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LIVES OF TWELVE BAD WOMEN
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[All rights reserved.]
What mighty ills have not been done by woman ? Who was't betrayed the Capitol ? A woman ! Who lost Mark Antony the world ? A woman ! Who was the cause of a long ten years' war, And laid at last old Troy in ashes ? Woman ! Destructive, damnable, deceitful woman.
Otwav.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Preface ....... xi
I. Alice Perrers, Favourite of King Edward III.
(d. 1400) ...... 3
By ARTHUR VINCENT.
II. Alice Arden, Murderess (Ex. 1551) . . -33
By ABEL H. COPPINGER.
III. Moll Cutpurse, Thief and Receiver (?i584-i659) . 49
By CHARLES ANDREWS.
IV. Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset (1593-1632) . 63
By GEOFFREY MARTIN.
V. Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland (1640-
1709) ...... 99
By ALFRED KALISCH.
VI. Jenny Diver, Pickpocket [Ex. 1741) . • • 137
By CHARLES ANDREWS.
VII. Teresia Constantia Phillips (1709-1765) . 165
By GILBERT BURGESS.
viii CONTENTS.
PAGE
VIII. Elizabeth Brownrigg, Cruelty personified (? 1720-
1767) 189
By EDGAR STUBBS.
IX. Elizabeth Canning, Impostor (1734-1773) ■ • 205
By W. G. WATERS.
X. Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess of Kingston
(1720-1788) . . . . -225
By W. G. WATERS.
XI. Mary Bateman, "The Yorkshire Witch" (1768-1809) 261 By ARTHUR VINCENT.
XII. Mary Anne Clarke (1776-1852) . . . 289
By W. G. WATERS.
Index ........ 313
NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS.
4
The Countess of Somerset . . . Frontispiece
The engraving from which this picture is copied is one of the best works of Simon de Passe, and is in all probability a faithful likeness. The hair curled into the representation of a wig is ultra-fashionable, and, as Grainger remarks, the Countess appears to have exposed more of the bosom than was seen in any former period. There are several portraits of Lady Frances, one being in the gallery at Windsor. The most curious, perhaps, is that prefixed to "Truth Brought to Light by Time" (1651), where she is depicted in company with Somerset, who is dwarfed and rendered insignificant by the enormous dimensions of his wife's hooped dress. In another rare print she is holding a feather fan and is with a Dr. Panurgus, who is doubtless supposed to represent her henchman, Dr. Forman.
Alice Arden . .... to face p. 33
There is no portrait, properly speaking, of the wife and murderess of Arden of Faversham, but it was worth while to reproduce Mr. Ebsworth's facsimile of an ancient cut provided by him as a frontispiece to Mr. A. H. Bullen's edition of "Arden of Feversham : A Tragedy" (London: Jarvis & Son, 1887). The violent interruption by Black Will of the un- fortunate Arden's game of backgammon with his wife's paramour, Mosby ; the determined demeanour of Alice with the dagger in hand, and the bellicose attitude of her assistants are most faithfully depicted.
Mary Frith ..... to face p. 49
Of the two portraits mentioned in the text the one reproduced is that pre- fixed to her "Life," published in 1662. She is represented in man's attire and wearing a sword, while a lion, an ape, and an eagle bear her company.
Barbara Villiers .... to face p. 99
The portraits of this lady are extremely numerous. She loved to be painted in fancy character, but it seemed scarcely appropriate that in the present volume she should figure as a Madonna, or as St. Catherine, or even as a shepherdess, or the chaste Pallas Athene. One of the many portraits painted by the assiduous Lely has been chosen as being probably a more trustworthy likeness than is to be found in some other pictures.
x NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS.
Teresia Constantia Phillips . • to face p. 165
Two portraits of this comely bad woman were engraved by Faber from pictures painted at the expense of her admirers.
Elizabeth Brownrigg . • • to face p. 109
Many cuts purporting to be likenesses of Mrs. Brownrigg were issued at the time when she gained her notoriety. The portrait given is a copy of that prefixed to the account of her exploits appearing in "Celebrated Trials" (1825). It corresponds fairly well with contemporary accounts of her personal appearance.
The picture, showing one of Mrs. Brownrigg's methods of inflicting pain on her apprentices, is an enlargement from a print in the same
book ..... to face p. 194
Elizabeth Canning .... to face p. 205
At the time when the town was divided into Canningites and anti- Canningites portraits of this imaginative servant-maid were plentiful. She figured in many satirical prints, and the resemblance of the pictures to her features was often as fanciful as her own adventures. A large folio shows her sitting in the house with Mother Wells ; in another picture she is standing on her trial, and she was also to be had in company with Mary Squires. The portrait in these pages is reduced from a fine folio mezzo- tint by McArdell.
The Duchess of Kingston . . . to face p. 225
The portrait of Elizabeth Chudleigh is a copy of the engraving after Reynolds in Peter Cunningham's edition of Walpole's letters. The lady was fond of entrusting the reproduction of her face to artists, but it is possible she underpaid them, for there is striking dissimilarity in many of her portraits.
Mary Bateman .... to face p. 261
There is no worthy likeness of the "Yorkshire Witch," nothing but a rough cut prefixed to the " Extraordinary Life and Character of Mary Bateman," which is here reproduced in all its native barrenness. In her right hand she is holding the egg bearing the inscription, " Crist is Coming" ; on the table is a bottle bearing on the label the words, " M. Bateman's Balm of Gilead," and also a letter addressed to William Perigo.
Mary Anne Clarke .... to face p. 289
The portrait of this extortionate lady bears her signature, and is probably therefore one preferred by herself. She liked posing, particularly in a somewhat Oriental fashion, on a sofa, but these pictures do not give as lively a presentation of the facial features as the bust-portrait. In several of her pictures the complexion given is dark even to swarthiness.
PREFACE.
IT is to be admitted that the idea of a volume containing the lives of twelve bad women owed its inception to the publication of the lives of twelve bad men. The one title suggests the other, and it was fitting that the one book should be followed by the second. Relentless circumstance decreed that Mr. Thomas Seccombe, to whose bright intellect, assisted by his exceptional editorial ability, the emergence of the Bad Men was due, should not only find it impossible to do the like for the Bad Women, but should be reluctantly debarred from collaboration. The completion of the work, so well begun by him, was thus left to one of his assistants in the former book, who has in the present volume pursued, as far as was possible, the lines marked down by him.
To the natural desire to follow so excellent a model is to be ascribed the limitation of the choice of Bad Women to former inhabitants of these islands. It is hoped that such limitations will be found to be justified, notwithstanding the common assumption that the most familiar types of evil- doing women are furnished by other countries. Whether thanks are really due to Nature for permitting British woman to make a just boast that at any rate she is not so bad as her foreign sister, or whether it be that the national quality of self-abasement teaches the English to look else- where than at home for examples of moral obliquity, are questions that need not now be discussed; yet it may scarcely be denied that such names as those of Lucrezia Borgia, Catharine de Medici, the Empress Catharine, or Joan of Naples, are more likely to be instanced as bad women than
xii PREFACE.
any native specimen. It must be remembered, however, that no claim is made to have enshrined within these pages biographies of the twelve worst women that ever lived, either in the world or in the narrower sphere of Great Britain and Ireland. To have done so would only provoke useless con- troversy, and there is the further objection that there have existed many women of criminal importance who, though they must have been very bad women indeed, have left little history beyond the bare record of a crime. Queen Elfritha, whose act won martyrdom for King Edward, Lady Macbeth, the Lady Shrewsbury who held her lover's horse while he killed her husband, and many another who has equal rights to inclusion in a company of Bad Women, are commemo- rated by a single deed of wickedness, while the rest of their lives merely furnishes material for a paragraph. Other women there have been (and the class is not a small one) who so dissembled their badness or goodness that, according to the point of view, they are at once objects of veneration and execration, and the story of their lives is more fitly to be looked for among Twelve Doubtful Women.
Neither description has its place in this volume, of which the purpose is to give unvarnished accounts of twelve English- women of whom enough is known to show that they were consistently bad, whether owing to a vicious temperament, a crooked nature, or a lack of moral perception, resulting in unscrupulousness and crime. Variety in the forms of evil having been decreed by Nature, it has been deemed well to follow her example so far as possible, and the selection of subjects has been made with this end in view. In the cases of Alice Perrers and Barbara Villiers the variety is afforded by the different conditions of different ages, and it is curious to note the parallelism between the characters of these two royal favourites, separated as they were by three centuries of time. Both variety and comprehensiveness demanded that some exponents of what are sometimes called vulgar crimes should be included, and vulgar and brutal as Moll Cutpurse, Jenny Diver, Mrs. Brownrigg, and Mary Bateman undoubt- edly were, they were none the less women, and, in their own particular lines, representative women. The murder by Alice
PREFACE. xiii
Arden of her husband, though sordid enough in its details, is as what is nowadays called a crime passioned redeemed from the reproach of vulgarity, and the dignity of history has done as much for the revolting sins of the vile Countess of Somerset. In the Duchess of Kingston is seen the type of the un-moral woman, innocent enough, no doubt, in a savage community, but particularly unwholesome if the well-being and progress of civilized society be held worthy objects of human endeavour. A form of crime, which is not vulgar because peculiarly femi- nine, is that exemplified in the case of Elizabeth Canning, who, although in her own day she almost escaped on a popular prejudice, and would probably have done the same to-day as a hysteric subject, was as wicked a little baggage as ever the devil inspired.
One class only of Bad Women has been designedly ex- cluded, and that is the class to which the name is not uncommonly applied in a special and limited sense. No woman has been admitted simply because she exhibited the infirmity which takes the form of multitudinous and indis- criminate lasciviousness. That such weakness not seldom accompanies vices, which in themselves betoken bluntness of the finer feelings, is for the present purpose an accident. It may be that the line which has to be drawn is a narrow one, and that such characters as Con Phillips and Mary Anne Clarke are very near the border, but there is yet a clear dis- tinction between these two women and a Messalina or Cora Pearl.
The twelve biographies have all been carefully compiled from the best available resources, and, inasmuch as no autho- rities (save in exceptional instances) are cited, it should be said that no statement of fact, which is not supported by authentic records, has been wilfully admitted.
January i, 1897.
ALICE PERRERS.
ALICE PERRERS.
(d. 1400.)
" Where women reigne or be in authoritie, there must nedes vanitie be preferred to vertue, ambition and pride to temperancie and modesty and finallie that avarice, the mother of all mischefe must nedes devour equitie and justice."^^oi/iv Knox.
IT is no uncommon thing for pedigrees to come to an in- convenient stop in the ascending direction. Many volumes hardly contain the names and suitable accounts of the English families for whom it is claimed that the blood of Edward III. still trickles in their veins ; and, no doubt, if all things might be known, another volume could be added containing the names of those who combine the blood of Edward and that of Alice Perrers. But beyond that on the lady's side it would in existing circumstances be difficult to go. Her origin is wrapped in mystery, and the lapse of five centuries has done nothing to throw light on it, although so great a span of time has not passed without giving birth to some ingenious specu- lation on the question. Archbishop Parker, for instance, thought that she might be identical with Alice Perot, the niece of William of Wykeham, a younger and most respect- able lady, whose son was fellow of his college. More than one historian has confidently asserted that she was the child of John de Perrers, of Holt in Norfolk, and his wife, Gunnora Ormesby ; but their daughter, named Elizabeth, should have been called Alice to make the theory more readily acceptable. Others again have held that she must have been the daughter or granddaughter of a Sir Richard Perers, who was returned to Parliament from time to time as representative of Hertford-
4 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
shire in the first thirty years of the fourteenth century, anc who is thought, but probably not very correctly, to have beer the same Sir Richard Perers who, some thirty years later, was branded as a common malefactor and spent many years ir Stortford prison. This last Sir Richard had a son of the same name, to whom, in the opinion of others, the paternity of Alice should be ascribed, but the son had to fall back on fraudulenl devices in his attempts to recover the confiscated acres of hi< father. His attempts were unsuccessful, though it is impossible to doubt that had it been his good fortune to own Alice Perrer: as a daughter or even as a remote relative, he would have gained all he wanted without recourse to forgery and expensive suits.
The chroniclers of the fourteenth century and their imme- diate successors were in no uncertainty as to the lady's origin and perhaps it is not disrespectful to the modern genealogist; of Perrers to believe that the earlier information may be the more exact. According to her contemporaries Alice Perrers was of base kindred, being the daughter of either a weaver 01 a tiler of Hunneye (" beside Exeter, as some suppose "). The year of her birth is unknown, and it is therefore not possible to determine whether she possessed the usual number of teetr or only the twenty-eight to which persons born after the yeai of the Great Plague were restricted.1 The probabilities are in favour of the usual number, for eighteen years after the Plague she was in high favour at King Edward's Court, anc before gaining this eminence she had been a poor servant anc had learnt the ways of love from " a certain fool that usee with his hands to carry water from the conduit to men's house: for necessary use." The manner of her transition from the fool to the king has not been handed down. She may have found a humble place at Court, from which she succeeded ir obtaining notice from the usually discreet eye of the King After the death of Queen Philippa she was described as having been one of the ladies of her chamber, but there is no evidena that she was recognized as such in the Queen's lifetime Occupying the position she did with regard to the King, th< post could not have been a comfortable one, unless, indeed tht 1 Vide Baker's " History," p. 131.
ALICE PERRERS. 5
Queen was more indulgent to the foibles of her lord than many wives consider necessary. It was certainly some few years before Philippa's death that Alice was promoted "to the familiarity of the King more than was convenient," and it was a public scandal that she was preferred in the King's love. It is idle in this case, as it is in most others of love astray, to speculate on the causes that led up to Edward's infatuation. His record of constancy was a good one and his strong attach- ment to his queen had been notorious. Philippa had been an excellent wife and a prolific mother, and though, to judge from her effigy at Westminster, she was no longer beautiful, her rival had no advantage over her in this respect, being described as neither beautiful nor fair. Popular gossip accounted for Alice's ascendancy by her flattering tongue, and that she knew how to use that organ to excellent effect for her own ends the whole story of her relations with Edward bears witness. Further, it were indiscreet, if not futile, to inquire.
Her place in the affections of the King once gained, Alice Perrers set about turning it to the best account. She found herself in the position of the beggar on horseback and made the best use of her opportunity. Her dominant quality was avarice, and it had its natural complement in the regal extrava- gance of Edward, who was not only by disposition generous, but may, perhaps, have felt, with the modesty of advancing age, that the mere distinction of his- protection was hardly sufficient reward for a lady who adapted herself with such ease to his requirements. The first recorded grant to her is an annual allowance of two tuns of wine per annum made in 1366 and this is probably but a token of numerous personal gifts ; but what the acquisitive nature of Alice chiefly loved was landed property. Reversions to the crown were ever falling in, and if a manor thus reverting was lucrative or desirable, it became the property by royal grant of Alice Perrers. In 1 367, for instance, the King's aunt having died, her manor of Arding- ton was granted to Alice, together with other property, which included the open fields in Merton with the enclosure of Mortoscough in the forest of Inglewood, and a piece of land in Northumberland. If it were possible to set forth the names and localities of all the estates thus acquired it would be over-
6 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
tedious to do so, for within ten years Alice became the pro- prietor of manors, lands, and tenements in no fewer than seventeen counties. Hers was no nominal ownership. Gain was her object, and no sooner was a grant of land recorded in her favour than she appointed an agent or bailiff whose duty it was to wring the uttermost penny from the luckless occupiers of the soil. Another profitable source of income was to be derived from the custody of minors, heirs of territorial rights, the profits of whose lands during their minority might be appropriated by the persons nominally made responsible for their maintenance. Several young gentlemen owed guardian- ship of this sort to the benevolent Alice, and as many others were, by the King's will, compelled to allow her to pocket a tax on their marrying.
Far the greater part of these numerous grants were made after a happy death had removed the Queen in August, 1369, when her rival and successor stepped into undisputed posses- sion of the first place in the Court and in the realm. The King was then fifty-seven years old, an advanced age in the fourteenth century, and though the issue of the struggle waged within him between virility and senility was beyond a doubt, the momentary mastery of either one or the other was equally in favour of Alice. He was happy in bending to her will, and her will was only to receive or to prevent others from receiving. She is represented as being ever by the King, taking "whatever she could catch or snatch from his hands," and hindering him from recompensing poor servants that had long served him. If she was in want of money, a commodity which it was not always convenient even for the King to provide, she was allowed to borrow from the Treasury. This was, in fact, a cheap method of generosity for the King, as, when the loans had accumulated, it was only necessary for Alice to remind him of her position, to bring the accustomed influences to bear, and to receive forthwith by royal warrant a pardon of all her debts. In similar fashion she would borrow jewels from the King and afterwards obtain a pardon of their value which had been entered up against her. It is likely indeed that the jewels she borrowed were sometimes re-sold by her to the King and then borrowed again. She disposed of "jewels and things" one
ALICE PERRERS. 7
Christmas to the King to the amount of £^97, and was duly paid this sum out of the exchequer. There was, however, one set of jewels which it taxed her persuasive powers to the utmost to obtain. These were those that had belonged to the Queen, on whose death they had been handed over for safe keeping to the hands of Euphemia, wife of Walter de Heselarton, knight. Alice Perrers must have felt that if she occupied the position of the late queen, and something more, she was fairly entitled to such meaner attributes of royalty as jewellery and other personal belongings of value. The King appears to have differed ; he may even have felt that a line might be drawn somewhere, or the members of his family have brought such influence as they could command to bear on him, but, whatever the reason, four years passed before a grant making over Philippa's jewels to Alice was formally enrolled. In extenuation of this gift of the King it has been argued by some of his or of her apologists on the strength of the wording of the grant, that not all but only some of the jewels were meant, and it is true that the inelegant Latin may be read thus ambiguously, but the most obvious and straightforward translation indicates the transfer of all the jewels. The point is not worth mention were it not for the strong insistence on it by commentators who, in order to mitigate the offence, have taken the curious means of prov- ing (to their own satisfaction) that the bulk of the gift bestowed was less than had been supposed. The same writers have not unnaturally disdained to notice Alice's smaller depredations, which amounted in sum to a very considerable value. Nothing she could lay her hands upon came amiss to her, and she helped herself from the royal palace to enormous quantities of silver cups and dishes, bed-linen, pillows, mattresses, table- cloths, curtains, silks, ribbons, and even remnants of cloth. These things and others of like character were doubtless taken for the embellishment of the home she made for herself as a place of retirement during the King's absence or as occasion might otherwise serve. This home was a moated mansion in the manor of Pallens-wick, a large estate to the north of and extending almost the whole length of what is now King Street, Hammersmith, and here, no doubt, were brought up the little girls by whose birth her union with the King was blessed from
8 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
time to time. It was unfortunate for Alice, as events after- wards proved, that nothing could be taken whether from the wardrobe or any other department of the royal household without an entry being made of the fact, and a woman of less assurance might have shrank from the frequent encounters it was necessary to undergo with the jealous custodians of the royal property. The officers and dependents of the household disliked her cordially, if not openly, but, as Alice Perrers well knew, their hostility was harmless to her so long as her star remained in the ascendant. She could afford to exercise a hateful magnanimity and to scatter smiles and kind words among people who might despise them but who must needs appear grateful. Still, she was mindful of her dignity and was able to assert it when necessary in picturesque manner. Thus in 1375, when her unpopularity was fast becoming a force with which she had to reckon, and the good people of London were murmuring more audibly than decently at her all-embrac- ing sway, Alice determined to give to the ignorant mob an object-lesson which should show to it the personage she was and the unassailable nature of the position she had won. Accordingly, a tournament was organized to be held at Smithfield under the direct patronage of the King. On the appointed day there started from the Tower a gorgeous pro- cession consisting of a great number of ladies of high rank, each one of whom led by the bridle a knight on horseback, and in the centre a triumphal chariot which contained Alice Perrers in the character of the " Lady of the Sun," and the doting King. Her raiment, which was magnificent and was, of course, supplied from the Wardrobe, included " a cap of tanned leather, broidered with gold thread and bound with gold ribbon furred with ermine." The lists remained open for seven days, and on each of them the inhabitants of the city of London were privileged to behold the exultant progress through their midst of the " Lady of the Sun " surrounded by her satellites. The success was so great, or the effect produced was considered so satisfactory, that a similar " hastilude " was planned for the following Whitsuntide, and Alice provided herself — again from the Wardrobe — with " a cloth of gold tissue, lined with red taffeta" together with "a russet gown,
ALICE PERRERS. g
lined with white, furred with ermine." The death of the Black Prince put a stop to the festivities before they were commenced, but it is safe to assume that the garments were not returned.
