St. Alban

(Frontispiece to the 1640 edition of Francis Bacon’s Advancement of Learning)

The coat of arms shown in this picture, consisting of a shield surmounted with a coronet set in a lozenge-shaped frame on the wall, is that of Francis Bacon as Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Alban.

Francis Bacon was created Viscount St. Alban on 3rd February 1621, shortly after his sixtieth birthday. Thanking King James, Bacon told him that:-

‘The eight in music,’ Bacon wrote elsewhere, ‘is the sweetest concord’; but perhaps he had a premonition of what lay ahead, for he also noted that ‘Swans are said at the approach of their own death to chant sweet melancholy dirges’. Within a few weeks, without notice, he was falsely accused in Parliament of taking bribes, impeached, stripped of his office and sentenced to a crushing fine. Obeying the command of the King, as demanded by his oath, Bacon did not defend himself but pleaded guilty to the empty charges. In the notes of his interview with the King he refers to himself as being both as innocent as any born upon St. Innocent’s Day and an oblation or sacrifice to his Majesty.

Interestingly the original St. Alban, who lived at Verulamium, had been martyred by his Emperor. Bacon’s country (and family) estate, Gorhambury, stretched over the site of the Roman town of Verulamium, after which Bacon had been given his first title, Baron Verulam of Verulam. But it was in reference to the saint that Bacon was given his second, higher title, and from that time on he commonly signed himself Francis St. Alban or Fr. St. Alban. It was a unique title, referring to a person (saint) rather than a place, and has profound implications.

For instance, St. Alban, besides being reputed by the Church as the first Christian martyr in Britain, is claimed by Freemasonry in their Legend of the Craft as the founder of Freemasonry in England, who framed for them their Constitution. The legend further states that in the year AD 287 the Emperor of Britain granted the Masons a charter and commanded St. Alban to preside over them as Grand Master, and that in the year AD 303 St. Alban was martyred. Modern scholarship, however, has convincingly shown that the historical St. Alban was martyred on 22nd June 209 by Geta, eldest son of the Emperor Severus, when they visited Britain in AD 208-9. This discrepancy in dating, together with other strange elements of the story, when applied allegorically to the later St. Alban—Viscount St. Alban—fit like a glove.

The legendary dates of St. Alban, given so precisely as if factual, are part of the Freemasonic allegory, which is Rosicrucian in design. In the Kaye Cipher 287 = Fra. Rosi Crosse. The mythical year of 303 is likewise a cipher, which reduces to 33 since 0 is traditionally counted as a null. In Simple Cipher 33 = Bacon. The number is also the count of the word ‘Free’, the meaning of ‘Francis’, as well as signifying the Thirty-Third degree of initiation. (See FBRT essay on ‘Ciphers’.)

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© Peter Dawkins, FBRT, 1999