BACON, Nathaniel (1593-1660), of Gray’s Inn, Mdx. and Ipswich, Suff.

After the death in 1626 of their uncle, Francis Bacon†, Viscount St Alban and earl of Verulam, Nathaniel and Francis* Bacon belonged to the most junior of the numerous surviving male lines descended from Sir Nicholas Bacon†, the great Elizabethan lord keeper; their father, Sir Edward, was the latter’s third son. This was a family network which crossed several county boundaries and it was in Suffolk, rather than Norfolk, that Sir Edward settled, as did Sir Butts Bacon of Mildenhall, his first cousin. Sir Edward had been brought to Suffolk by his marriage to Helen Little, who inherited from her father, Thomas Little†, Shrubland Hall at Barham, Suffolk, as well as estates at Bray in Berkshire. By the time Sir Edward died in 1618, he had added further estates by purchase and these he left to his surviving sons.50Vis. Suff. 1561, 1577 and 1612 ed. W.C. Metcalfe (Exeter, 1882), 110; Copinger, Manors of Suff. ii. 22-3, 244; A. Simpson, The Wealth of the Gentry (Chicago and Cambridge, 1961), 56-7, 98-100; HP Commons, 1558-1603; S. Westhorp, ‘On the library of the town of Ipswich’, Jnl. of the British Arch. Assoc. xxi. 67-8. He also bequeathed to them his godly example. Sir Edward’s eldest son, Nicholas, was to be ‘the greatest friend to pious ministers in all these parts of the county’, and both Nathaniel and Francis likewise maintained the family’s commitment to Protestantism.51Soc. Antiq. MS 667, p. 53.

Rising lawyer

Whatever other reasons there may have been, family tradition obliged Nathaniel Bacon to make the law his career. By the time he reached the age of 50, his career had developed very satisfactorily: in 1617 he was called the bar, by 1631 he was a reader at Barnard’s Inn, in 1632 he was called to the grand company of Gray’s Inn, where, in 1641, he served as reader.52PBG Inn, 226, 300, 310, 340, 345; Dugdale, Origines Juridiciales, 297; Baker, Readers and Readings, 58, 195, 540. From 1631, in succession to his late father and elder brother Philip, he also held the senior position in the alienations office as the clerk for engrossing licences and pardons of alienations.53Coventry Docquets, 182, 273; E165/47, p. 175. The documents in question were issued in vast numbers to those wishing to sell lands held from the crown by feudal tenures and consequently the office was worth about £400 a year.54Coventry Docquets, pp. xvi, 537-46, 618-731; Aylmer, King’s Servants, 40, 222. Bacon’s subordinates later included George Courthop* and Thomas Fitzjames*.

During his early married life Bacon’s main residence outside London was probably in that part of Essex just over the Suffolk border, along the southern bank of the Stour. He held land at Langham, while his first wife’s connections were with Boxted and Great Horkesley and those of his second with nearby Dedham and East Bergholt.55Fragmenta Geneal. i (1889), 12; Boxted par reg. f. 14. There were few places in England where the Protestant tradition was so strong. In 1637, on the death of his elder brother Philip, Bacon inherited land in Suffolk at Chempton.56C66/2785, nos. 89, 91, 94, 95. In 1643 he was named to the county committees both in Essex and Suffolk, and he served as a justice of the peace for both at various times during the 1640s and 1650s.

The first indication of Bacon’s literary interests dates from the 1630s when he penned and circulated in manuscript a short account of Francesco Spiera, the sixteenth-century Italian lawyer who had lapsed from Catholicism and then died agonized by spiritual doubts There was nothing new in the use of this story by Protestant writers as a warning against religious unbelief, but Bacon’s version, printed anonymously in 1638, confirmed Spiera as the archetypal tormented atheist in the English popular Protestant tradition. Long after Bacon's death, this, his least substantial work, was still being reprinted to alert new generations to the dangers of abandoning orthodoxy.57Harl. 6626; Sloane 397; Add. 22591, ff. 280-288; Bodl. Eng. hist. d. 92, ff. 38-59v; N. Bacon, A Relation of the Fearfull Estate of Francis Spira (1638); B. Opie, ‘Nathaniel Bacon and Francis Spira’, Trumbull Lib. Rec. xviii. 33-50; M. MacDonald, ‘The Fearefull Estate of Francis Spira’, JBS xxxi. 32-61.

Bacon was approached by the corporation at Ipswich to serve as their recorder in December 1642, after John Lany had been dismissed from the office because of his royalist sympathies. Bacon’s kinship to the local MP, John Gurdon* (a first cousin), may have helped recommend him. He accepted this offer, assuming the duties three months later, and, as the corporation had stipulated, he took up residence in the town for the first time.58Bacon, Annalls, 531-2. Those on the corporation with whom he now had dealings included John Brandlinge* and John Gurdon, both future parliamentary colleagues, as well as William Cage*, Robert Dunkon* and John Sicklemor, the father of another Suffolk MP, John Sicklemor*.

Heavyweight of the Eastern Association, 1644-5

During 1643, Bacon’s position as recorder of the most important Suffolk town, as well, presumably, his strong sympathies for the Parliament, ensured that he was appointed to the main county committees.59Suff. ed. Everitt, 52; A. and O.; Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA54/1/1: warrant, 7 July 1643. More was to follow. In the early months of 1644 efforts were made to coordinate the efforts of the associated counties and Bacon was, perhaps, the principal beneficiary of this process. Within Suffolk he was nominated to share the rotating chairmanship of the county committee, he helped organise the collections for the Scots’ army and the levying of the ‘voluntary’ loans, and he was named to the east Suffolk half of the committee for scandalous minsters.60Suff. ed. Everitt, 58-63; Luke Letter Bks. 377; Suff. Cttees. for Scandalous Ministers ed. Holmes, 25-6.

