomas Hoby, dated August 4th 1606, concerning the death of a mutual friend. Condolences over, Francis says, ‘Your loving congratulations for my doubled life, as you call it, I thank you for. No man may better conceive the joys of a good wife than yourself, with whom I dare not compare. But I thank God I have not taken a thorn out of my foot to put it into my side. For as my state is somewhat amended, so I have no other circumstance of complaint. But herein we will dilate when we meet; which meeting will be much more joyful if my Lady bear a part to mend the music: to whom I pray let me in all kindness be commended.’
Thomas Posthumus Hoby, younger son of Francis’s aunt Elizabeth Russell, had married a rich widow with estates in the north of England, and was therefore well content with his lot. He too was childless, and his north-country neighbours seem to have laughed at him, calling him ‘the busiest saucy little Jack in all the country, and would have an oar in anybody’s boat’. It is to be hoped the two cousins met, and dined, and introduced their wives, and music was made; perhaps Alice performed upon the virginal.
Where Francis and Alice lived when Parliament was in session is something of a mystery. Francis undoubtedly would continue to make use of his chambers in Gray’s Inn, but he could hardly take his lady there, and he was to be very active indeed when the House met in the February of 1607 after the Christmas recess. Twickenham Lodge was no longer in his possession; it became the property of Lucy, Countess of Bedford, during that year. It is possible that Lusty Packington, who quarrelled violently with his wife, Alice’s mother, just about this time, and according to the gossips had ‘parted with her on foul terms’, made his lodgings in the Strand available to his daughter and son-in-law. A countryman by taste and inclination, Lusty would prefer his estate at Hampton Lovett to the hurly-burly of the Strand, and Lady Packington, likewise possessed of a difficult temper, and with a brood of young Packingtons to bring up (fruits of her marriage with Lusty), besides her own Barnham daughters, may well have retired to her own estate in Suffolk. Francis had experience now of the trials that in-laws could bring, and he had little time to spare, with the question of the naturalisation of the Scots coming up for heated debate in the House of Commons.
Feeling on this matter ran very high indeed. Certainly there had been a great influx of citizens from north of the border since his Majesty’s accession, and many sections of society felt that they were taking over land, institutions and privileges that belonged by right to the English. Guido Fawkes had not been alone in wanting to blow every Scot back into Scotland.
It was, in a curious way, like the situation in our own time when persons from the Commonwealth can, by law, claim British citizenship and take up their residence in this country, and it roused the same heated passions. Members of Parliament who were against the union of Scotland and England were also against the naturalisation of Scottish subjects of both realms who had been born before the death of Queen Elizabeth, and had since shared equal rights with the English. Francis, who was a fervent supporter of the union and of naturalisation, made one of the longest speeches of his political career in reply to the member for Bucks, who had launched a tirade, lasting a whole day, against all things Scottish. Would anyone, he said, mingle two swarms of bees? Why, then, two hostile swarms of men? And if Queen Mary had borne a son to King Philip of Spain, would Parliament have naturalised the people of Sicily and Spain?
Francis rose to his feet on Tuesday, February 17th, and from the length of his reported speech he must have spoken for several hours, with apparently no interruptions. He soon dismissed the implication that the Scottish settlers since the accession were in danger of swamping the native English population. ‘I would fain understand,’ he said, ‘in these four years’ space… how many families of the Scottishmen are planted in the cities, boroughs and towns of this kingdom. For I do assure myself, that, more than some persons of quality about his Majesty’s person here at the Court, and in London, and some other inferior persons that have a dependency upon them, the return and certificate, if such a survey should be made, would be of a number extremely small.’
He informed Mr. Speaker and the House ‘that this realm of England is not yet peopled to the full… [and] if we were, it were not possible that we should relinquish and resign such an infinite benefit of fishing to the Flemings, as is well known we do.’ (A stab here at the fishermen on the continent, who were over-fishing the Channel to the detriment of our own fishing fleet. A bone of contention still!)
One great objection to naturalisation was that the laws of the two kingdoms differed. ‘It is true for mine own part, Mr. Speaker,’ Francis declared, ‘that I wish the Scottish nation governed by our laws; for I hold our laws, with some reducement, worthy to govern, if it were the world. But this is that which I say… that according to true reason of estate, naturalisation is in order first and precedent to union of laws… For naturalisation doth but take out the marks of a foreigner, but union of laws makes them entirely as ourselves.’
