Campbell states that, after the birth of Frances, Sir Edward and Lady
Elizabeth "lived little together, although they had the prudence to
appear to the world to be on decent terms till the heiress was
marriageable." Coke had been astute enough to secure a comfortable
country-house, at a very convenient distance from London, through Lady
Elizabeth. Her ladyship had held a mortgage upon Stoke Pogis, a place
that belonged formerly to the Earls of Huntingdon,[4] and Coke, either
by foreclosing or by selling, obtained possession of the property. As
it stood but three or four miles to the north of Windsor, the
situation was excellent.[5] Sir Edward's London house was in the then
fashionable quarter of Holborn, a place to which dwellers in the city
used to go for change of air.[6] As Coke and his wife generally
quarrelled when together, the husband was usually at Holborn[7] when
the wife was at Stoke, and _vice-versâ_. It was almost impossible that
Miss Frances should not notice the strained relations between her
parents. Nothing could have been much worse for the education of their
daughter than their constant squabblings; and, unless she differed
greatly from most other daughters, she would take advantage of their
mutual antipathies to play one against the other, a pleasing pastime,
by means of which young ladies, blessed with quarrelsome parents,
often obtain permissions and other good things of this world, which
otherwise they would have to do without.

Lady Elizabeth found a friend and a sympathiser in her domestic
worries. Francis Bacon, the former lover of her fortune, if not of her
person, became her consoler and her counsellor. Let not the reader
suppose that these pages are so early to be sullied by a scandal.
Nothing could have been farther from reproach than the marital
fidelity of Lady Elizabeth, but it must have gratified Bacon to annoy
the man who had crossed and conquered him in love, or in what