"MADAM, _10th July, 1617_.
"Seeing these people speak no language but thunder and lightning,
accounting this their cheapest and best way to work upon you, I would
with patience prepare myself to their extremities, and study to defend
the breaches by which to their advantage they suppose to come in upon
me, and henceforth quit the ways of pacification and composition,
heretofore and unseasonably endeavoured, which, in my opinion, lie most
open to trouble, scandal, and danger; wherefore I will briefly set down
their objections, and such answers to them as I conceive proper.
"The first is, you conveyed away your daughter from her father. Answer.
I had cause to provide for her quiet. Secretary Winwood threatening that
she should be married from me in spite of my teeth, and Sir Edward Cook
dayly tormenting the girl with discourses tending to bestow her against
her liking, which he said she was to submit to his; besides, my daughter
daily complained, and sought to me for help; whereupon, as heretofore I
had accustomed, I bestowed her apart at my cousin-german's house for a
few days, for her health and quiet, till my own business for my estate
were ended. Sir Edward Coke _never asked me where she was, no more than
at other times, when at my placing she had been a quarter of a year from
him, as the year before with my sister Burley_.
"Second. That you endeavoured to bestow her, and to bind her to my Lord
of Oxford without her knowledge and consent.
"Upon this subject a lawyer, by way of invective, may open his mouth
wide, and anticipate every hearer's judgment by the rights of a father;
this, dangerous in the precedent to others; to which, nevertheless, this
answer may be justly returned.
"Answer. My daughter, as aforesaid, terrified with her father's threats
and hard usage, and pressing me to find some remedy from this violence
intended, I did compassionate her condition, and bethought myself of
this contract to my Lord of Oxford, if so she liked, and thereupon I
gave it to her to peruse and consider by herself, which she did; she
liked it, cheerfully writ it out with her own hand, subscribed it, and
returned it to me; wherein I did nothing of my own will, but followed
hers, after I saw she was so averse to Sir Thomas Villiers, that she
voluntarily and deliberately protested that _of all men living she would
never have him, nor could ever fancy him for a husband_.
"Secondly. By this I put her under no new way, nor into any other than
her father had heretofore known and approved; for he saw such letters
as my Lady of Oxford had writ to me thereabouts; he never forbad it; he
never disliked it; only he said they were then too young, and there was
time enough for the treaty.
"Thirdly. He always left his daughter to my disposing and my bringing
up; knowing that I purposed her my fortune and whole estate, and as upon
these reasons he left her to my cares, so _he eased himself absolutely
of her, never meddling with her, neglecting her, and caring nothing for
her_.
"The Third. That you counterfeited a treaty from my Lord of Oxford to
yourself.
"Answer. I know it not counterfeit; but be it so, to whose injury? If to
my Lord of Oxford's (for no man else is therein interested), it must be
either in honour or in free-hold. Read the treaty; it proves neither!
for it is only a complement; it is no engagement presently nor futurely;
besides the law shows what forgery is; and to counterfeit a private
man's hand, nay a magistrate's, makes not the fault but the cause:
wherefore,
"Secondly, the end justifies--at the least, excuses the fact; for it was
only _to hold up my daughter's mind to her own choice and liking:_ for
her eyes only, and for no other's, that she might see some retribution,
and thereby with the more constancy endure her imprisonment, having this
only antidote to resist the poison of that place, company, and
conversation; myself and all her friends barred from her, and no person
or speech admitted to her ear, but such as spoke Sir Thomas Villiers's
language.
"The fourth. That you plotted to surprise your daughter to take her away
by force, to the breach, of the king's peace and particular commandment,
and for that purpose had assembled a number of desperate fellows,
whereof the consequence might have been dangerous; and the affront to
the king was the greater that such a thing was offered, the king being
forth of the kingdom, which, by example, might have drawn on other
assemblies to more dangerous attempts. This field is large for a
plentiful babbler.
"Answer. I know no such matter, neither in any place was there such
assembly; true it is I spoke to Turner to provide me some tall fellows
for the taking a possession for me, in Lincolnshire, of some lands Sir
William Mason had lately dis-seised me; but be it they were assembled
and convoked to such an end, what was done? was any such thing
attempted? were they upon the place? kept they the heath or the
highways by ambuscades? or was any place, any day, appointed for a
rendezvous? No, no such matter; but something was intended: and I pray
you what says the law of such a single intention, which is not within
the view or notice of the law? Beside, who intended this--the mother?
and wherefore? because she _was unnaturally and barbarously secluded
from her daughter, and her daughter forced against her will, contrary to
her vow and liking_, to the will of him she disliked; nay, the laws of
God, of nature, of man, speak for me, and cry out upon them. But they
had a warrant from the king's order from the commissioners to keep my
daughter in their custody; yet neither this warrant nor the
commissioners' did prohibit the mother coming to her, but contrarily
allowed her; then by the same authority might she get to her daughter,
that Sir Edward Cook had used to keep her from her daughter; the husband
having no power, warrant, or permission from God, the king, or the law,
to _sequester the mother from her own child, she only endeavouring the
child's good, with the child's liking, and to her preferment; and he,
his private end against the child's liking, without care of her
preferment; which differing respects, as they justify the mother in all,
so condemn they the father as a transgressor of the rules of nature,
and, as a perverter of his rights, as a father and a husband, to the
hurt both of child and wife_.
