nal
triumph, and "the oracle of law," with all his gravity, stood before the
council-table hen-pecked. In June, 1616, Sir Edward appears to have
yielded at discretion to his lady, for in an unpublished letter I find
that "his curst heart hath been forced to yield to more than he ever
meant; but upon this agreement he flatters himself that she will prove a
very good wife."

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