Even more significantly, he became the first chairman of the most important of the new administrative bodies, the central committee of the Eastern Association based at Cambridge, and thereby a person of real consequence in the prosecution of the war against the king.61Holmes, Eastern Assoc. 124; Luke Letter Bks. 398, 400, 408, 446, 527, 601, 603; SP28/128/8, ff. 11v, 12v, 22v, 24v; SP28/196, f. 388; Stowe 184, f. 109; Add. 5494, f. 148; SP28/222, ff. 30-88; Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA45/1/1. That he was regularly resident in Cambridge also helped draw him into the affairs of the university, not least because the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†) appointed him as one of his commissioners to purge the Cambridge colleges of all fellows who were politically or religiously suspect.62Cooper, Annals Camb. iii. 372; CUL, Mm.1.44, p. 454; J.D. Twigg, ‘The parliamentary visitation of the Univ. of Cambridge, 1644-1645’, EHR xcviii. 518. In that capacity, he was among those who in July 1644 countered the allegations that Manchester had forced Thomas Bainbridge, the master of Bacon’s old college, Christ’s, to take the Covenant.63SP22/3, f. 127. Six months later, however, he also signed the orders instructing the Cambridge colleges only to appoint fellows who had taken the Covenant.64Camb. Uni. Trans. ii. 463. He had meanwhile, in October 1644, approved the order by which the colleges were told to omit prayers for bishops during services in the college chapels.65Cooper, Annals Camb. iii. 382.

During June 1645 he kept his colleagues at Ipswich informed of the military movements in Leicestershire and Northamptonshire and passed on to them an account of events at Naseby.66Suff. RO (Ipswich), HD36/2672/82-3; HD36/2672/32. A ‘choice seed plot under God’s special providence, although unworthy’, was how he described Cambridge as the frantic preparations were being made there before the victory at Naseby removed the threat from the king’s army. The personal energy of Oliver Cromwell* in organising these preparations, which was encouraging the demands that the Cambridge MP be made lieutenant-general, was noted by Bacon for, according to him, Cromwell was ‘the chief actor, being in all places and in no place’.67Suff. RO (Ipswich), HD36/2672/82. In August 1646 Bacon reported that he himself was preoccupied with the proposed disbandment of the army and the withdrawal of the Scots; of the latter, he judged that they were ‘more forward to be gone than we are that they should go’.68Suff. RO (Ipswich), HD36/2672/26. This reflected distrust on his part that the hostilities were over. The suggestion that their stock of ammunition at Cambridge should be moved to London was at this time being opposed by the Eastern Association committee. Bacon probably supported the view that it should instead be sent to Ely, arguing that this would make the army more reluctant to retreat from there, but, faced with the counter proposal that it should be sent to Suffolk (the county least likely to fall to enemy forces), he sounded out the Ipswich corporation on whether they were prepared to provide the storage.69Suff. RO (Ipswich), HD36/2672/26-7; C6/1/6, pp. 37-8. Matthias Candler, the vicar of Coddenham, paid tribute to Bacon’s conduct as chairman, commenting that it had met with ‘great and general approbation of the county and of the university’.70Soc. Antiq. MS 667, p. 8; Add. 15520, f. 6.

Recruiter MP in the Long Parliament, 1645-9

On 27 November 1645 Bacon’s efforts on behalf of the committee of the Eastern Association had been recognised when he was elected to sit in Parliament for Cambridge University.71C219/43, pt. 1, f. 141. This choice was made mainly by the college fellows from whose ranks Bacon and his colleagues had so recently dismissed anyone unwilling to support Parliament. The university authorities were just as keen to make use of his professional expertise. During either that year or the next he supplied them with legal advice regarding the rectory at Burwell, Cambridgeshire.72CUL, U. Ac.2 (1), p. 726. The dons also turned to him in August 1646 when they nominated him and Harbottle Grimston* to act as their representatives in negotiations to resolve their dispute with the mayor of Cambridge, Richard Timbs*, who was trying to claim precedency over the vice-chancellor. To represent their side the Cambridge corporation sought out their MP, Oliver Cromwell.73Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1610-46, p. 430; Cooper, Annals Camb. iii. 401. Not that Bacon’s election diminished his links with Ipswich. On discovering that he was likely to be elected at Cambridge, he had written to the Ipswich corporation to reassure them that he did not intend to ‘cast off the care of the town, for upon any letter from you, wherever I am, I shall not fail, so long as I live, to serve that place to which I owe so much’. He duly arranged to spend two weeks in Ipswich before travelling to London.74Suff. RO (Ipswich), HD36/2672/78A.

Despite the frequent difficulty of distinguishing him from his brother in the Journal, it is evident that Bacon quickly established himself as an active member of the House. His legal reputation no doubt was one reason. On one issue that initially preoccupied him, the abolition of the court of wards, he had a direct personal interest. The brief ordinance passed in February 1646 implementing it also abolished the licences and pardons for alienations, removing at a stroke the main function of the office over which Bacon had presided since 1631.75A. and O. i. 833. This makes it more likely that it was Nathaniel than his brother, who twice chaired the committee of the whole House in May 1646 when further legislation on the subject was being discussed; by January 1647 the Commons had agreed that he should be paid £3,000 in compensation.76CJ iv. 534b, 539b, 727a; v. 46b; Add. 31116, pp. 580, 592; Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 102; CCC 800; A more Exact and Necessary Cat. of Pensioners in the Long Parliament (1648). There was no doubt that Bacon had lost out through this reform. The work of the office had declined sharply on the outbreak of the civil war, when those selling lands in areas not controlled by Parliament tended not to seek licences to alienate. The end of the fighting had brought about a modest revival in its work, in part because some of those sellers now sought pardons for their failure to obtain licences. The February 1646 ordinance reversed that. During the following law term (Easter), the office processed no business at all. Thereafter it was reduced mostly to issuing retrospective pardons.77A4/20.