Possibly one of his strongest and most eloquent arguments in favour of naturalisation was that, if two kingdoms were united without this additional bond, then history had proved that the union in time dissolved, and the peoples separated or rebelled. He gave examples from ancient Rome, from Sparta, and in more recent times from Aragon in Spain, from Florence and Pisa and from the Turkish empire. ‘I do believe,’ he continued, ‘and I would be sorry to be found a prophet in it, that except we proceed with this naturalisation, though perhaps not in his Majesty’s time, who hath such interest in both nations, yet in the time of his descendants, these realms will be in continual danger to divide and break again.’
Even more vital was the safety of the realm. ‘Touching surety, it was well said by Titus Quintius the Rom
an touching the state of Peloponnesus, that the tortoise is safe within her shell. But if there be any parts that lie open, they endanger all the rest.’
Francis’s concluding words were, ‘So my duty is performed. The judgement is yours. God direct it for the best.’
Perhaps his friend and contemporary, the dramatist Ben Jonson, was thinking of this speech and of others that were to come later, when he wrote of Francis Bacon in after years, ‘No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough, or look aside from him, without loss. He commanded where he spoke, and had us angry and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power. The fear of every man that heard him was, lest he should make an end.’
The proceedings continued through February and March and the matter was referred to the judges in the Upper House and back to the Commons, the whole question of naturalisation becoming ‘bogged down’, as we should say in modern slang, as to where the law stood, and whether those Scots born since the King was crowned should have equal rights in England, or if there should be a distinction made between those born before and those since.
Just before the Easter recess his Majesty himself addressed the House, hoping, very naturally, that his faithful Commons would pass an act of general naturalisation, and that the union of the two kingdoms would follow in due course. He was to be disappointed. Both questions were postponed indefinitely. The only allied bill that secured further readings and was passed was one for abolishing hostile laws between the two kingdoms, and this did not come about until June 30th. As to the act of union, neither his Majesty King James I, nor Francis Bacon his Learned Counsel, who had spoken so eloquently in its favour, would see such an act passed in their lifetime. Nor any member of the faithful Commons. More than a century would pass before England and Scotland became legally one kingdom.
Francis may have failed in his objective, but his fervour, at long last, had impressed his sovereign. On June 25th, just before the end of the session, he became Solicitor-General, a position for which he had waited for thirteen years. It was promotion at long last—and the office was also worth £1,000 a year. His foot was set on the first step of the winding stair.
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The improvement in status brought little personal satisfaction to Francis. He showed evidence of this in his private memoranda, written during July the following year and never intended to be seen by any eye but his own—the memoranda were not discovered until 1848—where a brief note refers to his mood after becoming Solicitor-General. ‘I have now twice, upon amendment of my fortune, disposition to melancholy and distaste, specially the same happening against the long vacation when company failed and business both, for upon my Solicitor’s place I grew indisposed and inclined to superstition.’
He mentions ‘old symptoms as I was wont to have it many years ago, as after sleeps; strife at meats, strangeness, clouds, etc.’ A tendency to hypochondria, which had been so strong in his brother Anthony, was now growing upon him too, and the memoranda have many jottings of remedies for indigestion, bowel troubles and ‘vicious humours’—indeed, for almost every ailment likely to attack the inner man.
One of the habits he found it almost impossible to break was the tendency to fall asleep in the afternoon, or immediately after dinner, which induced ‘languishing and distaste and feverish disposition’ more than any other. He would awake with pains in his side or in the belly under the navel, pains which could only be relieved with castor oil, or a change of position. Evidently the presence of his young wife at such times did nothing to improve matters, but must have increased his nervous irritation. Fortunately Alice’s sister Dorothy, a year or so younger than herself, had also found herself a husband, one John Constable, a young barrister of Gray’s Inn and therefore known personally to Francis. They were married some time during 1607, and his Majesty, apparently at the request of his new Solicitor-General, knighted the bridegroom in October. What John Constable had done to deserve the honour is unrecorded, but the sisters and brothers-in-law being friends eased the conscience of Francis where his own wife was concerned. When he himself was out of sorts, and Alice asked for entertainment, the Constables would oblige.
