BACON, Francis (1600-63), of Gray’s Inn, Mdx., and Ipswich, Suff.

Throughout his life Francis Bacon may well have felt that he was fated to be forever following several steps behind his elder brother, Nathaniel*. That he followed him to Cambridge, Gray’s Inn and a legal career was predictable enough. Thereafter, although the gap which had separated them at birth narrowed, Francis’s career mostly went where Nathaniel’s had already gone.

In the early stages of his legal career there is a danger of confusing him with a kinsman and namesake, later a judge in king’s bench, who belonged to the same inn.44Univ. of Chicago, Bacon coll. 4291. That Francis Bacon was called to the bar in 1616, named reader at Gray’s Inn in the autumn of 1634, called to its grand company in 1627, and elected dean of Gray’s Inn chapel in 1639; he became serjeant-at-law in 1640, served as recorder of Norwich, and had a son, also Francis, called to the bar in 1645.45PBG Inn, ii. 220, 276, 321, 334, 336, 354, 355, 367, 442; W. Dugdale, Origines Juridiciales (1666), 297; E. Foss, Judges of England (1848-64), vi. 250; Prest, Rise of the Barristers, 342; Baker, Readers and Readings, 59; ‘Sir Francis Bacon’, Oxford DNB. On the other hand, the future MP was admitted to Gray’s Inn in August 1618 on coming down from Cambridge and it is said that he was called to the bar in 1626. When his brother, Nathaniel, was appointed as the clerk in the alienations office in 1631, Francis was granted the reversion.46Coventry Docquets, 182. He may similarly have received the reversion to be the writer, drawer and ingrosser of the great seal in 1636.47HMC 4th Rep. 22. By eliminating the other Bacons, it seems likely that the future MP was also the person who became an ancient on 24 November 1645 and a bencher in 1648.48PBG Inn, ii. 354, 370. Further confusion can be avoided if it is noted that the Francis Bacon who was in the service of the queen of Bohemia and the prince of Orange in the late 1620s was the son of his cousin, Sir Robert Bacon†.49Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton ed. L. Pearsall Smith, ii. 311; APC 1629-30, p. 128.

In April 1633 the future MP married Katherine, daughter of the late Sir Thomas Wingfield, whose residence was at Letheringham, a village less than ten miles to the north-east of Barham.50Suff. Par. Regs. ed. Blagg, iv. 119. As part of the marriage settlement, Bacon presented his wife-to-be with lands at Grundisburgh and Otley which she then passed into the possession of her brother-in-law, William Bloys*, for the use of her sister, Cicely.51Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA30/312/28. In 1640 Bacon bought a farm belonging to Margaret Winthrop, wife of the governor of Massachusetts. Writing to John Winthrop in April he couched this as a favour to his ‘old friend and acquaintance’, but he considered he had paid too much for it and ‘I condemn my self for purchasing, for if a good change come not by the Parliament I shall wish my money in my purse again and both it and myself with you’.52Winthrop Pprs. iv. 228. It seems that political uncertainties at home were tempting him to emigrate to New England.

Bacon’s inclusion on the Suffolk commissions for assessment, the sequestration of delinquents and the levying of money during 1643 show his support for the parliamentarian war effort, as do his appointments to the additional committee for the county that June and to the committee for the associated counties that September.53A. and O.; Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA54/1/1: warrant, 7 July 1643; Eg. 2647, f. 72; Luke Letter Bks. 358, 377. In January 1644 he was one of six men named to the monthly rota for chairing the standing committee.54Suff. ed. Everitt, 59. In February he was among those who examined and approved the accounts of the treasurer of the county, Samuel Moody*.55SP28/176: acct. of Samuel Moody, 1643-4, f. 19. Later that year he was among members of the committee who signed a letter to the Committee of Both Kingdoms in London complaining about the numbers of nonconformists in Suffolk and seeking progress in settling the question of church government.56Univ. of Chicago, Bacon coll. 4552. Further responsibilities came with his work on behalf of the committee set up to expel unsuitable clergymen from livings within the county, although by the spring of 1645 he was said to be too often at Bury St Edmunds, sitting on the county committee, to play an active part on this one.57Suff. Cttees. for Scandalous Ministers ed. Holmes, 25, 111, 112.

