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In the following year, 1617, these domestic affairs totally changed. The political marriage of his daughter with Villiers being now resolved on, the business was to clip the wings of so fierce a bird as Coke had found in Lady Hatton, which led to an extraordinary contest. The mother and daughter hated the upstart Villiers, and Sir John, indeed, promised to be but a sickly bridegroom. They had contrived to make up a written contract of marriage with Lord Oxford, which they opposed against the proposal, or rather the order, of Coke.

The violence to which the towering spirits of the conflicting parties proceeded is a piece of secret history, of which accident has preserved an able memorial. Coke armed with law, and, what was at least equally potent, with the king’s favour, entered by force the barricadoed houses of his lady, took possession of his daughter, on whom he appears never to have cast a thought till she became an instrument for his political purposes, confined her from her mother, and at length got the haughty mother herself imprisoned, and brought her to account for all her past misdoings. Quick was the change of scene, and the contrast was as wonderful. Coke, who, in the preceding year, to the world’s surprise, proved so simple an advocate in his own cause in the presence of his wife, now, to employ his own words, “got upon his wings again,” and went on as Lady Hatton, when safely lodged in prison, describes, with “his high-handed tyrannical courses,” till the furious lawyer occasioned a fit of sickness to the proud crest-fallen lady. “Law! Law! Law!” thundered from the lips of “its oracle;” and Lord Bacon, in his apologetical letter to the king for having opposed his “riot or violence,” says, “I disliked it the more, because he justified it to be law, which was his old song.”

The memorial alluded to appears to have been confidentially composed by the legal friend of Lady Hatton, to furnish her ladyship with answers when brought before the council-table. It opens several domestic scenes in the house of that great lord chief-justice; but the forcible simplicity of the style in domestic details will show, what I have often observed, that our language has not advanced in expression since the age of James the First. I have transcribed it from the original, and its interest must plead for its length.

TO LADY HATTON. “MADAM,
10th July, 1617.

“Seeing these people speak no language but thunder and lightning, accounting this their cheapest and best way to work upon you, I would with patience prepare myself to their extremities, and study to defend the breaches by which to their advantage they suppose to come in upon me, and henceforth quit the ways of pacification and composition, heretofore and unseasonably endeavoured, which, in my opinion, lie most open to trouble, scandal, and danger; wherefore I will briefly set down their objections, and such answers to them as I conceive proper.

“The first is, you conveyed away your daughter from her father. Answer. I had cause to provide for her quiet. Secretary Winwood threatening that she should be married from me in spite of my teeth, and Sir Edward Cook dayly tormenting the girl with discourses tending to bestow her against her liking, which he said she was to submit to his; besides, my daughter daily complained, and sought to me for help; whereupon, as heretofore I had accustomed, I bestowed her apart at my cousin-german’s house for a few days, for her health and quiet, till my own business for my estate were ended. Sir Edward Coke never asked me where she was, no more than at other times, when at my placing she had been a quarter of a year from him, as the year before with my sister Burley.

“Second. That you endeavoured to bestow her, and to bind her to my Lord of Oxford without her knowledge and consent.