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Thanks to Christina Waldman for pointing out Brian McClinton critiques writers with a bias against Bacon
“Saving Bacon 4“

Brian McClinton’s letter, Sept. 27, 2005, in Prospect Magazine, Nov. 20, 2005.

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/7095-letters.

27th September 2005

In his travesty of the character and ideas of Francis Bacon, Terence Kealey describes him as an “unusually unpleasant” man “who collected… many bribes.” On the contrary, JG Crowther demonstrates (Francis Bacon: The First Statesman of Science, 1960) that Bacon was “fundamentally incorruptible.” Indeed he was almost alone among leading politicians in not paying James I for his offices and promotions. Nieves Mathews in Francis Bacon: The History of a Character Assassination (1996), argues that he was completely innocent of the charges of bribery and that writers such as Macaulay were themselves guilty of slandering Bacon’s reputation and unfairly influencing later generations.

The best judges of Bacon’s character are those nearest to him. To his apothecary Peter Boener he was “a noteworthy example… of all virtue, gentleness, peacefulness, and patience.” To his editor Rawley, “if [ever] there were a beam of knowledge derived from God upon any man in these modern times, it was upon him.” Aubrey tells us that “all that were great and good loved and honoured him.”

As for his ideas, Kealey completely misrepresents his whole philosophy. Bacon’s lodestar was not power, as he suggests, but truth. He spells it out himself in his beautiful Proem: “For myself, I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of Truth; as having a mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the resemblances of things (which is the chief point), and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish their subtler differences; as being gifted by nature with desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to reconsider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of imposture. So I thought my nature had a kind of familiarity and relationship with Truth.”

In other words, Bacon’s “method” is as provisional as that of Popper, who completely misrepresents him. If modern science is based upon the presumption of error and fallibility, then Bacon remains its true trumpeter. Nor did he rely only on induction, as Kealey implies, for he insisted on a continual interchange between theory and experiment. When he wrote that “knowledge itself is power” he meant not worldly success or useful technology but the proof of scientific theories: “Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known, the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule” (Novum Organum). In short, only by making nature act in a certain way—exercising power—can we be sure that we understand how it does act, and only by knowing that can we control it. Bacon realised that science could be useful for the good of mankind but he also believed in knowledge and work for their own sake as “pledges of truth.”

Finally, Kealey goes off the rails altogether in his paean to private funding of science. It was the co-operative and collaborative nature of scientific discovery that concerned Bacon, not the issue of the state’s role.

Frankly, it is a puzzle why so many writers in England persistently misrepresent one of the world’s greatest geniuses. Most of them would improve their scholarship if they read Bacon himself instead of parroting his unreliable commentators.

Brian McClinton, Author of
The Shakespeare Conspiracies : Untangling a 400 year Web of Myth & Deceit.

Lisburn, Northern Ireland
Academic journals

26th September 2005 Letters.

Video by the Francis Bacon Society

Shakespeare, aka Sir Francis Bacon – Sir Mark Rylance and Gary Cordice celebrate his legacyShakespeare, aka Sir Francis Bacon – Sir Mark Rylance and Gary Cordice celebrate 463 years of his legacy within world culture at his birthday bash in 2023 at the Royal Airforce Club, London  The Francis Bacon Society provides a platform for discussion of subjects connected with the Objects of the Society, but the Council does not necessarily endorse the opinions expressed by contributors or correspondents.  We welcome members of the public to pitch suitable videos they have made or will make which can be uploaded to the Francis Bacon website and/or YouTube Channel. Please contact us at francis.bacon.society@gmail.com 

The Francis Bacon Society established in 1886 will be celebrating it’s 137th anniversary on April 14th. If you would like to attend this special event see the information below. If you want to know more about the Francis Bacon Society visit https://francisbaconsociety.co.uk/

Friday 14th April Diana and Gary Invite you and your guests to: 

BACONAMANIA AT GREENWICH

In the dawning of this new age,
Baconamania is all the rage,
Come and meet not just this sage,
Other Knights who went from light to shade.

It is the birthday of prophet Bacon,
Time to rattle chains and to take on
This tour of paintings to you inspire
In the company of certain Knights of the sacred empire.

Come and hear brave stories to incite ire,
Hear what led their fortune to expire,
Then to the tavern we will retire,
Over a cold brew and a cosy fire.

FRIDAY 14^TH APRIL, 2023

3PM

MEET AT THE QUEEN’S HOUSE GREENWICH ROYAL PARK UNDER THE RIGHT COLONNADE (LOOKING FROM THE MAIN ENTRANCE)

PLEASE BOOK TICKETS ONLINE VIA THE ROYAL MARINES WEBSITE; https://www.rmg.co.uk/queens-house , ADMISSION FREE, BOOKING NECESSARY

SHOULD YOU WISH TO GO FOR A DRINK AFTER WE WILL HEAD TO SPLENDID AND RENOWNED TRAFALGAR TAVERN (great fish and chips) ON THE RIVERBANK BELOW THE PARK

TRANSPORT BY THAMES CLIPPER TO GREENWICH PIER

OR

DLR GREENWICH STATION CUTTY SARK

RSVP dianasheppard123@btinternet.com 

No later than Tuesday 11^th April

The Martyrdom of Francis Bacon by Alfred Dodd

From :  Alfred Dodd’s Book

The Martyrdom of Francis Bacon

pp. 30-35
Chapter II

His Birth, Life and Labours, 1561-1621

(special thanks to Gerald Francis Bacon)

Pallas Athena was the Goddess of Wisdom and was supposed to preside over the whole of the intellectual and moral side of human life. She was the patroness of the useful and elegant arts such as weaving (felling), imparting to her devotees the peuculiar Masonic Virtues of Prudence, Courage, Preserverance. She protected the State from outward enemies. The Britannia on our English coins is taken from Pallas. She was credited with being the inventor of musical instruments. The Olive wreath denoting Peace was her emblem. She was a Creator and Preserver.

She was depicted in Greek Art with a Helmet on her head. She held the Spear of Knowledge in her right hand, poised to strike at the Serpent of Ignorance writhing under her foot. The large Helmet denoted that she waged invisibly a silent war against Sloth and Ignorance. She was usually placed on the Greek Temples with a Golden Spear in her hand. When the morning rays of the sun glinted on the weapon, causing it apparently to tremble, the common people were in the habit of saying smilingly : “Athena is Shaking her Spear again.” She was thus known as “the Spear Shaker” or ” the “Shaker of the Spear.”….

Read more…>

by A. Phoenix

SirBacon.org is excited to share the following work by A. Phoenix on the 462nd Birthday of Sir Francis Bacon, January 22, 2023.

Francis Bacon’s Private Manuscript Notebook (Known as the Promus of Formularies and Elegancies) The Source of Several Hundred Resemblances, Correspondences and Parallels Found Throughout his Shakespeare Poems and Plays

By A. Phoenix
January 2023

In ordinary circumstances this contemporary manuscript document named the Promus of Formularies and Elegancies would be well known to every Bacon and Shakespeare scholar and student of English literature around the world.

Bacon’s unique private notebook held at the British Library contains a total of 51 leaves numbered pages 83 to 132 all written (apart from some French proverbs) in his own hand. The Folio numbered 85 is headed ‘Promus’ and beneath it appears the date ‘Dec. 5, 1594’ with the Folio numbered 114 headed ‘Formularies Promus’ carrying the date ‘27 Jan. 1595’ (i.e., January 1596).

It contains 1655 entries jotted down as an aid to his memory.

