Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

332 FRANCIS BACON
This remark again encourages
the erroneous idea that these
are trade-marks, rather than the secret signs of a religious, literary
society, which they surely were. The addition of " the star
on the top " (sometimes not a star, hut a rose or a fleur-de-lis)
was made just about the time when the other " Baconian n
marks began to appear, in the time, that is, of Sir Nicholas
Bacon, i
The few specimens given in Plate III. are chiefly selected from
a very large number which are found in the paper of one of
Anthony Bacon's chief correspondents — Anthony Standen.
These letters were written from various parts of the continent,
and under various names. Sometimes they are signed La Faye,
at other times Andrieu Sandal. Under the latter name Standen
was cast into prison in Spain, upon suspicion of being a political
spy. The charge was disproved, and his release effected, apparently
by the Bacons' influence, but Standen's history has yet
to be written. Other specimens given from the Harleian, Cottonian,
Lansdowne, and Hatton Finch MSS., at the British Museum,
are in documents concerning the Bacons and their friends.
They are chiefly in letters or documents sent from abroad, or in
copies.
The secresy attaching to all these matters is the strongest
proof that at some time or other there was danger involved in
the writing, printing, and disseminating of books. Now, when
there is no such danger, in free England and America at least,
the secrets would certainly be made public, were it not that the
vows of a secret society, vows perhaps heedlessly and ignorantly
taken by the large proportion of members, prevent the
better educated and more fully initiated amongst them from
revealing things which must, one would think, be, at the present
hour, matters chiefly of history or of antiquarian curiosity —
1 Joel Munsell specifies 1539 as the "era" of the "ancient water-mark of
the hand with a star at the fingers' ends." He does not mention that the star
was then a new addition. By 1559 this sign must have become sufficiently familiar
to excite no inquiry, for in that year Richard Tottel printed "in Flete
Strete, at the signe of the Hand and Starre," a translation of Seneca's Troas, made
by Jasper Haywood;