with regard to the commissioners of sewers, had been such as particularly to draw down on him the enmity of the

council.

Nor were these the only clouds that were lowering over him. In the preceding year, in his capacity of lord chief justice, he had been actively and zealously engaged in the investigation of the circumstances connected with the atrocious murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. In the course of the inquiry which took place relative to this assassination it was proved that it had been perpetrated by the favourite, Somerset, and Lady Essex, between whom Overbury had discovered, and endeavoured to prevent, an illicit intercourse. The rcumstances of the case were pecuharly revolting. The victim of their resentment had been, under some slight pretext, conveyed a prisoner to the Tower; and the lieutenant-governor was induced to become a party to the plot that was laid for his destruction. After several ineffectual attempts, he was at length killed by a violent poison. The crime remained some years unpunished, but at length a strict inquiry was set on foot. It was found that several subordinate agents had been participators in it, and these suffered the death they had justly deserved. Somerset and Lady Essex escaped with their lives; but the downfal of the favourite was the consequence of the discovery; and Coke, who had been indefatigable in his endeavours to detect the perpetrators of the crime, was consequently in no small degree instrumental in procuring his disgrace. It is needless to add that this made him many and very powerful enemies; and it is not to be supposed but that they availed themselves of the opportunity which now presented itself for poisoning the ear of the king against him. Indeed, James himself is supposed to have harboured a deep feeling of resentment against the lord chief justice, on account of certain mysterious hints which are said to have escaped him during the trial of Somerset and his accomplices. It is certain that whispers concerning some secret transaction in which the king was implicated, had been circulated about the court soon after the institution of legal proceedings against the murderers of Sir Thomas Overbury; and many have not scrupled to believe (though without much foundation for the story)

that they related to the poisoning of the hope of the nation, the young prince Henry; a crime very generally attributed at the time to Viscountess Rochester, though James (however unjustly) has not entirely escaped the suspicion of being privy to the death of his own son. It was natural that the persons who credited and gave countenance to such rumours should be personally odious to the king, nor is it improbable that such a motive should have weighed with him even stronger than political reasons, when he determined on removing Coke from his post. Sir George Villiers also, who afterwards became Duke of Buckingham, having been thwarted by the chief justice in his endeavours to procure the reversion of a lucrative situation in the court of King's Bench, did not neglect an occasion so favourable for the exercise of his resentment, which his influence with James rendered sufficiently formidable. All these circumstances combined to produce Sir Edward Coke's disgrace; but the avowed cause of it was his con duct in the case of the commendams. For this he was arraigned in the privy-council. The accusation against him was reduced to three heads: 1. an act done; 2. speeches of high contempt uttered in the seat of justice; 3. uncomely and undutiful carriage in the presence of his majesty, the privy-council, and judges. These charges having been officially notified to him, on the 30th of June, 1616, he was again summoned before the council, where, on his knees, he received intimation of the sentence which the king had passed on him. The substance of it was, that he should be sequestered from the council-table till his majesty's pleasure was further known; that he should forbear from riding his summer circuit as justice of assize; and that, during the vacation, he should employ his leisure in revising and correcting his Reports, in which the pedantic despot, James, declared that Coke had uttered for law many dangerous conceits of his own, to the prejudice of his crown, parliament, and subjects. It will scarcely be credited, that one of the charges brought against the lord chief justice was, that his coachman. used to ride bareheaded before him; a mark of dignity which it was said he was by no means entitled to assume, and of which the earl marshal must take notice. To this Sir Edward Coke (very innocently no doubt) replied, that

his coachman did so for his own convenience, and not in consequence of any orders having been given him to that effect. A few months afterwards (Nov. 15th) he was altogether removed from the chief justiceship, and his place was supplied by Sir Henry Montague, the recorder of London. It is worthy of observation, that the new judge was not appointed until he had entered into a written engagement with Buckingham, by which he agreed to put the trustees of the favourite in possession of the situation he had been deprived of through the influence of Sir Edward Coke. This fact sufficiently shows what was the principal cause of Coke's removal from the bench. It may also in some measure explain why he was first suspended, and afterwards entirely removed; the intermediate time being no doubt left him to propitiate the good grace of Buckingham by submission to his wishes. If this be the case, it must reflect eternal honour on Coke, that he preferred renouncing his office altogether to procuring his continuance in it by unworthy means. This is one of a thousand instances in which proud integrity has fallen a sacrifice to the machinations of interested cabal and court intrigue.

