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).]

S

Sackville Thomas. Lord Buckhurst, and Earl of Dorset (1536–1608) Dramatic poet.

Sandys George (1577–1663) The following extract from Richard Baxter’s preface to his Poetical Fragments (London, 1681) may interest the reader, as the criticism is probably comparatively unknown: “But I must confess after all that next the Scripture poems, there are none so savoury to me as Mr. George Herbert’s and Mr. George Sandys’. I know that Cowley and others far exceed Herbert in wit and accurate composure; but (as Seneca takes with me above all his contemporaries, because he speaketh things by words feelingly and seriously like a man that is past jest, so) Herbert speaks to God like one that really believeth a God. Mr. G. Sandys after his travels over the world, retired himself for his poetry and contemplations, and none are fitter to retire to God than such as are tired with seeing all the vanities on earth.” [See the remaining extract in Appendices Poetical Fragments].

Scotus Duns (c.1266–1308) Perhaps no other great medieval thinker whose life is as little known as that of Duns Scotus. Early 14th century manuscripts, for instance, state explicitly that John Duns was a Scot, from Duns, who belonged to the English province of Friars Minor (the order founded by Francis of Assisi), that “he flourished at Cambridge, Oxford, and Paris and died in Cologne.” Scotus opposed the rationalists’ contention that philosophy is self-sufficient and adequate to satisfy man’s desire for knowledge. In fact, he claimed, a pure philosopher, such as Aristotle, could not truly understand the human condition because he was ignorant of the fall of man and his need for grace and redemption.

Selden John (1584–1654) & Hobbes Thomas (1588–1679) Are supposed to have occasionally assisted Bacon; the former, on one occasion at least, gave him the benefit of his opinion as to the judgments of the House of Lords, and he is reported to have expressed the sentiment that “never was any man more willing or ready to do your Lordship’s service than myself.” That both he and Hobbes aided Bacon in the rendering of some of his translations, more especially with those of the Essays and Henry the Seventh, seems pretty certain, but it is difficult to produce definite evidence on this point.

Seneca (c.750/4 B.C. to 818/65 A.D.) Nearly the whole of the eighth century u.c. was embraced by the life of L. Annaeus Seneca of Corduba. A man of genuine Roman severity, which is, however, frequently tempered with pleasant humour, of sober and refined judgment, and in point of style an admirer of Cicero, he himself does not appear to have figured among the florid orators of his time. But, besides an historical work, he composed in his later years a survey of the themes commonly treated in the schools, ten books of controversiae and one book of suasoriae, under the title: oratorum et rhetorum sententiae, divisions, colores, which bears witness to his wonderful memory, and is a rich store-house for the history of rhetoric under Augustus and Tiberius. We possess this work with considerable gaps. Some of them are filled up by a still extant abridgment made in the 4th or 5th century of the Christian era. 1

Severinum Petrum (1542–1602) Born in Ripen, Denmark. Neither Haller nor Sprengel speak of him as favourably as Bacon; nor does he seem to have had any great share of reputation; at least he is not mentioned in the common biographical dictionaries. His only known work is the Idea Medicinæ Philosophicæ. Bacon comments on him extensively in his Temporis Partus Masculus.

Shaw Peter Author of The Philosophical works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam; published in London 1733. [See Part IV: Bacon’s Works].

Somer van, Hendrick or Enrico Fiammingo (b.1615, Amsterdam–d.1685, Napoli) Engraver. Dutch painter active in Italy. He was a distinguished pupil of Jusepe de Ribera (1591–1652) in Naples. His St. Jerome shows the strong influence of Ribera’s painting of the same subject. He was, with Mytens and Johnson, one of the best portrait painters in England before the arrival of van Dyck. He soon began to work for the Court, and his earliest datable work, Queen Anne of Denmark with her Horse and Dogs (1617, Royal Collection, Windsor), is perhaps the best. There are others in Liverpool, London and Yale.

Somer van Paul (d.1621) An artist of great merit, painted the fine, portrait of William, Earl of Pembroke, at St. James’; Bacon, when Lord Chancellor, at Gorhambury, and the Marquis of Hamilton, with the white staff, at Hampton Court. Somer died in England, January 5, 1621 and was buried at St. Martin’s in the Fields.

