as a consequence of domestic
misery. The lady who ruled his house in Bedford Row, is said to have
been such a virago, that the Chief Justice frequently retired to his
chambers, in order that he might place himself beyond reach of her
voice. Amongst the good stories told of Radcliffe, the Tory physician,
is the tradition of his boast, that he kept Lady Holt alive out of pure
political animosity to the Whig Chief Justice. Another eminent lawyer,
over whose troubles people have made merry in the same fashion, was
Jeffrey Gilbert, Baron of the Exchequer. At his death, October 14, 1726,
this learned judge left behind him that mass of reports, histories, and
treatises by which he is known as one of the most luminous, as well as
voluminous of legal writers. None of his works passed through the press
during his life, and when their number and value were discovered after
his departure to another world, it was whispered that they had been
composed in hours of banishment from a hearth where a _scolding wife_
made misery for all who came within the range of her querulous notes.

Disappointed in his suit to his beautiful and domineering cousin, Bacon
let some five or six years pass before he allowed his thoughts again to
turn to love, and then he wooed and waited for nearly three years more,
ere, on a bright May day, he met Alice Barnham in Marylebone Chapel, and
made her his wife in the presence of a courtly company. In the July of
1603, he wrote to Cecil:--"For this divulged and almost prostituted
title of knighthood, I could, without charge by your honor's mean, be
content to have it, both because of this late disgrace, and because I
have three new knights in my mess in Gray's Inn Commons, and because I
have found out an alderman's daughter, a handsome maiden, to my liking.
So as if your honor will find the time, I will come to the court from
Gorhambury upon any warning." This expression, 'an alderman's daughter,'
contributed greatly, if it did not give rise to, the misapprehension
that Bacon's marriage was a mercenary arrangement. In these later times
the social status of an alderman is so much beneath the rank of a
distinguished member of the bar, that a successful queen's counsel, who
should make an offer to the daughter of a City magistrate, would be
regarded as bent upon a decidedly unambitious match; and if in a
significant tone he spoke of the lady as 'an alderman's daughter' his
words might be reasonably construed as a hin