The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck | Page 9

in the hour of his tribulation,
had fought his battles before the King and the Council, and had even
braved the royal displeasure and endured exile from the Court, rather
than desert him in his need. She bitterly reproached him for repaying
her constancy and sacrifices on his behalf by selling her daughter
without either inquiring as to the mother's wishes, or even informing
that mother of his intention.
If Lady Elizabeth was infuriated at the news of the match, her daughter
was frenzied. She detested Sir John Villiers, and she implored her
parents never again to mention the question of her marrying him. The
mother and daughter were on one side and the father on the other;
neither would yield an inch, and Hatton House, Holborn, became the

scene of violent invective and bitter weeping.
Buckingham is said to have promised Coke that, if he would bring
about the proposed marriage, he should have his offices restored to him.
Buckingham's mother, Lady Compton, also warmly supported the
project. She was what would now be called "a very managing woman."
Since the death of Buckingham's father, she had had two husbands, Sir
William Rayner and Sir Thomas Compton,[13] brother to the Earl of
Northampton. She was in high favour at Court, and she was created
Countess of Buckingham just a year later than the time with which we
are now dealing. As Buckingham favoured the match, of course the
King favoured it also; and, as has been seen, Winwood, the Secretary of
State, favoured it, simply because Bacon did not.
On the other side, among the active opponents of the match, were
Bacon the Lord Keeper, Lord and Lady Burghley, Lord Danvers, Lord
Denny, Sir Thomas and Lady Howard, and Sir Edmund and Lady
Withipole.
Suddenly, to Coke's great satisfaction, Lady Elizabeth became, as he
supposed, calm and quiet. It was his habit to go to bed at nine o'clock,
and to get up very early. One night he went to bed at his usual hour,
under the impression that his wife was settling down nicely and
resigning herself to the inevitable. While he was in his beauty-sleep,
soon after ten, that excellent lady quietly left the house with her
daughter, and walked some little distance to a coach, which she had
engaged to be in waiting for them at an appointed place. In this coach
they travelled by unfrequented and circuitous roads, until they arrived
at a house near Oatlands, a place belonging to the Earl of Argyll, but
rented at that time by Lady Elizabeth's cousin, Sir Edmund Withipole.
The distance from Holborn to Oatlands, as the crow flies, is about
twenty miles; but, by the roundabout roads which the fugitives took in
order to prevent attempts to trace them, the distance must have been
considerable, and the journey, in the clumsy coach of the period, over
the rutted highways and the still worse by-roads of those times, must
have been long and wearisome. Oatlands is close to Weybridge, to the
south-west of London, in Surrey, just over the boundary of Middlesex

and about a mile to the south of the river Thames.
In Sir Edmund Withipole's house Lady Elizabeth and her daughter
lived in the strictest seclusion, and all precautions were taken to prevent
the place of their retreat from becoming known. And great caution was
necessary, for Lady Elizabeth and Frances were almost within a dozen
miles of Stoke Pogis, their country home; so that they would have been
in danger of being recognised, if they had appeared outside the house.
But Lady Elizabeth was not idle in her voluntary imprisonment. She
conceived the idea that the best method of preventing a match which
she disliked for her daughter would be to make one of which she could
approve. Accordingly she offered Frances to young Henry de Vere,
eighteenth Earl of Oxford. Although to a lesser extent, like Sir John
Villiers, he was impecunious and on the look out for an heiress, his
father--who was distinguished for having been one of the peers
appointed to sit in judgment on Mary, Queen of Scots, for having had
command of a fleet to oppose the Armada, for his success in
tournaments, for his comedies, for his wit, and for introducing the use
of scents into England--having dissipated the large inheritance of his
family.
Undoubtedly, Lady Elizabeth was a woman of considerable resource;
but, with all her virtues, she was not over-scrupulous; for, as Lord
Campbell says,[14] to induce her daughter to believe that Oxford was
in love with her, she "showed her a forged letter, purporting to come
from that nobleman, which asseverated that he was deeply attached to
her, and that he aspired to her hand." Lady Elizabeth was apparently of
opinion that everything--and everything includes lying and forgery--is