Francis Bacon the History of a Character Assassination

8vo, 592 pages. 9.75x6.50x1.75 inches. a few pencil notes, ow excellent copy. francesco bacone corruzione. in english. Frontispiece, xiii, 592 pp. Original cloth. Near Fine, in near fine dust jacket. New price: US$75.00. 'Francis Bacon is generally remembered as a great man, founder of modern science and philosophy, a just judge, and a teacher of kings. In England and America, however, he is more commonly seen as a cruel, corrupt, and power-hungry politician. Which appraisal is correct? In this fascinating reevaluation of one of Britain's most significant figures, Nieves Mathews examines the charges against Bacon and reveals how distorted facts can be recast as historical truths. In 1621 Bacon fell from power as Lord Chancellor, the highest position in the land. Charged with accepting bribes, he was convicted, fined, imprisoned, and exiled from the Court. He died five years later, disgraced and deeply in debt. In this illuminating study of the Jacobean administration a system which depended on corruption at every level the author shows Bacon to have been among the least tainted of the king's officials, the scapegoat in a political conspiracy aimed at dislodging the royal favorite. The destruction of Bacon's reputation followed Thomas Babington Macaulay's eloquent 'Essay on Bacon,' published in 1837. Macaulay's depiction of a cloven-hearted genius, at once the greatest and meanest of mankind, launched a tireless search among Bacon's biographers for evidence of malice and corruption. With the benefit of recent scholarship, Mathews portrays a man both single-minded and fallible, with positive qualities and flaws. Her penetrating reappraisal rescues Bacon from a long tradition of abuse and misrepresentation. A daughter of the Spanish statesman and historian Salvador de Madariaga, Nieves Mathews has devoted more than a decade to research on the life and reputation of Francis Bacon'