Aubrey in his laboriously compiled
_Short Lives_, in which he shows a friendly and admiring attitude toward
Bacon, definitely states that he was a pederast. Aubrey was only a careful
gleaner of frequently authentic gossip, but a similar statement is made by
Sir Simonds D'Ewes in his _Autobiography_. D'Ewes, whose family belonged
to the same part of Suffolk as Bacon's sprang from, was not friendly to
Bacon, but that fact will not suffice to account for his statement. He was
an upright and honorable man of scholarly habits, and, moreover, a trained
lawyer, who had many opportunities of obtaining first-hand information,
for he had lived in the Chancery office from childhood. He is very precise
as to Bacon's homosexual practices with his own servants, both before and
after his fall, and even gives the name of a "very effeminate-faced youth"
who was his "catamite and bedfellow"; he states, further, that there had
been some question of bringing Bacon to trial for sodomy. These
allegations may be supported by a letter of Bacon's own mother (printed in
Spedding's _Life of Bacon_), reproving him on account of what she had
heard concerning his behavior with the young Welshmen in his service whom
he made his bedfellows.
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