Read Ebook: The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck: A Scandal of the XVIIth Century by Longueville Thomas

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Sir Edward Coke--Lady Elizabeth Hatton--Bacon--Marriage of Coke and Lady Elizabeth--Birth of the Heroine 1

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

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

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

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

Buckingham ennobles his own family--Villiers becomes Lord Purbeck--Purbeck and the Countess of Buckingham become Catholics--Rumours that Purbeck is insane 64

The insanity question--Quite sane--Thought insane again--Letter from Lady Purbeck to Buckingham--Birth of Robert Wright--Sir Robert Howard 74

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

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

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

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

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

"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.

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.

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."

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.

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:

Lord Campbell says that Sir Edward Coke's arrogance to the whole Bar, and to all who approached him, now became almost insufferable, and that "his demeanour was particularly offensive to his rival"--Bacon. As to prisoners, "his brutal conduct ... brought permanent disgrace upon himself and upon the English Bar." When Sir Walter Raleigh was being tried for his life, but had not yet been found guilty, Coke said to him: "Thou art the most vile and execrable traitor that ever lived. I want words sufficient to express thy viprous treasons." When Sir Everard Digby confessed that he deserved the vilest death, but humbly begged for mercy and some moderation of justice, Coke told him that he ought "rather to admire the great moderation and mercy of the King, in that, for so exorbitant a crime, no new torture answerable thereto was devised to be inflicted upon him," and that, as to his wife and children, he ought to desire the fulfilment of the words of the Psalm: "Let his wife be a widow and his children vagabonds: let his posterity be destroyed, and in the next generation let his name be quite put out." According to Lord Campbell, Coke's "arrogance of demeanour to all mankind is unparalleled."

Towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth, Coke, as Attorney-General, had had another task well suited to his taste, that of examining the prisoners stretched on the rack, at the Tower. Volumes of examinations of prisoners under torture, in Coke's own handwriting, are still preserved at the State Paper Office, which, says Campbell, "sufficiently attest his zeal, assiduity and hard-heartedness in the service.... He scrupulously attended to see the proper degree of pain inflicted." Yet this severe prosecutor, bitter advocate and cruel examiner, became a Chief Justice of tolerable courtesy, moderate severity, and unimpeachable integrity.

If he had everything his own way in the criminal court and the torture chamber, Coke did not find his wishes altogether unopposed in his family. To begin with, he suffered the perpetual insult of the refusal on the part of his wife to be called by his name. If her first husband had been of higher rank, it might have been another matter: but both were only knights, and it was a parallel case to the widow Jones, after she had married Smith, insisting upon still calling herself Mrs. Jones. Lady Elizabeth defended her conduct on this point as follows: "I returned this answer: that if Sir Edward Cooke would bury my first husband accordinge to his own directions, and also paie such small legacys as he gave to divers of his friends, in all cominge not to above ?700 or ?900, at the most that was left unperformed, he having all Sir William Hatton's goods & lands to a large proportion, then would I willingly stile myself by his name. But he never yielded, so I consented not to the other." Whether Hatton or Coke, as an Earl's daughter she was Lady Elizabeth, by which name alone let us know her.

Lady Elizabeth found a friend and a sympathiser in her domestic worries. Francis Bacon, the former lover of her fortune, if not of her person, became her consoler and her counsellor. Let not the reader suppose that these pages are so early to be sullied by a scandal. Nothing could have been farther from reproach than the marital fidelity of Lady Elizabeth, but it must have gratified Bacon to annoy the man who had crossed and conquered him in love, or in what masqueraded under that name, by fanning the flames of Lady Elizabeth's fiery hatred against her husband. Hitherto, Coke had had it all his own way. He had snubbed and insulted Bacon in the law courts, and he had snatched a wealthy and beautiful heiress from his grasp. The wheel of fortune was now about to take a turn in the opposite direction.

