The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck Part 8

"Your G. asked farther if I remembered whether you might not entertayne him farther in discourse to see whether he would open or express any unlawfull practises; w^ch I thought you might for it went no farther than discourse.

"And to mye remembrance your Grace sayde that he offered to laye his hand on your head sayinge, I would doe noe more than thiss; And that thereupon you started backe, fearinge some sorcerye or ye like, and that you were not quiett till you had spoken with me about it. This, or much to this effect is the uttermost I can remember that pa.s.sed at ye time."

Buckingham had evidently felt some scruples about meddling with the Black Art, and had consulted Laud on the question. It is also pretty plain that Laud was anxious not to offend Buckingham, yet, at the same time, wished to guard against any possibility of being accused of approving, or even of conniving at, witchcraft. These notes occur in a "draft of a speech, in the handwriting of Bishop Laud, and apparently intended to be addressed to the House of Commons, by the Duke of Buckingham. It has not been found that this latter speech was ever actually spoken."

So far as accusations against Lady Purbeck of witchcraft were concerned, Buckingham must have found that he had no case; for, in a letter[77] to Carleton, written on 12th March, 1625, Chamberlain says that the charge of sorcery had been dropped; but that Lady Purbeck was to be prosecuted for incontinency. He adds that Sir Robert Howard was a close prisoner in the Fleet in spite of the advice given by the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General three weeks earlier--and that Lady Purbeck was a prisoner at Alderman Barkham's, had no friends who would stand bail for her, and was asking Buckingham to let her have a little money with which to pay her counsel's fees.

Eleven days later Chamberlain again wrote[78] to Carleton, saying that Lady Purbeck was acquitting herself well in the Court of High Commission; that a servant of the Archbishop's had been committed for saying that she had been hardly used, and that she called this man one of her martyrs. He also states that Sir Robert Howard had been publicly excommunicated at St. Paul's Cross, for refusing to answer.

How long the delinquents were kept in captivity is very doubtful.

Little else is recorded of either of them during the next two years; but, at the time of their trial in 1627, they would seem to have been at liberty. The reason of this long interval between the trial in the Court of High Commission in 1625 and that before the same Court in 1627 seems inexplicable.

FOOTNOTES:

[61] _Cabala_, p. 281.

[62] _Cabala_, p. 282.

[63] _S.P. Dom._, James I., Vol. CLx.x.xII, No. 79.

[64] _S.P. Dom._, James I., Vol. CLx.x.xIII, No. 41

[65] Innocent Lanier was one of the King's musicians.

[66] _MSS. of the House of Lords_, 228, 30th April, 1675. _Hist. Com.

MSS._, Ninth Report, Part II., p. 50.

[67] _S.P. Dom._, James I., Vol. CLx.x.xIII, No. 52.

[68] _S.P. Dom._, James I., Vol. CLx.x.xIII, No. 65, 16th February, 1625.

[69] _Ibid._, No. 66.

[70] _S.P. Dom._, James I., Vol. CLx.x.xIV., Nos. 7 and 7.1.

[71] _S.P. Dom._, James I., Vol. CLx.x.xIII, No. 65.

[72] _Camden, Complete History of England_, Vol. II., p. 791 (ed.

1719).

[73] _Memorials of the English Affairs_, etc., p. 17.

[74] _S.P. Dom._, James I., Vol. CLx.x.xIV., No. 47.

[75] _S.P. Dom._, Charles I., Vol. XXVI., No. 30.

[76] This looks like an antic.i.p.ation of Mesmer.

[77] _S.P. Dom._, James I., Vol. CLx.x.xV., No. 48.

[78] _S.P. Dom._, James I., No. 99.

CHAPTER X.

"Let us give great Praise to G.o.d, 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 pa.s.sed 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 "Amba.s.sador of Savoy," whose garden adjoined that of the house in which Lady Purbeck was staying, to beg the Amba.s.sador that he would allow the officers to pa.s.s 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 Amba.s.sador refused, considering it an indignity to be asked to allow men of such a type a free pa.s.sage through his house, and feeling horrified at the idea of lending a.s.sistance 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 Amba.s.sador, would occur at dinner-time, of pa.s.sing into the garden of the next house and arresting Lady Purbeck.

In the meantime the Amba.s.sador 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 mult.i.tude of people, and those officers, not without danger to the coachman, from their violence, but with ease to the Amba.s.sador, 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 Amba.s.sador 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 amba.s.sador 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 amba.s.sador 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 amba.s.sador, and had for his only answer, what reason cannot do, time will. Yet, after this the Earls of Carliel and Holland interposing; the amba.s.sador, (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 circ.u.mstances 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 c.o.ke, was himself overthrown in 1621, three years after the marriage of c.o.ke'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 c.o.ke, who was then a member of Parliament, was to have had the pleasure of conducting the impeachment. c.o.ke, 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 40,000, 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 c.o.ke would now be offered the Great Seal; but, to the astonishment of the world and to c.o.ke'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, c.o.ke 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 hara.s.sed 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.