ABSTRACT
Near the end of his life, in 1625, Francis Bacon wrote to Father Fulgentino, a Venetian priest, that he made his first attempt at writing down his thoughts on the reform of natural philosophy, what would become his 'Great Instauration', at the age of twenty-four, when he was in London, in 1585. The years of the late 1580s and the 1590s were, as Markku Peltonnen has described them, a crucial period of Bacon's 'intellectual gestation'. The friendship between Bacon and Andrewes may be traced to sometime after 1589, when Andrewes moved to London and assumed the triple position of rector at St Giles' Cripplegate, and prebend at both Southwell and St Paul's. A letter from Bacon to Lancelot Andrewes of 1609 is particularly helpful for understanding their friendship. Andrewes has come to be known as one of the 'fathers' of Anglo-Catholicism. Throughout his life Bacon would use Calvinist language and terminology to wrestle with Calvinist questions.
