Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban,[a] 1st Baron Verulam, PC (/ˈbeɪkən/;[5] 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England under King James I. Bacon argued the importance of natural philosophy, guided by scientific method, and his works remained influential throughout the Scientific Revolution.

Bacon was a patron of libraries and developed a system for cataloguing books under three categories – history, poetry, and philosophy – [8] which could further be divided into specific subjects and subheadings.

He attended Trinity College at the University of Cambridge on 5 April 1573 at the age of 12,[15] living there for three years along with his older brother Anthony Bacon (1558–1601) under the personal tutelage of John Whitgift, future Archbishop of Canterbury.

To support himself, he took up his residence in law at Gray's Inn in 1579,[19] his income being supplemented by a grant from his mother Lady Anne of the manor of Marks near Romford in Essex, which generated a rent of £46.

At this time, he began to write on the condition of parties in the church, as well as on the topic of philosophical reform in the lost tract Temporis Partus Maximus.

[19][28] In 1592, he was commissioned to write a tract in response to the Jesuit Robert Parson's anti-government polemic, which he titled Certain Observations Made upon a Libel, identifying England with the ideals of democratic Athens against the belligerence of Spain.

[30] When the office of Attorney General fell vacant in 1594, Lord Essex's influence was not enough to secure the position for Bacon and it was given to Sir Edward Coke.

Likewise, Bacon failed to secure the lesser office of Solicitor General in 1595, the Queen pointedly snubbing him by appointing Sir Thomas Fleming instead.

[38] Bacon was subsequently a part of the legal team headed by the Attorney General Sir Edward Coke at Essex's treason trial.

As Attorney General, Bacon, by his zealous efforts – which included torture – to obtain the conviction of Edmund Peacham for treason, raised legal controversies of high constitutional importance.

Bacon, however, continued to receive the King's favour, which led to his appointment in March 1617 as temporary Regent of England (for a period of a month), and in 1618 as Lord Chancellor.

[1] Bacon continued to use his influence with the King to mediate between the throne and Parliament, and in this capacity he was further elevated in the same peerage as Viscount St Alban on 27 January 1621.

I am ready to make an oblation of myself to the KingHe also wrote the following to George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham: My mind is calm, for my fortune is not my felicity.

[53] The true reason for his acknowledgement of guilt is the subject of debate, but some authors speculate that it may have been prompted by his sickness, or by a view that through his fame and the greatness of his office he would be spared harsh punishment.

When was a "base sycophant" loved and honoured by piety such as that of Herbert, Tennison, and Rawley, by noble spirits like Hobbes, Ben Jonson, and Selden, or followed to the grave, and beyond it, with devoted affection such as that of Sir Thomas Meautys.

Bunten wrote in her Life of Alice Barnham [63] that, upon their descent into debt, she went on trips to ask for financial favours and assistance from their circle of friends.

Bacon disinherited her upon discovering her secret romantic relationship with Sir John Underhill, rewriting his will (which had generously planned to leave her lands, goods, and income) and revoking her entirely as a beneficiary.

"[79] In his Brief Lives sketches (likely composed during 1665–1690 and published as a book in 1813), the antiquary John Aubrey wrote that Bacon was a pederast[80] "whose Ganimeds and Favourites tooke Bribes".

[81] While pederast strictly denoted "boy-lover" in earlier times, Cady wrote that Aubrey deployed the term discreetly in the original Greek to signify "male homosexual".

[83] Cady argued that Bacon's reference to male homosexuality in the New Atlantis deliberately gave the appearance of coming from "outside the phenomenon" due to prevalent opposition.

[84] He also noted that Bacon ended his monologue The Masculine Birth of Time with an older man asking a younger one (from his "inmost heart") to "give yourself to me so that I may restore you to yourself" and "secure [you] an increase beyond all hopes and prayers of ordinary marriages".

Some people, including Aubrey, consider these two contiguous, possibly coincidental events as related and causative of his death:The Snow so chilled him that he immediately fell so extremely ill, that he could not return to his Lodging ... but went to the Earle of Arundel's house at Highgate, where they put him into ... a damp bed that had not been layn-in ... which gave him such a cold that in 2 or 3 days as I remember Mr Hobbes told me, he died of Suffocation.

[90][91] Francis Bacon's philosophy is displayed in the vast and varied writings he left, which might be divided into three great branches: Bacon's seminal work the Novum Organum was highly influential in the 17th century among scholars, in particular Sir Thomas Browne, who in his encyclopedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646–72) frequently adheres to a Baconian approach to his scientific enquiries.

"It is nothing less than a revival of Bacon's supremely confident belief that inductive methods can provide us with ultimate and infallible answers concerning the laws and nature of the universe.

One of his biographers, the historian William Hepworth Dixon, states: "Bacon's influence in the modern world is so great that every man who rides in a train, sends a telegram, follows a steam plough, sits in an easy chair, crosses the channel or the Atlantic, eats a good dinner, enjoys a beautiful garden, or undergoes a painless surgical operation, owes him something.

Bacon played a leading role in establishing the British colonies in North America, especially in Virginia, the Carolinas and Newfoundland in northeastern Canada.

In 1610 Bacon and his associates received a charter from the king to form the Tresurer and the Companye of Adventurers and planter of the Cittye of London and Bristoll for the Collonye or plantacon in Newfoundland, and sent John Guy to found a colony there.

"[118] For Bacon, torture was not a punitive measure, an intended form of state repression, but instead offered a modus operandi for the government agent tasked with uncovering acts of treason.

[120] The Baconian hypothesis of Shakespearean authorship, first proposed in the mid-19th century, contends that Francis Bacon wrote some or even all of the plays conventionally attributed to William Shakespeare.

[130] As indicated by the title of his study, however, Rossi claims Bacon ultimately rejected the philosophical foundations of occultism as he came to develop a form of modern science.