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).]

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Walsall John Bacon’s tutor. A scholar from Christ Church, Oxford. His brief words that exist from the time of his undertaking of both the Bacon brothers is that they were both for the true fear of God, zealous affection to His word, obedience to their parents, reverence to their superiors, humility to their inferiors, love to their instructor, that he never knew any excel them. 1

Walsingham Francis. Sir His hypocrisy was a masterpiece. He is described by his contemporaries as “a man of a cruel and a savage nature.” It was evidently a pleasure to him to inflict personal cruelty upon the people who fell into his power. He was known to beat them on the head with his staff. His language to the unfortunate Catholic ladies whom he arrested for attending Mass was most detestable. No matter what outrage he committed upon women of the most stainless character, they had no redress from Queen Elizabeth, who had no sympathy for her own sex at any time; yet, she is remembered for a human heart when Essex died; “the death of Elizabeth, who died on March 24, l603 about a year after the decapitation of Essex, filled with regret at his fate.” 2 But who shall rumble through historical records, shall find her path of behaviour, much as a spider’s, when Essex died. Recounting, in his praise of Queen Elizabeth, the fate of her most remarkable enemies, Francis Bacon observes: “I may not mention the death of some that occur to mind: but still, methinks, they live that should live, and they die that should die.” Much of the barbarous cruelty practised by the Lord Deputies of Elizabeth in Ireland was suggested by Walsingham. The Queen’s chief adviser Lord Burghley, the Secretary of State Sir Francis Walsingham, and the military expert Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester now controled their own private secret services. Walsingham’s was the largest spy network at the time and when Francis Bacon is elected to Parliament as member for Bossiney, Cornwall, he departs for Italy, Florence, Venice, Mantua, Genoa, Savoy, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Poland. The music of his reports was singing a swift melody in his blood; he was an agent on commission from her Majesty. This report, including additional information from his brother Anthony and Nicholas Faunt, was presented to the Queen as a State Paper entitled Notes on the Present State of Christendom. 3 The countries covered included not just France, Italy and Spain, but also Austria, Germany, Portugal, Poland, Denmark and Sweden. Florence, Venice, Mantua, Genoa and Savoy are dealt with in most detail. Some of this information was used in the Shakespearean plays. It should be noted that these Notes on the Present State of Christendom were not made available to the public until 1734. There are still extant letters of this baleful minister to Sir Henry Sidney, advising the old policy of the spy-system in its most odious forms. To personate the character of a confessor to a dying prisoner was carried to a demoniac pitch of perfection by Walsingham. He often boasted that he had “improved upon the confessional devices of Thomas Crumwell.” Walsingham, like Crumwell, had his peculiarities, but the latter was more “in the rough and ready style” of his royal master. Walsingham had a malignant hatred of Ireland and its Popish people. It has been affirmed by several Protestant writers, that Walsingham had such an intense hatred of Ireland, that “he wished it to sink into the sea.” It is, however, in his relations with the Queen of Scots that Walsingham stands forth as the demon of the age. He died in April 1590, was buried at Old St. Paul’s, amidst the deep execrations of the descendants of his numerous victims.

