already quoted letter to Carleton, Chamberlain says that Sir Edward
Coke's "lady was at his heels, and, if her coach had not held"--_i.e._,
stuck in the mud of the appalling roads of the period--"in the
pursuit after him, there was like to be strange tragedies." Miss
Coke must have been long in forgetting that enforced ride of at least
a dozen long miles, on a pillion behind a brother, and as a prisoner
surrounded by an armed force.

Campbell states that, on reaching Stoke Pogis, Coke locked his
daughter "in an upper chamber, of which he himself kept the key."
Possibly, Sir John Villiers' mother, Lady Compton, may have been
there, in readiness to receive her; for Chamberlain says that Coke
"delivered his daughter to the Lady Compton, Sir John's mother; but,
the next day, Edmondes, Clerk of the Council, was sent with a warrant
to have the custody of the lady at his own house." This was probably
Bacon's doing.

Among the manuscripts at Trinity College, Cambridge, is a letter[18]
written from the Inner Temple to Mrs. Ann Sadler, a daughter of Sir
Edward Coke by his first wife. From this we learn that, on finding
herself robbed of her daughter, Lady Elizabeth hastened to London to
seek the assistance of her friend Bacon. In driving thither her coach
was "overturned." We saw that it had "held" in the heavy roads when
she was chasing her husband in it, and very likely its wheels may have
become loosened in some ruts on that occasion. An upset in a carriage,
however, was a common occurrence in those days, and, nothing daunted,
Lady Elizabeth managed to complete her journey to the house of Bacon
in London.

When she reached it, she was told that the Lord Keeper was unwell and