The Winding Stair: Francis Bacon, His Rise and Fall

by Daphne Du Maurier

  The Lord Chancellor had presented the marquis with a ‘plain cup of essay’ as a New Year’s gift, the wording of his accompanying note suggesting a play on words, ‘in token that if your Lordship in any thing shall make me your sayman, I will be hurt before your Lordship shall be hurt’. The Prince of Wales received ‘a pair of small candlesticks of gold, in token that his light and the light of his posterity upon church and commonwealth may never fail’. There is no record of a present to his Majesty, but, remembering the gift of a petticoat which Francis once sent as a new year’s token to Queen Elizabeth, perhaps King James was offered some article of wearing apparel to adorn his person in the royal bedchamber.

  The Prince of Wales presented a masque on Twelfth Night, written by Ben Jonson, Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, but for once it failed to please, despite the prancing of the two marquises, Buckingham and Hamilton, with the Earl of Montgomery and divers ladies. Lady Hatton was not present, neither was the Queen, who had been unwell for some little time. Both she and the King appear to have had circulatory trouble in their legs, and anything of this nature was invariably put down to gout. It was said that his Majesty had to be tied to his horse when hunting, but stiffness afterwards could be relieved by placing both his legs into the corpse of a disem-bowelled deer. His Lord Chancellor would not have recommended this doubtful remedy. His own treatment, ‘which hath seldom failed, but driven it away in twenty-four hours’, was ‘first to apply a poultice… of manchet boiled in milk, and a powder of red roses, and ten grains of saffron’. Then after the pores were open apply a ‘fomentation of sage leaves… root of hemlock, and water wherein steel hath been quenched’. Finally a ‘plaster, dissolved with oil of roses, spread upon a piece of holland, and applied’. Certainly a more pleasant prescription than bathing his legs in deer’s blood, but then, his Majesty’s tastes in many things were a little less refined than those of his Lord Chancellor.

  Tobie Matthew was in the news again, in close attendance upon the Countess of Exeter, who was thirty-eight years younger than her husband the earl, now seventy-six. He had married her as his second wife in 1612, so she was stepmother to a large family of sons and daughters considerably older than herself; one of them was Lady Hatton. Tobie Matthew was said to be ‘perverting’ the countess to become a Roman Catholic, but she was in some trouble anyway, having been accused of attempting to poison Lady Roos, wife of her husband’s grandson.

  This delicate matter was handed over to the Lord Chancellor to examine. He was obliged to tread warily, knowing both families well, for he had on the one side Sir Thomas Lake, a member of the Council and the father of Lady Roos, and on the other the outraged Earl of Exeter, who considered that his wife had been slandered, and who was determined to bring the whole affair before the Star Chamber. This necessitated several months of delay, and the Lord Chancellor was able to concentrate on more immediate matters connected with Chancery, finding time also to further certain suits of the Marquis of Buckingham, who was writing weekly from Newmarket or Theobalds, wherever the King should be, desiring him to favour various gentlemen in various affairs, ‘which I will not fail to acknowledge as done to myself’. Frequently these ‘suits’ concerned members of Buckingham’s own family, and the Lord Chancellor had to exercise the utmost care and discretion that when there was any controversy between rival parties he judged such cases on their merit alone.

  The King, despite his hope for a marriage between the Prince of Wales and the Infanta of Spain, still held to a policy of dealing firmly with recusants, in which he differed from his Lord Chancellor, who took a more moderate line. Perhaps his many conversations with Tobie Matthew had influenced him in this, for Tobie would have reported back to him the hopes of his many Spanish friends and others at the Spanish Court. However, Francis was obliged to abide by his Majesty’s commands, and on February 13th, before the judges went out on circuit, he made a speech in the Star Chamber giving them instructions that they should be more definite in finding out how many recusants there were throughout the country, ‘in what corners and where their nests are, and where it is that they do abound… None shall be a justice of peace whose wife is a recusant,’ he went on, which seems rather a harsh measure for an otherwise law-abiding Catholic.

  The Lord Chancellor also gave instructions that justices should be firmer in dealing with thieves; he would not have tolerated the modern custom of letting the offender off with a fine. ‘There is a rising of robberies more now than in former times was wont: and there are two causes hereof; the one is that men are too loose in taking of the committers of them, and the other is they are negligent in suffering them to go away; for now hue and cries are of no consequence, only a little paper is sent up and down with a soft pace, whereas they should be prosecuted with horse and foot, and hunted as a thief.’