Coke, however, did not remain long in disgrace. Some time before his removal from the bench, a negotiation had been set on foot concerning the marriage of his youngest daughter with Sir John Villiers, the brother of the Earl of Buckingham. He had then refused his consent to the match; but it is to be supposed, that the growing influence of the favourite, and the change that had been wrought in his own fortune, afterwards made him sensible of the advantages to be derived from so powerful an alliance, so that he was not indisposed to listen to a renewal of the same overtures, when a change in the relave situation of both parties had rendered an union between them more desirable. As to the sentiments the young lady herself might entertain on the subject, they appear not to have been thought worthy of the slightest consideration. Coke had himself consulted his interest alone in his own marriage with Lady Hatton, from whom he had long lived almost wholly estranged; and he was not of a character to sacrifice his own advancement to the inclination of his daughter. It was

through the medium of Secretary Winwood that the match was at length effected. That minister had felt himself offended by a certain tone of superiority which Bacon, on being promoted to the office of lord keeper, had thought proper to assume towards him; and it thenceforward became his study to raise up Coke from the disgrace into which he had fallen. With this view he obtained permission to renew the negotiation which had before been broken off, relative to the alliance with the family of the favourite. Buckingham, tempted by the offer of a large marriage portion which Coke promised with his daughter, immediately consented to the match; but it was not effected without considerable difficulty. Lady Hatton, who was always at variance with her husband, had a dislike to a connexion with the family of the Villiers, and was probably offended that she had not been in the first ininstance made privy to the negotiation. As she was a woman of masculine spirit, she determined to oppose the match; and accordingly, after pretending in vain to allege a contract with Lord Oxford, as a reason why the marriage could not take place, she caused her daughter to be secretly conveyed to the house of Sir Edmund Withipole, near Oatlands, whence she was afterwards removed to a residence of the Lord of Argyle's, in the neighbourhood of Hampton Court. Sir Edward, on finding his daughter had been sent from home, applied for a warrant to reclaim her; but in the mean time becoming acquainted with the place of her concealment, he determined on instantly rescuing her by force. Accompanied, accordingly, by his son and by about a dozen well armed men he proceeded to Hampton Court, tore down the doors of the house where she was confined, and carried her away. Lady Hatton having no other means of redress, appealed to the privy council; and thus this domestic quarrel became at length an affair of state.

The lord keeper, Bacon, used every exertion to prevent the match, which he was aware would be the means of reestablishing Coke in the king's favour. It is supposed to have been at his instigation that proceedings were instituted in the Star-Chamber against the perpetrator of this outrage, as the forcible rescue was affectedly called; though he could not but know that it was an act per

fectly justifiable by law. This was not the only step he took towards breaking off the intended marriage. The following letter was addressed by him to the Earl of Buckingham :

My very good Lord,

I shall write to your lordship of a business which your lordship may think to concern myself; but I do think it concerneth your lordship much more. For as for me, as my judgment is not so weak to think it can do me any hurt, so my love to you is so strong, as I would prefer the good of you and yours before mine own particular. It seemeth Secretary Winwood hath officiously busied himself to make a match between your brother and Sir Edward Coke; and as we hear, he doth it rather to make a faction than out of any great affection to your lordship. It is true he hath the consent of Sir Edward Coke, (as we hear,) upon reasonable conditions for your brother, and yet not better than without question may be found in some other matches. But your mother's consent is not had, nor the young gentlewoman's, who expecteth a great fortune from her mother, which without her consent is endangered. This match, out of my faith and freedom to your lordship, I hold very inconvenient both for your brother and yourself.

First, he shall marry into a disgraced house, which in reason of state is never held good.

Next, he shall marry into a troubled house of man and wife, which in religion and christian discretion is disliked. Thirdly, your lordship will go near to lose all such your friends as are adverse to Sir Edward Coke, (myself only excepted, who out of a pure love and thankfulness shall ever be firm to you.) And lastly and chiefly, (believe it,) it will greatly weaken and distrust your service. For though in regard of the king's great wisdom and depth I am persuaded those things will not follow, which they imagine; yet opinion will do a great deal of harm and cast the king back, and make him relapse into those inconveniences which are now well on to be recovered.