He had an added anxiety in that his young friend Tobie Matthew, who had turned Catholic while in Italy—a closely guarded confidence until now—returned to England in August 1607. As he was the son of the present Archbishop of York, his Catholicism was something that could not be kept secret for long; and it became the Solicitor-General’s painful duty to inform the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Bancroft, that the young man was not only in London but determined to hold firmly to the Catholic faith. Tobie, handsome, witty, something of a dilettante until the present, had been wandering about the continent against his parents’ wishes, visiting Florence, Siena, Rome; and he spoke fluent Italian. His travels, and possibly the influence of the Jesuits, had matured him, and although Francis could not condone his Catholicism here was just the intellect he needed to probe him out of his own seasonable melancholy into discussing Cogitata et Visa de Interpretatione Naturae (Thoughts and Conclusions on the Interpretation of Nature), the Latin treatise he had been writing, and to inspire him further to plan in outline the great work which lay ahead, and which at this stage he liked to call his Instauratio Magna.
Unfortunately, all attempts by the learned divines, including the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, to persuade Tobie to abjure his new faith failed, and he found himself in the Fleet prison. Francis was able to see him, however, as the gossips discovered. ‘Tobie Matthew hath leave to go as often as he will with his keeper to Sir Francis Bacon, and is put in good hope of further liberty.’ Thus Dudley Carleton to his correspondent John Chamberlain. Tobie was thirty years old on October 3rd 1607, and, with the anniversary of the Powder Plot coming up in a month’s time, Francis was well aware how the association of ideas might harm his young friend in the eyes of authority. A letter to Tobie, undated, must have been written about this time, in which Francis says, ‘Do not think me forgetful or altered towards you. But if I should say I could do you any good, I should make my power more than it is. I do hear that which I am right sorry for; that you grow more impatient and busy than at first; which maketh me exceedingly fear the issue of that which seemeth not to stand at a stay. I myself am out of doubt, that you have been miserably abused, when you were first seduced; but that which I take in compassion, others may take in severity… And I entreat you much, sometimes to meditate upon the extreme superstition in this last Powder Treason; fit to be tabled and pictured in the chambers of meditation, as another hell above the ground: and well justifying the censure of the heathen, that superstition is far worse than atheism; by how much it is less evil to have no opinion of God at all, than such as is impious towards his divine majesty and goodness. Good Mr. Matthew, receive yourself back from these courses of perdition.’
By these ‘courses of perdition’ Francis meant Tobie’s refusal to take the oath of allegiance to the King, a most dangerous course, which might have cost him his life.
Tobie was still in the Fleet at the new year, which came in bitterly cold, with the Thames frozen over, and the Archbishop of Canterbury travelled to Court across the ice from Lambeth Palace, which was hardly likely to improve his temper. The usual festivities were held, with a Masque of Beauty devised by Ben Jonson on January 10th, Queen Anne performing with her ladies, as was her custom, Lady Elizabeth Hatton amongst them. Everything went smoothly, and this time there was no break in decorum, no stumbling upon the floor. It is to be hoped that Francis allowed his lady to be present, in the company of her sister, Lady Constable, for once again he found himself involved in her family affairs. This time it was Lady Packington who was putting them all to trial. There was apparently some difficulty over Dorothy Constable’s marriage settlement, and Francis, who seems to have been a trustee, became exasperated.
And please God, he might have added, that she does not take it into her head to come and live with us, whether at Gorhambury or elsewhere. It is evident from his private memoranda later that year that the Bacons were living at some period during 1608 at a house called Fullwoods, which does not suggest an address in town, but by July they were installed at Bath House off the Strand. It is likely that their London quarters were shared with the Constables, giving Francis opportunity to escape to Gray’s Inn whenever possible. This would have been particularly convenient in early February, as owing to an outbreak of plague Tobie Matthew was allowed out on parole. On February 7th he was called before the Council, and told by the Earl of Salisbury that he could go free but under the surveillance of ‘some friend of good account’ for a period of six weeks, after which he ‘must depart the realm’. Tobie chose a Mr. Jones to watch over him, who may have been the Mr. Edward Jones known well to Francis Bacon—one-time secretary to the late Earl of Essex, an acquaintance of both Francis and his brother Anthony, and ‘a great translator of books’. Certainly it must have been possible for Solicitor-General Sir Francis and his protégé Tobie Matthew to meet at Gray’s Inn without further obstacle or embarrassment. Tobie’s actual date of departure is uncertain, but it seems to have been within the next two months. He was to remain abroad for ten years, during which time letters passed continually between the two friends.