The main source for research into the life of Anthony Bacon from the year 1579 until his death in 1601—indeed, one might say the only source—is his correspondence, which is housed today in sixteen volumes in the Lambeth Palace Library. This correspondence was used extensively by Thomas Birch in his Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, published in 1754, and some hundred years later by James Spedding in The Life and Letters of Francis Bacon, published between 1861 and 1872. Hepworth Dixon, in his Personal History of Lord Bacon, also quoted from the family letters.
For the purpose of the present work, over three hundred original letters in the collection were transcribed for me, by kind permission of the officials of the Lambeth Palace Library, by Mrs St George Saunders and her team of helpers in her Writers’ and Speakers’ Research. Many of these letters have never before been transcribed. Other original letters relating to the Bacon family, housed by the Folger Library in Washington, were photocopied for me by Mrs Yeandle, the Manuscript Librarian, and transcribed by Writers’ and Speakers’ Research. Bacon letters are also to be found in the Harleian and Cotton MSS. in the British Museum, and these have been read.
The Bacon correspondence in the Lambeth Palace Library does not give the reason for Anthony Bacon’s prolonged stay in Montauban, Tarn-et-Garonne, during the years 1586–88, nor does Thomas Birch in his Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. The State Papers of the time are also silent on this subject. Letters to Monsieur Méras, Director of the Archives Départementales at Montauban, and my visit there in 1973, produced the answer, with a document and letters never before published. I believe that his reason for remaining so long in Montauban was concealed from his family and friends at home in England, as well as from his employer, Sir Francis Walsingham, Secretary of State, and his uncle, Earl Burghley, the Lord Treasurer.
Facts concerning Gorhambury and Redbourne, Anthony Bacon’s properties in Hertfordshire, were obtained through the family records at Gorhambury and in the Herts and County Records Office, St Albans. Through the great kindness and courtesy of the Countess of Verulam and the librarian at Gorhambury, Mrs King, I was shown books, portraits and busts of Sir Nicholas and Lady Bacon and their sons. These my son was permitted to photograph, as well as the ruins of the original Gorhambury house.
The original of Sir Nicholas Bacon’s will was viewed at the Public Record Office in London, as was the document relating to the lawsuit between John Shakespeare and William Burbage.
Finally, Anthony Bacon’s place of burial, searched for in vain by Thomas Birch in the eighteenth century and by James Spedding in the nineteenth, was discovered by Mrs Saunders in 1973, in the parish records of St Olave’s Church, Hart Street, in the City of London.
BACON, FRANCIS, Works, 5 vols. (A. Millar, 1765)
BALLARD, GEORGE, Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain (T. Evans, 1775)
BARNS, STEPHEN, The Cookes of Gidea Hall (Essex Review, Vol. XXI, 1912)
BEVAN, BRYAN, The Real Francis Bacon (Centaur Press, 1960)
BIRCH, THOMAS, Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, 2 vols. (A. Millar, 1754)
BOWEN, CATHERINE DRINKER, Francis Bacon (Hamish Hamilton, 1963)
BROWN, IVOR, London (Studio Vista, 1965)
CALENDAR OF STATE PAPERS, DOMESTIC SERIES
CECIL, DAVID, The Cecils of Hatfield House (Constable, 1973)
COWPER, FRANCIS, A Prospect of Gray’s Inn (Stevens, 1951)
DEVEREUX, W. B., Lives and Letters of the Earls of Essex, 2 vols. (Murray, 1853)
Dictionary of National Biography
DIXON, W. HEPWORTH, Personal History of Lord Bacon (John Murray, 1861)
_______The Story of Lord Bacon’s Life (John Murray, 1862)
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1947 edition
ESSEX, 2ND EARL OF, An Apologia Penned in 1598 (1603)
GRIMBLE, IAN, The Harington Family (Cape, 1957)
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HEADLAM, CECIL, Inns of Court (A. & C. Black, 1909)
HERTFORDSHIRE, VICTORIA COUNTY HISTORY, The Burbage Family and the Manor of Theobalds
_______Hertfordshire
HOTSON, JOHN LESLIE, Shakespeare’s Sonnets Dated (Hart Davis, 1949)
_______The First Night of Twelfith Night (Hart Davis, 1954)
_______Mr W. H. (Hart Davis, 1964)
KINGSTON, C. L., Essex House, Formerly Leicester House (Archaeolgia, Vol. 73)
MCCLURE, N. E., The Letters of John Chamberlain (Philadelphia, 1939)
MACDOWALL, H. C., Henry of Guise and Other Portraits (Macmillan, 1898)
MAUROIS, ANDRÉ, A History of England (Cape, 1937)
MÉRAS, MATHIEU, Châteaux de France (Paris, 1971)
_______Receuil de l’Académie de Montauban (Montauban, 1967)
MINNEY, R. J., The Tower of London (Cassell, 1970)
MOLET, ANDRÉ, AND ISAACS, JULES, Histoire de France (Paris, 1923)
MONTAIGNE, MICHEL DE, Essais (Paris, 1965)
MORNAY, CHARLOTTE DE, A Huguenot Family in the XVI Century (Routledge, 1926)
NORSWORTHY, LAURA L., The Lady of Bleeding Heart Yard (Murray, 1953)
ORWICK, WILLIAM, Nonconformist Worthies of St Albans
OUDRÉ, HENRI, Vie de B. Aubéry du Maurier (1853)
PATRY, RAOUL, Vie de Philippe du Plessis-Mornay (Paris, 1933)
PREST, W. R., The Inns of Court under Elizabeth I and the Early Stuarts (Longmans, 1972)
RIDLEY, JASPER, The Life and Times of Mary Tudor (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974)
ROGERS, JOHN G., Gorhambury and Old Gorhambury (St Albans and Herts Architectural and Archaeological Society, 1933)
_______The Manor and Houses of Gorhambury (Ibid., 1936)
ROWSE, A. L., The England of Elizabeth (Macmillan, 1964)
_______Bisham and the Hobys in the English Past (Macmillan, 1951)
_______The Elizabethan Renaissance (Macmillan, 1971)
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM, Complete Works. Text of First Folio with quarto variants, 4 vols. (Nonesuch Press, 1953)
SIMPSON, ALAN, The Wealth of the Gentry, 1540–1660 (Cambridge University Press, 1961)
SPARKES, I. G., Gidea Hall and Gidea Park (Romford, 1966)
SPEDDING, JAMES, The Life and Letters of Francis Bacon, 7 vols. (Longmans Green & Ryder, 1861–72)
STOW, JOHN, Survey of London, 1595 edition
STRACHEY, LYTTON, Elizabeth and Essex (Chatto & Windus, 1928)
TARN ET GARONNE, DEPARTMENT DE, La Revue Geographique et Industrielle de France
URWIN, ALAN C. B., Twickenam Parke (Hounslow, 1965)
VERULAM, 5TH EARL OF, The Bacon Family (Privately printed, 1961)
WILLIAMS, NEVILLE, All the Queen’s Men (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972)
WILLIAMSON, HUGH ROSS, Catherine Medici (Michael Joseph, 1973)