The entries include single words, phrases, lines, turns of speech, metaphors, similes, aphorisms, and various moral and philosophical observations. These include entries drawn from the Bible; Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, and English proverbs; and lines and verses from classical poets and dramatists, among them, Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, Horace, and Terence.

This private notebook was used by Bacon as a literary storehouse from where he developed, expanded, and introduced ideas and themes into his acknowledged writings and works. 

In Shakespeare Studies in Baconian Light R. M. Theobald produced a list of around 500 Promus entries used by Bacon in his acknowledged writings, a number the orthodox scholar Charles Crawford stated could be significantly added to, and following his detailed study of the Promus in The Bacon Shakespeare Question N. B. Cockburn put the number at about 600. More recently, its modern editors Professor Stewart and Dr Knight in The Oxford Francis Bacon: Early Writings 1584-1596 (Oxford Clarendon Press, 2012) specified that during a period of thirty years Bacon utilised these entries in the Promus for usage in a diverse range of categories and genres that included his private letters, speeches, dramatic devices, essays, religio-political tracts, legal writings, and several of his philosophical and scientific works.

In 1883 the indefatigable Baconian scholar Constance M. Pott published her monumental work entitled The Promus of Formularies and Elegancies (Being Private Notes, circ. 1594, hitherto unpublished) by Francis Bacon Illustrated and Elucidated by Passages from Shakespeare.

In a work running to more than six hundred pages, Pott reproduced a full transcript of the entries in the Promus alongside hundreds of parallel passages from the Shakespeare poems and plays. This work has remained virtually unknown for the last one hundred and fifty years because it has been systematically ignored and misrepresented by orthodox Bacon and Shakespeare editors and commentators as it manifestly demonstrates that Bacon is Shakespeare.   

Now here for the first time (unknown to or expanded upon by Pott and other previous scholars and commentators) beyond paralleling hundreds of entries from Bacon’s notebook against his Shakespeare poems and plays, the present work will show how these sources used by Bacon, the Bible, Erasmus, Florio (Italian proverbs), Heywood (English proverbs), and especially the classical poets and dramatists Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, Horace, and Terence, completely saturate his Shakespeare works, confirming beyond any doubt that he used his private notebook as an aid-to-memory and wellspring for his divine Shakespeare poems and plays.

For the full story about ‘Francis Bacon’s Notebook’ see:

PAPER: https://aphoenix1.academia.edu/research

FULL VIDEO:   https://youtu.be/LTfUbKb7KqU

TRAILER:

Note from SirBacon.org – For further enjoyment visit https://sirbacon.org/baconspeakspromus.htm

Video presented by guitaoist

Bacon and Shakespeare Parallelisms: 45/885 Examples

Bacon and Shakespeare Parallelisms Paperback – August 24, 2016
by Edwin 1835-1908 Reed (Author)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.

This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

by A. Phoenix

THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE MANUSCRIPT (HITHERTO KNOWN AS
THE NORTHUMBERLAND MANUSCRIPT) WHICH ORIGINALLY
CONTAINED COPIES OF HIS SHAKESPEARE PLAYS
RICHARD II AND RICHARD III.
By A Phoenix
November 2022

https://aphoenix1.academia.edu/research

For the full story about ‘The Bacon-Shakespeare Manuscript’ see:

PAPER: https://aphoenix1.academia.edu/research

VIDEO: https://youtu.be/QDn8gdBqnIM

CONTENTS

1. The Silence of the Shakespeare Scholars p. 6
2. The Discovery of the so-called Northumberland Manuscript p. 12
3. The Outer Cover of Bacon’s Northumberland Manuscript p. 16
4. The Handwriting on the Outer Cover of the Bacon-Shakespeare Manuscript p. 38
5. The date of the Bacon-Shakespeare Manuscript p. 49
6. The Letters, Religio-Political Tracts and Dramatic Devices still Present in the Bacon-Shakespeare Manuscript and their links to his other Shakespeare poems and plays p. 51
7. The Anonymous Leicester’s Commonwealth the Most Scandalous and Explosive Political Tract of the Elizabethan Era p. 96
8. The Missing Pieces of the Bacon-Shakespeare Manuscript: Letters, Speeches, Essays, Dramatic Devices and Plays p. 150
9. The Shakespeare Plays Richard II and Richard III originally contained within the Bacon-Shakespeare Manuscript p. 167
10. References p. 200

FACSIMILES

1. The Outer Cover of Bacon’s collection of MSS known as the Northumberland Manuscript p. 18
2. A Modern Rendering of the Outer Cover of Bacon’s collection of MSS
known as the Northumberland Manuscript p. 19
3. The monogram of Francis Bacon commencing the first stanza of The Rape of Lucrece (1594) p. 21
4. The last page of The Rape of Lucrece containing the secret signature F. Bacon p. 22
5. The title page of Ars Adulandi, The Art of Flattery containing the verse scribbled over the outer cover of the Bacon-Shakespeare Manuscript p. 25
6. Page 136 of Love’s Labour’s Lost in the 1623 Shakespeare First Folio p. 27
7. The title page of the 1598 quarto edition of Love’s Labour’s Lost ‘By W. Shakespere’ incorporating the concealed acrostic BACON p. 29
8. The title page of the 1600 quarto edition of The Merchant of Venice p. 31
9. The title page of the anonymous 1597 quarto edition of Romeo and Juliet p. 34
10. The title page of the 1599 quarto edition of Romeo and Juliet with its concealed anagram BACON p. 35
11. First page of the 1599 quarto edition of Romeo and Juliet with its Baconian-Rosicrucian AA headpiece p. 36
12. The poem by John Davies ‘To our English Terence Mr. Will: Shake-speare’
revealing Bacon is Shakespeare p. 42
13. A facsimile copy of a letter from Francis Bacon to Michael Hicks p. 46
14. An enlarged part of the outside cover of the Bacon-Shakespeare MSS p. 47
15. The Tudor family Hilliard miniatures of Queen Elizabeth, Robert Dudley, and their concealed royal sons, Francis Bacon and Robert Devereux p. 53
16. The Baconian-Rosicrucian AA headpiece over the dedication page of the first Shakespeare poem Venus and Adonis (1593) p. 54
17. The White Hart Inn at the edge of the Bacon family estate at Gorhambury
with its Mural depicting the Boar and death of Adonis in Venus and Adonis and Bacon’s Boar Crest from the special copy of his Novum Organum p. 57
18. Francis Bacon’s Achievement of Arms headed with the Crest of a Boar p. 58
19. The title page of the 1591 edition of The Troublesome Raigne of Iohn King of England, with the discouerie of King Richard Cordelions Base sonne (vulgarly named, The Bastard Fawconbridge) p. 60
20. Portrait of Queen Elizabeth royal mother of Francis Bacon and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex p. 74
21. Portrait of Francis Bacon concealed Prince of Wales heir to the throne p. 75
22. Portrait of Robert Devereux a Royal Tudor Prince p. 76
23. The title page of Bacon’s Sagesse Mysterieuse Des Anciens depicting  allas Athena the Shaker of the Spear from where he derived his nom de plume
Shake-speare with the two mottoes ‘Truth is enveloped by obscurity’ and ‘Thus it shines in the shadows’ p. 78
24. The emblem on the title page of New Atlantis (Land of the Rosicrucians) with the inscription ‘In Time the Hidden Truth Will be Revealed’) p. 79
25. The Pregnancy Portrait of Queen Elizabeth p. 87
26. Portrait of her secret husband Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester p. 88
27. Portrait of Francis Bacon as a child p. 89
28. The title page of the 1584 edition of Leicester’s Commonwealth p. 97
29. The title page of the 1641 edition of Leicester’s Commonwealth p. 106
30. The title page of the 1641 edition of Leicester’s Commonwealth attributed to Robert Parson p. 107
31. The title page of the 1706 edition Secret Memoirs of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (Leicester’s Commonwealth) p. 110
32. The title page of the 1904 edition of the History of Queen Elizabeth, Amy Robsart and the Earl of Leicester (Leicester’s Commonwealth) p. 111
33. Deciphered title page of the 1584 edition of Leicester’s Commonwealth p. 140
34. The deciphered ‘The Preface of the Conference’ page from Leicester’s Commonwealth p. 141
35. The deciphered emblem prefaced to the 1585 French version of Leicester’s Commonwealth p. 144
36. The English version/translation of the ‘Addition of the Translator’ appended to the 1585 French version of Leicester’s Commonwealth (Exeter College,
Oxford MS 166) p. 145
37. The title page of the 1597 edition of Bacon’s Essays p. 153
38. The title page of the 1598 edition of Bacon’s Essays p. 154
39. The Baconian-Rosicrucian AA headpiece on the anonymous Epicedivm, A Funerall Song, vpon the vertuous life, and godly death, of the right worshipfull the Lady Helen Branch (1594) p. 158
40. The first page of Epicedivm containing reference to The Rape of Lucrece and Asmund and Cornelia replete with a 33 Bacon cipher p. 159
41. The monogram of Francis Bacon commencing the first sonnet in the 1609 edition of Shakespeares Sonnets p. 160
42. The monogram of Francis Bacon commencing the first verse of A Lover’s Complaint with an acrostic spelling out the name of its author Bacon p. 161
43. The Baconian-Rosicrucian AA headpiece above the dedication page of Nashes Lenten Stuffe (1599) p. 163
44. The Baconian-Rosicrucian AA headpiece on the title page of Pierce Pennilesse his supplication to the Diuell (1595) p. 164
45. The Baconian-Rosicrucian AA headpiece above the first page of the 1597 edition of Richard III p. 168
46. The Baconian-Rosicrucian AA headpiece above the first page of the p. 169 1598 edition of Richard III
47. The Baconian-Rosicrucian AA headpiece above the first page of the 1597 edition of Richard II p. 170
48. The Baconian-Rosicrucian AA headpiece above the first page of the 1598 edition of Richard II p. 171
49. The deciphered title page of the 1597 edition of Richard II p. 195
50. The deciphered title page of the 1597 edition of Richard III p. 196
51. The anagram BACON on the title page of the 1598 edition of Richard III p. 197
52. The deciphered title page of the 1599 edition of The First Part of the Life and Raigne of King Henry IIII p. 198