When the county committees of the Eastern Association* met at Bury St Edmunds on 30 January 1645 to express their misgivings about the New Model, Bacon was a moderating force, attempting to channel the feelings of those gathered there into resolutions which would be listened to by Parliament. The doubts of the Hertfordshire delegation led to him to express the hope that ‘none there present supposed that any thing would be debated against the way of the Parliament’ and his proposition ‘that a protestation might be made to that effect’ led the assembled delegates to agree such a statement.58Suff. ed. Everitt, 85-6. Several weeks later Bacon, Sir William Spring* and Edmund Harvey II* met with the Committee of Both Kingdom on what the Suffolk standing committee described as ‘business of great concernment to this county’, which was almost certainly so that they could explain how they saw the proposed military reforms as a threat to their autonomy.59Suff. ed. Everitt, 72.

The village of Barham, where Bacon was listed as resident in the 1640 Ship Money returns and where his mother was still living at Shrubland, was only about five miles from Ipswich.60Suff. Ship-Money Returns, 88 On the same day in 1642 that the appointment of his brother as recorder of Ipswich was approved, it is likely that Bacon was the person selected as one of the counsels retained by the corporation.61Bacon, Annalls, 531. This was a vacancy which had existed since the death of Sir Robert Hitcham† in 1636. In 1643 Bacon became the town clerk and it was probably at this point that he bought the house there which had previously belonged to his brother-in-law, William Bloys.62Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA30/787, ff. 16a, 23a, 136a, 137b; HD11/52/1/19; Soc. Antiq. MS 667, p. 27; Add. 15520, f. 12v. When William Cage* died in November 1645, Nathaniel would have been the obvious candidate to take his place as the Ipswich MP had he not several weeks before been returned to Parliament by Cambridge University. So in January 1646 the Ipswich freemen instead elected Francis, who possessed the strong local connections lacked by the other Ipswich MP, his cousin John Gurdon*.

Any assessment of Bacon’s career in the Commons is unavoidably hampered by difficulties in distinguishing which Journal entries refer to him and which to his brother. Even so, it is clear that, while not quite as active as Nathaniel, he was willing to play a regular part in the business of the House. Most of the earliest mentions in the Journals are more likely to refer to his brother, but in May 1646, five months after he took his seat, come the first certain glimpses of him: he and Nathaniel were added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers (15 May) and he was named to those committees to decide which offences should lead to suspension from the sacrament (18 May), on the bill concerning rent arrears (20 May) and for the better observation of monthly fasts (27 May).63CJ iv. 545b, 549a, 551b, 556b. He and his brother were then given leave to go into the country on 18 June.64CJ iv. 580a. Only by the end of 1646 did Francis’s record begin to become more substantial. When the ordinance for church repairs was committed on 4 November, he was the member of the committee to whom its business was referred. Twice during 1647 this bill was said to be in his hands. When the amendments to it were finally reported on 1 February 1648, it was presumably he who delivered the report and who, when the amended bill was approved, then carried it to the Lords.65CJ iv. 714b, v. 191b, 388a, 451b, 452b; LJ x. 14b. Also in November 1647, he was one of the three MPs to whom the draft declaration on receipts for money lent to support the public faith was committed (24 Nov.) and it was he who later took this declaration up to the Lords.66CJ iv. 728b, 729a.

His views on the confession of faith prepared by the Assembly of Divines are particularly well documented. In early December 1646 the Assembly circulated a printed draft to MPs and peers. The copy which Bacon received on 19 December from the Assembly’s scribe, Adoniram Byfield, survives with his copious annotations.67Westminster Coll. Lib. Cambridge, The Humble Advice of the Assembly of Divines [1646]. Like many of his colleagues, Bacon was most concerned about the contents of chapters XXX and XXXI. Regarding the former on ‘church censures’, he wanted it made clear that any rules on discipline should be decided by ‘the whole church representative in Parliament, not by any assembly of ministers’. The latter chapter, on ‘synods and councils’, was even more problematic. Again the obstacle was that he thought the clergymen were trying to usurp powers properly belonging to Parliament.

The Parliament sat is the supreme council and synod of England and have in it full power of intermeddling, both with that which is here termed ecclesiastical as that which is called civil, for both make but one Christian power.

For the same reason, Bacon went through the whole text carefully replacing every use of the word ‘synod’ with ‘Parliament’ and ‘ecclesiastical’ with ‘Christian’. His was a hardline Erastian position which believed that the clergy should be answerable to the secular authorities. He also wanted strong church discipline, but thought that it should be imposed by Parliament. He summed up his hostility to what the Assembly were proposing when, on the final page, he asserted that ‘it hath cost the Assembly more labour to maintain their desired power of ruling presbyteries than the true manifestations of Christ’s power to all Christians’. He presumably agreed when Parliament subsequently insisted that scriptural references supporting the contents be added to the margins of the printed text. He had already added his own examples of possible proof texts to his copy.

