our opinion, whereby you show yourself to be a
legal tyrant," said Lord Bacon, in his admonitory letter to Coke.

In 1616 Coke was out of favour for more causes than one, and his great
rival, Bacon, was paramount at the council table.[342] Perhaps Coke felt
more humiliated by appearing before his judges, who were every one
inferior to him as lawyers, than by the weak triumph of his enemies, who
received him with studied insult. The queen informed the king of the
treatment the disgraced lord chief-justice had experienced, and, in an
angry letter, James declared that "he prosecuted Coke _ad correctionem_
not _ad destructionem_;" and afterwards at the council spoke of Coke
"with so many good words, as if he meant to hang him with a silken
halter;" even his rival Bacon made this memorable acknowledgment, in
reminding the judges that "such a man was not every day to be found, nor
so soon made as marred." When his successor was chosen, the Lord
Chancellor Egerton, in administering the oath, accused Coke "of many
errors and vanities for his ambitious popularity." Coke, however, lost
no friends in this disgrace, nor lost his haughtiness; for when the new
chief-justice sent to purchase his Collar of SS., Coke returned for
answer, that "he would not part with it, but leave it to his posterity,
that they might one day know they had a chief-justice to their
ancestor."[343]

In this temporary alienation of the royal smiles, Coke attempted their
renewal by a project, which, involved a domestic sacrifice. When the
king was in Scotland, and Lord Bacon, as lord-keeper, sat at the head of
affairs, his lordship was on ill terms with Secretary Winwood, whom Coke
easily persuaded to resume a former proposal for marrying his only
daughter to the favourite's eldest brother, Sir John Villiers. Coke had
formerly refused this match from the high demands of these _parvenus_.
Coke, in prosperity, "sticking at ten thousand a year, and resolving to
give only ten thousand marks, dropped some idle words, that he would not
buy the king's favour too dear;" but now in his adversity, his ambition
proved stronger than his avarice, and by this stroke of deep policy the
wily lawyer was converting a mere domestic transaction into an affair of
state, which it soon became. As such it was evidently perceived by
Bacon; he was alarmed at this projected alliance, in which he foresaw
that he should lose his hold of the favourite in the inevitable rise
once more of