Francis Bacon was born on January 22, 1561 and died on April 9, 1626. He was 65 years old. He was a philosopher, statesmen, author, and was also known as a catalyst of the scientific revolution. Bacon was knighted in 1603, created Baron Verulam in 1618, and became Viscount St Alban in 1621.
Sir Francis Bacon was born at York House on the Strand in London. He was the youngest of five sons. Having not been very healthy, Bacon was given college tuition by John Washall, a graduate from Oxford. Most of his teachings were taught in Latin and followed a medieval curriculum.
Bacon’s goals were to discover truth, to serve his country, and to serve his church. In 1580 he applied for a post at court but failed. So he worked for two year at Gray’s Inn studying law, until he was admitted in 1582 as an outer barrister.
Parliamentary Committee charged Francis Bacon with twenty-three counts of corruption after he went into some serious debt. He confessed to all of them but people still argue that he was forced to confess to save King James from a political scandel. So he ended his career in disgrace and was now incapable of holding future office or sitting in parliament.
Even though Bacon was having some seriously bad luck, he did however have a couple of ladies in his life. The first women to enter the picture was Elizabeth Hatton. She was a twenty year old widow and she loved money! Bacon was only thirty-six at this time and was still having debt issues. They were engaged but it was reported that she broke off the engagement and left Bacon for a wealthier man. But that’s just a brush off his shoulder. Some years later at the age of forty-five, Bacon married Alice Barnham, a fourteen year old daughter of a well-known London alderman and M.P. But soon, she too became greedy and started an affair with John Underhill. Bacon found out about this romantic relationship and took her out of his will. Little did she know that he had a very generous sum of goods to give her. Many believe that Bacon was either bisexual or homosexual. No one can really prove it but that’s what some authors of books say.
Francis Bacon’s life came to an end on April 9, 1626. It was said that he was traveling to Highgate through the snow with the King’s physician. He suddenly came up with the idea of preserving meat in snow so they went to a lady’s house and got a fowl. He stuffed it with snow and happened to catch pneumonia. He thought that he had caught the illness from the fowl so he ate it to try to save his life. Of course it didn’t work, so he went to Highgate and was given a damp bed that had never been slept in. The bed was so cold that it just made everything worse. Mr. Hobbes said he died of suffication.
The Renaissance Man
I think a good renaissance man would be Mohandas Karamchand Ghandi. He was born in in 1869 and died of assaination in 1948 at the age of 78. Ghandi was a very inspirational man who worked and did what ever he could to get his point of “peace” through to people. He went on long fasts for both self-purification and social protest. And all he wanted was for people to get along with each other. He led nationwide campaigns for expanding women’s rights, easing poverty, building religious and ethnic amity, but what he really wanted to accomplish was acheiving Swaraj. Swaraj is the independence of India from foreign domination. Ghandi wanted non-violence and truth and he tried to influence people to support him and do the same. He was a good man and died doing what he was meant to do, died of a good cause, killed for speaking the truth.