Waller Edmund (1606–1687) The name which he has rendered familiar to so many (albeit they mispronounce it), was known long before his time as that of a family of great wealth and antiquity, originally settled in the county of Kent. From Groombridge, his seat) near Speldhurst, Richard Waller, afterwards sheriff of the county, set out to join Henry V., in France, and thither he returned from Agincourt, bringing with him Charles, Duke of Orleans, whom he had taken prisoner in the battle. For four-and-twenty years he kept the Prince “in honourable confinement,” and it is recorded of him, that during that time he rebuilt his own house and beautified the parish church, in the porch of which were carved  his arms with the addition, the royal shield of France, and the motto Haec fructus virtutis, granted to him in memory of his exploit. His eldest son, another Richard Waller, married the daughter and heiress of Edmund Brudenell, Lord of the manor of Coleshill, and this union no doubt led to the migration from Kent of that part of the family from which the poet was immediately descended. The exact date when the Wallers of Beaconsfield branched off from the main stock cannot now be ascertained, but it is certain that well back into the sixteenth century they were in possession of lands in Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire, all of which appear to have eventually devolved upon Robert Waller, the father of the poet. Robert Waller had been bred to the study of the law, and for some time practised as a barrister, but his circumstances rendering this occupation unnecessary, he retired into the country and devoted himself to the improvement of his estates. He took for his wife, Anne, daughter of Griffith Hampden.
Edmund, the poet of our interest was their eldest son, born on March 3, 1606, at the manor-house, Coleshill, a hamlet which then formed part of the county of Hertford, but which in the early 1800’s has been absorbed into Buckinghamshire. All traces of the mansion have disappeared, and the site upon which it is said to have stood is from the later times occupied by a dilapidated farmhouse, little better than a cottage, known as Stocks Place, or Old Stocks. What little we know of his early education is derived from Aubrey, who was told by Waller himself that “he was bred under several ill, dull, and ignorant schoolmasters, till he went to Mr. Dobson at Wickham, who was a good schoolmaster and had been an Eaton schollar,” while one Mr. Thomas Bigge, who was in the same form with him at Mr. Dobson’s school, and “was wont to make his exercise for him,” confessed to the same authority, that “he little thought then he would have been so rare a poet.” He gathered his children about him, received the Sacrament with them, and died on October 21, 1687.
On October 26 he was buried in Beaconsfield church-yard, by a curious piece of irony, “in woollen according to a late Act of Parliament.” When the question of enforcing the penalties for not observing the Act which required persons to be buried in wool had come up in the House, Waller said, “Our Saviour was buried in linen. ‘Tis a thing against the custom of nations, and I am against it.” That “Waller was smooth” has been generally admitted, and smoothness was the quality at which he particularly aimed. “When he was a brisk young spark, and first studied poetry, “me thought,” said he, “I never saw a good copy of English verses; they want smoothness; then I began to essay.” Such is Aubrey’s account, but it is scarcely in this direction that one must look for the reason of Waller’s extraordinary popularity among his contemporaries. The letter, written in 1645, where Edmund Waller mentions Francis Bacon’s lyrical poetry was “the diversion of his Youth” follows:

To My Lady Sophia.
Madam,
Your commands for the gathering of these sticks into a faggot had sooner been obeyed, but, that intending to present you with my whole vintage, I stayed till the latest grapes were ripe; for here your Ladyship hath not only all I have done, but all I ever mean to do of this kind. Not but that I may defend the attempt I have made upon poetry, by the examples (not to trouble you with history) of many wise and worthy persons of our own times; as Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Fra. Bacon, Cardinal Perron (the ablest of his countrymen), and the former Pope, who, they say, instead of the Triple Crown, wore sometimes the poet’s ivy, as an ornament, perhaps, of less weight and trouble.
But, madam, these nightingales sung only in the spring; it was the diversion of their youth; as ladies learn to sing and play whilst they are children, what they forget when they are women. The resemblance holds further; for, as you quit the lute the sooner because the posture is suspected to draw the body awry, so this is not always practised without some violence to the mind; wresting it from present occasions, and accustoming us to a style somewhat removed from common use. But, that you may not think his case deplorable who has made verses, we are told that Tully (the greatest wit among the Romans) was once sick of this disease; and yet recovered so well, that of almost as bad a poet as your servant, he became the most perfect orator in the world. So that, not so much to have made verses, as not to give over in time, leaves a man without excuse; the former presenting us at least with an opportunity of doing wisely, that is, to conceal those we have made; which I shall yet do, if my humble request may be of as much force with your ladyship, as your commands have been with me.
Madam, I only whisper these in your ear; if you publish them, they become your own; and therefore, as you apprehend the reproach of a wit and a poet, cast them into the fire; or, if they come where green boughs are in the chimney, with the help of your fair friends (for thus bound, it will be too stubborn a task for your hands alone), tear them in pieces, wherein you shall honour me with the fate of Orpheus; for so his poems, whereof we only hear the fame (not his limbs, as the story would have it), I suppose were scattered by the Thracian dames.
Here, madam, I might take an opportunity to celebrate your virtues, and to instruct the unhappy men that knew you not, who you are, how much you excel the most excellent of your own, and how much you amaze the least inclined to wonder of our sex. But as they will be apt to take your ladyship’s for a Roman name, so would they believe that I endeavoured the character of a perfect nymph, worshipped an image of my own making, and dedicated this to the lady of the brain, not of the heart, of your Ladyship’s most humble servant,
E. W.

