Bacon, Sir Francis

Bacon wishes the Earl success in soliciting aid for the Palatinate in the early years of the Thirty Years War, one page, folio, integral autograph address leaf (“To the Right hon. my very good Lord the Earle of Essex”), York House, London, 7 November 1620; locking slits, seal tear, and other small holes neatly repaired, light staining. Red morocco-backed folding-case.

Robert Devereux, Third Earl of Essex (1591-1646) — William Jessop, lawyer, of Gray’s Inn, whose daughter married William Hulton in 1694; thence by descent (Sotheby’s, 4 December 1992, “The Hulton Papers”, lot 8). acquisition: Purchased at the foregoing sale through Bernard Quaritch

“...I have receyved your lordships letter for whych I thank yow; and doe praye your lordship not to measure my respectes by my letters, but rather to measure my letters by my tymes, which were never so skant with me...”

Underneath its deceptively simple content, this letter reverberates with half a century of treachery and political schisms. Its immediate context is simple enough: in 1619 Essex had volunteered to fight for the great Protestant cause of the day, that of Frederick, Elector Palatine, who had become the “Winter King” of Bohemia and was now facing a combined army of Catholic powers, and this letter was written when he had just returned to England to garner further support and volunteers. Frederick was married to the King of England’s own daughter, and Bacon was the greatest lawyer of the land who was also known to be close to the King’s favorite, the Duke of Buckingham, so it would appear to be a conventional letter of support.

In fact, however, royal support for Essex and like-minded volunteers was decidedly lukewarm, and support for international Protestantism commonly went hand in hand with dissatisfaction with royal policy. Involvement in the Bohemian cause threatened King James I’s long-held policy of neutrality: James could not simply abandon his daughter, but neither did he want to get drawn into a major European war. It is not hard to see this policy reflected in Bacon’s letter, which protests his “affection to the noble enterprise wherein yow serve” and his “Love to your person,” but gives no indication of any concrete support for Essex.

Beyond the immediate political division between the two men there were personal tensions behind this letter that went back some twenty-five years. Francis Bacon’s first step towards political success had come as secretary to Essex’s father, the Second Earl, Queen Elizabeth’s favorite in the 1590s (and another man who liked to present himself as a savior of international Protestantism). However, when the Second Earl of Essex fell from favor Bacon was widely seen as having betrayed his former master, and eventually Bacon became part of the team that prosecuted Essex for treason. As Bacon worked his way to the center of Jacobean politics, the young Third Earl had moved in the other direction. In 1613 Essex suffered an extraordinary public humiliation when his marriage was annulled on the grounds of impotence in order to allow his wife to marry the King’s favorite, the Earl of Somerset. Bacon then produced a masque in celebration of the Somerset marriage. After Somerset’s spectacular fall from grace Bacon tied his political fortunes to the new favorite, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, for whom Essex had the heartfelt loathing shared by much of the aristocracy. 

The Battle of White Mountain was fought the day after this letter was written. It was a shattering defeat for Frederick’s cause which ended any hope of a quick peace and left James’s pacific policy in tatters. The King nevertheless resisted becoming directly involved in the widening war, although in the years that followed Essex returned with volunteers to the Protestant army of Frederick of Nassau. Essex was also to have his revenge on Francis Bacon: in 1621 he was an active member of the Parliamentary committee investigating corruption which brought about Bacon’s impeachment and political downfall. Within six months of having written this letter the sometime Lord Chancellor was a prisoner in the Tower. However, the fracture in the political nation – the division between “court” and “country” – was only to grow in subsequent decades: when England went to war with itself in 1642, the first commander of the Parliamentary army was the Third Earl of Essex.  

An exceptionally rare autograph letter by the greatest thinker of his age, signed at the zenith of his political career as Lord Verularum and Lord Chancellor. No other autograph letter signed by Bacon has been sold at auction for some forty years.