We are assured by another Baconian student that the Shakespeare plays were not an end, but merely a means to an end, the end being the revelation of Bacon’s history, and the composition of further plays and poems from the material which he had warehoused in the dramas attributed to Shakespeare and other authors. The initial, and most important fact which Mrs. Gallup’s deciphered story reveals, is, not that Francis Bacon was the author of Shakespeare’s plays, but that he was the legitimate son of Queen Elizabeth, by Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester. The disclosure is so startling, so quaint, so incredible, and withal so interesting, that the revelation both appeals to and outrages our credulity. From our knowledge of Elizabeth and of Bacon, we can more readily believe that the Queen was the mother of Bacon, than that Bacon was the father of Shakespeare’s plays. At Gorhambury is to be seen a pair of oil paintings, by Hilliard, of Elizabeth and Leicester. The pictures are a match in size, style, and treatment. The doublet in which Leicester is portrayed is of the same material as that of the gown in which the Queen is represented. Moreover, they were a present from Elizabeth to Sir Nicholas Bacon, the foster father of Francis, who signs his cipher revelations, “Francis First of England,” “Francis Bacon (Rightful) R,” “F.B. or T.” or “Francis of E.”, as the humour seized him.

The deciphered secret story, the “sterne and tragicle” history of Bacon’s political wrongs commences in the first edition of Edmund Spenser’s Complaints (1590 and 1591); but it was not until the Faerie Queene was published (1596) that he appropriates the authorship of Spenser’s works. His first care is to establish his claim to the throne:

“Our name is Fr. Bacon, by adoption, yet it shall be different. Being of blood roial (for the Queen, our sov’raigne, who married by a private rite the Earle Leicester—and at a subseque’t time, also, as to make surer thereby, without pompe, but i’ th’ presence o’ a suitable number of witnesses, bound herselfe by those hymeneall bands againe—is our mother, and wee were not base-born, or base-begot), we be Tudor, and our stile shall be Francis First, in all proper cours of time, th’ King of our realme.

“Early in our life, othe (oath)—or threat as binding in effect as othe, we greatly doubt—was made by our wilful parent concerning succession, and if this cannot bee chang’d, or be not in time withdrawn, we know not how the kingdome shall be obtain’d. But ’tis thus seene or shewn that it can bee noe other’s by true desce’t, then is set down. To Francis First doth th’ crowne, th’ honor of our land belong....”

Thus Bacon states his case, and through the succeeding 368 pages of Mrs. Gallup’s book he repeats the assertion ad nauseam. He makes no attempt to prove his claim—he early allows it to be understood that he is unable to verify his asseverations, nor does he explain how or why his name should be Tuder, or Tidder. As the son of Lord Robert Dudley, he would be a Dudley. The circumstantial evidence with which he supports his case is interesting, but valueless; his conclusions are unproven, his facts are something more than shaky. But let us pursue the story:

“We, by men call’d Bacon, are sonne of the Sov’raigne, Queene Elizabeth, who confin’d i’ th’ Tow’r, married Ro. D.”

Elizabeth, it appears, was once “so mad daring” as to dub Bacon, “as a sonne of Follie,” to “th’ courageous men of our broadland.” But—

“No man hath claime to such pow’r as some shal se in mighty England, after th’ decease of Virgin Queene E—— by dull, slow mortalls, farre or near, loved, wooed like some gen’rously affected youth-loving mayden, whylst she is both wife to th’ noble lord that was so sodainly cut off in his full tide and vigour of life and mothe’—in such way as th’ women of the world have groaninglie bro’t foorth, and must whilst Nature doth raigne—of two noble sonnes, Earle of Essex, trained up by Devereux, and he who doth speake to you, th’ foster sonne of two wel fam’d frie’ds o’ th’ Que., Sir Nichola’ Bacon, her wo’thie adviser and counsellor, and that partne’ of loving labor and dutie, my most loved Lady Anne Bacon....”

“... My mother Elizabeth ... join’d herselfe in a union with Robert Dudley whilst th’ oath sworne to one as belov’d yet bound him. I have bene told hee aided in th’ removall of this obstructio’, when turni’g on that narrowe treach’rous step, as is naturall, shee lightly leaned upon th’ raile, fell on th’ bricks—th’ paving of a court—and so died.”

“In such a sonne,” Bacon proceeds, “th’ wisest our age thus farr hath shewen—pardon, prithee, so u’seemly a phrase, I must speake it heere—th’ mother should lose selfish vanitie, and be actuated only by a desire for his advancement.”

Bacon is confident that the Queen would have acknowledged his claims but for the advice of a “fox seen at our court in th’ form and outward appearance of a man named Robbert Cecill, the hunchback,” who poisoned Elizabeth’s mind against her “sonne of Follie.” Both “Francis Tudor” (or Tidder), and his brother Essex, the “wrong’d enfan’s of a Queene,” learned that their “royall aspirations” were to receive “a dampening, a checke soe great, it co’vinc’d both, wee were hoping for advanceme’t we might never attaine.”

The “royall aspirations” of the Earl of Essex were cut short by the sentence of death that was passed upon him by “that mÈre and my owne counsel. Yet this truth must at some time be knowne; had not I allow’d myselfe to give some countenance to th’ arraingement, a subsequent triall, as wel as th’ sentence, I must have lost th’ life that I held so pricelesse.” And Bacon, or Francis Tidder, solaces himself, and condones his part in the deed with the reflection that, “Life to a schola’ is but a pawne for mankind.”

