complained of his extravagant expenditure in coals (Birch's Memoirs, ii. 371). So far from growing rich in Essex's household, it is clear that he grew poorer and poorer. Essex appears to have promised, and to have made some effort, to repay him for his self-denying services, but the schemes did not take effect. 'The Queen hears,' wrote Chamberlain to Carleton (28 June 1599), 'that he [Essex] has given Essex House to Antony Bacon, which displeases her; I believe it is but instead of 2,000l. he meant to give him with a clause of redemption for that sum' (Cal. State Papers, 1598-1601, p. 222).
Anthony died just before 27 May 1601, three months after his patron's execution, aged 43. Doubtless the shock which the last events of Essex's life caused him hastened his death. 'Anthony Bacon,' writes Chamberlain to Carleton 'under date 27 May 1601, 'died not long since, but so far in debt that I think his brother [to whom his property reverted] is little the better by him.'
After James I's arrival in England in May 1603, Francis sought the favour of the king mainly on the ground of 'the infinite devotion and incessant endeavours (beyond the strength of his body and nature of the times) which appeared in my good brother towards your majesty's service ... all which endeavours and duties for the most part were common to myself with him, though by design (as between brethren) dissembled' (Spedding's Life, iii. 62-3). On 25 Aug. 1604 Francis received the grant of a pension of 60l. a year, in consideration (in the words of the patent) of his brother's 'good, faithful, and acceptable service' (Rymer's Fœdera, xvi. 597). There seems every reason to accept Dr. Birch's inference that this grant formed the king's reply to Francis's petition of the previous year (Historical View, p. xx).
Bacon's voluminous correspondence, in sixteen volumes, is mainly preserved in Lambeth Palace Library, to which it was presentedby Archbishop Tenison. There are sixteen volumes of transcripts from the Lambeth papers at the British Museum (Addit. MSS. 4109-24). Some additional letters are also at the museum, and others are in the Public Record Office. These letters and papers are the only source of Anthony Bacon's biography, but they cover far more ground than his personal history. Besides the letters from and to his mother, his steward, his creditors, his brother, his friends, doctors, and money-lenders, there are notes of political intelligence from spies and ambassadors stationed in all parts of Europe. His papers present, in fact, as full a picture of European history of the period as any extant collection of documents. Mr. Spedding, who made an examination of the manuscripts, described Bacon as a grave, assiduous, energetic, religious man, remarkable for his power of attaching men to him, generous beyond his means, a little too apt to suspect and resent an injury, driven at times into injustice by pecuniary embarrassments, but generally fair and tolerant. We should add that in his religious opinions he showed a liberality far in advance of his age. He did not permit his strong personal sympathy with the principles of the Reformation to debar him from numbering men of other religious professions among his friends. His epistolary style, although occasionally cumbersome in expression, is full of quaint humour, and the writer's unswerving honesty of purpose gives a very pathetic interest to the whole of his correspondence with Essex.
[Dr. Thomas Birch printed in 1754, in two volumes, a large number of extracts from the Anthony Bacon MSS. at Lambeth, under the title of 'Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth,' but he injured the literary effect of the letters by transferring them, in almost all cases, from the first to the third person. Dr. Birch also made use of a few of these papers in his Historical View of the Negotiations between France and England, 1592-1617, published in 1749, and has given an account of Bacon in the introduction, pp. xix-xxii, which proves of very little value. Mr. Spedding, in the first three volumes of his life of Bacon, makes many references to Anthony Bacon. See also Dr. Abbott's Bacon and Essex (1877); Devereux's Lives and Letters of the Earls of Essex; Cooper's Athenæ Cantab. ii. 314-16; Todd's Cat. Lambeth MSS.]
BACON, FRANCIS (1561–1626), lord chancellor, born at York House on 22 Jan. 1561, was the son of Lord Keeper Bacon, by his second wife, Ann, second daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, and sister of the wife of Sir William Cecil, better known by his later title as Lord Treasurer Burghley. In April 1573, at the age of twelve years and three months, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, leaving it in March 1575. In June 1575 he was admitted to Gray's Inn.
Bacon was thus destined to the profession of the law. Few youths of his age, however, are content to look forward to a life of merely professional success; and in Bacon's case, partly by reason of his own mental qualities, and partly by reason of the influence of the exciting events of the great national struggle in the heart of which he lived, the visions of youth were peculiarly far-reaching. The boy already longed not merely to do something for the defence of protestantism against