Of Bacon’s committee appointments during 1647, that for the purpose of preparing a statement to be read in churches on the day of humiliation to be held on 10 March 1647 was perhaps of more note than most, if only because he was the first-named. However, it is rather more likely that it was his brother who the same day, 27 January 1647, was ordered to make the report to the House on the obstructions standing in the way of a church settlement.68CJ v. 66a, 66b. The brothers were listed first among additions made to the committee on information involving Cambridge University (8 Nov.).69CJ v. 352b-353a. In May 1647 Bacon subscribed to the ordinance for £200,000, putting up £136 18s 9d in conjunction with his brother, and then a further £41 12s by himself.70SP28/350/2A, ff. 41, 82v. The whereabouts of either brother during the crisis of late July and early August 1647 is not known.

It is clear that Francis was the more active in efforts to reach a peaceful settlement during negotiations with the king from late 1647. In November he was named to the committee to draft the Four Bills, and thus it was probably also Francis who had been included on the committee to consider one of Parliament’s revised peace propositions appointed a month earlier.71CJ v. 339a, 371a. No doubt this partly explains why he was one of those asked by the Commons in June 1648 to prepare a declaration defending Parliament from accusations that they had not promoted a peace settlement.72CJ v. 593a. In October 1648 he was named to the committee to draft the bills incorporating those points on which the king had given ground in the negotiations at Newport.73CJ vi. 62b. Meanwhile, on 22 June 1648, at the height of the second civil war, he and Sir William Spring* had been sent to Suffolk to ensure that the defence arrangements there were properly organised.74CJ v. 611a.

At Pride’s Purge, Bacon found himself secluded from the Commons. Readmission was granted to him on 6 June 1649, at the same time as his brother.75Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 367; CJ vi. 225b. However, two references in the Journals from that September could be to either, and it can be doubted whether he ever actually sat in the Rump.76CJ vi. 297a, 298a; Worden, Rump Parl. 72, 389. Instead he continued his active involvement in county affairs.77Suff. RO (Ipswich), B105/2/2, ff. 5-106v; CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 296, 331; 1653-4, p. 523. Among the duties at Ipswich during this period was membership of the committee set up in March 1652 to find a replacement town lecturer. The committee recommended Stephen Marshall, the renowned Presbyterian preacher, and, when he visited the town in June of that year to be offered the position, Marshall stayed with Bacon.78E. Anglian, n.s. ii. 80, 99, 100-1, 138-9.

When Ipswich regained its rights as a parliamentary borough in 1654, it again returned Bacon, this time with his brother as its other representative, and the pair continued to be chosen by the town until 1660.79Suff. RO (Ipswich), C5/14/4, ff. 83v, 96; E. Anglian, n.s. ii. 183. According to the Presbyterian, Thomas Gewen*, Bacon, his brother and other ‘eminent and conscientious men’ had left the Commons when the recognition was imposed by Cromwell but had returned by early October.80Archaeologia xxiv. 139-40.. Thereafter, apart from some committee work, most of which was of a legal character, the younger Bacon involved himself in those matters before the 1654 Parliament in which Nathaniel was heavily committed.81CJ vii. 366b, 375b, 378b, 381a, 397b, 407b, 409b. Like his brother, and in common with other Presbyterian MPs, he belonged to the committees to draft a bill to amend the constitutional settlement set out in the Instrument of Government (7 Dec.) and to enumerate heresies (12 Dec.). He was also named to committees to consider individual clauses in the revised settlement.82CJ vii. 398a, 399b, 411a, 415a. It is more likely, however, that it was his brother who got one of the key phrases in the lord protector’s oath reinstated.83CJ vii. 409a.

