October 17, 2018 Wednesday
Bedtime Story
The Rise and Fall of Francis Bacon
And so in return for some few European
goodies and rarities, Emperor Jahangir in one swipe in 1612 handed over to the
Crown the carte-blanche, all-purpose, unbounded travel-visa that would change
the destinies of both the nations forever.
The Indian subcontinent was not the only
place the British merchants had set their eyes on; the British ship by the name
of Clove (very appropriately named after a coveted and profitable spice) called
upon Japan in 1613.
In fact, the whole world was the market
waiting for the merchants to be exploited.
So these were the times when Francis Bacon lived
in England with this nation being just at its infancy in comparison to what it
would become a century or two later.
Bacon rose high up in the ranks in the
Parliament using the aid of his powerful uncle Lord Burghley who was both a
Baron and the chief advisor to Queen Elizabeth I.
It is not known to many but it was
primarily through his policy that would make United Kingdom as we would know it
at the power of its height.
Lord Burghley set his main goal as the
creation of a united and Protestant British Isles with complete control of both
Ireland and Scotland while building a powerful Royal Navy as a protection from
invasion.
In his life time he did not succeed in
accomplishing his dream though his future generations were more than pulled off
much more than he could even dream of.
Bacon is greatly cited by Westerners as the
pioneer of the enlightenment and yet here was a statesman, Attorney General and
Lord Chancellor (very high level officer of the state with myriad of duties
such as administration of courts, appointment of judges and many more) whose
public career ended in a disgrace.
A parliamentary committee charged him with
acts of corruption largely on accepting gifts from litigants.
He was charged with 23 such counts of
corruption and most likely declared guilty on all of them.
His public career ended in shame and
disgrace in 1621 when he was slapped with a hefty fine of 40,000 pounds and
imprisonment in the Tower of London.
Even worse, from then on he was declared by
the authorities incapable of holding any public position or occupying the
parliament.
I find this kind of justice system quite
remarkable; that the law took its due course even against a person of such high
standing and quite cozy with the monarchy.
The only thing that Bacon was spared from
was complete degradation that came with stripping of all titles of nobility.
So it this Bacon, a public servant of
highest echelons, who following this humiliation went to seclusion and devoted
his future life to reading and writing.
He would not live long after suffering this
humiliation and died just five years later.
It is said that he died of pneumonia while
trying to study the effect of low temperatures on meat preservation.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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