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by A. Phoenix

It is little known that there are a substantial number of passages by professors and academics relating to the links and connections between Bacon and Shakespeare. These links appear in largely inaccessible or out of the way learned journals or other difficult to obtain publications that the majority of scholars, students and casual readers are unfamiliar with. I have therefore thought on the basis that they may be of interest to a wider audience to gather them together in one place for those with an interest in Francis Bacon and Shakespeare and the authorship of the Shakespeare works.

Two Formats : One is in text form and the other is the video.

Short paper available here:   https://www.academia.edu/90586683/Great_and_Rare_Quotes_About_Francis_Bacon_and_The_Shakespeare_Works

Great & Rare Quotes About Francis Bacon & The Shakespeare Works

The full text PDF is posted below the YouTube video.

Video here:

Powered By EmbedPress

by A. Phoenix

Here’s the next short quote video about the Great One dedicated to Lawrence in celebration of 25 wonderful years of sirbacon.org♥️♥️

By Rob at Light-of-Truth

I am tickled I met Lawrence before SirBacon.org was live. He added me as yet another Baconian to his vast list of new Baconians even before he had a website!

It was part his dynamic personality. Dude has energy, and it is contagious. Plus the subject matter is fascinating. For we Baconians thanks to Lawrence, it is as if Bacon is reaching out to all of us today and select individuals like Lawrence Gerald are Bacon’s angels merely handing a thread here and there to allow Bacon to jump in. Laugh as you wish. But I am “just sayin’“.

I knew when I saw the Bacon portrait in their hallway that my life just took a turn, then I met Lawrence to solidify it.

SirBacon.org launched on October 10, 1997. I visited Lawrence a few weeks later in 1997. What a thrill to see and participate in the creative artwork and hear what articles were pending. It was like a dam broke and a Baconian flood of information was let loose.

It was.

I could go on and on, and I do on the B’Hive often. SirBacon.org became a Baconian bulldozer against all odds. Now 25 years of changing lives and connecting Sir Francis Bacon to new friends.

But what I have created is an intimate friend to friend silly video of a ton of old images from SirBacon.org that possible only me, Lawrence, and Bacon himself would recognize them all. 😉

Lawrence, congratulations on 25 Years of SirBacon.org.

With much Love I hope you enjoy!

NOTE: Most of these images are very low resolution. HD is not possible, watch small. 😉

What Francis Bacon Means to Me
By Christina G. Waldman
October 4, 2022

Francis Bacon knew the power of a metaphor, the ability of a story to teach and convey truths. A visionary, he saw through time and attempted to steer the course of history from his “helm” four hundred years ago. My interest in Shakespeare authorship ties in with an interest in legal history that began for me around 1980 with reading Mark Edwin Andrews’ book, Law versus Equity in The Merchant of Venice: A Legalization of Act IV, Scene 1 (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 1965). The concept of equity as a component of law is one that truly concerned Francis Bacon and should concern all who care about a definition of justice that includes fairness.
Although planted years earlier, my interest in legal history started to bloom when I began researching for my book, Francis Bacon’s Hidden Hand in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice: A Study of Law, Rhetoric, and Authorship (New York: Algora Publishing, 2018). This research began as a book review at Lawrence Gerald’s suggestion. The historical relationship between rhetoric and equity is fascinating. It can be traced back to the ancient Romans, at least. Like the Roman God Janus which faces forwards and backwards, prudence going forward requires a knowledge of past events and accumulated wisdom. These concepts Bacon taught, for example, in his “Wisdom of the Ancients.”

I believe part of the significance of “Plus Ultra” is that, like a ship’s captain adjusts course in response to new information, so, too, must researchers be willing to consider each “fact” a hypothesis subject to modification by new evidence. That is the major problem I see with considering the case closed in favor of William Shaxpere of Stratford (to whom the works of the poet dramatist published under the name of “William Shakespeare” have been traditionally attributed). While humanity exists, the case for knowledge and truth can never be closed.

Bacon was also interested in the interpretation of dreams, in ways of knowing which cannot be explained logically that involve the unconscious. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” He himself had had the prophetic dream of his father’s house being plastered over in black mortar, at the time of his father Sir Nicholas Bacon’s death, while he was overseas in France in his youth.

Francis Bacon tried to show humanity the way to think clearly, to recognize the “four idols,” and to know the difference between fact and fiction, between appearance and reality, and to learn to read between the lines. Poetry is an important tool in stimulating the full use of human capabilities. Bacon was big on contrasting opposites. In the juxtaposition of two opposites, one may see each thing being compared more clearly in contradistinction. The theatre is a good example of a juxtaposition of the opposites of appearance and reality (stage and audience). Bacon realized the teaching value of the theatre. He praised the Jesuits’ use of it.

