ANNE, LADY BACON: A LIFE IN LETTERS Katherine Alice Mair Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD Queen Mary, University of London 2009 ALL MISSING PAGES ARE BLANK IN ORIGINAL 2 Statement of Originality I, Katherine Alice Mair, affirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own, except where otherwise acknowledged in the text. 3 Abstract Anne, Lady Bacon (c.1S2B-1610) is chiefly remembered as the translator of several important religious texts and as the mother of Francis and Anthony Bacon. This thesis seeks to re-evaluate her fulfilment of her role as a mother, translator and religious patron through an examination of her correspondence and an assessment of her published works. In doing so it demonstrates that Anne was adept at utilising epistolary conventions in order to achieve her politico-religious aims, and was far more capable at negotiating complex webs of power than has hitherto been acknowledged. Over one hundred of her letters survive, most of which are written to Anthony between the 1592 and 1596, and only a few of which have been published. I have transcribed all these extant letters, and through a close analysis of their content and material construction I offer an outline of her epistolary habits, and demonstrate how her letter-writing practice was influenced by the practical elements of sixteenth-century epistolary culture. I describe the factors that influenced Anne's relationship with her sons, and analyse how both parties performed or neglected their duties. The second half of my thesis focuses on Anne's religious patronage. I describe the iconographic significance of the female translator, and examine Anne's contribution to the nascent Protestant literary culture. Faced with a political climate that was becoming increasingly hostile to expressions of non- conformity, I look at how Anne harnessed other means by which to support the puritan cause, and assess the extent to which she directed the religious tenor of her local parishes. 4 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 5 Abbreviations 6 List of Illustrations 8 Transcription Policy and Note on Dates 9 INTRODUCTION The Otherwordly Advice of Anne Bacon 10 PART ONE: LETTERS CHAPTER ONE 'Lysence me a little more for this once good Mr Secretarie': Anne Bacon's Negotiation of Epistolary Culture 34 PART TWO: MOTHER-SON RELATIONSHIP CHAPTER TWO The Formation of the Mother-Child Bond: A Study of Anne 87 and Her Sons CHAPTER THREE 'Your Christian and Naturall mother': Maternal Expectations and Filial Disobedience in the Correspondence of Anne and Anthony Bacon 113 PART 3: RELIGIOUS ACTIVISM CHAPTER FOUR 'The fruite of your motherly admonicions': The Constructive and Protective Uses of Print Publication 157 CHAPTER FIVE The Religious Patronage of Anne Bacon 215 CONCLUSION 265 Appendix 272 Bibliography 307 5 Acknowledgements I am hugely indebted to the librarians and staff at Lambeth Palace Library, who have provided knowledgeable and friendly assistance on my many visits over the last few years. I would also like to thank them for their kind permission to print two facsimiles of Anne Bacon's letters. This thesis was funded by a Queen Mary studentship, and I thank the university for making my doctoral studies possible. Dr Alison Wiggins was the instigator of this entire project, and I would like to thank her for her early encouragement and direction. For their inspiration and unfailing support, I would like to thank Professor Lisa Jardine and Dr Robyn Adams. The students at the Centre of Editing Lives and Letters and Queen Mary have offered encouragement, assistance, and kind words throughout my studies, for which I am most grateful, and I would particularly like to thank Olivia Smith for her friendship. I am hugely appreciative of the help so freely given by other Queen Mary staff, and I would like to thank Dr Warren Boutcher and Professor Julia Bottey for reading and commenting on early drafts of Chapter Four. Professor Alan Stewart took the time to discuss my thesis during his period as visiting Director of CELL, and offered me the benefit of his encyclopaedic knowledge on the Bacons. His help and advice was crucial to the development of my thesis, for which I thank him. My parents, John and Jacqueline Mair, have encouraged and inspired me to pursue my research from the beginning, and have engaged with it critically throughout. For their kind assistance, especially in the final months, I offer them my greatest thanks, and hope I can repay my filial debts in the future! There is no way this thesis could have been written without the support of Nick Bell, whose neverending patience and wise advice has seen me through the toughest times, and I would like to extend my deepest gratitude and appreciation to him for his constant faith in my abilities. 