Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

AND MIS SECRET SOCIETY. 221
Rules 8 and 13, especially when taken together with the preceding,
throw great light on the publication of such works as
" Montaigne's Essays " in France, of its supposed translation, in
1603, from French into pure Baconian English, by the Italian
Florio, tutor to the English royal family, and of the large additions
and alterations, such as none bat the author could have
presumed to make, in the later edition published by Cotton in
1685-6.
Rule 8 seems also to explain the fact of many of Bacon's most
intimate friends having passed so much of their time abroad, in
days when to travel was a distinction, bat not an every-day occurrence,
and when, indeed, it
required the royal sanction to leave
the country. So Anthony Bacon lived for many years in Italy
and the south of France, very little being absolutely known
about his proceedings. Mr. Doyly, Bacon's first recorded correspondent,
was at Paris when he received a mysterious letter
explaining something in an ambiguous manner. Bacon's answer
is equally misty: " he studiously avoids particulars, and means
to be intelligible only to the person he is addressing." 1
This Mr. Doyly had travelled with Anthony Bacon, and after
residing in Paris, went to Flanders, where " he was of long time
dependent on Mr. Norris. " What his business was is unknown;
he returned to Englaud in 1583. The letter from Mr. Doyly to
Francis Bacon shows great intimacy: it begins, " To my verye
deare friend, Mr. Doylie.
Then there was Anthony Bacon's very intimate friend Nicholas
Faunt, at one time Walsingham's secretary, a gentleman attached
to the Puritan party. From 1580 to 1582 we hud him traveling,
with no ostensible object, through France and Germany,
spending seven months between Geneva and the north of Italy,
back to Paris, and home to London in 1582. He is described as
an " able intelligencer, " and is just such a man as we should
expect to find Bacon making good use of.
The young Earl of Rutland receives in 1595 a licence to pass
over the seas, and (although they pass for awhile as the writing
of Essex) it is Bacon who writes for him those " Letters of
l Spedding, Letters and Life, ii. 9.