Bacon was also named first in December 1646 to the committee on the bill to allow parliamentary representation for Durham and he sat on the various committees considering reforms to the law courts.78CJ iv. 696b, 701b, 703b; v. 21b, 84a, 87a. On 28 May 1647 he brought in the bill on the assistance provided to maimed soldiers and, after it was passed by the Commons, carried it to the Lords.79CJ v. 188a, 190b-191b, 252b; LJ ix. 216b. In May 1648 he was one of the three MPs asked to take care of drafting of the declaration about those engaged against Parliament.80CJ v. 563a. Yet it is noticeable that this activity on legal and other secular affairs was outweighed by his involvement in legislation on religious matters.

Indeed, the very first Commons committee to which Bacon was appointed may have been that in January 1646 on the bill for the better observation of the Lord’s Day (20 Jan.).81CJ iv. 412a. If so, this would given him the chance to express views which are known to have been strongly sabbatarian.82Bacon, Annalls, preface, p. vii. That month he took the Solemn League and Covenant.83CJ iv. 420b. He and his brother were those first added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers on 15 May 1646; over the next two years he took a regular interest its affairs.84CJ iv. 545b; Add. 15669, f. 1v; SP22/2A, ff. 197, 224, 226, 242; SP22/3, ff. 3, 21, 330, 380, 478, 529, 536, 568, 574; Mins. of the Cttee. for the Relief of Plundered Ministers, pt. 1, ed. W.A. Shaw (Lancs. and Ches. Rec. Soc. xxviii), 257. Three days later he was named to the committee to enumerate offences scandalous enough to merit suspension from the sacrament. He delivered the resulting order to the Westminster Assembly the following day.85CJ iv. 549a; Mins. and Pprs. of the Westminster Assembly 1643-1652 ed. C. Van Dixhoorn (Oxford, 2012), iv. 132, 133. He also sat on the committee on the legislation to enforce the monthly fasts (27 May).86CJ iv. 549a, 553b. The bill which eventually became the 1648 ordinance for punishing blasphemies and heresies seems to have been drafted in April 1646 by him (or, just possibly, his brother), in conjunction with Zouche Tate*.87CJ iv. 526b; A. and O. That helps explain the claim by John Harington* that Nathaniel, along with Sir Thomas Widdrington*, was ordered on 27 May 1647 to bring in a bill against incest.88Harington’s Diary, 54. John Wylde* was then attempting to revive the blasphemy bill and when the House re-committed that bill the following day, it ordered that the sections on incest should be hived off to create a separate bill.89CJ v. 188a, 189a.

Most intriguingly, on 27 January 1647 the Commons asked one of the Bacons to report to the House a week later on the obstructions hindering an ecclesiastical settlement.90CJ v. 66b. The timing was significant. The Scots were about to hand over the king at Newcastle-upon-Tyne and several of the Presbyterian peers had approached Charles with a new offer of religious concessions. That possible deal, which would have established a Presbyterian settlement for three years, was one which both the Bacons could probably have supported. That neither made this report was presumably because the king’s good faith was soon called into question, resulting in the abandonment of the peers’ scheme.

Uncertainty surrounds the conduct of both brothers during the crisis at Westminster during late July and early August 1647. Neither was mentioned in the Journal between 21 July and 15 September.91CJ v. 252b, 302a. Yet both are most unlikely to have joined those Independent MPs who withdrew from the House. The mystery instead is why neither was among the Presbyterian MPs who took advantage of their colleagues’ temporary absence. That October, one of the Bacons (perhaps more probably Francis) was named to a committee to consider a revised peace proposition relating to army arrears of pay.92CJ v. 339a. Two months later Nathaniel was second on the list of those added to the committee to ensure that the rights of patrons to livings were preserved (13 Dec.).93CJ v. 380b. However, it was more probably Francis who oversaw the passage through the Commons of the bill for the repair of churches.94CJ iv. 714b; v. 388a, 451b, 452b; LJ x. 14b. This is all consistent with the assumption that they remained aligned with the other Presbyterian MPs. Furthermore, by 1648 there are signs that in these matters Bacon was working with Francis Rous*, that diligent toiler for Prebyterian reform of the church. It was to these two that the House in March 1648 gave responsibility for the printing of the returns of the classes.95CJ v. 474b; Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 17. Later, the pair were also given care of the bill to abolish cathedral chapters (16 June) and on 6 October one of the Bacons chaired the committee of the whole House when it debated the bill to sell off the lands of those chapters.96CJ v. 602a, vi. 45a. Nathaniel probably supported the decision in May 1648 to resume negotiations with the king.97CJ vi. 577b.

