Bacon dates

On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Not to be confused with Bacon dates Bacon. Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England.

Bacon has been called the father of empiricism. He argued for the possibility of scientific knowledge based only upon inductive reasoning and careful observation of events in nature. Bacon was educated at Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, where he rigorously followed the medieval curriculum, which was presented largely in Latin. Bacon’s head reads: Si tabula daretur digna animum mallem, Latin for “If one could but paint his mind”. Biographers believe that Bacon was educated at home in his early years owing to poor health, which would plague him throughout his life. He received tuition from John Walsall, a graduate of Oxford with a strong leaning toward Puritanism. His studies brought him to the belief that the methods and results of science as then practised were erroneous.

His reverence for Aristotle conflicted with his rejection of Aristotelian philosophy, which seemed to him barren, argumentative and wrong in its objectives. On 27 June 1576, he and Anthony entered de societate magistrorum at Gray’s Inn. A few months later, Francis went abroad with Sir Amias Paulet, the English ambassador at Paris, while Anthony continued his studies at home. The sudden death of his father in February 1579 prompted Bacon to return to England. Sir Nicholas had laid up a considerable sum of money to purchase an estate for his youngest son, but he died before doing so, and Francis was left with only a fifth of that money. Having borrowed money, Bacon got into debt. Bacon stated that he had three goals: to uncover truth, to serve his country, and to serve his church.

He sought to achieve these goals by seeking a prestigious post. In 1580, through his uncle, Lord Burghley, he applied for a post at court that might enable him to pursue a life of learning, but his application failed. His parliamentary career began when he was elected MP for Bossiney, Cornwall, in a by-election in 1581. He became a bencher in 1586 and was elected a Reader in 1587, delivering his first set of lectures in Lent the following year.

In 1588 he became MP for Liverpool and then for Middlesex in 1593. He became known as a liberal-minded reformer, eager to amend and simplify the law. Though a friend of the crown, he opposed feudal privileges and dictatorial powers. He struck at the House of Lords in its usurpation of the Money Bills. Bacon soon became acquainted with Robert Devereux, the 2nd Earl of Essex, Queen Elizabeth’s favourite. By 1591 he acted as the earl’s confidential adviser. When the office of Attorney General fell vacant in 1594, Lord Essex’s influence was not enough to secure the position for Bacon and it was given to Sir Edward Coke.

In 1597 Bacon became the first Queen’s Counsel designate, when Queen Elizabeth reserved him as her legal counsel. In 1597, he was also given a patent, giving him precedence at the Bar. With others, Bacon was appointed to investigate the charges against Essex. A number of Essex’s followers confessed that Essex had planned a rebellion against the Queen. According to his personal secretary and chaplain, William Rawley, as a judge Bacon was always tender-hearted, “looking upon the examples with the eye of severity, but upon the person with the eye of pity and compassion”. And also that “he was free from malice”, “no revenger of injuries”, and “no defamer of any man”.

The succession of James I brought Bacon into greater favour. In another shrewd move, Bacon wrote his Apologies in defense of his proceedings in the case of Essex, as Essex had favoured James to succeed to the throne. In 1613, Bacon was finally appointed attorney general, after advising the king to shuffle judicial appointments. Bacon continued to use his influence with the king to mediate between the throne and Parliament, and in this capacity he was further elevated in the same peerage, as Viscount St Alban, on 27 January 1621. Bacon’s public career ended in disgrace in 1621.

After he fell into debt, a parliamentary committee on the administration of the law charged him with 23 separate counts of corruption. His lifelong enemy, Sir Edward Coke, who had instigated these accusations, was one of those appointed to prepare the charges against the chancellor. There seems little doubt that Bacon had accepted gifts from litigants, but this was an accepted custom of the time and not necessarily evidence of deeply corrupt behaviour. While acknowledging that his conduct had been lax, he countered that he had never allowed gifts to influence his judgement and, indeed, he had on occasion given a verdict against those who had paid him. The law of nature teaches me to speak in my own defence: With respect to this charge of bribery I am as innocent as any man born on St. My mind is calm, for my fortune is not my felicity. Job himself, or whoever was the justest judge, by such hunting for matters against him as hath been used against me, may for a time seem foul, especially in a time when greatness is the mark and accusation is the game.

As the conduct of accepting gifts was ubiquitous and common practice, and the Commons was zealously inquiring into judicial corruption and malfeasance, it has been suggested that Bacon served as a scapegoat to divert attention from the clandestine and favorite of King James I own ill practice and alleged corruption. The true reason for his acknowledgement of guilt is the subject of debate, but some authors speculate that it may have been prompted by his sickness, or by a view that through his fame and the greatness of his office he would be spared harsh punishment. He may even have been blackmailed, with a threat to charge him with sodomy, into confession. Bacon has been accused of servility, of dissimulation, of various base motives, and their filthy brood of base actions, all unworthy of his high birth, and incompatible with his great wisdom, and the estimation in which he was held by the noblest spirits of the age. He believed that philosophy and the natural world must be studied inductively, but argued that we can only study arguments for the existence of God. Bacon also held that knowledge was cumulative, that study encompassed more than a simple preservation of the past. Bacon gave worship of Neptune as an example of the idola tribus fallacy, hinting at the religious dimensions of his critique of the idols.