Therefore my advice is, and your lordship shall do yourself a great deal of honour, if, according to religion and the love of God, your lordship will signify unto my lady your mother that your desire is that the marriage be not pressed or proceeded in without the

consent of both parents; and so either break it altogether, or defer any further delay in it till your lordship's return. And this the rather for that (besides the inconvenience of the matter itself) it hath been carried so harshly and inconsiderately by Secretary Winwood, as for doubt that the father should take away the maiden by force, your mother to get the start hath conveyed her away secretly, which is ill of all sides. Thus, hoping your lordship will not only accept well, but believe my faithful advice, who by my great experience in the world must needs see further than your lordship can, I ever rest, your lordship's true and most devoted friend and servant, FRANCIS BACON.

In another letter which he wrote to the king on the same subject, the following passage occurs:

"Your majesty's prerogative and authority have risen some just degrees above the horizon more than heretofore; which hath dispersed vapours: your judges are in good temper, your justices of peace (which is the great body of the gentlemen of England) grow to be loving and obsequious, and to be weary of the humour of ruffling all mutinous spirits grow to be a little poor, and to draw in their horns; and not the less for your majesty's disauctorizing the man I speak of. Now then I reasonably doubt that if there be but an opinion of his coming in with the strength of such an alliance, it will give a turn and relapse in men's minds into the former state of things, hardly to be holpen, to the great weakening of your majesty's service."

Again: "he is by nature unsociable, and by habit popular, and too old to take a new plye. And men begin already to collect, yea, and to conclude that he that raiseth such a smoke to get in, will set all on fire when he is in.”

The lord keeper was not content with taking such measures as these: he even ventured to threaten Winwood with a præmunire for having granted the warrant. But in this he went too far. Buckingham was highly incensed with his conduct, and even the king, who was on his return from Scotland, wrote him a severe letter on the subject (25th July, 1617.) "Every wrong," he said, "must be judged by the first violent and wrongous ground, whereupon it proceeds. And was not the thefteous stealing away of the

daughter from her own father the first ground whereupon all this great noise hath since proceeded? For the ground of her getting again came upon a lawful and ordinary warrant, subscribed by one of our council, for redress of the former violence; and except the father of a child might be proved to be either lunatic or idiot, we never read in any law that either it could be lawful for any creature to steal his child from him, or that it was a matter of noise and streperous carriage for him to hunt for the recovery of his child again. Whereas you talk of the riot and violence committed by him, we wonder you make no mention of the riot and violence of them that stole away his daughter, which was the first ground of all that noise, as we said before. For a man may be compelled by manifest wrong beyond his patience; and the first breach of that quietness, which hath ever been kept since the beginning of our journey, was made by them that committed the theft. And for your laying the burden of your opposition upon the council, we meddle not with that question; but the opposition, which we justly find fault with you, was the refusal to sign a warrant for the father to the recovery of his child, clad with those circumstances, as is reported, of your slight carriage to Buckingham's mother, when she repaired to you upon so reasonable an errand. What farther opposition you made in that business, we leave it to the due trial in the own time. But whereas you would distinguish of times, pretending ignorance either of our meaning or his, when you made your opposition; that would have served for a reasonable excuse not to have furthered such a business till you had been first employed in it; but that can serve for no excuse of crossing any thing that so nearly concerned one, whom you profess such friendship unto. We will not speak of obligation; for surely we think, even in good manners, you had reason not to have crossed any thing, wherein you had heard his name used, till you had heard from him. For if you had willingly given your consent and hand to the recovery of the young gentlewoman; and then written both to us and to him what inconvenience appeared to you to be in such a match; that had been the part indeed of a true servant to us, and a true friend to him. But first to

make an opposition, and then to give advice by way of friendship, is to make the plough go before the horse." It appears that at this time, or at least very shortly after it, Coke was reinstated (probably by the mediation of the favourite) in the good graces of his majesty, whose party he joined as it returned from Scotland. On the 3d of September, Sir Henry Yelverton, who was also among the king's followers, wrote to the lord keeper from Daventry, warning him of the danger he had incurred by his opposition to Buckingham. In the same letter he remarks: “Sir Edward Coke, as if he were already upon his wings, triumphs exceedingly; hath much private conference with his majesty; and in public doth offer himself, and thrust upon the king, with as great boldness of speech as heretofore. It is thought, and much feared, that at Woodstock he will again be recalled to the council table; for neither are the earl's ears, nor his thoughts, ever off him." This report was not without foundation; for on the very day of the king's arrival in London (15th September, 1617) the late lord chief justice was restored to his place in the privy council. Whatever obstacles still remained in the way of the marriage were now finally removed. Proceedings had been instituted in the starchamber, at the suit of Lady Hatton, against her husband; but they had been arrested by the king's order; and she was for some time placed in confinement. At length Lady Compton, the Earl of Buckingham's mother, prevailed on her to discontinue the action, and finally to give her consent to the match, which was accordingly concluded with great pomp.

