Cromwell's solitary parliament, and he sat in the revived Long parliament of 1660. After the establishment of the commonwealth he had been appointed one of the admiralty judges, an office which he exchanged for that of master of requests to the Protector. One of his chief functions appears to have been to act as a medium of communication between Cromwell and his council of state; and this body often commissioned him to inquire into and report on claims, grievances, and other matters brought before them and requiring careful investigation. He remained master of requests during the brief protectorate of Richard Cromwell, and died in 1660. He was buried at Coddenham. It has been said that he received 3,000l. for his anti-royalist services, and a salary of 500l. a year as master of requests ('The Mystery of the Good Old Cause' in Parliamentary History, iii. 1591).
Bacon's 'Historical Discourse' is a sort of constitutional history of England, showing much knowledge of the development of its institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, and pervaded by a strong spirit of hostility to the claims of the royal prerogative and to hierarchical pretensions. For this reason the edition of it, published after the Restoration in 1665, was suppressed by the government, and for the publication of one in 1676 its printer was prosecuted, and had to take refuge abroad. After the revolution of 1688 the edition of 1665 was reissued (in 1689), with the addition of a new title-page, on which the work was represented as having been 'collected' by Bacon 'from some manuscript notes of John Selden, Esq.' The statement seems to have no better foundation than a vague assertion of Chief Justice Vaughan, one of Selden's executors, that the 'groundwork' of the book was Selden's. A fifth edition was issued so late as 1760. The spirit of liberty which it breathed commended it to Lord Chatham, who, in his letters to his nephew, speaks of it as 'the best and most instructive book we have on matters of the kind,' adding that though its 'style' be 'uncouth,' 'the expression is striking and forcible.' Carlyle has surmised (Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, popular edition, iv. 240, note) that 'one of the two Suffolk Bacons, most probably Nathaniel Bacon,' was the writer of the 'Diary' published in 1828 as that of 'Thomas Burton, member in the parliaments of Oliver and Richard Cromwell from 1656 to 1659.' But as the diarist speaks of himself in the first person and of the two Bacons in the third, besides making disparaging mention of at least one speech of Francis Bacon, Carlyle was in all likelihood mistaken in his surmise. Nathaniel Bacon has also been credited with the authorship of the curious piece (probably a translation), 'A Relation of the fearful Estate of Francis Spira in the year 1548,' an account of an Italian lawyer who, after quitting Romanism for protestantism, reverted to his first creed, suffering in consequence agonies of remorse and coming to an unhappy end. The first edition of it was published anonymously in 1638, and it was not, apparently, until the publication of that of 1665, some years after his death, that it was said on the title-page to have been 'compiled' by Nathaniel Bacon. Many editions of it have been issued, one in 1845 as 'An Everlasting Proof of the Falsehood of Popery.' A translation of it into Welsh appeared in 1820. In the catalogue of the library of the British Museum there are various entries under this Nathaniel Bacon, which properly belong to another Nathaniel Bacon, the Virginian rebel.
[Gent. Mag. Ixxiv. pt. ii. p. 807, and xcv. 22; Parliaments of England, 1213-1700, printed as a return to the House of Commons in 1878; Calendars of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1655, &c., 1881-2; Foster's Register of Admissions to Gray's Inn, p. 3 1; Carlyle's Cromwell; Catalogue of the Library of the British Museum.]
BACON, NATHANIEL (1642?–1676), Virginian patriot, is vaguely stated in American books to have been a native of London, and to have kept terms at one of the inns of court. From a contemporary pamphlet (Strange News from Virginia, being a full and true Account of the Life and Death of Nathaniel Bacon, Esq., London, printed for Wm. Harris, 1677), we learn that he was the son of Thomas Bacon, of Friston Hall, Suffolk, and thus descended from a younger branch of the great house of Bacon. He entered Gray's Inn 22 Nov. 1664 (Foster, Register of Admissions to Gray's Inn, 1882, p. 31). About 1673 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Edward Duke, a Suffolk baronet. There appears to be no ground for a statement in the 'Gentleman's Magazine' (Ixxxvi. 297) that he did so against his father's wish, 'who violently marked his disapprobation.' On the contrary, the writer of the pamphlet above quoted mentions that he was allowed a 'gentle competency' from his father, which, however, his 'expensive habits' rendered insufficient. Possibly with a view of breaking these off, and also from a spirit of adventure, he emigrated to Virginia, his father supplying him with stock to the value of 1,800l. He settled on the plantation of Curles, in the upper part of the James river, on the Indian frontier. Both friends and foes are agreed as to his remarkable abilities, and the grace and charm of his manner. His acquirements as a lawyer
