The proposed conference was staved off by management for a day or two, but it could not be averted, and the Lords showed their eagerness for it.

And two things by this time--the beginning of March--seemed now to have become clear, first, that under the general attack on the referees was intended a blow against Bacon; next, that the person whom he had most reason to fear was Sir Edward Coke.
The storm was growing; but Bacon was still unalarmed, though Buckingham had been frightened into throwing the blame on the referees.
"I do hear," he writes to Buckingham (dating his letter on March 7th, "the day I received the seal"), "from divers of judgement, that to-morrow's conference is like to pass in a calm, as to the referees.

Sir Lionel Cranfield, who hath been formerly the trumpet, said yesterday that he did now incline unto Sir John Walter's opinion and motion not to have the referees meddled with, otherwise than to discount it from the King; and so not to look back, but to the future.

And I do hear almost all men of judgement in the House wish now that way.

I woo nobody; I do but listen, and I have doubt only of Sir Edward Coke, who I wish had some round _caveat_ given him from the King; for your Lordship hath no great power with him.
But a word from the King mates him." But Coke's opportunity had come.