His character may readily be understood from his favourite maxim: “If you know all things besides, but know not Christ, you know nothing: if you know Christ, you know enough.” His mottoes, adopted probably from the life of danger he had been so long compelled to lead, were: “In life we are in death: in death we are in life;” and, “Live mindful of death.”

Little can be said of Becon’s family. The maiden name of his wife, and the time of his marriage, are both unknown. His union may, however, be supposed to have taken place in the reign of king Edward VI., not only because he is reported to have been deprived under queen Mary, as a married priest, but moreover because we find him dedicating his “Catechism,” first published in its present shape in 1560, to his children, then living; having lost, as he tells them, two sons by death, one of whom
at least must have been older than the sons at that time alive. This Catechism is in the form of a dialogue between a father (Becon himself) and a son, the son being represented as about six years of age – an age taken most probably from that of his eldest child. If, therefore, he had had one or two children previously born, we cannot perhaps err much in supposing that his marriage took place in 1550 1551. It could hardly have been later; and that it was at a much earlier period is very improbable,
both on account of his manifold “tossings to and fro” in the latter part of
Henry VIII.’s reign, and also because, even prior to those troubles, he speaks of himself as “having no house of his own^[1].”

The names of his children were Theodore and Christophile, both dead before 1560; a second Theodore, Basil^[2], and Rachel. Of their history we know nothing, with one exception. There is a letter among the Burghley Papers to that great statesman from a Theodore Becon, dated Feb. 7, 1578^[3]. If it be, as with much probability it may be supposed, really from the son of our author, it furnishes au interesting glimpse of the subsequent fortunes of one of the family. The writer, we gather from it, was a
member of the University of Cambridge, and had been befriended by Lord Burghley. It is pleasing to see one, who must have known and respected the father, the kind patron of the son.

Becon’s worldly circumstances were far from opulent. In the preface to his “Christmas Banquet” he speaks of his poverty, and, as just mentioned, his “having no house of his own^[4].” In his dedication to the “Policy of War” he uses similar expressions, declaring his “riches not worth a galley half-penny, besides a few books and a little slender apparel^[5].” Nor must this be supposed the condition only of his earlier life. For in the preface to his “Catechism,” written in 1560, in the course of which year we have found him prebendary of Canterbury, he declares that, from his youth even up to that day, he had “ever been attempted,” such are his words, “with the cruel assaults of envious fortune.” The language in which, in this piece, he addresses his children, is very affecting: he commends them “to the merciful and bounteous providence of God, which never Ieaveth the succourless;” and, in reference to the Catechism he was inscribing to them, he says: “Take it with joyful heart as a testimony of your father’s good will towards you; yea, receive it as your patrimony, left of your father unto you, which otherwise is not able to enrich you; and glory no less in this my gift, than other children do in the riches of this world.”

[1] See below, page 61.
[2] These were probably named from the appellation he had assumed in his earlier writings.
[3] Burghley Papers. Lansdowne .MSS. Vol. XXVII. No. 78.
[4] See below, page 61.
[5] See page 235.