that marriage about would
also be for her welfare.

Coke had often waited for the confessions of men who were in
frightful agony on the rack, in the dungeons of the Tower; so it must
have been a mere trifle to him to await his daughter's consent to a
marriage which she detested, while he whipped her, or watched her
being whipped, reflecting upon the luxury of the bed-post in
comparison with the agony of the rack, flattering himself that he was
acting in obedience to Holy Scripture, and piously meditating upon the
gratification he must be giving to the soul of Solomon by this
exercise of domestic discipline. But a reader may well wonder whether
the old brute considered for a moment the worthlessness of a form of
marriage obtained by torture, or the fact that such a so-called
marriage could be annulled without difficulty.

Lady Elizabeth, perceiving that her only chance left of winning the
game was to over-trump her husband, and recognising that her only hope
of freedom and prosperity was by consenting to the wishes of
Buckingham and James, wrote to the King himself, to say that she would
agree to the marriage and would settle her property on her daughter
and Sir John Villiers.

Eventually, "The marriage settlement," says Campbell, "was drawn under
the King's own superintendence, that both father and mother might be
compelled to do justice to Sir John Villiers and his bride; and on
Michaelmas Day the marriage was actually celebrated at Hampton Court
Palace, in the presence of the King and Queen and all the chief
nobility of England. Strange to say, Lady Hatton still remained in
confinement, while Sir Edward Coke, in nine coaches,"--one man in nine
coaches!--"brought his daughter and his friends to the palace, from his
son's at Kingston-Townsend. The banquet was most splendid: a masque was
performed in the evening; the stocking was thrown with all due spirit:
and the bride and bride-groom, according to long established fashion,
received the company at their couchee."

In a footnote to _The Secret History of James I._, Vol. I., p.
444,[34] we read:

"The Scottish historian, Johnstone, says that Purbeck's marriage was
celebrated amid the gratulation of the fawning courtiers, but stained
by the tears of the reluctant bride, who was a sacrifice to her
father's ambition of the alliance with Buckingham's family."

Here is another account of the wedding, in a letter[35] from Sir
Gerard Herbert to Carleton:--

"Maie it p