Warbeck Perkin “For his part, was not wanting to himself either in gracious and princely behaviour, or in ready and opposite answers, or in contenting and caressing those that did apply themselves unto them, insomuch as it was generally believe that he was indeed Duke Richard.” [of York]. 4 Bacon draws above from Speed, where Shakespeare in his Tempest has the same thought: “Like one, who having unto Truth, by telling of it made such a sinner of his memory, to credit his own lie, he did believe he was indeed the Duke.” It is marvellous how Bacon and Shakespeare alike transmute the least suggestion of arid chroniclers into imperishable stuff.

Whitgift or White-Gift John (1530–1604) Tutor at Trinity College founded a hospital and a school at Croydon, where he is buried. He was of “middle stature, strong and well shaped, of a grave countenance and brown complexion, black hair and eyes, his beard neither long nor thick”. (Paule, biographer of Whitgift). “Narrow-minded, mean, a tyrannical priest, who gained power by servility and adulation, and employed it in persecuting both those who agreed with Calvin about Church Government, and those who differed from Calvin touching the doctrine of Reprobation.” This is the description of Whitgift given by Lord Macaulay (1800–1859) in his famous article on Bacon in 1837, which is well known and talked about though “deficient in spiritual insight.” 5 [Also see Macaulay.]

Whitney Geoffrey His work A Choice of Emblemes, and other devises, for the most part gathered out of sundry writers, English and moralized, and divers newly devised. A work adorned with variety of matter, both pleasant and profitable: wherein those that please may find to fit their fancies, because herein by the office of the eye, and the ear, the mind may reap double delight through wholesome precepts, shadowed with pleasant devises both fit for the virtuous, to their encouraging and for the wicked for their admonishing. 6 [Also see Part III: Alciati and Whitney; Part II: Brant Sebastian.]

Withers George (1588–1667) Contemporary poet. A traditionary document may be mentioned, which was published in 1643–45, and was believed by Sir Egerton Bridges to have been the work of Withers. It is entitled The Great Assizes holden in Parnassus by Apollo and his Assessours, at which are arraigned Mercurius Brittanicus, Mercurius Aulicus, &c., (periodical publications of that time). This document shows that Francis Bacon, in the opinion of Withers, at least, was entitled to high rank among his contemporaries in the Kingdom of Apollo. [Also see Part III: The Great Assizes.]

