 Owen's book "Sir Francis Bacon's Cipher Story" (1893–95) claimed to have discovered a secret history of the Elizabethan era hidden in cipher-form in Bacon/Shakespeare's works.The most remarkable revelation was that Bacon was the son of Queen Elizabeth.According to Owen, Bacon revealed that Elizabeth was secretly married to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who fathered both Bacon himself and Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, the latter ruthlessly executed by his own mother in 1601.