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Pitt Press Series.

BACON'S

HISTORY OF THE REIGN

OF

KING HENRY VII.

WITH NOTES

BY

THE REV. J. RAWSON LUMBY, D.D.

NORRISIAN PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY,

LATE FELLOW OF ST CATHARINE'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

EDITED FOR THE SYNDICS OF THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

Cambridge:

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

London: C. J. CLAY AND SON,
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE,

AVE MARIA LANE.

1885

[All Rights reserved.]

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INTRODUCTION.

I. Of the Author.

FRANCIS BACON, afterwards Baron Verulam and Viscount St Albans, was born 22nd Jan., 1560-1, at York House, in the Strand. His father was Sir Nicholas Bacon, Queen Elizabeth's Lord Keeper, and his mother, who was the second wife of Sir Nicholas, was Anne, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke. She was a lady of considerable learning, as was shewn by her translation of Jewel's Apology from Latin into English. Bacon's youth was passed partly in London, and partly at the country residence of the family at Gorhambury near St Albans. At twelve years old he became a member of Trinity College, Cambridge, and continued his studies in that University until his sixteenth year. The father designed his son for diplomatic life, and therefore after entering him of Gray's Inn, sent him to France as one of the suite of Sir Amyas Paulet, who went to Paris as English ambassador in September, 1576. But after little more than two years of such life, the prospects of young Bacon became utterly changed by the sudden death of his father in February, 1578-9. By this event Bacon was compelled to return to London, and settled down at Gray's Inn to the study of the law as the profession by which he was to live, his father's death having occurred before it had been possible for him to make provision for the children of his second marriage. Bacon was admitted to the bar in 1582, but strove, along with his legal occupations, to carry on those studies in which his soul delighted, and con

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