A Finding List: Part 2.
Bacon’s Acquaintances, Friends, Companions, Colleagues
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W-X-Y-Z
In this section, it was felt the need to contain all persons referred to in Bacon’s works, speeches, and letters who were his acquaintances, friends, or companions.
They are given a well deserved synoptical, yet understandable biography. This way, all references noted to persons mentioned by Bacon would be well understood to why he referred to them, and under what circumstances they surrounded his lifestyle. In continuation to these synoptical biographies, are the works of these persons either in a detailed account that will be found in the Appendix volume or in a synoptical form after each individual biography.
Where no additional information is added to those works, is due to the lack of historical records, which is believed to be more and more noted to modern researchers on the history of those times and especially when compiling such a volume as this one.
A jesty note from Edmund Burke will end the introduction to this part: “Strip majesty of its externals and it is merely a jest.” [(m)ajest(y).]
E
Ellis Leslie Robert (b.August 25, 1817–d.May 12, 1859) An English polymath, remembered principally as a mathematician and editor of the Works of Francis Bacon. Ellis was the youngest of six children of Francis Ellis (1772–1842) of Bath. Educated privately, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1836, graduating as Senior Wrangler in 1840 and elected Fellow of Trinity shortly afterwards. Although he had also entered Inner Temple in 1838, he was called to the bar in 1840, and later helped William Whewell with jurisprudence. Ellis never practised law. He hoped unsuccessfully for the Cambridge chair of civil law. He inheriting substantial estates in Ireland on the death of his father, Ellis contemplated entering Parliament as a whig under the patronage of Sir William Napier (1785–1860): his courtship of one of Napier’s daughters unfortunately ended in some confusion, and Ellis never married. As a mathematician, Ellis founded the Cambridge Mathematical Journal with D. F. Gregory in 1837. His own major mathematical contributions were on functional and differential equations, and the theory of probability: On the foundations of the theory of probabilities, 1849. Philosophically, Ellis, like George Boole and later John Venn, defended an objective rather than subjective theory of probability. He corresponded with Augustus De Morgan on the conjectured four-colour theorem.
Ellis took on the editing of Francis Bacon’s Works with two other Trinity fellows, Douglas Denon Heath and James Spedding. Unfortunately, dramatic deterioration of Ellis’ health from 1847 left his work on the general prefaces to Bacon’s philosophy unfinished. Spedding and Heath completed the Works in seven volumes, published 1857–1859. [Also see Spedding James; Heath Douglas Denon]. Continental travel failed to restore Ellis’ health; an attack of rheumatic fever at San Remo in 1849 left him an invalid, and he returned to Cambridge, living at Anstey Hall, Trumpington, next to his friend John Grote, vicar of Trumpington. From his sickbed, he kept up contact with the young Trinity mathematician William Walton, and dictated his thoughts on a wide range of topics, including etymology, bees’ cells, Roman money, the principles of a projected Chinese dictionary, and Boole’s Laws of Thought (1854). He translated Dante, Roman law texts and Danish ballads; a gentle melancholia suffuses the lines of his own poetry, which he left in manuscript. William Walton edited a posthumous collection of both published and unpublished writings, in The mathematical and other writings of R. L. Ellis, 1863 and was prefaced by a biographical memoir by Harvey Goodwin. Correspondence and notebooks of Ellis are amongst the Mayor Papers and Whewell Papers at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Erasmus Desiderius (1466–1536) Leader of the Northern Renaissance. His name was Gerard Gerard, which he translated into Desiderius Erasmus. Julius Scaliger contested with him, but got nothing by it, for, as Fuller says, he was like a badger, that never bit but he made his teeth meet. (Aubrey).
Essex Robert Devereux. 2nd Earl (1566–1601) Queen Elizabeth I’s favourite and personal friend to the Bacon brothers.