The Winding Stair: Francis Bacon, His Rise and Fall

by Daphne Du Maurier

  The second book covers every aspect of learning; natural history, civil history, divinity, philosophy, natural philosophy, physics and metaphysics, medicine, etc. Despite the formidable list of subjects discussed, it is not a difficult book to read, and perhaps one of the reasons it is neglected in our own time is because so much of what Francis persuasively advocated, which was revolutionary at the beginning of the seventeenth century, has since been adopted and accepted as natural. Above all The Advancement of Learning is important because for the first time it defined the steps of scientific method, and stressed the importance of seeking truth through reason rather than through revelation: it may, in fact, truly be described as marking the birth of scientific philosophy.

  The reader intent on discovering clues to Francis the man behind the thoughts to which he gave utterance will find a rich reward in certain sentences and paragraphs scattered here and there amongst the whole, as when, for instance, he says that certain men of learning esteem it a ‘kind of dishonour unto learning to descend to enquiry or meditation upon matters mechanical,’ and proceeds to tell the tale of the philosopher who ‘while he gazed upwards to the stars fell into the water; for if he had looked down he might have seen the stars in the water, but looking aloft he could not see the water in the stars.’

  He is particularly discerning in his discussion on the art of medicine. ‘The lawyer is judged by the virtue of his pleading, and not by the issue of his cause. The master in the ship is judged by the directing his course aright, and not by the fortune of the voyage. But the physician, and perhaps the politique, hath no particular acts demonstrative of his ability, but is judged most by the event; which is ever but as it is taken: for who can tell, if a patient die or recover, or if a state be preserved or ruined, whether it be by art or accident? And therefore many times the impostor is prized, and the man of virtue taxed. Nay, we see the weakness and credulity of men is such, as they will often prefer a mountebank or witch before a learned physician.’ Evidently a hit at the quacks of his own time, who were legion, as they are now.

  A few pages further on he has something to say on another subject that is frequently argued in medical circles today. ‘Nay further, I esteem it the office of a physician not only to restore health, but to mitigate pains and dolors; and not only when such mitigation may conduce to recovery, but when it may serve to make a fair and easy passage. So it is written of Epicurus, that after his disease was judged desperate, he drowned his stomach and senses with a large draught and inguration of wine; whereupon the epigram was made, he was not sober enough to taste any bitterness of the Stygian water. But the physicians contrariwise do make a kind of scruple and religion to stay with the patient after the disease is deplored; whereas in my judgement they ought both to inquire the skill, and to give the attendances, for the facilitating and assuaging of the pains and agonies of death.’ Small wonder that Francis had marked his passage thus, ‘Of euthanasia at the end.’ Was he thinking once again of his brother Anthony?

  The temptation to continue quoting from this fascinating work must be quelled… but then suddenly, later in the second book, we find him once more reverting to the diseases of the body, and saying, ‘So in medicining of the mind, which are not other than the perturbations and distempers of the affections…’ and two pages later, ‘Is not the opinion of Aristotle worthy to be regarded, wherein he saith that young men are not fit auditors of moral philosophy, because they are not settled from the boiling heat of their affections, nor attempered with time and experience?’ And the probing reader asks, yes, but who said the same in verse? It was Hector, in Troilus and Cressida, published four years later.

  Not much

  Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought

  Unfit to heare Moral Philosophie.

  The Reasons you alledge, so more conduce

  To the hot passion of distemp’red blood,

  Then to make up a free determination

  ’Twixt right and wrong.

  Francis has a chapter on poetry in his Advancement of Learning, and curiously enough it is one of the shortest, for, he writes, ‘In this third part of learning, which is poesy, I can report no deficience. For being as a plant that cometh of the lust of the earth, without a formal seed, it hath sprung up and spread abroad more than any other kind.’ He concludes with the line, ‘But it is not good to stay too long in the theatre.’ What does he mean? Not good for whom? For a writer who must not let himself be seduced by his imagination when more important work needs to be done? So the chapter ends abruptly, and he passes on to the ‘palace of the mind.’ Finally, in the conclusion to the whole book, he says, ‘I have been content to tune the instruments of the Muses, that they may play that have better hands.’