The date of Bacon’s appointment as one of the masters of requests is even less certain than that for his brother. One contemporary source dates it to 1657, but this may well be slightly out.84Soc. Antiq. MS 667, p. 27; Add. 15520, f. 12v. The council of state approved salaries of £500 a year to them both in December 1656, backdating them to Michaelmas; by this time Nathaniel had been in office for at least a year.85CSP Dom. 1656-57, p. 182; Add. 4196, ff. 259, 265; Add. 4197, ff. 117, 152; E403/2523, pp. 135-6; Whitelocke, Diary, 515; Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 346. The inclusion of Francis by the council of state in September 1655 on the committee to investigate the election of a politically-suspect mayor at Colchester need not indicate that he had taken up office by then, since, through his brother, he already had some links with that part of Essex.86CSP Dom. 1655, p. 354. A rumour in February 1656 that he was going to be appointed as a judge in Ireland may or may not imply he was already a master of requests.87Henry Cromwell Corresp. 108. The fact that after the summer of 1656 he ceased his frequent appearances at the Suffolk quarter sessions would be consistent with his being detained in London by new duties, but the requirement to attend Parliament confuses this and there is anyway less surviving evidence as to these duties than is the case for his brother.88Suff. RO (Ipswich), B105/2/3; B105/2/4, ff. 3, 6v; CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 385; Univ. of Chicago, Bacon coll. 4298. The possibility that Bacon was already performing his official duties when Parliament assembled in 1656 cannot be discounted since much of his recorded activity in its early months seems hardly more than mundane.89A Narrative of the late Parliament (so called) (1657), 10 (E.935.5); CJ vii. 433b, 434b, 435a-b, 445a, 449a, 513b, 514b. It is not known whether he made any progress with the matters concerning amendments to oaths and the banning of local fairs which the Ipswich corporation had specifically entrusted to him, in conjunction with his brother and John Brandlinge*.90E. Anglian n.s. iii. 267.

Following the presentation of the Remonstrance (by which time he unquestionably was a master of requests), things became more interesting for him. In March 1657 he was included on the committee to look into the judicial powers of the Other House, and added to that which was drafting the article of the Humble Petition and Advice on some of the financial problems remaining from the policies of the 1640s.91CJ vii. 502a, 508b. On balance, his brother is more likely to have been the teller with the veteran Presbyterian, Sir Richard Onslow to get the draft twelfth article of the Humble Petition committed.92CJ vii. 508a. But Francis was believed to have supported the Petition’s offer of the crown to Cromwell.93Narrative of the late Parliament, 22. He was included on the succession of committees sent to press Cromwell for an explanation of his unwillingness to accept it. He was subsequently named to the committees to consider the article dealing with the validity of existing writs and to decide how the title ‘lord protector’ could best be circumscribed.94CJ vii. 519b, 520b, 521b, 524a, 535a, 538b.

With his brother, he acted as teller on 5 May 1657 in the division arising out of the arrest of Edward Waring*. Both were on the side of those who wanted the House adjourned until the next morning, but Waring managed to get the adjournment motion defeated and the House went on to give the third reading to an Irish land bill.95CJ vii. 530a, 533b. Bacon had more success on his next outing as a teller, six weeks later, when the division involved the exact wording of the customs bill and when he and Richard Beale*, for the yeas, were on the winning side (17 June).96CJ vii. 559b-560a. He and his brother seem also to have managed the attempted passage of a private bill to settle Worcester House on Margaret, countess of Worcester, during the lifetime of her husband, the 6th earl.97CJ vii. 529b, 575a, 576b. In November of that year, during the interval between the two sessions, he was consulted by Cromwell over the decision to grant the title of lord deputy of Ireland to his son, Henry Cromwell*. Relaying that news, Bacon flattered Henry by praising his rule in Ireland as promoting ‘the advancement of learning, religion and government’.98Henry Cromwell Corresp. 345.

When this Parliament reassembled at Westminster in early 1658 Bacon was quick to raise a matter of specific interest to his constituency. On the second day of the new session (21 Jan.) he moved that a committee be appointed to consider what provision should be made to maintain a minister at Ipswich. After Denis Bond* attempted to block this, the solicitor-general, William Ellys*, suggested that a general bill on that subject should instead be brought in. This did not satisfy Bacon, apparently on the grounds that each town faced different problems. But the House liked Ellys’s idea and so revived the committee on that subject first appointed in November 1656. Bacon was among MPs now added to it.99Burton’s Diary, ii. 331-3; CJ vii. 448a-b, 450a, 580b. The next day the order that the former clerk of the House should deliver his records to his successor enabled Bacon to quibble about which of the officials should sign it.100Burton’s Diary, ii. 337. Later that week, acting ex officio as master of requests as a commissioner to swear in new MPs, he at first refused to allow the republican, Sir Arthur Hesilrige* to take the oath of loyalty but later probably cooperated.101Burton’s Diary, ii. 347. Hesilrige, who had since been summoned to the Other House, was exploiting confusion as to whether he was still an MP to distance himself from the protectorate, but Bacon, trying to carry out a routine piece of ritual, was probably seeking to avoid a fuss. On 3 February Bacon moved against the proposal that the powers of the Other House be referred to a grand committee, quite possibly because he agreed with his brother, who had earlier argued that interpretation of statute should be a matter for Parliament as a whole.102Burton’s Diary, ii. 428, 429.