Willoughby or Willobie Henry (1574?–1596?) The eponymous hero of the poem called Willobies Avisa was second son of Henry Willoughby, a country gentleman of Wiltshire, by Jane, daughter of one Dauntsey of Lavington, Wiltshire. A younger brother was named Thomas, The father’s father, Christopher Willoughby, was illegitimate son of Sir William Willoughby, the brother of Sir Robert Willoughby, first baron Willoughby de Broke, [q.v.]. Henry matriculated as a commoner from St. John’s College, Oxford, on December 10, 1591 at the age of sixteen. According to the report of a “friend and chamber fellow,” he was a scholar of good hope. He maybe the Henry Willoughbie who graduated B.A, from Exeter College on February 28, 1594–95. 7 Soon after that date, being desirous to see the fashions of other countries for a time, he departed voluntarily to her Majesty’s service. Before June 30, 1596, he is reported to have died. On September 3, 1594 there was licensed for the press a book entitled Willoby his Avisa or The True Picture of a Modest Maid and of a Chaste and Constant Wife 8 and shortly afterwards the work issued from the press of John Windet. In this volume, which mainly consists of seventy-two cantos in varying numbers of six-line stanzas (fantastically called by the author hexameters), the chaste heroine, Avisa, holds converse in the opening sections as a maid, and in the later sections as a wife with a series of passionate adorers. In every case she firmly repulses their advances midway through the book. Henry Willobie is introduced as an ardent admirer, in his own person, chiefly under the initials “H.W.” It is explained in a prose interpolation that Willobie has sought the advice of a friend, “W. S.” who had lately gone through the experience of a severe rebuff at the hands of a disdainful mistress. After “W.S.” light heartedly offers some tantalising advice in verse, “H.W.” in the twenty-nine cantos which form the last portion of the volume, is made to rehearse his woes and Avisa’s obduracy. Two prefaces, one addressed to “all the constant ladies and gentlewomen of England that fear God,” and the other to “the gentle and courteous reader,” are both signed Hadrian Dorrell. The second is dated from Dorrell’s chamber in Oxford. This first of October Dorrell takes responsibility for the publication, stating that he found the manuscript in his friend Willobie’s rooms while he was absent from the country. Dorrell says that he christened the work Willobie his Avisa because he supposed it was Willobie’s “doing and being written with his own hand.” He explains that the name Avisa was derived from the initial letters of the words amans vxor inviolata semper amanda and that there was “something of truth hidden under this shadow”.
In 1596 Peter Colse produced a poem on the same model as Willobies Avisa, which he called Penelopes Complaint. Colse declares that “seeing an unknowns author hath of late published a pamphlet called Avisa concerning the chastity of a lady of no historical repute, lie deemed it fitting to treat of the chastity of Penelope.” Colse speaks approvingly of the unknown, author’s style and verse, which he closely imitates. To Colse’s effort Hadrian Dorrell at once replied in 1590 in a new edition of Avisa, to which he prefixed an Apologia shewing the true meaning of Willobie his Avisa. This was dated from Oxford “this 30 of June 1596.” Dorrell, in contradiction to his former statement, declares that the whole of Avisa was a poetical fiction which was written “thirty-five years since, and long lay among the waste papers in the author’s study, with many other pretty things of his devising including a still unpublished work called Susanna.
The name Avisa he now affirms either means that the woman described had never been seen, “a” being the Greek privative particle, and “visa” the Latin participle; or was an irregular derivative from avis, a bird. At the close of the Apologie, he remarks that Willobie is lately dead. Dorrell’s general tone suggests that his two accounts of the origin and intention of the book are fictitious, while the conflict between his statements respecting the author renders it unlikely that either is wholly true, but that Dorrell had ground for his claim of intimacy with Henry Willoby, the Oxford student, seems supported by the fact that he adds to this edition of 1596 a poem in the same metre as Avisa, headed “The Victoria of English Chastitie under the fainted name of Avisa” and signed “Thomas Willoby frater Henrici Willoby nuper defunct.”
The Oxford student Henry Willoby undoubtedly had a brother named Thomas. The name of Hadrian Dorrell was apparently assumed. No Oxford student bearing that appellation is known to the university registers. It is probable that Hadrian Dorrell was sole author of Avisa and that he named his work after his friend Henry Willoby, in the same manner as Nicolas Breton named a poem, The Countess of Pembrokes Passion after the patroness in whose honour and for whose delectation it was written. The chief interest of the poem lies in its apparent bearings on Shakespeare’s biography. In prefatory verses in six-line stanzas, which are signed Contraria Contrariis: Vigilantius: Dormitanus, direct mention is made of Shakespeare’s poem of Lucrece, which was licensed for the press on May 9, 1594, only four months before Avisa. This is the earliest open reference made in print by a contemporary author to Shakespeare’s name. The notice of Shakespeare lends substance to the theory that the alleged friend of Willoby, who is known in the poem under the initials “W.S.” may be the dramatist himself. “W.S.” is spoken of as the old player. If this identity be admitted, there is a likelihood that the troubled amour from which “W.S.” is said in the poem to have recently recovered is identical with the intrigue that forms one of the topics of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. The frivolous tone in which “W.S.” is made in Avisa to refer to his recent amorous adventure suggests, moreover, that the professed tone of pain which characterises the poet’s addresses to a disdainful mistress in his Sonnets is not to be interpreted quite seriously.
Willobies’ Avisa droved popular, and rapidly went through six editions, but very few copies survive. Of the first edition, published in 1594, two perfect copies are known one in the British Museum, and the other in Mr. Christie Miller’s library at Britwell; a slightly imperfect copy is in the Huth Library. No copy is now known either of the edition of 1596, containing for the first time Dorrell’s Apologie and Thomas Willoby’s contribution, or of a third edition published after 1596 and before 1605. A fourth edition (the fourth time corrected and augmented) was issued by Windet, the original printer and publisher, in 1605; & unique copy is at Britwell. Bagford, Benjamin Furley, and other collectors noted an edition of 1609, which was probably a remainder issue of the fourth edition. The work was reprinted in 1635 by William Stansby, and was described on the title-page as “the fifth time corrected and augmented.” A copy, said to be unique, is in the British Museum. Dr. Grosart reprinted privately 1880 the first edition, with extracts from the aditions first published in 1596, although now only accessible in the editions of 1609 and 1635. The portion supposed to refer to Shakespeare was reprinted in Shakspere Allusion Books.