  The Advancement of Learning was ready for publication in the autumn of October 1605, and was printed by Henry Tomes and sold at his shop at Gray’s Inn Gate, in Holborn. Francis had sent advance copies to the Earl of Northampton (one time Lord Harry Howard, friend of the Earl of Essex and brother Anthony), with a request that he should present the book to his Majesty. He also sent copies to the Lord Chancellor Lord Ellesmere, who had introduced him to Sir John and Lady Packington, to the Lord Treasurer Lord Buckhurst, to cousin Robert Cecil, now Earl of Salisbury and Chancellor of Cambridge University, to Sir Thomas Bodley at Oxford University, and of course to Tobie Matthew, who was in Italy at the time—indeed, he had been travelling abroad since the preceding April. His letters were in his customary formal style when addressing his superiors, but he was on easier terms with young Tobie. ‘I have now at last taught that child to go, at the swaddling whereof you were. My work touching the Proficiency and Advancement of Learning I have put into two books; whereof the former, which you saw, I count but as a page to the latter. I have now published them both; whereof I thought it a small adventure to send you a copy, who have more right to it than any man, except Bishop Andrews, who was my inquisitor.’ (This was Dr. Launcelot Andrews, an old friend and Dean of Westminster, who was about to become Bishop of Chichester, and to whom Bacon had more than once sent manuscripts for scrutiny and criticism.)

  Francis had, so he thought, timed the moment of publication well, just before Parliament assembled for the new session; but unfortunately for him—a fate common to writers throughout the centuries when their books are overtaken by public events—the impact that his two volumes might have made was entirely overshadowed by the discovery of a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament when the Lords and Commons should be assembled before his Majesty on the opening day, November 5th. The Advancement of Learning, save for a casual mention by Chamberlain that ‘Sir Francis Bacon hath set forth a new work,’ appears to have awakened no other comment. The great Powder Treason, known to the world since as the Gunpowder Plot, took precedence not only over all other business in both Houses of Parliament but in the minds and hearts of all subjects loyal to the Crown.

  Francis, thankful that his Majesty’s life had been spared, as well as his own and that of other members of the Commons and the Lords, shed no tears over the fact that his own ten months and more of composition had misfired. The two books must be translated into Latin, the universal language of scholars at that time, and distributed in the continent of Europe, where their argument would be more readily appreciated and understood. When opportunity served, during the years that lay ahead, he would find time to incorporate all the ideas he had expressed in his Advancement of Learning in yet a further major work, written wholly in Latin.

  5

  The perpetrators of the great Powder Treason were all arrested, imprisoned, tried and condemned to death, the executions taking place on the last two days of January 1606. No mercy killing for them. They were hanged, drawn and quartered, amongst them Sir Everard Digby, who in his defence spoke warmly for the Catholic cause. Guy Fawkes, alias Johnson, alias Guido Fawkes, who had actually been found with the thirty barrels of powder under Parliament House, declared that the desperate state of the nation demanded a desperate remedy, and confe
ssed that he had desired to blow all the Scots back to Scotland. This admission, in the presence of King James, whose own father, Lord Darnley, had been similarly murdered at Kirk o’ Field in 1567, when James was only one year old, was hardly one to induce clemency in the monarch, who had lived in the fear of assassination ever since.

  November 5th was declared to be a public holiday in perpetuity in thankfulness for his Majesty’s escape, and detestation for all papists throughout the country began to grow amongst the people. Further arrests were made, houses owned by those with Catholic sympathies were searched, and a bill was introduced in Parliament on January 21st to establish laws against recusants, the name given to all those who refused to attend the services of the Church of England.

