BACON, Thomas (1620-bef. 1700), of Friston, Suff.

Unlike most of the Suffolk Bacons of note in this period, Thomas Bacon was a descendant not of Sir Nicholas Bacon†, lord keeper to Elizabeth I, but of his younger brother, Sir James. The latter had acquired a seat at Friston, outside Aldeburgh, sometime in the middle years of the previous century. By 1618 the family estates had passed to Sir James’s grandson and our MP’s father, Nathaniel. Thomas’s siblings included the future wife of Nathaniel Barnardiston, son of Sir Nathaniel* and younger brother of Sir Thomas*.25Vis. Suff. 1561, 1577, 1612, 109-10; Vis. Suff. 1664-1668, 38; Copinger, Manors of Suff. v. 131; Vis. Eng. and Wales, Notes ed. Crisp, vii. 174-5, 179.

Baptised in June 1620, Thomas was left a piece of plate in the will of his grandfather, Thomas Le Gros, compiled on 27 March 1621.26PROB11/140/481. In 1637 he matriculated at Cambridge and four years later he progressed, in accordance with family tradition, to Gray’s Inn. It is not certain that he was the Thomas Bacon called to the bar in 1651 and to the bench in 1658 and who served as the reader of Staple Inn in 1660. His namesake, son of the future judge in king’s bench, Sir Francis Bacon, was perhaps more likely to have sought a professional career in the law.27Al. Cant.; G. Inn Admiss. 226; PBG Inn, 422-3, 435, 459; PBG. Inn, 1669-1800, 6, 20. Probably shortly after he came of age Bacon married Elizabeth, a daughter of Sir Robert Brooke†. A receipt from June 1641 for £1,000 from Bacon’s father records the sum he had been paid by Brooke as half of the marriage portion.28Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA30/312/391.

From 1642 Bacon’s father sat on the county committee for Suffolk and all the main Suffolk committees charged with aiding the parliamentarian cause. In a sure sign that he supported ecclesiastical reform, he was included on the committee to remove scandalous ministers within the county.29Suff. ed. Everitt, 43, 52, 60, 61, 63; A. and O.; Suff. Cttees. for Scandalous Ministers ed. Holmes, 25-6. Following Nathaniel’s death in early August 1644, Thomas Bacon was admitted into the circle of gentlemen who managed the county. As early as October 1644 he was named an assessment commissioner, and when the conference organised by the Eastern Association counties to oppose the planned reforms to the army was held at Bury St Edmunds in 1645, he attended as one of the Suffolk delegates. Notwithstanding this, he was soon included in the Suffolk commission for the New Model ordinance.30A. and O.; Suff. ed. Everitt, 84. The following July he was one of the group given control of Landguard Fort and that same month he was appointed to the commission both for oyer and terminer and for gaol delivery.31Suff. ed. Everitt, 71; C181/5, f. 257. All this suggests that he had been appointed to the county committee in immediate succession to his father. He was signing the committee’s warrants by 1645 and he continued to participate in its proceedings until at least 1647.32SP28/243, unf.; Suff. ed. Everitt, 75, 130. He attended his first quarter sessions as a justice of the peace in January 1646.33Suff. RO (Ipswich), B105/2/1, f. 80v. He also became an elder for the fourth Presbyterian division of Suffolk in 1645.34Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 425.

Shortly before his death in July 1646, Sir Robert Brooke agreed to lease Hinton Hall to Bacon and Robert Brewster* for 12 years in return for a peppercorn rent. The plan was that the estate’s income would be used to educate Sir Robert’s son, Robert Brooke†, and to pay the portion for his two unmarried daughters.35Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA30/312/267. When in 1647 Martha married William, the eldest son of William Bloys*, as part of the settlement, Bloys transferred various properties at Trimley, Otley and Grundisburgh into the possession of Bacon, Elizabeth, Lady Brooke (Sir Robert’s widow), Robert Brooke, and Francis Bacon* (who was Bloys’s brother-in-law, as well as Bacon’s second cousin).36Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA30/312/13.

