I remember Sir John Danvers told me, that his lordship much delighted in his curious[298] garden at Chelsey, and as he was walking there one time, he fell downe in a dead-sowne. My lady Danvers rubbed his face, temples, etc. and gave him cordiall water: as soon as he came to himselfe, sayd he, 'Madam, I am no good footman.'
<His death and burial.>
[299]Mr. Hobbs told me that the cause of his lordship's death was trying an experiment: viz., as he was taking the aire in a coach with Dr. Witherborne (a Scotchman, Physitian to the King) towards High-gate, snow lay on the ground, and it came into my lord's thoughts, why flesh might not be preserved in snow, as in salt. They were resolved they would try the experiment presently. They[300] alighted out of the coach, and went into a poore woman's howse at the bottome of Highgate hill, and bought a hen, and made the woman exenterate it, and then stuffed the bodie with snow, and my lord did help to doe it himselfe. The snow so chilled him, that he immediately fell so extremely ill, that he could not returne to his lodgings (I suppose then at Graye's Inne), but went to the earle of Arundell's house at High-gate, where they putt him into a good bed warmed with a panne, but it was a damp bed that had not been layn-in in about a yeare before, which gave him such a cold that in 2 or 3 dayes, as I remember he[301] told me, he dyed of suffocation.
Mr. George Herbert, Orator of the University of Cambridge, haz made excellent verses on this great man. So haz Mr. Abraham Cowley in his Pindariques. Mr. Thomas Randolph of Trin. Coll. in Cambr. haz in his poems verses on him.
[302]In the north side of the chancell of St. Michael's church (which, as I remember, is within the walles of Verulam) is the Lord Chancellor Bacon's monument in white marble in a niech, as big as the life, sitting in his chaire in his gowne and hatt cock't, leaning his head on his right hand. Underneath is this inscription which they say was made by his friend Sir Henry Wotton.
Franciscus Bacon, Baro de Verulam,
Sti Albani Vicecomes, seu, notioribus titulis,
Scientiarum Lumen, Facundiae Lex,
sic sedebat.
Qui postquam omnia Naturalis sapientiae
et Civilis arcana evolvisset,
Naturae decretum explevit
'Composita solvantur,'
Anno Domini MDCXXVI
aetatis LXVI.
Tanti viri
mem.
Thomas Meautys[XV.]
superstitis cultor,
defuncti admirator,
H. P.
[XV.] His lordship's secretarie, who maried a kinswoman (<Anne> Bacon), who is now the wife of Sir Harbottle Grimston, Master of the Rolles.
<His relatives.>
[303]He had a uterine[XVI.] brother Anthony Bacon, who was a very great statesman and much beyond his brother Francis for the politiques, a lame man, he was a pensioner to, and lived with ... earle of Essex. And to him he dedicates the first edition of his Essayes, a little booke no bigger then a primer, which I have seen in the Bodlyan Library.
[XVI.] His mother was <Anne> Cooke, sister of ... Cooke of Giddy-hall in Essex, 2nd wife to Sir Nicholas Bacon.