it was very fortunate that it might be the means of
injuring her husband whom she hated. Her own account of her final
agreement to the marriage may be seen in a letter which she wrote to
the King in the following year:--[27]

"I call to witness my Lord Haughton, whom I sent twyce to moove the
matter to my Lady Compton, so as by me she would take it. This was
after he had so fondly broke off with my Lorde of Bukingham, when he
ruled your Majestie's favour scarse at the salerie of a 1,000L. After
that my brother and sister of Burghly offered, in the Galerie Chamber
at Whitehall, theire service unto my Ladie Compton to further this
marriage, so as from me she would take it. Thirdly, myselfe cominge
from Kingstone in a coach with my Ladie Compton, I then offered her
that if shee would leave Sir Edward Cooke I would proceed with her in
this marriage."

Although, as Chamberlain had written, Lady Elizabeth was now beginning
"to come about," in fact had come about, her faithful friend, Bacon,
in his frantic anxiety to regain the favour of Buckingham and the
King, ordered her to be arrested and kept in strict though honourable
confinement. In fact, to use a modern term, all the actors in this
little drama, possibly with the exception of Frances Coke and Sir John
Villiers, were prepared, at any moment, "to give each other away."
According to Foard,[28] Bacon was, at this time, busily engaged in
preparing for the trial of another member of Lady Elizabeth's family,
namely her stepmother, Lady Exeter.[29]

By the irony of fate, it happened that the two mortal enemies, Coke
and Bacon, acted together in the matter of the incarceration of Lady
Elizabeth; for, while the former pleaded for it, the latter ordered
it. It was spent partly at the house of Alderman Bennet,[30] and
partly at that of Sir William Craven,[31] Lord Mayor of London in the
years 1610 and 1618, and father of the first Earl of Craven. In both
houses she was doubtless treated with all respect, and she must have
occupied a position in them something between that of a paying-guest
and a lunatic living in the private house of a doctor--not that there
was any lunacy in the mind of Lady Elizabeth. Quite the contrary!

FOOTNOTES:

[20] _S.P. Dom._, James I., Vol. XCII, No. 101, 23rd July, 1617.

[21] Campbell, Vol. I., p. 300.

[22] Campbell, Vol. I., p. 301.

[23] _Ibid._, p. 302.

[24] _S.P. Dom._, James I., Vol. XCII, No. 101, 22nd July, 1617.

[25] _S.P. Dom