Alice Perrers, however, had but little mind for diversions such as those described, except so far as they might be neces- sary or useful for the strengthening of her position and the attainment of her ends. Her business was to acquire riches by means fair or foul, and she was not slow to see that there were ways open to her other than the extraction of excessive remuneration for favours bestowed on the King. It is believed that she was the partner of Lord Latimer and Richard Lyons in the creation of a " corner " in necessary commodities, which was highly lucrative while it lasted. Lyons, who was the active partner, was a merchant of London and farmer of Customs, and was thus in a favourable situation to secure the first chance of purchasing imported merchandize. The simple plan of the confederates was for him to use this chance, and by buying up, with the capital his friends could provide, all importations of some given article, obtain an easy command of the market. The plan worked admirably well, and under Alice's protection Lyons was able to extend the sphere of their operations by selling patents to traders for monopolies. Another field for their activity was found among the numerous creditors of the King who had advanced him money, and having experienced difficulty in obtaining repayment were willing to sell their debts at a considerable discount for cash ; the debts were bought up, and it was mere everyday work for Alice to obtain settlements in full from the Treasury. While her accomplices or agents were thus working for the common cause, she herself was busy on her own account. It came to be known that the influence and assistance of the most powerful person in the kingdom were at the service of suitors in the courts of law, and it is the truth that they were so — in return for a consideration. Alice, in fact, indulged in the offence of maintenance or of helping litigants to bring actions on condition of sharing in the winnings in the event of a successful issue. The weaker the cause, the higher was the price to be paid for its support ; and the higher the price, the
io TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
greater was the chance of a favourable judgment. For, if in the early days of the system, before it was perfected, the judges had ventured to disregard the evidence of witnesses suborned by Alice, she soon found a way of teaching them manners if not justice. When a case in which she was interested came on for hearing she appeared in Westminster Hall and took her seat on the bench. From that point of vantage she was able to instruct the judge as to what was true and what was not, and as to the finding it was proper to give on the evidence as interpreted by her. The judges knew the character with which they had to deal, and were too wise to do otherwise than bow to what was for them, as for others, the royal will. Their brothers in the ecclesiastical courts were in a like case ; they too had to bear the presence on their bench and the assistance in their councils of the self-appointed coadjutor, and knew no alternative but to concur with her if the defendant, though guilty of the worst crime known to the Consistory, was only rich enough to pay her fees. One instance only is on record of a miscarriage of Alice's designs in a court of justice, and in that she was vanquished by brute force. It happened that a great part of England's naval forces were congregated in London by order of John of Gaunt, and a unit of these forces was an unfor- tunate seaman, against whom, for some reason beyond the scope of conjecture, Alice Perrers bore a grudge. She was able to induce a certain squire, whose name has not come down to us, to kill this sailor ; and there the matter should have ended, but the man's shipmates thought fit to regard it seriously, and to secure the capture and imprisonment of the murderer. He was brought up for trial in due course, and it was seen that the court was disposed to treat the matter lightly. Moreover, it was rumoured that, whatever the verdict in the case, Alice Perrers had thoughtfully armed herself with the royal warrant for the squire's pardon. The shipmates of the murdered man did not wait for the verdict: they rushed into court, seized the prisoner, and, taking him outside, " killed him like a swine, with a knife." Alice was beaten, and the sailors went scot free ; but the man she wished to be punished was dead, and if the instrument of her wrath had shared a like
ALICE PERRERS. n
ate, he had at any rate served her purpose, and she had done vhat she could to save him. But though a body of ignorant nen might thus venture to thwart her wishes, persons of any 3osition who had anything to gain or lose could only pray :hat their path might never cross hers, since, if it did, they nust submit with resignation to be trampled upon. An imusing illustration of the awe she inspired is found in the itory of the manor of Oxhey. This manor was left by a oious lady, named Johanna Whitewell, to the powerful and grasping monastery of St. Albans, the representatives of which promptly entered into possession. But the land was daimed by one Thomas Fitz-John, who alleged that the manor was not Johanna's to bequeath, inasmuch as it belonged to him, and he therefore turned out the people put in by the Abbot of St. Albans, and formally claimed owner- ship. The tenants, however, were one and all in favour of the monastery, and joined with the monks in dislodging Fitz-John, who, finding the odds too strong for him, gave up outward struggle and prepared a mine for the fathers. He went to London, obtained an interview with Alice Perrers, and on terms which were probably not altogether in his favour conveyed the property to her. Then he returned with i small force of friends, dispossessed the abbot's men again, md announced the transfer of the property to Alice, whose seneschal, Robert of Warwick, then and there named a place md time at which the unwilling tenants were to assemble to ittorn to their new mistress. The abbot conferred with his :ouncil on the steps to be next taken, and it being agreed that the greatness and power of Alice were such that it was useless to pursue justice against her, they reluctantly decided to desist from pressing their rights, and to leave her in peaceful possession. Her motive here was, as always, cupidity ; and t is not to be imagined that she was actuated in any way by lostility to the Church. On the contrary, she posed as a Dious woman, and was ready to advance money to religious Dodies, as she did on one occasion to the Abbey of West- ninster, provided the interest was high enough. Moreover, :he Church owes no small debt to her for the assistance she jave to its distinguished servant, William of Wykeham.
12 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
When that good man was in great disfavour, and had been specially exempted from the general pardon granted in the King's jubilee year, which meant that his temporalities, of which he had been deprived, were not to be restored to him, Alice greatly damaged her own prospects by befriending the bishop, and thus opposing the will of his enemy, the Duke of Lancaster. The bishop hankered after those lost temporalities, and seeing no other means of getting them back, invoked the aid of Alice. What was the price he paid is not known, but it must have been considerable, for, in order to earn her money, she stirred up the bedridden King, who was at the time within three days of his death, and obtained from him the revocation of Wykeham's sentence.
This last example of Alice's power of combining charity and business is, however, in anticipation of the course of events. The Duke of Lancaster, when he took over the reins of government, had had perforce to come to a working arrangement with his father's favourite. With the one other exception of Isabella de Courcy, his eldest daughter, who on her return from France took up her residence with her father and Alice Ferrers, and accompanied them to Havering, Eltham, Sheen, or whatever palace the pair might choose to occupy, Edward's other children viewed with extreme dis- approval his relations with Alice. The Black Prince remained in his retirement at Berkhampstead, and although, no doubt, his continued illness was the principal cause of his leading so private a life, it is possible that he was partly influenced thereto by the hatred of his wife for the lady who guided the nation's destinies. The princess Joan, whose own polyandrous tastes had been largely and honourably satisfied, could afford to resent with stern indignation the aggrandisement by unchastity of a sister-woman. Alice Ferrers, no doubt, preferred her contempt to more active hostility, and was content to have the more leisure for increasing her store. Public affairs, however, demanded a great deal of her atten- tion and her time. During the absence of the King's sons she was to all intents prime minister, and inasmuch as outside the sphere of her own immediate interests she had no particular gift of wisdom, it is little subject for wonder that the adminis-
ALICE PERRERS.
13
tration fell into contempt. The people of England, so long as they had no leader, endured her for their love of their king, but they are not to be blamed if they fixed on her the respon- sibility for the contempt in which their country was fast falling in the opinion of the world. They had almost the right to believe that that splendid fleet, four hundred ships strong, which had set sail under Edward's own command for the relief of Thouars, and returned to England without so much as nearing the opposite shore, was blown back not so much by contrary winds as by the hot breath of its leader's desire unto the witch to whose guidance he had entrusted his own and the nation's destinies. John of Gaunt can have had no more admiration for the lady's methods than the rest of the world ; but when, at length, the truce with France left him free to turn his attention to domestic politics, he was quick to see that an active opposition to her could only be an obstacle to the attainment of his own ends. His nature was hardly more generous than her own, but he presented her with a hanap of beryl garnished with silver, which had been a gift to him, and so had cost him nothing ; and she in turn, with equal freehandedness, obtained the grant of some manors, which for some reason she did not want for herself, to Catherine Swynford. Under their dual control things went well enough for them. They humoured the King, and did as they pleased ; and since the schemes of the lady, at any rate, did not extend beyond herself and her immediate belongings, they left no permanent stain on the country's annals. Alice continued to amass wealth and to oppress the tenants who were unlucky enough to owe fealty to her. She knew probably better than any one else that the King's day on earth were practically numbered, and no sagacity was needed to predict that her own reign would come to an end at the same time as his. It was not the fault of her enemies, who were many, and who were liberally scattered over the country, that it did not come first. At the very time when Alice's position seemed more firmly established than ever, these enemies, who were led by the Black Prince's party, the opponents of the existing administration, were working most strenuously to undermine it. The result of their efforts was
14 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
seen when the Parliament, the assembling of which was necessitated by the lack of supplies, met at Westminster in April, 1376. The government of two had, apparently, given no consideration to the choice of representatives. They counted on a passive meeting of country gentlemen who would formally grant what money was asked for, and return peacefully to their homes. How they reckoned without their host was seen directly the Commons were gathered together. They were almost to a man supporters of the Black Prince and the claims of his son to the succession, as against the presumed ambition of the Duke of Lancaster to fill the throne on his father's death. They elected Sir Peter Delamare to be their Speaker, in the literal sense of the word, and that virtuous man began the good work by declaiming against the existing system, or want of system, of government, and all the misdeeds of those who directed the affairs of the nation. John of Gaunt was dumbfounded by the unexpected turn of the Parlia- mentary wheel. He could not at first believe that the honest fools were serious in applauding Sir Peter's contumacious speech, and at the close of the first day's proceedings his impulse was to appear before the Commons in the morning " so glorious that they would no more dare to provoke him to wrath." Counsel taken with less fiery friends convinced him that the opposition was too resolute to be silenced by the mere apparition of a prince, however glorious ; and so on second thoughts " he laid aside all vigour and stoutness of stomach and next day appeared very favourable and mild." The Commons made the most of the free hand given them by the withdrawal of any active opposition. So soon as necessary business was concluded, what must have been a pre-concerted attack on the King's favourites was commenced. The first victims were Alice Perrers' friends and coadjutors, Richard Lyons and Lord Latimer. Lyons had scented danger and tried to escape it by sending to the Black Prince a barrel of gold in a barge, " as if it had been a barrel of sturgeon." The gift was sent back, and was re-addressed to the Kino-, who was lying ill at Eltham. Alice was with him, and it is need- less to say the gold was kept, but it made no difference to the immediate fate of Lyons, who was condemned to imprison-
ALICE PERRERS. 15
lent during the King's will. Lord Latimer and others were kewise sentenced, and then came the turn of Alice Perrers.
There were present the representatives of the seventeen ounties in which her property lay, and every one of them tad listened to the groans of those who were forced to sub- nit to her extortion. Each good knight was primed with ome story of her enormities and turned an eager ear to the ale his neighbour had to tell. Most of these probably pre- sented no point of attack, but the readiness displayed to seize ipon the smallest chance of crushing her shows the temper 3f the country. One knight, for instance, had it on good luthority that Alice had lured the King to unlawful love by the wicked enchantments of a Dominican friar who professed to be a physician but was really a magician. This friar, it was said, had made pictures of the king and Alice, by the skilful employment of which Alice could obtain whatever she wanted, and he had also made " rings of memory and forget- fulness." Here was something on which the " Good " Parlia- ment could act. Its worthy leader commissioned his brother, Sir John Delamare, and Sir John Brentwood, to assume dis- guises and to proceed to Pallens-wick, and, if possible, secure the sorcerer. The crafty knights set off on their mission, and on arriving at Alice's house inquired if there was any one there who could cure diseases. The friar fell innocently into the trap, was seized by the knights and haled before Parliament. A whole day was spent in cross-examining the Dominican, but without effect, and at last the disappointed Commons yielded to the merciful suggestion of the Arch- bishop of Canterbury, that justice would be satisfied if the man were handed over to the care of his Order.
Others of the knights unearthed a scandal touching Alice and a certain William de Windsor. They found out " by diligent search " that she was " greatly in love " with Windsor, and the astute idea was conceived of working on the jealousy of the King. It is more than likely, almost certain in fact, that there was some sort of foundation for this new charge which the sagacity of Alice's enemies enabled them to bring against her. William de Windsor was a needy knight of ancient family who for many years had served his king and
16 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
country with more or less distinction. He had been warden of the western marches, had fought against the French at Poitou, and was retained by Lionel, Duke of Clarence, at two shillings a day, to assist him in the government of Ireland. When that prince threw up his task and declared he would never go to the country again of his own free will, Windsor remained as lieutenant. From time to time he visited London, and on one of these occasions he would appear to have established some sort of intimacy with Alice Perrers. There is presumptive evidence that the advances came from the side of the lady, who, having no agency in Ireland, and yet believing that money might be exacted there as elsewhere if the right means were employed, conjectured that the posi- tion and poverty of Windsor would combine to make him the right instrument for her purposes. Her suggestions were well received, and for some years the history of his proceedings in Ireland is merely a record of his extortions and the com- plaints aroused thereby. While the King was yet vigorous he interfered with the game as much as was possible ; he sent to Windsor to forbid him to levy the sums for which he had extorted grants from the commonalty of Dublin ; he publicly rebuked him for his exactions and exercised his authority to prevent him from proceeding against the towns which resisted his demands ; and more than once he sanctioned the appointment of a public inquisition on his rapacious habits. Nevertheless, when Alice Perrers had once grasped the reins of power she caused Windsor to be appointed Governor of Ireland, despite his tremendous unpopularity, and her hand is to be seen in the contract under which, in consideration of .£11,218 6s. 8d., he undertook to find two hundred men and forty archers for a year. Perhaps it is not unfair to trace the same guiding spirit in the refusal of Windsor to pay the men's wages ; that she, at any rate, was in some way concerned in the bargain seems clear from the fact that she herself openly drew sums of money from the exchequer on account of payments due to Windsor over this transaction.
How much more the knights of the Good Parliament found out about the relations existing between Alice Perrers and
ALICE PERRERS. 17
he Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland is not known, but some of hem went and informed the King that they had proved her o be another man's wife, which was certainly untrue, and that le therefore had been living in adultery. The King denied .11 knowledge of his sins, and equally disclaimed having >een a party to the unlawful acquisition of gain by his mis- ress, but he was forced to consent to her removal from his presence and to swear on the cross of the Archbishop of Canterbury that he would never see her again. Well has it )een said " that it was barbarous to dictate in this unfeeling nanner to a monarch who had once been the arbiter of iurope and to tear from the aged prince, now in his sixty- ifth year, a companion and confidant whom habit had •endered necessary to him ; . . . a generous mind would have bund some expedient less harsh than of forbidding to the /enerable king her society and conversation." But the /irtuous knights were in no mood for generosity ; they exacted the like solemn oath from Alice, and the Archbishop ind the other bishops present in Parliament all swore to ex- ;ommunicate her if she should break her word. Nor had the worthy Commons yet done with her. They made a formal :omplaint that women had pursued business and quarrels in :he King's courts by way of maintenance and for pay, and :hey constrained the King to pass an ordinance forbidding .vomen to do so henceforth, and " in especial Alice Perrers, on Dain of so much as the said Alice may forfeit and of being aanished the realm." Alice had no choice but to retire in disgrace into private life, while her persecutors continued to larry the King and stretch his pliancy to the utmost, but her star, though eclipsed for the moment, was not yet on the ,vane. Fate willed it that the Black Prince, who was believed :o be one of the chief instigators of the proceedings against ler, and of the eloquence displayed by Sir Peter Delamare on :he grievances of the nation in general, should die while the jood Parliament was still putting things to rights. The Dractical effect of this unhappy event was to undo the Parlia- ment's chief labours, for when its string of petitions to the King was exhausted, and the last concession to its wishes had jeen made by the enfeebled invalid, the Parliament was
3
i8 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
necessarily dissolved. It then became apparent that there was no authority able or willing to enforce the excellent measures that had been so lately passed. The persons who had been driven to bow their necks before the storm ventured to raise their heads, looked round them, and seeing all was calm, emerged into the open. John of Gaunt resumed the administration of affairs. Lord Latimer, and others who had been condemned, reappeared at Court, and Alice Perrers, making light of perjury, returned to the King. There was no one to say her nay ; there might and did arise great murmur- ings of the people at this ineffectiveness of the popular Parlia- ment, but even the Archbishop and his suffragans " were made like dumb dogs not able to bark," and were restrained by fear from excommunicating her. The King welcomed back his companion ; he had got on ill without her, and though it may not be necessary to believe with one chronicler that the disease he suffered from was inordinate lust of the flesh, yet it is certain that in her absence both his health and spirits were at their lowest ebb. Alice was able so successfully to foster the spark of life that yet remained in the weak old man that he was able to rise from his bed and, leaving his retirement, to eat in public at Westminster his Christmas dinner with his grandson and successor.
It now only remained for Alice Perrers and her friends to make an example of some one of those who had despitefully used them. Obviously the efficient cause of their troubles was the talkative Sir Peter Delamare, and inasmuch as his long tongue, when let loose at Westminster, had not stopped short of expostulation at the failings of the Duke of Lan- caster, he, too, was of their mind in wishing for a handsome revenge. Without any formalities of trial or justice the ex- cellent harbinger of free speech in England was sent off to gaol in Newark, or Nottingham — perhaps to both in turn — there to remain without prospect of release till fortune or the course of nature should again place his friends in power. Alice Perrers was in favour of taking him into a wood and cutting off his head without ado, and as there was none of those in power who had any objection, this summary clapper would no doubt have been put in Sir Peter's eloquence had
ALICE PERRERS.
