" ... wed to one half lunatic."
_Taming of the Shrew_, II., I.
Poor Purbeck seems to have had many amateur keepers. The King gave
orders to a Sir John Hippisley to remove him from the Court, in
September, 1623; and on the and Sir John wrote to Conway:--[55]
"NOBLE SIR,
"I have received the King's command and your directions in your
letters to bring my Lord of Purbecke out of London which I have done
and have made no noise of it and have done all I could to give no
scandal to the Duke or Viscount: He is now at Hampton Court, but is
not willing to go any further till the king send express commande that
he shall not staye here.
"Sir I have obeyed all the King's commandes and that without any
scandal to the Duke,"--always the point of main importance--"now my
humble request to you is that I may be free from entering any farther
in this business and that I may come and kiss his Maj^tes hand for now
I am fit.... There is one Mr. Aimes that knoweth my Lord of Purbecke
and fitte to be employed by rate he hath power to persuade him. I
beseech you grant me fair of this and you shall have it me
"To be your faithfull servant ever to be commanded
"(Signed) JO: HIPPISLEY.
"HAMPTON COURT
"this 2 of _September_."
From this it is very clear that Hippisley did not want to have
anything more to do with a disagreeable business; and the question
presents itself whether it was because he disliked acting as keeper to
a lunatic, or because he did not think Purbeck so mad as was
pretended, if mad at all, and objected to having a hand in a shady
transaction.
In the same month, the King wrote himself to Purbeck.[56] The letter
is almost illegible; but its purport appears to be to urge Lord
Purbeck, out of consideration for Buckingham, as well as for his own
good, to go to, and to stay at, whatever place might be appointed for
him by the Earl of Middlesex.
During the summer of the following year (1624), Purbeck seems to have
recovered his sanity; but only for a time, although a considerable
time. Chamberlain wrote[57] to Carleton:--
"MY VERY SWEETE LORD:
" ... The Viscount Purbecke followed the court a good while in very
goode temper, and there was speech of making him a marquis that he
might go before his younger brother but I heare of late he is fallen
backe to his old craise and worse....
"Yo^r Lo^ps most assuredly
"at command,
"(Signed) JOHN CHAMBERLAIN."
This shows that, if Purbeck was insane, his insanity was intermittent;
and it could not have been chronic; for in later years we read that he
was managing his own affairs and that he married again, some time
after the death of Frances.
From the following letter, written by Lady Purbeck to Buckingham, and
unfortunately undated, it would seem that Buckingham had driven her
from her home, when she had become the subject of a certain amount of
vague scandal, but, so far as was then known, or at least proved, of
nothing more; and that he had contrived that she should have none of
the wealth which she had brought to her husband. As will be seen, she
was apparently penniless, except for what she received from her mother
or her friends.
"My Lord[58]:--Though you may judge what pleasure there is in the
conversation of a man in the distemper you see your brother in; yet,
the duty I owe to a Husband, and the affection I bear him (which
sickness shall not diminish) makes me much desire to be with him, to
add what comfort I can to his afflicted mind, since his only desire is
my company; which, if it please you to satisfy him in, I shall with a
very good will suffer with him, and think all but my duty, though I
think every wife would not do so. But if you can so far dispense with
the laws of God as to keep me from my Husband, yet aggravate it not by
restraining me from his means, and all other contentments; but, which
I think is rather the part of a Christian, you especially ought much
rather to study comforts for me, than to add ills to ills, since it is
the marriage of your brother makes me thus miserable. For if you
please but to consider, not only the lamentable estate I am in,
deprived of all comforts of a Husband, and having no means to live of;
besides falling from the hopes my fortune then did promise me; for you
know very well, I came no beggar to you, though I am like so to be
turn'd off.
"For your own honour and conscience sake, take some course to give me
satisfaction, to tye my tongue from crying to God and the world for
vengeance, for the unwilling dealing I have received, and think not to
send me again to my Mother's, where I have stayed this quarter of a
year, hoping (for that Mother said you promised) order should be taken
for me; but I never received a penny from you. Her confidence in your
nobleness made me so long silent; but now, believe me, I will sooner
beg my bread in the streets, to all your dishonours, than any more
trouble my friends, and especially my Mother, who was not only content
to afford us part of the little means she hath left her, but whilst I
was with her, was continually distempered with devised Tales which
came from your Family,"--this refers to certain scandalous stories
about her own conduct--and withal lost your good opinion, which before
she either had, or you made shew of it; but had it been real, I can
not think her words would have been so translated, nor in the power of
discontented servants' tales to have ended it.
"My Lord, if the great Honour you are in can suffer you to have so
mean a thought as of so miserable a creature as I am so made by too
much credulity of your fair promises, which I have waited for
performance of almost these five years: and now it were time to
despair, but that I hope you will one day be yourself, and be governed
by your own noble thoughts, and then I am assured to obtain what I
desire, since my desires be so reasonable, and but for mine own, which
whether you grant or not, the affliction my poor husband is in (if it
continue) will keep my mind in a continual purgatory for him, and will
suffer me to sign myself no other but your unfortunate sister
"F. PURBECK."
This letter may be taken as evidence of Purbeck's lunacy. On the other
hand it might possibly, if not plausibly, be argued that it may only
mean that he was in a very bad state of bodily health accompanied by
great mental depression. Some readers of these pages may have
experienced the capabilities of a liver in lowering the spirits.