About the year 1611, King James entertained the idea of reigning as an absolute sovereign. Archbishop Bancroft flattered him in this notion, and suggested that the King ought to have the privilege of "judging whatever cause he pleased in his own person, free from all risk of prohibition or appeal." James summoned the judges to his Council and asked whether they consented to this proposal. Coke replied:--

"God has endowed your Majesty with excellent science as well as great gifts of nature; but your Majesty will allow me to say, with all reverence, that you are not learned in the laws of this your realm of England, and I crave leave to remind your Majesty that causes which concern the life or inheritance, or goods or fortunes of your subjects are not to be decided by natural reason, but by the artificial reason and judgment of law, which law is an art which requires long study and experience before that a man can attain to the cognizance of it."

Coke had the misfortune to offend the King in another matter. James issued proclamations whenever he thought that the existing law required amendment. A reply was drawn up by Coke, in which he said: "The King, by his proclamation or otherwise, cannot change any part of the common law, or statute law, or the customs of the realm." This still further aggravated James.

Meanwhile Bacon, now Attorney-General, was high in the King's favour, and he was constantly manoeuvring in order to bring about the downfall of his rival. He persuaded James to remove Coke from the Common Pleas to the King's Bench--a promotion, it is true, but to a far less lucrative post. This greatly annoyed Coke, who, on meeting Bacon, said: "Mr. Attorney, this is all your doing." For a time Coke counteracted his fall in James's favour by giving ?2,000 to a "Benevolence," which the King had asked for the pressing necessities of the Crown, a benevolence to which the other judges contributed only very small sums. This fair weather, however, was not to be of long duration.

In 1616 Coke again offended the King. Bacon had declared his opinion that the King could prohibit the hearing of any case in which his prerogative was concerned. In the course of a trial which shortly afterwards took place, Bacon wrote to the judges that it was "his Majesty's express pleasure that the farther argument of the said cause be put off till his Majesty's farther pleasure be known upon consulting him." In a reply, drawn up by Coke and signed by the other judges, the King was told that "we have advisedly considered of the said letter of Mr. Attorney, and with one consent do hold the same to be contrary to law, and such as we could not yield to by our oaths."

James was furious. He summoned the judges to Whitehall and gave them a tremendous scolding. They fell on their knees and all were submissive except Coke, who boldly said that "obedience to his Majesty's command ... would have been a delay of justice, contrary to law, and contrary to the oaths of the judges."

Although Coke was now in terrible disgrace at Court, he might have retained his office of Chief Justice, if he would have sanctioned a job for Villiers, the new royal favourite. George Villiers, a young man of twenty-four, since the fall of the Earl of Somerset had centralised all power and patronage in his own hands. The chief clerkship in the Court of King's Bench, a sinecure worth ?4,000 a year, was falling vacant, and Villiers wished to have the disposal of it. The office was in the gift of Coke, and, when Bacon asked that its gift should be placed in the hands of Villiers, Coke flatly refused and thus offended the most powerful man in England. Nothing then became bad enough for Coke and nothing in Coke could be good. His reports of cases were carefully examined by Bacon, who pointed out to the King many "novelties, errors, and offensive conceits" in them. The upshot of the whole matter was that Coke was deprived of office. When the news was communicated to him, says a contemporary letter, "he received it with dejection and tears."

