English statesman and philosopher Sir Francis Bacon was BOTD in 1561. Born in London to an aristocratic family, he was educated at Cambridge, where he joined the service of Queen Elizabeth I. He continued his studies in Europe, undertaking diplomatic missions for the Queen, returning to England in 1579 where he practised law. He became a Member of Parliament in 1581, and was appointed legal adviser to the Queen. Hailed as the father of empiricism, he argued for scientific knowledge should be based solely on observation of natural events and deductive reasoning. He also proposed systems for categorising books into history, poetry and philosophy, and was also rumoured to have written plays attributed to William Shakespeare. After being forced by Elizabeth to prosecute her former lover the Earl of Essex, he fared better during the reign of James I, who appointed him Attorney General and Lord Chancellor. Bacon’s public career ended in disgrace in 1621, when he was imprisoned for debt. He married heiress Alice Barnham in 1604 when she was 13 and he was 45, though biographers agree that he was primarily attracted to men. He had a particular fondness for his Welsh serving man Godrick, an effeminate-faced youth who was his “catamite and bedfellow”. Bacon died in 1626, aged 65. He is now recognised as one of the most influential thinkers of the English Renaissance.