As Lady Purbeck says, her mother had now "lost the good opinion" of
Buckingham, and undoubtedly this was because she had refused to
increase his brother's allowance. So early as 28th November, 1618,
John Pary wrote to Carleton,[59] regretting that he had not applied to
Lady Bedford to use her influence in order to obtain a certain
appointment, instead of applying to Lady Elizabeth, who had fallen out
with Buckingham, and now had no influence whatever with him.
Lady Elizabeth, therefore, after having risen by her own skill to be
one of the most influential women in England--perhaps the most
influential--and that in the face of enormous difficulties, was
beginning to fall from her high estate. And besides the bitter
disappointment of the loss of influence and of royal smiles, a
grievous and humiliating family sorrow was in store for her.
These pages do not constitute a brief on behalf of Lady Purbeck. It is
desired that they should do her justice--full justice; but too little
is recorded of her personal character to permit any attempt to portray
it in detail, or even to make a bold sketch of its principal features.
Of her circumstances it is much easier to write with confidence. We
have already learned much about them. We have seen that she was
brought up in an atmosphere of perpetual domestic discord, ending in a
physical struggle between her father and her mother for the possession
of her person: that she was afterwards flogged until she consented to
make a marriage contract with a man much older than herself, whom she
disliked intensely--a form of marriage which was no marriage, as her
will for it was wanting and she was literally forced into it, if any
girl was ever forced into a marriage.
An old husband hateful to a young wife would become yet more
unattractive if he became insane, or eccentric, or even an irritable
invalid. Then his change of religion would most likely annoy her
extremely. Whether a husband leaves his wife's religion for a better
or a worse religion, it is equally distasteful to her.
Her condition would be made still further miserable when she was
turned out of her own home, and practically robbed of her own
possessions, luxuries and comforts. From what we have seen of her
mother, it is difficult to believe that she was a tenderhearted woman,
to whom a daughter would go for consolation in her affliction: nor
could that daughter place much confidence in a mother who had once
deceived her with a forged letter. To her father, who had treated her
with great brutality and had sold her just as he might have sold a
beast among his farm stock, she would be still less likely to turn for
comfort or for counsel. Add to all this that, as the wife of an
official in Prince Charles's household, and as the sister-in-law of
the reigning favourite, she was a good deal at the Court of James I.
at a time when it was one of the most dissolute in Europe; and it
will be easy to recognise that her whole life had been spent in
unwholesome atmospheres.
When we consider the position of a very beautiful girl of between
twenty-one and twenty-four, who had had such an education, had endured
such villainous treatment, and was now placed under such trying
conditions, we can but feel prepared to hear that some or other of the
usual results of bad education, bad treatment, and bad surroundings
exhibited themselves, and surely if trouble, and worse than trouble,
was ever likely to come of a marriage that had been an empty form,
Lady Purbeck's was one after which it might be expected.
And it came! Near Cripple Gate, at the North Wall of London, in
October, 1624, was born a boy named Robert Wright. More than a century
later the Vicar of the Parish was asked to refer to his registers
about this event, and he sent the following reply:--[60]
"London, _April 10 1740._
SIR,
"I have searched my Parish Register according to your directions and
have found the following Entry concerning Robert Wright.
"Christening in October 1624.
"Robert, Son of John Wright, Gentleman, of Bishopthorpe in Yorkshire,
baptised in the Garden House of Mr. Manninge at the upper end of
White Cross Street ... 20th.
"I am, Sir,
"Your very humble servant,
"WILL NICHOLLS,
"Vicar of St. Giles's Cripplegate."
The father of this boy was, in reality, Sir Robert Howard, the fifth
son of the Earl of Suffolk, the Earl to whose vigilance the discovery
of the Gunpowder Plot is attributed by some authorities. But Suffolk
had incurred the enmity of Buckingham, had been deprived of the office
of Lord Treasurer, had been tried for peculation in the discharge of
it, and then condemned in the Star Chamber to imprisonment in the
Tower and a fine of L30,000. When he was liberated, he was told that
two of his sons, who held places in the King's household, were
expected to resign them; but Suffolk, in very spirited letters to the
King and to Buckingham (_Cabala_, pp. 333, 334), protested against
this. The whole family, therefore, was in bad odour at Court and with
Buckingham at this time.
Sir Robert Howard was a brother of the first Earl of Berkshire, who
married a niece of Lady Elizabeth Hatton. It may possibly have been
through this connection by marriage that Sir Robert Howard became
acquainted and intimate with Lady Purbeck; and, to make a long story
short, let it be observed here that, in relation to the boy who was
christened Robert Wright, Lady Purbeck had had what, among the lower
classes, is euphemistically termed "a misfortune."
FOOTNOTES:
[55] _S.P. Dom._, James I., Vol. CLIII., No. 6.
[56] _S.P. Dom._, James I., Vol. CLII, No. 13.
[57] _S.P. Dom._, James I., Vol. CLXX., No. 54, 24th July, 1624.
[58] _Cabala, Sive Scrinia Sacra_, etc., p. 318.
[59] _S.P. Dom._, James I., Vol. CIII., No. 111.
[60] _Coles' MSS._, Vol. XXXIII., pp. 17, 18.