My interest in Shakespeare authorship has led me into a desire to better understand Bacon’s teachings and wisdom. It has also given me a way into understanding the Shakespeare plays better.

Bacon’s writing is eloquent, beautiful in the way that the King James Version of the Bible is beautiful. The English language is what it is today because of Bacon, “Shakespeare,” and the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. In fact, there is evidence that King James did give the KJV over to Bacon for final editing before it saw publication.

The past holds many secrets. Some might argue, what possible good can come of unearthing some of these secrets? But I would say, we should be building history upon a solid foundation of truth, not on shifting sands (as Jesus taught by parable in the Bible). Bacon also recognized that to enter the Kingdom of Heaven one must become as a little child (as Jesus also taught in the Bible).

I am extremely grateful to all at SirBacon.org for giving me the tools and encouragement to start out on an adventure of Baconian exploration that has greatly enriched my life. Plus Ultra!

By Julie Kemp

Francis Bacon opened my heart and mind (Geminis indeed) when i read a book of faction about his earliest days and what delivered him to his grand gestalt. Somehow the tragedy of his mother’s rejection of him especially with regard to declaring the truth of so much ‘background’ and heritage moved me to some very emotional weeks about 7 years ago.

My personal context at that time was consumed by caring for, then living with my late widowed mother who died in December 2017. I had retired from professional nursing to attend to this role which i sensed would be slightly disconcerting for us both but i could not bear to be nursing others in my state’s capital city whilst Mum was clinically depressed and alone in a country town. Soon i saw Mum come to laugh and enjoy her TV viewing as i had never seen her do before. Initially i was stunned and stung by the mirth and laughter i heard from her bedroom one night – but i did quickly move to enjoy her reactions and fostered such. My sister too came to see this and told me she thought it was a good thing all was working out so well. Of course my ‘buttons’ were pressed but gently so – it alerted me to just how things do pass on down in families. I sought some counselling with a local psychologist who i have come to admire for her poignant and incisive grasp of things! My own sense of childhood losses, stern discipline and lack of connection came into sharper focus. My genealogy work beginning in 2005 also assuaged heartaches and losses which had given me room to digest fresh insights into family and contexts and how we can get stuck within ourselves and not live the life it’s said we came here for.

So i had lots of ‘hangups’ early on and being the eldest (of four siblings) was one of them! I never married although i could have had i dared to trust and like myself. After years of many hard times mixed with the joys of some international travels, obtaining a university degree in 1983, followed by working in the performing arts as a secretary for several years i returned to professional nursing. In the 90’s i ventured into mental health nursing training and sought my own psychotherapy with the author of the book above alluded to, although at that time i was not involved in getting to ‘know’ ‘Shakespeare’. However many years later i consulted with the psychiatrist again and his 2012 book was on his secretary’s counter. Being told it was a book of fiction, a sort of ‘wisdom’ tale that dealt with Queen Elizabeth I, i was intrigued as i wanted some different reading material and i had had some past life regression (1 session only) which featured this lady!

It took a year before i started reading ‘The Way of the Quest’ by Dr, George Blair-West. It took me back to my young days of reading beloved fables and was rapt; it did though help to get back in touch with my ‘sense of injustice’ and the agony of it. I found myself, now in my mid 60’s restricted to time and place as i never had quite been before. It seemed ‘the Universe’ was gently forcing me perhaps to face myself anew. One day i was talking with Mum in her suite and at one point burst into tears telling her about George’s book. I was sobbing as i tried to explain what it was about and how incensed i felt by the forces forever taking aim at Francis. Mum was a very thoughtful if not outwardly demonstrable person but she was tender towards me yet mystified as to why i was so upset. I was at that time not quite able to reply fully.

I want to remember and retain monarchy (constitutional) which so recently has loomed large on the World Stage Itself. Francis was and is King of Literature and a Prince of All Realms. I want his story now to be told in full as so much is declared nowadays in the name of ‘mental health’. But hey, Francis is one great avatar of ‘mental health’ who lived the range of human experience in a massively toxic age that explains our own. Let’s really look at him anew.

Kindest regards and thanks for your great website Lawrence,

Julie.

by Allisnum2er

In honor of SirBacon.org’s 25th Anniversary I wish to acknowledge Thomas Bockenham for his Work and especially for his discovery, thanks to a 13 by 13 square , of the true identity of the Bard concealed on Shakespeare Monument.

https://sirbacon.org/archives/Poets Corner Statue.mp4

Related documents:

https://sirbacon.org/links/bio__on_bokie.htm

https://sirbacon.org/gallery/west.htm

And here are my presents for this special occasion.

Interestingly, the nef, that is the french word for “nave”, was “a 16th century clock in the form of a ship having mechanical devices to illustrate astronomical movements.” (Merriam-Webster)

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1866-1030-1

With the name FRANCIS BACON forming the two Pillars of Hercules, I think that it is a direct reference to the frontispiece of Francis Bacon’s Book Instauratio Magna .

https://archive.org/details/nby_231406

In regard of the Letter H, I already mentionned on the B’Hive Community that in my opinion, the secret of this letter was given by Ben Jonson in his English Grammar, published posthumesly in 1640 :

 “And though I dare not say she is (as I have heard one call her) the Queen -mother of consonants ; yet she is the life and quickening of c, g, p, s, t, w .”

Talking about the Letter H and the Queen mother, I made a discovery few days ago, as I was looking for the best gift to offer on the 25th anniversary of SirBacon.org.

This discovery gave birth to the following video that I am very happy to share with you .

by SirBacon.org

Today, October 10, 2022, 25 years after SirBacon.org was launched, we thought we’d share some of our oldest work. The What’s New Page has been a key part of SirBacon.org and is still today. When we rebuilt the website we included What’s New content from 2016 forward, but today we are offering a glimpse of the past with the What’s New on SirBacon.org Archives containing everything from 1998 through 2015. (Keep in mind websites, links, and email addresses are not permanent. We’ll aim to clean up outdated links in time.)

Enjoy!

Video By Kate Cassidy

If you are interested in codes and cipher, this video is for you. Sometimes a message has been staring us in the face. We just need the key. This is a further video following on from:

Part 1 https://youtu.be/nrsacG8L90w
Part 2 https://youtu.be/xa5VrlxbLMc
Part 3 https://youtu.be/WXdRXUTQFLQ

All the videos discuss the true authorship of the works of Shakespeare, as we approach the 400th anniversary of the First Folio in 1623. This video looks at the Sonnets printed separately in 1609.

These are the links to which I refer in the video:

William C Marshall YouTube Video https://youtu.be/4C9phKLx2vU

How to Make Anything Signify Anything https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issue…

The new paper on the cryptanalysts: The Friedmans and Cipher in the Shakespeare Works https://aphoenix1.academia.edu/research.

Cryptomenytices et cryptographiae https://archive.org/details/gustavise…

and https://sirbacon.org/

For a PDF on Baconian Ciphers in Shakespeare, see https://www.fbrt.org.uk/wp-content/up…

by A. Phoenix

This is the Holy Grail of the Shakespeare World: an original manuscript of a Shakespeare play corrected in the hand of its secret concealed author Francis Bacon

126 page Academic Paper  https://aphoenix1.academia.edu/research  

It is little known to virtually all Shakespeare scholars, the ordinary schoolmen, and the rest of the world that there exists an early manuscript version of the play Henry IV. This manuscript is the earliest extant manuscript of a Shakespeare play ever discovered, an historical landmark of the utmost importance, that one might be forgiven for thinking that it would not only be well-known and minutely scrutinised by Shakespeare scholars around the globe, as well as known to all and sundry with only the remotest interest in Shakespeare, but celebrated for what it is: a unique artefact of world-wide significance.

