d. 9 April 1626
Bacon did not marry until the late age of forty-eight, and contemporary figures relate that he was by preference homosexual. John Aubrey in hisBrief Lives says quite bluntly that Bacon "was a pederast" and had "ganimeds and favourites" ("pederast" in Renaissance diction meant generally "homosexual" rather than specifically a lover of minors; "ganimed" of course derives from the mythical prince abducted by Zeus to be his cup-bearer and bed-warmer.) The Puritan moralist Sir Simonds D'Ewes (Bacon's fellow Member of Parliament) in his Autobiography and Correspondence discusses Bacon's love for his Welsh serving-men, in particular a "very effeminate-faced youth" whom he calls "his catamite and bed-fellow" ("catamite" is a corruption of "Ganymede").
Even Bacon's mother, Lady Ann Bacon, in a letter to her other sonAnthony (also gay), complains of "that bloody Percy" whom Francis kept "yea as a coach companion and a bed companion," as well as others including Jones, Markes, Enney "and his Welchmen one after another." Lady Ann's major distress was not that her son was gay, but that it violated decorum for a nobleman to allow a servant to sleep in themaster bedroom; she felt that a lower-ranking bedroom would have been more appropriate.
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