To this searching letter, wrung from a father, uncertain how far his daughter had for ever exposed herself to shame, hoping, yet fearing, lest it might not prove so, and that she had fallen into honourable hands, Buckingham thus replied:— “MY LORD, “Your mistaking in your fashion of dealing with a free and honest heart, together with your froward carriage towards your own daughter, enforced me the other day to post to Hampton Court, and there cast myself at His Majesty’s feet, confessing freely unto him all that hath ever passed in privacy between your lordship and me concerning your daughter’s marriage, lest otherwise, by this, your public miscarriage of the business, it might by other means, to my disadvantage, have come to his knowledge. And now that I have obtained my master’s pardon for this, my first fault, for concealing, and going further in anything than His Majesty was acquainted with, I can delay no longer of declaring unto you how unkindly I take your harsh usage of me and your own daughter, which hath wrought this effect in me; that, since you esteem so little of my friendship and her honour, I must now, contrary to my former resolution, leave off the pursuit of that alliance any more, putting it in your free choice to bestow her elsewhere, to your best comfort; for, whose fortune it shall ever be to have her, I will constantly profess that she never received any blemish in her honour but which came by your own tongue. It is true I never thought before to have seen the time that I should need to come within the compass of the law, by stealing of a wife against the consent of the parents, considering of the favours that it pleaseth His Majesty, though undeservedly, to bestow upon me. So leaving this to you and your wife’s censure, “I rest, “Your lordship’s servant, “BUCKINGHAM.”[284] These protestations on the part of Buckingham, that the honour of Lady Katharine was untouched, are confirmed by the following extracts from certain letters relative to the affair, by which it is evident, first, that James himself promoted the abduction of the young heiress, and, secondly, that the Countess of Buckingham, whilst she favoured her son’s schemes, never suffered the reputation of her daughter-in-law to be injured, since she did not, for an instant, permit her to leave her presence during the temporary absence from her father’s house. Footnote 284: From Harleian, 1581, p. 134.