A Book About Lawyers. John Cordy Jeaffreson

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 bridegroom humbly sued for pardon, pleading ignorance of law in excuse of their misbehavior.

The scandalous consequences of that marriage are known to every reader who has laughed over the more pungent and comic scenes of English history. Whilst Lady Hatton gave masques and balls in the superb palace which came into her possession through marriage with Sir Christopher Hatton's nephew, Coke lived in his chambers, working at cases and writing the books which are still carefully studied by every young man who wishes to make himself a master of our law. In private they had perpetual squabbles, and they quarrelled with equal virulence and indecency before the world. The matrimonial settlement of their only and ill-starred daughter was the occasion of an outbreak on the part of husband and wife, that not only furnished diversion for courtiers but agitated the council table. Of all the comic scenes connected with that unseemly fracas, not the least laughable and characteristic was the grand festival of reconciliation at Hatton House, when Lady Hatton received the king and queen in Holborn, and expressly forbade her husband to presume to show himself among her guests. "The expectancy of Sir Edward's rising," says a writer of the period,[6] "is much abated by reason of his lady's liberty,[7] who was brought in great honor to Exeter House by my Lord of Buckingham from Sir William Craven's, whither she had been remanded, presented by his lordship to the king, received gracious usage, reconciled to her daughter by his Majesty, and her house in Holborn enlightened by his presence at a dinner, where there was a royal feast; and to make it more absolutely her own, express commandment given by her ladyship, that neither Sir Edward Coke nor any of his servants should be admitted."

      If tradition may be credited, the law is greatly indebted to the class of women whom it was our forefathers' barbarous wont to punish with the ducking-stool. Had Coke been happy in his second marriage, it is assumed that he would have spent more time in pleasure and fewer hours at his desk, that the suitors in his court would have had less careful decisions, and that posterity would have been favored with fewer reports. If the inference is just, society may point to the commentary on Littleton, and be thankful for the lady's unhappy temper and sharp tongue. In like manner the wits of the following century maintained that Holt's steady application to business was a consequence of domestic misery. The lady who ruled his house in Bedford Row, is said to have been such a virago, that the Chief Justice frequently retired to his chambers, in order that he might place himself beyond reach of her voice. Amongst the good stories told of Radcliffe, the Tory physician, is the tradition of his boast, that he kept Lady Holt alive out of pure political animosity to the Whig Chief Justice. Another eminent lawyer, over whose troubles people have made merry in the same fashion, was Jeffrey Gilbert, Baron of the Exchequer. At his death, October 14, 1726, this learned judge left behind him that mass of reports, histories, and treatises by which he is known as one of the most luminous, as well as voluminous of legal writers. None of his works passed through the press during his life, and when their number and value were discovered after his departure to another world, it was whispered that they had been composed in hours of banishment from a hearth where a scolding wife made misery for all who came within the range of her querulous notes.

      Disappointed in his suit to his beautiful and domineering cousin, Bacon let some five or six years pass before he allowed his thoughts again to turn to love, and then he wooed and waited for nearly three years more, ere, on a bright May day, he met Alice Barnham in Marylebone Chapel, and made her his wife in the presence of a courtly company. In the July of 1603, he wrote to Cecil:—"For this divulged and almost prostituted title of knighthood, I could, without charge by your honor's mean, be content to have it, both because of this late disgrace, and because I have three new knights in my mess in Gray's Inn Commons, and because I have found out an alderman's daughter, a handsome maiden, to my liking. So as if your honor will find the time, I will come to the court from Gorhambury upon any warning." This expression, 'an alderman's daughter,' contributed greatly, if it did not give rise to, the misapprehension that Bacon's marriage was a mercenary arrangement. In these later times the social status of an alderman is so much beneath the rank of a distinguished member of the bar, that a successful queen's counsel, who should make an offer to the daughter of a City magistrate, would be regarded as bent upon a decidedly unambitious match; and if in a significant tone he spoke of the lady as 'an alderman's daughter' his words might be reasonably construed as a hint that her fortune atoned for her want of rank. But it never occurred to Bacon's contemporaries to put such a construction on the announcement. Far from using the words in an apologetic manner, the lover meant them to express concisely that Alice Barnham was a lady of suitable condition to bear a title as well as to become his bride. Cecil regarded them merely as an assurance that his relative meditated a suitable and even advantageous alliance, just as any statesman of the present day would read an announcement that a kinsman, making his way in the law-courts, intended to marry 'an admiral's daughter' or a 'bishop's daughter.' That it was the reverse of a mercenary marriage, Mr. Hepworth Dixon has indisputably proved in his eighth chapter of 'The Story of Lord Bacon's Life,' where he contrasts Lady Bacon's modest fortune with her husband's personal acquisitions and prospects.

      [4] To readers who have no sense of humor and irony, the essay 'Of Love' unquestionably gives countenance to the theory that Francis Bacon was cold and passionless in all that concerned woman. Of the many strange constructions put upon this essay, not the least amusing and perverse is that which would make it a piece of adroit flattery to Elizabeth, who never permitted love "to check with business," though she is represented to have used it as a diversion in idle moments. If Sir Thomas More's 'Utopia' had been published a quarter of a century after 1518 (the date of its appearance), a similar construction would have been put on the passage, which urges that lovers should not be bound by an indissoluble tie of wedlock, until mutual inspection has satisfied each of the contracting parties that the other does not labor under any grave personal defect. If it were possible to regard the passage containing this proposal as an interpolation in the original romance, it might then be regarded as an attempt to palliate Henry VIII.'s conduct to Anne of Cleves.

[5] When due allowance has been made for the difference between the usages of the sixteenth century and the present time, decency was signally violated by this marriage, which followed so soon upon Mrs. Coke's death, and still sooner upon the death of Lady Hatton's famous grandfather, at whose funeral the lawyer made the first overtures for her hand. Mrs. Coke died June 27, 1598, and was buried at Huntingfield,