your Majesty should
bestow thanks, not upon the zeal of Sir Edward Coke to your Majesty,
nor upon the eloquent persuasions or pragmaticals of Mr. Secretary
Winwood; but upon them"--meaning himself--who "have so humbled Sir
Edward Coke, as he seeketh now that with submission which (as your
Majesty knoweth) before he rejected with scorn." And then he says that
if the King really wishes for the match, concerning which he should
like more definite orders, he will further it; for, says he, "though I
will not wager on women's minds, I can prevail more with the mother
than any other man."

King James's reply is not in existence, and it is unknown; but,
judging from a further letter of Bacon's, it must have been rather
cold and unfavourable; and, in Bacon's second letter to the King, he
was foolish enough to express a fear lest Buckingham's "height of
fortune might make him too secure." In his answer to this second
letter of Bacon, James reproves him for plotting with his adversary's
wife to overthrow him, saying "this is to be in league with Delilah."
He also scolds Bacon for being afraid that Buckingham's height of
fortune might make him "misknow himself." The King protests that
Buckingham is farther removed from such a vice than any of his other
courtiers. Bacon, he says, ought to have written to the King instead
of to Buckingham about "the inconvenience of the match:" "that would
have been the part of a true servant to us, and of a true friend to
him [Buckingham]. But first to make an opposition, then to give
advice, by way of friendship, is to make the plough go before the
horse."

By the time these letters had been carried backwards and forwards, to
and from Scotland and the North of England, a later date had been
reached than we have legitimately arrived at in our story, and we must
now go back to within a few days of Sir Edward Coke's famous raid at
Oatlands.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] _Chief Justices_, Vol. I., pp. 297-298

[15] _S.P. Dom._, James I., July, 1617. Chamberlain to Sir Dudley
Carleton.

[16] Campbell, p. 298.

[17] Lord Campbell's account.

[18] Quoted by Spedding in his _Life of Bacon_.

[19] Foard's _Life and Correspondence of Bacon_, p. 421.

CHAPTER V.

"They've always been at daggers drawing,
And one another clapper-clawing."
Butler's _Hudibras, Hud._, II, 2.

Bacon had scarcely written his first letters to Buckingham and the
King, bef