The reason this is not the case is because the manuscript itself conceals an explosive secret which it would be difficult to overestimate of the most far-reaching consequences which completely collapses the fiction and illusion William Shakspere of Stratford wrote the Shakespeare works and at the same time confirms the truth that Francis Bacon is our supreme poet and dramatist Shakespeare.

This manuscript was discovered in 1844 preserved in the collection of the eighth Baronet Sir Edward Dering (1807-96) at Surrenden Hall near Pluckley in Kent. It had previously formed part of the library of the first Sir Edward Dering (1598-1644), an antiquarian with an interest in literature and drama, named after his uncle the Puritan preacher Edward Dering patronised by the Cooke sisters Lady Anne Cooke Bacon, Lady Elizabeth Cooke Hoby Russell, Lady Mildred Cooke Cecil and Lady Cooke Killigrew. The relatively obscure Sir Edward Dering (1598-1644) about whose early life very little is known was-here revealed for the first time-a close friend and relative (twice over) of the author of Henry IV Francis Bacon.

To the present day the so-called Dering manuscript is presented to the world as a handwritten version of an abridgement of I and 2 Henry IV mainly written by a scribe, with revisions in the hand of Sir Edward Dering, possibly for a court performance at the court of James I or a private performance at his house in Kent c.1623. It is said that the manuscript is or is apparently based on the 1613 quarto edition of I Henry IV and 1600 quarto edition of 2 Henry IV meaning the manuscript dates from no earlier than 1613 and as Dering’s revisions appear to incorporate some emendations in the First Folio, the MS or parts of the MS, may be dated sometime between 1622 to 1624.

One hundred and twenty years after the so-called Dering MS was first discovered which was afterwards purchased in  great secrecy by Henry Folger, who secreted it away in the Folger Shakespeare Library, a Secret Baconian-Rosicrucian-Freemasonic Institution, a facsimile edition of it was published in 1974.

The edition entitled The History of King Henry The Fourth as revised by Sir Edward Dering published by the Folger Shakespeare, edited by George Walton Williams and Gwynne Blakemore Evans, is not generally well known and remains unfamiliar to the ordinary schoolmen and casual student, and is not quite what it appears to the uninstructed eye.

Its joint editor G. Blakemore Evans worked for US Intelligence serving in the Army Signal Corps alongside William Friedman at Bletchley run by British Intelligence, the centre of allied cipher and code-breaking during the Second World War. In their book The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined the Fraudulent Friedmans falsely maintained that there were no Baconian ciphers used in the Shakespeare works, in perpetrating one of the greatest academic and literary frauds of all time.

However as the present writer demonstrated in The Fraudulent Friedmans: The Bacon Ciphers in the Shakespeare Works their fraudulent book The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined is itself an elaborate cryptogram containing hidden Baconian ciphers conveying the concealed cryptographic message that Francis Bacon, Brother of the Rosy Cross, is Shakespeare. The Friedmans knew there were Baconian ciphers present in the Shakespeare works, a secret cryptically incorporated throughout their work aided by the Folger Shakespeare Library, revealing and confirming Bacon is Shakespeare.

Similarly, while in the open plain text of The History of King Henry The Fourth as revised by Sir Edward Dering its editors George Walton Williams and Gwynne Blakemore Evans himself an expert in cryptography, maintained the fiction of the so-called Dering manuscript, its title page incorporated a number of hidden Baconian ciphers, revealing and confirming that the manuscript of Henry IV was of Baconian origin and likewise that Bacon is Shakespeare.  

In contrast to Williams and Evans and several other Shakespeare scholars who have maintained and repeated the fiction of the so-called Dering manuscript, the orthodox scholar Professor Hardin Craig observed that the MS contains a number of differences and peculiarities which remain unchanged by any contact with the fifth 1613 quarto of I Henry IV. He further observes that it was written in a normal Elizabethan hand with no discernible Jacobean intermixtures, and most importantly, concludes it may be older than the earliest 1598 quarto edition of I Henry IV, and that it is a manuscript of Shakespeare’s play when it was originally one and not two plays.

This whole illusory house of cards rests entirely on the presence of Dering’s hand in the manuscript. If his hand is not present, Dering self-evidently had nothing whatsoever to do with its composition, or its revision, cuts, its division into acts and scenes, its numerous additions of fifty lines and half lines, the introduction of original material in prose and verse, or its wholesale and extensive corrections. All from a person who never wrote a single drama in his entire life or is known to have heavily revised and amended any other play, never mind a Shakespeare play, in the same fashion or manner. The very premise on which this theory rests is self-evidently absurd and more importantly demonstrably false.

The large formatted edition of The History of King Henry The Fourth as revised by Sir Edward Dering totals two hundred and thirty-eight pages, comprising an introduction, a Note on the Transcription and Textual Notes, The Names of All the Characters, a facsimile and transcription with textual notes of the manuscript itself, and a Descriptive and Historical Collation. There is however one absolutely critical piece of evidence missing, namely a facsimile of Dering’s handwriting.

There is no reasonable and rational explanation whatsoever why Evans and Williams did not reproduce what constitutes the most important evidence in their whole Dering theory. By now the intelligent and alert reader will probably strongly suspect or more likely readily realise there is something wrong, something very wrong when the modern authorities on the Dering manuscript have unmistakably and very deliberately not reproduced facsimiles of Dering’s handwriting in this standard edition of the so-called Dering manuscript.

What was it then they wanted to conceal from other ordinary scholars and the rest of the Shakespearean world? Simple, the hand of Dering is nowhere present in the so-called Dering manuscript, a very simple fact which at a stroke completely and incontrovertibly exposes and collapses this whole charade and irrefutably demolishes a fraud or illusion (secretly known to some for more than a century) once and for all.    

The known and undoubted examples of Dering’s hand bears no resemblance whatsoever to the handwriting (including its corrections) to any of the handwriting in the so-called Dering manuscript, or the handwriting in the obverse and reverse of the scrap of paper. It fact not only is it manifestly plain that Dering’s known hand and the hands in the so-called Dering MS do not even remotely resemble each other, it is difficult to conceive of any other specimens of handwritings, being more different.

What then is the reason for the fraud and the false insistence on Dering’s handwriting being present in the so-called Dering MS? The reason is because it masks and conceals its true status, provenance and date. In other words it misdirects the eye away from a great historical secret, one known to some since it was first discovered, and others who were made privy to the secret afterwards.

The so-called Dering manuscript is a single-five act Shakespeare play of Henry IV and is earlier than the first printed quarto of The Historie of Henrie the fourth issued in 1598 and the quarto edition of The Second part of Henrie the fourth printed in 1600. The MS represents the play as Bacon originally composed it when it was one play and not two before developing his original version into two separate parts. Furthermore, we can be reasonably precise regarding the date of the manuscript. It is widely agreed Henry IV followed closely upon Richard II as not only is Henry IV next chronologically its predecessor Richard II clearly points to a sequel. The earlier Richard II is believed to date to around late 1595 or early 1596, and Henry IV was probably composed shortly after, sometime in 1596.

