a pool. it is indifferent for judges and magis
trates, for if they be facile and corrupt, you shall
have a servant five times worse than a wife. For
soldiers, i find the generals commonly in their
hortatives put men in mind of their wives and
children, and i think the despising of marriage
among the Turks maketh the vulgar soldier
more base. Certainly wife and children are
a kind of discipline of humanity; and single
men, though they may be many times more
charitable because their means are less ex
hausted, yet on the other side, they are more
cruel and hardhearted (good to make severe
inquisitors) because their tenderness is not
so oft called upon. grave natures, led by cus
tom, and therefore constant, are commonly
loving husbands; as was said of ulysses, “He
preferred his old wife to immortality.” Chaste
women are often proud and forward, as pre
suming upon the merit of their chastity. it is
one of the best bonds both of chastity and
obedience in the wife, if she think her hus
band wise, which she will never do if she find
him jealous. Wives are young men’s mistress
es, companions for middle age, and old men’s
nurses. so as a man may have a quarrel to
marry when he will. but yet he was reputed
one of the wise men that made answer to the
question when a man should marry: “a young
man not yet, an elder man not at all.” it is
often seen that bad husbands have very good
wives, whether it be that it raiseth the price of
their husband’s kindness when it comes—or
that the wives take a pride in their patience.
but this never fails if the bad husbands were
of their own choosing, against their friends’
consent, for then they will be sure to make
good their own folly.
Francis Bacon, “Of Marriage and Single Life.”
One of three hundred men knighted by King James
I in 1603, Bacon three years later at the age of
forty-five married a fourteen-year-old girl named
Alice Barnham, whom he considered a “handsome
maiden to my liking.” Although there were no
known marital scandals, he later excised her from
his will, citing “great and just causes.” Bacon
published “The Wisdom of the Ancients” in 1609,
was named attorney general in 1613, and became
Lord Chancellor in 1618.