Queen Elizabeth, Bacon tells us, though already wedded “secretly to th’ Earle, my father, at th’ Tower of London, was afterwards married at the house of Lord P——....”

Briefly, then, we have it, on the authority of the cipher translation, that “Bacon was the son of Elizabeth and Robert Dudley, who were married in the Tower between 1554 and 1558. Leicester’s wife did not meet with her fatal accident until 1560. Bacon was born in January, 1561. His parents were subsequently re-married, at a date not stated, at the house of Lord P——.”

In 1611 (Shepheard’s Calendar) Bacon declares “Ended is now my great desire to sit in British throne. Larger worke doth invite my hand than majestie doth offer; to wield th’ penne dothe ever require a greater minde then to sway the royall scepter. Ay, I cry to th’ Heavenly Ayde, ruling ore all, ever to keepe my soule thus humbled and contente.” But in 1613 (Faerie Queene), he says, that “in th’ secrecy o’ my owne bosome, I do still hold to th’ faith that my heart has never wholly surrendered, that truth shall come out of error, and my head be crowned ere my line o’ life be sever’d. How many times this bright dreeme hath found lodgement in my braine!... It were impossible, I am assurr’d, since witnesses to th’ marriage, and to my birth (after a proper length of time) are dead, and the papers certifying their presence being destroyed, yet is it a wrong that will rise, and crye that none can hush.” In 1620 (Novum Organum) he has lost his “feare, lest my secret bee s’ented forth by some hound o’ Queen Elizabeth;” but “the jealousy of the King is to be feared, and that more in dread of effecte on the hearts of the people, then any feare of th’ presentation of my claime, knowing as he doth, that all witnesses are dead, and the requir’d documents destroy’d.”

Bacon, according to the cipher, was sixteen years of age when he learned the truth of his parentage through the indiscretion of one “th’ ladies o’ her (the Queen’s) train, who foolish to rashnesse did babble such gossip to him as she heard at the Court.” Bacon, it seems, taxed the Queen forthwith with her motherhood of him, and Elizabeth, with “much malicious hatred” and “in hastie indignation,” said:

“You are my own borne sonne, but you, though truly royall, of a fresh, a masterlie spirit, shall rule not England, or your mother, nor reigne on subjects yet t’ bee. I bar from succession forevermore my best beloved first borne that bless’d my unio’ with—no, I’ll not name him, nor need I yet disclose the sweete story conceal’d thus farre so well, men only guesse it, nor know o’ a truth o’ th’ secret marriages, as rightfull to guard the name o’ a Queene, as of a maid o’ this realm. It would well beseeme you to make such tales sulk out of sight, but this suiteth not t’ your kin’ly spirit. A sonne like mine lifteth hand nere in aide to her who brought him foorth; hee’d rather uplift craven maides who tattle thus whenere my face (aigre enow ev’r, they say) turneth from them. What will this brave boy do? Tell a, b, c’s?”

“Weeping and sobbing sore,” Bacon hurries to Mistres Bacon’s chamber and entreats her to assure him that he is “the sonne of herselfe and her honored husband.... When, therefore, my sweet mother did, weeping and lamenting, owne to me that I was in very truth th’ sonne o’ th’ Queene, I burst into maledictio’s ’gainst th’ Queene, my fate, life, and all it yieldeth.... I besought her to speak my father’s name.... She said, ‘He is the Earle of Leicester.... I tooke a solemne oath not to reveale your storie to you, but you may hear my unfinish’d tale to th’ end and if you will, go to th’ midwife. Th’ doctor would be ready also to give proofes of your just right to be named th’ Prince of this realm, and heire-apparent to the throne. Nevertheless, Queen Bess did likewise give her solemn oath of bald-faced deniall of her marriage to Lord Leicester, as well as to her motherhood. Her oath, so broken, robs me of a sonne. O Francis, Francis, breake not your mother’s hearte. I cannot let you go forth after all the years you have beene the sonne o’ my heart. But night is falling. To-day I cannot speak to you of so weighty a matter. This hath mov’d you deeply, and though you now drie your eyes, you have yet many teare marks upon your little cheeks. Go now; do not give it place i’ thought or word; a brain-sick woman, though she be a Queene, can take my sonne from me.’” So Bacon leaves her, not to search for the midwife, or cross-question the doctor, but to “dreame of golden scepters, prou’ courts, and by-and-bye a crowne on mine innocent brow.”

All Bacon’s confessions, if true, prove him to have been a bastard, but this logical and inevitable conclusion he repeatedly denies. He claims his mother’s name, and for his father, a nobleman whose wife was living at the time of his bigamous marriage with Elizabeth. If the marriage was valid, why were Leicester and the Queen re-married at the house of Lord P., and in what year did the second ceremony take place? But although anti-Baconians maintain that Bacon was not a fool, and therefore could not have seriously advanced such claims; that if he had done so he would have made a more plausible story of his wrongs; that he was not a dunce, and therefore could not have written the “maudlin and illiterate drivel” attributed to him by Mrs. Gallup, it is still inconceivable that this cipher story is a gigantic fraud. Mr. Andrew Lang, who makes no doubt that Mrs. Gallup has honourably carried out her immense task of deciphering, has arrived at the conclusion that Bacon was obviously mad.