ssed of imagination should choose to make a novel
on the foundation of this simple story, he may describe to his readers
how the cross-grained and unattractive Coke contrived to induce the
fair Lady Elizabeth Hatton to accept him for a husband. The present
writer cannot say how this miracle was worked, for the simple reason
that he does not know. One incident in connection with the marriage,
however, is a matter of history. Elizabeth was not sufficiently proud
of her prospective bride-groom to desire to stand beside him at a
wedding before a large, fashionable, and critical assemblage in a
London church. If he would have her at all, she insisted that he must
take her in the only way in which he could get her, namely, by a
clandestine marriage, in a private house, with only two or three
witnesses.

Now, if there was one thing more than another in which Mr. Attorney
Coke lived and moved and had his being, it was the law, to all
offenders against which he was an object of terror; and such a great
lawyer must have been fully aware that, by making a clandestine
marriage in a private house, he would render himself liable to the
greater excommunication, whereby, in addition to the minor annoyance
of being debarred from the sacraments, he might forfeit the whole of
his property and be subjected to perpetual imprisonment. To make
matters worse, Archbishop Whitgift had just issued a pastoral letter
to all the bishops in the province of Canterbury, condemning marriages
in private houses at unseasonable hours, and forbidding under the
severest penalties any marriage, except in a cathedral or in a parish
church, during the canonical hours, and after proclamation of banns
on three Sundays or holidays, or else with the license of the
ordinary.

Rather than lose his prize, Coke, the great lawyer, determined to defy
the law, and to run all risks, risks which the bride seemed anxious to
make as great as possible; for, at her earnest request, or rather
dictation, the pair were married in a private house, without license
or banns, and in the evening, less than five months after Coke had
made the entry in his diary canonising Bridget. As the Archbishop had
been his tutor, Coke may have expected him to overlook this little
transgression. Instead of this, the pious Primate at once ordered a
suit to be instituted in his Court against the bridegroom, the bride,
the parson who had married them, and the bride's father, Lord
Burghley, who had g