At Pride’s Purge, Bacon was secluded from the House.98Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 367. This did not prevent the Ipswich corporation writing in February 1649 to him, his brother and Gurdon asking them to get Parliament to deal with the disruption to shipping by royalist privateers.99Suff. RO (Ipswich), C6/1/6, pp. 70, 71. Bacon was readmitted on 6 June 1649 and over the next four months participated in business, though intermittently. The bill for the propagation of the gospel in New England was referred to him and one of the Gurdons on 13 June, while on 18 September he (or his brother) reported from the Navy Committee* the proposed amendments concerning crimes committed abroad.100CJ vi. 225b, 231a, 297a, 298a. He also appeared again in conjunction with Rous when they headed the list of those added to the committee on the bill for a general pardon (16 Aug.).101CJ vi. 280a. Thereafter, if he continued to attend, he remained uncharacteristically unobtrusive. His apparent absences did not, however, prevent the Commons approving his appointment as a judge in the court of Admiralty in November 1652.102CJ vii. 221b, 223a.

The alienations office meanwhile continued its slow decline towards near extinction. Its grants of pardons for alienations only came to a complete halt in late 1650.103A4/20. Most of its staff were probably dismissed in 1653 as part of the programme of law reform under the Nominated Parliament.104Aylmer, State’s Servants, 44. Even then some officials clung on, as there were still writs of covenant and writs of entry in recoveries to be granted and in that form the office survived to the Restoration and beyond.105A7/50-59; A9/6-9; A. and O. ii. 1013-14; CSP Dom. 1660-1, pp. 101-2. But this probably no longer involved Bacon.

Historian

On the subject of the execution of the king, one brief comment by Bacon survives. In about 1654 he completed work on The Annalls of Ipswiche, his huge compilation from the borough records, unpublished in his lifetime, which he hoped would serve as an aid to subsequent recorders. Beneath the last entry, for 2 January 1649, he noted

the last day of January puts a period unto my pen. And thus by the goodness of Almighty God, I have summed up the affairs of the government of this town of Ipswich under bailiffs; who are happy in this, that God hath established their seat more surer than the throne of kings.

In what seems to have been an afterthought, he inserted the word ‘sad’ in front of ‘period’.106Suff. RO (Ipswich), C4/7, f. 866; Bacon, Annalls, 550.

It is his other major historical work which best reveals his views on constitutional questions at this time. In 1647 he had brought out the first part of his Historicall Discourse of the Uniformity of the Government of England. The claim, made in the advertisement of the 1689 edition (actually printed in 1682 and then suppressed), that John Selden* had provided the ‘ground-work’ and Bacon’s contribution was the ‘superstructure’ may, strictly speaking, be correct. Bacon may well have relied on Selden’s considerable expertise, but the views expressed can be taken to be his own. The second half of the Discourse, completing the history of English government up to the death of Elizabeth, did not appear until 1651, but there is nothing to suggest that most of this part could not have been written by Bacon at about the same time as the first volume. Indeed, throughout the work, despite the topicality of the issues discussed, there are few obvious references to events more recent than 1647. His discussion of the restrictions on the crown’s power to levy troops during the reigns of the later Tudors provided a natural point at which to observe that,

the title of the supreme power in all this work hath been of late put to the question, and brought us to this sad condition of trial by battle, and by fighting, to find out who hath the chief power to fight: a lesson that might have been learned from former generations foregoing, at a cheaper rate, when England is well in its wits.107N. Bacon, The Continuation of an Historicall Discourse (1651), 290.

It was presumably with the events of 1641 and 1642 at least partly in mind that he went on to assert restrictions on the royal prerogative which included the claim that the king must consult Parliament and the council before he could levy troops and that only volunteers and the trained bands could be arrayed. A section on the fifteenth-century Parliaments expressed the view that the prerogative to dissolve an uncooperative Parliament had not been much use because, as James I and Charles I had shown, ‘the kings themselves were no greater gainers thereby, then an angry man is by his passions’.108Bacon, Continuation, 130.

The only section of the second part which undoubtedly postdates the execution of Charles I is the preface, which admits that the 1647 volume had had a hostile reception. Bacon used the preface to attack one unnamed book, identifiable as The First Part of an Historical Collection (1649) by William Prynne*.109Bacon, Continuation, sig. [A2-C4]. What Bacon found objectionable was Prynne’s argument that the Commons had not been present in the early ‘Parliaments’. Bacon had to refute this claim because his own version of English history was an attempt to show that the constitution was mixed and had been so immemorially. Much of the first part of the Historicall Discourse had set out ‘to refresh the image of the Saxon commonweal’ because ‘afar off it seems a monarchy, but in approach discovers more of a democracy’ and to deny that the Norman Conquest - which he refused to regard as a conquest - had broken the essential continuity of English constitutional practice.110N. Bacon, Historicall Discourse (1647), 113-64. A similar stress on the democratic nature of early English government also appears in his Annalls.111Bacon, Annalls, preface, p. ii-iii. Bacon’s conclusion in the Historicall Discourse that relations between English kings and their subjects were therefore contractual was one he stated openly.112Bacon, Continuation, 89-91, 303.

The Historicall Discourse condemns the medieval church and celebrates the break from Rome. But it was not primarily a work concerned with religion. Other evidence about Bacon’s life away from Westminster during the late 1640s and the 1650s confirms, however, that he was then a firm Presbyterian. That he was an elder of the classis at Ipswich comes as no surprise. He also served as churchwarden of St Margaret’s, Ipswich, and in 1654 he and John Brandlinge* approved the certificate from the congregation at Woodbridge explaining to the lord protector their need for assistance in supporting their minister.113Bacon, Annalls, memoir, p. ii; Original Letters ed. Nickolls, 155. Among Bacon’s acquaintances were a number of Presbyterian clergymen, most notably Stephen Marshall, in whose appointment as the town lecturer at Ipswich in 1653 he had probably played an influential part.114E. Anglian, n.s. ii. 80, 99, 99-101, 138-9; Suff. RO (Ipswich), C6/1/6, pp. 123-4, 127. Moreover, Bacon’s estate at Langham was in the next parish to Dedham, where Matthew Newcomen, associated with Marshall in the anti-episcopal pamphlets of ‘Smectymnuus’, had been the lecturer since 1636; in 1655 Newcomen succeeded Marshall as the Ipswich lecturer.115‘Matthew Newcomen’, Oxford DNB; Al. Cant.; Calamy Revised, 363. In 1657, when he was hoping to recruit Newcomen to serve in Dublin, Vincent Gookin* believed that the best way to persuade him was through Bacon.116TSP vi. 20.