19
lot Sir Henry Percy intervened and begged off the first Speaker's life from John of Gaunt. Alice Perrers yielded the point ; for all she knew to the contrary the abode of dead demagogues was a pleasanter place than Newark gaol, and the imprisonment would last as long as she remained where she did. Matters more practical claimed her attention. Richard Lyons, one of the chief instruments of her rapacity, had been really imprisoned as a result of his condemnation by the Good Parliament, and some of his goods and lands which had been forfeited were now in the possession of two of the King's sons. The man wanted not only his freedom but his property, and Alice, to whose credit it must be stated that she always stood by her useful friends, applied herself to the satisfaction of his wishes. His release was an easy matter, but in view of the opposition to be encountered and the necessity of keeping on as good terms as possible with the princes, the restitution of property presented some difficulties. They were overcome, however, by Alice, who persuaded the King to send a special messenger to his sons with instructions to restore at once under pain of his displeasure what they had so lately gained. If she had any reward herself beyond the pleasing consciousness of seeing justice done it may possibly be traced in connection with the remission to Lyons of an alleged debt of £300 which he owed to the Treasury, and the gift to him of 1,000 marks. Another of her friends who re- quired her good offices was Sir William de Windsor. He had come to London while Parliament was sitting — perhaps on the news that the representatives of the people with cha- racteristic impetuosity had already caused to be purchased by the hands of John Buck a coffer to contain the rolls and memoranda of accusations against him. He had been re- ceived by the King, and for quarrelling in the King's presence in the house of the Brethren of St. Mary of Mount Carmel, had been imprisoned, only to be released at once and sent back to his duties in Ireland. His enemies at Court were many, and included John of Gaunt, who had once before caused Sir Nicholas Dagworth, a noted enemy of Windsor, to be sent to Ireland to investigate his conduct, and who was now very unwilling that the Lord-Lieutenant should continue
20 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
in office. He did not oppose his return, but immediately sent Dagworth after him with the same mission as before. Alice Perrers was exasperated at his interference in a matter which seemed to concern herself only, and on her own responsibility had a warrant prepared for Dagworth's immediate recall. The King, of course, signed it, despite the order of the Council authorizing Dagworth's errand, and the messenger came back. It was now the turn of John of Gaunt, who liked being thwarted no better than Alice, to assert his power as Regent before his friends on the Council, and he accordingly sought a private interview with the King at Havering. After much argument he obtained a promise that Dagworth and Windsor should both be summoned to the royal presence with the object of proving Dagworth's impar- tiality. As he left the King's room he found Alice at the door, and in reply to her entreaties that Dagworth should not go back sternly replied that the King's will must be done. But although Alice might ask a favour of Lancaster as a matter of compliment she relied on more effectual means for securing the accomplishment of her will. The hours of the night belonged to her, and how to turn them to her advantage was her secret. When Lancaster came in the morning to bid good-bye to his father as he lay in bed, the King swore that, ordinance of Council or not, Dagworth should not go to Ireland, and, after all, the son retired worsted by the lady.
Meanwhile Alice Perrers had not forgotten that she owed something to herself, and must take steps to clear her own character. Inasmuch as it was in Parliament that indignity had been put upon her, she determined that it was the duty of Parliament to see her righted, and she lost no time in doing her utmost to provide an opportunity. In some six months' time the stingy grants made by the Good Parliament were exhausted, and it became necessary to obtain further supplies. No such mistake as had been made before in the selection of knights of the shire was allowed on this occasion, and when the faithful Commons assembled at Westminster in January, 1377, there were present scarcely more than a dozen of those who had shown such prowess the year before. The others were to a man supporters of the Government, as
ALICE PERRERS. 21
were also the Lords, with whom they met in conference. Proceedings were opened by the Chancellor, the Bishop of St. David's — who, being an ecclesiastic, was ineligible for his office — with a sermon from the text, " Ye suffer fools gladly, seeing that ye yourselves are wise," the application of which was, as he went on to explain, that he was a fool and the Members of Parliament were wise. Naturally the Commons were flattered, and they were further cheered by the Bishop's assurance that the King was almost restored to health. They proceeded gaily with business, voted supplies, invented a new tax, refused to listen to prayers on behalf of the languishing Sir Peter Delamare, and, after showing their independence by presenting a few popular petitions to the King, dispersed to their homes. Alice had had a Bill prepared which set forth that she had been shut out of common liberty par meinz vrai suggestion et sans due proces, and demanded that the judg- ment against her should be annulled. For some reason — probably because it was thought well to dissolve Parliament as soon as possible after the voting of supplies — the Bill was never presented. The general pardon granted in honour of the King's Jubilee to all persons except the unfortunate Wykeham, who was reserved as a sacrifice to Alice's greed, included Alice herself, and made her legally free, but the ordinance of the Good Parliament remained on record against her.
The King's restoration to health was, of course, a figment of faith on the part of the Bishop of St. David's. In January, before the meeting of Parliament, he had been removed from Havering to Sheen, and there he now lay very ill and greatly suffering. Sometimes he found energy, or the task was performed for him, to order costly raiment to be sent to him in his chamber to be presented to Alice Perrers. But Alice was, as always, bent on also acquiring less perish- able property than clothing, and knew that in all human probability but little time was left her for increasing her store. For once she was unselfish enough to think of others than herself, and did not forget to obtain handsome settle- ments for her daughters Joan. There is no good reason to doubt that these two girls of one name were the children of
22 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
Edward as well as of Alice, but there is some doubt as to the parentage of Isabella, a third illegitimate daughter ascribed to Edward. There is nothing to connect Isabella with Alice Perrers, who in her will only mentions the two Joans, but Isabella had left the country, having married a Spanish nobleman who proudly quartered the English leopards, and may have predeceased her mother. Alice Perrers, having fulfilled her maternal obligations, was at liberty to make further provision for herself. She prudently refrained from interference in the troubles of John of Gaunt, who, while she remained at Sheen, was suffering hard things from the Londoners, and steadfastly ministered to the King and to her own requirements. She forgot nothing, and one of the last of Edward's grants to her was, like the first of which we have record, two tuns of Gascon wine a year for life. If others thought to benefit themselves by wresting a gift from the feeble invalid before he died disappointment followed the attempt ; for throughout the day Alice sat immovable at the head of the King's bed, as throughout the night she lay in it, and there was no suitor for the royal bounty so foolish as not to recognize the futility of asking for the humblest thing in the presence of the dreadful nurse. If the historians of the time may be trusted to have faithfully recorded even conversation, the nurse continually persuaded her patient that recovery was sure, and encouraged him to talk of hunting and hawking, and of any other trifle rather than of what pertained to his salvation. She herself was under no delusion. When she struck her bargain with Wykeham and obtained for him the restitution of his temporalities, she must have reckoned that the great offence thus given to John of Gaunt would cost her little, since both she and he would very soon have it out of their power to damage either one another or any one else ; and her reasoning, although falsified by the turn of events, was justifiable. The end was indeed near at hand. It was only three days later when Alice, recognizing that it was at last useless to hope for even one more gift from Edward III., prepared to part with him. She drew the rings from the fingers of the helpless, dying man and stole unob- trusively away.
ALICE PERRERS.
23
To slink into the retirement of private life, thus acknow- ledging that her day was gone by, was clearly the wisest and safest policy that Alice Ferrers could now pursue. She had taken at the flood the tide which led to fortune, and so long as the tide at its turn left her high and dry in peaceful possession of her ill-won gains she could count herself happy For practical purposes the potentiality of evil-doing in the familiar way was removed from her, and although the party which the King's death placed in power was very far from friendly to her, it might well be the wiser course for them to let bygones be bygones rather than to revive past grievances. But if Alice built up for herself any such hopes of oblivion she neglected to take into account the jealous and revengeful hostility which during all the years of her self-aggrandizement had been gathering force among both high and low. There were against her not only the actual victims of her robbery and oppression, but the larger multi- tude of disappointed persons who fancied that had it not been for her they might have enriched themselves, including also the officers and dependents of the Court, who had care- fully marked and written up against her every one of her depredations. The storm broke on her peaceful retirement at Pallens-wick with surprising quickness. Almost immediately after the accession of Richard II. a Commission, which was evidently aimed against her, was appointed to take an inventory of the Crown jewels and to administer an oath to such persons as were suspected of having them in their possession. Though the report of this Commission has not come down, it is hardly possible that Alice Perrers can have escaped conviction, and this result no doubt led to the next step against her, which took the form of a writ addressed to the Sheriffs of London (November 20, 1377), inviting "all persons having any suit or claim to make against Alice for any extortions, oppressions, injuries, grievances, or excesses by her committed against the King and his people to prefer their petitions to Parliament before the ensuing Saturday, when, by the permission of God, "justice should be done them." As soon as Parliament met she was summoned before the Lords to answer certain charges. There would
24 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
appear to have been some difficulty as to the choice of the charge by which her case could be most effectually dealt with, and it was finally determined to utilize the ordinance passed against her by the Good Parliament. The ordinance was therefore recited to her by Sir Richard le Scrope, the seneschal of the King's household, who went on to say that it seemed to the Lords that she had brought herself within the terms of the decree in various ways, and especially in pro- curing the pardon of Lyons and preventing Dagworth's mission to Ireland. Alice replied that she was not guilty, as she was ready to prove by the testimony of John de Ypres, the Seneschal of Edward III., William Street, the Comptroller, Alan Buxhull, Nicholas Carew, the Keeper of the Privy Seals, and others about the King. She was instructed to return on the following Wednesday, and a committee, consisting of the Duke of Lancaster, one of his brothers, and three other earls, was nominated to hear the witnesses. On the day appointed Alice did not appear ; she had failed to find any member of the royal household who would give evidence in her favour, and nearly every one of those she had promised to call appeared against her. The principal witness was the chief of her judges, the Duke of Lancaster, who gave a long account of Alice's interference in the Dagworth matter, and whose evidence was supported by Roger Beauchamp, ex-Chamberlain, and Sir Peter de la Vache. Other witnesses swore to Alice having been sitting by the King's bed when Lyons was summoned to the royal presence, and to all the directions for his pardon and the restoration of his property having been given by her. John Beverley said that he had never heard either matter mentioned by the King or by Alice, for she always took care to say nothing in his presence, but he believed in his conscience that she was the prime mover, and he thought her guilty. The trial was not, in fact, a very fair one, but it served. The judges, having found her guilty, decreed that the ordinance against her should have the force of statute, and that she should be banished, and all her possessions forfeited to the King, as well as all lands of which she took the profits or made bargain to her own profit by reason of the fraud and
ALICE PERRERS. 25
leceit that was to be presumed. It was further resolved that he ordinance was made for restraining and punishing Alice 5errers only, and was not to extend to others nor be taken is an example, her case being especially odious. The Commons, under the guidance of Alice's old enemy, Sir ?eter Delamare, who had been released from gaol to lead heir deliberations, actively supported the Lords. They Detitioned the King, demanding that judgment might be executed upon Alice according to her deserts and without "avour or affection, and that, in consideration of the great damage she had done the kingdom, her forfeited estates might be applied to the relief of the people whom she had in so many ways injured.
The petition granted, the distribution of Alice's large possessions proceeded apace. It is to be feared the poor were somewhat overlooked, but John of Gaunt condescended to take for himself the new hostel lately made by her on the banks of the Thames (by Cannon Street), and all the new houses which she built in the Ropery between the alleys called Weston Lane and Wolfy Lane, in the City of London ; and two of the best of her manors fell to the lot of his son- in-law, Sir John de Holand. Special officers were appointed to trace and seize the multifarious objects which Alice had collected, and long lists of her goods were issued to the sheriffs, with orders to deliver the articles named to the keeper of the Wardrobe, or other official whose duty it might be to account for them. Some of these lists are still extant, and although not furnishing interesting reading matter, are very curious as illustrating the watchful care taken in record- ing and cataloguing every theft, small and great, committed by the prosperous Alice Perrers. One haul alone, comprising part of her jewellery, included 21,868 pearls, besides 30 ounces of small ones, and another took in such trifles as a pair of gloves and an odd yard of ribbon.
The lady herself, while the sack of her property went on, withdrew from observation, if not into exile, and took with tier, it is said, £20,000. She was not yet at the end of her resources, and was determined not to let her possessions, gathered through so many years, pass from her for ever
26 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
without an effort to recover them. She laid her plans, and began by marrying Sir William de Windsor, a step at once necessary and artful. Being under sentence of banishment, she could not herself petition Parliament, but her husband could, and when Parliament met at Gloucester the following year Windsor, who was himself a member of it, applied for a reversal of judgment against Alice, on the ground of certain errors in the record. These alleged errors were that she had had to answer on insufficient notice, that the case ought to have been tried in the King's Bench, that she was not present when the issue was tried, and, above all, that she was put to answer as a single woman, whereas she was and, had been for a long time, the wife of William de Windsor. This last statement was, of course, untrue and, if true, could have been pleaded at the time ; but it was craftily and safely made, for the first Parliament which impeached her had decided for its own ends that she was then, two years ago, already married to Windsor. On the other hand, she herself was charged with continuing within the realm after having been banished, and the two trials dragged on until finally, more than a year later (December, 1379) the sentence of banish- ment was revoked, and she was pardoned for her contempt of court. It still remained to Alice to recover her landed property, and here fortune seemed to favour her. Windsor's services were required for the expedition made into France early in the following year, and men also were wanted. Windsor had neither goods nor money, but at the instigation and expense of his new-made wife he undertook to find a hundred men-at-arms for half a year, in consideration of a grant to him of her forfeited estates. The terms were accepted, to the immense joy of Alice, but the terms of the grant, though she knew it not, were very carefully drawn so as to exclude her from any claim to the ownership after her husband's death. The grant was, in fact, expressly made to Windsor and his heirs in such a manner as to disinherit Alice and her heirs, and there can be but little doubt of Windsor being a party to the trick thus played upon his covetous wife. He had, however, apparently fulfilled the duties he had been married to perform, and went off to France, where he stayed
ALICE PERRERS. 27
is Governor of Cherbourg. His bride, who had no further leed of his services, gleefully set about the recovery of her lost possessions, but met with small success. The new Dwners of her estates were disinclined to part with them, and she could, of course, hope for no support from the tenants, who abhorred her name. Moreover, the times had grown troublous, rebellion was afoot through the land, and it was easier to proclaim legal rights than to enforce them. Even the Abbot of St. Albans, who had formerly yielded possession of his manor of Oxhey to the powerful mistress of the King, and who on her conviction had re-entered, was now indis- posed to recognize her title. With something of her old imperious arrogance at resistance, Alice collected a strong body of men, who frightened the monks off the land, wasted their growing crops and destroyed their mill ; but even the Abbot recognized the changed circumstances, and commenced an action at law. The defence of the action was not left to Alice, for it was scarcely begun when William de Windsor died. In his will, which was nuncupative, no mention was made of his wife, his possessions being left in trust for the payment of his debts, and then to his heirs-at-law, who were his three sisters. Alice, who believed that all her former property devolved on her in virtue of the grant of it to Windsor, prepared to resume possession in her own right, but wherever she turned she found herself forestalled by John de Windsor, the nephew and executor of William. William had died heavily in debt, and his creditors took advantage of his widow's steadfast belief in her rights to obtain from her recognizances for the accounts owing to them, while John, who was really responsible, took the cheaper course of obtain- ing a pardon for all his uncle's debts. Thus Sir John de Holand, who already held two of Alice's fairest estates, and who stepped into the governorship of Cherbourg on Windsor's death, obtained her bond for £6,000 and enforced it. Others did likewise, and never was woman more harassed than was Alice Perrers in her futile endeavours to regain possession of the properties she had spent her best years in acquiring, and which ever now eluded her grasp. Yet, growing old as she was, she never abated her activity, and at least succeeded in
28 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
afflicting considerable annoyance on the usurpers of her rights. In 1389 she took proceedings against Wykeham to recover a quantity of jewels of great value, which she asserted she had pawned with him after her indictment. Fortunately for the good bishop, he himself was one of the judges who tried the case, and accepted his affirmation that he had never seen or heard of any such jewels, so once again Alice met with discomfiture. But her arch-enemy was John de Windsor, whose every step she dogged with unwearied energy, but to little or no purpose. She gained a momentary triumph when, in 1393, she procured his committal to Newgate on a charge of detaining her goods to the value of £3,000 and her daughter's goods to £4,000, but he was immediately admitted to bail. She had by this time found out the terms of the grant to Windsor, and petitioned the King to restore her lands and tenements on the ground that such was the in- tention of the grant, but that by the fraudulent device of some who were no friends of hers the property had been settled on the heirs of Windsor, the proof of her contention being found in the fact that it was she who sustained all the charges of Windsor's hundred men-at-arms. This petition, like so many others which the pertinacious and exasperated woman constantly made to the King and to Parliament, was referred and remained unheeded. Her last recorded appearance was at Shrewsbury, whither, though close on, or perhaps past, seventy years of age, she followed the Parliament to tell once more her story and to pray relief. The session lasted only three days, but the importunate widow made herself heard, and actually had a promise of redress. But the redress never came. The Parliament made the King omnipotent for a time, but his own troubles exacted all his attention, and very soon the weary Alice Perrers saw another young king on the throne. The struggle of her de- clining years was therefore to begin anew, and with less hope than ever of success. She lost heart at the cheerless prospect, and in the summer of 1400 became seriously ill while living at Upminster, where she was allowed to occupy an estate which she called her own. In August she recog- nized that she could no longer hope for what she considered
ALICE PERRERS. 29
ustice on earth, and made her last will. For the disposi- ions of this document, which is still extant, she nerved lerself to a generosity which in her was almost reckless, ^fter directing that her body should be buried in Upminster Church, she bequeathed to that church one of her best oxen "or a mortuary and ten marks for ornaments ; forty shillings :or wax to burn about her body, forty shillings for repairing the highways near the town, ten marks to be distributed among the poor of the parish on the day of her burial, to the chaplain six marks, and to John Pelham, the sacrist, three shillings and fourpence. Legacies to a number of servants followed, and then came the disposition of the manors, which the obstinate testatrix claimed in death as in life. To the younger Joan she specially left her manor of Gaynes in Upminster, and proceeded in Latin words to this effect : " To Joan and Joan my daughters all my other manors and advowsons which John Windsor or others have by his consent usurped, the which I desire my heirs and executors to recover and see them parted between my daughters, for that I say on the pain of my soul he had no right there nor never had ; but if Joan the elder claims the manor of Compton Murdak, she is to have none of the rents and reversions in London, because I wish that manor to be sold for my soul." The executors of the will were Joan the younger and the favourite daughter, who was married to Sir Richard North- land, and John Kent, merchant. The elder Joan was the wife of Robert Skerne, and a monument in Kingston Church commemorated the virtues of the pair.
Little enough time was left to Alice Perrers for further consideration as to the means of securing salvation for her guilty soul, for five days later she died. Her daughters did not inherit her taste for pursuing a shadow, and appear to have resigned the intangible benefits conferred on them by their dying mother. Even the younger Joan, as well as her co-executor, declined administration of the will, and left the pleasing task to a priest, whose troubles, if he attempted to execute the trust, are unrecorded. The retribution which overtook Alice Perrers in the later years of her life suggests an agreeable theme for the moralist ; but morals are best left
30 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
to be drawn by readers, according to individual taste. It is possible that there are even now persons depraved enough to think that it were worth a man's or woman's while to suffer in old age if only he or she, while in the prime of life, could wield the sway and garner the wealth that Alice Perrers did, and of what profit are morals to such ? Yet it is likely that if the woman's whole career could be uncovered further than can now be done with the scanty and scattered materials which remain, there is no one, however depraved, who would not shrink from envy.
