Although they lived 100 years apart, Francis Bacon could be compared to Leonardo Da Vinci in terms of his breadth of interest and intellectual genius. A lawyer, philosopher, scientist, playwright, courtier, botanist, politician, and spiritual writer, Bacon was acknowledged in his day as one of the leading minds in Europe and as a key instigator of the scientific method that produced so much technological advance in the following centuries. 

Since his death on the 9th April 1626 understanding of the importance of his legacy has continued to grow. Many would now argue that the modern world as we know it owes its existence, at least in part, to the vision of Francis Bacon.

Francis Bacon was born on the 22 January 1561 at York House in London, the last son of Sir Nicholas and Lady Anne Bacon. His father was Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, his uncle Sir William Cecil served Elizabeth I as Lord Treasurer. Their country homes were respectively at Gorhambury and Theobalds, not far from each other.

It was during Queen Elizabeth’s 1568 visit to Gorhambury (near St Albans in Hertfordshire) that the Queen was so impressed by the intelligence of the seven-year-old Francis that she called him her ‘young Lord Keeper’.

At the age of 12 Francis was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge, together with his brother Anthony. It was whilst there that Francis felt called to develop his father’s ‘Advancement of Learning’ project to make it of worldwide scientific value.

In 1576 Francis Bacon was entered as a law student at Gray’s Inn, but was immediately sent by the Queen to France in the embassy of Sir Amyas Paulet, where he remained until 1579, when the death of his father recalled him home to England.

After the funeral of his father, Francis Bacon took up residence in Gray’s Inn to study law. At the same time he began his 36 years as a Member of Parliament, entering the Commons in 1581 as a member for Bosinney in Cornwall, and then going on to represent Melcombe, Taunton, Liverpool, Middlesex, and Southampton.

Bacon was called to the Bar in 1582, became a Bencher in 1586, a Reader (a role with responsibility for teaching the law) in 1588, and then a Double Reader of Gray’s Inn in 1600. In 1594 he was elected co-Treasurer of Gray’s Inn for a year, and later on, in King James’ reign, he served as sole Treasurer for nine years, 1608-1617.

Whilst he was studying and practising law, Francis continued to develop his philosophical ideas. By 1585 he had composed his first philosophical work, The Greatest Birth of Time, which would later develop into the comprehensive Great Instauration of all arts and sciences.

Francis Bacon’s involvement in high politics started in 1584, when he wrote his first political memorandum, A Letter of Advice to Queen Elizabeth.

In 1592 (or 1596) Francis Bacon was made the Queen’s Counsel Learned, but the position was ‘Extraordinary’ rather than ‘Ordinary’, which meant that it was unpaid. As someone who lived constantly beyond his means this role didn’t solve Francis’ financial predicament, but it gave him a special standing and enabled him to enjoy official access to the Queen. This was the first such appointment of what became known as the Queen’s Counsel (QC) or King’s Counsel (KC).

Among his many talents, Francis Bacon was a poet and playwright, and wrote many masques for performance at Gray’s Inn and before the Queen. He also wrote entertainments for other courtiers to perform before the Queen on notable occasions.

All this time Francis Bacon was recognised as one of the country’s foremost legal minds, advising the Crown, senior ministers, and courtiers, from whom he sought patronage and financial support. However, his main support during Queen Elizabeth’s reign was from his brother Anthony, who supplied not just money but also overseas intelligence and contacts, and assisted in Francis’ philosophical and poetic endeavours.

Francis Bacon was recognised by Queen Elizabeth’s successor James I as a person of ability, celebrated by his contemporaries for his extraordinary talent, memory and forensic ability to grasp the complexity of whatever was put before him.

Knighted in 1603, Francis Bacon married Alice Barnham in 1606, after which King James gave Bacon a series of rapid promotions in the offices of the State – Solicitor-General in 1607, Attorney-General in 1613, a Privy Counsellor in 1616, Lord Keeper in 1617, and Lord Chancellor in 1618. He was elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Verulam of Verulam in 1618, and created Viscount St Alban in 1621.

At Gray’s Inn where he practised as a lawyer, Twickenham Park where he wrote poetry, and Gorhambury which was now his country estate, he brought to life his theories on gardening and landscape.

As a scientist, Bacon was keen to reform and develop the study of the physical and metaphysical laws of the universe – divine, human, and natural. He created The Great Instauration to begin to do just that.

The great tragedy of Francis Bacon’s life was the accusation of corruption by enemies of the Jacobean government and the way that he was allowed to be found guilty by the King and his favourite the Duke of Buckingham.

Arrested, fined, and dismissed from Court and Parliament in May 1621, Bacon was banished to his estate at Gorhambury, near St Albans, Hertfordshire, which he had inherited from his brother Anthony and where his mother lived until her death in 1610. Then, after he had received an official pardon in 1622, he returned to London, where he resided at various houses, including Gray’s Inn.

These five remaining years of Francis Bacon’s life, removed as they were from the workload of Court and the House of Lords, were the most productive of his life in terms of the Great Instauration, and cemented his legacy as an intellectual giant to stand with any other of the age.

In those final years he finished writing his compilation of Essays and his New Atlantis, works of literary brilliance, and also his much augmented Advancement of Learning, which was translated into Latin, the universal language of his day, and published at the same time and in the same year as the 1623 Shakespeare First Folio.

Famously, in New Atlantis Bacon presented the idea of a utopian scientific institution that promotes pure research; he called it ‘Salomon’s House’ in homage to the wisdom of the Biblical King Solomon. It was from these ideas that the Royal Society would come to be founded in 1660.

Bacon wrote his own scientific texts including the Historia Naturalis et Experimentalis and the enormous Sylva Sylvarum, or A Natural History, a notebook of his own and others’ natural experiments.

In March 1626 Francis Bacon met his end as a result of conducting a scientific experiment into the preservative properties of snow on the carcass of a chicken. The chill he caught turned into pneumonia, and he died at Highgate on the 9 April 1626.

Sir Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam of Verulam, Viscount St Alban, was buried, at his request, in the crypt of his parish church; St Michael’s in St Albans where his mother’s body lay.

In 1630 a memorial monument was erected in the chancel above the crypt by Thomas Meautys, Bacon’s friend and private secretary. It remains a focus for visitors and pilgrims to the church to this day.