  Francis had taken no part at all in the treason trials, but in the House of Commons he was selected as a member of the committee appointed to look into the question of the laws against recusants, and indeed he was active throughout the whole of February, March and April, serving on various committees.

  The tricky question of a subsidy for the throne came up again, and it was perhaps fortunate for King James that while this was being discussed there was an alarming report on March 22nd that his Majesty had been found stabbed in his bed! A totally unfounded rumour, immediately contradicted by a proclamation, but it had the effect of mellowing those members of Parliament who might otherwise have been ill-disposed to grant an additional levy. How the report came about is unknown, but Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, was a subtle man, well versed in political moves, and he may have considered that a shock to the faithful Commons would not come amiss at this moment, as an additional jolt four months after the Powder Treason. Some historians of our day have declared that the Powder Treason itself was an ingenious ‘plant’ on the part of Salisbury to frighten the King, but such an idea has no documentary proof, and seems an unfair indictment of a statesman whose loyalty and service to the monarch had never been in doubt. In any event the March scare was short-lived, bells rang in the churches, the people ran out into the streets, and everyone rejoiced that King James was safe, while Francis Bacon rose to his feet in the House to urge that the bill for the subsidy should be passed, giving thanks at the same time that the sovereign was alive and well.

  During the present session and before, when he was still working on his Advancement of Learning, his intimacy with Sir ‘Lusty’ Packington and Lady Packington had grown. Although his object was undoubtedly to win their consent to a marriage with Lady Packington’s daughter Alice, one wonders what possible rapport he could have had with the parents, so dissimilar to himself in character and pursuits. There could have been one bond—a mutual interest in building and in gardening. ‘Lusty’ had built his own house, Westwood Park, at Hampton Lovett, and had dug a great lake in the grounds, which was a source of annoyance to his neighbours, who declared that by doing so he had interfered with the King’s highway. Who better to advise him about this lake, and his rights, than Learned Counsel Francis Bacon, friend of Lord Keeper and Lord Chancellor Ellesmere? And who better, in addition, to advise him about another quarrel, this time with Lord Zouche, who was claiming jurisdiction over Worcestershire, while Lusty himself was sheriff for the town of Worcester?

  The grounds and the offending lake would certainly make a point of contact between hot-tempered Lusty Packington and Francis, who was forever thinking out his own improvements to Gorhambury. It is pleasant to speculate upon the two men pacing the grounds, Lusty blustering away about his rights, and Francis nodding agreement but making diplomatic suggestions, and at the same time noting the improvements in looks and carriage of his host’s stepdaughter Alice. Hampton Lovett was about twenty-five miles from Stratford-on-Avon, through which Francis would pass on his journeys to and from London, and where, in the year 1605, William Shakespeare purchased for £440 a thirty-one-year lease of tithes around Stratford and the neighbouring villages.

  Some time during 1605, or early in 1606, Francis Bacon and Sir John and Lady Packington came to an agreement concerning the future of Miss Alice Barnham, with her £6,000 inheritance and her £300 a year from land. The articles of marriage, dated May 10th 1606, settled the Manors of Gorhambury, Westwick and Praye, including the advowsons of St. Michaels and Redbourne, upon trustees, so that the same should be for Alice for life, and of the clear value of £300 per annum. If Francis should die first he would leave to her ‘goods and money worth £1,000, with her apparel, linen and personal ornaments, and such jewels as she should possess during covertures, but no jewel over £100 in value. If he should survive her, the Manors to be for him and his issue by her, and in default for his Trustees.’