Arthur Vincent.
ALICE ARDEN.
THE MUKDEK OF ARDEN OF FEVERSHAM.
ALICE ARDEN.
(EX. 1551.)
" We can Measure the height of any star, point out All the dimensions of the earth, examine The sea's large womb, and sound its subtle depth ; But art will ne'er be able to find out A demonstration of a woman's heart."
James Shirley.
rHE chronicler Ralph Holinshed, narrating the historical events of Edward VI. 's reign, turns aside to tell the :ory of the murder of Thomas Arden, of Feversham (or aversham). " It may seem," he apologizes, " to bee but a rivate matter, and therefore as it were impertinent to thys lystorie " ; but on account of its " horriblenesse " he deter- lined to " sette it foorth somewhat at large." He employed 11 diligence in gathering information from authentic sources ; nd modern research has added little to his graphic narrative, 'he crime was made the subject of a powerful anonymous rama (which may have undergone revision at Shakespeare's and) published in I592,1 and also supplied material for a ismal ballad. Thomas Arden (or Ardern) is traditionally stated to have
1 The Lamentable and Trve Tragedie of M. Arden of Feversham in Kent, Hio was most wickedlye murdered, by the meanes of his disloyall and anion wyfe, who for the loue she bare to one Mosbie, hyrcd two desperat iffins Blackwill and Shakbag, to kill him. Wherin is shewed the great alike and discimulation of a wicked woman, the vnsatiable desire of \thie lust and the shamefull end of all murderers. Imprinted at London r Edward White, dwelling at the lyttle North dore of Paules Church at e signe of the Gun. 1592. 4to. Other editions were published in 1599 id 1633.
4 33
34 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
been born near Wye in Kent.1 He became chief comptroller of his Majesty's Customs at Faversham, was a jurat in 1544 and in 1548 served as mayor of the town. His wife Alice was a step-daughter of Sir Edward North, father of the trans- lator of Plutarch. Arden is described by Holinshed as a tall, comely man ; and Alice Arden was a tall, well-favoured young gentlewoman. As malignant fate would have it, Alice became enamoured of a certain low-bred fellow, one Richard Mosby, a tailor by trade, and a servant in the North family. An ill-featured, odious rascal, of a swarthy complexion, was this Mosby ; the last man in the world likely to find favour in the eyes of a young, handsome, high-born woman. One account2 says that Alice had been familiar with Mosby before her marriage, and that her friends married her to Arden with a view to putting a stop to the intimacy. Holinshed does not hint at any prenuptial irregularities. He states, however, that Arden was well aware of the guilty relations that existed between Mosby and Alice after her marriage, and that he was " contented to winke at her filthie disorder " because he was loth to offend her and lose the benefits that he hoped to derive from her kinsmen's powerful influence. The dramatist represents Arden's conduct in a less odious light. At one moment suspecting his wife to be disloyal, at another convinced of her innocence — now harassed by fears, then elate with confidence — Arden, in the dramatist's conception of him, was weak-minded but not wholly con- temptible ; uxorious, a poltroon (though it would have needed a strong hand indeed to curb Alice Arden's imperious temper) but never a wittol.
Her infatuation for Mosby drove Alice Arden to plan the murder of her husband. In Faversham lived a painter named Clark, who was reputed to be skilled in the mixing of poisons, and to him Alice repaired. The painter, who was in
1 The statement occurs among some MS. notes found many years ago in a lumber-room at the Dolphin Inn, Faversham. The writer, a Mr. Burton, says that he gathered his information " from the auncientest people." We are told in these notes that Arden was fifty-six years old when he came to Faversham (his wife being twenty-eight) ; but he was probably younger.
2 The MS. notes of Mr. Burton.
ALICE ARDEN.
35
re with Mosby's sister Susan, promised — on condition that Dsby should further his suit — to make away Arden by ison. At that time the art of poisoning had been carried a high pitch of refinement. The painter suggested that he Duld paint a portrait of Alice and temper poison with the , so that her husband might perish by the fumes when he zed upon the picture. But the Italianate subtlety of this ggestion did not commend itself to Alice and her paramour, ley urged that some simpler method would be preferable ; cordingly Clark prepared some noxious powder, and ;tructed Alice to put it in a porringer and pour milk upon She forgot the instructions and, instead of pouring the ilk on to the powder, put the milk in first and the powder :erwards. Arden, having occasion to ride to Canterbury, se early and called for his breakfast (which usually con- :ted of butter and milk), whereupon Alice set before him e poisoned porringer. After taking a spoonful or two he und the taste unpleasant, and he also complained of the lour of the milk, saying, " Mistress Alice, what milk have >u given me here ? " Alice, equal to the critical occasion, ized the bowl and upset the contents, pettishly exclaiming, '. ween nothing can please you." Without further question rden rode off to Canterbury, and on the journey " fell into :treme purging upwards and downwards." A certain Green, of Faversham, servant to Sir Anthony ger, was now consulted by Alice. This man cherished a ievance against Arden, conceiving that Arden had unjustly -ested from him a piece of ground at the back of the Abbey Faversham. Fierce words had passed between them, and ey had even come to blows. With many oaths Green had wed to take vengeance on Arden ; and Alice applied her- If to fan the flame, offering Green ten pounds wherewith to re assassins, and promising to repossess him of the Abbey ounds when the murder had been accomplished. Green, ving occasion to go to London, asked his neighbour Brad- aw, a goldsmith, who had no knowledge of the conspiracy -ected against Arden, to accompany him as far as Graves- d. At Rainham Down they saw three or four serving-men ming from the direction of Leeds, and at the same moment
36 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
Bradshaw espied two desperate ruffians, one known as Black Will and the other as Shakebag, advancing up the hill from Rochester. Bradshaw congratulated his companion on the presence of the serving-men ; for he was well acquainted with the infamous character of Black Will (who was armed with a sword and buckler), having served as a soldier with him some years previously at Boulogne under Sir Richard Cavendish. Many robberies and many heinous murders had been committed in those early days by Black Will, and he was still ready for cut-throat work. Here was the very man for Green's purpose. The serving-men invited Black Will and Shakebag to accompany them to Gravesend, and held out the bait of a supper. Green and Bradshaw joined the company. Bradshaw was anxious to avoid conversation with Black Will, but the ruffian claimed his acquaintance and reminded him of the days when they were fellows-in-arms. Green took occasion to talk with Black Will on the journey, and promised to regale him with sack and sugar after supper. When Black Will presented himself in the evening at the hostelry where Green and Bradshaw were staying, Green drew him aside and explained the nature of the business on which he proposed to employ him, and named the reward. Needless to say that Black Will undertook the commission with alacrity. After concluding the arrangement Green wrote to Mistress Arden a letter in which occurred the words "we have gote a man to our purpose, we may thanke my brother Bradshaw." On the following morning Bradshaw started back for Faversham, and— ignorant of its compromising con- tents— duly delivered Green's letter into the hands of Mistress Arden ; and Green, accompanied by Black Will and Shake- bag, proceeded by boat with the tide to London. At this time Arden was on a visit to London, and would certainly be found in or about St. Paul's Churchyard (then the ordinary resort for business or pleasure). Green and Black Will lay in wait for him, and in due course he appeared, followed by his serving-man Michael. Black Will, with his natural ferocity, was for killing them both ; but Green explained that Michael (who was the painter's rival for the hand of Susan Mosby) had promised to be an accomplice in the murder. For some
ALICE ARDEN. 37
ie Black Will hung about St. Paul's Churchyard in the ae of finding an opportunity of stabbing Arden, but it ppened that Arden was joined by several friends, who :ompanied him to dinner at the ordinary. Meanwhile een talked with Michael, and it was agreed that Michael juld leave unbolted the doors of the house where his tster was staying, so that Black Will might murder Arden the night. At night, when his master had retired, Michael, he lay abed expecting the advent of Black Will, became nerved. From the moment he had set eyes on the sperado he "ever after" (says Holinshed) "stood in doubt Black Will least he should kill him." Green's promise protection had reassured him in the day-time, but now, in 3 watches of the night, fear assailed x him, and, creeping
: The dramatist, in the following agonized soliloquy, has powerfully
picted Michael's overwhelming terror : —
"Conflicting thoughts incamped in my breast Awake me with the echo of their strokes, And I, a judge to censure either side, Can give to neither wished victory. My master's kindness pleads to me for life With just demand, and I must grant it him : My mistress she hath forced me with an oath For Susan's sake, the which I may not break, For that is nearer than a master's love : That grim-faced fellow, pitiless Black Will, And Shakebag stern in bloody stratagem, Two rougher ruffians never lived in Kent, Have sworn my death if I infringe my vow, A dreadful thing to be considered of. Methinks I see them with their bolstered hair Staring and grinning in thy gentle face, And in their ruthless hands their daggers drawn, Insulting o'er thee with a peck of oaths, Whilst thou submissive, pleading for relief, Art mangled by their ireful instruments. Methinks I hear them ask where Michael is, And pitiless Black Will cries, ' Stab the slave ! The peasant will detect the tragedy ! ' The wrinkles in his foul death-threat'ning face Gape open wide, like graves to swallow men. My death to him is but a merriment And he will murder me to make him sport. He comes, 'he comes ! oh, Master Franklin, help ! Call up the neighbours or we are but dead ! "
ranklin was a friend staying in the house with Arden.)
38 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
from his bed, he bolted the doors. Black Will, foiled of his purpose, sought Green the next morning and swore that he would make it his first business to kill Michael for having played him false. Green went to Michael and inquired how came the doors to be locked, whereupon Michael declared that his master, clean contrary to his wont, had risen in the night to shut the doors, and had soundly rated him in the morning for leaving them open. The explanation pacified Black Will.
It was now agreed that Black Will should lie in wait on Rainham Down for Arden, who would drop down with the tide to Gravesend, and then ride to Faversham. At Rochester the timorous Michael, still dreading that he would be killed along with his master, " pricked his horse of purpose and made him to halt." Arden rode on, and Michael was to follow when the blacksmith had removed the horseshoe and searched the foot. As he approached the spot where Black Will was concealed, it chanced that Arden was overtaken by several gentlemen of his acquaintance, and so once more Black Will was baffled.*
1 In the play Arden is accompanied by his friend Franklin. As they approach the place of ambush, Franklin — who is narrating a story of an inconstant wife — suddenly finds himself unable to continue : —
" Pardon me, Master Arden, I can no more : This fighting at my heart makes short my wind."
On the previous night Arden had been troubled with an ominous dream : —
" This night I dreamed that, being in a park, A toil was pitched to overthrow the deer, And I upon a little rising hill Stood whistly watching for the herd's approach. Even there, methought, a gentle slumber took me, And summoned all my parts to sweet repose ; But in the pleasure of this golden rest An ill-thew'd foster [forester] had removed the toil And rounded me with that beguiling home Which late, methought, was pitch'd to cast the deer. With that he blew an evil-sounding horn, And at the noise another herdman came With falchion drawn and bent it at my breast, Crying aloud, ' Thou art the game we seek ! '
ALICE ARDEN. 39
After his return home Arden sent Michael with a letter to r Thomas Cheiney (Master of the Cinque Ports) in the Isle
Sheppey. The letter that Sir Thomas wrote in reply was sen by Alice from Michael, who at his mistress's direction Id Arden that he had lost Sir Thomas's letter, and did t know its import, adding that he thought it best for 5 master to go the next morning to Sheppey. Meanwhile ■een had contrived to harbour Black Will and Shakebag in
storehouse belonging to Sir Anthony Ager at Preston, lere Alice visited them and supplied them with food and ink. Early the following morning Arden and Michael irted for Sheppey, and Black Will made for a certain jroom-close " which Arden must needs pass on his way :tween Faversham and the Ferry. As they drew near the ipointed spot Michael pretended that he had dropped his irse, and was sent back by his master to find it. Arden issed in safety, for Black Will had lost his way.1 In the )pe of securing their victim on the homeward journey, the ffians again lay in wait at nightfall, but again failed to :hieve their object.
St. Valentine's Fair being now at hand, the impatient Alice
With this I waked and trembled every joint :
Like one obscured in a little bush,
That sees a lion foraging about,
And when the dreadful forest king is gone
He pries about with timorous suspect
Throughout the thorny casements of the brake,
And will not think his person dangerless,
But quakes and shivers though the cause be gone.
So trust me, Franklin, when I did awake
I stood in doubt whether I waked or no,
Such great impression took this fond surprise.
God grant this vision bedeem me any good."
1 According to the dramatist it was a very misty morning. Black rill and Shakebag are shown floundering about in the ditches. " Oh, rill, where art thou?" says Shakebag. "Here, Shakebag," replies lack Will, " almost in hell's mouth, where I cannot see my way for loke." Presently Shakebag falls into a ditch and calls to Black Will ■" Help, Will, help ! I am almost drowned." The ferryman then imes up and inquires, " Who's that that calls for help ? " to which lack Will replies, " 'Twas none here, 'twas thou thyself." From the rryman they learn that Arden has ciossed to Sheppey.
40 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
and her paramour were determined to dispatch the business at that time. Mosby, who had occasional visitings of conscience, declared that he would not see a gentleman treacherously murdered ; that he would pick a quarrel with Arden during the fair and kill him in hand-to-hand fight. But Mosby 's project failed, for Arden, though frequently pro- voked, always refused to cross swords with a tailor.1 On the day of the fair Green was sent by Alice to fetch Black Will to a tenement (belonging to Arden and close to his house), rented by Mosby's sister. Thither repaired Alice, accompanied by Michael and one of her maids. Mosby and Shakebag were also of the company. The final arrangements for the murder were then concluded. At first Mosby declined to take part, and, leaving the house in a fury, went up the Abbey Street to the " Fleur de Lys," a hostelry (kept by one Adam Fowl), where he frequently lodged. But a messenger from Alice overtook him before he reached the " Fleur de Lys," " desiring him of all love to come backe again to help to accomplish the matter he knew of." So he turned back and rejoined the company, whereupon Alice fell on her knees before him and implored him to go through with the matter. There would be, she assured him, no danger ; for nobody cared for her husband, and any inquiries that might be made would be quickly hushed up. At length he consented. Alice Arden went home and sent out on various errands such of the servants as were not privy to the plot. Then Black Will was brought into Arden's house and concealed in a closet at the end of the parlour.2 Mosby took his stand at the door of the house clothed in a silk " nightgown," with a girdle at the
1 In the play, when Mosby on one occasion challenges Arden, the latter coolly draws the challenger's sword from its scabbard and remarks : —
" So, sirrha ; you may not wear a sword ; The statute makes against artificers ; I warrant that I do. Now use your bodkin, Your Spanish needle and your pressing iron, For this shall go with me."
= Arden's house is still standing ; and on the parlour window were formerly to be seen the arms of the Norths.
ALICE ARDEN. 41
ist. Between six and seven in the evening Arden, who d been at a neighbour's house settling some accounts, came me, and finding Mosby at the door inquired if it were yet Dper-time. " I think not," said Mosby, " it is not yet ready." 'hen let us go and play a game at the tables" (back- mmon), said Arden ; and so they went into the parlour. ; they passed through the hall where Alice was walking, •den greeted her with the words, " How nowe, Mistres ■den ? " but she took little notice of him. Meanwhile the cket door of the entry was made fast. Mosby now seated nself on a bench facing the closet where Black Will was ncealed. Michael stood at Arden's back, holding a candle shadow Black Will that his movements might not be per- ived. As they played at the tables Mosby exclaimed, " Now nay take you, sir, if I will ! " — the signal for Black Will to ue from his hiding-place. While Arden was inquiring, Take me, which way ? " Black Will stepped from the closet d, coming behind the doomed man, drew a towel round his ck with intent to strangle him. Mosby had at his girdle a essing-iron of fourteen pounds' weight ; with this he struck rden on the head, and the hapless victim fell with a groan the floor. Concluding that he was now dead, they bore m to the counting-house ; but as they were about to lay m down he groaned again, whereupon Black Will spatched him by giving him a great gash in the face. The ffian then proceeded to take the money from his purse and e rings from his fingers. Having received the promised ward of ten pounds from Alice, he procured a horse from -een and rode hastily away. When he had gone Alice me into the counting-house and stabbed her dead husband ven or eight times in the breast. Then they cleared up the .Hour, wiped away the blood-stains with a towel, and arranged the tumbled rushes, which in those days served as carpet. The bloody knife used by Alice and the towel ;re cast into a tub which stood by the well-side. Alice now sent for two guests who had been previously vited to supper — Prune and Coles, grocers from London, hen they arrived she expressed some anxiety on account of e absence of her husband. However, they sat down to
42 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
supper, Mosby's sister joined them, and they made a merry party. After supper Alice's daughter I played on the virginals and the time was beguiled with dancing. Alice continued to express her concern at her husband's absence, and proposed a game at the tables. The Londoners excused themselves on the score of the lateness of the hour, and went off to their lodgings. After their departure Alice sent away the servants, some to seek for their master, and others on various errands. Alice remained in the house with her daughter, Michael, and Mosby's sister. Then came the question of the disposal of the body. They carried it out to lay it in a field adjoining the churchyard, near the garden wall. The snow had begun to fall, and they found, when they reached the garden gate, that they had forgotten the key. After some delay the key was found, and the body was deposited about ten paces from the gate. It escaped notice that some of the rushes from the floor were sticking to the slippers. Alice and the others returned to the house through the garden. It was now late in the evening, and the servants who had been sent abroad had returned. Alice dispatched messengers right and left among the townspeople, but no tidings of the missing man could be found. As the suspense grew greater her outcries became more vehement. Several of the leading townsmen, including the mayor, now joined in the search. In former years the fair had been held partly in the town and partly in the Abbey grounds, but this year Arden — for his own private gain and to the great disgust of many of the poorer inhabitants — had caused it to be held wholly in the Abbey grounds, of which he had become the owner. The Abbey grounds were searched and at length the mayor reached the spot where the body lay. Prune, the grocer, was the first to catch sight of it, and it was not long before the tell-tale rushes were observed to be clinging to the slippers. Next were seen, leading to the garden gate, the footmarks in the snow. An examination of the foot- marks quickly showed that the body had been brought from the house through the garden to the spot where it was found.
1 Holinshed does not hint that the daughter had been an accomplice to the crime, and does not mention her age. She is not one of the characters in the play.
ALICE ARDEN. 43
len the mayor and the others entered the house and ques- ned Alice. At first she took a defiant attitude, " I would you Duld know that I am no such woman." The servants were ;n examined, and search was made in and around the house, ood-spots and a piece of hair were discovered close to the use. Presently the knife with which Alice had stabbed her sband, and the towel with which she had wiped the stains >m the floor, were drawn from the tub. In the face of this idence there was nothing for it but to confess. At the ;ht of the blood-stained towel Alice exclaimed, " Oh, the Dud of God help, for this bloud have I shed ! " 1 Alice and
: In the play Alice continues, in spite of the damning evidence of the ife and the towel, to assert her innocence : —
Franklin. Know you this handtowel and this knife ?
Susan. [Aside.] Ah, Michael, through this thy negligence Thou hast betrayed and undone us all.
Michael. [Aside.] I was so afraid I knew not what I did : I thought I had thrown them both into the well.
