It was upon a cold day in January in 1560 that Francis Bacon “came crying into the world."* He was born in a fine house and was the child of great people, his father being Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal.  But although his father was one of the most important men in the kingdom, we know little about Francis as a boy.  We know that he met the Queen and that he must have been a clever little boy, for she would playfully call him her “young Lord Keeper.”  Once too when she asked him how old he was, he answered, “Two years younger than your Majesty’s happy reign.”  So if you know when Elizabeth began to reign you will easily remember when Bacon was born.

James Spedding.

Francis was the youngest of a big family, and when he was little more than twelve years old he went to Trinity College, Cambridge.  Even in those days, when people went to college early, this was young.

For three years Bacon remained at college and then he went to France with the English ambassador.  While he was in France his father died and Bacon returned home.  At eighteen he thus found himself a poor lad with his future to make and only his father’s great name and his own wits to help him.  He made up his mind to take Law as his profession.  So he set himself quietly to study.

He worked hard, for from the very beginning he meant to get on, he meant to be rich and powerful.  So he bowed low before the great, he wrote letters to them full of flattery, he begged and promised.

Bacon is like a man with two faces.  We look at one and we see a kindly face full of pity and sorrow for all wrong and pain that men must suffer, we see there a longing to help man, to be his friend.  We look at the other face and there we see the greed of gain, the desire for power and place.  Yet it may be that Bacon only strove to be great so that he might have more power and freedom to be pitiful.  In spite of Bacon’s hard work, in spite of his flattery and begging, he did not rise fast.  After five years we find him indeed a barrister and a Member of Parliament, but among the many great men of his age he was still of little account.  He had not made his mark, in spite of the fact that the great Lord Burleigh was his uncle, in spite of the fact that Elizabeth had liked him as a boy.  Post after post for which he begged was given to other men.  He was, he said himself, “like a child following a bird, which when he is nearest flieth away and lighteth a little before, and then the child after it again, and so in infinitum.  I am weary of it.”