condition. Footnote 170: Nichols, vol. iii., p. 392, from Whitaker’s Hist. of Craven. Footnote 171: Nichols, iii., p. 434. In the harangue addressed to the king on his entrance into Warwick, there is this passage:—“This castle, alsoe moste desirous to receive you, the greatest guest that ever she entertained, would speake in noe lower key, but that her late disgrace abateth her courage. After shee became the jaylor’s lodge, interchanging the goulden chaines of her noble erle’s with the iron fetters of wretched prisoners, given over to be inhabited by battes and owles, she is ashamed to speake before you.” Nichols’s, vol. iii., p. 431. This speech was transcribed for Nichols’s Progresses, by the late William Hamper, Esq., F.S.A., from the Black Book of Warwick, a book preserved by the corporation. Sir Fulke Grevill spent 20,000_l._ in restoring the Castle with its pleasaunce and gardens. To his care the preservation of that interesting structure is due. Footnote 172: Birch’s MSS., 4173. Whilst Buckingham was in Scotland, overtures were made to reconcile certain differences between him and Sir Edward Coke, then Lord Chief Justice in England. In order to comprehend the conduct which the favourite pursued in relation to that celebrated man, it becomes necessary to review a series of occurrences which had happened previously to the Scottish journey; to enter, likewise, into the topics of the day; and, above all, to refer to the prejudices of the king, and the resistance made to them by an honest, though a harsh, individual. These considerations are mixed up with matters of apparently private interest; yet are necessary to be unfolded, when the conduct of Villiers, and the history of his family, are the subject of narrative. It will be remembered that the chief interest which James derived from the representation of the play of “Ignoramus” had arisen from the ridicule cast upon the practice of the common law. In several passages of that drama, Sir Edward Coke was supposed to be particularly alluded to.[173] This great lawyer had, in various ways, given offence; he had termed the royal prerogative, in one of his speeches in Parliament, “a great overgrown monster;” and he had displayed a courage which redeemed his character from many of its demerits, by insinuating that the common law of England was in charge of being perverted. On two other notable points Coke had also offended the king; the one being the famous dispute respecting the Court of Chancery; the other, the still more celebrated case of the Commendams.[174] In the former matter, the conduct of Coke is allowed to have been highly discreditable to him and his associates; in the latter, to have merited the warmest admiration. Footnote 173: Nichols, vol. iii., p. 90. Footnote 174: