A letter addressed by Coke to Buckingham, before his final removal from his pre-eminent station, must, one would imagine, have touched a harder heart than that of Villiers. Coke’s words are described as “now being humble enough.” His letter, though supplicatory, was not abject. He thanked Buckingham for having, by his honourable means, obtained a hearing for him. He entered manfully into the defence of his book of reports, to which objections had been made, which were the plea of his suspension from his usual judicial duties, “assuring his Lordship that never any book was written of any human learning that was not in some part or other subject to exception.”[183] Footnote 183: Bishop Goodman, vol. ii., p. 166. This remonstrance was dispatched to Buckingham at a time when the heart of the favourite might have been softened by his own elevation, and by the general joy. It reached him just before the creation of Charles, Prince of Wales, and contained a request that the deeply-humbled Coke might be permitted to attend that ceremonial.[184] There is no record that the entreaty was acceded to. Footnote 184: Ibid. Until the end of November (1616) the fate of the Lord Chief Justice was undecided. The Queen, to her credit, and the Prince Charles, were urgent in his behalf. And a rumour now first began to prevail that the younger brother of the favourite, Sir John Villiers, who had an appointment in the Prince’s household, was to marry Sir Edward Coke’s daughter, with a dowry of 900l. in land from her father, and 2,100_l._ in land from Lady Hatton, together with Lord Teynham’s office; but, in the meantime, the Lord Chief Justice was, in his fortunes, affected as it were with an “ague,” which has an alternate bad and good day.[185] The next report was that Coke was “quite off the hooks,” and that orders had been sent to give him a _supersedeas_. The jest of the day was that four P’s had lost him his place—Pride, Prohibitions, Præmunire, and Prerogative.[186] Shortly afterwards he was superseded, and had the mortification of knowing that Sir Henry Montagu, who was appointed in his stead, went with great pomp to Westminster Hall, accompanied by many noblemen, to the number of “fifty horse, the whole fry of the Middle Temple, and swarms of lawyers and officers.”[187] That was a day of triumph for Buckingham. Footnote 185: Nichols, from Birch’s MS., p. 4172. Footnote 186: Ibid. Footnote 187: Ibid, p. 227.