Francis Bacon (not the contemporary artist) was, until his financial disgrace, considered one of the leading statesmen of England, and following James I's accession, of Britain as a whole and also may have written shakespeare's works okay no he didn't.
In addition to generally being acknowledged as the father of the scientific method, he had a pretty good political career, serving in Parliament several times as well as the Star Chamber, eventually becoming the very first Queen's Counsel (to Elizabeth I), and even acting as temporary regent to James VI/I. Bacon was known for his reformist attitudes and advocated for the limitation of tyrannical power, and overall was highly respected until the scandals in his late career in which one of his patrons, the infamous George Villiers, left him high and dry, and he died before the Duke of Buckingham's downfall.
His love life wasn't exactly a stirring success either; he courted the 20 year-old widow Elizabeth Hatton only for her to marry his arch-nemesis, Sir Edward Coke, and he never really quite got over it. Later in life he married the 14 year-old Alice Barnham, but never had any children with her (and to be honest that's a pretty creepy age gap, although it must have been accepted in contemporary Stuart society) and so his titles of Baron Verulam and Viscount St. Albans lapsed.
So what if he has a son with Alice in, say, 1610 (for the sake of argument let's say he names him William after his influential uncle, William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, mainly because I like the sound of "Bill Bacon"?
) within whom he instills these values and generally is the same sort of good egg?
Certainly a Francis Bacon type might have eased some of the tensions between Charles I and Parliament - Bill Bacon would be about 30 years old at the OTL outbreak of Civil War, so that's plenty of time for him to build up his career - and there's no reason to assume that the 2nd Baron Verulam couldn't rebound from his father's disgrace after George Villiers bites it.
What sort of career could Bill Bacon have? Could he have been a strong mediating figure between Charles I and Parliament? Does the viscountcy of St. Albans continue? What if instead Francis Bacon successfully courts Elizabeth Hatton, with all the knock-on effects that entails?
In addition to generally being acknowledged as the father of the scientific method, he had a pretty good political career, serving in Parliament several times as well as the Star Chamber, eventually becoming the very first Queen's Counsel (to Elizabeth I), and even acting as temporary regent to James VI/I. Bacon was known for his reformist attitudes and advocated for the limitation of tyrannical power, and overall was highly respected until the scandals in his late career in which one of his patrons, the infamous George Villiers, left him high and dry, and he died before the Duke of Buckingham's downfall.
His love life wasn't exactly a stirring success either; he courted the 20 year-old widow Elizabeth Hatton only for her to marry his arch-nemesis, Sir Edward Coke, and he never really quite got over it. Later in life he married the 14 year-old Alice Barnham, but never had any children with her (and to be honest that's a pretty creepy age gap, although it must have been accepted in contemporary Stuart society) and so his titles of Baron Verulam and Viscount St. Albans lapsed.
So what if he has a son with Alice in, say, 1610 (for the sake of argument let's say he names him William after his influential uncle, William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, mainly because I like the sound of "Bill Bacon"?
) within whom he instills these values and generally is the same sort of good egg?Certainly a Francis Bacon type might have eased some of the tensions between Charles I and Parliament - Bill Bacon would be about 30 years old at the OTL outbreak of Civil War, so that's plenty of time for him to build up his career - and there's no reason to assume that the 2nd Baron Verulam couldn't rebound from his father's disgrace after George Villiers bites it.
What sort of career could Bill Bacon have? Could he have been a strong mediating figure between Charles I and Parliament? Does the viscountcy of St. Albans continue? What if instead Francis Bacon successfully courts Elizabeth Hatton, with all the knock-on effects that entails?
