The great Lord Bacon, when a young man plodding at the bar, but with a very small practice, cast about his eyes among the desirable matches of the day, and selected the handsome widow of Sir William Hutton (nephew and heir of Lord Chancellor Hutton), who had a large fortune at her own disposal. But another legal gentleman had been beforehand with him; and when he proposed he was rejected. His favored rival was Sir Edward Coke, a crabbed widower, but attorney-general, rich and of large estate, as well as of large family. The widow who valued wealth as much as Bacon did, married the old man, running off with him, and entering into an irregular marriage, for which they were both prosecuted in the Ecclesiastical Court. Bacon had reason to rejoice at his escape, for the widow was of capricious and violent temper, and led Coke a most wretched life, refusing to take his name, separating from him, doing every thing to vex and annoy him, and teaching his child to rebel against him. Bacon was however shortly after consoled by a rich and handsome wife, in the daughter of Alderman Barnham, whom he married. But the marriage seems at best to have been one of convenience on his part. They did not live happily together; she never was a companion to him; and not long before his death, a final separation took place, and the great Lord Chancellor died without the consolations of female tenderness in his last moments. When the separation took place, "for great and just causes," as he expresses it in his will, he "utterly revoked" all testamentary dispositions in her favor. But she lost nothing by this, for his costly style of living during his official career left him without a penny, and he died insolvent.