Produced by Malcolm Farmer, Richard J. Shiffer and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.
THE
CURIOUS CASE
OF
LADY PURBECK
A SCANDAL OF THE XVIITH CENTURY
BY THE AUTHOR OF
"THE LIFE OF SIR KENELM DIGBY," "THE ADVENTURES
OF KING JAMES II.," "MARSHAL TURENNE"
"THE LIFE OF A PRIG," ETC.
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
1909
PREFACE
The curious case of Lady Purbeck is here presented without
embellishment, much as it has been found in old books and old
manuscripts, chiefly at the Record Office and at the British Museum.
Readers must not expect to find any "well-drawn characters," "fine
descriptions," "local colour," or "dramatic talent," in these pages,
on each of which Mr. Dry-as-dust will be encountered. Possibly some
writer of fiction, endowed with able hands directed by an imaginative
mind, may some day produce a readable romance from the rough-hewn
matter which they contain: but, as their author's object has been to
tell the story simply, as it has come down to us, and, as much as was
possible, to let the contemporaries of the heroine tell it in their
own words, he has endeavoured to suppress his own imagination, his own
emotions, and his own opinions, in writing it. He has the pleasure of
acknowledging much useful assistance and kind encouragement in this
little work from Mr. Walter Herries Pollock.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Sir Edward Coke--Lady Elizabeth Hatton--Bacon--Marriage of Coke
and Lady Elizabeth--Birth of the Heroine 1
CHAPTER II.
Rivalry of Coke and Bacon--Quarrelling between Coke and Lady
Elizabeth--Coke offends the King and loses his offices--Letter of
Bacon to Coke 10
CHAPTER III.
Coke tries to regain the favour of Buckingham and the King by offering
his daughter to Sir John Villiers--Anger of Lady Elizabeth--Lady
Elizabeth steals away with her daughter 21
CHAPTER IV.
Coke besieges his wife and carries off his daughter--Coke and Winwood
_v_. Lady Elizabeth and Bacon--Charges and counter-charges 30
CHAPTER V.
Lady Elizabeth tries to recover her daughter--Her scheme for a match
between Frances Coke and the Earl of Oxford--Bacon, finding that
he has offended both Buckingham and the King, turns round and
favours the match with Villiers--Trial of Lady Exeter--Imprisonment
of Lady Elizabeth at an Alderman's house 39
CHAPTER VI.
Frances is tortured into consent--The marriage--Lady Elizabeth comes
into royal favour and Coke falls out of it--Lady Elizabeth's
dinner-party to the King--Carleton and his wife quarrel about
her 52
CHAPTER VII.
Buckingham ennobles his own family--Villiers becomes Lord
Purbeck--Purbeck and the Countess of Buckingham become
Catholics--Rumours that Purbeck is insane 64
CHAPTER VIII.
The insanity question--Quite sane--Thought insane again--Letter
from Lady Purbeck to Buckingham--Birth of Robert Wright--Sir
Robert Howard 74
CHAPTER IX.
Proceedings instituted against Sir Robert Howard and Lady
Purbeck--Buckingham's correspondence about them with his
lawyers--Lanier, the King's musician--Buckingham accuses Lady
Purbeck of witchcraft--Dr. Lambe--Laud and witchcraft 83
CHAPTER X.
Trial of Lady Purbeck before the High Commission--The
sentence--Archbishop Laud--The Ambassador of
Savoy--Escape--Clun--Some of our other characters--Lady Purbeck
goes to Stoke Pogis to take care of her father--Death of Coke 102
CHAPTER XI.
Lady Purbeck goes to London--Laud--Arrest of Lady Purbeck and Sir
Robert Howard--Question of her virtue at that time--Lord
Danby--Guernsey--Paris--Sir Robert Howard turns the tables on
Laud--Changes of religion 114
CHAPTER XII.
Lady Purbeck in Paris--The English Ambassador--Serving a writ--Lady
Purbeck at a convent--Sir Kenelm Digby--His letter about
Lady Purbeck--Lady Purbeck returns to England 125
CHAPTER XIII.
Lord Purbeck takes Lady Purbeck back again as his wife--He
acknowledges Robert Wright as his own son--Death of Lady
Purbeck--Retrospect of her life and character--Her
descendants--Claims to the title of Viscount Purbeck 137
CHAPTER I.
"After this alliance,
Let tigers match with hinds, and wolves with sheep,
And every creature couple with its foe."
DRYDEN.
The political air of England was highly charged with electricity.
Queen Elizabeth, after quarrelling with her lover, the Earl of Essex,
had boxed his ears severely and told him to "go to the devil;"
whereupon he had left the room in a rage, loudly exclaiming that he
would not have brooked such an insult from her father, and that much
less would he tolerate it from a king in petticoats.
