This celebrated judge was peculiarly unhappy in his domestic life. Lady Elizabeth Hatton, his second wife, the sister of Thomas Burleigh, Earl of Exeter, and the widow of Sir Thomas Hatton, had brought him, along with a large fortune, the unpleasant acquisition of a partner violent, litigious, and unscrupulous. The very commencement of the inauspicious nuptials had been attended with trouble, the parties subjecting themselves to many inconveniencies from the irregularity of their marriage, which took place in a private house, without bans or licence. From the moment that the knot was tied, Coke found in this new connection nothing but misery. Neither in private nor in public could his wife and he abstain from the sharpest contentions. Their daughter—that object which should most surely have cemented a union—soon proved a new source of the bitterest feuds. When Buckingham was in Scotland, an overture was made to him on the part of Sir Edward Coke, relating to the marriage of his youngest daughter to Sir John Villiers, the elder brother of the favourite. The proposal was made through Secretary Winwood, the friend of Coke, and was, at first, eagerly accepted by Buckingham; but, although it had these good auspices, there were obstacles which prevented its favourable course. One of these was the dislike of the young lady to her appointed suitor, who was diseased, and troubled with a humour in his legs, and accounted not a long-lived man; so that, as was observed by Mr. Chamberlain, “there needed so much ado to get him a wife.” Another was the jealousy of Lady Hatton. Incensed that her husband should dare to dispose of her daughter without her consent, she carried her off, and secreted her in the house of Sir Edmund Withipole, near Oatlands, in Surrey. From that retreat, the young lady was removed to the residence of Archibald, seventh Earl of Argyle, near Hampton Court.