Francis Bacon's youth was spent in preparations for a life of royal service. Sir Nicholas carefully guided his formal education toward this end, and Francis seems always to have believed that to serve as a councillor was his vocation. While a young man, Francis was confronted with several differing conceptions of just what the role and the purpose of a statesman should be, yet by the late 1580s he had made his own decision about the responsibilities of a good statesman. His youthful experiences and the nature of his employments after 1586 made Bacon utterly convinced that the nature and problems of knowledge and learning were properly the concern of the statesman he wished to become.

Francis Bacon's formal education began under the watchful eye of his parents but we know almost no details of the schooling he received in his father's house.