Lord Verulam
The Rarest of Princes
William Rawley's Note Book
In a note book destined only for his own private use, Bacon’s, William Rawley, begins a number of sayings and anecdotes, having reference to his master, Bacon, in a cipher which is anything but very complicated; it was resorted to, lest any servant, into whose hands the book might happen to fall, should be able to read the contents. Mysterious as the cipher may appear at the first glance, all Rawley did was to write down an English sentence in Greek consonants, applying the numerals 1 to 6 instead of the vowels, thus: 1=a, 2 = e, 3 = i, 4 = 0, 5=u, 6=y. Solved with this key, the words in one of Rawley’s cipher reads:
I. Apophthegms. My Lo.: I was the justest judge that was in England these 50 years: but it was the justest censure in Parliament that was these 200 years.
As the next anecdote in English writing begins with the words: “The same Mr. Bacon,” there can be no doubt, but that Bacon was also meant in the first apophthegm, by the words “My Lord,” contained therein.
Another Cryptic statement
Rawley’s Note Book had been begun in September 1626, i.e., not until after Bacon’s death. And yet, for all that, such precautions on the part of his secretary. Another entry of interest also emanated from Bacon’s lips, for the “He” referred to is none other than Bacon. The anecdote had evidently never been told outside the most intimate circle, and Rawley thought it better, even in this case, to enter it cautiously (curiously) in his Note Book. Using the same key, the words read:
He thought Moses was the greatest sinner that was, for he never knew any break both tables at once but he.
To consider Moses a sinner who broke all the Ten Commandments at once, was a thought which, in the year 1626, it was wise to express in a secret (veiled) language, by means of a cipher. If we take up Bacon’s works themselves, we shall find, wherever we turn, that he was thoroughly versed in all occult arts. The cipher employed by Rawley, which we referred to above, was a very simple one for those times. Francis Bacon himself, in his work De Augmentis Scientiarum (1623), devotes whole pages to the subject of ciphers and secret or occult methods of instruction. He discusses the special method how one ought to bring forward, and speak upon, a subject or matter that were of too dangerous a nature for the general public, as being too new and too exciting.
08 April 2008Headline
It was not long ago when many researchers and biographers of Francis Bacon were offering to the public that The Masonic Pillars Emblem in Whitney's Choice of Emblems, first gave reference to Bacon's Masonic Pillars.
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Other Cryptic Topics
Bacon's Cryptic Style
It may then be expressed by mouth, written, yea even printed, and yet only the initiated, only the “filii” will know what is really meant thereby. Bacon enumerates a whole series of such methods, and then goes on to mention briefly the various kinds of ciphers, dwelling longer upon one, which, as a young diplomatist in France, where he was attach to the English Embassy, he had invented himself. By this method it is possible to express omnia per omnia [all by all]. It is based upon the employment of two alphabets differing but slightly from each other, every five letters to which mean a secret letter. With its aid one might write, for instance, Tennyson’s Locksley Hall, and the initiated would decipher The May Queen from it. The disguising piece need, as we said, only contain at least five times as many letters as the piece to be disguised.