ABSTRACT
Bacon’s programme for the ‘great instauration’ — the reform, reorganisation and renewal of learning in all its departments — included measures to set history on a completely fresh footing. His contribution to historical science (the term is no longer anachronis tic when we reach Bacon) was threefold. Firstly, in the realm of theory Bacon provided a methodological grounding for history as an empirical study, dealing with experience and proceeding induc tively. Secondly, he offered a new rationale for historical study in which it provided the data or raw material for a science of man in society. Thirdly, in the realm of historical practice Bacon trans cended the efforts of the chroniclers (and the limitations of his own system, for that matter) in his history of the reign of Henry VII, establishing himself as the first analytic or explanatory English historian (Quinton, p. 71).