This well-known incident is only mentioned to give an idea of the
period of English history at which the following story makes its
start. It is not, however, with public, but with private life that we
are to be here concerned; nor is it in the Court of the Queen, but in
the humbler home of her Attorney-General, that we must begin. In a
humbler, it is true, yet not in a very humble home; for Mr. Attorney
Coke had inherited a good estate from his father, had married an
heiress, in Bridget Paston, who brought him the house and estate of
Huntingfield Hall, in Suffolk, together with a large fortune in hard
cash; and he had a practice at the Bar which had never previously been
equalled. Coke was in great sorrow, for his wife had died on the 27th
of June, 1598, and such was the pomp with which he determined to bury
her, that her funeral did not take place until the 24th of July. In
his memorandum-book he wrote on the day of her death: "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 reigns in
Heaven." Bridget had made good use of her time, for, although she died
at the age of thirty-three, she had, according to Burke, seven
children; but, according to Lord Campbell, ten.
As Bridget was reigning in Heaven, Coke immediately began to look
about for a substitute to fill the throne which she had left vacant
upon earth. Youth, great personal beauty and considerable wealth,
thought this broken-hearted widower at the age of forty-six, would be
good enough for him, and the weeks since the true handmaid of the Lord
had left him desolate were only just beginning to blend into months,
when he fixed his mind upon a girl likely to fulfil his very moderate
requirements. He, a widower, naturally sought a widow, and, happily,
he found a newly made one. Youth she had, for she was only twenty;
beauty she must have had in a remarkable degree, for she was
afterwards one of the lovely girls selected to act with the Queen of
James I. in Ben Jonson's _Masque of Beauty_; and wealth she had in the
shape of immense estates.
Elizabeth, grand-daughter of the great Lord Burghley, and daughter of
Burghley's eldest son Thomas Cecil, some years later Earl of Exeter,
had been married to the nephew and heir of Lord Chancellor Hatton. Not
very long after her marriage her husband had died, leaving her
childless and possessed of the large property which he had inherited
from his uncle. This young widow was a woman not only of high birth,
great riches, and exceptional beauty, but also of remarkable wit, and,
as if all this were not enough, she had, in addition, a violent temper
and an obstinate will. This Coke found out in her conduct respecting a
daughter who eventually became Lady Purbeck, the heroine of our little
story.
Romance was not wanting in the Attorney-General's second wooing; for
he had a rival, whom Lord Campbell in his _Lives of the Chief
Justices_, describes as "then a briefless barrister, but with
brilliant prospects," a man of thirty-five, who happened to be Lady
Elizabeth's cousin. His name was Francis Bacon, afterwards Lord
Chancellor, Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, and the author of the
_Novum Organum_ as well of a host of other works, including essays on
almost every conceivable subject. In the opinion of certain people, he
was also the author of the plays commonly attributed to one William
Shakespeare. This rival was good-looking, had a charming manner, and
was brilliant in conversation, while his range of subjects was almost
unlimited, whereas, the wooer in whom we take such an affectionate
interest, was wrinkled, dull, narrow-minded, unimaginative, selfish,
over-bearing, arrogant, illiterate, ignorant in almost everything
except jurisprudence, of which he was the greatest oracle then living,
and uninterested in everything except law, his own personal ambition,
and money-making.
Shortly before Coke had marked the young and lovely Lady Elizabeth
Hatton for his own, Bacon had not only paid his court to her in
person, but had also persuaded his great friend and patron, Lord
Essex, to use his influence in inducing her to marry him. Essex did so
to the very best of his ability, a kind service for which Bacon
afterwards repaid him after he had fallen--we have seen that his star
was already in its decadence--by making every effort, and successful
effort, to get him convicted of treason, sentenced to death, and
executed.
Which of these limbs of the law was the beautiful heiress to select?
She showed no inclination to marry Francis Bacon, and she was backed
up in this disinclination by her relatives, the Cecils. The head of
that family, Lord Burghley, Queen Elizabeth's Lord High Treasurer, was
particularly proud of his second son, Robert, whom he had succeeded in
advancing by leaps and bounds until he had become Secretary of State;
and Burghley and the rest of his family feared a dangerous rival to
Robert in the brilliant Bacon, who had already attracted the notice,
and was apparently about to receive the patronage, of the Court. If
Bacon should marry the famous beauty and become possessed of her large
fortune, there was no saying, thought the Cecils, but that he might
attain to such an exalted position as to put their own precocious
Robert in the shade.
