Anthony Bacon (1558–1601)

Anthony Bacon in 1594.

Anthony Bacon (1558–1601) was a member of the powerful English Bacon family who was also a spy during the Elizabethan era. He was Francis Bacon's brother.

Early years, 1558–1580

Anthony Bacon was born in 1558, the same year that his father, Sir Nicholas Bacon, was appointed Lord Keeper of the Great Seal by Elizabeth I of England. His mother, Anne, was the daughter of noted humanist Anthony Cooke. His mother's sister was married to William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, making Burghley Anthony Bacon's uncle. Anthony Bacon's more famous younger brother, Francis Bacon, was born three years after him, in 1561.

Anthony and his brother spent their early years at York House in the Strand, London. Their mother (who was one of the most educated women of her day, speaking French, Latin, Greek, Spanish, Hebrew and Italian) oversaw their early education. In April 1573, the Bacon brothers enrolled in Trinity College, Cambridge, where they lived in the household of the Master of Trinity College, John Whitgift. The boys' father died in February 1579 after having been one of the most powerful men in England for the past twenty years.

Years in France, 1580–1592

Bacon traveled to France in 1580. While there, he served as an intelligencer reporting to English spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham. He initially settled in Montauban-de-Picardie. In 1586, he was charged with sodomy for having sex with his page Isaac Burgades, who had sodomized other pages in the household, and they in turn having let the practice become known in the town. Although the theoretical punishment was still burning at the stake, as the result of intervention in 1587 of Henry, then King of Navarre, Bacon never suffered any consequence, but left Montauban because of the scandal.

He was friends with Montaigne and spent two years at Bordeaux at the time Montaigne was preparing the fourth edition of his Essays.

Anthony lived in France until 1592, and was a friend of Henry after his coronation as Henry IV.

Living with his brother, 1592–1594

Bacon returned to England in February 1592. He initially stayed with his brother Francis in Francis' chambers at Gray's Inn. Together, they established a scrivenery employing scriveners who acted as secretaries, writers, translators, copyists and cryptographers, dealing with correspondence, translations, copying, ciphers, essays, books, plays, entertainments and masques.

In 1593, Bacon paid for his friend Antonio Pérez to come to England. Pérez may have been the model for the character of Don Adriana de Armado in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost. In 1593 Bacon was also elected member of Parliament for Wallingford, Berkshire.

In April 1594, Bacon established his own residence in Bishopsgate.

In the household of the 2nd Earl of Essex, 1595–1601

The next year, he became "Secretary of State" of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex and moved into Essex House. During this time, Essex House was the center of the so-called "Shakespeare circle", a literary circle that involved the Earl of Essex, Sir Thomas Walsingham, and Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke. Sir Henry Cuffe and Sir Henry Wotton were also among the Earl of Essex's supporters at this time. In 1597 Bacon was MP for Oxford.

In 1601, Essex was accused, and then convicted, of high treason, with Bacon's brother Francis playing a role in Essex's prosecution. Anthony Bacon died shortly thereafter, at the home of Essex's widow Frances Walsingham. He is buried at St Olave Hart Street.

Legacy

After Anthony's death, Francis Bacon collected his correspondence, bequeathing it to his literary executor William Rawley, who in turn bequeathed it to Thomas Tenison, who in turn bequeathed it to the Lambeth Palace library, where it currently remains.

The 1975 biography by Daphne du Maurier, Golden Lads, located the archival records in Montauban; no English records had existed.

Upon reading a book called Elizabeth and Essex, British conspiracy theorist David Icke claimed (in his 1991 book, The Truth Vibrations) that he is the reincarnated soul of Anthony Bacon, saying, "It is weird in the extreme to sit there looking at a picture of someone your soul was part of 400 years ago" (p. 35).

References

• Profile from tudorplace.com
• Profile from Francis Bacon Research Trust
• Bacon Papers at Lambeth Palace Library