Bacon was among Suffolk gentlemen who featured on a list of persons to be involved in a royalist uprising compiled by Roger Whitley† some time in 1658.103Bodl. Eng. hist. e. 309, p. 42. As a senior officeholder, Bacon was not an obvious potential supporter of a conspiracy, which suggests that Whitley possessed firm intelligence about him. One possibility is that his sense of personal loyalty to the protectorate weakened after Cromwell’s death.

With the exception of his reappointment to the commission to administer to MPs the oath of loyalty, no references in the Journal for the 1659 Parliament can be linked with any certainty to him.104CJ vii. 593a, 614b, 637a. But he is known to have spoken in debate.. When the House discussed whether to commit the bill recognising Richard Cromwell* as lord protector, he argued that MPs should first vote on the principle of whether to have a lord protector at all, seemingly in the hope that they could avoid referring the bill to a committee.105Burton’s Diary, iii. 195. On 7 March he argued that they should recognise the Other House, admitting that he had ‘great fears’ for the consequences of attempts to dispute this.106Burton’s Diary, iv. 65-6. A third speech by him on 17 March similarly supported the protectoral constitution, as he defended the rights of the Scottish and Irish MPs to take their seats.107Burton’s Diary, iv. 173; Derbys. RO, D 258/10/9/1, unfol. He also spoke in favour of committing the excise bill (1 Apr.), on the grounds that it removed ‘a great grievance’.108Burton’s Diary, iv. 327; Derbys. RO, D 258/10/9/2, f. 14v.

There is some doubt about whether either he or Nathaniel sat in the recalled Rump before the recall of the secluded Members in February 1660. However, evidence concerning Francis is stronger. Although his nomination by the Commons as an assessment commissioner for Ipswich and Hadleigh four days before may not prove much, his appointment to the committee on the bill to set up a council of state on the afternoon of 21 February 1660, only hours after it had been resolved to reverse the vote of 18 December 1648, is most interesting. It hints that he made a point of not taking his seat until the secluded Members were readmitted.109CJ vii. 804a, 845b, 847b. On resuming active involvement in the affairs of the Commons, his main interest would seem to have been those bills to suspend the sequestration against estates belonging to released prisoners: he was named to the committee for them and reported the various amendments.110CJ vii. 854a, 856b, 859b. Three days before it was implemented, either he or his brother reported the amendments to the bill which dissolved the Long Parliament.111CJ vii. 873a-b.

No doubt because his brother was then in Ipswich, it was to Francis, as well as to the council of state, that the town assembly of Ipswich wrote in February 1660 asking to obtain an order for the restoration of the town militia. A month before that Bacon’s name had been missing from the Ipswich petition for a free Parliament. By May 1660, however, the corporation thought it appropriate that he should accompany the delegation sent to London with gifts for the newly-restored king and in June, together with his brother and Robert Clarke, he acted as one of the attorneys to administer the oaths on Sir Frederick Cornwallis* and Sir Henry Felton* on their appointments as free burgesses of the town. He had also been included on the committee of the corporation to consider what amendment were necessary to the town’s charter.112E. Anglian, n.s. vi. 106-7, 264, 316, 318.

In Bacon’s final Parliament, the 1660 Convention, Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, included him on his list of pro-Presbyterian associates, giving to William Ellys* the task of managing him.113G.F. Trevallyn Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 341. In August 1660 he resigned as recorder at Aldeburgh so that he could spend more time in London.114Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE1/O2/1, f. 127v. When his wife died in October 1660 she was buried in what was probably his local London church, St Martin-in-the-Fields.115Survey of London, xx (1940), 31. By this stage in his career Bacon would seem to have acquired some shipping interests, a natural involvement for someone with his connections with Ipswich. This may explain his appeal, with his brother and Robert Ellison, to the admiralty commission in May 1660 for naval protection for some ships travelling to and from Danzig.116CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 1. What is certain is that in his will, which he made out in April 1663, he instructed that these interests be managed by William Bloys and by his clerk, Thomas Brookes. His links with his brother-in-law were still strong, with the provisions of the will including the disposal to his own daughter of land he had recently bought from Bloys’s son, Sir William. Other properties mentioned were estates at Naughton (‘Nunneton’), a house at Kensington and chambers at Gray’s Inn.117PROB11/312/218; Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA30/787, f. 134b. On 21 August Bacon went to stay at Bloys’s house. He remained there until death overtook him on 23 September 1663.118Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA30/787, f. 183a.