  Something that concerned him more personally was the case of Lord Clifton, who had been prosecuted for some fault before Francis became Lord Chancellor, imprisoned in the Fleet, and ordered to pay a fine of £1,000. Furious, this nobleman threatened to kill the Lord Keeper, and was transferred to the Tower. Francis, magnanimous as always, was prepared to intercede for him, and he was released, but the unfortunate nobleman appears to have been unbalanced, for some months later he stabbed himself in his Holborn lodgings.

  Meanwhile, during the early part of the year and into the spring Francis continued his sittings in the Court of Chancery, present every day, recording every fact, never rising until all business had been concluded; while for information of a more personal kind we have to turn to John Chamberlain, who now and again mentions the Lord Chancellor, or his friends, in his numerous letters to Dudley Carleton in Venice.

  We hear in early February that Tobie Matthew is ‘going to a play at Blackfriars but methinks playing and Friday’s fasting agree not so well together as praying in a man of so much profession’. Chamberlain obviously disapproved of Tobie; possibly he was still sporting his ‘gaudy attire’ and paying nightly visits to the Spanish ambassador.

  There was some disagreement between the Lord Chancellor and the Archbishop of Canterbury about the appointment of a new provost at Oriel College, Oxford. The Archbishop wanted a man of ‘years and gravity’, and that ‘striplings should not be made heads of houses’. Francis favoured a younger man, saying he ‘respected not minority of years when there was majority of parts’. His protégé was only twenty-six, and in the event he was appointed.

  In April the Lord Chancellor attended a sermon at Mercers’ Chapel to hear the Archbishop of Spalato speak. Francis came ‘in all his pomp of the Council, which was not so strange as, not a month since, to see him in the same state go… to cheapen [bargain for] and buy silks and velvets.’

  John Chamberlain may have sneered at the Lord Chancellor buying his clothes at bargain prices; he would surely have itched to get his fingers on the personal statement of receipts and disbursements for that same year, from June to September, had he known they existed amongst the private papers. Like the private memoranda for 1608, these lists of ten years later were presumably never intended for any eyes except those of Francis Bacon and his personal secretaries, but preserved they were, and eventually found their way amongst the state documents.

  The biographers Spedding and Dixon repeat them in full, but here a selection has been made for the purpose of revealing the more intimate side of Francis Bacon, Lord Keeper and Lord Chancellor, in the year 1618. Under ‘receipts’ for the four months, for instance, we find:

  June 27 Of your Lordship from Mr. Tobie Matthew by your Lp. order £400 0s 0d

  July 23 Of Mr. Edney [groom of the chamber, and one of Francis Bacon’s originalattendants] 209 0 0

  Of Mr. Young, your Lp. secretary 300 10 0

  Of Mr. Hatcher [seal-bearer] from the Hamper 680 0 0

  The following items were listed under the heading ‘Gifts and Rewards’:

  June 26 To one that brought your Lp. cherries & other things from Gorhambury by your Lp.’s order 0 6 0

  29 To
an Italian by your Lp. order 5 10 0

  30 To Mr. Butler by your Lp. order as a gift 22 0 0

  July 1 To my La. Hatton’s man that brought your Lp. garden seeds 0 11 0

  So the bond of friendship had not been severed, and the gardens of Hatton House were filled with lilies, rosemary, cloves, strawberries, which evidently found their way either to York House or down to Gorhambury.

  July 5 To Mr. Matthew’s man that brought your Lp. sweetmeats 0 5 0

  To Mr. Recorder’s man that brought your Lp. a salmon 0 10 0

  July 6 To Mr. Trowshaw, a poor man & late a prisoner in the Compter by your Lp. order 3 6 0

  To the Washwoman, for sending after the crane that flew into the Thames 0 5 0

  [A delightful image! Had Francis observed the scene from his window in York House, and the washwoman, knowing his affection for birds, halloo’d to a nearby waterman?]

  July 8 To my Lady’s footman that brought your Lp. cherries from Gorhambury 0 5 0

  [Alice was evidently in the country, and Francis could entertain his friends to salmon and cherries without her.]

