be mentioned one on the scarcity of money {26 Feb.) He enumerated seven causes : (1) the turning of money into plate ; (2) the use of gold folia in gilding ; (3) the undervalue of silver ; (4) the East India Company, who intercept ' the dollars and other moneys that would otherwise come into the kingdom, and bring in for it nothing but toys and trifles ; ' (5) the excess of imports over exports ; (6) 'the French merchants for wine arry forth 80,000. per annum, and bring in nothing but wines and lace and such like trifles ; (7) the patent for gold and silver lace and thread, which wastes our bullion and coin, and hinders the bringing of it into the kingdom (ib. i. 96 ; Parl. Hist. i. 1194). The impeachment of Bacon took place in the same year ; and Coke, who was member of the committee of investigation, was, along with Digges, Phillips, and Noy, entrusted with the drawing up of the charges. It has even been suggested that he instigated the proceedings ; but there is no reason to believe that this is true. Mainly by his advice, indeed, the House of Commons declined to accept the novel mode of trial proposed by the King ; but his conduct exhibits no trace of unseemly eagerness to secure the disgrace of his old rival. From the appearance of such unworthiness he was saved by Bacon's plea of guilty. 'Even Sir Edward Coke,' says Macaulay, 'for the first time in his life behaved like a gentleman.' The general condemnation which is here implied was shared, it must be confessed, by some of his contemporaries. 'He would die,' writes Sir E. Conway in 1624, 'if he could not help to ruin a great man once in seven years.' Since his removal from the bench he and Bacon had worked together much more harmoniously ; but there could never have been any real sympathy between them. They differed absolutely in character and in intellect, and each probably despised the other. Coke's opinion of Bacon's philosophical work has been curiously preserved in the copy of the 'Novum Orgauum ' which Bacon presented to him. It bears the inscription :
Edw. C. ex dono auctoris.
Auctori consilium.
Instaurare paras veterum documenta sophorum :
Instaura leges, justitiamque prius,
and a sketch of a ship, with the lines :
It deserveth not to be reade in Schooles,
But to be freighted in the Ship of Fooles.
(Bacon's Works, 1819, vi. 252.)
By his conduct in parliament Coke had finally cut himself away from all hope of restoration to office. James especially resented an address which he had moved concerning the Spanish marriage, called it ' Sir Edward Coke's foolish business,' and said ' it had well become him, especially being our servant and one of our council, to have explained himself unto us, which he never did, though he never had access refused to him.' The great debate which concluded with the protestation in favour of the liberties of parliament exhausted the patience of the king. He tore the entry from the journal of the house, dissolved parliament, and arrested Coke and other leaders of the ' turbulent ' party. In the hope of finding treasonable matter Coke's chambers were ransacked and his papers were brought to the council to be searched (S. P. D. cxxvii. 333, 336). He himself was kept closely confined in the Tower for nine months. When he was released in August 1622, it was only subject to conditions as to the limits within which he might live, and he was removed from the council. While he was in the Tower five different suits were brought against him, in all of which he was successful ; he was examined four times on state matters, and delivered of all kind of suspicion, and nothing that could bring him into question was found among his papers. These are described as his seven great deliveries while he was prisoner in the Tower (Holkham MS. 727).
In the parliament of 1624 Coke sat for Coventry. The king had resolved to exclude him along with Pym and others, and being unable to do so openly had placed them on a commission to inquire into the condition of religion and trade in Ireland. The manoeuvre was perfectly understood by everybody, and somehow Coke contrived to escape from what was meant as a temporary exile. 'No restraint,' he said afterwards, referring to the attempt, ' be it never so little, but is imprisonment, and foreign employment is a kind of honourable banishment.' He remained to take a leading part in the impeachment of the Earl of Middlesex, to speak against the excessive taxation of the people, to advocate a stricter observance of ' the king's ecclesiastical laws,' to renew his protest against the Spanish marriage, and to encourage the feeling for war, which made him, he said, feel seven years younger. Buckingham's eagerness for war made him exclaim that ' never any man deserved better of his king and country ' the speech to which Clarendon must refer (Hist. bk. i. 10) when he accuses Coke of having blasphemously called Buckingham ' our Saviour.' Coke was afterwards heard to speak very differently of Buckingham's influence on home policy. Meanwhile he had so far regained favour that afew months before James's death the oath of a privy councillor was again
