File BL/BC 8/24 - Nathaniel Bacon to Sir E. Coke: circumstances of fight among his servants in which John Symonds was killed by Robert Drury.

Second son of Lord Keeper Sir Nicholas Bacon and first wife Jane, daughter of Thomas Ferneley. Had two brothers Nicholas and Edward and two half-brothers Anthony and Francis, sons of Sir Nicholas and second wife Anne, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke. In 1569 married Anne, illegitimate daughter of Sir Thomas Gresham and Mistress Dutton. Children: Anne, Winifred and Elizabeth and two sons who died in infancy. Wife Anne died in 1595. Married in 1597 second wife Dorothy, daughter of Sir Arthur Hopton. Educated at Trinity College, Cambridge and Gray's Inn, London. He lived at Norwich from 1569, Cockthorpe from 1573 and Stiffkey Hall, from 1578. He was JP in Norfolk from 1574, MP successively for Tavistock (Devon), 1571-1572, Norfolk, 1584, 1593 and 1604, and Lynn, 1597. Sheriff of Norfolk, 1599 and another unknown year, knighted, 1604. Puritan and close connections through his family with leading figures at Court.
For an attempt to re-create his archive, see the Norfolk Record Society volumes of 'The Papers of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey'.

The family owned land in Norfolk from the 13th century. Sir Edward Coke (1549-1633), Lord Chief Justice, added to the Norfolk estates, inherited Suffolk property and purchased estates in Bucks., Dorset, London, Oxon. and Somerset. The family also acquired property in Derbyshire and Lancashire through marriages of Sir Edward Coke's sons. Non-Norfolk estates were sold c 1750-1820. The family seat is at Holkham Hall, Holkham.