  July 30 To Sir Samuel Paton’s man that brought your Lp. 12 dozen of quails 1 2 0

  To Mr. Jones the apothecary his man 0 5 0

  [Indigestion must have followed upon the quails!]

  July 31 To Sir Edward Carew’s man that brought your Lp. boxes of orange flowers, by your Lp. order 9 10 0

  August 1 To a poor pilgrim by your Lp. order 2 4 0

  August 2 To a poor man at St. Albans by your Lp. order 0 2 6

  To Mr. Gibson’s maid of St. Albans that brought your Lp. six turkies 0 5 6

  The vacation had started, and the Lord Chancellor was now settled at Gorhambury. Bucks, stags and salmon follow in quick succession, all unsolicited gifts from noblemen, but the apothecary of St. Albans was summoned immediately afterwards, and received £1 2s 0d. Indeed, the apothecary was usually summoned the day after a good dinner, and he pocketed another £1 2s 0d when Francis had been made a present of some ducks.

  The Lord Chancellor was in London in mid-August, and several rewards are listed for this period, all dated August 19th, amongst them being:

  To the several servants of your Lp. house at Gorhambury at your Lp. coming from thence at your Lp. order 15 14 0

  To the carters that came up to London with the trunks 0 10 0

  To him that came with the confectionery glasses 0 3 0

  To him that came with the sumpters 0 2 6

  To the woman that washed & starched your Lp. lining at Gorhambury 0 6 0

  To the Prince’s trumpeters by your Lp. order 2 4 0

  To old Mr. Hillyard by your Lp. order 11 0 0

  This last item is of special interest. ‘Old Mr. Hillyard’ would be Nicholas Hilliard, the famous painter of portraits and miniatures, who had painted a miniature of Francis Bacon at eighteen, and had been in financial distress for some time. He was now seventy-one, and was to die the following year.

  The list of modest rewards for services rendered continues until the end of September, and usually consists of a few shillings paid to a man who had brought a gift of birds or fruit from his master to the Lord Chancellor.

  The list of ‘Disbursements and Payments’ is not so modest, although to the present-day eye they do not seem excessive.

  June 25 Paid the lining draper and sempster’s bill for cloth and lace and making your Lp. ruffs, & cuffs, & shirts 29 8 10

  July 4 Paid for a looking-glass for your Lps. case 0 18 0

  July 8 Paid Mr. Young your Lp. secretary by your Lp. order 66 0 0

  Paid the Steward by your Lp. order 200 0 0

  Paid Mr. Neave the upholster in part of his bill 200 0 0

  July 9 Paid the Steward by your Lp. order 400 0 0

  July 23 Paid the Steward by your Lp. order 200 0 0

  July 24 Paid the Steward by your Lp. order 200 0 0

  It will be seen from the above that the steward must have been responsible for many of the household bills, food, servants’ wages, etc. His name at this time was Mr. Sharpeigh, and he appears to have lived up to it. Certain of the tradesmen sent in separate bills, as below:

  August 15 Paid Mr. Wells your Lp. butcher at Gorhambury in part of his bill of a greater sum due 100 0 0

  August 17 Paid the Clerk of the Kitchen at Gorhambury by your Lp. order 50 0 0

  September 11 Paid Mr. Miller the woolen draper by your Lp. order in part of his old bill 100 0 0

  –and, continually, the sum of £200 to Mr. Sharpeigh, Steward.

  The roll of attendants, grooms of the chamber, gentlemen waiters, pages, ushers, and lesser fry amounted at this time to seventy-three. Certainly an enormous retinue, but the steward may not have been accountable for the salaries of the personal attendants.

  Entertaining at York House and Gorhambury must certainly have increased from July onwards, for on the twelfth of that month Lord Keeper Lord Chancellor Sir Francis Bacon was created Baron Verulam of Verulam, and from henceforward signed his name Fr. Verulam, Canc. He took his name from the Roman city of Verulamium three-quarters of a mile away, and it was about this time that he began building his new house, set in the north-east corner of the park at Gorhambury. It was supposed to be a place of retreat, but as it was set near the main turnpike road it could not have been as quiet, even in those days, as the old house in the grounds above. Verulam House was planned to be small and compact, with high rooms, a grand staircase, and a flat leaded roof from which his lordship could enjoy the views over the various walks, gardens and lakes. The kitchens were placed in a basement, a novel idea at that time, and water was piped up to the house from the ponds nearby.

