Bacon's DictionaryAppendices

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The exhibits and miniatures of which are found in this section, are designed to assist the serious student and reader in following the path of the Authorship Controvesy that has been so laboriously persued by many authors and researchers during its commence.

These exhibits have been placed here as not to interrupt the flow of reading in the Baconian Dictionary sections, being a finding list of Bacon’s works, his history, his thoughts and his aims, which are a subject of study and discussion.

Poetical Fragments

That George Sandys’ poetry and Lawes’ music conjoined should have failed to obtain popularity is remarkable, but it may possibly be attributed to that prejudice in favour of long usage which is so difficult to remove. George Sandys, the seventh and youngest son of Edwin Sandys, Archbishop of York, by Cicely his wife, was born at Bishopthorpe Palace. We are able to give the precise day and hour of his birth, as Collins in his Peerage (3rd Edit. 1756) tells us, “Before a great Bible, printed by Richard Jugge, Queen’s Printer, 1574, in the Archbishop’s own hand are the names and birthdays of his children, which he had by his said wife Cicely.” From this list we read “George Sandes, born March 2, at six of the clock in the morning, in 1577; his godfathers, George Earl of Cumberland, 1 William Lord Ewer; his godmother, Catherine Countess of Huntingdon.” Of the antiquity of the Archbishop’s family and his own personal history little need be said. In Hash’s History of Worcestershire, and in most of the old Peerages will be found his pedigree; and the story of his life may be gathered from Chalmers’ or other biographical dictionaries, as his zeal for the Reformation is well known. He appears, from the accounts of all his biographers to have been a man of unamiable disposition, but a discovery in the present century of a letter from him to the Lord Treasurer Burghley has thrown a light upon his character which may startle some of his admirers.

It would appear that he has “the singular honour of having first suggested the great crime (of the murder of Mary Queen of Scots) as an expedient for the safety of our Queen and Realm.” The Archbishop had been one of the promoters of the claim of the Lady Jane Grey to the throne, and this may have been one of the reasons for the Countess of Huntingdon standing as godmother to his son George. Lady Huntingdon was daughter to John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, and sister to Lady Jane Grey’s husband. On the death of the Archbishop in 1588, the guardianship of his three youngest sons Thomas, Henry, and George, was committed to his wife; she was to have “the custody and bringing up of those three children so long as she continued a widow, and all that time to have in her hands as well their annuities granted out of the Manor of Ombersley, as all other patents, leases, legacies, profits, and commodities which they shall have until they shall come to their full age, and be fit to receive the same themselves; and if it shall fortune that she marry before that time, then the several profits and bequests to be committed to the hands of his sons Samuel and Edwin, upon sufficient bonds by them to be given for security of the same to their three brethren.”

Edwin Sandys, who was then named as guardian of his brothers in the event of his mother marrying again (which, however, she did not) was the Archbishop’s second son, and born probably at Ombersley in Worcestershire about 1561. He was admitted at Corpus College, Oxford, at the age of sixteen, under the celebrated Hooker as tutor. There is a pleasant notice of him in Walton’s Life of Hooker. After taking his degree, he was admitted a probationer-fellow in 1579. He appears to have travelled much, and when at Paris he drew up a tract under the title of Europe Speculum, or a view or survey of the state of religion in the Western parts of the world, wherein the Roman religion and the pregnant policies of the Church of Rome to support the same are notably displayed, &c. This he finished in 1599. An imperfect copy was published without his consent in 1605, and soon followed by another impression. He published a corrected edition just before his death in 1629. Sir Edwin Sandys was Treasurer of Virginia. Bishop King, a relation of the Sandys family, in his lines prefixed to George Sandy’s Paraphrases.