  Benedict Barnham, Alice’s father, had left a will shortly before he died. At this time Alice was five years, ten months and thirteen days old. When she was married to Francis Bacon—who was forty-five—Alice, according to the reckoning of the Rev. C. Moor, writing in the Genealogist’s Magazine in 1937, was ‘twelve days under fourteen years of age’. Perhaps there is a slight error here, and May 10th was in fact her fourteenth birthday. The extreme youth of the bride does not seem to have been noticed by the gossips or by any of Francis Bacon’s later biographers, including James Spedding and W. Hepworth Dixon. The only contemporary allusion to the wedding, indeed, is contained in the letter from Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain on the following day, May 11th. ‘Sir Francis Bacon was married yesterday to his young wench in Marylebone Chapel. He was clad from top to toe in purple, and hath made himself and his wife such store of fine raiments of cloth of silver and gold that it draws deep into her portion. The dinner was kept at his father-in-law Sir John Packington’s lodging over against the Savoy, where his chief guests were the three knights Cope, Hicks and Beeston [Sir Michael Hicks, Sir Walter Cope and Sir Hugh Beeston, all three members of Parliament]; and upon this conceit, as he said himself, that since he could not have my L. of Salisbury in person, he would have him at least in his representative body.’

  Francis’s choice of purple as a wedding-garment is intriguing. Roman emperors and Persian kings wore purple. Perhaps, in fantasy, he saw himself as Julius Caesar or Darius. There is no record listing the other guests who attended the wedding, or where the honeymoon—if one took place—was spent. Twickenham Lodge would seem more suitable than Gorhambury, in view of the fact that on May 13th he was obliged to read a Petition of Grievances to his Majesty—those of the faithful Commons, not his own. Moreover, the towers of Richmond Palace on the opposite bank of the Thames, as seen from Twickenham Lodge, might have greater appeal for a bride of just fourteen than the imposing rooms and gallery at Gorhambury, especially if a visit to Hertfordshire entailed a meeting with her mother-in-law, the dowager Lady Bacon, confined to her own quarters and likely to be totally bewildered at the sudden appearance of a ‘wench’ in silver and gold.

  So the wedding night came and went, with what success or failure we shall never know. It would be cynical to assume that his remarks in a later essay, ‘Of Marriage and Single Life’, referred to Alice when he said, ‘Wives are young men’s mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men’s nurses. So as a man may have a quarrel to marry, when he will; but yet he was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question when a man should marry, “A young man not yet, an elder man not at all”.’

  However, the Latin work he was to write the year after his marriage, Cogitata et Visa de Interpretatione Naturae (Thoughts and Conclusions on the Interpretation of Nature), has an interesting passage describing the legend of Scylla: ‘That lady had the face and countenance of a maiden, but her loins were girt about with yelping hounds. So these doctrines present at first view a charming face, but the rash wooer who should essay the generative parts in hope of offspring, is blessed only with shrill disputes and arguments.’ The marriage of Francis Bacon and Alice Barnham was childless…

  Parliament was prorogued from May 27th until November 16th, so the groom had nearly six months in which to woo his bride, and win her esteem if not her passi
on. Perhaps a visit to Court would bring stimulation. King Christian of Denmark, Queen Anne’s brother, arrived for a state visit early in July, alighting from his flagship at Gravesend, where he was met by his brother-in-law King James and his nephew young Prince Henry, who conducted him in the royal barge to Greenwich. The poor Queen had only lately recovered from the birth of a baby daughter who had died after a few hours, and it was hoped that the King of Denmark’s visit would help to soften her bereavement. There was a state ride through London, after which every sort of entertainment was provided for the royal visitor—excursions to St. Paul’s, to Westminster Abbey, and to the Tower to watch the inevitable bear-baiting by mastiffs, followed by hawking and hunting in the country.

  The Earl of Salisbury gave a magnificent party at Theobalds where he was host to both King James and King Christian and their retinues, though Queen Anne herself was not present. It is likely that Francis and his lady were invited, being relatives of the earl, and if they were indeed present Francis may have felt obliged to escort his young bride from the scene. The banquet was all very well, but it was followed by a masque intended to represent the Queen of Sheba visiting Solomon. Unfortunately, the Court lady acting the part of the Queen of Sheba had indulged herself too freely at the banquet, with the result that she tripped up the steps when presenting gifts to the Danish king, and spilt a mass of wine, cream and jellies on his lap.