The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck

Table of

aise to God, and litt

gged to act as chaplain, in the absence of that official, at the

rial of Lady Purbeck in 1627 i

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 in

f the Great Seal, the Earls of Manchester, Pembroke, Montgomery and Dorset, Viscount

enance. This Sentence passed at London-House, in Bishop Mountains time, N

r husband, and that she should do penance, bare-footed, and clad in a whit

her having been found guilty of adultery by the Court, that, although she might be guilty of that offence according to the civil law,

lace 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 d

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

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

thes. He then ordered his coach to be brought round, and when it came, his attendants, ostentatiously, but with a show of great hurry a

rm to his followers outside. The coach "drove fast down the Strand, followed by a multitude of people, and those officers, not without d

e 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 busine

ut 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 rea

o 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

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

es 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 t

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

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 Rhé against the French, on behalf of the Huguenots, and completely failed in the attempt. In 1628 a new

inst 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

into private life and lived at Stoke Pogis, where he is supposed to

oke 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 (be

k, whom he had forgiven,-probably from a consciousness that her errors might be ascribed to his utter disregar

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 h

ankerous 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 shun

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 th

er'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 att

ery 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

TNO

d, and Blessed Martyr, William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. Wrote by Hims

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ian MS. 39