Bridget had not been in her grave four months when the great Lord
Burghley died. Coke attended his funeral, and a funeral being
obviously a fitting occasion on which to talk about that still more
dreary ceremony, a wedding, Coke took advantage of it to broach the
question of a marriage between himself and Lady Elizabeth Hatton. He
broached it both to her father, the new Lord Burghley, and to her
uncle, the much more talented Robert. Whatever their astonishment may
have been, each of these Cecils promised to offer no opposition to the
match. They probably reflected that the Attorney-General was a man in
a powerful position, and that, with his own great wealth combined with
that of Lady Elizabeth Hatton, he might possibly prove of service to
the Cecil family in the future.
How the match, proposed under such conditions, came about, history
does not inform us, but, within six months of Bridget's funeral, her
widower embalmed her memory by marrying Elizabeth Hatton, a girl
fifteen years her junior.
If any writer possessed of imagination should choose to make a novel
on the foundation of this simple story, he may describe to his readers
how the cross-grained and unattractive Coke contrived to induce the
fair Lady Elizabeth Hatton to accept him for a husband. The present
writer cannot say how this miracle was worked, for the simple reason
that he does not know. One incident in connection with the marriage,
however, is a matter of history. Elizabeth was not sufficiently proud
of her prospective bride-groom to desire to stand beside him at a
wedding before a large, fashionable, and critical assemblage in a
London church. If he would have her at all, she insisted that he must
take her in the only way in which he could get her, namely, by a
clandestine marriage, in a private house, with only two or three
witnesses.
Now, if there was one thing more than another in which Mr. Attorney
Coke lived and moved and had his being, it was the law, to all
offenders against which he was an object of terror; and such a great
lawyer must have been fully aware that, by making a clandestine
marriage in a private house, he would render himself liable to the
greater excommunication, whereby, in addition to the minor annoyance
of being debarred from the sacraments, he might forfeit the whole of
his property and be subjected to perpetual imprisonment. To make
matters worse, Archbishop Whitgift had just issued a pastoral letter
to all the bishops in the province of Canterbury, condemning marriages
in private houses at unseasonable hours, and forbidding under the
severest penalties any marriage, except in a cathedral or in a parish
church, during the canonical hours, and after proclamation of banns
on three Sundays or holidays, or else with the license of the
ordinary.
Rather than lose his prize, Coke, the great lawyer, determined to defy
the law, and to run all risks, risks which the bride seemed anxious to
make as great as possible; for, at her earnest request, or rather
dictation, the pair were married in a private house, without license
or banns, and in the evening, less than five months after Coke had
made the entry in his diary canonising Bridget. As the Archbishop had
been his tutor, Coke may have expected him to overlook this little
transgression. Instead of this, the pious Primate at once ordered a
suit to be instituted in his Court against the bridegroom, the bride,
the parson who had married them, and the bride's father, Lord
Burghley, who had given her away. Lord Campbell says that "a libel was
exhibited against them, concluding for the 'greater excommunication'
as the appropriate punishment."
Mr. Attorney now saw that there was nothing to be done but to kiss the
rod. Accordingly, he made a humble and a grovelling submission, on
which the Archbishop gave a dispensation under his great seal, a
dispensation which is registered in the archives of Lambeth Palace,
absolving all concerned from the penalties they had incurred, and, as
if to complete the joke, alleging, as an excuse, ignorance of the law
on the part of the most learned lawyer in the kingdom.
The newly married pair had not a single taste in common. The wife
loved balls, masques, hawking, and all sorts of gaiety; she delighted
in admiration and loved to be surrounded by young gallants who had
served in the wars under Sydney and Essex, and who could flatter her
with apt quotations from the verses of Spenser and Surrey. The
husband, on the contrary, detested everything in the form of fun and
frolic, loved nothing but law and money, loathed extravagance and
cared for no society, except that of middle-aged barristers and old
judges. As might be expected, the union of this singularly
ill-assorted couple was a most unhappy one. Indeed it was a case of--
"at home 'tis steadfast hate,
And one eternal tempest of debate."[1]
Within a year of their marriage, that is to say in 1599, Lady
Elizabeth Hatton, as she still called herself, had a daughter. Here
again Burke and Lord Campbell are at variance. Burke says that by this
marriage Coke had two daughters, Elizabeth, who died unmarried, and
Frances, our heroine; whereas Lord Campbell says that Frances was born
within a year of their marriage and makes no mention of any Elizabeth.
It is pretty clear, from subsequent events, that, if there was an
Elizabeth, she must have died very young, and that Frances must have
been born almost as soon as was possible after the birth of her elder
sister.[2]
The beginning of our heroine may make the end of our chapter. In the
next she will not be seen at all; but, as will duly appear, the events
therein recorded had a great--it might almost be said a
supreme--influence on her fortunes.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Young's _Love of Fame_.
[2] Most of the matter in this chapter has been taken from _The Lives
of the Chief Justices of England_, by John, Lord Campbell. In two
volumes. London: John Murray, 1849, Vol. I., p. 239 _seq._, Chap.
VII.