contentment and countenance he can in hope of the
great portion she may bestow upon" Buckingham's brother, Sir John
Villiers; "for there is little or nothing more to be looked for from
Sr. Ed. Cooke, who hath redemed the land he had allotted his daughter
for 20,000L so that they have already had 30,000L of him paide
down.... She layes all the fault of her late troubles upon the
deceased secretarie," Winwood, "who not long since telling her brother
that for all her bitter speeches they two [Lady Elizabeth and her
husband] shold become goode frends again. She protested she wold
sooner be frends with the Devill."

Lady Elizabeth was so much in the King's good graces that aspirants
for office tried to win her influence with James and Buckingham in
their favour. Chamberlain, in the letter quoted above, expresses the
wish that she might endeavour to obtain for Carleton the post of
Secretary of State, which had just then fallen vacant through the
death of Winwood. In a letter[37] written a fortnight later, however,
Chamberlain says:--

"Your father Savile is gon into Kent to his daughter Salley, the day
before his goings I met him and wisht him to applie the Lady Hatton,
whom he had alredy visited but moved her in nothing because the time
was not fit but she meant to do yt before he went. Some whisper that
she is alredy ingaged and meanes to employ her full force strength and
vertue for the L. Hawton or Hollis, who is become her prime privie
Counsailor and doth by all meanes interest and combine her with the
Lady of Suffolke and that house. A man whom Sir Edward Cooke can no
wayes indure, and from whose company he wold faine but cannot debarre
her." Obviously a very sufficient reason for liking him and espousing his
cause.

Lady Elizabeth had fairly outwitted her husband; but, as will
presently be seen, she had not yet quite done with him. Another
account of her liberation is to be found in _Strafford's Letters and
Despatches_:--[38]

"The expectancy of Sir Edward's rising is much abated by reason of his
lady's liberty, who was brought in great honour to Exeter House by my
Lord of Buckingham, from Sir William Craven's, whither she had been
remanded, presented by his Lordship to the King, received gracious
usage, reconciled to her daughter by his Majesty, and her house in
Holborn enlightened by his presence at dinner, where there was a royal
feast: and to make it more absolutely her own, express commandment
given by her L