was that she did not give
him her hand; that he sought it is no occasion for surprise--or for
insinuations that he coveted her wealth. Biography is by turns
mischievously communicative and vexatiously silent. That Bacon loved Sir
William Hatton's widow, and induced Essex to support his suit, and that
rejecting him she gave herself to his enemy, we know; but history tells
us nothing of the secret struggle which preceded the lady's resolution
to become the wife of an unalluring, ungracious, peevish, middle-aged
widower. She must have felt some tenderness for her cousin, whose
comeliness spoke to every eye, whose wit was extolled by every lip.
Perhaps she, like many others, had misread the essay 'Of Love,' and felt
herself bound in honor to bring the philosopher to his knees at her
feet. It is credible that from the outset of their sentimental
intercourse, she intended to win and then to flout him. But coquetry
cannot conquer the first laws of human feeling. To be a good flirt, a
woman must have nerve and a sympathetic nature; and doubtless the flirt
in this instance paid for her triumph with the smart of a lasting wound.
Is it fanciful to argue that her subsequent violence and misconduct, her
impatience of control and scandalous disrespect for her aged husband,
may have been in some part due to the sacrifice of personal inclination
which she made in accepting Coke at the entreaty of prudent and selfish
relations--and to the contrast, perpetually haunting her, between what
she was as Sir Edward's termagant partner, and what she might have been
as Francis Bacon's wife?

She consented to a marriage with Edward Coke, but was so ashamed of her
choice, that she insisted on a private celebration of their union,
although Archbishop Whitgift had recently raised his voice against the
scandal of clandestine weddings, and had actually forbidden them. In the
face of the primate's edict the ill-assorted couple were united in
wedlock, without license or publication of banns, by a country parson,
who braved the displeasure of Whitgift, in order that he might secure
the favor of a secular patron. The wedding-day was November 24, 1598,
the bridegroom's first wife having been buried on the 24th of the
previous July.[5] On learning the violation of his orders, the
archbishop was so incensed that he resolved to excommunicate the
offenders, and actually instituted for that purpose legal proceedings,
which were not dropped until bride and bride