"Let us give great Praise to God, and little Laud to the Devil."
(Grace said by the Court Jester, Archie Armstrong, when he
had begged to act as chaplain, in the absence of that
official, at the dinner-table of Charles I. Archbishop Laud
was little in stature.)
The following account of the trial of Lady Purbeck in 1627 is given by
Archbishop Laud:--[79]
"Now the Cause of _Sir Robert Howard_ was this: He fell in _League_
with the _Lady Viscountess Purbeck_. The _Lord Viscount Purbeck_
being in some weakness and distemper, the Lady used him at her
pleasure, and betook her self in a manner, wholly to Sir Robert
Howard, and had a Son by him. She was delivered of this Child in a
Clandestine way, under the Name of _Mistress Wright_. These things
came to be known, and she was brought into the _High-Commission_, and
there, after a Legal Proceeding, was found guilty of _Adultery_, and
sentenced to do _Pennance_: Many of the great Lords of the Kingdom
being present in Court, and agreeing to the Sentence."
A marginal note states that there were present Sir Thomas Coventry,
the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, the Earls of Manchester, Pembroke,
Montgomery and Dorset, Viscount Grandison, five Bishops, two Deans and
several other dignitaries, clerical and legal.
Laud continues: "Upon this Sentence she withdrew her-self, to avoid
the Penance. This Sentence passed at _London-House,_ in Bishop
_Mountains_ time, _Novemb. 19. An. Dom. 1627_. I was then present, as
Bishop of _Bath_ and _Wells_."
The sentence in question was that Lady Purbeck was to be separated
from her husband, and that she should do penance, bare-footed, and
clad in a white sheet, in the chapel of the Savoy; but a decree of
divorce was not given.
No attempt shall be made here to excuse or palliate the sins of Lady
Purbeck; but it may be observed in relation to Laud's mention of her
having been found guilty of adultery by the Court, that, although she
might be guilty of that offence according to the civil law, she was
not guilty of it morally; because her so-called marriage was no
marriage at all, since she was forced into it against her will.
It cannot be a matter for surprise that Lady Purbeck "withdrew
herself" rather than do penance, barefooted, in a white sheet in a
fashionable church, and before a crowded congregation, for a crowd
there would certainly have been to enjoy the spectacle of the public
penance of a Viscountess. For some time her place of withdrawal or,
to speak plainly, her place of hiding, was undiscovered. As we have
seen, she was sentenced on the 19th of November. She was not arrested;
but she was commanded to "present herself" on a certain Sunday at the
Savoy chapel, to perform her public penance. As might have been
expected, she did not present herself, to the great disappointment of
a large congregation, and she thereby exposed herself to arrest. The
officials did not discover her place of retreat until about Christmas.
The following story of an incident that then happened in connection
with this matter is told by Sir John Finett.[80]
A serjeant-at-arms, accompanied by other officers of justice and their
men, proceeded to the house in which Lady Purbeck was concealed, and
at once guarded every door into the street; but admittance was
refused, and the Countess of Buckingham sent "a gentleman" to the
"Ambassador of Savoy," whose garden adjoined that of the house in
which Lady Purbeck was staying, to beg the Ambassador that he would
allow the officers to pass through his house and garden into the
garden of Lady Purbeck's house of refuge "for her more easy
apprehension and arrest that way."
The Ambassador refused, considering it an indignity to be asked to
allow men of such a type a free passage through his house, and feeling
horrified at the idea of lending assistance to "the surprise and
arrest of a fair lady, his neighbour." After many protests, however,
he consented to the entrance of one constable into his garden, and the
man was to avail himself of an opportunity which, said the Ambassador,
would occur at dinner-time, of passing into the garden of the next
house and arresting Lady Purbeck.
In the meantime the Ambassador called his page, "a handsome fair boy,"
and, with the help of his attendants, dressed him in women's clothes.
He then ordered his coach to be brought round, and when it came, his
attendants, ostentatiously, but with a show of great hurry and fear of
discovery, ran out of the house with the sham-lady and "thrust her
suddenly into" the carriage, which immediately drove off.
The constable, congratulating himself upon his sharpness in
discovering, as he thought, the escape of Lady Purbeck, at once gave
the alarm to his followers outside. The coach "drove fast down the
Strand, followed by a multitude of people, and those officers, not
without danger to the coachman, from their violence, but with ease to
the Ambassador, that had his house by this device cleaned of the
constable."
While all this turmoil was going on in the Strand, Lady Purbeck went
quietly away to another place of hiding; but her escape got the
gallant and kind-hearted Ambassador into great trouble. Buckingham was
enraged when he heard of the trick. Sir John Finett shall himself tell
us what followed. Buckingham, he says, declared that "all this was
done of designe for the ladies escape, (which in that hubbub she
made), to his no small prejudice and scorn, in a business that so
nearly he said concerned him, (she being wife to his brother), and
bringing him children of anothers begetting; yet such as by the law
(because begotten and born while her husband was in the land) must be
of his fathering.
