There were practical, as well as personal, reasons for Anthony’s flight to Gorhambury and his brother’s to Twickenham, where he had borrowed his half-brother Edward’s house. The sickness mentioned by George Jenkyll was in fact the plague, which raged through mid-summer into the autumn of that year of 1592, and was to recur the following year. Anyone who had the means to quit the city and go to the country did so at the earliest opportunity. Nevertheless, Anthony realised that week after week passed under his mother’s roof would prove disastrous; she would give him no peace, question his every action, and find fault with each and every one of his entourage until, in despair, they asked to be dismissed.
He had already taken care that she should not encounter Tom Lawson. As soon as he had moved to Gorhambury Anthony had dispatched Lawson into France, to St Jean de Luz, bearing letters to his secret agent in Spain, Anthony Standen. Standen had travelled extensively since leaving Bordeaux, and had made several exceedingly useful contacts in Turkey, Italy, Portugal and Spain; it was the intelligence from Spain that mostly concerned Anthony, who would then pass it by messenger to the Earl of Essex.
The King of Spain, it seemed from Standen’s information, was rebuilding his fleet, with the intention of attacking the coast of Brittany and thence advancing on England. An eye should be kept to the defences of Guernsey and Jersey, Standen warned. He also advised that great care should be taken with the handling of her Majesty’s Catholic subjects. Rigorous dealings against them would only prejudice their loyalty—the Lord Treasurer was already as disliked by Catholics as the Earl of Leicester and Walsingham had been in the past—and every effort should be made to bind all the Catholic subjects of Christendom to the Earl of Essex.
Standen, being Catholic himself, was possibly biased. Nevertheless the advice was sound, and only confirmed what Anthony had known from his own experience in France. If Henri IV had taken severe measures against all his Catholic subjects he would not have held his crown for six months. In any case, rumours increased daily—and this Standen had direct from contacts in Bordeaux—that it was only a matter of time before the King of France abjured his Protestant faith and was received once more into the Catholic church.
Messengers riding to and fro between Gorhambury and London caused comment, and ceaseless enquiry from his mother. Anthony knew that he must shift his quarters to another roof, and it was about this time, in the autumn of the year, that he installed some of his staff, if not immediately himself, in one of his leasehold properties at Redbourne, a village about five miles distant from Gorhambury. The house—at that time Place House, on the site of the one-time priory—was bounded by the village street on one side and the large expanse of village green on the other; there was stabling and a barn; and the whole dwelling was indeed suitable for a bachelor who might wish to entertain his friends from London, and whose male staff could amuse themselves by riding, roaming and drinking in the village taverns, of which there were at least five, a large number for a small village with a single narrow street.
Anthony might conceivably have risked the plague in London during the autumn but for the presence there, from September until after Christmas, of one of du Plessis’ closest associates, who had been sent on yet another mission to the Court of Queen Elizabeth. This young man, Benjamin Aubéry du Maurier, had curiously enough lived for thirteen months under the roof of Théodore Beza in Geneva, arriving there only a short while after Anthony had left. Recalled at his father’s death to the family château near La Flèche, du Maurier later joined the forces of the King of Navarre, and was certainly in Montauban at some period between 1587 and 1588, when Anthony was still in trouble and awaiting the results of his appeal. He was employed by Monsieur du Plessis in the capacity of secretary, and went with him to Saumur. He may not have met Anthony Bacon, but he would certainly know all about him, and what he would have heard would hardly reflect to Anthony’s credit.
Aubéry du Maurier arrived in London on September 6th 1592, bearing with him the ratification of the treaty in which the Queen had promised to send troops to aid the forces of the King of France, and certain very private letters from the King to the English monarch, informing her that in order to trick his enemies he was sending Cardinal de Gondy to the Pope to negotiate his conversion to the Church of Rome. This was, Henri IV explained, merely a ruse; naturally he would remain true to his Protestant beliefs. The King of France was playing a double game, but he seems to have succeeded in duping the Queen. In any event his letters had the desired effect, for in the spring of the following year English troops were dispatched to Dieppe.
It may be wondered why a young man of twenty-six was sent on such an important mission rather than du Plessis in person, who had seen the Queen the year before. The explanation came from du Maurier himself in later years. ‘It became known,’ he said, ‘that the person of Monsieur du Plessis was disagreeable to her Majesty. She had received certain ill reports of him.’ It appeared that Monsieur du Plessis had permitted certain of his entourage to mock at ‘the bizarre and ridiculous accent with which Queen Elizabeth spoke the French language’. This was intolerable! The Queen of England could never permit such an affront to her dignity. Young du Maurier, during the four months he remained in London, was careful to respect her Majesty’s pronunciation. And Anthony Bacon remained at Gorhambury, equally careful to keep out of trouble.
It was in October that he learnt of the death of Michel de Montaigne in a letter from the poet Pierre de Brach.
I have been so deeply moved by the death of Monsieur de Montaigne that I am not my true self. I have lost the best friends, and France the most complete and the most forceful personality she ever had, in the whole world the purest mirror of philosophy; to all of which his writings testify. The last letter he ever received was from you, which I sent to him, and which he could not reply to because death claimed him first. His name and his memory will never die until all things perish, and will remain within me always.