It would be natural to suppose that by this time Bacon had done enough to satisfy his vengeance upon Coke. But no! He must needs worry him yet further by an exasperating letter, from which some extracts shall be given. It opens with a good deal of scriptural quotation as to the wholesomeness of affliction. Then Bacon proceeds to say: "Afflictions level the mole-hills of pride, plough the heart and make it fit for Wisdom to sow her seed, and for grace to bring forth her increase. Happy is that man, therefore, both in regard of Heavenly and earthly wisdom, that is thus wounded to be cured, thus broken to be made straight, thus made acquainted with his own imperfections that he may be perfect. Supposing this to be the time of your affliction, that which I have propounded to myself is, by taking the seasonable advantage, like a true friend to show your shape in a glass.... Yet of this resolve yourself, it proceedeth from love and a true desire to do you good, that you, knowing what the general opinion is may not altogether neglect or contemn it, but mend what you may find amiss in yourself.... First, therefore, behold your Errors: In discourse you delight to speak too much.... Your affections are entangled with a love of your own arguments, though they be the weaker.... Secondly, you cloy your auditory: when you would be observed, speech must either be sweet, or short. Thirdly, you converse with Books, not Men ... who are the best Books. For a man of action & employment you seldom converse, & then but with underlings; not freely but as a schoolmaster with his scholars, ever to teach, never to learn.... You should know many of these tales you tell to be but ordinary, & many other things, which you repeat, & serve in for novelties to be but stale.... Your too much love of the world is too much seen, when having the living" "of ?10,000, you relieve few or none: the hand that hath taken so much, can it give so little? Herein you show no bowels of compassion.... We desire you to amend this & let your poor Tenants in Norfolk find some comfort, where nothing of your Estate is spent towards their relief, but all brought up hither, to the impoverishing of your country.... When we will not mind ourselves, God takes us in hand, & because he seeth that we have unbridled stomachs, therefore he sends outward crosses." And Bacon ends by commending poor Coke "to God's Holy Spirit ... beseeching Him to send you a good issue out of all these troubles, & from henceforth to work a reformation in all that is amiss, & a resolute perseverance, proceeding, & growth, in all that is good, & that for His glory, the bettering of yourself, this Church & Commonwealth; whose faithful servant whilest you remain, I am a faithful servant unto you."

If ever there was a case of adding insult to injury, surely this piece of canting impertinence was one of the most outrageous.

FOOTNOTES:

Gray made the churchyard of Stoke Pogis the scene of his famous Elegy, and he was buried there in 1771.

Lady Elizabeth's house in Holborn was called Hatton House. A letter says: "Lady Hatton sells her house in Holborn to the Duke of Lennox, for ?12,000." Another letter says that "Lady Hatton complained so much of her bargain with the Duchess of Richmond for Hatton House, that the Duchess has taken her at her word and left it on her hands, whereby she loses ?1,500 a year, and ?6,000 fine."

"Under no man's judgment should the King lie; but under God and the law only."

If Bacon flattered himself that he had extinguished Coke for good and all, he was much mistaken. It must have alarmed him to find that Lady Elizabeth, after constant quarrels with her husband and ceasing to live with him, had taken his part, now that he had been dismissed from office, that she had solicited his cause at the very Council table, and that she had quarrelled with both the King and the Queen about the treatment of her husband, with the result that she had been forbidden to go to Court, and had begun to live again with Coke, taking with her her daughter, now well on in her 'teens.

There was a period of hostilities, however, early in the year 1617. Sir Edward and Lady Elizabeth went to law about her jointure. In May Chamberlain wrote to Carleton:--

"The Lord Coke & his lady hath great wars at the council table. I was there on Wednesday, but by reason of the Lord Keeper's absence, there was nothing done. What passed yesterday I know not yet: but the first time she came accompanied with the Lord Burghley" , "& his lady, the Lord Danvers" , "the Lord Denny" , "Sir Thomas Howard" "& his lady, with I know not how many more, & declaimed bitterly against him, and so carried herself that divers said Burbage" "could not have acted better. Indeed, it seems he hath carried himself very simply, to say no more, in divers matters: and no doubt he shall be sifted thoroughly, for the King is much incensed against him, & by his own weakness he hath lost those few friends he had."

It is clear from this letter that, although her husband was one of the greatest lawyers of the day, Lady Elizabeth was not at all afraid of pitting herself against him in Court, where indeed she seems to have proved the better pleader of the pair.

This dispute was patched up. On 4th June Chamberlain wrote: "Sir Edward Coke & his Lady, after so much animosity and wrangling, are lately made friends; & his curst heart hath been forced to yield more than ever he meant; but upon this agreement he flatters himself that she will prove a very good wife." So Coke and his "very good wife" settled down together again. We shall see presently whether there was to be a perpetual peace between them.

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