"The ambassador for his purgation from this charge, went immediately
to the Duke at Whitehall, but was denied accesse: Whereupon repairing
to my Lord Chamberlain for his mediation, I was sent to him by his
lordship, to let him know more particularly the Duke's displeasure,
and back by the ambassador to the Duke with his humble request but of
one quarter of an hours audience for his disblaming. But the duke
returning answer, that having always held him so much his friend and
given him so many fair proofs of his respects, he took his proceeding
so unkindly, as he was resolved not to speak with him. I reported this
to the ambassador, and had for his only answer, what reason cannot do,
time will. Yet, after this the Earls of Carliel and Holland
interposing; the ambassador, (hungry after his peace from a person of
such power, and regarding his masters service and the public affairs),
he a seven night after obtained of the duke an interview in Whitehall
garden, and after an hours parley, a reconciliation."
As has just been seen, the officers of the law lost sight of Lady
Purbeck. So also, for the present do we; but we know what became of
her; for she was taken by Sir Robert Howard to his house at Clun, in
the extreme south-west of Shropshire, where a small promontory of that
county is bordered by Montgomeryshire, Radnorshire and Herefordshire.
It is probable that, so long as she was far away from the Court and
from London, Buckingham and the authorities took no trouble to find
her or her paramour, and almost connived at their escape.
During their absence from our view, it may add to the interest of our
story to observe the conditions at that time of some of the other
characters who have figured in it, and to consider certain
circumstances of the period at which we are halting. Looking back a
little way, we shall find that King James, who we noticed was so ill
as to be only just able to sign an order connected with the
proceedings against Lady Purbeck, died in March, 1625, and that the
very correct Charles I. was King during the subsequent proceedings.
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. Bacon was
impeached on charges of official corruption, and his old enemy, Sir
Edward Coke, who was then a member of Parliament, was to have had the
pleasure of conducting the impeachment. Coke, however, was deprived of
that gratification by Bacon's plea of Guilty, and was obliged to
content himself with attending the Speaker to the bar of the House of
Lords when judgment was to be prayed, and with hearing the Chief
Justice, by order of the Lords, condemn Bacon to a fine of L40,000,
incapacity ever to hold any office again, exile from Court, and
imprisonment in the Tower during the King's pleasure.
It was generally supposed that the exultant Coke would now be offered
the Great Seal; but, to the astonishment of the world and to Coke's
unqualified chagrin, the King proclaimed Williams, "a shrewd Welsh
parson," as Lord Campbell calls him, Lord Keeper in the place of
Bacon. After this disappointment, Coke became even fiercer against the
Court than he had been before Bacon's disgrace. Bacon's fine was
remitted, "the King's pleasure" as to the length of his imprisonment
was only four days, he was allowed to return to Court, and he was
enabled to interest himself with the literary pursuits which he loved
better than law and almost as much as power; but he was harassed by
want of what, perhaps, he may have loved most of all, namely money,
and he died in 1626, five years after his fall and condemnation.
Although Buckingham was at the summit of his glory, everything did not
go well with him during the period at which he was scheming to rid his
brother of Lady Purbeck. In 1623 he went to Spain with Prince Charles
to arrange a marriage with the Infanta, a match which he failed to
bring about. In 1626 he was impeached, though unsuccessfully, by the
House of Commons. In 1627 he commanded an expedition to the Isle of
Rhe against the French, on behalf of the Huguenots, and completely
failed in the attempt. In 1628 a new Parliament threw the blame upon
him of all the troubles and drawbacks from which the country was then
suffering; and, in August, the same year, he was murdered by an
assassin less than twelve months after he had succeeded in his
proceedings against Lady Purbeck.
It was not until shortly after the death of Bacon that his rival, Sir
Edward Coke, reached the zenith of his fame as a politician. Only a
few months before the death of Buckingham, Coke framed the celebrated
Petition of Rights, a document which has often been spoken of as the
second _Magna Charta_. He had gained little through his attempt to
bribe Buckingham by giving his daughter and her wealth to Buckingham's
brother, and he was now exasperated against the royal favourite and
that favourite's royal master. "In the House of Commons, Sir Ed.
Coke," says Whitelock in his _Memorials_[81] "named the Duke to be the
cause of all their miseries, and moves to goe to the King, and by word
to acquaint him." Rushworth writes[82] more fully of this speech of
Coke's. "Sir Edward Cook spake freely.... Let us palliate no longer;
if we do, God will not prosper us. I think the Duke of Buckingham is
the cause of all our miseries; and till the King be informed thereof,
we shall never go out with honour, or sit with honour here; that man
is the Grievance of Grievances: let us set down the causes of all our
disasters, and all will reflect upon him." And Coke was as bitter
against the King. A little later Charles I. had issued a warrant for a
certain commission, when, in a conference with the Lords, Coke
moved[83] "That the Warrant may be damned and destroyed."
