Brian Wormald provides a fundamental reappraisal of one of the most complex and innovative figures of the late-Elizabethan and Jacobean age. In the centuries since his death, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) has been perceived and studied as a promoter and prophet of the philosophy of science--natural science--but he saw himself also as a clarifier and promoter of what he called "policy" or the study and improvement of the structure and function of civil states. Mr. Wormald shows that Bacon was concerned equally with the knowledge of the world of nature and with that of policy. The junction between...

Brian Wormald provides a fundamental reappraisal of one of the most complex and innovative figures of the late-Elizabethan and Jacobean age. In the centuries since his death, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) has been perceived and studied as a promoter and prophet of the philosophy of science--natural science--but he saw himself also as a clarifier and promoter of what he called "policy" or the study and improvement of the structure and function of civil states. Mr. Wormald shows that Bacon was concerned equally with the knowledge of the world of nature and with that of policy. The junction between...

This celebrated study, first published in 1951, offers a reinterpretation of the writings and attitudes of Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon (1609-74), best known for his History of the Rebellion and the Civil War and his autobiography, which presents an excellent record of the English Civil War. Mr. Wormald reconstructs the attitudes of this controversial figure toward the earth-shaking events of the war and what made him change his ideas. His answers reverse the traditional view of Hyde's thought.