together again. We shall see presently whether there was
to be a perpetual peace between them.

While Bacon was meditating an information against Sir Edward Coke in
the Star Chamber for malversation of office, in the hope that a heavy
fine might be imposed upon him, Coke also was plotting. He discovered
that Bacon, who had been made Lord Keeper early in the year 1617, had
had his head turned by his promotion and had become giddy on his
pinnacle of greatness; or, to use Bacon's own words, that he was
suffering acutely from an "unbridled stomach." Of this Coke determined
to take advantage.

Looking back upon his own fall, Coke considered that the final crash
had been brought about not, as Bacon had insinuated in his letter, by
offending the Almighty, but by offending Villiers, now Earl of
Buckingham, and he came to the conclusion that his best hope of
recovering his position would be to find some method of doing that
Earl a service. Now, Buckingham had an elder brother, Sir John
Villiers, who was very poor, and for whom he was anxious to pick up an
heiress. The happy thought struck Coke that, as all his wife's
property was entailed on her daughter, Frances, he might secure
Buckingham's support by selling the girl to Buckingham's brother, for
the price of Buckingham's favour and assistance. It was most fortunate
that Frances was exceedingly beautiful, and that Sir John Villiers was
unattractive and much older than she was; because this would render
the amount of patronage, due in payment by Buckingham to Coke, so much
the greater.

James I. and Buckingham had gone to Scotland. In the absence of the
King and the Court, Bacon, as Lord Keeper, was one of the greatest men
left in London, and quite the greatest in his own estimation. Misled
by this idea of his own importance, he was imprudent enough to treat
his colleague, Winwood, the Secretary of State, with as little
ceremony as if he had been a junior clerk, thereby incurring the
resentment of that very high official. Common hatred of Bacon made a
strong bond of union between Coke and Winwood, and Winwood joined
readily in the plot newly laid by Coke.

Sir John Villiers was already acquainted with Coke's pretty daughter;
and, when Coke went to him, suggested a match, and enlarged upon the
fortune to which she was sole heiress, Sir John professed to be over
head and ears in love with her, and observed that "although he would
have been well pleased to have taken her in h