"Lastly, if recrimination could lessen the fault, take this in the worst
sense, and naked of all the considerable circumstances it hath, what is
this, nay, what had the executing of this intention been comparatively
with _Sir Edward Cook's most notorious riot, committed at my Lord of
Arguyl's house, when, without constable or warrant, associated with a
dozen fellows well weaponed, without cause being beforehand offered, to
have what he would, he took down the doors of the gate-house and of the
house itself, and tore the daughter in that barbarous manner from the
mother, and would not suffer the mother to come near her; and when he
was before the lords of the council to answer this outrage, he justified
it to make it good by law, and that he feared the face of no greatness_;
a dangerous word for the encouragement of all notorious and rebellious
malefactors; especially from him that had been the chief justice of the
law; and of the people reputed the oracle of the law; and a most
dangerous bravado cast in the teeth and face of the state in the king's
absence, and therefore most considerable for the maintenance of
authority and the quiet of the land; for if it be lawful for him with a
dozen to enter any man's house thus outrageously for any right to which
he pretends, it is lawful for any man with one hundred, nay, with five
hundred, and consequently with as many as he draw together, to do the
same, which may endanger the safety of the king's person, and the peace
of the kingdom.
"The fifth, that you having certified the king you had received an
engagement from my Lord of Oxford, and the king commanding you, upon
your allegiance, to come and bring it to him, or to send it him; or not
having it, to signify his name who brought it, and where he was; you
refused all, by which you doubled and trebled a high contempt to his
majesty.
"Answer. I was so sick on the week before, for the most part I kept my
bed, and even that instant I was so weak as I was not able to rise from
it without help, nor to endure the air; which indisposition and weakness
my two physicians, Sir William Paddy and Dr. Atkins, can affirm true;
which so being, I hope his majesty will graciously excuse the necessity,
and not impose a fault, whereof I am not guilty; and for the sending it,
I protest to God I had it not; and for telling the parties, and where he
is, I most humbly beseech his sacred majesty, in his great wisdom and
honour, to consider how unworthy a part it were in me to bring any man
into trouble, from which I am so far from redeeming him as I can no way
relieve myself, and therefore humbly crave his majesty, in his princely
consideration of my distressed condition, to forgive me this
reservedness, proceeding from that just sense, and the rather, for that
the law of the land in civil causes, as I am informed, no way tieth me
thereunto."
Among the other papers it appears that Coke accused his lady of having
"embezzled all his gilt and silver plate and vessell (he having little
in any house of mine, but that his marriage with me brought him), and
instead thereof foisted in _alkumy_[346] of the same sorte, fashion, and
use, with the illusion to have cheated him of the other." Coke insists
on the inventory by the schedule! Her ladyship says, "I made such plate
for matter and form for my own use at Purbeck, that serving well enough
in the country; and I was loth to trust such a substance in a place so
remote, and in the guard of few; but for the plate and vessell he saith
is wanting, they are every ounce within one of my three houses." She
complains that Sir Edward Coke and his son Clement had threatened her
servants so grievously, that the poor men run away to hide themselves
from his fury, and dare not appear abroad. "Sir Edward broke into Hatton
House, seased upon my coach and coach-horses, nay, my apparel, which he
detains; thrust all my servants out of doors without wages; sent down
his men to Corfe to inventory, seize, ship, and carry away all the
goods, which being refused him by the castle-keeper, he threats to bring
your lordship's warrant for the performance thereof. But your lordship
established that he should have the use only of the goods during his
life, in such houses as the same appertained, without meaning, I hope,
of depriving me of such use, being goods brought at my marriage, or
bought with the money I spared from my allowances. Stop, then, his high
tyrannical courses; for I have suffered beyond the measure of any wife,
mother, nay, of any ordinary woman in this kingdom, without respect to
my father, my birth, my fortunes, with _which I have so highly-raised
him_."
What availed the vexation of this sick, mortified, and proud woman, or
the more tender feelings of the daughter, in this forced marriage to
satisfy the political ambition of the father? When Lord Bacon wrote to
the king respecting the strange behaviour of Coke, the king vindicated
it, for the purpose of obtaining his daughter, blaming Lord Bacon for
some expressions he had used; and Bacon, with the servility of the
courtier, when he found the wind in his teeth, tacked round, and
promised Buckingham to promote the match he so much abhorred.[347]
Villiers was married to the daughter of Coke at Hampton Court, on
Michaelmas Day, 1617--Coke was re-admitted to the council-table--Lady
Hatton was reconciled to Lady Compton and the queen, and gave a grand
entertainment on the occasion, to which, however, "the good man of the
house was neither invited nor spoken of: he dined that day at the
Temple; she is still bent to pull down her husband," adds my informant.
The moral close remains to be told. Lady Villiers looked on her husband
as the hateful object of a forced union, and nearly drove him mad; while
she disgraced herself by such loose conduct as to be condemned to stand
in a white sheet, and I believe at length obtained a divorce. Thus a
marriage, projected by ambition, and prosecuted by violent means,
closed with that utter misery to the parties with which it had
commenced; and for our present purpose has served to show, that when a
lawyer like Coke holds his "high-handed tyrannical courses," the law of
nature, as well as the law of which he is "the oracle," will be alike
violated under his roof. Wife and daughter were plaintiffs or defendants
on whom this lord chief-justice closed his ear: he had blocked up the
avenues to his heart with "Law! Law! Law!" his "old song!"
Beyond his eightieth year, in the last parliament of Charles the First,
the extraordinary vigour of Coke's intellect flamed clear under the
snows of age. No reconciliation ever took place between the parties. On
a strong report of his death, her ladyship, accompanied by her brother,
Lord Wimbledon, posted down to Stoke-Pogis to take possession of his
mansion; but beyond Colebrook they met with one of his physicians coming
from him with the mortifying intelligence of Sir Edward's amendment, on
which they returned at their leisure. This happened in June, 1634, and
on the following September the venerable sage was no more!