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What availed the vexation of this sick, mortified, and proud woman, or the more tender feelings of the daughter, in this forced marriage to satisfy the political ambition of the father? When Lord Bacon wrote to the king respecting the strange behaviour of Coke, the king vindicated it, for the purpose of obtaining his daughter, blaming Lord Bacon for some expressions he had used; and Bacon, with the servility of the courtier, when he found the wind in his teeth, tacked round, and promised Buckingham to promote the match he so much abhorred.[8] Villiers was married to the daughter of Coke at Hampton Court, on Michaelmas Day, 1617–Coke was re-admitted to the council-table–Lady Hatton was reconciled to Lady Compton and the queen, and gave a grand entertainment on the occasion, to which, however, “the good man of the house was neither invited nor spoken of: he dined that day at the Temple; she is still bent to pull down her husband,” adds my informant. The moral close remains to be told. Lady Villiers looked on her husband as the hateful object of a forced union, and nearly drove him mad; while she disgraced herself by such loose conduct as to be condemned to stand in a white sheet, and I believe at length obtained a divorce. Thus a marriage, projected by ambition, and prosecuted by violent means, closed with that utter misery to the parties with which it had commenced; and for our present purpose has served to show, that when a lawyer like Coke holds his “high-handed tyrannical courses,” the law of nature, as well as the law of which he is “the oracle,” will be alike violated under his roof. Wife and daughter were plaintiffs or defendants on whom this lord chief-justice closed his ear: he had blocked up the avenues to his heart with “Law! Law! Law!” his “old song!”

Beyond his eightieth year, in the last parliament of Charles the First, the extraordinary vigour of Coke’s intellect flamed clear under the snows of age. No reconciliation ever took place between the parties. On a strong report of his death, her ladyship, accompanied by her brother, Lord Wimbledon, posted down to Stoke-Pogis to take possession of his mansion; but beyond Colebrook they met with one of his physicians coming from him with the mortifying intelligence of Sir Edward’s amendment, on which they returned at their leisure. This happened in June, 1634, and on the following September the venerable sage was no more!

[Footnote 1:
This conjecture may not be vain; since this has been written, I have heard that the papers of Sir Edward Coke are still preserved at Holkham, the seat of Mr. Coke; and I have also heard of others in the possession of a noble family. The late Mr. Roscoe told me that he was preparing a beautifully embellished catalogue of the Holkham library, in which the taste of the owner would rival his munificence.

A list of those manuscripts to which I allude may be discovered in the Lambeth MSS. No. 943, Art. 369, described in the catalogue as “A note of such things as were found in a trunk of Sir Edward Coke’s by the king’s command, 1634,” but more particularly in Art. 371, “A Catalogue of Sir Edward Coke’s Papers then seized and brought to Whitehall.”
]

[Footnote 2:
Lloyd’s State Worthies, art. Sir Nicholas Bacon. ]

[Footnote 3:
Miss Aikin’s Court of James the First appeared two years after this article was written; it has occasioned no alteration. I refer the reader to her clear narrative, ii. p. 30, and p. 63; but secret history is rarely discovered in printed books. ]

[Footnote 4:
These particulars I find in the manuscript letters of J. Chamberlain. Sloane MSS. 4172, (1616). In the quaint style of the times, the common speech ran, that Lord Coke had been overthrown by four P’s–PRIDE, Prohibitions, Praemunire, and Prerogative. It is only with his moral quality, and not with his legal controversies, that his personal character is here concerned. ]

[Footnote 5:
In the Lambeth manuscripts, 936, is a letter of Lord Bacon to the king, to prevent the match between Sir John Villiers and Mrs. Coke. Art. 63. Another, Art. 69. The spirited and copious letter of James, “to the Lord Keeper,” is printed in “Letters, Speeches, Charges, etc., of Francis Bacon,” by Dr. Birch, p. 133. ]

[Footnote 6:
Stoke Pogis, in Buckinghamshire; the delightful seat of J. Penn, Esq. It was the scene of Gray’s “Long Story,” and the chimneys of the ancient house still remain, to mark the locality; a column on which is fixed a statue of Coke, erected by Mr. Penn, consecrates the former abode of its illustrious inhabitant. ]

[Footnote 7:
A term then in use for base or mixed metal. ]

[Footnote 8:
Lambeth MSS. 936, art. 69 and 73. ]