The one clergyman among Bacon’s acquaintances who may not fit this pattern was Cave Beck. Although possibly a supporter of the king during the 1640s, Beck became schoolmaster at Ipswich in 1650 and curate of Bacon’s own parish in the town, St Margaret’s, in 1657.117V. Salmon, ‘Cave Beck’, Procs. Suff. Inst. Arch. xxxiii. 285-98; J. Blatchly, The Town Library of Ipswich (Woodbridge, 1989), 32; J. Corder and J. Blatchy, ‘Notes’, The Blazon, xxxvi. [pp. 10, 12]; J. Blatchy and P. Northeast, ‘Discoveries in the clerestory and roof structure of St Margaret’s Church, Ipswich’, Procs. Suff. Inst. Arch. xxxviii. 387-408; ‘Cave Beck’, Oxford DNB. He dedicated to Bacon and his brother that year his book on the ‘universal’ language he had devised, a subject which had also been of interest to the second Lord Keeper Bacon.118C. Beck, The Universal Character (1657), sig. A4, [A6], [A7v].

Critic of the protectorate, 1654-5

By the time he returned to sit in Parliament in 1654, when he was chosen at Ipswich with his brother, Bacon’s Historical Discourse had established him as an authority on constitutional law. He proved a key figure in the Commons during the debates on the Instrument of Government, which he and his allies in the Presbyterian interest sought to revise to enhance the power of Parliament and reduce the role of the army. Before going to Westminster Bacon been instructed by his electorate to ‘see and consent unto such things as shall be there ordained provided that they shall not intermeddle in the altering the government as it is now established under one man and the Parliament’.119Suff. RO (Ipswich), C5/14/4, f. 83v; E. Anglian, n.s. ii. 183. But for him that did not preclude a quest for essential clarification. Between 7 and 11 September (before Bennet Hoskins* assumed this role), Bacon chaired the committee of the whole House as it began its lengthy examination of the Instrument.120CJ vii. 367a-b. Such questioning provoked Cromwell to impose an oath of recognition on MPs, and Bacon and his brother – both accounted ‘eminent and conscientious men’ by the Presbyterian, Thomas Gewen* – withdrew from the House.121Archaeologia xxiv. 139-40. A month later Bacon had returned, and was the second MP added to the committee to complete the review of legislation passed by the 1653 Parliament (10 Oct.).122CJ vii. 375a. It would also seem that in mid-November he was involved in persuading the grand committee on religion to recommend, for incorporation into the Instrument, those definitions of fundamental religious doctrine for which John Owen* had been pressing since 1652.123CJ vii. 385b. When MPs rejected this, Bacon was then named to the committee set up to draft the House’s own definitions of what was to constitute heresy. That same day, 12 December, he was also the first added to the committee charged with suppressing obnoxious works by John Biddle, the Socinian.124CJ vii. 399b, 400a. He was meanwhile among MPs that the civil lawyers thought could be lobbied to support their petition for the encouragement of civil law.125Bodl. Tanner 51, f. 10.

The task of coordinating the drafting of a Government Bill to remodel the Instrument was entrusted on 7 December to Bacon and William Steele*. Bacon’s report 11 days later did not please the Commons, who referred the clauses they had prepared to an enlarged committee.126CJ vii. 398a, 403a. That dealing with the arrangements to summon a Parliament after the death of the lord protector, on which Bacon reported the next day, was probably a new version of one of these. It laid down that the council of state was to issue the writs before the appointment of a new protector and provoked resolutions detailing exactly what the powers of the council were to be in the meantime.127CJ vii. 403a, 404b. Bacon’s brother replaced him on 22 December as reporter on the work of the committee on the new act to settle the government, so it is uncertain which of them secured the reinsertion of the promise to ‘seek their peace and welfare, according to those laws, customs and liberties’ into the oath of the lord protector.128CJ vii. 407a, 409a. Thereafter, Nathaniel continued to be included on other related committees.129CJ vii. 411a, 415a, 419b.

One surviving copy of A Representation Concerning the late Parliament, published in the spring of 1655, has on the title page a contemporary annotation naming Bacon as its author.130CUL, Adams 7.65.20. This identification is at least plausible. It appears that the author had sat in 1654 but not in the Nominated Parliament of 1653.131A Representation Concerning the late Parliament in the Year 1654 (1655), 3, 29, (E.831.13). The work aimed to refute the criticisms made against Parliament by Cromwell in his speeches of 12 September 1654 and 22 January 1655 and was thus a direct attack on the lord protector. His complaint that Parliament had meddled in constitutional affairs was countered by the view that the Instrument of Government had been implemented without parliamentary consent and that Cromwell’s own right to determine the constitution was uncertain.