After the prorogation of Parliament which soon followed, Coke retired
into private life and lived at Stoke Pogis, where he is supposed to
have encouraged his neighbour, Hampden, in his plots against the
Court.
In the year 1632 Lady Purbeck left Sir Robert Howard to live with and
take care of her father. She probably went to him on hearing that he
had been seriously hurt by a fall from his horse. In his diary[84]
Coke thus describes this accident: "The 3rd of May, 1632, riding in
the morning in Stoke, between eight and nine o'clock to take the air,
my horse under me had a strange stumble backwards and fell upon me
(being above eighty years old) where my head lighted near to sharp
stubbles, and the heavy horse upon me." He declares that he suffered
"no hurt at all;" but, as a matter of fact, he received an internal
injury.
Lord Campbell says that, from this time "his only domestic solace
was the company of his daughter, Lady Purbeck, whom he had
forgiven,--probably from a consciousness that her errors might be
ascribed to his utter disregard of her inclinations when he concerted
her marriage. She continued piously to watch over him till his death."
Lady Elizabeth was never reconciled to her husband. On the contrary,
she seems to have been very anxiously awaiting his death in order to
take possession of Stoke Pogis. Garrard, in a letter[85] to Lord
Deputy Strafford written in 1633, says: "Sir Edward Coke was said to
be dead, all one morning in Westminster Hall, this term, insomuch that
his wife got her brother, Lord Wimbledon, to post with her to Stoke,
to get possession of that place; but beyond Colebrook they met with
one of his physicians coming from him, who told her of his much
amendment, which made them also return to London; some distemper he
had fallen into for want of sleep, but is now well again." Lady
Elizabeth's keen disappointment may be readily imagined.
It is not likely that the couple of years spent by Lady Purbeck with
her father can have been very pleasant ones. He was bad-tempered,
ill-mannered, cantankerous and narrow-minded, and he must also have
been a dull companion; for beyond legal literature he had read but
little. Lord Campbell says: "He shunned the society of" his
contemporaries, "Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, as of _vagrants_ who
ought to be set in the stocks, or whipped from tithing to tithing."
Nor can Lady Purbeck have found him a very tractable patient. He had
no faith in either physicians or physic. Mead wrote[86]to Sir Martin
Stuteville: "Sir Edward Coke being now very infirm in body, a friend
of his sent him two or three doctors to regulate his health, whom he
told that he had never taken physic since he was born, and would not
now begin; and that he had now upon him a disease which all the drugs
of Asia, the gold of Africa, nor all the doctors of Europe could
cure--old age. He therefore both thanked them and his friend that sent
them, and dismissed them nobly with a reward of twenty pieces to each
man." Doubtless a troublesome invalid for a daughter to manage.
At last it became apparent that the end was rapidly approaching, and
then Lady Purbeck was subjected to a most embarrassing annoyance. Two
days before her father's death she was summoned from his bedside to
receive Sir Francis Windebank, the Secretary of State, who had arrived
at the house, accompanied by several attendants, bringing in his hand
an order from the King and Council to search Sir Edward Coke's mansion
for seditious papers and, if any were found, to arrest him.
Sir Francis, on hearing the critical condition of Sir Edward, assured
Lady Purbeck that he would give her father no personal annoyance; but
he insisted on searching all the rooms in the house except that in
which Coke was lying; and he carried away every manuscript that he
could find, including even Sir Edward's will--a depredation which
subsequently caused his family great inconvenience. It is believed
that Coke was kept in ignorance of this raid upon his house, probably
by the care and vigilance of Lady Purbeck. Thus his last hours were
undisturbed, and on the 3rd of September, 1634, in the 83rd year of
his age, died one of the most disagreeable men of his times, but the
most incorruptible judge in a period of exceptional judicial
corruption.
FOOTNOTES:
[79] _The History of the Troubles and Tryal of the most Reverend
Father in God, and Blessed Martyr, William Laud, Archbishop of
Canterbury_. Wrote by Himself, during his Imprisonment in the Tower:
London, R. Chiswell, 1695, p. 146.
[80] _Finetti Philoxenis_, London, 1636, p. 239.
[81] P. 10.
[82]_Historical Collections_, p. 607 (ed. 1659).
[83] Rushworth's _Collections_, p. 616.
[84] Campbell, Vol. I., p. 334.
[85] _Strafford Letters_, I., p. 265.
[86] Harleian MS. 390, fol. 534.