The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck | Page 5

and hard-heartedness in the service.... He
scrupulously attended to see the proper degree of pain inflicted." Yet
this severe prosecutor, bitter advocate and cruel examiner, became a
Chief Justice of tolerable courtesy, moderate severity, and
unimpeachable integrity.
If he had everything his own way in the criminal court and the torture
chamber, Coke did not find his wishes altogether unopposed in his
family. To begin with, he suffered the perpetual insult of the refusal on
the part of his wife to be called by his name. If her first husband had
been of higher rank, it might have been another matter: but both were
only knights, and it was a parallel case to the widow Jones, after she
had married Smith, insisting upon still calling herself Mrs. Jones. Lady
Elizabeth defended her conduct on this point as follows:[3] "I returned
this answer: that if Sir Edward Cooke would bury my first husband
accordinge to his own directions, and also paie such small legacys as he
gave to divers of his friends, in all cominge not to above £700 or £900,
at the most that was left unperformed, he having all Sir William
Hatton's goods & lands to a large proportion, then would I willingly
stile myself by his name. But he never yielded, so I consented not to the
other." Whether Hatton or Coke, as an Earl's daughter she was Lady
Elizabeth, by which name alone let us know her.
Campbell states that, after the birth of Frances, Sir Edward and Lady
Elizabeth "lived little together, although they had the prudence to
appear to the world to be on decent terms till the heiress was
marriageable." Coke had been astute enough to secure a comfortable
country-house, at a very convenient distance from London, through
Lady Elizabeth. Her ladyship had held a mortgage upon Stoke Pogis, a
place that belonged formerly to the Earls of Huntingdon,[4] and Coke,
either by foreclosing or by selling, obtained possession of the property.
As it stood but three or four miles to the north of Windsor, the situation
was excellent.[5] Sir Edward's London house was in the then

fashionable quarter of Holborn, a place to which dwellers in the city
used to go for change of air.[6] As Coke and his wife generally
quarrelled when together, the husband was usually at Holborn[7] when
the wife was at Stoke, and _vice-versâ_. It was almost impossible that
Miss Frances should not notice the strained relations between her
parents. Nothing could have been much worse for the education of their
daughter than their constant squabblings; and, unless she differed
greatly from most other daughters, she would take advantage of their
mutual antipathies to play one against the other, a pleasing pastime, by
means of which young ladies, blessed with quarrelsome parents, often
obtain permissions and other good things of this world, which
otherwise they would have to do without.
Lady Elizabeth found a friend and a sympathiser in her domestic
worries. Francis Bacon, the former lover of her fortune, if not of her
person, became her consoler and her counsellor. Let not the reader
suppose that these pages are so early to be sullied by a scandal. Nothing
could have been farther from reproach than the marital fidelity of Lady
Elizabeth, but it must have gratified Bacon to annoy the man who had
crossed and conquered him in love, or in what masqueraded under that
name, by fanning the flames of Lady Elizabeth's fiery hatred against
her husband. Hitherto, Coke had had it all his own way. He had
snubbed and insulted Bacon in the law courts, and he had snatched a
wealthy and beautiful heiress from his grasp. The wheel of fortune was
now about to take a turn in the opposite direction.
About the year 1611, King James entertained the idea of reigning as an
absolute sovereign. Archbishop Bancroft flattered him in this notion,
and suggested that the King ought to have the privilege of "judging
whatever cause he pleased in his own person, free from all risk of
prohibition or appeal." James summoned the judges to his Council and
asked whether they consented to this proposal. Coke replied:--
"God has endowed your Majesty with excellent science as well as great
gifts of nature; but your Majesty will allow me to say, with all
reverence, that you are not learned in the laws of this your realm of
England, and I crave leave to remind your Majesty that causes which

concern the life or inheritance, or goods or fortunes of your subjects are
not to be decided by natural reason, but by the artificial reason and
judgment of law, which law is an art which requires long study and
experience before that a man can attain to the cognizance of it."
On hearing this, James flew into a