Sir Nicholas Bacon, , father of Lord Bacon, lord-keeper of the great seal, born 1510, died 1579. Henry VIII. gave him several lucrative offices, which he retained under Edward VI. He lived in retirement during the reign of Mary, but Queen Elizabeth appointed him lord-keeper of the great seal for life. He was the intimate friend of Lord Burleigh, a sister of whose wife he married, and by her became the father of the great chancellor.

Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, and Lord High Chancellor of England; was born at London in 1561. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1575 was admitted to Gray's Inn. In 1576 - 79 he was at Paris with Sir Amyas Paulet the English ambassador. The death of his father called him back to England, and being left in straitened circumstance, he zealously pursued the study of law, and was admitted a barrister in 1582. In 1584 he became member of parliament for Melcombe Regis, and soon after drew up a Letter of Advice to Queen Elizabeth, an able political memoir. In 1586 he was member for Taunton, in 1589 for Liverpool. A year or two after he gained the Earl of Essex as a friend and patron. Bacon's talents and his connection with the lord -treasurer Burleigh, who had married his mother's sister, and his son Sir Robert Cecil, first secretary of state, seemed to promise him the highest promotion; but he had displeased the queen, and when he applied for the attorney-generalship, and next for the solicitor-generalship (1595), he was unsuccessful. Essex endeavoured to indemnify hint by the donation of an estate in land. Bacon, however, forgot his obligations to his benefactor, and not only abandoned him as soon as he had fallen into disgrace, but with. out being obliged took part against him on his trial, in 1601, and was active in obtaining his conviction. He had been chosen member for the county of Middlesex in 1593, and for Southampton in 1597, and had long been a queen's counsel.

The reign of James I. was more favourable to his interest. He was assiduous in courting the kings favour, and James, who was ambitious of being considered a patron of letters, conferred upon him in 1603 the order of knighthood. In 1604 he was appointed king's counsel, with a pension of £60; in 1606 he married; in 1607 he became solicitor-general, and six years after attorney-general. Between James and his parliament he was anxious to produce harmony, but his efforts were without avail, and his obsequiousness and servility gained him enmity and discredit. In 1617 he was made lord-keeper of the seals; in 1618 Lord High Chancellor of England and Baron Verulam. In this year he lent his influence to bring a verdict of guilty against Raleigh. In 1621 he was made Viscount St. Albans. Soon after this his reputation received a fatal blow A new parliament was formed in 1621, and the lord-chancellor was accused before the house of bribery, corruption, and other malpractices. It is difficult to ascertain the full extent of his guilt; but he seems to have been unable to justify himself, and handed in a 'confession and humble submission, ' throwing himself on the mercy of the Peers. He was condemned to pay a fine of £40,000, to be committed to the Tower during the pleasure of the king declared incompetent to hold any office of state, and banished from court for ever. The sentence, however, was never carried out The fine was remitted almost as soon as imposed, and he was imprisoned for only a few days. He survived his fall a few years, during this time occupying himself with his literary and scientific works, and vainly hoping for political employment.

In 1597 he published his celebrated Essays, which immediately became very popular, were successively enlarged and extended, and translated into Latin, French, and Italian. The treatise on the Advancement of Learning appeared in 1605; The Wisdom of the Ancient, in 1609 (in Latin); his great philosophical work, the Novum Organum (in Latin), in 1620; and the De Augmentis Scientiarum, a much enlarged edition (in Latin) of the Advancement, in 1623. His New Atlantis was written about 1614 - 17; Life of Henry VII. about 1621. Various minor productions also proceeded from his pen. Numerous editions of his works have been published, by far the best being that of Messrs Spedding, Ellis, & Heath (1858 - 74).

Bacon was great as a moralist, a historian, a writer on politics, and a rhetorician; but it is as the father of the inductive method in science, as the powerful exponent of the principle that facts must be observed and collected before theorizing, that he occupies the grand position he holds among the worlds great ones. His moral character, however, was not on a level with his intellectual, self-aggrandizement being the main aim of his life. We need to no more than allude to the preposterous attempt that has been made to prove that Bacon was the real author of the plays attributed to Shakespeare, an attempt that only ignorance of Bacon and Shakespeare could uphold and tolerate.

He died at Highgate in 1626