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).]

J

James VI., of Scotland and I., of England (1566–1625) From his fourth till at least his twelfth year James was educated at Stirling Castle with several youths of noble family, under the care of George Buchanan and Peter Young. He was naturally clever, and made rapid progress in his studies, which included Latin, Greek, French, history, logic, and rhetoric. We are told by Killigrew that at the age of ten he “translated a chapter of the Bible from Latin into French, and from French into English, extempore”, and James Melville, speaking of a visit he paid the King, says, that “it was the sweetest sight in Europe that clay for strange and extraordinary gifts of mime, judgment, memory, and language.” At twelve years of age he had nominally to take the government into his own hands. His tender age was, as his tutor laments, “engrossed by the attentions of flatterers,” and distracted by the “fetching and flytmg” of those whom Melville terms “bot factious, fasschious, ambitious, greedy, vengeable, warldly, wretchit creatours.” James’ juvenile production, Essays of a Prentice in the Divine Art of Poetry (1584), was probably written as themes for his tutors. Two Meditations on the Revelations (1588–89) are indicative of his theological bent. Demonology (1597). Basilikon Doron (1599). A Counterblast to Tobacco (1604), all are his best known essays. The remainder, and much the larger portion, of his writings deals with political and theological questions, which have for their centre his cherished tenet of the “divine right of Kings.” The most important of these are: The True Law of Free Monarchy (1603); An Apology for the Oath of Allegiance (1607); A Defence of the Right of Kings (1615). The Bishop of Winton published in 1616 an edition of his prose works, which included his speeches and some occasional tracts. 1 The Basilicon Doron was re-printed in London in 1603, and turned into Latin quatrains by Henry Peacham, and ornamented with emblematical figures. It was partly translated in Latin and English verse also by William Willymot, under the title of “Speculum Principis; a Prince’s Looking-glasse, or a Prince’s Direction. Printed at Cambridge, 1603.” A Translation into French was also published soon after. The manuscript copy presented to Prince Henry, 2 “In this book,” says Camden, “is most elegantly pourtrayed and set forth the pattern of a most excellent and every way accomplished King. Incredible it is how many hearts and affections he won unto him by his correcting of it, and what an expectation of himself he raised amongst all men, even to admiration.” Archbishop Spotswood also regards it as having contributed more to facilitate the accession of James to the Throne of England, than all the discourses published by other writers in his favour. Bacon considered it as excellently written, and Locke pronounced its author, “that learned King who well understood the nature of things.” Hume says, “whoever will read the Basilicon Doron, particularly the two last books, will confess James to have possessed no mean genius; and Andrews terms it a “well-written treatise on the arts of government, clothed in as pure a style as the age would admit; and not more, chargeable with pedantry than contemporary books of a serious kind.”

Janssen Cornelius (1593–1664) Engraver. Also known as Cornelis Johnson Van Ceulen, or Van Keulen, Johnson, Jonson, or Janson. Cornelius’ parents were Flemish refugees. He was considered the most important native English, Baroque portraitist of the early seventeenth century. He lived in Amsterdam after he left England. He painted in Middelburg, The Hague, and finally Utrecht. After his return to Holland he improved greatly under Rembrandt’s influence.

Jodelle The first person, according to Pasquier, who produced a French hexameter and pentameter. Bacon refers to him in his De Aug., Bk. VI.

Jonson Benjamin (1573–1637) Actor, poet, and playwright. He was one of Francis Bacon’s good pens, and wrote two merital dedications to him. Ben Jonson lies buried in the north aisle in the path of square stone opposite to the Scutcheon of Robertus de Ros, with this Inscription on him, in a pavement square of blew marble about fourteen inches, which was done at the charge of Jack Young, afterwards Knighted, who, walking there when the grave was covering, gave the fellow eighteen pence to cut it: O Rare Benn Johnson.

Johnson Samuel. Dr (1709–1784) English critic, biographer, essayist, poet, and lexicographer, regarded as one of the greatest figures of 18th century life and letters. It has been recorded, that he once said to a student of his: “What! Sir, a fellow who claps a hump upon his back and a lump on his leg and cries, “I am Richard III.”? Nay, Sir, a ballad-singer is a higher man, for he does two things: he repeats and he sings; there is both recitation and music in his performance; the player only recites.” His famous comment is “A Dictionary of the English language might be compiled from Bacon’s works alone.”

Jones Inigo (1573–1652). Among the number of architects, was the celebrated Inigo Jones, son of Inigo Jones, a citizen of London, who was put apprentice to a joiner, and had a natural taste for the art of designing. He was first renowned for his skill in landscape painting, and was patronized by the learned William Herbert, afterward Earl of Pembroke. He made the tour of Italy at his Lordship’s expense, and improved under some of the best disciples of the famous Andrea Palladio. On his return to England, having laid aside the pencil and confined his study to architecture, he became the Vitruvius of Britain, and the rival of Palladio.
This celebrated artist was appointed general surveyor to king James I., under whose auspices the science of masonry flourished. He was nominated Grand Master of England and was deputized by his sovereign to preside over the lodges. During his administration, several learned men were initiated into masonry, and the society considerably increased in reputation and consequence. Ingenious artists daily resorted to England, where they met with great encouragement. Lodges were constituted as seminaries of instruction in the sciences and polite arts, after the model of the Italian schools; the communications of the fraternity were established, and the annual festivals regularly observed. Many curious and magnificent structures were finished under the direction of this accomplished architect; and, among the rest, he was employed, by command of the sovereign, to plan a new palace at Whitehall, worthy the residence of the Kings of England, which he accordingly executed; but for want of a parliamentary fund, no more of the plan than the present Banqueting-house was ever finished.
Inigo Jones continued in the office of Grand Master till the year 1618, when he was succeeded by the Earl of Pembroke; under whose auspices many eminent, wealthy, and learned men were initiated, and the mysteries of the Order held in high estimation. On the death of King James in 1625, Charles ascended the throne. The Earl of Pembroke presided over the fraternity till 1630, when he resigned in favour of Henry Danvers, Earl of Danby; who was succeeded in 1633 by Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, the progenitor of the Norfolk family. In 1635, Francis Russel, Earl of Bedford, accepted the government of the society; but Inigo Jones having, with indefatigable assiduity, continued to patronize the lodges during his Lordship’s administration, he was re-elected the following year and continued in office till his death in 1646.

