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Updated: May 28, 2025
There was a subdued flutter of excitement as we paraded, for though both our destination and object were unknown, it was clearly understood that the hour of action had arrived. Everything was moving. A long cloud of dust rose up in the direction of Springfield. A column of infantry Coke's Brigade curled out of its camp near Spearman's Hill, and wound down towards the ferry at Potgieter's.
A letter written on the same day by Sir John Finet mentions the projected marriage of Sir Edward Coke's daughter with Sir John Villiers, who would have £2,000 a year from Buckingham, and be left heir of his lands, as he was already of his Earldom, failing the Earl's male issue.
Coke's departure left the position without a clearly recognized commander, although he had done little more than attend to and distribute the supports and reinforcements on the S.W. spur. After the dispatch of Thorneycroft's letter at 6.30 p.m., the situation grew more hopeless every minute.
The British were now moving upon the Boers in two separate bodies, the one which included Lyttelton's and Coke's Brigades from Potgieter's Drift, making what was really a frontal attack, while the main body under Warren, who had crossed at Trichard's Drift, was swinging round upon the Boer right.
Coke's first marriage was not unhappy; and on the death of his wife by that union, he wrote in his note-book: "Most beloved and most excellent wife, she well and happily lived, and, as a true handmaid of the Lord, fell asleep in the Lord, and now lives and reigns in heaven." In after years he often wished most cordially that he could say as much for his second wife.
Indeed it seemed as if affliction were about to "level the mole-hills," not now of Coke's, but of Bacon's pride; "to plough" Bacon's heart and "make it fit for Wisdom to sow her seed, and for Grace to bring forth her increase," blessings which Bacon had so kindly & so liberally promised to Coke in a letter already quoted.
I know there is an opinion of Lord Coke's, in Colvin's case, that if England and Scotland should, in a course of descent, pass to separate Kings, those born under the same sovereign during the union, would remain natural subjects and not aliens. Common sense urges some considerations against this. Natural subjects owe allegiance; but we owe none.
Going further back still, we find that Bacon, who had succeeded in overthrowing Coke, was himself overthrown in 1621, three years after the marriage of Coke's daughter to Sir John Villiers, and shortly after Bacon himself had been created Viscount St. Albans.
It is pointed out by Amos, in his Great Oyer of Poisoning, that a large number of the documents appertaining to the Somerset trial show corrections and apparent glosses in Coke's own handwriting, and that even the confessions on the scaffold of some of the convicted are holographs by Coke.
Watts was both charmed and surprised when the friendly skipper joined in the concluding lines in his own language. But his pleasure was short-lived. Coke's inflamed visage glowered into the mess room. "Sink me if you ain't a daisy!" he roared, pouncing on a three-quarters filled bottle of rum. "D'you fancy we're goin' to land you at Maceio cryin' drunk? No, sir, not this time.
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