Servant of the protectorate, 1655-9

If Bacon had given offence to Cromwell through his conduct in Parliament, or even through suspicions that he had written this critique, the protector does not seem to have held it against him for long. Probably by 3 August, when Bacon replied on Cromwell’s behalf to a letter relating to a dispute about the university proctors at Cambridge, and certainly by 17 August, when Cromwell explicitly described him as such, Bacon had been appointed a master of requests.132CUL, Add. 4429(7); CSP Dom. 1655, p. 291; Bodl. Tanner 69, f. 170. He may have been in office by July, when the council of state consulted him on proposals involving alehouses and on the legal difficulties of the wife of Richard Fortescue, commander of the forces on Jamaica.133CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 241, 259. His salary was paid from the first quarter of 1656 at the latest and confirmed by letters patent in March 1657.134TSP vi. 590; vii. 485; CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 182; Add. 4196, ff. 247, 260, 261; Add. 4197, ff. 116, 153; Whitelocke, Diary, 515; Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 346; E403/2523, pp. 134-5. Bacon appointed John Maidstone*, the steward of the household who was a first cousin of his late wife, to collect these payments.135Add. 4196, f. 245.

As the conduits for soliciting the favour of the lord protector, the masters of requests had some scope for controlling the progress of petitions. When Bacon arranged for Roger Coke to present his petition seeking the release from prison of his father, Henry Coke*, Cromwell apparently gave general approval and left it to Bacon to confirm the details.136R. Coke, A Detection of the Court and State of England (1694), ii. 58-9. Sir Archibald Johnston* approached either Bacon or his brother in 1657 when he wanted to raise the case of the former Remonstrant, Sir James Stewart.137Wariston Diary, iii. 92. However, most of Bacon’s influence Bacon would have been over minor matters on which the council of state relied on him for professional legal advice.138CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 340, 362-3; 1655-6, pp. 30, 37, 233, 252, 254, 297; 1656-7, pp. 19, 86, 198, 256; 1657-8, pp. 60, 372; Knyvett Lttrs. 47; Add. 33374, f. 76v; ‘Petition of Peter Butler’, Procs. Mass. Hist. Soc. lviii. 247-8. Nor need it reveal much that, in 1658, he or his brother was used by Viscount Conway when he wanted a favourable word spoken to either William Steele (chief baron of the exchequer) or the Bacons’ cousin, Miles Corbett* (Steele’s equivalent in Ireland) to secure permission for the ex-Laudian and active episcopalian cleric Jeremy Taylor to travel to Ireland.139Conway Lttrs. ed. M.H. Nicolson (New Haven, 1930), 151. Earlier, in 1656, Bacon had been said to be close to John Bradshawe*.140Cheshire RO, DSS 1/7/66/33. As his court appointment implies, Bacon supported the policies of the protector at this time and he said so when he met Ralph Josselin, the vicar of Earls Colne, at Colchester in March 1656.141Josselin, Diary, 364.

Re-elected to Parliament in 1656, it may be that Bacon was sought after for business connected with, or akin to, his duties as master of requests.142CJ vii. 452a, 503b, 504a, 513b, 514b, 529b. He probably got to London in time for the opening session, for he received permission to take his annual oaths in Ipswich on 8 September rather than at Michaelmas, three weeks later. Ipswich corporation’s request that he, his brother and John Brandlinge* should seek an order or act banning the local fairs seems to have come to nothing.143E. Anglian, n.s. iii. 178, 267. As was appropriate for someone who was becoming something of an expert on the laws against heresy, Bacon expended much effort in the early months of this session in the proceedings against James Naylor.144CJ vii. 448a, 454b, 497b; Burton’s Diary, i. pp. clxxxviii, 34, 35, 37, 54, 66, 68, 85-6, 104, 126, 131-3, 146, 164, 195, 246, 257, 277. His opinion that Naylor deserved to be executed was firmly stated and at total variance with Cromwell’s line. He pointed out that Naylor ‘does arrogate to himself the person, attributes, and what not, of Christ. No man here, I believe, will open his mouth against any part of this charge, but agree that it is horrid blasphemy’.145Burton’s Diary, i. 54. Later that day, it was probably Nathaniel again who fulminated that ‘this fellow is not the fairest of ten thousand, as his disciples would have him, but the foulest of ten thousand rather’.146Burton’s Diary, i. 68.

What may have been his most conspicuous contribution to the passage of the Humble Petition and Advice again involved the question of religion. Bacon served on most of the committees created to finalise the details of the Humble Petition and, later, to counter the lord protector’s doubts.147CJ vii. 501b, 502a, 505a, 507b, 508b, 511b, 519b, 520b, 521b, 535a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 8-10. It is more likely to have been Nathaniel than his brother who on 19 March was a teller with another Presbyterian, Sir Richard Onslow* for the minority in a division relating to the proposed wording for clause 11 (clause 12 in the final version), for this confirmed the sale of the bishops’ lands.148CJ vii. 508a. When the proposal to offer Cromwell the crown had first been raised, Bacon had been dismissive. On 19 January 1657, shortly after he had welcomed the suppression of Sindercombe’s plot, he probably told the Commons that they had better things to do with their time.149Burton’s Diary, i. 357, 365-6. Later he may have become more favourable to the kingship proposals, and was listed among those who voted for kingship on 25 March.150A Narrative of the late Parliament (so called) (1657), 22 (E.935.5).

When the issue of the assessment arose in June 1657, Bacon supported proposals for a pound rate. On 15 June, after facing off rival claims on behalf on Thomas Bampfylde* and Edmund Fowell*, he chaired a committee of the whole House debating the assessment bill.151Burton’s Diary, ii. 230-1, 254, 255; CJ vii. 558a, 559a. Several days later he and Isaac Puller* were the tellers for the minority against including in the bill for the better observation of the Lord’s Day a proviso which prevented constables from entering houses without permission to enforce the law.152CJ vii. 567a-b; Burton’s Diary, ii. 264.

