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When a friend or a relative tells a man that he is behaving scandalously, the recipient of the information is apt to say that his informer is "cracked." The earliest hint of Lord Purbeck's insanity was given in 1620.

For this purpose, he very ingeniously contrived to find a sister of one of Lady Purbeck's servants, and, no doubt by the promise of a heavy bribe, he persuaded her to go to the house, to ask to be admitted in order to speak with her sister, to find out, when there, if Lady Purbeck was in the house, and, if possible, to see her.

The author of Annales Ecclesiastici. "To err is human, to forgive divine." 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.

Shortly before the arrival of Lady Purbeck in Paris, Sir Kenelm had declared himself a Catholic; and the fact that both he and Lady Purbeck had submitted themselves to the Catholic Church may have formed a bond of union between them. Sir Kenelm soon contrived to interest Cardinal Richelieu in Lady Purbeck's case, and not only Richelieu but also the King and the Queen of France.

XXXIII., p. 17, may be found the following note, after a mention of Lady Purbeck: "Sir Robert Howard died April 22, 1653, and was buried at Clunn in Shropshire, leaving issue by Catherine Nevill, his Wife, 3 sons, who, I presume, he married after the Lady Purbeck's death which happened 8 years before his own. Mitton. Sir Robert was 5th Son to Thomas, Earl of Suffolk, Lord Treasurer of England."

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.

This letter may be taken as evidence of Purbeck's lunacy. On the other hand it might possibly, if not plausibly, be argued that it may only mean that he was in a very bad state of bodily health accompanied by great mental depression. Some readers of these pages may have experienced the capabilities of a liver in lowering the spirits.

The proceedings against the two delinquents would appear to have been in abeyance during the rest of the year; but in January, 1625, Sir John Coke the Secretary of State, not one of the Cokes of Sir Edward's family wrote to Buckingham, saying that the King, although so ill as scarcely to be able to sign his name, had put it to the warrant sent by the Lord Chief Justice for authority to examine into Lady Purbeck's business.

Over the details of this perplexing situation history has kindly thrown a veil; indeed, we learn nothing further about Lady Purbeck's proceedings until we read, in the already noticed letter of Garrard's, that she landed at St. Malo, whence she eventually went to Paris.

Nominally it was probably in that of Purbeck; but, if Purbeck as a lunatic was in the custody of Buckingham, what was in Purbeck's custody would be in Buckingham's custody. Presently, however, we shall hear of the child being with its mother in her imprisonment at the house of an Alderman. Innocent Lanier to Buckingham. "May it please your grace,