On December 5, 1589 Henry and George Sandys were both matriculated at Oxford as of St. Mary Hall. The eminent keeper of the Archives in the 1800’s (John Griffiths, Warden of Wadham) informed that Henry, in subscribing the Articles, wrote his name Sandes. Of George there is no subscription, probably because he was too young. Wood thinks that the brothers afterwards removed to Corpus, where Edwin had been educated under Hooker, but of this there is no proof. We may, perhaps, be surprised at the extreme youth of George on entering the University, but it was a not infrequent custom in those days for boys to commence their University career at an age when now they would hardly have entered a public school. How long Sandys remained at Oxford it is impossible to discover, and it does not appear that he took a degree. Nor have we any trace of his life or occupation till 1610, when he set out on his travels to the East. In that year his mother died. Her maiden name was Cicely Wilford, sister to Sir Thomas Wilford. She had survived her husband, the Archbishop, twenty-two years, and had lived at Ombersley Court, the family seat in Worcestershire. Whether Sandys had left England previous to her death, or that event was the cause of his departure, is not clear. He tells us, “I began my journey through France hard upon the time when that execrable murder was committed upon the person of Henry the fourth 2 by an obscure varlet: even in the streets of his principal City by day, and then when royally attended; to shew that there is none so contemptible, that contemneth his own life, but is the master of another man’s. Triumphs were interrupted by funerals; and men’s minds did labour with fearful expectations. The Princes of the Bloud discontented, the Noblesse factious: those of the Religion daily threatened, and nightly fearing a massacre. Meanwhile a number of soldiers are drawn by small numbers into the City to confront all outrages, France I forbear to speak of, and the less remote parts of Italy: daily surveyed and exactly related. At Venice I will begin my journal. From whence we departed on August 20, 1610 in the Little Defence of London.” He seems to have spent about twelve months in travelling through the Turkish Empire, Egypt, and the Holy Land, and then returned to Venice. When he arrived in England he does not mention. Antony Wood says it was in 1612 “or after.” He published, however, an account of his travels in 1615 with a dedication to Charles I., then Prince of Wales. To Charles he was sincerely attached, and all his works are dedicated to him.

Sandys’ Travels attained great popularity in his own day, and are justly esteemed as being “learned without pedantry, and circumstantial without being tedious; and valuable for the picture they give of the East in his time, particularly of Jerusalem.” Maundrell and Gibbon, with others, have praised their fidelity; and they may still be read with interest. Fuller 3 says of Sandys: “He proved a most accomplished gentleman, and an observant traveller, who went as far as the Sepulchre at Jerusalem; and hath spared other men pains in going thither by bringing the Holy Land home to them; so lively is his description thereof, with his passage thither, and return thence.” His visit to the Holy Sepulchre is vividly described, and inspired his Muse, not only as one of the very few specimens of his original composition, but also as having suggested ideas to Milton in his Ode on the Passion (Stanza VII.). Thomas Warton says, “He (Milton) seems to have been struck with reading Sandys’ description of the Holy Sepulchre, and to have caught sympathetically Sandys’ sudden impulse to break forth into a devout song, at the awful and inspiring spectacle.”

Archdeacon Todd has printed Sandys’ Dedication to the Prince, and given several extracts from the travels. On his return from his Eastern travels, Wood says: “Being in several respects improved by his large journey, he became an accomplished gentleman, as being master of several languages, and of a fluent and ready discourse and excellent deportment. He had also naturally a poetical fancy and a zealous inclination to all human learning, which made his company desired and acceptable to most virtuous men and scholars of his time.” We have no information as to his occupation for the next few years. He was, however, but a short time at home. In 1606 a charter of incorporation had been granted to Adventurers of London to begin their first plantation and seat in any place upon the Colony of Virginia. Of this Corporation Sir Edwin Sandys was the Treasurer. In Stith’s History of Virginia (Williamsburg, 1747) will be found a full account of the transactions of the Society.

In 1621, Stith informs us, the Earl of Southampton (Shakespeare’s patron) at a meeting of the Corporation recommended “Sir Francis Wyat, a young gentleman every way sufficient and equal to the place, and highly esteemed on account of his birth, education, integrity of life, and fair fortune” as Governor of the Colony. He went, with many marks of honour, at the end of August 1621, with the treasurer, secretary, physician general, and surveyor, in company with nine sail of ships, all which arrived safe in Virginia about October. Sir Francis entered upon his government on November 18. He was the nephew of George Sandys, having married Margaret, daughter of Sir Samuel Sandys. It seems most probable that the poet accompanied the new Governor in the capacity of Treasurer of the Company, for in the Appendix to Stith’s History (pp. 32, 33) is “an Ordinance and Constitution of the Treasurer, Council, and Company in England for a Council of State and General Assembly.” It is dated July 24, 1621 and in it Sir Francis is mentioned as Governor of Virginia, and George Sandys as Treasurer. Here then we have a proof that he went to Virginia at least in 1621, and fairly assumed that he was the Treasurer who sailed with Sir Francis Wyat. This is very interesting as it enables us to affix with some certainty the date to a portion at least of his translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

The Colony was in a most unsettled state, and under the year 1623, Stith informs us (p. 303), “in the midst of these tumults and alarms the Muses were not silent. For at this time Mr. George Sandys, the Company’s Treasurer of Virginia, made his translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.” And Holmes 4 says, “one of the earliest literary productions of the English Colonists in America of which we have any notice is a translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses made this year (1623) by George Sandys, Treasurer of the Virginia Company.” Sandys’ Travels was first published in 1615 and by 1637 a fourth edition had been printed. 5