Bacon's explanations, and his warnings against Coke the King "rejected with some disdain;" he justified Coke's action; he charged Bacon with disrespect and ingratitude to Buckingham; he put aside his arguments and apologies as worthless or insincere.

Such reprimands had not often been addressed, even to inferior servants.

Bacon's letters to Buckingham remained at first without notice; when Buckingham answered he did so with scornful and menacing curtness.

Meanwhile Bacon heard from Yelverton how things were going at Court.
"Sir E.Coke," he wrote, "hath not forborne by any engine to heave at both your Honour and myself, and he works the weightiest instrument, the Earl of Buckingham, who, as I see, sets him as close to him as his shirt, the Earl speaking in Sir Edward's phrase, and as it were menacing in his spirit." Buckingham, he went on to say, "did nobly and plainly tell me he would not secretly bite, but whosoever had had any interest, or tasted of the opposition to his brother's marriage, he would as openly oppose them to their faces, and they should discern what favour he had by the power he would use." The Court, like a pack of dogs, had set upon Bacon.

"It is too common in every man's mouth in Court that your greatness shall be abated, and as your tongue hath been as a razor unto some, so shall theirs be to you." Buckingham said to every one that Bacon had been forgetful of his kindness and unfaithful to him: "not forbearing in open speech to tax you, as if it were an inveterate custom with you, to be unfaithful unto him, as you were to the Earls of Essex and Somerset." All this while Bacon had been clearly in the right.