Alice. It is the pig's blood we had to supper. But wherefore stay you ? find out the murderers.
Mayor. I fear me you'll prove one of them yourself.
Alice. I one of them ? What mean such questions ?
Franklin. I fear me he was murdered in this house And carried to the fields, for from that place Backwards and forwards may you see The print of many feet within the snow. And look about this chamber where we are, And you shall find part of his guiltless blood ; For in his slipshoe did I find some rushes, Which argueth he was murdered in this room.
Mayor. Look in the place where he was wont to sit. See, see ! his blood ! it is too manifest.
Alice. It is a cup of wine which Michael shed.
Michael. Ay, truly.
Franklin. It is his blood which, strumpet, thou hast shed. But if I live, thou and thy complices Which have conspired and wrought his death shall rue it.
Alice. Ah, Master Franklin, God and heaven can tell I loved him more than all the world beside. But bring me to him, let me see his body."
It was formerly a popular belief that the wounds in the body of a rrdered person would begin to bleed afresh in the murderer's presence.
44 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
the servants were at once arrested, and the mayor then pro- ceeded to the " Fleur de Lys," where Mosby was found in bed. In the bedroom were discovered his blood-stained hose and blood-stained purse. Confronted with these tokens of his guilt he at once confessed and was committed to gaol.
From the Faversham Ward Mote Book it appears that Arden was murdered on the evening of Sunday, February 15, 1550-1. The sessions were shortly afterwards held at Faver- sham, and the prisoners were arraigned and condemned. Green, Black Will, the painter (who had prepared the poison), and Shakebag had escaped. Questioned at the trial as to whether there had been any other accomplices, Alice named the innocent Bradshaw, whose only part in the business had been that he delivered to her Green's letter containing the words, " We have gote a man to our purpose, we may thanke my brother Bradshaw." In spite of his protestations of innocence poor Bradshaw was condemned (" as a procurer of Black Will to kill Master Arden ") and suffered with the others. Michael was hanged in chains at Faversham ; one of the maid- servants was burnt there, bitterly upbraiding her mistress to the end ; Mosby and his sister Susan were hanged at Smithfield; and Alice was burnt at Canterbury on the 14th of March. In the Archives of the City of Canterbury is recorded — "For the charges- of brenning Mistres Arden and execution of George Bradshaw . . . xliii5." Some years afterwards Green, venturing to return to the neighbourhood of Faversham, was seized, condemned, and hanged in chains between Ospring and Boughton. Before his execution he declared that Bradshaw had been guiltless of complicity in the plot. Black Will contrived to escape from England, but it is satisfactory to be able to record that he was burned " on a scaffold " in Flushing. Adam Fowl, mine host of the " Fleur de Lys," who had carried messages between Mosby and Alice, was put to some inconvenience. He was taken to
When Alice was brought to the spot where her murdered husband lay the blood began to flow and she owned her guilt : —
" The more I sound his name the more he bleeds ; This blood condemns me, and in gushing forth Speaks as it falls and asks me why I did it. '
ALICE ARDEN. 45
ndon with his legs bound under the horse's belly, and was nmitted to the Marshalsea prison ; but his innocence was ablished. Holinshed says that the fate of Shakebag was known ; but the dramatist states that he took sanctuary d, " being sent for out," was murdered in Southwark as he s making his way to Greenwich. The only accomplice who :ceeded in making good his escape was the painter. Arden's mes were amply appeased.
One point is specially mentioned by Holinshed and the amatist. The spot where Arden's body was found belonged a strip of ground which (it was commonly reported) he had :hed from a widow named Cook, who had become the wife one Richard Read, a mariner. Whether he had become issessed of this ground rightfully or wrongfully, his action .d excited the bitterest resentment of the mariner and Mis- iss Read. They cursed him to his face, " wishing many a ngeance to light upon him, and that all the world might Mider at him." For two years or more after the murder the :rfect print of Arden's body was plainly visible, for no grass ew where any part of the body had touched the ground. ■om near and far folk came to see the marvel, and all comers stinctly discerned the hand of Providence. It is to be feared that Arden was of an avaricious temper, isregarding wholesome superstition he trafficked in church ud and fared ill. But it must be added that he bequeathed the corporation of Faversham houses and land to the value ' forty shillings or thereabouts per annum for the benefit of e poor and for an annual sermon to be preached in com- emoration of the town's benefactors. His daughter's second isband contested the legacy and had it partly annulled, uring Commonwealth times the money was lent to needy :rsons and was not repaid. Until 1836 the vicar was paid for .e annual sermon, and for some time after that date (when r the New Municipal Act payment from the borough fund iuld no longer be sanctioned) continued to deliver the sermon atuitously ; but the custom has long been obsolete. Of the •operty left to the town by Arden one piece still remains — e small plot of ground (at the back of the town hall) where ice stood the pillory, and where now stands the market pump.
46 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
The tragedy of " Arden of Feversham " was reprinted in 1 770 by a Faversham antiquary, Edward Jacob, who adduced some not very cogent reasons for assigning it to Shakespeare. There are modern editions in Tyrrell's "Doubtful Plays of Shakespeare" and Dr. Delius' " Pseudo-Shakespere'sche Dramen" (1855). Mr. A. H. Bullen edited the play in 1887, and it has been more recently included in the series of "Pseudo- Shakespearian Plays" edited by Dr. Karl Warnke and Dr. Ludwig Proescholdt. The authorship remains a mystery. If we are to look for Shakespearean touches anywhere, it must be in the fine scene of the quarrel and reconciliation between Alice and Mosby (act iii. scene 5).
Lillo's " Arden of Faversham," posthumously published in 1768, is a poor recast of the old play ; yet on one occasion it so powerfully affected the audience that the performance had to be suspended.
Abel H. Coppinger.
MARY FRITH.
Stehere the Pre/idefle o'th _pilf-i.no 'H-ade
Bnilet and. breedi^s in a tlnmrsn drejle- jKt.&naleHtmiuvriS^ a. KLc&iliaw mefie Eeres no attra&iotL. -tkatjyour fancy areetS
MARY FRITH, (? 1584-1659.)
OTHERWISE KNOWN AS MOLL CUTPURSE.
" Hence, lewd impudent ! I know not what to term thee, man or woman, For nature, shaming to acknowledge thee For either, hath produc'd thee to the world Without a sex : some say thou art a woman, Others a man, but I think rather, neither ; Or man and horse, as the old Centaurs were feign'd."
Amends for Ladies. 161 8.
MISTRESS MARY FRITH, in her habit as she lived, might possibly have experienced some difficulty n establishing her claim to admission into any company of women, good, bad, or indifferent ; for Field's lines, quoted ibove, merely echoed common report, which made her that vhich the printers of the seventeenth century so often ielighted to present to their readers as " an hermophrodite." \t her death, however, she was, in the language of one of her ;arly biographers, " found to be otherwise," and part at least )f her title to her present distinction was thus by anticipation idmitted.
The birth of Mary Frith was heralded by no eclipses, ides, whales, or great fires, a circumstance wherein her :ontemporaries, who looked upon these portents as only jroper to such occasions, had every reason to consider them- ;elves unfairly treated, and one which is certainly to be egretted by the accurate biographer, thus deprived of very tecessary assistance in fixing the date of this important event, "laims to the honour have been advanced on behalf of two rears, 1584 and 1589, supported in both cases by evidence
e 49
5o TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
which is, to say the least of it, inconclusive. Seeing, however, that Mistress Mary had in the first decade of the seventeenth century already become a personage of considerable notoriety, it seems better, with every allowance for her precocity, to make choice of the earlier date.
Her father, a shoemaker, "a fair and square-conditioned man, that loved a good fellow next to himself," practised his trade and all the virtues near the Barbican, at the upper end of Aldersgate Street, and here it was that he was blessed in the birth of his egregious daughter. The little Mary was not slow to give evidence of the fact that there dwelt in her a spirit for which the restricted sphere of feminine activity would prove all too narrow. " A very Tomrig or Rump- scuttle she was, and delighted and sported in boys' play and pastime." She minded not the pleasures of plain sewing, and to her " a sampler was as grievous as a winding-sheet." She was constant in her attendance at cudgel-fights and other scenes of disorder, and, last and most serious token of divergence from established feminine standards, she wore her clothes " as handsomely as a dog would a doublet."
Such graceless behaviour could not fail to give rise to the gravest apprehensions in the minds of her parents, who were constrained to console themselves with proverbial reflections, and the hope that " an unhappy girl might make a good woman." Faith in proverbs in their case received no shock, for they both died in Moll's youth, and were thus spared the sight of their own blasted hopes and their daughter's glory.
After the death of her parents Moll seems to have fallen under the care of her father's relatives, one of whom was a minister, who, to his glory be it recorded, refused to take tithes, choosing rather to trust to the spontaneous generosity of his parishioners : " a jolly fat fellow he was, and would take off his cup merrily." It was to him probably Moll owed it that she was taught to read and write. Letters, however, wrought no change in her, and she remained to the end of her life a witness to the failure of elementary education. She continued her association with the youth of the opposite sex ; she would leap with them and hop with them, and when they fell out with her she was equally ready to fight with
MARY FRITH. 51
em. As she grew up the ordinary occupations of her sex still iled to attract her ; household duties she abhorred, and she mid not endure " the magpye chat of the wenches." These me wenches, or at least the more modest among them, •obably regarded her conversation with equal dislike, for le affected dissolute language to such an extent that it grew Don her, and in her old age amounted to downright swear- g, though, her biographer hastens to add, " in her it was not ) much malicious as customary."
She was perhaps unfortunate in not being able to take ill advantage of the " spacious times " of Queen Elizabeth, tough on the whole it seems doubtful if she would have iund in any reign but that of her present Majesty a elcome for the developments of her great and independent lind. For Moll was a pioneer, and excited among her jntemporaries, by the adoption of masculine garments, an iterest nowadays hardly intelligible. The use of such oparel, in spite of protests hereafter to be mentioned, she ;tained until the end of her life. In addition to this token f a spirit beyond the reach of prejudice, Moll also prided grself upon being the first among English women to smoke )bacco, a practice from which she continued to derive Dmfort, in spite of the fact that " an unlucky knave in a rocer's shop" upon one occasion played on her what was then oubtless regarded as a highly humorous practical joke, by resenting her with a pipe in which gunpowder was concealed y a superficial covering of tobacco.
Mary had, instead of the lamb of later nursery lyrics, a lastiff, which attended upon her walks abroad, and, if there as in her any vein of cynicism, she must have reflected with itterness upon the hour when she added a cobbler to the Dmpany. " Wildbrat was faithful," but the cobbler was a leat. Details of his treachery are wanting, and we know Dt if it was in the matter of the estate of Frith deceased lat he was unfaithful, or if he proved a dishonest partner in le business which Mary, at a very early stage in her career, :arted on her own account. We have no evidence to enable 3 to state with any approach to exactness the date at which [ary Frith began to earn her better known designation of
52 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
Moll Cutpurse, and, indeed, such evidences, in the case of a person of her disposition and pursuits, is hardly to be expected. Manners of the best are in peril among question- able surroundings, and Moll probably found that it was no very steep descent which led from association with the patrons of cudgel-fights to the practice of picking and steal- ing. It is likely, however, that her relatives, with far different intentions, were mainly instrumental in throwing her upon her own, or perhaps to speak more correctly, upon other people's resources. Having but little faith in proverbs, and misliking the apparent tendency of her inclinations, they determined upon taking what they conceived to be a very decided step in her interest. There was nothing novel in the conclusion at which they arrived : it simply amounted to this — Mary would do better with larger opportunities and a wider sphere, and if she were to leave the country it could hardly prove other than advantageous both to the country and herself.
It is quite evident that the object of all this solicitude was not herself invited to join the family council in deliberating upon her future, for it was only by means of trickery that she was induced to go on board a vessel lying at Gravesend bound for New England, and nothing but the application of ardent spirits induced her to remain there, until her well- meaning but faithless friends had secured their retreat. It was only when, seated upon a sea-chest amid the bustle of departure, she was asked by the boatswain what she did in that galley, that she realized her position. Curses and tears were followed by entreaties, and finally Moll succeeded in softening the heart of the captain and was set ashore. Misinter- preting the benevolent intentions of her kinsfolk, it is scarcely to be wondered at that she hesitated to trust herself again to their supervision, but preferred to seek shelter among those persons in whose minds the idea of departure from their native land was always associated with a somewhat narrow escape from a violent death. Before, however, she was made free of the community there were questions to be answered and an examination to be passed. Moll found no difficulty in dealing with both branches of the ordeal. Her replies were
MARY FRITH. 53
ninently satisfactory, and the examination, which was Dnfined to her hands, only served to reveal her exceptional ualifications for the career she designed to embrace. Not nly did she bear no mark of the Sessions' branding-iron, but le was the possessor of a particularly long middle finger, as mch a joy to your thief as a clumsy fat finger is an object of :orn and detestation. These preliminaries having been isposed of, Moll was admitted with the customary forms nd ceremonies, and in a short time, by steps of which no 5cord is left, she succeeded in obtaining over her companions lat ascendancy which, wherever it is exercised, is the most nmistakeable evidence of superior powers.
Pockets or purses in the early days of the seventeenth entury were frequently attached to the girdle, and thus hung xposed, and it was her singular dexterity in removing these hat earned for Moll her distinguishing appellation.
Though it is scarcely possible that " the picture of Mistress /loll " mentioned in " Twelfth Night " (act i. sc. 3) can tave been the counterfeit presentment of our Mary, it is vident that fame came to her quickly, for on August 7, 1610, here was entered in the register of the Stationers' Company
A booke called, The madde pranckes of mery Moll of the lanckside, with her walkes in mans apparrell, and to what urpose, written by John Day." This work, if it was ever >ublished, has unfortunately disappeared, and Middleton's
Roaring Girl," which was printed in the following year, vhatever its merits as a play, is of little value as a medium of .uthentic information. The stage Moll is avowedly idealized.
Worse things," says the author, " I must needs confesse the vorld has taxt her then has been written of her, but it is the :xcellency of a writer to leave things better than he finds =m." Accordingly, she is represented as a piece of virtue, vith strength, constancy, and knowledge of arms more than ufficient for her protection upon all occasions of difficulty .nd danger.
" A bold virago stout and tall As Joan of France or English Mall."
It is true she keeps " a book of homers," otherwise pick-
54 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
pockets, and is so much in their counsels as to be able to charge one of them to make good forthwith a purse which a knight of her acquaintance had lost " at the last new play i' the Swan," but she is evidently to be understood as nothing worse than the manager of a highly respectable Lost Property Office.
No more convincing proof can be adduced of Moll's ascendancy over her companions than the fact that, though so skilful in the practise of purse-cutting, she was allowed to abandon the constant exercise of this perilous employment, and to become receiver-general of the fruits of their enter- prises, and the unquestioned arbiter in all their disputes.
Her transactions in stolen property were on a most exten- sive scale, rivalling even those of the great Jonathan Wild himself, and more than one writer has borne testimony to her intimate acquaintance with the movements of the " pilfering trade " and to the value of her services. " Sprecious ! " cries the citizen in Brome's " Court Beggar," " How now ! my fob lias been fubd to-day of six pieces and a dozen shillings at least. My watch is gone out of my pocket too o' th' right side. I'le go to honest Moll about it presently." It is said of one of the characters in " The Feigned Astrologer " that—
" now Moll Cutpurse, that oracle of felonie, Is dead, there's not a pocket pickt But hee's acquainted with it."
And Thomas Shipman in his " Carolina," published in 1683, declares —
" 'tis well known Moll Cutpurse sought to help folks to their own."
Unlike most persons of her profession, Moll rather courted observation, and lived and died in a house in Fleet Street, " within two doors of the Globe Tavern, over against the Conduit." It is true that at her entry the landlord regarded his tenant with eyes of disfavour, but his objections appear to have arisen rather from doubts as to her solvency than from any scruples as to her moral character ; at any rate, gold
MARY FRITH. 55
irevailed, and Moll remained. It is probable that she Doked to this very audacity and her known eccentricities to lisarm suspicion, and she must have felt secure indeed to lave ventured to expose stolen goods in one of the windows if her house. This confidence was like to have brought ruin lpon her, for there happened to pass by the said window a [entleman who, observing therein a watch of which he had >een recently robbed, was so ignorant or neglectful of the ules of the game that he incontinently invoked the aid of a :onstable, and carried her and his watch before a magistrate. VIoll was duly committed for trial, but when the constable, :ager to detail the result of the information he had received, vas about to go into the witness-box, he discovered that the vatch was missing from his pocket. The jury had no alter- lative but to acquit, and Moll was therefore free to leave the :ourt with her friends, some of whom, it is hardly necessary :o state, had accompanied the constable thither.
Besides being compelled to make this involuntary appearance Defore the representatives of the civil power, Moll was also called jpon to give her attendance in the Court of Arches, to answer 1 charge of wearing " undecent and manly apparel," and her defence, if she made any, being judged to be inadequate, she ivas sentenced to do penance in a white sheet at Paul's Cross. A. career such as that of Moll Cutpurse is so obviously liable :o suffer from the effects of exaggeration and misrepresenta- :ion, that one gladly seizes the opportunity to quote the testimony of an eye-witness of any of its incidents. John Chamberlain, writing on February II, 16}-*, to Dudley Carleton, says : " The last Sunday Moll Cutpurse, a notorious oaggage that used to go in man's apparel, and challenged :he field of diverse gallants, was brought to the same place 'Paul's Cross), where she wept bitterly, and seemed very oenitent, but it is since doubted she was maudlin drunk, being discovered to have tippel'd of three quarts of sack before she :ame to her penance. She had the daintiest preacher or jhostly father that ever I saw in the pulpit, one Radcliffe, of Brazen-Nose College in Oxford, a likelier man to have led the revels in some inn of court than to be where he was. But the jest is, he did extreme badly, and so wearied the audience
56 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
that the best part went away, and the rest tarried rather to hear Moll Cutpurse than him." Seeing that Moll's friends and companions in the regular exercise of their occupation made use of one of their number, who was known as the " bulk," for the special purpose of picking quarrels and so causing crowds to assemble, they did not fail to take full advantage of the opportunity which the misfortune of their mistress had created for them. Many, therefore, who had come out to see the penance of Moll Cutpurse went home themselves to repent, and some who, figuratively speaking, were bent on shearing, returned, almost literally, shorn ; for, having relieved them of such valuables as they had about them, the thieves proceeded to cut off portions of their gar- ments as well.
Moll probably thought that this discipline had purchased her a licence to clothe herself henceforth as she pleased, for she continued to wear her manly apparel, and her consistency in this respect earned for her the approbation of John Taylor, the Water Poet, who, in " The Water-cormorant, his Com- plaint against a Brood of Land-cormorants," after inveighing against the monstrous and fantastic fashions of his day, says —
" Mary Frith doth teach them modesty, For she doth keepe one fashion constantly, And therefore she deserves a matron's praise, In these inconstant, moon-like, changing days."