Pierre de Brach wrote again to Anthony before Christmas, and here he gives some indication of the impression which the Englishman had produced upon him and the little circle around Montaigne. He began by telling him that Princess Catherine of Navarre had been in Bordeaux for three weeks, on the way to see her brother the King, and had been very sorry to see de Brach only the day she left. Verses were exchanged between them, which de Brach now ventured to send Anthony. ‘They are worth little,’ he says, ‘you need only spare a few minutes upon them, for I know that you are capable of far better things, nevertheless I would value your opinion.’ Capable of far better things… Had Anthony, then, continued to write verse, both at Montauban and in Bordeaux?
Another of his former friends was the painter and engraver Gaultier, who had sent him an engraving of Princess Catherine. He had done it from memory, but the sitter had been recognised by several people; and he was delighted to know through ‘Monsieur Lawson, whom I met in Bordeaux, that you had received the portraits of Monsieur the little Prince and Mlle his sister, which my son sent you from St Jean, while he was in their service, and that you were well pleased with the work.’ (The reference must be to the King of France’s heir apparent, the three-year-old Prince de Condé, and his sister.) Anthony therefore possessed a small collection of French royal portraits which possibly, at that time, adorned the long gallery at Gorhambury. Gaultier added in a postscript, ‘Please to engage the good services of Monsieur Hilliard, the Queen’s painter, should he live near you, and ask him to send me samples of his colour, as I do not care for my own.’
Christmas came and went, the plague had eased with the cold weather, and once Aubéry du Maurier had sailed for Dieppe Anthony could return to his brother’s chambers in Gray’s Inn. Parliament met on February 19th 1593, and both Bacon brothers were returned, Francis for the county of Middlesex, Anthony for Wallingford in Berkshire. Anthony can hardly have put in an appearance, or her Majesty would have come to hear of it, and demanded why the gouty Mr Bacon could sit Westminster and yet not pay his respects at Court after being a twelvemonth in England. Francis, on the other hand, did take his seat, and found himself in considerable trouble in consequence.
Briefly, the matter before Parliament was the question of supply. The country was still in danger from attack by Spain. The Crown was in debt from assisting the King of France and sending troops to the Netherlands also. Money must be levied to pay for all the vast expenses incurred in the previous year and for the year to come. A committee was set up, comprising members of both Houses, to consider these questions. The Lords demanded a triple subsidy, to be payable in three years instead of the normal six. Francis, a member of the select committee, listened to a speech from a fellow Commoner who spoke in favour of a still larger grant than the one proposed, insisting that the country could well afford it, then rose in opposition. It was said of Francis Bacon as a speaker that ‘he commanded the attention of his hearers, and had their affections wholly in his power. As he accompanied what he spoke with all the expression and grace of action, his pleadings never failed to awaken in his audience the several passions he intended they should feel.’ On this occasion he was alone. Peers and Commons were alike in favouring a larger grant, only the Member for Middlesex was obdurate.
‘The poor men’s rent is such as they are not able to yield it,’ he declared with passion, ‘and the general commonalty is not able to pay so much upon the present. The gentlemen must sell their plate and the farmers their brass pots ere this will be paid. And as for us, we are here to search the wounds of the realm and not to skim them over; wherefore we are not to persuade ourselves of their wealth more than it is. The danger is this, we shall breed discontentment in the people. And in a cause of jeopardy, her Majesty’s safety must consist more in the love of her people than in their wealth. In granting these subsidies thus we run into two perils. The first is, that putting two payments into one year we make it a double subsidy; for it maketh four shillings in the pound a payment. The second is, that this being granted in this sort, other princes hereafter will look for the like; so we shall put an ill precedent upon ourselves and our posterity; and in histories it is to be observed that of all nations the English care not to be subject, base, and taxable.’
He sat down amid silence. The committee voted for the grant, and the resolution of the Commons was passed to the Lords. The Bill went through its regular stages and was presented to the Queen, who signified her gracious acceptance, but she knew very well that thirty-two-year-old Mr Francis Bacon, son of her loyal old servant the Lord Keeper, had opposed, in the name of the people, a grant to the Crown. Her Majesty was seriously displeased. Mr Bacon might in future press some suit upon her a dozen times, seek a position, hope for advancement, she would close her ears to all requests. She would not even suffer him to appear at Court.
‘I was sorry to find,’ Francis told his uncle the Lord Treasurer, ‘that my last speech in Parliament, delivered in discharge of my conscience and duty to God, Her Majesty, and my country, has given offence.’ But he did not retract what he had said. He did not apologise for his opposition to the subsidy, only expressed his regret that his motives had been misunderstood. All hopes of preferment were instantly blighted. Even the Earl of Essex, who on Shrove Tuesday had been sworn in for the first time as a member of the privy council, could do no more at this moment than bid Francis have patience and bide his time; the Earl would make it his business to satisfy the Queen that Mr Bacon had intended no insult to the Crown.