Sir Edward Coke, however, still remained at variance with his wife. Their quarrels were not merely the effect of occasional ebullitions of temper, such as may disturb the domestic comforts of a family for awhile, without causing any permanent disunion among the members of it. Lady Hatton was a woman of a haughty and imperious character, who was constantly on the watch for oppor tunities to remind her husband how much he was indebted to her for the honour and the wealth he had derived from her alliance. On the other hand, the deportment of Sir Edward Coke had nothing conciliatory in it; and, indeed, if we are to form

our opinion of his temper from the ebullitions of it which he could not control even in public, it was very far from being of a nature to render him, under any circumstances, an amiable husband or father of a family. Domestic happiness they never enjoyed together. They had separate houses and separate establishments; Sir Edward occasionally occupying his chambers in the Temple, while his lady fixed her residence at Hatton House, in Holborn; or retiring to his seat at Stoke Pogies, in Buckinghamshire, (the same which is now the residence of the descendant and representative of the celebrated William Penn,) when she either remained in London, or tenanted her mansion of Corfe Castle. Among other subjects of angry contention between them, these different dwellings and their appurtenances formed a fertile theme for dispute. At one time we find Sir Edward publicly accusing his wife of having purloined his plate, and substituted counterfeit alkumy in its place, with intent to defraud him. On another occasion, Lady Hatton complains of his seizing her coach, coach-horses, and wearing apparel, maltreating her servants, and causing her to suffer " beyond the measure of any wife, mother, or even any ordinary woman in the kingdom." It might be supposed that when she had been persuaded to give her consent to her daughter's union with Villiers, some show at least of reconciliation with her husband would have taken place; but this was not the case; and the very day on which she gave a magnificent entertainment in honour of the marriage, Sir Edward, uninvited and unnoticed by his wife, dined in the Temple. There exists abundant testimony that their mutual resentment, and it may almost be said hatred, against each other, was cherished for some time after this period. At the end of four years (1621) they were in some degree reconciled by the personal interference of the king, who undertook to be the mediator between them; but they always remained strangers to domestic happiness. As for their daughter, who had from the beginning expressed a strong dislike to Sir John Villiers, her marriage, as might have been expected, was an unhappy one.

So soon as a probability had appeared of Sir Edward's being reinstated in the king's favour, the wary courtier,

Bacon, had dropped all appearance of resentment against him; and had even taken the trouble to explain away some parts of his conduct towards him. He was also particularly careful to repair the fault he had committed with regard to Buckingham, by assiduous endeavours to propitiate the good graces of the favourite. A short extract from a letter which he wrote to King James, with the view of deprecating the anger of that monarch occasioned by his opposition to the marriage of Coke's daughter, will sufficiently illustrate these facts. "It is true," he says, "that in those matters which, by your majesty's commandment and reference, came before the table concerning Sir Edward Coke, I was sometimes sharp, it may be too much; but it was with the end to have your majesty's will performed; or else when methought he was more peremptory than became him, in respect of the honour of the table. It is true also, that I disliked the riot or violence, whereof we of our council gave your majesty advertisement by our joint letter: and I disliked it the more, because he justified it to be law; which was his old song. But in that act of council, which was made thereupon, I did not see but all my lords were as forward as myself," &c. And again, alluding to an intimation given him by the Earl of Buckingham, for whom he had just professed his readiness to spend his life, he adds: "After I had received, by a former letter of his lordship, knowledge of his mind, I think Sir Edward Coke himself, the last time he was before the lords, might particularly perceive an altera tion in my carriage. And now that your majesty hath been pleased to open yourself to me, I shall be willing to further the match by any thing, that shall be desired of me, or that is in my power." In consequence of this disposition, a reconciliation appears to have taken place between the lord keeper and Ccke; and accordingly we find no traces of animosity in the conduct of the latter, when, at a subsequent period, (1621,) he was called upon to take a share in the proceedings which terminated in the disgrace of Bacon.

Sir Edward Coke was a member of the parliament which necessity rather than inclination forced the king to summon in 1621; and the same upright and independent spirit, which had done him so much honour in the affair of the

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