There appears to be three hands in the so-called Dering MS two of which were scribes. It appears the manuscript was copied from another MS now lost. The so-called Dering MS was begun by one scribe who copied out the whole of page one and for some unknown reason after he had completed the first page the task was turned over to a second scribe, who copied out the rest of the manuscript.

The manuscript is intimately connected to Bacon’s literary workshop of writers, scribes and copyists that produced Bacon’s Northumberland MSS, which once contained his Shakespeare plays Richard II and Richard III, that dates from around 1596/7. On the outside cover of the Northumberland MSS in a contemporary hand there are more than a dozen examples of various forms of the name Bacon or Francis Bacon and his literary mask Shakespeare or William Shakespeare. Above the entry for the Shakespeare play Richard II is written ‘By Mr. ffrauncis William Shakespeare’ and where the name ‘William Shakespeare’ has been written further down the page the word ‘Your’ is written twice across it, so thus reads ‘Your William Shakespeare’. The writing on the outer cover of the manuscript is chiefly in one hand with occasional words in another, and a few words written at angle, possibly by a third. One of the hands was undoubtedly Bacon who was also responsible for the monogram signature ‘W.S.’ at the top right hand corner. As with the so-called Dering manuscript, the main content of Bacon’s Northumberland MSS is written in two or more hands. One of the works contained within it generally referred to by the title Leicester’s Commonwealth is itself written by two different scribes whose identity remains unknown. On examining the facsimiles of the so-called Dering MS and the aforementioned work in Bacon’s Northumberland MSS it appears that one of the scribes who copied out Leicester’s Commonwealth was also responsible for copying out the so-called Dering MS from the second page onwards. It appears that in producing the so-called Dering manuscript one of these scribes was most likely working from Bacon’s original (‘foul papers’) manuscript of I Henry IV, producing an authorial fair copy of the play, which Bacon later gifted to his friend and relative Sir Edward Dering.

The so-called corrector’s hand in the so-called Dering manuscript is Bacon’s own cramped hand, as one would expect, from the author of the play.

It is now more than fitting that instead of it being referred to as the Dering manuscript it is hereafter known by its right and proper designation as Francis Bacon’s 1596 manuscript of Henry IV, the unique and earliest known extant manuscript of a Shakespeare play, the holy grail of Shakespeare scholarship.    

by A. Phoenix

THE FOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY SYNOPSIS

The unique and greatest Shakespeare repository in the world the Folger Shakespeare Library is to the present day still shrouded in secrecy and mystery with an untold secret history which stretches back to Elizabethan and Jacobean England to the time of the publication of the Shakespeare First Folio the bedrock on which the library is founded.

The Folgers trace their colonial descent directly back to Peter Folger (1617-1690) translator and government official born in Norwich, England, in 1617, the son of John Folger and Meriba Gibbs. His father John Folger was born in 1594 in the county of Norfolk and his wife Meriba Gibbs two miles east of the county of Norfolk, England in 1600. Virtually nothing is known about either John and Meriba Gibbs Folger and the early years of their son Peter. There is however every likelihood that the Folgers knew members of the Bacon family. The twin counties of Suffolk and Norfolk of East Anglia were the political strongholds of the prominent Bacon family, whose wide and extensive private and social circles, extended across the whole region. The great scion of the family the philosopher-poet Francis Bacon, concealed author of the Shakespeare works, the inspiration of Henry and Emily Folger for the Folger Shakespeare Library, successively served as the Member of Parliament for Ipswich in the county of Suffolk in 1597, 1601, 1604 and 1610.

This was the period of the great expansion into North America secretly directed by Francis Bacon and his Rosicrucian Brotherhood that was to forever change the future direction of the modern world. In 1606, the Virginia Company was formed to organize and promote the colonisation of Virginia and shortly after the first permanent English speaking settlement in North America was established at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, the seed which grew and evolved into the first modern constitutional and federal republic, the United States of America.

It is conceivable that through knowledge of the activities of Francis Bacon and the London Virginia Company and the first permanent English settlement in Jamestown, followed by Bermuda (1609), Newfoundland (1610), and afterwards Massachusetts, founded by the Pilgrims transported across the Atlantic in the Mayflower in 1620, that the Folger family developed the idea of emigrating to the New World.

The elusive John Folger and his eighteen year old son Peter Folger emigrated to Massachusetts in 1635. During his voyage to America on the vessel Abigail, Peter first met Mary Morrill, whom he married in 1644. Their youngest daughter Abiah, was the mother of the great writer, scientist, and philosopher Benjamin Franklin, the most important Rosicrucian-Freemason of his time and one of the Founding Freemasonic Fathers of the United States of America. Franklin was also a member of the Baconian-Rosicrucian-Freemasonic Royal Society and for several years he regularly corresponded with the great eighteenth-century Shakespearean actor David Garrick and Dr Samuel Johnson, editor of the Shakespeare works.

It was Freemason David Garrick who organized the Grand Shakespeare Jubilee of 1769 which put Stratford-upon-Avon, home of William Shakspere, as the false centre of the Shakespeare world on the map, a Rosicrucian-Freemasonic ludibrium, that still fools and deceives nearly all and sundry around the Shakespearean globe to the present day.

In homage to his great ancestor Benjamin Franklin, the originator of the magnificent and unique Folger Shakespeare Library, Henry Clay Folger said that he had not collected Shakespeareana he would have collected Frankliniana.

In her recent work The Millionaire and the Bard on the obsessively secretive Henry Folger and the Shakespeare Folger Library its author Andrea Mays states that ‘The Folger Library maintains the culture of modesty and secrecy established by its founders’ and told how Henry and Emily Folger filled the Folger Shakespeare library with all kinds of ‘sophisticated and obscure symbols and images’ as well as ‘secret words and signs’ that ‘formed a silent composition’ that only ‘a time traveller or a scholar could comprehend’.

She did not however provide an explanation that would shed light on or explain the meaning of all the secret, arcane signs, images, symbols, and the ubiquitous so-called ‘Tudor Rose’, that all formed part of the silent composition encoded into the Folger Shakespeare Library; and thus far, no one has hitherto been able to comprehend, decipher, and decode them.

Disclosed here for the first time, the Folger Shakespeare Library is a complex Baconian-Rosicrucian-Freemasonic cryptogram that when decoded conveys the explosive far reaching secret known to the Folgers, namely, the concealed identity of the true author of the Shakespeare works, Francis Bacon.

PDF – https://aphoenix1.academia.edu/research

Video By Kate Cassidy

“This is a short addendum to my Part One and Part Two videos about the Shakespeare authorship question and the Mystery Schools.

Part One https://youtu.be/nrsacG8L90w

Part Two https://youtu.be/xa5VrlxbLMc

by A. Phoenix

THE FRAUDULENT FRIEDMANS BY A PHOENIX.

We have produced a 340 page book entitled The Fraudulent Friedmans (supported by 81 illustrations and 756 references) accompanied by a I hour and 40 minutes video. Given the length of the book in the following days and weeks we will be providing extracts highlighting important pieces of evidence and information relating to the lives and writings of the Friedmans and their involvement in the greatest literary fraud in history concerning Francis Bacon’s concealed authorship of the Shakespeare works.

