Knitting Circle Francis Bacon
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Biography,work,bibliography.
Francis BaconBorn 22nd. January, 1561, in London; died 9th. April, 1626, in London.Bacon was born at York House which stood at the corner of Villiers Street and the Strand in London, WC2. He died at Arundel House, the site of which is now occupied by St. Michael's Church, Highgate, and Old Hall, 17 South Grove, London, N6. Bacon's Lane, London, N6, is named after him.
A philosopher, essayist, statesman, and innovative thinker. Students today are often taught that he was important in the development of scientific method because he applied the inductive method of modern science as opposed to thea priorimethod of medieval scholars. For this he is sometimes called theFather of Modern Science.
In 1573 Francis and his elder brotherAnthony(1558-1601), who was also gay, entered Trinity College, Cambridge. They then went to Gray's Inn, London, in 1576. In 1582 Francis was called to the bar and began a very successful law practice. He became a Member of Parliament in 1584, and he was appointed Queen Elizabeth I's Counsellor in 1591.James I(1566-1625) acceded to the thrown in 1603 and in the same year Francis Bacon was knighted. He became Solicitor General in 1607, Attorney General in 1613, and Lord High Chancellor in 1618. He was conferred the title of Baron Verulam in 1618, and of Viscount St. Albans in 1621.
Bacon's personal friendship with King James I may have been a factor in his swift rise to power. James's homosexual loves are well-established, and he was known as "e;Queen James"e;. However, Bacon had to be more discreet. His brother-in-law, Mervyn Touchet, was executed in 1631 for his homosexuality, as were two of Touchet's servants.
In 1606 when he was 45, Bacon married Alice Barnham, a fourteen-year-old alderman's daughter. This was a childless marriage and he may have felt obliged to embark on it for career and social reasons.
In 1621 Bacon was found guilty of accepting bribes and was fined and imprisoned in the Tower of London for a few days. He was banished to his estate of Gorhambury near St. Albans, and even though the King pardened him after three months, he was not allowed to return to the London courts or parliament.
In March 1626, near Highgate, he was experimenting with the preservation of a fowl by stuffing it with snow, when he came down with a cold and was taken to the home of the Earl of Arundel. He was put in a damp bed in a seldom-used room and developed pneumomia and died a month later.
"e;A well-known legend about Bacon that the authors Lisa Jardine and Alan Stewart" title="Anthony Quinton (1998)
Bacon's homosexuality is known from the two seventeenth century writers, John Aubrey and Sir Simon D'Ewes. In hisAutobiography, Simon D'Ewes says of Bacon, "e;Nor did he ever, that I could hear, forbear his old custom of making his servants his bed-fellows so to avoid the scandal that was raised of him."e;. He also describes a particular Welsh servant of Bacon's as being, "e;a very effeminate-faced youth"e; and "e;his catamite and bedfellow"e;. In hisBrief Lives, John Aubrey states, "e;He was a pederast"e; (meaning then, simply homosexual) with "e;ganymedes and favourites"e;. There is a letter that exists from his mother, Lady Ann Bacon, in which she chastises him for his fondness for Welsh boys. In writing to Anthony, she complains of "e;that bloody Percy"e; whom Francis kept "e;yea as a coach companion and a bed companion"e;.
Francis Bacon's essayOf Friendshipconfines itself to relations between men. HisOf Beautydiscusses only male examples.
The inductive method in science is often called the Baconian method. Bacon abandoned the deductive logic of Aristotle and stressed the importance of experiment in interpreting nature and the necessity for the proper regard for any possible evidence which might run counter to any held thesis. He described heat as a mode of motion, and light as requiring time for transmission. His importance is his insistance that truth is not derived from authority, and that knowledge is the fruit of experience. However, Bacon was behind the scientific knowledge of the time, and modern research suggests that his interest in experiment was rooted in magical, alchemical, and esoteric traditions. The chief exponents of the inductive method were William of Ockham (c1300-c1349), John Herschel (1792-1871), and John Stuart Mill (1806-73).
Francis Bacon has also been attributed with the works of William Shakespeare, but this appears to be without foundation.
A portrait of Francis Bacon is reproduced in black and white inElliman and Roll, (1986), page 9, along with a black and white photograph of Canonbury Tower, Canonbury Road, London, N1 where he held the lease from 1616 to 1621.
Work- The Advancement of Learning, 1605. A review of the state of knowledge at the time and its chief defects.
- Essays, including ten essays in 1597, expanded to 58 in 1625.
- New Atlantis, 1617. Suggests the formation of scientific academies.
- Novum Organum, 1620.
- History of Henry VII, 1622.
- De Augmentis Scientiarum, 1623. A Latin version ofThe Advancement of Learning.
- Apophthegms, 1625. A collection of witticisms.
- Maxims of the Law, 1630.
- Reading on the Statute of Uses, 1642.
