Bacon Pedigree
Arms: Quarterly, First and fourth, Gules, on a Chief, Argent, two Mullets, Sable, for Bacon. 
Second and third, Barry of Six, Or and Azure, over all a Bend, Gules, for Quaplod.
Crest: On a Wreath, Argent and Gules, a Boar passan Ermine.
Motto: Mediocra Firma.
Seat: Colchester in Essex.
The Bacon family derive their decent from Grimbaldus, who came into England at the time of the Norman conquest, in company with William Earl Warren, to whom he was related; which Grimbaldus had lands in Normandy; and, after his arrival in England, settled at Letheringsett, near Holt in Norfolk.
Grimbaldus founded a church, and made his second son, Edmund, parson of it. His other sons were Radulph and Ranulph.
Roger, the son of Ranulph, was father of Robert, the first of the family we find mentioned by the name of Bacon, whose brother, William Bacon, was of Monks Bradfield in the county of Suffolk, temp. Ric. I. which William is taken notice of among the knights bearing banners, as well Normans as of other provinces, in the reign of King Philip II., of France, and by a daughter of Thomas, Lord Bardolph, was father of another William, of the same place, whose son, Adam, lived in the time of Edward I., and left two sons, Wido Bacon of Bradfield aforesaid, who died without issue, and Robert Bacon of Hesset, alias Hegesett, in the faid county.
The said Robert, by Alice his wife, daughter of Burgate, had issue John Bacon of Hesset and Bradfield, who was father of John Bacon, and he of another John, of the same places, who married Helena, daughter of Gedding, and by her left a son of his own name, who married (first) Helena, daughter of Sir George Tillot, of Rougham in Norfolk, Knt. and (secondly) Julian, daughter of Bardwell; from which second marriage proceeded the Bacons of Hesset, who flourished there near five hundred years, and have not been extinct a century.
John, son of the said John Bacon, (by Helena his first wife,) married Margery, daughter and heir of John Thorp, son of William Thorp, (by the daughter and heir of Quaplod) son of Sir William Thorp (by the daughter and heir of Sir Roger Bacon, a commander in the wars, temp. Edward II., and Edward III., son of Sir Henry Bacon, son of another Sir Henry, a judge itinerant, temp. Henry., III. lineally descended from Grimbaldus;) since which marriage this branch of the family quarter the arms of Quaplod with their own, viz. Barry of six, Or and Azure, a Bend, Gules.
William Camden on Sir Nicholas Bacon
Of person very corpulent, most quick wit, singular prudence, admirable eloquence, retentive memory, and another pillar to the Privy Council.
This corpulency of body grew on him in his old age, to which the Queen alluding used to say, Sir Nicholas’ Soul lodges well.
He had the deepest reach into affairs of any man, that was at the Council-table, the knottiest head to pierce into difficulties, the most comprehensive judgment to surround the merit of a cause, the strongest memory to recollect all circumstances of a business to one view the greatest patience to debate and consider, and the clearest reason to urge anything that came in his way in court or chancery.
Being grown still more famous for his knowledge, he had the honour of knighthood conferred upon him by Queen Elizabeth i., in the first year of her reign, and was made Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England, which office in his time was by act of parliament made equal in authority with that of the Chancellor.
He promoted the interest of England to his power and, to secure his own, made use of the policy of the age, viz. great alliance. He and Cecil [Lord Burghley] married two sisters: Walsingham and Mildmay, two more Knolles, Essex, and Leicester, were also linked together.
As to greatness, Sir Nicholas never affected it, according to his motto, Mediocria firma; nor was he so much for a large, as a good estate. His houses at Redgrave in Suffolk and Gorhambury in Hertfordshire were convenient, but not stately; which made Queen Elizabeth tell him, when she called at Redgrave, in her progress, That it was too little for his Lordship; To which he answered, No Madam, but your Highness has made me too big for it. However, on that remark he is said to have added the wings to the house.Sir Nicholas Bacon died 21 Eliz. 1579 and was interred on the south side of the choir of St. Paul’s cathedral, London, where a noble monument was erected to his memory, before the Fire of London.
Sir Nicholas’ second wife was Anne, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, of Giddy-Hall in Essex, Knt. By whom he had issue two sons, 1. Anthony, who was legate at Venice, and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancastcr, and died at Essex Housfe in the Strand, unmarried, before his father; and 2. Sir Francis Bacon, Knt.
Sir Francis Bacon was born at York-Place in the Strand, Jan. 22, 1560, and June 10, 1573, was matriculated in the university of Cambridge, and entered into Trinity college, under the care of Dr. White-Gift, then master of the said college, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.
After he had passed through the circle of the liberal arts, his father thought proper to qualify him for the management of public affairs, and sent him over to France with Sir Amyas Paulet, Ambassador to that court, who entrusted him with a commission to the Queen, which he discharged with great approbation, and returned to France, with an intention to continue some years.
During his absence, his father died in 1579, upon which he returned to England, and applied himself to the study of the common law, which he resolved upon as his profession.
He was appointed one of the Queen’s Council Extraordinary in the 28th year of his age an honour scarce ever granted before. He was one of the first that argued the difficult cafe of Uses, called Chudleigh’s Case, which is reported by Sir Edward Coke.
But the greater figure which he made in the ten last years of the Queen’s reign, was in the House of Commons; and then it is thought he applied himself to politics; so that the Queen and Lord Treasurer Burghley employed his head and hand in affairs of state. He made no considerable advances in his fortune under Queen Elizabeth, but on the accession of King James I., to the crown, he was soon raised to considerable honours.
