Thomas Longueville

“ It is possible, again, that Lady Villiers, without having any of the affection which a wife ought to have for a husband, may have had a sort of respect for him as a man of probity, much older than herself, who treated her well and even kindly.
George Villiers, a mushroom-grown Duke himself, having made the King create his mother Countess of Buckingham, bethought him of his eldest brother and determined to make him a peer. ”

“ The newly married pair had not a single taste in common. The wife loved balls, masques, hawking, [pg 8] 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. ”

“ Again, although it is possible that the King and Laud may have believed in the revival of the criminal intercourse between Lady Purbeck and Sir Robert, it is equally possible that they did not, and that they merely considered it "boldness" and a "thing full of Impudence" to "publickly adventure to outface the Justice of the Realm," when a woman under sentence to do public penance for grave immorality—a woman who had fled to a remote part of the country to escape from that penance—came back to London and took up her quarters "so near the Court, and in so open view," as if nothing had happened ”

“ 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. ”

“ On one occasion, Coke grossly insulted him in the Court of Exchequer, whereupon Bacon said: "Mr. Attorney, I respect you but I fear you not; and the less you speak of your own greatness, the more I will think of it." Coke angrily replied: "I think scorn to stand upon terms of greatness towards you, who are less than little—less than the least."
Lord Campbell says that Sir Edward Coke's arrogance to the whole Bar, and to all who [pg 11] approached him, now became almost insufferable, and that "his demeanour was particularly offensive to his rival"—Bacon. ”

“ Lady Elizabeth, however, failed to effect the match. Possibly the letter just quoted may have been too strong meat for Oxford. Even her skill in the gentle art of forgery proved unavailing. Whether Oxford had no fancy for the girl, or the girl had no fancy for Oxford, does not appear, and perhaps other causes may have prevented the marriage; but, although he did not marry Frances, he married her first cousin, Lady Diana, daughter of the second Earl of Exeter, a niece of Lady Elizabeth, and, like Frances, both a great heiress and a beautiful woman. ”

“ That old cousin must have wished devoutly that she had placed herself anywhere else. For the Governor of one of the King's islands to receive and to shelter a criminal flying from justice was a very embarrassing position. On the other hand, to refuse protection to a helpless lady, and that lady a kinswoman, much more to betray her into the hands of her enemies, would have been an act from which any honourable man might well shrink. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now, Buckingham had an elder brother, Sir John Villiers, who was very poor, and for whom he was anxious to pick up an heiress. The happy thought struck Coke that, as all his wife's property was entailed on her daughter, Frances, he might secure Buckingham's support by selling the girl to Buckingham's brother, for the price of Buckingham's favour and assistance. It was most fortunate that Frances was exceedingly beautiful, and that Sir John Villiers was unattractive and much older than she was ”

“ Even when we have made due allowance for the fact that the pen of Sir Kenelm Digby was inclined to be a little flowery, sufficient is left in this description of Lady Purbeck to make her character attractive, and we know that nature had added to her charms by endowing her with exceptional beauty. ”

“ While Bacon was meditating an information against Sir Edward Coke in the Star Chamber for malversation of office, in the hope that a heavy fine might be imposed upon him, Coke also was plotting. He discovered that Bacon, who had been made Lord Keeper early in the year 1617, had had his head turned by his promotion and had become giddy on his pinnacle of greatness; or, to use Bacon's own words, that he was suffering acutely from an "unbridled stomach." Of this Coke determined to take advantage. ”

“ But a reader may well wonder whether the old brute considered for a moment the worthlessness of a form of marriage obtained by torture, or the fact that such a so-called marriage could be annulled without difficulty.
Lady Elizabeth, perceiving that her only chance left of winning the game was to over-trump her husband, and recognising that her only hope of freedom and prosperity was by consenting to the wishes of Buckingham and James, wrote to the King himself, to say that she would agree to the marriage and would settle her property on her daughter and Sir John Villiers. ”