When Parliament reassembled in January 1658, Bacon moved the motion that a day of humiliation be held for the ‘seeking of God, for His special assistance and blessing upon the endeavours of this House’.153Burton’s Diary, ii. 320; CJ vii. 579a. The following week he was on the committee which waited on the lord protector to inform him that the Commons had requested that his speech of 25 January be printed; that they wanted to see the paper on the public finances he had mentioned; and that they would take what he had said into consideration. It was Bacon who was then obliged to report Cromwell’s unhelpful reply, questioning the authority by which the committee made such requests.154CJ vii. 589a-b. When the Commons moved on to discuss the Other House, Bacon displayed some caution, disapproving of the proposal from Alexander Thistlewayte* that the matter should be referred to a grand committee. Bacon maintained that this would involve the committee interpreting the Humble Petition and Advice – something too important to be left to a mere committee.155Burton’s Diary, ii. 428.

Elections to the 1659 parliament saw Bacon returned once more with his brother for Ipswich, but only after it had been suggested that he stand again for Cambridge University. This may have been an attempt to block the election there of Thomas Sclater*. Ralph Cudworth, the neo-Platonist master of Christ’s, informed John Thurloe*, the other successful candidate for the university, that Bacon was

a person so well known amongst us, and so highly esteemed, that if there had been the least hint given, that it would be acceptable to him at the beginning, when men were unengaged, he would … have certainly been chosen.156TSP vii. 587.

During the debate on 7 February on the bill to recognise Richard Cromwell* as lord protector, Bacon spoke in support of the principle of government by a single person and argued that it would waste less time if the bill was debated by the whole House rather than referred to a committee.157Wilts. RO, 9/34/3, p. 103; Burton’s Diary, iii. 114-15. His real fear, as he explained on 10 February, was that the committee would tinker with the bill’s text.158Burton’s Diary, iii. 198. He also supported the constitutional status quo in the debates on 8 and 19 February. England had been ruled by a single person and two Houses for centuries and the recent, brief departure from that practice could not, in itself, overturn this.159Burton’s Diary, iii. 122-3, 356-7; Wilts. RO, 9/34/3, pp. 128-9. But he did not necessarily believe that this required a hereditary second chamber. Indeed, in what some may have thought little more than legal casuistry, he tried to argue on 22 February that, despite appearances, the old House of Lords had only ever been elective.160Wilts. RO, 9/34/3, p. 141; Burton’s Diary, iii. 408-9. On that basis, he took the view six days later that the Other House should be accepted as it was currently constituted; there was no reason at all to recall the old peers.161Wilts. RO, 9/34/3, pp. 154-5; Burton’s Diary, iii. 534-7. By 5 March he was becoming irritated at the amount of time MPs were spending on such issues. While he was as keen as anyone in the House to understand their constitution as part of a centuries-old continuum, he saw no reason why those old principles could not be re-invented for new circumstances.162Burton’s Diary, iv. 32-3; Wilts. RO, 9/34/3, p. 163. Thus, on 18 March he backed the rights of the Scottish MPs to sit at Westminster.163Derbys. RO, D258/10/9/1, unfol.; Burton’s Diary, iv. 174. On the question as to how Members should conduct themselves during joint conferences, he preferred to see the old courtesies preserved. When on 6 April some suggested that they should not remove their hats when meeting the peers, Bacon joked that they were ‘inclining to Quakerism’.164Burton’s Diary, iv. 352. The diarist Thomas Burton* had missed the first part of that debate and so seems to have relied on Bacon to brief him on what exactly they were arguing about.165Burton’s Diary, iv. 351. Bacon had meanwhile supported the rights of the Scottish and Irish MPs to continue sitting.166Burton’s Diary, iv. 231.

His other activities in this Parliament echoed earlier interests. On 26 February he disagreed with those who thought that the Fifth Monarchist John Portman had been imprisoned illegally.167Burton’s Diary, iii. 497. Similarly his response two days later to the suggestion that a bill be introduced to repeal legislation against the late John Lilburne may have been no more than lukewarm.168Burton’s Diary, iii. 508. He regularly chaired the House when it sat as a grand committee on religion, as when it discussed the case of the Unitarian, John Biddle, and the proposed catechism.169Burton’s Diary, iii. 118, 548; iv. 402. He also chaired the committee that heard the appeal from John Wylde* to be reinstated as chief baron of the exchequer.170Burton’s Diary, iv. 438, 467-8. On 15 April Bacon and Thurloe acted together as tellers in the division which recommitted a proposed declaration calling on everyone to pay their excise arrears. Possibly they objected to the promise that the excise would soon be reduced, because when the proposal resurfaced almost four weeks later as a call for all tax arrears to be paid, no mention was included of lessening the excise.171CJ vii. 639b, 640a, 648a; Burton’s Diary, iv. 438.

Under slightly different circumstances Bacon’s role in this Parliament could have been even more significant. By 16 March both the Speaker, Chaloner Chute I*, and his temporary replacement, (Sir) Lislebone Long*, were too ill to perform the duties of that position. Having been nominated by Sir Arthur Hesilrige* to be the next temporary replacement, Thomas Reynell* instead nominated Thomas Bampfylde*, whom Hesilrige then seconded. At the last minute Sir William Wheler* instead proposed Bacon, ‘who was at the door’, but the House ignored this and called Bampfylde to the chair.172Burton’s Diary, iv. 149. Although Bampfylde was no friend of the commonwealthsmen, Bacon was clearly being suggested as an alternative because he was more closely associated with the government. When Chute died several weeks later, Bampfylde succeeded him as Speaker. This would presumably have been Bacon’s fate had he been preferred over Bampfylde on 16 March.