It is quite evident that the Court of Arches had no terrors for Moll, for she actually made a bet of twenty pounds with one Banks, a vintner in Cheapside, to ride astride in breeches and doublet from Charing Cross to Shoreditch. Her pro- gress in this guise, heralded by trumpet and banner, not unnaturally excited remark (" a plaguy orange wench " at Bishopsgate made herself particularly obnoxious), and, but for a timely diversion created by a wedding party, was like to have been seriously interfered with by the crowd, some of whom cried out, " Come down, thou shame of women, or we will pull thee down ! "
On the whole, Moll seems to have had but few declared enemies, and to have thought she deserved none, for she
MARY FRITH. 57
regarded with feelings of the bitterest resentment the act of a constable who presumed to arrest her very late one night as she was returning home by way of Ludgate Hill. She was lodged in the Counter, where she soon made friends with such of the company as did not happen to be already her familiars, and the next morning was haled before the Lord Mayor, charged with the offence of " unseasonable and suspicious walking." She pleaded the occasions of a lady, one of her friends, whose condition required her presence at her bedside, and, nothing further being alleged against her, she was released upon payment of a small fine. The constable, who was otherwise a cobbler, one William Wall by name, was one of Moll's neighbours, and this uncalled for and unneighbourly action of his so rankled in her breast that she put herself to some considerable trouble in order to be revenged upon him. Having discovered that the constable had some relatives at Ludlow, she procured the arrival at his house of a supposed messenger, all dust-stained from the journey, with news of the death of his uncle and his own succession to the estate. The ridiculous airs assumed by the cobbler and his wife upon the receipt of this intelligence, and their ignominious return after a fruitless but costly visit to Ludlow, afforded Moll infinite satisfaction, and her cup was full when she was able to con- gratulate her victim and ask how he enjoyed the air of his lands.
In addition to having, as it were, under her thumb the mob of the " homers," " bulks," " whipsters," and " rubs " of the metropolis, Moll had also an extensive circle of acquaintance among the aristocracy of the profession, " the Hacks and Blades of the road." Richard Hannam, " the Great Robber of England," the celebrated Captain Hind, and Crowder, who exercised his calling in the habit of a bishop, with four or five servants attending upon him, were all frequent visitors at Moll's house, and were accustomed to deposit their effects with her during their periods of absence upon the country roads.
It is probable that Moll owed much both of her reputation and the immunity she enjoyed to the unhappy divisions of tier time. She had given conspicuous proof of her loyalty by oroviding wine for the Fleet Street Conduit upon the occa-
58 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
sion of the King's return from the Scotch war, and as he passed had rushed from the crowd and grasped his hand, crying, " Welcome home, Charles ! " After the Civil War broke out she prided herself upon being the only person in her street who was a declared opponent to the Parliament. She contributed parboiled ox-livers and brickbats to feed the Trained Bands, and, not unnaturally, considered she was doing praiseworthy and loyal service in robbing the King's enemies, from whom she succeeded in obtaining considerable sums by means of forged warrants addressed to their collec- tors and receivers.
She and the famous Captain Hind were the moving spirits in the successful attack made upon a waggon containing pay for the Commonwealth soldiery, in the neighbourhood of Shotover, and she herself was active in the onslaught upon Fairfax on Hounslow Heath, when two of his horses were killed, and he himself was wounded and robbed of two hun- dred and fifty Jacobuses. For her part in this last exploit Moll was arrested at Turnham Green, and conveyed to New- gate. She had a friend there in the person of Ralph Briscoe, one of the officials, and, though there is mention of the pay- ment of a sum of two thousand pounds, the matter of her release is involved in obscurity.
To the practice of stealing and receiving Moll added the art of fortune-telling, in which she was an adept, and when this comparatively honest trade had been brought into dis- repute through the stoning of Dr. Lamb, she threw her energies into the abominable occupation of a procuress. She exercised her vile office on behalf of both sexes, and in this walk of life became acquainted with the most disreputable of her contemporaries, among whom were " Aniseed-water Robin," who wore skirt and petticoats ; " Mulled Sack," the chimney-sweeper ; Cottington, the cheat ; and Damaris Page, " the Abbess of the Holland Leaguers on the Bankside." She herself had a strange reputation for chastity, involved, in all probability, with the doubts that were openly expressed as to her sex. This reputation was not, however, unchallenged, as appears from one of Thomas Freeman's Epigrams (published in 1614), which is headed, "Of Moll Cutpurse disguised going."
MARY FRITH. 59
They say Mol's honest, and it may bee so,
But yet it is a shrewd presumption no ;
To touch but pitch, 'tis knowne it will defile,
Moll weares the breech, what may she be the while ?
Sure shee that doth the shadow so much grace,
What will shee when the substance comes in place ? "
There are extant two portraits of Moll Cutpurse, one upon :he title-page of Middleton's " Roaring Girl," and the other prefixed to the " Life " published in 1662.
In the former she appears as a fine figure of a woman, in Tian's apparel, and one can gather from the text of the play :hat her proportions were considerable. Goshawke, one of :he persons of the drama, protests concerning her that he lever knew " so much flesh and so much nimbleness together," ind another addresses her as " sweet plumpe Mol." In the ater portrait the handiwork of Time, or an artist less disposed :o flatter, is plainly to be seen, and one can appreciate the invitation beneath it, " But if her Features please not, read her Feats." By the various means which have been mentioned Moll succeeded in making or taking a considerable amount Df money, and though in her later years she was afflicted with iropsy, she lived in her house in Fleet Street, surrounded by iogs, parrots, and looking-glasses, in comparative comfort. Death overtook her on July 26, 1659, and she was buried in 3t. Bridget's churchyard. Her property she left to a kins- xian of the same name, the master of a ship, dwelling at ^.edriffe, with a special provision that twenty pounds were to )e set aside that Fleet Street Conduit might once more run vith wine at her expense when the King came home again.
Over her grave was set a fair marble stone, on which was cut he following epitaph, " compos' d by the ingenious Mr. Milton" mt destroyed in the great conflagration of London. The vords in italics are the words of Captain Smith, belief in them ve make no article of faith.
" Here lies under this same marble Dust for Time's last sive to garble ; Dust to perplex a Sadducee, Whether I rise a He or She, Or two in one a single pair,
60 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
Nature's sport and now her care ;
For how she'l cloath it at last day
(Unlesse she sigh it all away),
Or where she'l place it none can tell,
Some middle place 'twixt Heaven and Hell ;
And well 'tis Purgatory's found,
Else she must hide her under ground.
These Reliques do deserve the doom,
That cheat of Mahomet's fine Tomb :
For no communion she had,
Nor sorted with the Good or Bad,
That when the world shall be calcin'd,
And the mixt masse of humane kind
Shall separate by that melting fire,
She'l stand alone and none come nigh her.
Reader, here she lies till then,
When (to say all) you'l see her agen.
Charles Andrews.
LADY FRANCES HOWARD.
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^ADY FRANCES HOWARD.
(1593—1632.)
" Blood, though it sleep a time, yet never dies : The gods on murderers fix revengeful eyes."
George Chapman.
THE annals of the Howard family in the sixteenth century are largely written in letters of blood. Violent lives and violent deaths redden almost every page. Jot that glorious episodes are lacking. One Howard met lis death in the van of Richard III.'s army at Bosworth "ield ; a second was the victor of Flodden ; a third led the lefeat of the Spanish Armada. But glory only reached the iowards in the train of destroying war. In time of peace heir riotous passions found vent in crime. As a rule mnishment followed the misdeed swiftly, but the warning ell on heedless ears. In 1542 Queen Catherine Howard :xpiated her unchastity on the scaffold. Within half a lecade the career of her cousin, Surrey the poet, was >rought to a close by the same tragical agency, because lis arrogance of spirit was believed to threaten the throne. Thirty-five years later treason involved the poet's son in his ather's fate. Other chiefs of the house, escaping the heads- nan's block, spent the best years of their life in the dungeons if the Tower of London. Women of the family, who were sd into comparatively venial sin, became in their own lespite heroines of tragedy. Douglas Howard, who yielded 00 easily to the blandishments of Leicester, Queen Eliza- ieth's favourite, is reported to have narrowly escaped Amy lobsart's fortune, when her lover tired of her charms.
63
64 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
The humble suitor, who was rejected for a prouder alliance by Lady Frances Howard, an elder cousin of the lady commemorated here, sent his faithless mistress verses penned with his own blood, and then took his exit from the world by running himself upon his sword.
Such were some of the traditions which distinguished the family history of our heroine. It is not, therefore, surprising that she inherited little respect for conventional morality and the sanctity of human life, or that her nerve did not falter when murder was needed to remove obstacles that stood between her and the goal of her passions.
Her father, Thomas Howard, was son of that Duke of Norfolk who was executed in 1572, and was grandson of the poet Surrey who was executed in 1 547. He held high office under James I., becoming, in the first instance, Lord Chamberlain and Earl of Suffolk, and afterwards Lord High Treasurer of England. Unlike his father and grandfather, he was convicted of no worse crime than embezzlement of public monies to the tune of £50,000. Her mother, who exerted a baneful ascendancy over her husband and her children, openly conducted the sale of State offices.1 She eagerly accepted a pension from the arch-enemy of her country — the King of Spain. And it was a common say- ing that Audley End, built by Lord Suffolk on the estate in Essex that he inherited from his mother, had its founda- tion in Spanish gold. Bacon compared Lady Suffolk to an Exchange woman who kept her shop while her creature, Sir J. Bingley, cried, " What d'ye lack ? " Until the small- pox shed its blight upon her she was reckoned no ordinary beauty, and her portraits show that, despite her avaricious propensity, she was vain of her charms and liberal in her display of them. She was even suspected of being the mistress of Sir Robert Cecil.
The Earl and Countess of Suffolk had seven sons and three daughters. The eldest son, Theophilus (afterwards second Earl of Suffolk), was the hero of a notable quarrel with
1 She was daughter and coheiress of Sir Henry Knevet, Kt, of Charl- ton, Wilts, and her first husband was Richard, eldest son of Robert Lord Rich.
LADY FRANCES HOWARD. 65
ie famous Lord Herbert of Cherbury, when both were :rving as volunteers at the siege of Juliers, and Lord Her- ;rt has contrived that this eldest brother of Lady Frances lould descend to posterity as an unamiable coward. Claren- on reports contemptuously of the character of the next rother Thomas. Sir Robert, the fifth son, owed his fame to is adultery with the great Duke of Buckingham's sister-in- iw, Lady Purbeck, which exposed him and his mistress to lany years' persecution in the Star Chamber. The youngest Dn, Edward (Lord Howard of Escrick), joined the Parlia- lent in its struggle with Charles I., but ruined his reputation y taking bribes when an officer of the Commonwealth, and e enjoys the further ignominy of having begotten a son (the :cond Lord Howard of Escrick), who turned king's evidence dth fatal effect at the trials of Lord William Russell and dgernon Sidney.
The eldest daughter, Elizabeth, had scarcely a more reput- ble record. She married William Knollys, Earl of Banbury, ut the paternity of her two sons was called in question, and tie right of her sons and their descendants to succeed to the arldom of Banbury occupied the attention of the House f Lords and the Law Courts for a century and a half. rrances was the second daughter. The third, Catherine, dio married the heir of the first Earl of Salisbury, was an ncestress of the present Marquess. The anonymous author f a scandalous drama (that has never been published) on he subject of Lady Frances's early life, represents her engag- ig with her sister Catherine in a lascivious dialogue on the corning after Lady Frances's first marriage.1 Otherwise the ireath of scandal left Catherine — alone of the sisters — un- cathed.
Frances was apparently born at her father's house at Audley ind, near Saffron Walden, in 1593. Her eldest sister was er senior by nine years, her youngest sister was her junior pparently by as many months. The girl's early years fere spent either in Essex or in the London mansion of the imily at Charing Cross.
Captain Field, a retainer in her father's household pro- 1 The play is in Brit. Mus., MS. Addit. 25348. 6
66 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
tested (in the hearing of Sir Simonds D'Ewes) that, having known her from her infancy, he had always observed her to be of a better nature and sweeter disposition than any of her sisters and brothers ; but our knowledge of her sisters' and brothers' characters reduces this compliment to narrow dimensions. Forgetful of her wealth in vicious ancestors, Captain Field proceeds to ascribe her subsequent depravity to the malignant influence in childhood of one only of her kinsmen, her father's uncle, the Earl of Northampton. The facts of heredity will not permit her corrupt temperament to be deduced from early association with any single relative. But Lord Northampton was peculiarly adapted to encourage her predisposition to evil courses ; his sinister figure casts a clear-cut shadow over the chief scenes in her career.
The younger son of Surrey the poet, Lord Northamp- ton, was his grand-niece's senior by five-and-fifty years. During Queen Elizabeth's reign he had often suffered im- prisonment on account of his complicity in plots against the throne ; but he bore his crosses with cynical complacency. Intrigue was his ruling passion ; and he intrigued with so much craft that the historian cannot unravel all the threads of his mysterious plottings. He was reputed to be at heart a papist, but he bore a hand in bringing to the scaffold many Catholic priests. Greedy of power and money, he won by cunning flattery place and power at James I.'s court, but at the same time he accepted a pension from Spain. He exerted a baleful fascination over many a younger man and woman. The great Francis Bacon's mother bitterly deplored the spell that he cast upon her sons. There lay, indeed, on the surface of his nature some agreeable traits, which could rarely fail to dazzle acquaintances, whether old or young. He delighted in lavish hospitality, and his many - sided culture made him, when he chose, despite a pre-occupied manner, an amiable host. He had inherited something of his father's literary sentiment ; he read widely, published an exposure of judicial astrology, and wrote for a sister a treatise of philosophy. He loved, too, magnificence in architecture. He built the great mansion in which he lived at Charing Cross (known in later years as Northumberland
LADY FRANCES HOWARD. 67
ise), and he revised with his own hand the design of his hew's palace at Audley End. Without close domestic — he never married, and he outlived most of his kinsmen lis own generation — he seems to have developed in later rs as benevolent an interest, as his crooked nature would >w, in his nephew's children. Behind the quick wit and id looks of the child Frances, he soon detected the embryo an evil character, in some regards, not dissimilar from his 1. His ill-omened insight was not at fault, and the bonds sympathy between the curiously matched couple proved issoluble. No good lesson could the girl learn from so Dromising a tutor.
"ranees, and her younger sister Catherine, inherited much [heir mother's beauty ; and when Frances was no more than rteen and Catherine no more than twelve, their parents •gained their hands away in marriage. Child-marriages re then in vogue, and many of the girls' kindred had :ome parents before they were twenty. The husbands the two girls were chosen by the worldly wise parents m families in high place and in high favour with the Crown, therine was betrothed to a lad of eighteen, William, Vis- jnt Cranborne, the son and heir of James I.'s astute chief nister, Sir Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury. For ances a suitor was found in Robert Devereux, third Earl
Essex, a boy of fourteen, on whom the King, regretful of ; father's fate, had lately showered attentions. It is not clear why the King or Salisbury was willing for :sex to ally himself at so early an age with the Lord tamberlain's daughter ; but the craft of Lady Suffolk was pable of securing most objects that she deemed conducive the family interest. Afterwards, when trouble came of the periment, James took care to disclaim responsibility and tly denounced the practice of " marrying young couples fore they be acquainted with one another." Robert Devereux (born in 1 591), was son of that ill-starred irl of Essex, whose execution in February 1601 stirred pular feeling so poignantly. After being educated at Eton,
had been entered in January 1602 as a Gentleman Corn- liner at Merton College, Oxford, where he occupied an
68 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
apartment in the lodgings of the distinguished Warden Henry, afterwards Sir Henry, Savile. His father had sought to promote the accession of James VI., of Scotland, to the English throne when Queen Elizabeth should die ; and on the 24th of March, 1603, the boy was present in Cheapside when James I. was proclaimed king. Immediately afterwards, young Essex was sent to Essex House, where his mother * was then residing. And in accordance with an arrangement of the King and Sir Robert Cecil, a bill reversing the attainder of the late Earl of Essex at once passed through Parliament. In the same month (April), the King gave orders that Essex should be brought up with his son Prince Henry ; and the boys became fellow-students and close companions. On one occasion they quarrelled over a game of tennis, and the Prince called Essex " Son of a traitor," whereupon the Earl gave him a sharp blow on the head with his racket. The King, hearing of the matter, called them to his presence, found what provocation had been given, and observed to his son " that he who did strike him then, would be sure with more violent blows to strike his enemy 2 in times to come." At Oxford the Earl read diligently "books that afforded most study, not most delight " ; and his recreations were riding the great horse, running at the ring, and the exercise of arms. When the King was entertained by the University in the autumn of 1605, Essex was included among the noblemen who received the degree of M.A. It is sufficiently surprising (to a modern reader; to learn that Essex was made M.A. at the age of fourteen ; but more surprising is the news which ran through London at the same date : " The Earl of Essex and the young Lord Cranborne shall marry two of my Lord Cham- berlain's daughters at Court very shortly : they only stay for the King's coming, who is looked for in the next week."
' Daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham ; she was married three times, first, to Sir Philip Sidney, next to the Earl of Essex, and finally to the Earl of Clanricarde.
" The prediction might have been verified if Prince Henry's life had been spared. He died at eighteen, and Essex lived to become a famous Parliamentarian general.
LADY FRANCES HOWARD. 69
The marriage between Essex and Lady Frances Howard is celebrated on Sunday, January 5, 1605-6. The bride- 00m is said to have carried himself with a grave and aceful demeanour befitting his father's age. The Masque 1 Hymenaei "), performed at Court on the same evening by blemen and ladies of rank, was written by Ben Jonson d mounted by Inigo Jones. It was a brilliant spectacle ; he men were clad in crimson, the women in white ; they d every one a white plume of the richest heron's feathers, d were so rich in jewels upon their heads as who most Drious. I think they hired or borrowed all the principal tvels and sets of pearls both in Court and city. The vanish ambassador, seemed but poor to the meanest of em." On the following night the Barriers were performed, tteen knights appearing on each side ; the one band led ' the Duke of Lenox, the other by the Earl of Sussex. When the festivities were over the bride returned to her ther's house. It had been arranged that Essex should end a year or two on the Continent before he joined his :fe ; but it was not till the spring of 1608 that he started on s travels. At Paris he was entertained by Henri IV., whom : accompanied on a hunting expedition to Fontainebleau. The date of Essex's return may be fixed not later than the itumn of 161 1. He was now twenty years of age, and his wife is a beauty of eighteen, "jam matura viro, jam plenis nubilis mis." After the long delay he was naturally anxious to :perience the joys of married life ; but, though the pair :cupied one bed and one chamber for three years, his hopes of ippiness remained unfulfilled. The fact was that the Countess, own in beauty but not in virtue, had bestowed her affections 1 another — Robert Carr, the King's favourite (successively iscount Rochester and Earl of Somerset). Sir Simonds 'Ewes declares that she had previously intrigued with enry Prince of Wales, but Cornwallis — who was treasurer the Prince's household — stoutly champions his master's
1 It was published in 1606 with the names of the masquers and a note it the music was by Ferrabosco and the dances by Thomas Giles, hen it was republished in the folio of 1616 Ben Jonson suppressed 3 names of Essex, Lady Frances, and the masquers.
