es, 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