“ It seems safe to infer that whatever protection and hospitality her relative, Lord Danby, may have afforded to Lady Purbeck, he was heartily glad to get rid of her. If she had originally intended to go to Paris, she would scarcely have made the long voyage of nearly two hundred miles out of her way to Guernsey, and the most natural explanation of that voyage is that she had hoped and expected to obtain concealment, hospitality, and a refuge in the house of her relative. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Possibly some writer of fiction, endowed with able hands directed by an imaginative mind, may some day produce a readable romance from the rough-hewn matter which they contain: but, as their author's object has been to tell the story simply, as it has come down to us, and, as much as was possible, to let the contemporaries of the heroine tell it in their own words, he has endeavoured to suppress his own imagination, his own emotions, and his own opinions, in writing it. ”

“ This was written after the death of Frances, but it has been accepted as true, and that may well be. It is difficult in our days to believe that a young lady could be put to physical torture by her father, until she consented to marry a man whom she loathed; but the parental ethics of those times were very different from those of our own. A man like Coke would have no difficulty in persuading himself that a marriage with Sir John Villiers would be for his daughter's welfare, and, consequently, that a whipping to bring that marriage about would also be for her welfare. ”

“ Lady Elizabeth's house in Holborn was called Hatton House. A letter (S.P. Dom., James I., 13th July, 1622) says: "Lady Hatton sells her house in Holborn to the Duke of Lennox, for £12,000." Another letter (ib. 26th February, 1628) 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."
[8] "Under no man's judgment should the King lie; but under God and the law only." ”

“ John Villiers, alias Danvers, alias Wright, in addition to the title of Viscount Purbeck, assumed that of Earl of Buckingham, the reversion of which had been secured by the first Earl and Duke to his brother and his heirs, in the case of his own direct heirs failing. This self-styled Earl squandered his fortune in a life of debauchery, and then married the daughter of a clergyman, a widow with a large jointure but about as dissolute in character as himself, which is saying much. He left no sons. ”

“ 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 [pg 2] 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. ”

“ 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, [pg 110] 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." ”

“ Coke had been astute enough to secure a comfortable country-house, at a very convenient distance from London, through Lady Elizabeth. Her ladyship had held a mortgage upon Stoke Pogis, a place that belonged formerly to the Earls of Huntingdon, [4] and Coke, either by foreclosing or by selling, obtained possession of the property. As it stood but three or four miles to the north of Windsor, the situation was excellent. [5] Sir Edward's London house was in the then fashionable quarter of Holborn, a place to which dwellers in the city used to go for change of air. ”

“ Common hatred of Bacon made a strong bond of union between Coke and Winwood, and Winwood joined readily in the plot newly laid by Coke.
Sir John Villiers was already acquainted with Coke's pretty daughter; and, when Coke went to him, suggested a match, and enlarged upon the fortune to which she was sole heiress, Sir John professed to be over head and ears in love with her, and observed that "although he would have been well pleased to have taken her in her smoke [smock] , he should be glad, by way of curiosity, to know how much could be assured by marriage settlement upon her and her issue." ”

“ Buckingham, at about the same time that he received Coke's letter, received one in a very different tone from Bacon, in which he said: [19] "Secretary Winwood has busied himself with a match between Sir John Villiers & Sir Edward Coke's daughter, rather to make a faction than out of any good affection to your lordship. The lady's consent is not gained, nor her mother's, from whom she expecteth a great fortune. This match, out of my faith & freedom to your lordship, I hold very inconvenient, both for your mother, brother, & yourself." ”

“ It is open to those who may like to do so to take Laud's words as meaning that Lady Purbeck and Sir Robert Howard were again living together in immorality. Possibly that may have been Laud's meaning. If it was, he may have been mistaken. The world is seldom very charitable and, when Sir Robert and Lady Purbeck were both in London—which was comparatively a small place in those days—the gossips would naturally put the worst construction on the matter. ”

“ CHAPTER XIII. Return to Table of Contents
"To err is human, to forgive divine."
Pope.
Concerning Lady Purbeck's life, after her return to England, we have the following evidence from Coles' Manuscripts. Let us observe, first, that in the extract there is a mistake. It was not Lady Purbeck, but the wife of her son, whose maiden name was Danvers. Anybody who may choose to discredit the whole, on account of this error, can do so if he pleases; but it is certain that Lord Purbeck "owned the son" and that the son's grandson, "the Rev. Mr. Villiers," claimed "the Title of Earl of Bucks." ”