6 Abbreviations BL British Library CCEd The Clergy of the Church of England Database 1540-1835 <www.theclergydatabase.org.uk> CPR Calendar of Patent Rolls CSPD Calendar of State Papers Domestic ELR English Literary Renaissance EPM Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967) EUL Edinburgh University Library HMC Hatfield Historical Manuscripts Commission, Hatfield House Papers, cited with permission HRO Hertfordshire Record Office HF Lisa Jardine and Alan Stewart, Hostage to Fortune: The Troubled Life of Francis Bacon (London: Victor Gollancz, 1998) LL Francis Bacon, Letters and Life, 7 vols, ed. by James Spedding (London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1861-74) LPL Lambeth Palace Library Memoirs Thomas Birch, Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, 2 vols (London: A. Millar, 1754) nd ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2 edn <www.oed.com> 7 PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association of America Rich Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, rev. edn (London: Virago, 1986) Stiffkey The Papers of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiff key, 3 vols, ed. by A. Hassel Smith, Gilliam M. Baker and R.W. Kenny (Norwich: Norfolk Record Society, 1979-90). stc A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed Editions of the England, Scotland and Ireland, and of English Books Printed Abroad, first compiled by A.W. Pollard and G.R. Redgrave, 2nd ed., 3 vols (London: Bibiiographical Society, 1976-91) Works Francis Bacon, Works, 7 vols, ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis and Douglas Denon Heath (London: Longmans, 1857-9) Personal Abbreviations AB Anthony Bacon ACB Anne Cooke Bacon EE Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex FB Francis Bacon RC Robert Cecil WC William Cecil, Lord Burghley 8 List of Illustrations 1. ACB to AB, 29 February 1591/2, LPL MS 648 fols 6r-r (art. 4) p.84 2. ACB to AB, 17 May 1592, LPL MS 648 fols 167r-168v(art. 103) p.85 9 Transcription Policy and Note on Dates In quoting from manuscripts I have silently expanded all abbreviations and contractions, and lowered all superscriptions. The exceptions are for those abbreviations still in use, such as "Mr' and 'Dr'; and the abbreviations for pounds, shillings and pence, which also retain their superscript form. I have indicated insertions (with caret marks) and deletions (with strikethroughs), as these practices are often significant to the meaning of the text. I have maintained the original orthography and punctuation, as I wish to maintain as far as possible Anne Bacon's mode of expression. Any editorial additions are placed within square brackets, and Latin words are italicised. In quotations from early modern printed material I have modernised usage of 'i/j' and 'u/v' graphs, as well as the long's', and silently expanded abbreviations and contractions. I have used new style dates throughout my narrative, but where a letter has been dated in the old style I have indicated both dates in my citation, for example 5 February 1591/2. 10 Introduction The Otherwordly Advice of Anne Bacon In the division of labor according to gender, the makers and sayers of culture, the namers, have been the sons of mothers. 1 The maternal fears and frustrations of Anne, Lady Bacon endure in surprising detail in the cache of letters written to her sons, Anthony and Francis Bacon, at the end of the sixteenth-century. But her expressions of motherly concern also persist in the altogether more unorthodox form of a ghost story told by members of Gray's Inn, the inn of court once the home to the brothers: It is said - on what authority is unrecorded - that Lady Anne Bacon, the wife of Queen Elizabeth's Lord Keeper, haunts the gardens [... ] On Call Nights, so the legend runs, when there is a "sound of revelry by night" from the Hall, the lady, dim as an opiate vapour, rises from the catalpa- tree that her famous son, Francis Bacon, planted. Gliding along the grass, alone, and palely loitering like Keats's hero, she wrings her lily- white hands and smites her magnolia-like brow. 'Alas! they mum. They sinfully revel,' she moans.' Anne's phantasmal laments have their origins in her authentic concerns expressed in a letter written by Anne to Anthony in December 1594. Anne's objections (on religious grounds) to the Christmas revels of the law students are articulated in no uncertain terms, and she writes to Anthony, 'I trust they wyll not 1 Rich, p. 11. 2 G.C.L.. DuCann,. 'Ghosts.. at Gray's Inn', Graya, 1(1927),27-30,. (p. 27). Robert Tittler draws 11 ne[either] mum nor mask nor synfully revell at Grayes lnne'.' Her pleas went unheard, and the celebrations that year included not only what is believed to be the first performance of William Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, but also a dramatic interlude written by her own son, Francis.' It is a testament to the potency and dramatic effect inherent in her letter-writing style that this brief complaint is converted into a playful tale, and in doing so it promotes two of the common views of Anne Bacon.