The trouble was, as Francis confessed to his brother when Anthony arrived at Gray’s Inn, that he owed money in every quarter. When he spoke of the plight of the English people in face of threatened taxation he knew only too well, from personal experience, what it meant to have creditors on the doorstep. He was in debt to a Mr Harvey, in greater debt still to a friend and fellow barrister at Gray’s Inn, a Mr Nicholas Trott—indeed, he had been borrowing from the latter freely most of the time his brother had been overseas. What could Anthony do? Would it be any use approaching their mother? Anthony tried, once Easter was behind them.
‘My duty most humbly remembered, I assure myself that your Ladyship, as a wise and kind mother to us both, will find it neither strange nor amiss, which, tendering first my brother’s health, which I know by experience to depend not a little upon a free mind, and then his credit, I presume to put your Ladyship in remembrance of your motherly offer to him the same day you departed; which was to help him out of debt…’
The suggestion was that the sole property which Francis had inherited from the Lord Keeper, a farm near Woolwich called Marks, should be sold to pay off Harvey. Lady Bacon, as the widow, had to give consent and forfeit her claim to the proceeds.
Her Ladyship, predictably, replied with a torrent of reproach. ‘I have been too ready for you both till nothing is left. The state of you both doth much disquiet me.’ All his brother’s ills had been brought about by bloody Percy, Jones, Ennis—a filthy, wasteful knave—and his Welshmen one after the other (‘for take one, and they will all swarm ill-favouredly’). ‘If your brother desire a release to Mr Harvey, let him so require it himself, that is, that he make and give me a true account of all his debts, and leave to me the whole order and receipt of all his money for his land, to Harvey, and the just payment of his debts thereby. For I will not have his cormorant seducers and instruments of Satan to him committing foul sin by his countenance, to the displeasing of God and his godly true fear. Otherwise I will not pro certo.’
She had not finished, though. A second letter arrived the following day. A further tirade against Welsh wiles, and a prayer to God to sanctify her son’s heart, and that he might rightly use his good gifts of natural wit and understanding.
‘He [Francis] perceives my good meaning by this, and before too. But Percy had winded him. God bless my son. What he would have me do and when, for his own good, let him return plain answer. I send the first flight of my doves to you both, and God bless you in Christ.’
Alas, poor Ann Bacon. Did she pass sleepless nights alone at Gorhambury, regretting past times when the Lord Keeper was at her side to give wise counsel, and her father would send guidance from Gidea Hall?
Harvey was settled. But Nicholas Trott remained unpaid. There was nothing for it but that Anthony must sell one of his own properties to help his younger brother, and the fine manor of Barley in Hertfordshire came up for consideration. Alderman Spencer of the City, likely to become Lord Mayor of London, showed interest, but negotiations were to take several months, and the sale of this property would also displease their mother. Nor was the noble Earl of Essex, himself continually hard-pressed for ready cash, able to assist financially. He could barely find the necessary sums to pay his foreign agents. Anthony must find ways and means to keep them quiet, though never, naturally enough, by suggesting they withheld intelligence. Standen, that most assiduous of Anthony’s correspondents, was shortly due in England out of Spain brimful of information, and would expect good recompense, while Captain Goade, another under-cover agent now stationed in France, complained of an empty purse.
It was hardly an easy summer that the brothers Bacon could look forward to at the Inn of Glaucus, the younger still harried by his creditors, and the elder sifting his intelligence as best as he could and emptying his own pockets at the same time. They were running short of linen and must needs write to Gorhambury for replenishments, but this request, though granted, brought a furious outburst from her ladyship, not because of the linen, but because young Edward Burbage, son of the William Burbage who had caused lawsuits over Pinner Farm, employed by her son out of the kindness of his heart as a courier, had not only spoilt one of her best horses but had shown insolence to her very face.
‘He lied and wrangled disdainfully with me,’ she exploded, ‘so I bade him get out of my sight like a lying proud varlet. Whereupon, glad belike, he went immediately to the stable and put on his cloak and sword, and jetted away like a jack. I write this to tell you the truth, howsoever he lieth…’
Familiar words. ‘And a speake any thing against me, Ile take him downe, and a were lustier then he is, and twentie such Jacks: and if I cannot, Ile find those that shall: scurvie knave, I am none of his flurtgils, I am none of his skaines mates.’ Thus Juliet’s nurse. The Lord Keeper’s widow wouldn’t be put upon either.
Anthony summoned George Jenkyll and dispatched him forthwith with a message to the offending Edward.
Burbage.
Although your unthankfulness, and unfaithful dealing, would weary any master’s patience in England, how liberal and kind soever he were, yet for charity’s sake I am content to forebear just rigour till I receive by my man, this bearer George Jenkyll, your answer, which if it be not effectuate, then blame none but yourself if I make you feel what it is to incur wilfully the displeasure of so good a master, as the world knows, and your self cannot deny, I have been unto you. Therefore advise yourself thoroughly in the name of God.
Nothing but trouble with these Burbages. Anthony would dismiss young Edward… But the boy turned up the next day and acknowledged his faults, and Anthony had not the heart to send him away. The whole affair had precipitated an attack of gout, however. He felt ill. He must get away to Bath and take the waters. How to afford it, though? Then, suddenly, Standen arrived in London, and all thought of Bath was at an end.