7o TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
chastity. Arthur Wilson, secretary in after years to Essex, relates that on one occasion when she had dropped her glove a courtier handed it to the Prince, who rejected it with the remark, " He would not have it ; it is stretched by another." To her evil genius and great-uncle Northampton, who was anxious to ingratiate himself with the King's favourite, is attributed the discredit of having brought about and fostered the guilty intimacy between Rochester and the young Countess. If Weldon's information was correct, a Mr. Coppinger — who had run through a fair fortune and was now forced to lead the life of a serving - man — was employed by Northampton to act the part of Sir Pandarus. In the early days of their life together the Earl had treated his Countess with all courtesy and kindness. He imputed her coldness to maiden bashfulness ; and when this bashful- ness (as he regarded it) became insipid, he took counsel with her father, who " made use of his paternal power to reduce his daughter to the obedience of a wife." But " paternal power " in a case of this kind has its limits. It did not help matters that the young Earl was seized with a virulent attack of small-pox.
The Countess contrived to keep as much as possible at a distance from her husband, but at length (under compulsion from her father) she joined him at Chartley in Staffordshire. Here she conducted herself in strange fashion. She kept her chamber all day, and would never stir out till the dead of night. To this style of living she adhered for some months, showing not the slightest respect or affection for her husband. " Cow," " Beast," and " Coward," were the terms in which she would address him.
It was an age of witchcraft and magic. The Countess had been in frequent communication with the notorious wizard, Dr. Simon Forman, and an infamous wise-woman, Mrs. Anne Turner, widow of a doctor of physic. She had two objects in view : one, to hinder her husband from enjoying her society ; the other, to inflame Rochester's passion. Forman com- pounded drugs to debilitate Essex and to sharpen Rochester's inclination ; for the same purpose he framed waxen figures and brazen images. From Chartley she wrote to these
LADY FRANCES HOWARD. 71
abominable agents, lamenting the slow progress that was being made, and urging them to redouble their efforts. Two letters, both undated (which were produced at Mrs. Turner's trial) have been preserved. To Mrs. Turner she wrote as follows : —
" Burn this Letter. " Sweet Turner, — I am out of all hope of any good in this world. . . . My lord is very well as ever he was, so you may see in what a miser- able case I am. You may send the party word of all ; he sent me word all should be well, but I shall not be so happy as the lord to love me. As you have taken pains all this while for me, so now do all you can, for never so unhappy as now ; for I am not able to endure the miseries that are coming on me. But I cannot be happy so long as this man liveth : therefore pray for me, for I have need, but I should be better if I had your company to ease my mind. Let him know this ill news : if I can get this done you shall have as much money as you can demand ; this is fair play. — Your sister, Frances Essex."
The other letter was addressed to Dr. Simon Forman,, and must have been written before the 24th of May, 16 12, on which day the Lord Treasurer (Cecil) died : —
" Sweet Father, — I must still crave lyour love, although I hope I have it, and shall deserve it better hereafter : remember the galls, for I fear, though I have yet no cause but to be confident in you, yet I desire to have it remain as it is. You will see it continue still if it be possible, and, if you can, you must send me some good news ; alas ! I have need of it. Keep the Lord still to me, for that I desire. Be careful you name me not to anybody, for we have so many spies that you must use all your wits, and all little enough ; for the world is against me, and the heavens favour me not. I hope you will do me good, and if I be un- grateful let all mischief come unto me. My Lord is lusty and merry and drinks with his men, and all the content he gives me is to use me as doggedly as ever before ; I think I shall never be happy in this world, because he hinders my good, and ever will, I think ; so remember, I beg, for God's sake, get me free from this place. — Your affectionate daughter, Frances Essex.
" Give Turner warning of all things but not the Lord ; I would not have anything come out, for fear of my Lord Treasurer, for so he may tell my father and mother, and fill their ears full of toys."
The letters just quoted have been frequently printed, but the following particulars, from the State Papers, of the Countess's connection with Mary Woods, a reputed witch, of
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Stratton-Strawlers, near Norwich, have not been noticed. Under date 26th of February, 161 3, we find the exami- nations of Richard Grimstone, pursuivant, who deposed that he was sent by the Countess to apprehend Mary Woods for detaining a diamond ring and some money, which the Countess — having occasion to go in haste to the Court — had delivered to her safe keeping. One Davison of Norwich testified that Mary Woods deluded silly women by professing skill in palmistry, and, if they attempted to prosecute her, that she threatened to accuse them of trying to poison their husbands. Woods in her defence stated that she had re- ceived a goblet and a diamond from Mrs. Clare, and a ring from Lady Essex, with a promise of a thousand pounds if she would procure a poison — for making away the Earl of Essex — that should not act within less space than three or four days. She had promised to gratify the Countess, but afterwards repented, and left London without procuring the poison. The pursuivant, Grimstone, stated that Woods had threatened that, if she were taken before a justice, she would accuse Lady Essex of having suborned her to murder the Earl. On the 15th of May, Isabel, wife of William Peel, was examined on the practices of Mary Woods to procure money from her and others on pretence of getting them husbands or children : she stated that she knew of no attempt of Lady Essex to poison her husband. Woods was again examined on the 14th of June, when she testified that she had given Lady Essex a powder to wear round her neck because she wished to have a child ! What became of Woods is not known. It would seem that the Countess's friends contrived to hush up the inquiry.
At the time when she was being accused by Mary Woods of practising to poison the Earl, Lady Essex was engaged in preparing a petition for divorce. On the 16th of May, 161 3 a Commission was appointed under the Great Seal to examine into the question of the nullity of the marriage. George Abbott, Archbishop of Canterbury,1 consented — with
1 The Archbishop's very interesting narrative of the proceedings of the Commissioners is preserved in Harl. MS. 6854. It is printed in vol. ii. of Howell's "State Trials."
LADY FRANCES HOWARD. 73
great reluctance — to sit on the Commission, and with him were joined the Bishop of London, the Bishop of Ely, the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, Sir Julius Caesar (Chan- cellor of the Exchequer), Sir Thomas Parry (Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster), Sir Daniel Dun, Sir John Benett, Dr. Francis James, and Dr. Thomas Edwards.
Lady Essex claimed that the marriage should be nullified on the ground that her husband was impotent. The Earl at his examination created a favourable impression from the fact that he abstained from using bitter language about his wife. He stated that when he returned to England he loved her, but added, " I cannot so now, neither ever shall I." He denied emphatically that he was impotent.
King James took the liveliest interest in the Commissioners' proceedings, and used all his influence to induce them to annul the marriage. He chafed at the delays that occurred, and attempted to confute by argument the conscientious objections of Archbishop Abbott. Before starting on pro- gress from Windsor, his Majesty called the Commissioners together and found that the Bishop of Ely, the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, Sir Thomas Parry, Sir Julius Ceesar, and Sir Daniel Dun were prepared to pronounce in favour of a nullity, but that the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, Sir John Benett, and Dr. Edwards were stiffly opposed to the majority : whereupon he strengthened the Commission by the addition of new members. For a time it was doubtful whether the Countess would succeed in her suit. On the 29th of August the Rev. Thomas Lorkin wrote to Sir Thomas Puckering that " unless the Commission be changed, the nullities which His Majesty desireth will never be pronounced." Archbishop Abbott, falling on his knees before the King at Windsor, implored to be exempted from attending the Commission, declaring that he would esteem such exemption a greater favour than all the preferments that he had received at the King's hands. On the Wednesday before Lorkin wrote to Puckering, the Commissioners had again assembled, but to little purpose. Rochester stayed in town to hear the result of the proceedings, and then rode in haste to his Majesty. Finally, in September, after many
74 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
delays, a nullity was pronounced, and the majority consisted of the Bishops of (i) Winchester, (2) Ely, (3) Lichfield and Coventry, and (4) Rochester", (5) Sir Julius Caesar, (6) Sir Thomas Parry, (7) Sir Daniel Dun ; in the minority were (1) the Archbishop of Canterbury, (2) the Bishop of London, (3) Sir John Benett, (4) Dr. Francis James, (5) Dr. Thomas Edwards. On the morning when the sentence of nullity was pronounced the King had sent a special injunction that the Commissioners were simply to give their assents or dissents, and that no arguments were to be used. The marriage was annulled " propter latens et incurabile impedimentum " ; both parties were at liberty to marry again, and the Earl was to refund the dowry that he had received with his wife.1
No sooner was the decree of nullity pronounced than pre- parations were made for the lady's marriage with Lord Rochester. On the 4th of November Rochester was created Earl of Somerset, and it was reported that he would be made Marquis of Orkney, " that his mistress may be a better woman if it may be than she was before " (Chamberlain to Carleton, 22nd of November, 161 3). At first the marriage was announced to take place the last week of November at Audley End, and great preparation was made to receive the King. The Queen had looked askance on the divorce pro- ceedings, and it was anticipated that she would not attend the marriage ; but in the end she consented to be present, and it was arranged that the ceremony should be postponed till Christmas and should then be solemnized at Whitehall.
On St. Stephen's Day, the 26th of December, 161 3, the Lady Frances Howard (assuming her maiden name) was married to the Earl of Somerset. The King had given her away on the occasion of her marriage with Essex, and now her father took the King's place. The services of the Dean of the Chapel, Dr. James Montague, who had officiated at the
1 Some thirteen years later Essex married a second wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Paulet, of Eddington, Wiltshire. She mis- conducted herself with one Uvedale, two years after the marriage, and Essex procured a divorce from her. Such a termination of the Earl's second matrimonial venture may lend some support to the argument advanced by his first wife in favour of the dissolution of his first marriage.
LADY FRANCES HOWARD. 75
former marriage, were again enlisted ; and a fulsome marriage- sermon was preached by the Dean of Westminster, Dr. George Montaigne. With unblushing effrontery the bride went to the altar " in her hair " — with her hair hanging loosely down her back, to indicate to beholders that she was a virgin. Many of the most noted poets of the day lauded the unblessed nuptials. Campion wrote the masque that was performed on the marriage-night ; Ben Jonson's " A Challenge at Tilt " was pronounced on the 27th of December, and was followed (two days later) by his " Irish Masque " ; George Chapman pub- lished an inept poem "Andromeda Liberata" (which is said to have procured him a cudgelling from some of Essex's friends) ; and Donne composed a frigidly conceited Epithalamium, over which his most cordial admirers will not care to linger.
There was a great display of wedding presents, " more in value and number than ever, I think, were given to any sub- ject in this land," as Chamberlain wrote to Mistress Alice Carleton, on the 30th of December, 161 3. Valuable plate was sent by the City, the Merchant Adventurers, the East India Company, and the Farmers of the Customs ; six goodly candlesticks, costing above five hundred marks, came from Sir Thomas Lake ; Sir Robert Carr and Sir Robert Mansfield clashed — both sending silver fire-shovels, tongs, and irons, &c. ; Sir Fulke Greville gave a gold cup ; Sir Charles Wilmot a gold warming-pan ; the Countess of Shrewsbury's present was a gold basin and ewer, two gold pots, and " some vessel, all of gold " ; and the Earl of Salisbury gave a suit of hangings for which his father had paid £1,500, and another that had cost £800. Particularly noticeable was the present of the Lord Admiral, the lady's aged kinsman — a rich gold basin and ewer (set with stones) that had been given to him by the King of Spain ; but, when brought to the touch, it was proved not to be of pure metal. The Spanish Ambassador sent a jewel valued at £500, "if it hold good." It appears that the presents were submitted to the goldsmiths, who examined them critically and appraised them cautiously.
The festivities were prolonged. At the King's wish the Lord Mayor entertained the royal favourite and his bride, with their friends and followers, at the Mansion House, the
76 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
guests (men on horseback and women in carriages) proceeding in goodly show by torchlight. The bride had a new coach for which she could not find four suitable horses. She begged the loan of the famous team belonging to Sir Ralph Winwood, who made answer that " it was not for such a lady to use any- thing borrowed ; and therefore, the next morning, presented them to the great lord." At first Somerset declared that he could not accept so valuable a gift, but finally allowed his scruples to be overcome. The solemnities concluded on Twelfth Night with the performance of "The Masque of Flowers," provided at the sole expense of Sir Francis Bacon and presented before the Court in the Banqueting House at Whitehall by the gentlemen of Gray's Inn.
To turn from these festivities. At five o'clock on the morning of the 15th of September, 161 3 — ten days before the decree of the nullity of the marriage between Essex and Lady Frances Howard — died, miserably in the Tower of London, a gentleman of rare accomplish- ments, Sir Thomas Overbury ; and between three and four in the afternoon of that day, his body, a festering mass of sores, was buried in the choir of the church within the Tower. Sir Thomas Overbury, son of Sir Nicholas Over- bury, of Bourton-on-the-Hill, in Gloucestershire, had been Somerset's old and intimate friend. When he was just past his twentieth year (he was born in 1581) young Overbury went " upon a voyage of pleasure " to Edinburgh, where he met Sir William Cornwallis who had been his fellow-student at Queen's College, Oxford. By Cornwallis he was introduced to Robert Carr, who was then page to the Earl of Dunbar. Carr and Overbury struck up a friendship and travelled south together. When Carr became powerful his friend shared in his prosperity. On the 19th of June, 1608, Overbury was knighted at Greenwich, and in the following year — on his return from a tour in France and the Low Countries — was thought, by well-informed persons, to have a good chance of being appointed to an embassy. But he made many enemies by his overbearing temper. At one time he incurred the Queen's displeasure, and was temporarily banished from Court. On the 13th of November, 161 1, Chamberlain wrote to Carleton
LADY FRANCES HOWARD.
77
that " Sir Thomas Overbury, by much suit, is referred to the Court, and there is hope in time to the Queen's favour." Subsequently the King took a deep dislike to him. The gossip ran that Carr ruled the King and that Overbury ruled Carr. Anxious to falsify this report the King proposed to send Overbury abroad on diplomatic business. Overbury refused to go, and was thereupon committed for contempt to the Tower. Sir Henry Wotton, an astute observer, in a letter to Sir Edmund Bacon (April 22, 161 3) relates the manner of Overbury's committal, and ends with a sinister forecast : — ■
" Yesterday, about six o'clock at evening, Sir Thomas Overbury was from the council-chamber conveyed by a clerk of the council and two of the guard of the Tower, and there, by warrant, consigned to the lieutenant as close prisoner : which, both by the suddenness, like a stroke of thunder, and more by the quality and relation of the person, breeding in the beholders (whereof by chance I was one) very much amazement, and being likely in some proportion to breed the like in the hearers, I will adventure, for the satisfying of your thoughts about it, to set down the fore-running and leading causes of this accident, as far in so short a time I have been able to wade in so deep a water.
" It is conceived that the king hath a good while been much dis- tasted with the said gentleman, even in his own nature, for too stiff a carriage of his fortune ; besides that scandalous offence of the Queen at Greenwich, which was never but a palliated cure. Upon which con- siderations His Majesty resolving to sever him from my Lord of Rochester, and to do it not disgracefully nor violently, but in some honourable fashion, commanded not long since the Archbishop by way of familiar discourse to propound unto him the embassage of France, or of the Archduke's Court, whereof the one was shortly to be changed, and the other at the present vacant. In which proposition it seemeth, though shadowed under the Archbishop's good will, that the King was also contented some little light should be given him of His Majesty's inclination unto it, grounded upon his merit. At this the fish did not bite ; whereupon the King took a rounder way, commanding my Lord Chancellor and the Earl Of Pembroke to propound jointly the same unto him, which the Archbishop had before named, as immediately from the King ; and to sanction it the more, he had, as I hear, an offer made him of assurance, before his going, of the place of treasurer of the chamber, which he expecteth after the death of the Lord Stanhope, whom belike the King would have drawn to some reasonable composition. Notwithstanding all these motives and impulses, Sir Thomas Overbury refused to be sent abroad, with such terms as were by the Council interpreted pregnant of contempt in a case where the King had opened his will ; which refusal of his I should for my part esteem an eternal disgrace to our occupation, if withal I did not consider how hard it is to
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pull one from the bosom of a favourite. Thus you see the point upon which one hath been committed, standing in the second degree of power in the Court, and conceiving (as himself told me but two hours before) never better than at the present of his own fortunes and ends.
" Now in this whole matter there is one main and principal doubt, which doth trouble all understandings ; that is, whether this were done without the participation of my Lord Rochester; a point necessarily inviting two different consequences. For if it were done without his knowledge, we must expect of himself either a decadence or a ruin ; if not, we must then expect a reparation by some other great public satisfaction whereof the world may take as much notice. These clouds a few days will clear. In the meanwhile I dare pronounce of Sir Thomas Overbury that he shall return no more to this stage, unless Courts be governed every year by a new philosophy, for our old principles will not bear it."
Wotton was right in his last conjecture : Overbury did return no more to this stage.
Ample evidence exists to prove thatOverburywas induced by Rochester to adopt a contumacious attitude towards the King. Convinced that the favourite's influence would be exerted on his behalf, he confidently expected that he would be speedily released from the Tower and receive valuable preferment. But he was mistaken. At least two persons were bent on his destruction — Essex's divorced wife and her great-uncle the Earl of Northampton — and with devilish cruelty they accomplished their object, not (it is to be feared) without the connivance of Rochester.
Lady Essex hated Overbury because he used every effort to thwart her projected marriage with Rochester. Overbury approved of the arrangement that Lady Essex should be Rochester's mistress ; in fact he penned love- letters to her in his friend's name. But the prospect of Rochester uniting himself by marriage with the house of Howard filled him with aversion. He thought that his influence with Rochester would be strong enough to break off the proposed match ; for he was Rochester's trusted adviser and bosom friend, acquainted not only with the innermost secrets 1 of state policy, but with the personal
' " I will undertake the time was," said Bacon in his indictment of Somerset, " when Overbury knew more of the secrets of state than the Council-table did."
LADY FRANCES HOWARD. 79
and private history of the King and his favourite. With the view, it is said,1 of dissuading his friend from the marriage he wrote his poem " A Wife," for which his unhappy fate procured a popularity that would otherwise have been inexplicable. Overbury expatiates in the poem on the excellences that a man should seek in his choice of a wife ; and these excellences, beauty apart, were not to be found in the lady who was petitioning for a divorce from the Earl of Essex, and was intriguing with Rochester. Piety and discreet behaviour are qualities on which the poet specially insists ; and we know that in the matter of religious exercises the Countess was remiss, for her maid Frances Brittain declared " the Countess never came to prayers." If Overbury had contented himself with writing " A Wife " Lady Essex would have had little ground of complaint ; for, at least in the form preserved to us, the poem merely describes the qualities that an ideal wife should possess, and contains no reflections on her ladyship. But his opposition took a much more active shape. On one occasion Rochester returned late to his chamber in the privy gallery at Whitehall and there found Overbury. " How now," said Rochester, " are you up yet ? " " Nay," answered Over- bury, " what do you here at this time of night ? Will you never leave the company of that base woman ? And seeing you do so neglect my advice, I desire that to-morrow morning we may part ; and that you will let me have that portion you know is due to me ; and then I will leave you free to yourself to stand on your own legs." Rochester retorted that " his legs were strong enough to bear himself " ; and so they parted in
1 Sir Nicholas Overbury (Sir Thomas's father), in the notes which he dictated in 1637 to his grandson Nicholas Oldisworth, stated that " Sir Thomas wrote his poem called ' A Wife ' to induce Viscount Rochester to make a better choice than of the divorced Countess " (Add. MS. 15476). Ben Jonson, in his conversations with William Drummond of Hawthorn- den, declared that Overbury had been in love with the Countess of Rutland, and " caused Ben to read his ' Wife ' to her, which he, with an excellent grace did, and praised the author. That the morn thereafter he discorded with Overbury, who would have him to intend a suit that was unlawful. The lines my Lady kept in remembrance, ' He comes loo near that comes to be denied.' " About 1610 Jonson wrote an epigram in praise of Overbury. He told Drummond that " Overbury was first his friend and then his mortal enemy."