Here are the links for the video trailer, the full video and the book:

For the video trailer: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I-hIZPortXAgMupMTs89bcmlq4zzxO2D/view

For the video that explores the full story see: https://youtu.be/fc2ErlSmmjI

For a detailed paper on ‘The Friedman Fraud’ see: https://aphoenix1.academia.edu/research

Please find a synopsis below:

SYNOPSIS OF THE FRAUDULENT FRIEDMANS: THE BACON CIPHERS IN THE SHAKESPEARE WORKS

 By A Phoenix 

For over sixty years deluded Bacon and Shakespeare scholars supported by universities around the four corners of the globe, fanned by the international news media, have deceived the rest of the world into believing that the Friedmans, the two greatest cryptographers of the twentieth century, had once and for all in their book The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined put an end to the notion of Baconian ciphers being present in the Shakespeare plays, a falsehood which continues to deceive the world to the present day.

This is a story about one of the greatest literary frauds of all time fully revealed here for the first time that will absolutely shock Shakespeare scholarship and the rest of the world and necessitate a complete re-assessment of Francis Bacon’s true authorship of the Shakespeare works.

From a very early age Francis Bacon was given a baptism into ciphers and codes and other arcane cryptic devices for concealing and communicating secret and hidden information. His father Lord Keeper and de facto Lord Chancellor of England Sir Nicholas Bacon and his uncle Secretary of State Sir William Cecil were the twin pillars of the Elizabethan Reformation and effectively the heads of the secret state. The lifeblood of the Elizabethan state and the English Secret Service headed by Sir Francis Walsingham were secret ciphers and codes and its three principal pillars Bacon, Cecil and Walsingham went to extraordinary lengths to maintain a cryptographic hegemony over their dangerous European rivals and the domestic enemies of the English government. Early in the Elizabethan reign Sir William Cecil and Sir Nicholas Bacon directed the great mathematician and cryptographic expert Dr John Dee to seek out a rare manuscript copy of Johannes Trithemius’s Steganographia. The spy, intelligencer and secret government agent Dr Dee had a profound and extensive interest in cryptology and after tracking down a prized manuscript of Steganographia on the continent he returned with it to England, where a copy of it was placed in the hands of his political masters. He was afterwards a mentor to the young Francis Bacon who possessed an all-consuming and profound fascination for all ciphers and codes and other cryptographic devices necessary for a life in the English Secret Service.

In 1576 a fifteen year old Francis Bacon travelled in the train of the Ambassador-elect Sir Amias Paulet for a three year stay at the English Embassy in Paris which stood at the very centre of European intrigue and espionage where he was joined by the great English cryptographer Thomas Phelippes with the two of them occupied with ciphers and other areas of cryptography on an almost daily basis. It was during his time in Paris that Bacon later recalled how he invented his famous bi-literal cipher, a cipher system he later secretly inserted into his Shakespeare works. Living in Paris at the time when Bacon was busy working with and inventing new ciphers was the diplomat and cryptographer Blaise de Vigenère with whom Bacon is believed to have collaborated on his Traicte des Chiffre or secret ways of writing.  

In 1591 there appeared in London a Latin edition of a milestone work on cryptology by the Italian polymath and playwright Giambattista della Porta entitled De Fvtivis Literarvm Notis printed by John Wolfe, and dedicated to Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. Some two centuries later there was discovered at Northumberland House (at the time in the ownership of his ancestor Earl Percy, afterwards the Duke of Northumberland) what has come to be known as the Northumberland MSS that originally contained several of Bacon’s writings among them his Shakespeare plays Richard II and Richard III. On the outer-cover of The Northumberland Manuscript the name of Bacon/Francis Bacon and his pseudonym Shakespeare/William Shakespeare are scribbled on more than a dozen occasions. Down the left side appears Honorificabiletudine a variant of the long word honorificabilitudinitatibus in Love’s Labour’s Lost (5:1:41). Further down the page we are met with the entry ‘revealing day through every crany peepes and see Shak’, line 1086 of The Rape of Lucrece ‘revealing day through every cranny spies’. In particular above the entry for Bacon’s Shakespeare play Richard II appears the entry ‘By Mr. ffrauncis William Shakespeare’ and further down the word ‘Your’ is twice written across his pseudonym William Shakespeare-so it reads ‘Your William Shakespeare’.

With the spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham now dead the headquarters of the English Secret Service had been transferred to Essex House on the Strand the grand stately residence of the royal favourite Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex. Under the roof of Essex House, Francis and Anthony Bacon ran a vast domestic and foreign intelligence network of spies and intelligencers operating across the European continent. Working out of Gray’s Inn and Essex House, Francis and Anthony also set up a literary workshop with connections to English printers and publishers employing writers, translators, and scribes for distribution of private manuscripts, books, plays, masques and other entertainments. This Bacon-Essex circle included the Earl of Southampton to whom Bacon dedicated Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece and to whom many of his Shakespeare sonnets were addressed.

Francis and Anthony Bacon were the joint heads of the foreign and domestic arms of the English Secret Service that evolved into British Intelligence in other words the equivalent of MI5 and MI6. They were in charge of gathering intelligence domestically and from all over Europe for which they employed a highly organised network of secret agents and spies whose important intelligence and information was conveyed through secret codes and ciphers and the interception of ciphered correspondence of enemy agents, deciphered by Francis, Anthony, and Thomas Phelippes.

In his first major acknowledged work The Advancement of Learning Bacon sets out a series of cipher systems which he named Simple Cipher, Kay Cipher, Wheel Cipher and his Bi-literal Cipher, that he secretly incorporated into the 1623 Shakespeare First Folio. Shortly before the publication of the First Folio in November 1623 there appeared in Latin Bacon’s truly monumental De Augmentis Scientiarum Libri IX which included a much more expansive and detailed explanation of his Bi-literal Cipher. Soon after the publication of the De Augmentis and the Shakespeare First Folio there appeared the extremely rare work on cryptology entitled Cryptomenytices et Cryptographiae Libri IX by one Gustavus Selenus, a pseudonym for Augustus, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg, a near five hundred page work published at Luneburg early in 1624. The revealing title page of the Cryptomenytices et Cryptographiae contains a pictorial cryptogram depicting Francis Bacon giving a figure holding a spear dressed in actor’s boots, representing the actor William Shakspere, a quarto or book of plays, who is shown carrying them off into the distance toward a building representing the Globe Theatre.

Some three centuries later the discovery of the presence of Bacon’s Biliteral Cipher was announced to the world in a series of volumes published by the remarkable Elizabeth Wells Gallup entitled The Bi-literal Cypher of Sir Francis Bacon Discovered in his Works. On examining the prefatory material of the 1623 Shakespeare First Folio Gallup deciphered a series of revelations about Francis Bacon’s secret life and enormous corpus of writings revealing that not only was he the secret author of the Shakespeare works but also the works published in the names of among others Spenser, Greene, and Marlowe, and that he was the concealed royal son of Queen Elizabeth and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.

News of these revelations soon reached the ears of Colonel George Fabyan who had had set up his  Riverbank estate located west of Chicago which is still shrouded in secrecy and mystery to the present day. It was here that Colonel Fabyan provided Gallup with a staff and extensive resources to continue her investigations into the Bacon Bi-literal Cipher and its presence in the Shakespeare works and other Baconian publications set forth anonymously or in the names of others. She was afterwards joined at Riverbank by William F. Friedman and his future wife Elizebeth Smith, the widely acclaimed duo who went on to become the two greatest cryptographers of the twentieth century and the authors of The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined.

The years spent by the Friedmans at Riverbank are not well-documented and what we know or believe of their time there almost entirely derives from the story told by the Friedmans themselves in a series of unpublished manuscripts and lectures and their book The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined.   

