Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 16, 2025
A reader might have been tempted to imagine that Purbeck's "melancholy fitts" of insanity were the result of misery about his wife's infidelity; but, if she could still "draw from him speeches to her advantage," this cannot have been the case. The prosecution of Lady Purbeck was pretty clearly at the instigation of Buckingham and not of Purbeck.
In the Strafford Papers there is a letter to the Lord Deputy from Garrard, in which he says that, after Lady Purbeck's sentence some years earlier, she had evaded it by flight and had "not been much looked after since;" but that "this winter she lodged herself on the Water side over against Lambeth, I fear too near the road of the Archbishop's barge; whereof some complaint being made, she had the Sergeant at Arms sent with the warrant of the Lords and the Council to carry her to the Gate-House, whence she will hardly get out until she hath done her penance.
Of Lady Purbeck's character much less is recorded than of the characters of several other leading figures in this story her father, her mother, Bacon, Buckingham.
Or that she might persuade him to stop the suit if he should happen to be sane enough to do so when it came on? The next letter has an interest, first, because it shows that Lady Purbeck's child was really in the custody of Buckingham.
The chief object aimed at by Conway and, as will be seen presently, by the King, was to prevent any scandal or gossip about Purbeck's behaviour injuring "his Ma^ties. dearest servant," Buckingham. Purbeck's personal interests evidently counted for very little, if for anything. Woolrych's Life of Sir Ed. Coke, p. 150. His authority for this statement is Camden, Ann. Jac., p. 45.
Then the fact of Lady Purbeck's returning openly to London looks as if she was conscious of innocence since she had left Sir Robert a couple of years earlier, and as if she believed that the innocence of her recent life was generally known.
Instead of conceding her these privileges for any length of time, Lord Danby evidently speeded the parting guest with great celerity. While all this was going on, Sir Robert Howard remained under arrest in London. Laud, writing of Lady Purbeck's escape, says: "In the mean time, I could not but know, though not perhaps prove as then, that Sir Robert Howard laboured and contrived this conveyance.
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 "Ambassador of Savoy," whose garden adjoined that of the house in which Lady Purbeck was staying, to beg the Ambassador that he would allow the officers to pass through his house and garden into the garden of Lady Purbeck's house of refuge "for her more easy apprehension and arrest that way."
I., p. 444, we read: "The Scottish historian, Johnstone, says that Purbeck's marriage was celebrated amid the gratulation of the fawning courtiers, but stained by the tears of the reluctant bride, who was a sacrifice to her father's ambition of the alliance with Buckingham's family." Here is another account of the wedding, in a letter from Sir Gerard Herbert to Carleton: "Maie it please yor.
"Have consulted with Sir Henry Martin on Lady Purbeck's business, and think the best plan would be to have the case brought before the High Commission Court, which can sit without delay, in the vacation, and when the crime is proved there, the divorce can be obtained by ordinary law.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking