Overview

The documents in this volume complete the major project to produce a definitive edition of The Papers of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey which was begun by the late A. Hassell Smith in the 1970s.

The volume comprises, and is organised into, three very unequal parts: (A) Documents which can be definitely or approximately dated (279 items, numbered 1-279); (B) Undated and undatable documents (16 items, numbered 280-295); and (C) Documents relating to Dorothy, Lady Bacon, and her sons (11 items, numbered 296-306). There is also an Appendix consisting of the probate copy of the will of Anne, Lady Townshend (Nathaniel’s eldest daughter). While not strictly a ‘Bacon paper’ it can be included as an item of intrinsic interest in its own right. Anne died at about the same time as her father and they were buried together at Stiffkey on the same day, 7 November 1622. In her will she mentioned both her father and his indefatigable secretary, Martin Man, along with other family members and individuals both from her household and from the local community.

The first, and most substantial, section (A) of the full text covers the years 1555 to 1623, albeit somewhat unevenly. The first few years, 1555-59 (document nos. 1-9), deal exclusively with the financial and estate-building activities of Lord Keeper Sir Nicholas Bacon and also of Sir Thomas Gresham, later Nathaniel’s father-in-law, but then there is a gap of seven years. A more continuous annual coverage ensues, beginning in 1566 and for every year thereafter. Initially the documents are still largely concerned with estate-building. The years 1570-71, which were rather thin in volume I of the edition, are better represented here and increasingly, particularly after 1574 when Nathaniel became a justice of the peace, a more varied picture of family, household, local community and county affairs begins to emerge. Nathaniel’s early life had been effectively dominated by his all-powerful father, described by Hassell Smith as ‘an efficient autocrat who dealt personally with the most trivial situations.’ But after Sir Nicholas’s death in 1579 (fully covered in volume II but with a few ripples here, particularly in document nos. 123-6), Nathaniel became ‘his own man’, engaged with the building of his new mansion at Stiffkey (never actually completed as Sir Nicholas had intended) and growing into his work as a county figure and as an estate-owner. The decades of the 1570s and 1580s are quite extensively illustrated here, with some slight thinning in the 1590s, but then there is another more substantial coverage for the very early years of the new century up to and including 1604. Thereafter there are fewer documents for each succeeding year, in part because some of the later discoveries were incorporated into the main texts for volumes V-VII, although that cannot be the sole explanation.

Biographical Note

Nathaniel Bacon (?1546-1622) was the second son of the Lord Keeper Sir Nicholas Bacon and his first wife Jane, the daughter of Thomas Ferneley, a Suffolk merchant. Nathaniel had two brothers, Nicholas and Edward, both of whom became county figures in Suffolk, and two half-brothers, Anthony and Francis, the sons of Sir Nicholas and his second wife Anne, the intellectual daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke.

Nathaniel was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and Gray’s Inn. In 1569 he married Anne, the base daughter of Sir Thomas Gresham and Mistress Dutton who either was, or became, the wife of Thomas Dutton, one of Gresham’s factors in Antwerp. Initially they lived at Norwich with their brother-in-law Francis Wyndham, moving first to the Woodhouses of Waxham before renting a modest house at Cockthorpe in 1573. In 1576 Nathaniel began to build Stiffkey Hall where the couple took up residence in 1578 despite its unfinished state. They had three daughters, Anne, Elizabeth and Winifred, and two sons, both of whom died in infancy. Elizabeth married Thomas Knyvett in 1592, Anne married John Townshend in 1593, and Winifred married Robert Gawdy in 1597. Their mother Anne died in 1594 and three years later Nathaniel married Dorothy, the daughter of Arthur Hopton and widow of William Smith of Burgh Castle. Sir John Townshend, the husband of Nathaniel’s eldest daughter and heiress, was killed in a duel in 1603. Thomas Knyvett died in 1605.