Jones Robert There is much excellent verse hidden away in the Song-Books of Robert Jones, a famous performer on the lute. Between 1601 and 1611 Robert Jones issued six musical works. Two of these The First Set of Madrigals, 1607, and The Muses’ Garden for Delight, 1611, cannot be discovered in their present resting-place. An incomplete set of the Part-Book of the Madrigals can be found in the British Museum Library but The Muses’ Garden has eluded every attempt to discover it. Of Robert Jones, the composer of the music of these songs, very little is known. It is said in volume 30 of the Dictionary of National Biography, that he was a poet a well-known musician, but for this claim there seems to be no good evidence, though unfortunately it has been followed by several modern musicians who have re-set some of the verses in his song-book. It is possible that the statement was made on the strength of the following passage in the dedication of Musical Dream: “It is not unknown unto your well deserving self, Right Worshipful, that not long since I took my Ultimum Vale, with a resolving in myself, never to publish any works of the same Nature and Fashion, whereupon I betook me to the ease of my Pillow, where Somnus having taken possession of my eyes and Morpheus the charge of my senses; it happened me to fall into a Musical Dream wherein I chanced to have many opinions and extravagant humours of divers Natures and Conditions some of modest mirth some of amorous Love, and some of most divine contemplation, all these I hope shall not give any distaste to the ears or dislike to the mind, either in their words, or in their several sounds, although it is not necessary to relate or divulge all Dreams or Phantasies that opinion begets in sleep, or happeneth to the minds’ apparition.” The authentic details of Robert Jones’s career are most meagre. On April 19, I597 a grace was passed for his degree of Mus. Bac., at Oxford in which it is stated that he had studied music for sixteen years and was a member of St. Edmund’s Hall. Almost the only other facts known about him are derived from Collier’s Annals of the Stage (1879), in which it is said that in a Privy Seal for Patent was granted to Philip Rosseter, Philip Kingman, Robert Jones and Ralph Reeve, who had bought ground and buildings near Puddle-Wharf Blackfriars, on which to erect a Theatre.
Rosseter was a musician of some repute and had been (1609–10) Master of the Children of the Queen’s Revels. The new house was to be occupied by this company, by the Prince of Wales and the Lady Elizabeth players, to which later Rosseter had recently joined himself. Collier prints the original document in full, and from this it seems that the building the partners had acquired was called by the name of the Lady Saunders’ House or otherwise Porter’s Hall, and was then in the occupation of Robert Jones. The grant of the patent is dated Greenwich 13 Jas I, and in the following autumn a beginning was made in pulling down the house and erecting the new theatre. The scheme, however, met with great opposition from the Lord Mayor and Aldermen and the Privy Council, and in the following January, when the building was nearly finished, the Lord Mayor was ordered by the King’s authority to make it unfit for use as a theatre, which was done within three days’ time. These are practically the only facts known about Robert Jones, though it can be gathered from the dedications of his various musical worlds that he enjoyed at one period of his career the patronage of Robert Sidney, first Earl of Leicester. To him he dedicated his First Book of Ayres (1600) and not the Second Book as stated by Mr. Sidney Lee in his life of Leicester in the Dictionary of National Biography, styling them “the unworthy labours of my musical travels.” In 1601 he published a Second Book, dedicated to Sir Henry Lennard, afterwards twelfth Baron Dacre of the South, whose house at Chevening was not far from that of the Sydney’s at Penshurst. In the same year Jones contributed a Madrigal to the celebrated Triumphs of Oriana, and in 1607 he brought out a set of Madrigals (no complete copy of which is known to exist) dedicated to Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury. His next work was Ultimum Vale, another book of his, dedicated to Henry, Prince of Wales, a unique copy of which is preserved in the Library of the Royal College of Music. This was followed in 1609 by a fourth book of first entitled Musical Dream dedicated to Sir John Leventhorpe, of Sawbridgeworth, Herts. The Muses’ Garden, 1610 and three pieces in Sir William Leighton’s Tears or Lamentations of a Sorrowful Soul, 1614 complete the list of his compositions. The former is dedicated to Lady Mary Wroth, a daughter of Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester by his first wife Barbara Gamage. She married September 27, 1602 Sir Robert Wroth, of Durance, Middlesex, and in 1621 published a romance called Urania. The esteem in which she was held by the literary circles of the day is shown by the two epigrams addressed to her by Ben Jonson in 1616 and by a passage in Henry Peacham’s Compleat Gentleman, 1623, to the effigy that she “seemeth by her late published Urania inheritrix of the Divine wit of her immortal Uncle.” 3