While all this turmoil was going on in the Strand, Lady Purbeck went
quietly away to another place of hiding; but her escape got the
gallant and kind-hearted Ambassador into great trouble. Buckingham was
enraged when he heard of the trick. Sir John Finett shall himself tell
us what followed. Buckingham, he says, declared that "all this was
done of designe for the ladies escape, (which in that hubbub she
made), to his no small prejudice and scorn, in a business that so
nearly he said concerned him, (she being wife to his brother), and
bringing him children of anothers begetting; yet such as by the law
(because begotten and born while her husband was in the land) must be
of his fathering.
"The ambassador for his purgation from this charge, went immediately
to the Duke at Whitehall, but was denied accesse: Whereupon repairing
to my Lord Chamberlain for his mediation, I was sent to him by his
lordship, to let him know more particularly the Duke's displeasure,
and back by the ambassador to the Duke with his humble request but of
one quarter of an hours audience for his disblaming. But the duke
returning answer, that having always held him so much his friend and
given him so many fair proofs of his respects, he took his proceeding
so unkindly, as he was resolved not to speak with him. I reported this
to the ambassador, and had for his only answer, what reason cannot do,
time will. Yet, after this the Earls of Carliel and Holland
interposing; the ambassador, (hungry after his peace from a person of
such power, and regarding his masters service and the public affairs),
he a seven night after obtained of the duke an interview in Whitehall
garden, and after an hours parley, a reconciliation."
As has just been seen, the officers of the law lost sight of Lady
Purbeck. So also, for the present do we; but we know what became of
her; for she was taken by Sir Robert Howard to his house at Clun, in
the extreme south-west of Shropshire, where a small promontory of that
county is bordered by Montgomeryshire, Radnorshire and Herefordshire.
It is probable that, so long as she was far away from the Court and
from London, Buckingham and the authorities took no trouble to find
her or her paramour, and almost connived at their escape.
During their absence from our view, it may add to the interest of our
story to observe the conditions at that time of some of the other
characters who have figured in it, and to consider certain
circumstances of the period at which we are halting. Looking back a
little way, we shall find that King James, who we noticed was so ill
as to be only just able to sign an order connected with the
proceedings against Lady Purbeck, died in March, 1625, and that the
very correct Charles I. was King during the subsequent proceedings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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