Southampton Henry. Third Earl (1573–1624) Kept no diaries, he did not pour forth his heart readily in effusive letters, he wrote no signed poems or papers, and few of his correspondents kept his epistles. There has been preserved no record of his baptism and as with young Essex, Lord Burleigh seems to have taken the boy Henry away, in the first instance, to his own home, with only occasional visits allowed to his mother and grandfather. He was admitted at St John’s College, Cambridge, as Fellow-Commoner at Michaelmas, 1585. There is an occurrence worth mentioning: Thomas Dymock, Gentleman, on behalf of Henry, Earl of Southampton, her Majesty’s ward, complains that Richard Pitts, being an ill neighbour to his Park at Whiteley Park, Southampton, came with others by night and stole the deer there from, with guns, dogs, etc., and beat the keepers. This suggests that Thomas Dymock was employed as Steward. His interest in Whiteley Park was great. He was paid for living in it, to keep it for the young Earl, and his perquisites were large.
The earliest Dedication to Southampton is that of John Clapham, in 1591, printed before his Poem on Narcissus in 1593. In that very month of April 18, something happened which has done more than anything else to keep the Earl of Southampton in memory. Yet a commonplace enough event it was the registration of a book in the Stationers’ Registers; the name of the book was Venus and Adonis; the name of the author was William Shakespeare; the name of the printer was Richard Field, the Stratford friend of the poet, and it was dedicated to the Earl of Southampton, dedicated timidly, because the poet did not know how the public would take his venture, and he wanted to leave his patron as free as possible to slip out, should the venture prove a failure. It happens that the first preserved fragment of Shakespeare’s prose writing is this dedication as Golding’s Ovid had been a text-book for translations from 1565–67; scholars and poets were essaying translations; Marlowe had left unfinished his Hero and Leander; Drayton had written his Endymton and Phoebe; Chapman his Ovid’s Banquet of Sense; Thomas Peend his Hermaphroditus and Salmacis and Lodge his Scylla. But Venus and Adonis was unlike any of these in style, rhythm, and imagery, and though the measure is nearest to that of Lodge, how superior it was to its predecessor any one can measure.
Barnabe Barnes had also been writing during 1592 a poem, or collection of poems, Sonnets, madrigals, elegies, and odes which he called Parthenophil and Parthenophe which he managed to get printed in May 1593, and in it he included a sonnet to Southampton, though the dedication was “to Mr William Percy Esq., his dearest friend.” John Florio’s preface to his World of Words he says that he had been some years in the “pay and patronage of the Earl of Southampton.” Turning to the Gray’s Inn Revels of 1594, it is quite possible that Southampton was associated with it much more closely than has been supposed. It is quite probable that Francis Bacon designed, or had something to do with designing, the device intended to have been performed at Gray’s Inn on December 28, 1594, only it was not played. It was Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors that was played by base and common fellows (himself certainly being one), which was reckoned as the crowning disgrace of the evening. But during the following few days, when the disappointed performers laid their heads together to recover the lost glory of Gray’s Inn, there is no doubt that Bacon helped them. Spedding says that the speeches of the Six Councillors “carry his signature in every line.” With that dictum careful readers agree. The history says that the performances of January 3, 1594 quite restored the lost honour of the Night of Errors and made the Graians and the Templars friends that is, that his legal contemporaries preferred Bacon’s Six Councillors. But dramatic posterity prefers Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors. We have seen that Florio dated his special association with him at least from 1594, though he did not dedicate to him directly until 1598. [Also see Part III: Gray’s Inn revels].
Southampton took part in the Spanish voyage of 1596. The manuscript copy of the Diana of Montemayor in the British Museum was done out of Spanish by Thomas Wilson Esquire, in the year 1596, and dedicated to the Earl of Southampton who was then upon the Spanish voyage with Essex. In 1601, there appears in the Salisbury Papers the following entry: “Persons living that are condemned, the Earl of Southampton, Sir John Davys, Sir Edward Baynham, John Littleton.” None of these were executed: Sir John Davies probably from policy; John Littleton died of illness. It went hard with Southampton also, yet a more jubilant note was struck by John Davies not he of the Essex trouble, but John of Hereford, writing-master and poet. In the Preface to Microcosmus singing the praises of James, the first man that he calls on to join him is Southampton: 2

Then let’s be merry in our God and King,
That made us merry being ill bestadd:
South-Hampton up the cappe to Heaven fling
And on the Violl there sweet praises sing
For he is come that grace to all doth bring.

Spedding James (b.June 28, 1808–d.March 9, 1881) English author chiefly known as the editor of the Works of Francis Bacon. He was born in Cumberland the younger son of a country squire, and was educated at Bury St. Edmunds and Trinity College, Cambridge where he took a second class in the classical tripos, and was junior optime in mathematics in 1831. In 1835 he entered the colonial office, but he resigned this post in 1841. In 1842 he was secretary to Lord Ashburton on his American mission, and in 1855 he became secretary to the Civil Service Commission but from 1841 onwards he was constantly occupied in his researches into Bacon’s life and philosophy. On March 1, 1881 he was knocked down by a cab in London and on the 9th he died of erysipelas. Spedding’s great edition was begun in 1847 in collaboration with Ellis and Heath.
In 1853 Ellis had to leave the work to Spedding, with the occasional assistance of Heath, who edited most of the legal writings. The Works were published in 1857–1859 in seven volumes, followed by the Life and Letters (1861–1874). Taken together these works contain practically all the material which exists in connection with the subject, collected and weighed with care and impartiality. In 1853, Delia Bacon approached Spedding with her belief that Francis Bacon was instrumental in the authorship of Shakespeare’s works. Speddings’s initial reaction was speechless astonishment; but on later occasions he clearly expressed his disfavour of the Baconian hypothesis, and explained some of the common-sense reasons against it. [Also see Delia Bacon Salter.] Spedding was also one of the first people to perceive Shakespeare’s hand in the additions to Sir Thomas More. [Also see Part III: The Manuscript Play of Sir Thomas More.] Spedding humorously emphasized his devotion to Bacon in one of his non-Baconian works. [See Appendices Spedding’s opinion].