Following the execution of Charles I, Thomas Bacon ceased to attend the Suffolk quarter sessions. Although he continued to be named to the commission of the peace for most of the 1650s, he probably did not attend its meetings until October 1660.37Suff. RO (Ipswich), B105/2/1, f. 116; B105/2/4, f. 131; B105/2/5, f. 38v. However, at his first attempt, he was elected to Parliament in 1654, as one of the ten persons returned for Suffolk. With one vote fewer than John Sicklemor*, he polled the lowest number of votes among the successful candidates, but was 30 votes clear of his nearest unsuccessful rival.38Suff. RO (Ipswich), GC17/755, f. 140v. Owing to the failure of the clerks to distinguish between three Mr Bacons – his more experienced cousins Nathaniel and Francis also having been elected – it is almost impossible task to establish what, if anything, he did in this Parliament. Two references are more likely to have been to one of them39CJ vii. 407b, 409a. At the following election he had less success, his 1,079 votes falling almost 100 short of what was needed to qualify for a seat.40Suff. RO (Ipswich), GC17/755, f. 140v.

In January 1660 Bacon signed the Suffolk petition of that month to George Monck* recommending the calling of a free Parliament. With his brother-in-law Robert Brooke he delivered the letter sent from Suffolk to the corporation of London thanking them for their efforts in support of the idea.41Suff. ed. Everitt, 128; A Letter Agreed unto, and subscribed by, the Gentlemen, Ministers, Freeholders and Seamen of the Co. of Suff. (1659, 669.f.23.22); CSP Dom. 1659-1660, p. 336. That year, as one of the closest resident gentry and with Francis Bacon* as the recorder, he returned to the Commons as MP for Aldeburgh. The notes by Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton imply that he was an active member of Wharton’s pro-Presbyterian group, deputed to encourage Sir Dudley North*, Sir Henry Felton*, Sir Henry North* and John Gurdon* to give their backing to the group’s agenda in the Convention. Wharton also expected him to speak in the debates on the bill to limit the episcopalian content in any religious settlement, which was to be introduced when Parliament assembled in November 1660.42G.F. Trevallyn Jones, `The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention', EHR lxxix. 333, 341, 348-9. In October 1660 he resumed attendance at quarter sessions.

Bacon was probably disappointed in his only son, Nathaniel. In 1662 Nathaniel had to be withdrawn from Cambridge University to receive private tuition from John Ray (the future authority on natural history), although after a continental tour with Ray and Philip Skippon junior (son of Philip Skippon*), Nathaniel Bacon completed his education at Cambridge and Gray’s Inn. In 1670 he married Elizabeth, daughter of their neighbour Sir Edward Duke* of Benhall, despite Duke’s threat of disinheriting her. As part of an agreement concluded after Sir Edward’s death in January 1671, Thomas Bacon settled on the couple £500 and lands worth £40 a year. After Nathaniel acted as an accomplice in a confidence trick, his father persuaded him (it was said, by giving him £1,800 in stock) to emigrate to Virginia, where he gave his name to the rebellion in 1676.43PROB11/336/278; Strange News from Virginia (1677), 2-3; Oxford DNB, ‘Nathaniel Bacon (1647-1676)’; T.J. Wertenbaker, Torchbearer of the Revolution (Princeton, 1941), 4-5, 42-50; S.S. Webb, 1676: The End of American Independence (New York, 1984), 27-8. During the latter half of that year, Thomas Bacon petitioned the king on behalf of his son, arguing that Nathaniel’s actions against the native Americans, which had led to him being declared an outlaw, were unavoidable because of the weakness displayed by the council of Virginia and that the indemnity he had subsequently been granted was a tacit acknowledgement of this.44CO1/37, ff. 31-4. In the event Bacon’s plea made no difference, as his son may well have been dead already as a result of natural causes.

In 1674 Bacon sold the house at Friston, which that year was assessed for 20 hearths and which he had substantially extended, adding ‘a very handsome chapel’.45Suff. in 1674 (Suff. Green Bks. xi. 13, 1905), 118; Soc. Antiq. MS 667, p. 406. He spent his later years living with his son-in-law Thomas Andrew, at Wandsworth in Surrey.46Manning, Bray, Surr. iii. 357; VCH Surr. iv. 114. His will, made on 30 April 1695, shows that he retained land and the advowson at Melton, as well as the corn tithes at Friston and Snape. The main beneficiary of the inheritance was Mary, his son’s daughter, who married the noted man-midwife, Hugh Chamberlen the younger (1664-1728). He must have died before November 1697, when the will was proved.47PROB11/453/89.