July 23, 1603, he was knighted at Whitehall, and the year following he was made one of the King’s Council Learned in the law; and, as his abilities had appeared in Council, in Parliament, and in his Profession, and especially in his Speeches which he made in the House of Commons, he was in the year 1607 appointed Solicitor-General in the room of Sir Henry Hobart.
In 1611 he was made joint Judge with Sir Thomas Vavasor, then knight marshal of the knight marshal’s court, and October 27, 1613, he succeeded Sir Henry Hobart as Attorney-General, and June 9, 1616, he was sworn of the King’s Privy Council, a trust rarely conferred, either before or since, on a gentleman in that office.
March 7, 1616/17 he was appointed Lord keeper of the Great Seal, and January 4, 1618, he was made Lord Chancellor of England, and on the 9th of July following created Lord Verulam, and January 27, 1620/21, he was advanced to the dignity of Viscount St. Albans, and appeared with the greatest honour and splendour at the opening of the session of Parliament on the 30th of that month.
The learned Bayle says Francis Bacon was one of the greatest geniuses of his age.
Mr. Voltaire styles him the father of experimental philosophy, and the greatest writers of our nation, as well as those of other countries, conspire in giving him the noblest character imaginable; and the duke of Buckingham (Sheffield) in particular allures us, That all his works are for expression as well as thought; the glory of our nation and of all latter ages.
Dr. Rawley, who was his chaplain, observes, that he was eminent for the sharpness of his wit, his memory, judgment, and elocution, so that Sir Walter Raleigh once said before the doctor, that the Earl of Salisbury was an excellent speaker, but no good pen-man; the Earl of Northampton, and the Lord Henry Howard, excellent pen-men, but no good speakers; but that Sir Francis Bacon was eminent in both.
But the lords taking this for a full and ingenuous confession, sent several of their members, to see if the Chancellor would own it, which he did in these words, My Lords, it is my act, my hand, my heart; I beseech your Lordships to be merciful to a broken reed. This answer being reported to the house, the lords agreed to move the king to sequester the Seal, and on Wednesday, May 2, it was resolved to give sentence against him next morning, and accordingly he was summoned to attend, but he answered, that he was sick and protested that he did not feign this for an excuse; for if he had been well, he would willingly have come.
On May 3, 1621, the Lord Chief Justice pronounced the following judgment, That the Lord Viscount St, Albans, Lord. Chancellor of England shall undergo a fine and ransom of 40,000£ and that he shall be imprisoned in the Tower during the King’s pleasure. That he shall be incapable of any office, place, or employment in the state or commonwealth, and, never sit in parliament, or come within the verge of the court.
He read much, and with great judgment, and after a moderate relaxation of his mind from study, returned to it with fresh vigour, and would not suffer any moment to escape him without improvement. His conversation was extremely delightful and instructive. When his office called him, as he was one of the king’s council, to charge any offenders, he did it with the greatest lenity; and in civil affairs, as counsellor of state; he never engaged his mailer in any severe or precipitate courses.
The Prince of Wales and some others endeavoured to have mitigated the severity of this sentence; and many of the lords, by way of excuse for the rigour of it, told him afterwards, that they knew they left him in good hands, and it might be presumed, that the king, who, as his lordship writes, had shed tears upon the news of his being accused, would be indulgent and beneficent to him upon his Sentence.
There is a variety of opinions concerning his guilt in the points charged against him; Mr. Rushworth says, his decrees were generally made with so much equity, that those gifts rendered him suspected for injustice, yet never any decree made by him was reversed as unjust.
After the judgment given against him, and a short imprisonment in the Tower, he retired from the engagements of an active life, to the shade of a contemplative one, which he had always loved. The first, or at least the greatest act of kindness, which the king extended to him, was the remitting the parliamentary fine, and granting it to some of his lordship’s friends.
Neither was he less in favour with the subject than with his sovereign; for he was always acceptable to the House of Commons when he was a member thereof.
He was religious, free from malice, which as he said himself, he never bred nor fed. No revenger of injuries. He never endeavoured to remove others from their places, or accused any man to his Prince. In his will he has this remarkable passage, for my name and memory, I leave it to men’s charitable speeches and to foreign nations and the next ages.
This request very probably was granted him, for we find that he was summoned to parliament in the first year of King Charles I. However, it appears from the works, which he composed and designed during his retirement, that his thoughts were still free, vigorous, and noble and, as Dr. Tenison, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, observes, it did not appear by anything during all the time of his eclipse of fortune, that there was any abjectness of spirit in him; his writings show a mind in him, not distracted with anxiety, nor depressed with shame; not slow for want of encouragement, nor broken with discontent; such vigour of conceit, such a masculine style, such quickness in composition, appeared in his learned labours.
The last five years of his life he devoted entirely to his studies, a thing which he would often speak of during the active part of his life, as if he affected to die in the shade, and not in the light. In this recess, he composed the greatest part of his Latin and English works.
His lordship had happily escaped the plague, which infected the summer of the year 1625, and with some difficulty, being of a weak and tender constitution, passed the severe winter which followed; but going in the spring to make some experiment in natural philosophy, he was taken so ill, that he was obliged to stay at the Earl of Arundel’s house at Highgate about a week, and there expired on Easter day, the 9th of April, 1626, in the 66th year of his age, of a gentle fever attended with a great cold, which occasioned such a defluxion of rheum, that he was suffocated with it.
The Lord Keeper Bacon married Alice, daughter and coheir of Benedict Barnham, Esq; Alderman of London, by whom he had no issue.
Bibliography: Thomas Wotton: The Baronetage of England, vol. i, 1886Return to Home Page