Speed John (1552–1629) Was one of the most industrious writers of this period on the subjects of antiquities and history, and his compilations, derived in great part from the collections in the libraries of Sir Robert Cotton, and the contributions of Sir Henry Spelman and other antiquaries, are of considerable value. Speed was originally a tailor and so had not great advantages from education, but yet his History of Great Britaine was long the best in existence. He wrote also the Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain and a work on the Genealogies of Holy Scripture under the title of A cloud of Witnesses.

Spenser Edmund (1553–1598) Born in East Smithfield. In 1569 he was admitted as a sizar of Pembroke Hall in the University of Cambridge, and he attained the degree of Master of Arts in 1576. In after life he became secretary to Arthur Lord Gray of Wilton, Lord Deputy of Ireland, who appears to have been his firm and bountiful patron; for the poet terms him “the pillar of his life.” The chief occupation of Spenser’s life, however, was literature, to which he was ardently attached to the day of his death, January 16, 1598–99. The chief work of Spenser is his Faerie Queene, the object of which is “to represent all the moral virtues, assign to every virtue a Knight, to be the patron and defender of the same; in whose actions the feats of arms and chivalry, the operations of that virtue whereof he is the protector, are to be expressed, and the vices and unruly appetites that oppose themselves against the same are to be beaten down and overcome.” He also wrote paraphrases of Ecclesiastes, and of the Canticum Canticorum; the Hours of our Lord, the Sacrifice of a Sinner, and the Seven Penitential Psalms, which are irretrievably lost to posterity. 3

St. Augustine Let no one ask of me the effective cause of voluntary evil; for the cause is not effective, but defective; it is not an effect at all. (Bacon, De Civitate Dei, Vol. XII. Ch. 7). The De Civitate Dei was translated into English for the first time twenty-four years after the play of Hamlet was produced. Bacon was perfectly familiar with it. His mother was distinguished among her contemporaries as a theologian, and especially for her knowledge of the Christian fathers, some of whose writings she translated for publication. And Sir Toby Matthew, Bacon’s literary friend and inquisitor, made an English translation of St. Augustine’s Confessions in Bacon’s lifetime, and probably with Bacon’s help. [Also see Part IV: Bacon’s Works].

St. James It has been referred that he was acquainted with astronomy. This opinion is founded on the phrase rendered in the English version. Bacon comments on him in his De Augmentis. “Variableness or shadow of training” for neither parallax nor the alternate approach to and receding from the solstice affects the Sun of Suns, whose aspect is the same at all places and throughout all time. Bacon so comments in his De Aug., Bk. I.

Steevens George (1736–1800) Born at Stepney. Steevens published part of the Shakespeare plays in 1766.

Stow John or Stowe (1525–1605) Was a most diligent, accurate, and impartial recorder of public events. He, like John Speed, was a tailor, but his decided turn for antiquarian research soon asserted its power, and he abandoned his trade, and is said to have travelled on foot through a large part of England for the purpose of a personal inspection of the historical treasures of the cathedrals and large libraries. He published a Summary of English Chronicles and A Survey of London, which latter is the best known of his works. He wrote, but was never able to publish, a large Chronicle or History of England. He fell into great poverty towards the end of his life. [Also see Speed John.]

Stuart Arabella (d.1615) Daughter of the Earl of Lenox, younger brother of Lord Darnley, the grandson of Margaret, eldest sister of Henry VII., and thus stood next in succession to James. Her claim to the throne as against James was that she was born in England, whereas he was an alien. She had been arrested by Elizabeth in consequence of a rumour that she was to marry William Seymour, grandson of Catherine Grey. She was imprisoned in 1609 on another rumour of her marriage to some person unknown. In 1610 she became actually engaged to William Seymour: he promised not to marry her without the King’s consent, but married her secretly a few months afterwards. The marriage was discovered, and she was committed to private custody whilst her husband was committed to the Tower. She escaped, disguised in a man’s clothes, but was arrested in the Straits of Dover. She died in the Tower in 1615.

Sydney Philip. Sir (1554–1586) Soldier, poet, and author of the Arcadia.