Francis Bacon Biography

Sir Nicholas had risen from his birth into the family of an Ipswich abbot's sheep reeve to become lord keeper of the Great Seal in the reign of Elizabeth I. In The Arte of English Poesie (1589) the poet George Puttenham described Sir Nicholas as "a most eloquent man, and of rare learning and wisdom, as I ever knew England to breed." With his first wife, a merchant's daughter named Jane Fernley, Sir Nicholas had seven children. Within weeks of his wife's death in 1552 he married Anne Cooke, one of the five daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke, an eminent scholar who had been the tutor to Henry VIII's son Prince Edward, later Edward VI. The Cooke daughters were known for their erudition, and Anne later published her translations of sermons of Bernardino Ochino as well as an English-language version of John Jewel's Apologia ecclesiae anglicanae (Apology for the Church of England, 1562).