"There is no such thing as perfect secrecy."
--_South's Sermons._
As might be expected, the whereabouts of the place for concealment of
Lady Elizabeth and her daughter leaked out and reached the ears of Sir
Edward Coke, who immediately applied to the Privy Council for a
warrant to search for his daughter. Bacon opposed it. Indeed, it is
said that Bacon had not only been all the time aware of the place of
the girl's retreat, but had also joined actively in the plot to convey
her to it. Because it was difficult to obtain a search-warrant from
the Privy Council, Coke got an order to the same effect from Winwood,
the Secretary of State;[15] and, although this order was of doubtful
regularity, Coke determined to act upon it.
In July, 1617, Coke mustered a band of armed men, made up of his sons
(Bridget's sons), his servants and his dependents. He put on a
breastplate, and, with a sword at his side and pistols in the holsters
of his saddle, he placed himself at the head of his little army, and
gallantly led it to Oatlands to wage war upon his wife.
On arriving at the house which he went to besiege, he found no
symptoms of any garrison for its defence. All was quiet, as if the
place were uninhabited, the only sign that an attack was expected
being that the gate leading to the house was strongly bolted and
barred. To force the gate open, if a work requiring hard labour, was
one of time, rather than of difficulty: and, when it had been
accomplished, the general courageously led his troops from the outer
defences to the very walls of the enemy's--that is to say of his
wife's--castle.
The door of the house was found to be a very different thing from the
gate. The besiegers knocked, and pounded, and thumped, and pushed, and
battered: but that door withstood all their efforts. Again and again
Coke, with a loud voice, demanded his child, in the King's name.
"Remember," roared he to those within, "if we should kill any of your
people, it would be justifiable homicide; but, if any of you should
kill one of us, it would be MURDER!"[16]
To this opinion of the highest legal authority, given gratis, silence
gave consent; for no reply was returned from the fortress, in which
the stillness must have made the attackers afraid that the foes had
fled. And then the bang, bang, banging on the door began afresh.
One of Coke's lieutenants suddenly bethought him of a flank attack,
and, after sneaking round the house, this warrior adopted the
burglar's manoeuvre of forcing open a window, on the ground floor. One
by one the valiant members of Coke's little army climbed into the
house by this means, and the august person of the ex-Lord Chief
Justice himself was squeezed through the aperture. Nobody appeared to
oppose their search; but preparations to prevent it had evidently been
made with great care; for Chamberlain wrote that they had to "brake
open divers doors."
Room after room was searched in vain; but, at last, Lady Elizabeth and
Frances were discovered hidden in a small closet. Both the father and
the mother clasped their daughter in their arms almost at the same
moment. The daughter clung to the mother; the father clung to the
daughter. Sir Edward pulled; Lady Elizabeth pulled; and, after a
violent struggle between the husband and the wife, Coke succeeded in
wrenching the weeping girl from her mother's arms.[17] Without a
moment's parley with his defeated antagonist, he dragged away his
prey, took her out of the house, placed her on horseback behind one of
her half-brothers, and started off with his whole cavalcade for his
house at Stoke Pogis.
The writer is old enough to have seen farmers' wives riding behind
their husbands, on pillions. Most uncomfortable sitting those pillions
appeared to afford, and he distinctly remembers the rolling movements
to which the sitters seemed to be subjected. This was when the pace
was at a walk or a slow jog. But the unfortunate Frances must have
been rolled and bumped at speed; for there was a pursuit. In his
already quoted letter to Carleton, Chamberlain says that Sir Edward
Coke's "lady was at his heels, and, if her coach had not held"--_i.e._,
stuck in the mud of the appalling roads of the period--"in the
pursuit after him, there was like to be strange tragedies." Miss
Coke must have been long in forgetting that enforced ride of at least
a dozen long miles, on a pillion behind a brother, and as a prisoner
surrounded by an armed force.
Campbell states that, on reaching Stoke Pogis, Coke locked his
daughter "in an upper chamber, of which he himself kept the key."
Possibly, Sir John Villiers' mother, Lady Compton, may have been
there, in readiness to receive her; for Chamberlain says that Coke
"delivered his daughter to the Lady Compton, Sir John's mother; but,
the next day, Edmondes, Clerk of the Council, was sent with a warrant
to have the custody of the lady at his own house." This was probably
Bacon's doing.
Among the manuscripts at Trinity College, Cambridge, is a letter[18]
written from the Inner Temple to Mrs. Ann Sadler, a daughter of Sir
Edward Coke by his first wife. From this we learn that, on finding
herself robbed of her daughter, Lady Elizabeth hastened to London to
seek the assistance of her friend Bacon. In driving thither her coach
was "overturned." We saw that it had "held" in the heavy roads when
she was chasing her husband in it, and very likely its wheels may have
become loosened in some ruts on that occasion. An upset in a carriage,
however, was a common occurrence in those days, and, nothing daunted,
Lady Elizabeth managed to complete her journey to the house of Bacon
in London.
