er smoke [smock], he
should be glad, by way of curiosity, to know how much could be assured
by marriage settlement upon her and her issue."[12] With some
reluctance Sir Edward Coke then entered into particulars, and the
match was regarded as settled by both sides.

Everything having been now satisfactorily arranged, it occurred to
Coke that possibly the time had arrived for informing, first his wife,
and afterwards his daughter, of the marriage to which he had agreed.

Sir Edward had often seen his wife in a passion, and he had frequently
been a listener to torrents of abuse from her pretty lips and caustic
tongue. Although he had been notorious as the rudest member of the
Bar, he had generally come off second best in his frequent battles of
words with his beautiful helpmate. Stolid and unimpressible as he was,
he can hardly have been impervious to the effects of the verbal venom
with which she had constantly stung him. But all this had been mere
child's play in comparison with her fury on being informed that,
without so much as consulting her, her husband had definitely settled
a match for her only child with a portionless knight. A new weapon was
lying ready to her hand, and she made every possible use of it. It
consisted in the fact that, much as she and her husband had quarrelled
and lived apart, she had returned to him in the hour of his
tribulation, had fought his battles before the King and the Council,
and had even braved the royal displeasure and endured exile from the
Court, rather than desert him in his need. She bitterly reproached him
for repaying her constancy and sacrifices on his behalf by selling her
daughter without either inquiring as to the mother's wishes, or even
informing that mother of his intention.

If Lady Elizabeth was infuriated at the news of the match, her
daughter was frenzied. She detested Sir John Villiers, and she
implored her parents never again to mention the question of her
marrying him. The mother and daughter were on one side and the father
on the other; neither would yield an inch, and Hatton House, Holborn,
became the scene of violent invective and bitter weeping.

Buckingham is said to have promised Coke that, if he would bring about
the proposed marriage, he should have his offices restored to him.
Buckingham's mother, Lady Compton, also warmly supported the project.
She was what would now be called "a very managing woman." Since the
death of Buckingham's father, she had h