About the middle of August, Chamberlain wrote that Frances Coke was staying with Sir Robert Coke, Sir Edward’s son by his first wife, and that Lady Elizabeth was with her all day, to prevent the access of others; but that, finding her friends were deserting her, and that “she struggles in vain” against the King’s will, “she begins to come about,” and “upon some conditions will double her husband’s portion and make up the match and give it her blessing.”  Presently he says:  “But it seems the Lady Hatton would have all the honour and thanks, and so defeat her husband’s purpose, towards whom, of late, she has carried herself very strangely, and, indeed, neither like a wife, nor a wise woman.”

As Chamberlain says, Lady Elizabeth was determined that, if she had to yield, she would be paid for doing so, and that her husband should obtain none of the profits of the transaction.  It was unfortunate that that transaction should be the means of injuring her daughter whom she loved; but it was very fortunate that it might be the means of injuring her husband whom she hated.  Her own account of her final agreement to the marriage may be seen in a letter which she wrote to the King in the following year:—­[27]

“I call to witness my Lord Haughton, whom I sent twyce to moove the matter to my Lady Compton, so as by me she would take it.  This was after he had so fondly broke off with my Lorde of Bukingham, when he ruled your Majestie’s favour scarse at the salerie of a 1,000L.  After that my brother and sister of Burghly offered, in the Galerie Chamber at Whitehall, theire service unto my Ladie Compton to further this marriage, so as from me she would take it.  Thirdly, myselfe cominge from Kingstone in a coach with my Ladie Compton, I then offered her that if shee would leave Sir Edward Cooke I would proceed with her in this marriage.”

Although, as Chamberlain had written, Lady Elizabeth was now beginning “to come about,” in fact had come about, her faithful friend, Bacon, in his frantic anxiety to regain the favour of Buckingham and the King, ordered her to be arrested and kept in strict though honourable confinement.  In fact, to use a modern term, all the actors in this little drama, possibly with the exception of Frances Coke and Sir John Villiers, were prepared, at any moment, “to give each other away.”  According to Foard,[28] Bacon was, at this time, busily engaged in preparing for the trial of another member of Lady Elizabeth’s family, namely her stepmother, Lady Exeter.[29]

By the irony of fate, it happened that the two mortal enemies, Coke and Bacon, acted together in the matter of the incarceration of Lady Elizabeth; for, while the former pleaded for it, the latter ordered it.  It was spent partly at the house of Alderman Bennet,[30] and partly at that of Sir William Craven,[31] Lord Mayor of London in the years 1610 and 1618, and father of the first Earl of Craven.  In both houses she was doubtless treated with all respect, and she must have occupied a position in them something between that of a paying-guest and a lunatic living in the private house of a doctor—­not that there was any lunacy in the mind of Lady Elizabeth.  Quite the contrary!