Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/85

1618] Scotland, Coke had had a private interview with Buckingham, in which he agreed to consent to the marriage on condition of regaining his honours and position in the council and on the bench.

During the absence of the court in Scotland, and whilst Bacon was in the full blow of his assumed greatness, he discovered this compact, which boded him nothing but destruction. Without delay he incited the lady Hatton, who was in almost everything violently opposed to her husband, to make haste and secure her daughter by secreting herself in the house of Sir Edward Withipole, near Oxford, and by contracting her in marriage to Henry de Vere, earl of Oxford, for whom the young lady really entertained a regard. Coke, enraged at this flight, and at the attempt to marry his daughter contrary to his own plans, applied for a search-warrant to enter the house where she was secreted. Bacon refused it, but Winwood was only too happy to grant it. Coke, supported by twelve armed men, made a forcible entry, and carried away his daughter. On this, Bacon procured the new attorney-general, Yelverton, to file an information against Coke in the star-chamber for a breach of the peace. Bacon also wrote to the king and the favourite in Scotland, representing to Buckingham that it was by no means to his honour or interest to ally his family to that of Coke, a fallen, disgraced man, and disliked of the king, and especially as much better matches might be found. To James he represented the trouble which Coke had given to his majesty, his fondness for opposing his wishes, and the disturbances there had been in the kingdom and courts of justice so long as he had been in power. He added that now everything was quiet, and that his majesty knew that he had in him an officer always anxious to do his will.

The answer of the king struck him at once to the earth. The great philosopher was not aware how far the compact with Coke had really gone; and when he read the king's letter, reprimanding his presumption, accompanied by another from Buckingham, in which he rated him for his officious meddling, and telling him that the same hand which had made him could unmake him, he saw the gulf into which he had plunged. At once he wrote off to both monarch and minion, imploring the humblest pardon for his unworthy offence, which he would now do all in his power to wipe away. Accordingly, he stopped the proceedings before the council and in the star-chamber against Coke, and assured lady Hatton and her friends that he could not assist them in a course so opposed to the wishes of the Young lady's father.

On the return of the court, Bacon hastened to pay his homage to the proud favourite; but he was then made to feel how much it is in the power of a base and little-souled man in favour, to humiliate the most gigantic mind when it forgets its own dignity. The great renovator of science, the proud and vaunting lord-keeper, was made to wait for two whole days in the lobby of the upstart. This is Weldon's account of it:—"He attended two days at Buckingham's chamber, being not admitted to any better place than the room where trencher-scrapers and lackeys attended, there sitting upon an old wooden chest, amongst such as for his baseness were only fit for his companions, although the honour of his place did merit far more respect, with his purse and seal lying by him on that chest. Myself told a servant of my lord of Buckingham, it was a shame to see the purse and seal of so little value or esteem in his chamber, though the carrier without it merited nothing but scorn, being worst amongst the basest. But the servant told me they had command it must be so. After two days he had admittance. At his first entrance he fell down flat at the duke's foot, kissing it, and vowing never to rise till he had his pardon; and thus was he again reconciled. And since that time so very a slave to the duke and all that family, that he durst not deny the command of the meanest of the kindred, nor yet oppose anything. By which you see a base spirit is even most concomitant with the proudest mind; and surely, never so many brave parts, and so base and abject a spirit, tenanted together in any one earthen cottage, as in this one man."

Buckingham condescended to forgive the suppliant lord-keeper: the marriage was accomplished, and Bacon soon after, that is, on the 4th of January, 1618, was raised to the dignity of lord chancellor, with a pension of twelve hundred pounds a year, and the title of baron Verulam. So that he threw no obstacle in the way of the marriage. both James and Buckingham preferred his pliancy to the sturdy spirit of Coke.

The consequences of this forced and unnatural marriage were as deplorable as the means of effecting it were vile. The brother of Villiers was created viscount Purbeck; but no title could give him a sound body or a healthy intellect. It was not long before he was pronounced utterly mad, was shut up in an asylum, and Buckingham took possession of his wife's property under pretence of managing it for lord and lady Purbeck, but spent it for his own purposes; and Coke's daughter, outraged in all her feelings as a woman, and her rights as a subject, became a degraded and abandoned character.

Buckingham now reigned supreme at court. He had rapidly risen from a simple country youth into a baron, viscount, earl, and marquis; he was a member of the privy council, knight of the garter, had been a master of the horse, and was now lord high-admiral; the earl of Nottingham, the brave old Howard, the hero of the Armada, having been compelled to resign to make way for him. He and his mother disposed of all places about court, in the church, in the courts of law, and in the government. Peers, prelates, and men of all degrees courted humbly his favour, and paid him large sums of money for the places they sought, or agreed to annuities out of their salaries and emoluments. The king seemed to rejoice in the wealth which flowed in on his favourite from all these corrupt services, and could not bear him out of his sight.

Let us take Weldon's account of this state of things:—"And now Buckingham, having the chancellor or treasurer, and all great officers his very slaves, swells in the height of pride, and summons up all his country kindred, the old countess providing a place for them to learn to carry themselves in a court-like garb." The old countess, as Weldon calls her, was far from old, but a woman yet in her prime, and of singular beauty, and of as notorious wickedness. She was another Elizabeth Wydville, in looking out for all the rich heirs and heiresses, and marrying her kin to them. The brothers, half-brothers, cousins of Buckingham, were