BACON, Sir Nicholas, lord keeper of the great seal in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, was born at Chislehurst in Kent in 1510, and educated at the university of Cambridge, after which he travelled in France, and made some stay at Paris. On his return he settled in Gray's Inn, and applied himself with such assiduity to the study of the law, that he quickly distinguished himself; and, on the dissolution of the monastery of St Edmund's Bury in
Suffolk, he had a grant from King Henry VIII., in the thirty-sixth year of his reign, of several manors. In the thirty-eighth of the same king he was promoted to the office of attorney in the court of wards, which was a place both of honour and profit. In this office he was continued by King Edward VI.; and in 1552 he was elected treasurer of Gray's Inn. His great moderation and consummate prudence preserved him through the dangerous reign of Queen Mary. In the very dawn of that of Elizabeth he was knighted; and on the 22d of December 1558, the great seal of England having been taken from Nicholas Heath, archbishop of York, was delivered to him, with the title of Lord Keeper; and he was also made one of the queen's privy council. He had a considerable share in the settling of religion; and, as a statesman, he was remarkable for a clear head and wise counsels. But his great parts and high preferment were far from raising him in his own estimation, as appears from the modest answer he gave Queen Elizabeth when she told him his house at Redgrave was too little for him: "Not so, madam," returned he; "but your majesty has made me too great for my house." After having held the great seal more than twenty years, this able statesman and faithful counsellor was suddenly removed from the scene of his labours. He had been under the hands of his barber, and, thinking the weather warm, had ordered a window before him to be thrown open; but he fell asleep as the current of fresh air was blowing in upon him, and awakened some time after distempered all over. He was immediately removed into his bed-chamber, where he died a few days after, on the 26th of February 1578-9, equally lamented by the queen and her subjects. He was buried in St Paul's, where a monument was erected to him, which was destroyed by the great fire of London in 1666. Mr Granger observes that he was the first lord keeper who ranked as lord chancellor; and that he had much of that penetrating genius, solidity, judgment, persuasive eloquence, and comprehensive knowledge of law and equity, which afterwards shone forth with so great splendour in his illustrious son.