Anthony Bacon

Anthony Bacon 1594, at the age of 36

Anthony Bacon (* 1558 in London , † 1601 in London) was an English parliamentarian and spy. He worked for Francis Walsingham and later for Robert Devereux , the second Earl of Essex . One of his brothers was Francis Bacon .

youth

Anthony Bacon was the fourth of five sons Nicholas Bacon , who under Queen I. Elisabeth Lord Privy Seal was. Anthony was the elder of two sons from Nicholas' second marriage to Anne Cooke Bacon , whose sister was married to William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley . Together with his younger brother Francis he had the Puritan clergyman John Walsall as a teacher from 1567 . From April 1573, Anthony studied with his younger brother Francis for three years at Trinity College in Cambridge , without the two graduating. Anthony was already sickly as a child, the earliest surviving letter from his brother Francis mentions that Anthony could not attend lectures in Cambridge because of "sore eyes".

France

In 1576, Anthony was admitted to Gray's Inn to train as a lawyer . In February 1579, his father, Anthony, inherited lands that yielded £ 360 annually. Having become independent through the money, he decided to go to France. From Paris he sent the first espionage reports to Burghley and Walsingham. Anthony stayed in many cities in France. Bourges was too Catholic for him, which is why he went to Protestant Geneva in 1581 . After stays in Lyon , Montpellier , Toulouse and Marseille , he went to Bordeaux in 1583 , where he met Michel de Montaigne . During this time, the English queen used Bacon as an unofficial contact for Henry of Navarre , the leader of the Huguenots .

Daphne du Maurier's research in the French archives of Montauban produced a document from the summer of 1586 that accused Anthony of sodomy . He was never convicted for it. Henry, the then King of Navarre, intervened personally with a letter to the Royal Council.

Return to England

In February 1592 Anthony returned to London in the hope that Burghley would keep him occupied, which was not fulfilled. Anthony's brother Francis introduced him to his own patron Robert Devereux, who employed him, but without paying him for his work. The brothers saw each other regularly, and worked and wrote together. They shared a room in Gray's Inn until April 1594. After that, Anthony took an apartment in a house in Bishopsgate , near the theater. Francis continued to live at Gray's Inn and in a country residence in Twickenham .

Anthony's physical complaints increased, he suffered from kidney stones and gout. As Essex 'protégé, he was elected to the House of Commons twice as MP for Wallingford , Berkshire .

In a few years after his return from France, Anthony had managed to build up a sophisticated network of informants and spies. As Devereux's secretary, he was responsible for the transmission and reception of reports, dossiers and information in various parts of the continent for the next twelve years. His own informant and lover is said to have been Tom Lawson until his death. In addition to Anthony's own secretariat, there were four other secretaries working for Essex. These included Henry Cuffe, Edward Reynolds and Henry Wotton , the friend and cousin of the Bacon brothers, who published his memoir Reliquiae Wottonianae in 1651 . Henry Cuffe accompanied Essex in 1596 on its expedition to Cádiz , a military attack on the city that was briefly captured by the English. On his return he was refused by the Queen and the Privy Council to publish a report on it. Anthony Bacon, to whom Cuffe had given the manuscript, managed to distribute some copies of it.

Death and inheritance

When Robert Devereux , Earl of Essex was executed on February 25, 1601 after an attempted coup for treason in the Tower of London , Anthony Bacon left his house and went into hiding. He died in the house of Frances Walsingham, only daughter of Francis Walsingham and widow of Philip Sidney and the Earl of Essex, and was buried in a crypt in St Olave Hart Street Church.

Parts of a surviving correspondence were collected by his brother Francis and bequeathed to his secretary and literary administrator, William Rawley. He in turn passed it on to Thomas Tenison (1636-1715), Archbishop of Canterbury . Since then, these so-called Bacon Papers have been in the library of Lambeth Palace and are still waiting to be evaluated.

literature

• Daphne du Maurier: Golden Lads. Sir Francis Bacon, Anthony Bacon, and their friends . Amereon, Mattituck, New York 1985, ISBN 0-884-11544-5 (reprint of 1975 edition).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Roderick Lewis Eagle: Dr. Whitgift's accounts for Francis and Anthony Bacon at Trinity, Cambridge . In: Notes & Queries . Volume 197, Number 9, 1952, pp. 178-179.