Final year, 1659-60

Meanwhile, Bacon had been working with Herbert Pelham* to raise money for Harvard University.173Recs. of the Gov. and Co. of the Massachusetts Bay ed. N.B. Sturtleff (Boston, 1853-4), iv. pt. i, 362; An Humble Appeal for the Inlargement of University Learning in New Eng. [1659]; S.E. Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (Harvard, 1936), ii. 367. He does not seem to have resumed his seat at Westminster when the Rump reassembled in early May 1659, or even when the Rump met again in late December after the ‘interruption’, because both Bacons came to the attention of the committee on absent Members on 5 January 1660.174CJ vii. 804a. The previous August, Bacon had been among those asked by the Ipswich corporation to draft a petition to Parliament concerning the town militia, and had also been ordered to write to Speaker William Lenthall* and to one of the Gurdons on the subject, but that it was Robert Dunkon* and another member of the corporation who took the petition to London.175E. Anglian, n.s. v. 383; vi. 60.

Once the Members secluded in 1648 were re-admitted in late February 1660, however, the Ipswich corporation seem to have assumed that Bacon would sit. They expected him, in conjunction with the council of state, to obtain an order from Parliament reconstituting the town’s militia in its old form. By May they wanted him to contact General George Monck* to propose that Viscount Hereford and Sir Henry Felton* be among gentlemen given control of Landguard Fort. Bacon was also asked to attend on their delegation to present the returned Charles II with gifts marking the Restoration. That June he was appointed an attorney for the swearing-in of Sir Frederick Cornwallis* and Sir Henry Felton* as free burgesses of the town. With most of the corporation, he was a member of the committee created in June 1660 to decide revisions to the town charter.176Suff. ed. Everitt, 125-7; E. Anglian, n.s. vi. 106-7, 263-4, 316-18.

In his final Parliament, the 1660 Convention, Bacon’s interest in legal problems connected with church land, evident in his record in the Long Parliament, was again to the fore. In these last weeks of his life, Bacon was asked, with Matthew Hale*, to prepare legislation on the leasing of such land and on the endowment of vicarages.177CJ viii. 116b. Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, seems to have considered him likely to be sympathetic to a Presbyterian form of church settlement and assigned to William Ellys*, treasurer of Gray’s Inn, the job of obtaining the support of the Bacon brothers.178G.F. Trevallyn Jones, `The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention', EHR lxxix. 341.

Bacon provided the most detailed exposition of his religious views in his History of the Life and Actions of St Athanasius, published posthumously.179N. B[acon], The History of the Life & Actions of St Athanasius (1664); Transcripts of the Reg. of the Worshipful Co. of Stationers, 1640-1708 (3 vols. 1913-14), ii. 326; Opie, ‘Bacon’, Trumbull Lib. Rec. xviii. 41-6. For Bacon the orthodoxy to be defended was that of the fourth century Nicene Creed. In the place of Arianism, there were now other heresies. Roman Catholicism, explicitly mentioned, was little more than a substitute for the errors of Arius, but his principal point was that orthodoxy had to be firmly defended against all its enemies. To underline the contemporary implications, Bacon likened the attempt by the council of Antioch in 341 to produce an alternative to the Nicene creed to

too many in these late Parliaments, wherein much endeavour hath been for a form of articles of faith that might be established by law, but little or nothing could be effected. The consciences of men have been so tender, that they cannot endure any form of wholesome words; but like this Antiochian council, they like the Nicene faith; and yet will have liberty to differ from it; they will publish one, so as they be not bound thereto, but be at a liberty to change.180Bacon, Athanasius, 85-6.

He had few doubts that the inevitable consequence of such theological licence would be disorder. The avoidance of indiscipline required strong regulation of the community of believers: Athanasius took refuge in the desert to escape persecution, but ‘even in the wilderness there must be rule and government’. A bishop, ‘or (if that word please not) an overseer, is as necessary in the wilderness as at Alexandria, to interpose, advise, exhort, and by reproof to reduce men into ways of reason and religion’.181Bacon, Athanasius, 131. He avoided an extreme episcopalian stance: in his eyes, bishops were no more than presbyters who had received excessive respect from the laity.182Bacon, Athanasius, 4-5. Athanasius’ decision to dispute Constantine’s command that Arius be admitted into the congregation at Alexandria provided ‘no precedent of the Christian magistrate’s interest above the ecclesiastical, nor of the ecclesiastical interest independent upon the Christian magistrate, in regard the general councils were not purely ecclesiastical, but mixed of both interests’.183Bacon, Athanasius, 57. Here his arguments on ecclesiastical government directly connected with those on secular government as expressed in his Historicall Discourses. In both spheres he considered shared decision-making by those who had claims to authority the only way to produce the cooperation needed to determine and enforce the law.

Bacon died in London on 28 August 1660, having made his will two days before. He was buried at Barham four days later.184PROB11/305/77; Bodl. Tanner 226, p. 42; Pearson, ‘Bacons of Shrubland Hall’, 34; E. Anglian, n.s. vii. 38-9. He left his library to his two surviving sons, with Philip, the elder, receiving the books on law and history, and Francis, those on theology and philosophy. A year later the great court of the corporation of Ipswich granted £25 to his widow to express their gratitude for his work on the Annalls.185PROB11/305/77; Bacon, Annalls, memoir, pp. iv-vi n; E. Anglian, n.s. vii. 92.