The writer of the Latin verse was not Ladie Russell, and it was written to Ladie Burlie, so she must either be Ladie Bacon or Mistress Killigrew. It is not an improbable theory that Ladie Bacon was writing to her sister Mildred, who had, through her husband, power either to send Francis to Cornwall or permit him to be sent away over the seas.
There is a copy of Machiavelli's "History of Florence," 1595, with Bacon's notes in the margins.[42]
At the end is a memorandum giving the dates when the book was read "in Cornwall at," and then follow two words, the second of which is "Lake," but the first is undecipherable.
Is it possible that Lady Anne Bacon had a house in Cornwall which Francis Bacon, inheriting after her death, was in the habit of visiting for retirement? But this is conjecture.
The following point is of interest. In the "Life of Burghley" (1598) it is said that: "Bookes weare so pleasing to him, as when he gott libertie to goe unto his house to take ayre, if he found a book worth the openinge, he wold rather loose his ridinge than his readinge; and yet ryding in his garden walks upon his litle moile was his greatest Disport: But so soone as he came in he fell to his readinge againe or els to dispatchinge busines."
Rawley, in his "Life of Bacon" (1657), attributes an exactly similar habit to the philosopher, and almost in identical phrase: "For he would ever interlace a moderate relaxation of his mind with his studies as walking, or taking the air abroad in his coach or some other befitting recreation; and yet he would lose no time, inasmuch as upon his first and immediate return he would fall to reading again, and so suffer no moment of time to slip from him without some present improvement."
It is difficult to approach any phase of the life of Bacon without being confronted with what appears to be evidence of careful preparation to obscure the facts. This observation does not result from imagination or prejudice; Bacon's movements are always enshrouded in mystery. Investigation and research will, however, eventually establish as a fact that there was a closer connection between Burghley and Bacon than historians have recognised, and that they had a strong attachment for each other.