  We can tell that building was under way this summer from items listed in the payments.

  August 17 Paid Mr. Dobson by your Lp. order to discharge areas of workmen’s bills left unpaid at Whittide last 100 0 0

  September 17 Paid the Steward by your Lp. order for Mr. Styles the mason for the works the masonat Verulam 50 0 0

  Francis designed the house himself with the help of an assistant, Mr. Dobson from St. Albans, and the cost of the building was said to be around £10,000. This was three times what his father, Lord Keeper Sir Nicholas Bacon, had spent when he built Gorhambury. The ruins of the old house stand today, but—alas for explorers—not a stone remains of Verulam House, which was pulled down some forty years after Francis died. John Aubrey saw it in 1656, ten years before it was demolished, and described it in his Brief Lives, in which he said it was ‘the most ingeniously contrived little pile that ever I saw… there were good chimney pieces; the rooms were very lofty, and all were very well wainscotted. There were two bathing-rooms or stuffes, whither his Lordship retired afternoons as he saw cause. All the tunnels of the chimneys were carried into the middle of the house; and round about them were seats…

  ‘In the middle of this house was a delicate staircase of wood, which was curiously carved, and on the posts of every interstice was some pretty figure, as of a grave divine with his book and spectacles, a mendicant friar, etc., not one thing twice. On the doors of the upper story on the outside, which were painted dark umber, were the figures of the gods of the Gentiles; viz, Apollo… Jupiter, with his thunderbolt, bigger than the life, and done by an excellent hand; the heightenings were of hatchings of gold, which when the sun shone on them made a most glorious show.

  ‘The upper part of the uppermost door on the east side had inserted into it a large looking-glass, with which the stranger was very gratefully deceived, for, after he had been entertained a pretty while, with the prospects of the ponds, walks, and country, which this door faced, one would have sworn at first glance that he had beheld another prospect through the house; for as soon as the stranger was landed on the balcony, the concierge that showed the house would shut the door to put this fallacy on him with his looking-glass.’

  The ‘stuffes’ John Aubrey mentions were heated rooms, in other words a form of Turkish bath. Possibly an antidote to that fatal sleep of afternoon.<
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  After visiting Verulam House Aubrey walked up to Gorhambury, a mile distant, and saw the gardens and the woods, but from his description both were already in decline, and ‘east of the parquet, where his Lordship much meditated, his servant Mr. Bushell attending him with his pen and ink horn, and in his Lordship’s time a paradise, now is a large ploughed field’. There were some four acres of fish-ponds, ‘pitched at the bottom with pebbles of several colours, as of fishes, etc., which in his Lordship’s time were plainly to be seen through the clear water, now overgrown with flags and rushes’.

  Thus even in a short space of time the garden and surroundings of Gorhambury that Francis had planted and laid out with so much love and care had gone to waste; something which happens with such frequency in the present day, but is somehow unexpected in the seventeenth century.

  Mr. Bushell, with his pen and ink-horn, figures in the roll of attendants in 1618 as ‘gent. usher’. He had, in fact, served Francis Bacon since 1608 as a lad of fifteen, and stayed with him until his death, when he became a mining engineer in Somerset and Cardigan, basing his knowledge on all that he had learnt on minerals from his master.

  The two chief secretaries in the rolls are Mr. Young and Mr. Thomas Meautys. Thomas Meautys was later to become secretary-in-chief and a close personal friend, and was to marry the granddaughter of Sir Nicholas Bacon, half-brother to Francis. Edward Sherburn is entered as a groom of the chamber, and there are some twenty-five gentlemen waiters; one would like to know their precise duties. Mr. Percy is there, that ‘bloody Percy’ so much detested by the first Lady Bacon. He must by now have been advanced in years, like his master. There is a Mr. Nicholas Bacon, very probably the son of half-brother Edward Bacon, and—possibly the most intriguing gentleman waiter of them all—Mr. John Underhill, at that time twenty-six years old, of Loxley in Warwickshire, a few miles from Stratford-on-Avon, and kinsman to William Underhill who had sold New Place to Mr. William Shakespeare.