Through his family Nathaniel had close connections with leading figures at Court, especially through his father, lord keeper to Elizabeth I, and his father-in-law, Sir Thomas Gresham, who was the queen’s principal financial agent. When his father married Anne Cooke, he became a nephew by marriage of William Cecil (Lord Burghley), Sir Thomas Hoby (ambassador to France), Sir Henry Killigrew (ambassador to Scotland), and Lord John Russell, son of the second earl of Bedford. Through this marriage he also became a cousin of Robert Cecil, later earl of Salisbury. His two famous brothers were well-connected at court: Anthony became secretary to the earl of Essex, while Francis rose to be lord chancellor and a philosopher of European renown. His sisters extended this network of court contacts. The eldest, Elizabeth, was married three times: her first two husbands, Sir Robert D’Oyly (d.1577) and Sir Henry Neville (d.1593), were minor figures at court, while her third, Sir William Peryam, was chief baron of the exchequer. Another sister, also named Elizabeth, married first Francis Wyndham (d.1592), who became a judge of common pleas, and secondly Sir Robert Mansell, courtier, monopolist and admiral. The middle sister, Anne, married Henry Woodhouse.

Despite these various connections, Nathaniel remained essentially a county figure, apparently never seeking any office at court or in central administration. In 1574 he was appointed a JP in Norfolk, an office he held for almost fifty years and which he discharged assiduously both at sessions and through his out-of-sessions activities. As a carpet-bagger he represented Tavistock in the parliaments of 1571 and 1572, probably as a result of religious affinity and family connections with the earl of Bedford. But once settled at Stiffkey he was returned as knight of the shire for Norfolk in 1584, 1593 and 1604, and as burgess for King’s Lynn in 1597. His keenness to use legislation as a means to redress the ills of society no doubt prompted him to stand yet again as knight of the shire in 1620 at the age of 74, but this time unsuccessfully. The concern for a range of local issues evident in his papers is reflected in his membership of parliamentary committees and such evidence as survives of his parliamentary speeches. Twice sheriff of Norfolk and for many years collector of the loan there, he regularly figured as a subsidy commissioner and, as a member of innumerable special commissions, was especially valued by the privy council for his ‘uprightness and indifferency’. He evinced less enthusiasm for military affairs, apparently never commanding his local militia company, and only being appointed to the muster commission in 1596 and to the deputy lieutenancy in 1605, an office he proceeded to discharge with more concern for legal and constitutional niceties than for the raising of an efficient militia. He was knighted in 1604 and died in 1622.

Archival sources

• Norfolk Record Office
• Raynham Hall
• Suffolk Archives (Suffolk Record Office)
• The National Archives
• The Folger Shakespeare Library

Illustrations, Plates, Figures, Maps and Appendices

• Illustrations: 1
• Plates: 4
• Figures: 1
• Maps: 3
• Appendices: 1

Supported by

This publication was generously supported by: Trinity College, Cambridge; Marc Fitch Fund.

Editors and contributors

• Editors: G. Alan Metters, Ian Palfrey, Barry Taylor, Jill Taylor
• Honorary Society Editor: Jean Agnew

Publication details

• Series: Norfolk Record Society, Volume LXXXIX (89)
• Publisher: Norfolk Record Society
• Year: 2026
• Period: Early Modern
• Type of Volume: Documentary
• ISBN: 9780995773684
• Number of Pages: 312
• Format: Hardback
• Language: English

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Recommended citation

Metters, G. A., Palfrey, I., Taylor, B. and Taylor, J. eds., The Papers of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey: volume VIII, Addenda and Miscellanea. Norfolk Record Society, Vol. 89 (2026).

Keywords

Bacon Family, Local Government, Correspondence, Norfolk, Early Modern Estate Papers

About the editors

Alan Metters was formerly honorary secretary of the Norfolk Record Society and is an honorary research fellow at the University of East Anglia.

Ian Palfrey is a senior archivist at the Norfolk Record Office.

Barry Taylor was formerly senior history librarian at the University of East Anglia.

Jill Taylor is a retired school teacher. Her 1989 UEA PhD thesis was on ‘Nathaniel Bacon: an Elizabethan squire, his family and household and their impact upon the local community’.

Related Volumes

These volumes explore similar themes, periods, editor or record types:

The Papers of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey, Volume I, 1556-1577
The Papers of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey, Volume II, 1578-1585
The Papers of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey, Volume III, 1586-1595
The Papers of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey, Volume IV, 1596-1602
The Papers of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey, Volume V, 1603-1607
The Papers of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey, Volume VI, 1608-1613
The Papers of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey, Volume VII, 1614-1622

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