The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck Part 1

The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck.

by Thomas Longueville.

PREFACE

The curious case of Lady Purbeck is here presented without embellishment, much as it has been found in old books and old ma.n.u.scripts, chiefly at the Record Office and at the British Museum.

Readers must not expect to find any "well-drawn characters," "fine descriptions," "local colour," or "dramatic talent," in these pages, on each of which Mr. Dry-as-dust will be encountered. 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. He has the pleasure of acknowledging much useful a.s.sistance and kind encouragement in this little work from Mr. Walter Herries Pollock.

CHAPTER I.

"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 Ess.e.x, 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 c.o.ke 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. c.o.ke 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.

As Bridget was reigning in Heaven, c.o.ke immediately began to look about for a subst.i.tute to fill the throne which she had left vacant upon earth. Youth, great personal beauty and considerable wealth, thought this broken-hearted widower at the age of forty-six, would be good enough for him, and the weeks since the true handmaid of the Lord had left him desolate were only just beginning to blend into months, when he fixed his mind upon a girl likely to fulfil his very moderate requirements. He, a widower, naturally sought a widow, and, happily, he found a newly made one. Youth she had, for she was only twenty; beauty she must have had in a remarkable degree, for she was afterwards one of the lovely girls selected to act with the Queen of James I. in Ben Jonson's _Masque of Beauty_; and wealth she had in the shape of immense estates.

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 c.o.ke found out in her conduct respecting a daughter who eventually became Lady Purbeck, the heroine of our little story.

Romance was not wanting in the Attorney-General's second wooing; for he had a rival, whom Lord Campbell in his _Lives of the Chief Justices_, describes as "then a briefless barrister, but with brilliant prospects," a man of thirty-five, who happened to be Lady Elizabeth's cousin. His name was Francis Bacon, afterwards Lord Chancellor, Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, and the author of the _Novum Organum_ as well of a host of other works, including essays on almost every conceivable subject. In the opinion of certain people, he was also the author of the plays commonly attributed to one William Shakespeare. This rival was good-looking, had a charming manner, and was brilliant in conversation, while his range of subjects was almost unlimited, whereas, the wooer in whom we take such an affectionate interest, was wrinkled, dull, narrow-minded, unimaginative, selfish, over-bearing, arrogant, illiterate, ignorant in almost everything except jurisprudence, of which he was the greatest oracle then living, and uninterested in everything except law, his own personal ambition, and money-making.

Shortly before c.o.ke 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 Ess.e.x, to use his influence in inducing her to marry him. Ess.e.x 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. c.o.ke attended his funeral, and a funeral being obviously a fitting occasion on which to talk about that still more dreary ceremony, a wedding, c.o.ke 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 c.o.ke 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, fas.h.i.+onable, and critical a.s.semblage 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 c.o.ke 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, c.o.ke, 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 c.o.ke had made the entry in his diary canonising Bridget. As the Archbishop had been his tutor, c.o.ke may have expected him to overlook this little transgression. Instead of this, the pious Primate at once ordered a suit to be inst.i.tuted 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 b.a.l.l.s, 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 Ess.e.x, 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-a.s.sorted couple was a most unhappy one. Indeed it was a case of--

"at home 'tis steadfast hate, And one eternal tempest of debate."[1]

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 c.o.ke 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.[2]

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:

[1] Young's _Love of Fame_.

[2] Most of the matter in this chapter has been taken from _The Lives of the Chief Justices of England_, by John, Lord Campbell. In two volumes. London: John Murray, 1849, Vol. I., p. 239 _seq._, Chap.

VII.

CHAPTER II.

"Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure, Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure."

_Don Juan_, xiii., 16.

Rivals in love, rivals in law, rivals for place, c.o.ke and Bacon, while nominally friends, were implacable enemies, but they sought their ends by different methods. When James I. had ascended the throne, Bacon began at once to seek his favour; but c.o.ke took no trouble whatever for that purpose, and he was not even introduced to the royal presence until several weeks after the accession. Bacon, then a K.C., held no office during the first four years of the new reign; but his literary fame and his skilful advocacy at the Bar excited the jealousy of c.o.ke.

On one occasion, c.o.ke 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." c.o.ke 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 c.o.ke'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, c.o.ke 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, c.o.ke 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, c.o.ke's "arrogance of demeanour to all mankind is unparalleled."

Towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth, c.o.ke, 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 c.o.ke's own handwriting, are still preserved at the State Paper Office, which, says Campbell, "sufficiently attest his zeal, a.s.siduity 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, c.o.ke 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:[3] "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 c.o.ke, as an Earl's daughter she was Lady Elizabeth, by which name alone let us know her.

Campbell states that, after the birth of Frances, Sir Edward and Lady Elizabeth "lived little together, although they had the prudence to appear to the world to be on decent terms till the heiress was marriageable." c.o.ke had been astute enough to secure a comfortable country-house, at a very convenient distance from London, through Lady Elizabeth. Her ladys.h.i.+p had held a mortgage upon Stoke Pogis, a place that belonged formerly to the Earls of Huntingdon,[4] and c.o.ke, 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 fas.h.i.+onable quarter of Holborn, a place to which dwellers in the city used to go for change of air.[6] As c.o.ke and his wife generally quarrelled when together, the husband was usually at Holborn[7] when the wife was at Stoke, and _vice-versa_. It was almost impossible that Miss Frances should not notice the strained relations between her parents. Nothing could have been much worse for the education of their daughter than their constant squabblings; and, unless she differed greatly from most other daughters, she would take advantage of their mutual antipathies to play one against the other, a pleasing pastime, by means of which young ladies, blessed with quarrelsome parents, often obtain permissions and other good things of this world, which otherwise they would have to do without.

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, c.o.ke had had it all his own way. He had snubbed and insulted Bacon in the law courts, and he had s.n.a.t.c.hed 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. c.o.ke replied:--

"G.o.d 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."

On hearing this, James flew into a rage and said: "Then am I to be _under_ the law--which it is treason to affirm?"

To which c.o.ke replied: "Thus wrote Braxton: 'Rex non debet esse sub homine, sed sub _Deo et Lege_.'"[8]