Bibliography- Fulton Henry Anderson, (1962), "e;Francis Bacon: His Career and His Thought"e;, Los Angeles: University of Southern California Press.
- Tom Cowan,Gay Men and Women Who Enriched the World
- Daphne du Maurier, (1975),Golden Lads: A study of Anthony Bacon, Francis, and their friends, Gollanz, 288 pages, ISBN 0575019808 (hardback).
- Synopsis:"e;This marvellously readable biography combines du Maurier's very special narrative powers with a remarkable picture of the period and of Anthony Bacon himself. A mysterious historical figure, Bacon was a contemporary of the brilliant band of gallants who clustered round the court of Elizabeth I, the 'golden lads' of the title. For some time an agent in France for Walsingham, Anthony was also closely connected with the Earl of Essex, who succeeded the Earl of Leicester as the Queen's favourite. Du Maurier did much to throw light on matters which had long puzzled historians, and as well as a consummate exercise in research, this biography is also a strange and fascinating tale."e;
- Daphne du Maurier, (1976),The Winding Stair: Francis Bacon, His Rise and Fall, Gollanz, 254 pages, ISBN 0575021683 (hardback).
- Synopsis:"e;Many accounts of the life of Francis Bacon have been written for scholars. But du Maurier's aim in this biography was to illuminate the many facets of Bacon's remarkable personality for the common reader. To her book she brought the same gifts of imagination and perception that made her earlier biography, Golden Lads, so immensely readable, skillfully threading into her narrative extracts from contemporary documents and from Bacon's own writings, and setting her account of his life within a vivid contemporary framework. This is truly history made alive."e;
- Elliman and Roll, (1986), pages 18-19.
- Rom Harré, (1989), "e;The Philosophies of Science"e;, second edition, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-289201-0, 203 pages.
- Lisa Jardine and Alan Stewart, (1998), "e;Hostage to Fortune: The troubled life of Francis Bacon (1561-1626)"e;, Victor Gollancz, 637 pages, ISBN 0 575 06233 9.
- Reviewed by Jonathan Fryer inGay Times, June, 1998, issue 237, pages 80-81. "e; It was only when the Scottish King James came south to take the English throne that Bacon was promoted successfully to be Soliciter General, Attorney General and Lord Chancellor, picking up first a knighthood and then a seat in the House of Lords along the way."e;
"e;It is doubtful that King James would have been much ruffled by details of Francis's predilictions, however, as the sovereign himself had a tendency to lean heavily on the shoulders of sturdy male members of his entourage, while fiddling with his codpiece. Such delightful details pepper Lisa Jardine and Alan Stewart's splendidly writtenHostage to Fortune, which brings out both Bacon's awfulness and his charm. It is a substantial, scholarly work, immaculately referenced and lush with splendid quotations (including a wicked ditty about Francis's halitosis), while at the same time being highly readable."e;
- A genius reeking of everything but successby Anthony Quinton inThe Times Higher Education Supplement, 26th. June, 1998, page 22. "e;Anyone thinking about writing a serious life of Francis Bacon is likely to be discouraged by the fact of Spedding's vast, defensiveLife and Lettersin seven volumes (1861), even by its relatively handy abridgement in two volumes."e;
"e;Hostage to Fortunedoes not quite do the job, hefty and close packed though it is. Indeed, in a number of ways it is rather a weird book. Most weird is its almost total exclusion of any reference to Bacon's philiosophy, apart from perfunctory mention of dates of publication (of the comparatively small fraction that was published during his life) and, occasionally, of the names of things he might have been working on at particular times."e;
"e;The Bacon on whom Jardine's and Stewart's attention is exclusively focused is a fairly absurd figure. He was kept busy with legal work, but his political influence on the two very capricious monarchs he served - or tried to serve - was almost negligible."e;
"e;It seems that Elizabeth either disliked or distrusted him, or both. His notorious homosexuality may have been distasteful to her."e;
"e;James I, of course, was a blatant homosexual himself and that, one might have thought, should have been a bond with Bacon. Perhaps it was, to some extent, although their tastes were different. The king liked glamorous, straight young men; Bacon liked stable boys."e;
"e;James was much more lavish to Carr and Villiers. Carr did not last long and Bacon botched his obsequious handling of Villiers. Jardine and Stewart take a sensible and tolerant line about homosexuality in Bacon's epoch, that of a sophisticated Edwardian public school housemaster. If you are going to put a lot of vigorous young men together in confined quarters and keep them away from women, what do you expect is going to happen?"e;
- Matthew Parris, (1995), "e;Great Parliamentary Scandals"e;, "e;Francis Bacon - 1621: 'I am guilty of corruption and do renounce all defence' "e;, pages 1-9.
- Paolo Rossi, (1968), "e;Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science"e;, London: Routledge.
- A. L. Rowse, (1977), "e;Homosexuals in History"e;
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administrator@knittingcircle.org.ukFirst uploaded 21st. February, 1996
Last altered 18th. August, 2006