For the next few years the Friedmans worked closely alongside Elizabeth Wells Gallup assisting her in a complex and minute study of the Bacon Bi-literal Cipher and its links to the Shakespeare First Folio and soon after the Friedmans were appointed the joints Heads of the Riverbank Department of Ciphers.

During this period the Riverbank Cipher Department headed by the Friedmans produced a series of pamphlets known as the Riverbank Laboratories Publications on Cryptography. These comprise of a series of important ground-breaking technical monographs dealing with cryptography and cryptanalysis and several dealing with Gallup’s work on the Bacon Bi-literal Cipher. A number of the volumes on the Bacon Bi-literal Cipher were issued anonymously and the identity of their author (s), who were of course known to the Friedmans, remain unknown to the world at large to the present day.

For more than half a century the Friedmans had every opportunity to reveal the identity of the authors of these anonymous Riverbank publications on the Bacon Bi-literal Cipher but repeatedly refused to do so. The reason why, is the Friedmans themselves, were the anonymous authors of these tracts in which it is emphatically stated that the presence of Bacon’s cipher system identified by Elizabeth Wells Gallup has been repeatedly tested and dissected, and was and is, demonstrable beyond any and all doubt.

In 1997 there appeared a still virtually unknown work entitled The Sabines at Riverbank: Their Role in the Science of Architectural Acoustics by John W. Kopec. The book issued by the Acoustical Society of America was limited to only a thousand copies on a subject which falls outside the ordinary scope of literary scholarship and largely for this reason still remains unknown to Baconian and Shakespearean scholarship.

In researching the work Kopec fully immersed himself in the history of Riverbank, a history which has barely been glanced at. Virtually all of what little is known of the Riverbank Cipher Department has come down to us through the lens of the Friedmans. Their three main repositories (two unpublished) where they discussed their time at Riverbank provide us with only a very carefully edited version of the circumstances and events surrounding it and their parts played in the authorship of the Riverbank publications on the Bacon Bi-literal Cipher. Their various accounts about their time at Riverbank are marked by inconsistency, factual discrepancy, deliberate omissions, falsehoods, and deceit. Now here for the very first time was a book on Riverbank by an author who had spent more than two decades on site with unlimited access to what records remained of its secret, obscure and hidden past. Kopec’s book is dedicated to Don Williams, son of Fabyan’s chauffeur Bert Williams, who drove the limousine that picked up Elizebeth Smith Friedman from the Newberry Library in Chicago, marking the beginning of her career at Riverbank from 1916 to 1920.

The long-time Riverbank chauffeur Bert Williams knew the Friedmans well and for the years the couple lived on the estate he was in almost daily contact with them, as he was with Elizabeth Wells Gallup, providing him with first-hand inside information about the Riverbank publications on the Bacon Bi-literal Ciphers and their authorship.  

Outside of the records Don Williams ‘Mr. Riverbank’ who was born there in 1920 was a critical source of information for Kopec. Don ‘Mr Riverbank’ Williams, worked at Riverbank for 35 years before retiring in 1985, and knew more about it than any other person alive. In the main body of the text Kopec devoted several pages to the period spent by the Friedmans at the Riverbank estate. His informative discussions with Don Williams included the explosive and far-reaching statement of enormous historical importance to Baconian and Shakespearean scholarship and the truth about Lord Bacon’s authorship of the Shakespeare works: namely, the anonymous The Greatest Work of Sir Francis Bacon issued by the Riverbank Cipher Department was written by the Friedmans, confirming the presence of the Bacon Bi-literal Cipher in the Shakespeare canon.                 

For the rest of their lives the Friedmans remained silent about their authorship of The Greatest Work of Sir Francis Bacon endorsing the presence of the Bacon Bi-literal Cipher in the Shakespeare works and decades later when both Fabyan and Elizabeth Wells Gallup were long dead wrote The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined wherein they fraudulently pretended in the open plain text that no Bacon ciphers were used in the Shakespeare poems and plays in one of the greatest academic and literary frauds of all time. However revealed and demonstrated here for the first time The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined is itself one very elaborate cryptogram containing hidden secret Bacon ciphers repeatedly conveying the concealed cryptographic message that Francis Bacon, Brother of the Rosy Cross, is Shakespeare.

The Friedmans knew there were Bacon ciphers present in the Shakespeare works and that Bacon is the true secret author of the Shakespeare works, a secret which at a single stroke completely collapses the Stratfordian fiction and illusion that the illiterate/semi-illiterate William Shakspere was the author of the Shakespeare plays. It was a secret they took to the graves but not beyond it. For on the tombstone of William and Elizebeth Friedman, one designed by themselves, the two greatest cryptographers of the twentieth century, left a secret cryptographic message:

FRANCIS BACON IS SHAKESPEARE.

by Ryan Murtha

The writings of Francis Bacon contain numerous discussions of esotericism. In a general sense, the essay “Of Simulation and Dissimulation” stresses the importance of knowing “what things are to be laid open, and what to be secreted, and what to be showed at half lights, and to whom and when.” In New Atlantis, members of the scientific fraternity “take all an oath of secrecy, for the concealing of those [inventions and discoveries] which we think fit to keep secret.” In The Advancement of Learning Bacon distinguishes between “disclosed” (exoteric) and “enigmatical” (esoteric) writing, the latter allowing the author “to remove the vulgar capacities from being admitted to the secrets of knowledges, and to reserve them to selected auditors, or wits of such sharpness as can pierce the veil.” In Valerius Terminus he again extols the practice of esoteric writing “both for the avoiding of abuse in the excluded, and the strengthening of affection in the admitted.” Hence it is possible that we do not yet fully understand Bacon; the first serious attempt to investigate his religious opinions was Steven Matthews’s excellent 2008 book Theology and Science in the Thought of Francis Bacon. In the present essay, I argue that Bacon was prone to visionary or religious experiences, about which he wrote in the form of alchemical tracts published under a number of pseudonyms.

Read more…

by Richard Allan Wagner

Hamlet’s “To Be or Not to Be” speech is, possibly, the last place people would expect to find a line from Masonic ritual—yet, word-for-word, there it is—hiding like an “undiscovered” treasure as countless actors throughout the centuries have unwittingly spoken the words without gleaning the full measure of their meaning or origin.

Read more…

By Eric Roberts

“The purpose of this gallery of portraits is to provide a visual complement to the countless written texts by and about Sir Francis Bacon. We can be fairly certain that Francis himself commissioned at least ten of the fourteen pictures in this inventory of portraits produced during his lifetime. It is also certain that he wanted future generations to be able to see what the man behind the words actually looked like. During the course of research, it soon became evident that the only digital copies of Francis Bacon’s portraits available online were of small size and low resolution, and that there was a genuine need to provide public access to better quality images. Only then could the subtle details and facial expressions captured in these portraits be appreciated.Thus, the decision to purchase and assemble the best images available on behalf of all Baconians and admirers of the life and works of Francis Bacon was a ’no brainer’. This project would not have been realized without the help of Lawrence Gerald, Rob Fowler, Peter Dawkins, Gary Keegan, A. Phoenix, and The Francis Bacon Society.”

View the Gallery: Francis Bacon’s Portraits from Life

by Peter Dawkins

Peter Dawkins has wriTTen an Illuminating article about the Shakespeare monument in Stratford while describing some very interesting ciphers embedded  in the inscription. It is a must read for any of us.

Read more…

Video by A. Phoenix

View this video  that illustrates the presence of Baconian ciphers on the title page of the 1623 Shakespeare First Folio cryptographically confirming that Francis Bacon is Shakespeare.

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