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Unit 11: Of Revenge by Francis Bacon

As Lord Chancellor, Bacon wielded a degree of power and influence that he could only have Notes
imagined as a young lawyer seeking preferment. Yet it was at this point, while he stood at the
very pinnacle of success, that he suffered his great Fall. In 1621 he was arrested and charged
with bribery. After pleading guilty, he was heavily fined and sentenced to a prison term in the
Tower of London. Although the fine was later waived and Bacon spent only four days in the
Tower, he was never allowed to sit in Parliament or hold political office again.
The entire episode was a terrible disgrace for Bacon personally and a stigma that would cling
to and injure his reputation for years to come. As various chroniclers of the case have pointed
out, the accepting of gifts from suppliants in a law suit was a common practice in Bacon’s day,
and it is also true that Bacon ended up judging against the two petitioners who had offered
the fateful bribes. Yet the damage was done, and Bacon to his credit accepted the judgment
against him without excuse. According to his own Essayes, or Counsels, he should have
known and done better. (In this respect it is worthnoting that during his forced retirement,
Bacon revised and republished the Essayes, injecting an even greater degree of shrewdness
into a collection already notable for its worldliness and keen political sense.) Macaulay in a
lengthy essay declared Bacon a great intellect but (borrowing a phrase from Bacon’s own
letters) a “most dishonest man,” and more than one writer has characterized him as cold,
calculating, and arrogant. Yet whatever his flaws, even his enemies conceded that during his
trial he accepted his punishment nobly, and moved on.
Bacon spent his remaining years working with renewed determination on his lifelong project:
the reform of learning and the establishment of an intellectual community dedicated to the
discovery of scientific knowledge for the “use and benefit of men.” The former Lord Chancellor
died on 9 April, 1626, supposedly of a cold or pneumonia contracted while testing his theory
of the preservative and insulating properties of snow.

11.2 Thought and Writings

In a way Bacon’s descent from political power was a fortunate fall, for it represented a liberation
from the bondage of public life resulting in a remarkable final burst of literary and scientific
activity. As Renaissance scholar and Bacon expert Brian Vickers has reminded us, Bacon’s
earlier works, impressive as they are, were essentially products of his “spare time.” It was
only during his last five years that he was able to concentrate exclusively on writing and
produce, in addition to a handful of minor pieces:

• Two substantial volumes of history and biography, The History of the Reign of King Henry
the Seventh and The History of the Reign of King Henry the Eighth.
• De Augmentis Scientiarum (an expanded Latin version of his earlier Advancement of
Learning).
• The final 1625 edition of his Essayes, or Counsels.
• The remarkable Sylva Sylvarum, or A Natural History in Ten Centuries (a curious hodge-
podge of scientific experiments, personal observations, speculations, ancient teachings,
and analytical discussions on topics ranging from the causes of hiccups to explanations
for the shortage of rain in Egypt). Artificially divided into ten “centuries” (that is, ten
chapters, each consisting of one hundred items), the work was apparently intended to
be included in Part Three of the Magna Instauratio.
• His utopian science-fiction novel The New Atlantis, which was published in unfinished
form a year after his death.
• Various parts of his unfinished magnum opus Magna Instauratio (or Great Instauration),
including a “Natural History of Winds” and a “Natural History of Life and Death.”

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