“Next, he shall marry into a troubled home of man and wife, which in religion and Christian discretion is disliked. “Thirdly, that he should incur the almost certain loss of friends, myself only excepted, who, out of a pure love and thankfulness, shall be ever firm to you. “And lastly and chiefly, the danger that would be incurred of lessening Buckingham’s influence with the King.” He therefore recommended Buckingham to signify unto his mother, who seems to have been the main-spring in the affair, that his desire was that the marriage should not be proceeded in without the consent of both parties, thus making use of a plea in order to sound a retreat from the alliance; but all was in vain. Bacon next addressed himself to the King. He touched him in his weak part. “Your Majesty’s prerogative and authority have risen in some just degrees above the horizon more than heretofore, which has distilled vapours; your judges are in good temper; your justices of peace (which is the great body of the gentlemen of England) grow to be loving and obsequious, and to be weary of this humour of ruffling; all mutinous spirits grow to be a little poor, and to draw in their horns, and not the less for your Majesty’s disauthorising the man I speak of;[199] now, then, I reasonably doubt that if there be but an opinion of his coming in with the strength of such an alliance, it will give a downward relapse in men’s minds unto the former state of things, hardly to be helped, to the great weakening of your Majesty’s service. He is by nature unsociable, and by habit unpopular, and too old to take a new place. And men begin already to collect, yea, and to conclude that he that raiseth such a smoke to get in, will set all on fire when he is in.”[200] Footnote 199: Coke. Footnote 200: These letters are taken from Mr. Montague’s edition of Bacon’s works, vol. vii., Bacon’s Life, p. 16. Not content with these remonstrances, Bacon threatened Winwood with a Præmunire for granting the warrant; but he was speedily checked by the indignation of Buckingham, and consequently by that of the King. Coke was reinstated in the favour of the Monarch, and restored to his place in the Privy Council, September 15, 1617. He joined the Court on its journey from Scotland at Woodstock, and “as if he were already on his wings,” to use the expression of Sir Henry Yelverton, in his letter to Bacon, “triumphed exceedingly.” The poor puppet, Frances Hatton, whose inclinations, as Lord Campbell remarks, were as little considered “as if she had been a Queen of Spain under the influence of a Louis Philippe,” was now commanded by her mother to write a second letter, consenting to marry one who, in thus espousing her, proved to be most unhappy. “MADAM,