We are assured by another Baconian student that the Shakespeare plays were not an end, but merely a means to an end, the end being the revelation of Bacon’s history, and the composition of further plays and poems from the material which he had warehoused in the dramas attributed to Shakespeare and other authors. The initial, and most important fact which Mrs. Gallup’s deciphered story reveals, is, not that Francis Bacon was the author of Shakespeare’s plays, but that he was the legitimate son of Queen Elizabeth, by Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester. The disclosure is so startling, so quaint, so incredible, and withal so interesting, that the revelation both appeals to and outrages our credulity. From our knowledge of Elizabeth and of Bacon, we can more readily believe that the Queen was the mother of Bacon, than that Bacon was the father of Shakespeare’s plays. At Gorhambury is to be seen a pair of oil paintings, by Hilliard, of Elizabeth and Leicester. The pictures are a match in size, style, and treatment. The doublet in which Leicester is portrayed is of the same material as that of the gown in which the Queen is represented. Moreover, they were a present from Elizabeth to Sir Nicholas Bacon, the foster father of Francis, who signs his cipher revelations, “Francis First of England,” “Francis Bacon (Rightful) R,” “F.B. or T.” or “Francis of E.”, as the humour seized him. The deciphered secret story, the “sterne and tragicle” history of Bacon’s political wrongs commences in the first edition of Edmund Spenser’s _Complaints_ (1590 and 1591); but it was not until the _Faerie Queene_ was published (1596) that he appropriates the authorship of Spenser’s works. His first care is to establish his claim to the throne: “Our name is Fr. Bacon, by adoption, yet it shall be different. Being of blood roial (for the Queen, our sov’raigne, who married by a private rite the Earle Leicester--and at a subseque’t time, also, as to make surer thereby, without pompe, but i’ th’ presence o’ a suitable number of witnesses, bound herselfe by those hymeneall bands againe--is our mother, and wee were not base-born, or base-begot), we be Tudor, and our stile shall be Francis First, in all proper cours of time, th’ King of our realme. “Early in our life, othe (oath)--or threat as binding in effect as othe, we greatly doubt--was made by our wilful parent concerning succession, and if this cannot bee chang’d, or be not in time withdrawn, we know not how the kingdome shall be obtain’d. But ’tis thus seene or shewn that it can bee noe other’s by true desce’t, then is set down. To Francis First doth th’ crowne, th’ honor of our land belong....” [Illustration: GORHAMBURY, A.D. 1568.] [Illustration: GORHAMBURY, A.D. 1795.] [Illustration: GORHAMBURY, A.D. 1821.]