Wotton Henry. Sir (1568–1639) Essayist and poet. Some correspondence passed between Bacon and his cousin Sir Henry Wotton on different occasions, but on the whole this was of no special interest. Sir Henry, as an accomplished man of letters, appreciated very highly the work of his learned relative, and no doubt would be eager to possess his publications as they appeared. When the Novum Organum was issued Bacon sent three copies to him, and on the receipt of them, Wotton writes: “I have by the care of my cousin Mr. Thomas Meautys, and by your own special favour, three copies of that work wherewith your Lordship hath done a great, and ever-living benefit to all the children of nature, and to nature herself in her utter most extent of latitude; who never before, had so noble nor so true an interpreter, or (as I am readier to style your Lordship) never so inward a secretary of her cabinet.” Specimens of Bacon’s poetry were also found among Wotton’s papers after his death, and these were subsequently published in the Reliquiae Wottonianae in the year 1651 where there is an entrance worth citing on Anthony Bacon: “The Earl of Essex had accommodated Lord Anthony Bacon in partition of his house, and had assigned him a noble entertainment. This was a gentleman of impotent feet, but of a nimble head; who being of an improvident nature, contrary to his brother the Lord Viscount St Albans, and well knowing the advantage of a dangerous secret, would many times cunningly let fall some words as if he could amend his fortunes under the Cecilians with whom he was near in alliance and of blood also, and who had made some great proffers to win him away.” Anthony dislikes Fabritio, this elegant dabble; the mutual displacement builds on a wall of jealousy and remains even upon Anthony’s death, when Wotton-Fabritio publishes his above-mentioned memoirs.

Wright John Probably descendents of the John Wright in the 1600’s, was another John Wright who died in 1807 on October the 13th. He resided in St. John’s square, Clerkenwell, London, an excellent printer, and a worthy man, in the thirty-eighth year of his age. Joseph Wright, his brother and successor, died, after a lingering illness, at his father’s house in Leicestershire, May 1, 1809; and Edward Wright, a third brother, in the same profession, died April 26, 1810. The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Dr. Faustus, written by Christopher Marlowe was printed in London by John Wright, and sold at his shop, without Newgate, at the sign of the Bible in 1616. It was in black letter. Some former possessor of this copy has filled up the initial M. and written Marklin. It sold at Wright’s sale for £1.7s. In May 1612 the work A Remembrance of the Honours due to the Life and Death of Robert Earle of Salisbury, Lord Treasurer of England, and imprinted at London, for John Wright, was to be sold at his shop, near Christ Church. This was a tribute to the memory of Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, by Richard Johnson. It was partly in prose and partly in verse, and to which a portrait of the Earl was prefixed.

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Xenophane By whom Xenophanes is called Xenophane is uncertain; probably suggested by a wrong reading in Simplicius on Aristotle De Cælo. Bacon comments on him in his Vitæ et Mortis. [Life & Death].

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