When she reached it, she was told that the Lord Keeper was unwell and
in his room, asleep. She persuaded "the door-keeper" to take her to
the sitting-room next to his bedroom, in order that she might be "the
first to speak with him after he was stirring." The "door-keeper
fulfilled her desire and in the meantime gave her a chair to rest
herself in." Then he most imprudently left her, and she had not been
alone long when "she rose up and bounced against my Lord Keeper's
door." The noise not only woke up the sleeping Bacon, but "affrighted
him" to such an extent that he called for help at the top of his
voice. His servants immediately came rushing to his room. Doubtless he
was relieved at seeing them; but his feelings may have been somewhat
mixed when Lady Elizabeth "thrust in with them." He was on very
friendly terms with her; but it was disconcerting to receive a lady
from his bed when he was half awake and wholly frightened, especially
when, as the correspondent describes it, the condition of that lady
was like that of "a cow that had lost her calf."
The upshot of this rather unusual visit was that Lady Elizabeth got
Bacon's warrant, as Lord Keeper, and also that of the Lord Treasurer
"and others of the Council, to fetch her daughter from the father and
bring them both to the Council."
At that particular time Bacon had just made a blunder. He was well
aware of Buckingham's high favour with the King; but he scarcely
realised its measure. Indeed, since he had seen him last, and during
the time that the King had been in Scotland, Buckingham's influence
over James had increased enormously. It is true that Bacon had
enlisted the services of Buckingham to defeat Coke, and that he had
used him as a tool to secure the office of Lord Keeper: but, as the
occupier of that exalted position, he considered himself secure enough
to take his own line, and even to offer Buckingham some fatherly
advice, as will presently appear.
Bacon now made another attack upon his enemy by summoning Coke before
the Star Chamber on a charge of breaking into a private house with
violence. On receiving this summons, Coke wrote to Buckingham, who was
with the King in the North, complaining that his wife, the Withipoles,
and their confederates, had conveyed his "dearest daughter" from his
house, "in most secret manner, to a house near Oatland, which Sir
Edmund Withipole had taken for the summer of my Lord Argyle." Then he
said: "I, by God's wonderful providence finding where she was,
together with my sons and ordinary attendants did break open two
doors, & recovered my daughter." His object, he said was, "First &
principally, lest his Majesty should think I was of confederacy with
my wife in conveying her away, or charge me with want of government in
my household in suffering her to be carried away, after I had engaged
myself to his Majesty for the furtherance of this match."
Buckingham, at about the same time that he received Coke's letter,
received one in a very different tone from Bacon, in which he
said:[19] "Secretary Winwood has busied himself with a match between
Sir John Villiers & Sir Edward Coke's daughter, rather to make a
faction than out of any good affection to your lordship. The lady's
consent is not gained, _nor her mother's, from whom she expecteth a
great fortune_. This match, out of my faith & freedom to your
lordship, I hold very inconvenient, both for your mother, brother, &
yourself."
"First. He shall marry into a disgraced house, which in reason of
state, is never held good."
"Next. He shall marry into a troubled house of man & wife, which in
religion and Christian discretion is not liked."
"Thirdly. Your lordship will go near to lose all such of your friends
as are adverse to Sir Edward Coke (myself only except, who, out of a
pure love & thankfulness, shall ever be firm to you).... Therefore, my
advice is, & your lordship shall do yourself a great honour, if,
according to religion & the law of God, your lordship will signify
unto my lady, your mother, that your desire is that the marriage be
not pressed or proceeded in without the consent of both parents, & so
either break it altogether, or defer any further delay in it (sic)
till your lordship's return."
A few days later, on the 25th of July, Bacon wrote to an even greater
man than Buckingham, namely, to the King himself. "If," said he,
"there be any merit in drawing on this match, your Majesty should
bestow thanks, not upon the zeal of Sir Edward Coke to your Majesty,
nor upon the eloquent persuasions or pragmaticals of Mr. Secretary
Winwood; but upon them"--meaning himself--who "have so humbled Sir
Edward Coke, as he seeketh now that with submission which (as your
Majesty knoweth) before he rejected with scorn." And then he says that
if the King really wishes for the match, concerning which he should
like more definite orders, he will further it; for, says he, "though I
will not wager on women's minds, I can prevail more with the mother
than any other man."
King James's reply is not in existence, and it is unknown; but,
judging from a further letter of Bacon's, it must have been rather
cold and unfavourable; and, in Bacon's second letter to the King, he
was foolish enough to express a fear lest Buckingham's "height of
fortune might make him too secure." In his answer to this second
letter of Bacon, James reproves him for plotting with his adversary's
wife to overthrow him, saying "this is to be in league with Delilah."
He also scolds Bacon for being afraid that Buckingham's height of
fortune might make him "misknow himself." The King protests that
Buckingham is farther removed from such a vice than any of his other
courtiers. Bacon, he says, ought to have written to the King instead
of to Buckingham about "the inconvenience of the match:" "that would
have been the part of a true servant to us, and of a true friend to
him [Buckingham]. But first to make an opposition, then to give
advice, by way of friendship, is to make the plough go before the
horse."
By the time these letters had been carried backwards and forwards, to
and from Scotland and the North of England, a later date had been
reached than we have legitimately arrived at in our story, and we must
now go back to within a few days of Sir Edward Coke's famous raid at
Oatlands.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] _Chief Justices_, Vol. I., pp. 297-298
[15] _S.P. Dom._, James I., July, 1617. Chamberlain to Sir Dudley
Carleton.
[16] Campbell, p. 298.
[17] Lord Campbell's account.
[18] Quoted by Spedding in his _Life of Bacon_.
[19] Foard's _Life and Correspondence of Bacon_, p. 421.