certain dangers to honesty and justice than the interference and solicitation of the great, and the old famous pest of bribes, of which all histories and laws were full.  And yet on the highest seat of justice in the realm he, the great reformer of its abuses, allowed them to make their customary haunt.  He did not mean to do wrong:  his conscience was clear; he had not given thought to the mischief they must do, sooner or later, to all concerned with the Court of Chancery.  With a magnificent carelessness he could afford to run safely a course closely bordering on crime, in which meaner men would sin and be ruined.

Before six months were over Bacon found on what terms he must stand with Buckingham.  By a strange fatality, quite unintentionally, he became dragged into the thick of the scandalous and grotesque dissensions of the Coke family.  The Court was away from London in the North; and Coke had been trying, not without hope of success, to recover the King’s favour.  Coke was a rich man, and Lady Compton, the mother of the Villiers, thought that Coke’s daughter would be a good match for one of her younger sons.  It was really a great chance for Coke; but he haggled about the portion; and the opportunity, which might perhaps have led to his taking Bacon’s place, passed.  But he found himself in trouble in other ways; his friends, especially Secretary Winwood, contrived to bring the matter on again, and he consented to the Villiers’s terms.  But his wife, the young lady’s mother, Lady Hatton, would not hear of it, and a furious quarrel followed.  She carried off her daughter into the country.  Coke, with a warrant from Secretary Winwood, which Bacon had refused to give him, pursued her:  “with his son, ‘Fighting Clem,’ and ten or eleven servants, weaponed, in a violent manner he repaired to the house where she was remaining, and with a piece of timber or form broke open the door and dragged her along to his coach.”  Lady Hatton rushed off the same afternoon for help to Bacon.

After an overturn by the way, “at last to my Lord Keeper’s they come, but could not have instant access to him, for that his people told them he was laid at rest, being not well.  Then my La.  Hatton desired she might be in the next room where my Lord lay, that she might be the first that [should] speak with him after he was stirring.  The door-keeper fulfilled her desire, and in the meantime gave her a chair to rest herself in, and there left her alone; but not long after, she rose up and bounced against my Lord Keeper’s door, and waked him and affrighted him, that he called his men to him; and they opening the door, she thrust in with them, and desired his Lp. to pardon her boldness, but she was like a cow that had lost her calf, and so justified [herself] and pacified my Lord’s anger, and got his warrant and my Lo.  Treasurer’s warrant and others of the Council to fetch her daughter from the father and bring them both to the Council.”