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anger. This conversation was overheard by Henry Peyton, Overbury's servant, who adds that they were never perfectly reconciled again.
Overbury being committed to the Tower, Northampton and the Countess commenced their villainous operations without delay. Northampton, anxious to be in favour with Rochester, " and knowing," as Bacon put it, " Overbury's malice to him- self and to his house, thought that man must be removed and cut off, so as certainly it was resolved and decreed that Over- bury must die." Sir William Waad was Lieutenant of the Tower when Overbury was committed. Northampton found a pretext for removing him from his office (on the ground that he had shown too great indulgence to certain prisoners, particularly Lady Arabella Stuart T), and on the 6th of May substituted in his place Sir Gervase Helwys (or Elwes), who had been recommended by Sir Thomas Monson ; 2 at the same time making Richard Weston, a protege of Monson, under-keeper in the place of Carey.
Rochester destroyed many of the letters 3 that passed between himself and Northampton, but in the face of the four following letters of Northampton to Rochester, it is difficult to believe that the younger man was ignorant of the plot against Overbury's life : —
i. " In this business concerning Overbury there must be a main drift and a real charge : You may imagine the meaning."
2. " I yesterday spent two hours in prompting the Lieutenant with as great caution as I could, and find him to be very perfect in his part. And I long exceedingly to hear his report of this adventure."
3. " You need not use many instruments, so long as I am in town with the Lieutenant."
4. "I cannot deliver with what caution and discretion the Lieutenant hath undertaken Overbury. But for his conclusion I do and ever will love him the better ; which was this, That either Overbury shall recover
1 It was also given out that Waad had embezzled jewellery belonging to this unfortunate lady.
2 Helwys paid ^1,700 to Monson for procuring him the Lieutenancy of the Tower.
3 One of the letter-writers of the time, Mr. John Castle, declared "it would turn chaste blood into water to hear the unchaste and unclean phrases that were contained " in Northampton's letters to Rochester.
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and do good offices betwixt my Lord of Suffolk and you, which if he do not you shall have reason to count him a knave ; or else thai he sluill not recover at all, which he thinks the most sure and happy change of all, for he finds sometimes from Overbury many flashes of a strong affection to some enemies of his."
Particularly noticeable is the third letter : " You need not use many instruments, so long as I am in town, with the Lieutenant." Northampton was clearly under the impression that Rochester's agents were in communication with Helwys. It was from the Countess that these agents received their in- structions, but one cannot dismiss the suspicion that Rochester must have been aware of the nature of those instructions. On the 9th of May the under-keeper Weston mixed rosaker in some broth prepared for Overbury ; on the 1st of July he tried the effect of white arsenic on the prisoner ; and later he mixed corrosive sublimate in tarts and jellies. Overbury had a marvellously strong constitution which he had fortified against poison by the use of antidotes. Dr. Francis Anthony on two occasions sold aurwn potabile to a servant of Overbury, while he lay in the Tower, as an antidote against poison. The Countess continually sent poisoned tarts and jellies to the Tower for the prisoner's use. On one occasion she wrote to Helwys : " I was bid to bid you say that these tarts came not from me ; and again I was bid to tell you to take heed of the tarts because there be letters in them, and therefore neither give your wife nor children of them, but of the wine you may, for there are no letters in it; Sir T. Monson will come from the Court this day, and then we shall have other news." Growing impatient of the delay, she sent for Weston, who declared that he had administered to the prisoner as much poison as would kill twenty men. Among other agents she employed the notorious Mrs. Turner, who not only tempered poisons herself but engaged the services of one James Franklin, an apothecary, " then dwelling at the backside of the Exchange," who pro- cured seven different sorts of poison — aquafortis, white arsenic, mercury, powder of diamonds, lapis costitus, great spiders, and cantharides — which were all at various times given to the unhappy victim.
Before his spirit was utterly broken by his sufferings
7
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Overbury addressed letters of threatening remonstrance to Rochester.
" Have we not protested friendship of souls ? [he exclaimed] and yet will you sacrifice me for a woman, and will you break this oath ? . . . You visit your woman, curl your hair, and perfume your clothes while I languish in prison. . . . But know this : I have all this long vacation written your story, how I found you at the first, how I have lost all the great ones for your sake, what secrets I have partaken, and at the last, when you had won your woman by my letters and working, you juggled with me and thus betrayed me ; how at Hunting- don and Newmarket you vowed I should not live at Court nor with my friends ; how treacherously you sent for me thrice that day wherein I was caught in this trap : this I have sealed under seven seals, whereof my friends shall know ; and if you persist to deal thus inhumanely with me, I will leave you to die with shame."
Harleian MS. 7002 preserves passages from letters wherein Overbury recorded details of his sufferings. It appears that on certain occasions he was attended by the King's physician, Dr. Mayerne. One passage runs : " I was let blood Wednes- day ten o'clock ; to this Friday morning my heat slackens not, my water remains as high, my thirstiness the same ; the same loathing of meat, having eat not a bit since Thursday was se'night [seven-night] to this hour ; the same scouring and vomiting. Yesternight about eight o'clock, after Mr. Mayerns [Dr. Mayerne] was gone, I fainted." Three surgeons, Cragg [or Craig], Nasmyth, and Abraham Allen also attended him.
Sir Nicholas Overbury petitioned the King to allow him access to his sick son, and the King replied that his own phy- sician should be sent. Then Sir Nicholas addressed himself to Rochester, who assured him that his son would be quickly released, and begged him not to prefer any more petitions to the King. Rochester also wrote to Sir Thomas's mother, urging that her stay in town would be of no advantage to the prisoner, and that he would be a free man by the time she reached home. Sir John Lidcote, Overbury's brother-in-law, obtained permission (by a warrant from Northampton) to see the prisoner in the Tower, and found him in bed, very feeble, with his head dry and his speech hollow. At parting, Over- bury asked him softly " whether Somerset juggled with him
LADY FRANCES HOWARD. 83
or not ? " To which Lidcote replied that he thought not. Later, " Coming to press my Lord of Somerset," says Lidcote, " about Sir T. Overbury, I perceived he dealt not plainly with him. And once speaking with my Lord about him, he gave a counterfeit sigh (as this deponent conceived) for at that instant he smiled in my face."
After many weeks of cruel suffering, Overbury died on the 15th of September from the immediate effects of a clyster administered (at the prescription of Dr. Mayerne) on the previous day by Paul de Lobel, an apothecary dwelling in Lime Street. Whether the clyster had been poisoned or Overbury died of sheer exhaustion is doubtful. He died hard : Weston is said to have smothered him when the end was near.
On receipt of the news of Overbury's death Northampton wrote to Helwys : —
" Noble Lieutenant, If the knave's body be foul, bury it presently ; I'll stand between you and harm : but if it will abide the view, send for Lidcote, and let him see it to satisfy the damned crew.1 When you come to me, bring me this letter again yourself or else burn it. — North- ampton."
At twelve o'clock he dispatched a second letter, un- signed : —
" Worthy Mr. Lieutenant, Let me entreat you to call Lidcote and three or four friends, if so many come to view the body, if they have not already done it ; and so soon as it is viewed, without staying the coming of a messenger from the Court, in any case see him interred in the body of the Chapel within the Tower instantly. If they have viewed, then bury it by and by ; for it is time, considering the humours of that damned crew, that only desire means to move pity and raise scandals. Let no man's instance cause you to make stay in any case, and bring me these letters when I next see you. Fail not a jot herein, as you love your friends ; nor after Lidcote and his friends have viewed, stay one minute, but let the priest be ready, and if Lidcote be not there send for him speedily, pretending that the body will not tarry. — Yours ever. In post-haste at twelve."
Later in the day he sent yet a third letter, after conferring with Rochester : —
1 I.e., Overbury's relatives and friends.
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" Worthy Mr. Lieutenant, My Lord of Rochester, desiring to do the last honour to his deceased friend, requires me to desire you to deliver the body of Sir T. Overbury to any friend of his that desires it, to do him honour at his funeral. Herein my Lord declares the constancy of his affection to the dead, and the meaning that he had in my knowledge to have given his strongest strain, at this time of the King's being at Theobald's, for his delivery.1 I fear no impediment to this honourable desire of my Lord's but the unsweetness of the body, because it was reputed that he had some issues, and in that case the keeping of him above must needs give more offence than it can do honour. My fear is also that the body is already buried upon that cause whereof I write ; which being so, it is too late to set out solemnity. This with my kindest commendations I end, and rest your affectionate and assured friend, H. Northampton.
" P.S. — You see my Lord's earnest desire, with my concurring care, that all respect be had to him that may be for the credit of his memory. But yet I wish withal that you do very discreetly inform yourself whether this grace hath been afforded formerly to close prisoners, or whether you may grant my request in this case, who speak out of the sense of my Lord's affection, though I be a Councillor, without offence or prejudice. For I would be loth to draw either you or myself into censure now I have well thought of the matter, though it be a work of charity."
Helwys hastily summoned a coroner's jury, six of the jurors being gaolers, and the interment took place between three and four in the afternoon. Northampton, with brutal exulta- tion, described to Rochester the sorry state of the corpse at the inquest. Not content with poisoning Overbury's body, Northampton vilified his memory — giving out that he had died of lues venerea.
The murder accomplished, all went well for a time with Somerset and Lady Essex. She had procured her divorce, and the pair had been made man and wife amid the plaudits of the Court. New honours soon fell on the bride's father and husband. Her grand-uncle, Northampton, who had been First Commissioner of the Treasury since the post of Trea- surer was put in commission, in 1612, on Salisbury's death, himself died in June, 1614. Thereupon the great office of Treasurer was revived and bestowed on Lord Suffolk, North- ampton's nephew and Lady Somerset's father. At the same
1 It would be charitable to judge that Rochester had repented of his callous conduct, and really had the intention of procuring Overbury's release.
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time Suffolk yielded his office of Lord Chamberlain to his new son-in-law. The King's affection for Somerset seemed as strong as ever. When creating him Chamberlain, James declared that " forasmuch as it was a place of great nearness to his person, he had therefore made choice of him thereto, whom of all men living he most cherished, my Lord of Somerset. To whom addressing himself with the most amiable condescension that might be used, he said these words : ' Lo, here, friend Somerset ' ; offering therewith the staff, which the other, prostrating himself upon his knees, received with some few but effectual words of acknowledg- ment" (Rev. Thomas Lorkin to Sir Thomas Puckering, Bart, July 21, 1614). In March, 1615, Lady Somerset went with her family to Cambridge, where her father had been installed Chancellor in succession to his uncle. Lord Suffolk resided in extravagant state at St. John's College, Cambridge, awaiting a visit from the King to the University. In all the academic festivities that followed James's arrival, Lady Suffolk and her daughters took a prominent share, and it was noticed that few other ladies joined the royal party. But the triumph of the guilty bride and bridegroom was short-lived. A new favourite was soon to appear in the person of George Villiers (ultimately Duke of Bucking- ham) whom the Queen and Archbishop brought in as a rival to the powerful Earl of Somerset. The King, in spite of his recent avowals of regard, was becoming tired of Somerset. On the 24th of November the observant John Chamberlain hinted to Carleton that the world was not going quite so well with Somerset as formerly ; and on the 1st of December he wrote that, in spite of the scarcity of money, the King had given .£1,500 towards the expenses of a masque which was being prepared for the gracing of young Villiers. There is extant in the Lambeth Library a long and violent letter, undated and unsigned, but doubtless written early in 1615, in which the King inveighs bitterly against Somerset's overbearing conduct and hints not ob- scurely at reprisals. One sentence runs : " Do not all courtesies and places come through your office as Chamber- lain, and rewards through your father-in-law as Treasurer ? "
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" If ever I find," continues the King, " that you think to retain me by one sparkle of fear, all the violence of my love will in that instant be changed into as violent a hatred." And again : " You have, in many of your mad fits, done what you can to persuade me that you mean not so much to hold me by love as by awe, and that you have me so far in your reverence as that I dare not offend you or resist your appetites." There is much more in the same strain.
It was clearly a matter of life and death for Somerset to oppose Villiers's rapid advancement. But all his efforts were vain. If Somerset had retained the King's favour, Overbury's murder would never have been avenged. When it became clear that Villiers' star was in the ascendant, a way was easily found for humiliating the arrogant favourite who had lorded it over the obsequious Court.
The manner of the discovery of Overbury's murder has been variously related. According to Wilson, "the apothe- cary's boy that gave Sir T. Overbury the clyster, falling sick at Flushing, revealed the whole matter which Sir R. Winwood, by his correspondents, had a full relation of." The same account is given by Weldon, with the addition that the boy was named Reeve, and that " Thoumbal, the foreign agent " (i.e., William Trumbull, agent to Archduke Albert), unwilling to commit such dangerous matter to paper, obtained special licence to return to England and communicate his informa- tion to Secretary Winwood. At the Countess of Somerset's indictment, the Attorney-General (Bacon) stated that the late Lord Shrewsbury commended Sir Gervase Helwys, the Lieutenant of the Tower, for his good qualities to a certain Councillor ; that the Councillor, while expressing himself sensible of the favour, added that he would be glad to see Helwys cleared of the suspicions attached to Overbury's death : which speech was related by Shrewsbury to Helwys, who thereupon proceeded to confess that to his knowledge some attempts had been made on Overbury's life, but that those attempts had been checked. The Councillor lost no time in acquainting the King with the matter, and his Majesty presently ordered that Helwys should set down
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all he knew of the affair in writing. D'Ewes and Bishop Goodman give a similar account, adding that the Councillor was Sir Ralph Winwood. It is well known that Winwood cherished a personal grievance. When Somerset declared that he had conferred the Secretaryship of State on Winwood, and bitterly accused him of ingratitude for taking part in the Overbury inquiry, Winwood replied that for his Secretaryship he thanked not Somerset, but the .£7,000 which he had paid Somerset for the office.
In September, 161 5, the investigation into the causes of Overbury's death began ; Lord Chief Justice Coke showing the utmost zeal in his conduct of the inquiry, and the King closely scanning the depositions of witnesses (ready to restrain Coke's activity if it were pushed too far). The first witness examined was Sir William Waad, Lieutenant of the Tower when Overbury was committed. Then came the examination of Helwys ; Weston ; Mrs. Turner ; Sir Thomas Monson, who had recommended Helwys and Weston for their posts ; Robert Bright, the coroner at the inquest ; Paul de Lobell, the apothecary ; Overbury's servants, Lawrence Davies and Giles Rawlins ; Eleanor Dunne, who laid out the body ; Simon Merston (one of the King's musicians), who took tarts and jellies for Overbury to Weston from the Countess ; and others. Not wishing to proceed single-handed with so diffi- cult and dangerous an inquiry, Coke soon begged the King to appoint a Commission. Accordingly the Lord Chancellor (Ellesmere), the Duke of Lenox, and Lord Zouch, were joined with Coke. As a result of the preliminary investigation, the Earl * and Countess were required by the Commissioners on
1 Shortly before the order was given, the King had parted with Somerset at Royston, with exaggerated protestations of affection, hanging about his neck and slobbering his cheeks, saying, " For God's sake, when shall I see thee again ? On my soul I shall neither eat nor sleep until you come again." But Somerset was no sooner in his coach than the King exclaimed, in the hearing of four servants, " I shall never see his face more." So writes Weldon, who professes that he was himself present when the King parted from Somerset. See also Roger Coke's "Detection of the Court and State of England," 1696. The author was grandson of the Lord Chief Justice by his fourth son, and his account of the issue of the warrant for the Earl's arrest (with particulars relating to the arrest), was drawn from one of the Chief Justice's sons.
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the 17th of October to keep their chambers; and on the following day the Earl, for attempting to communicate with Mrs. Turner, and for seizing certain papers in the possession of Weston's son, was taken, under the custody of Sir Oliver St. John, to the Dean of Westminster's house, whence after some delay (pending the receipt of instructions from the King) he was removed to the Tower. The Countess, who was heavy with child, was committed to the custody of Sir William and Lady Smithe in the Blackfriars.
The subsidiary actors in the tragedy were first dealt with. On the 19th of October Richard Weston was arraigned at the Guildhall for the murder of Overbury, and obstinately refused to plead. The terrible penalty for standing mute — the peine forte et dure — was explained to him, but his resolve was unshaken, and he was remanded till the following Monday. Important evidence, to show the violence of the Countess's enmity against Overbury, was given to the Commissioners on the 2 1 st of October, by Sir David Wood. He testified that the lady had offered him ^1,000 if he would assassinate Overbury (before his committal to the Tower) ; that he had replied he would be hangman to nobody nor go to Tyburn at a woman's word, but if Rochester would guarantee his safety he would be the readier for her sake to come to blows with Overbury (who had thwarted him in a suit) : whereupon the Countess said that she could make no promise about Rochester, but that Overbury might easily be killed some night on his way home from Sir Charles Wilmot's. Mean- while strong pressure was brought against Weston to induce him to plead, with the result that when he came up again on the 23rd of October, at the Guildhall, he submitted himself to trial, made a rambling and confused defence, was found Guilty by the jury, and after a brief delay (the authorities having meanwhile got from him all the information that they wanted) was hanged at Tyburn.
On the 7th of November, Mrs. Turner was tried at the King's Bench for comforting, aiding, and assisting Weston in the poisoning of Overbury. In the course of the trial curiosity was roused by the production of a MS. list, compiled by the late Dr. Simon Forman, showing " what ladies were in love
LADY FRANCES HOWARD. 89
with what lords." According to the gossip of the time, the Lord Chief Justice, when the list (which he would not permit to be read in Court) was handed up to him, found his own wife's name on the first page. Magical charms, inscribed by Forman on parchment, were also produced. In summing up Coke informed the prisoner that she had the seven deadly sins— that she was a whore, a bawd, a sorceress, a witch, a papist, a felon, and a murderess. The jury found her Guilty, and, when asked what she had to say for herself, she only desired favour, and could hardly speak for weeping. After her conviction she was attended by the Rev. Dr. Whiting, to whom she expressed herself profoundly penitent for her wickedness, and exclaimed against the Court, "where was nothing but malice, pride, whoredom, swearing, and rejoicing in the fall of others." The tradition goes that by Coke's orders she was hanged in yellow starched ruffs (she having brought in the fashion of yellow starch), and that the hang- man wore yellow ruffs for the occasion. At the scaffold she requested to be allowed to pray for the Countess, "as she wished to do so while she had breath." She met her death with exemplary patience.
Sir Gervase Helwys' trial, for aiding and abetting Weston, followed on the 16th of November. He defended himself with spirit, admitting that he was an accessory after the fact, but claiming that, since the inquiry began, he had materially helped the authorities to discover the facts. When he had finished pleading, Coke flourished in his face the confession of Franklin made at five o'clock on that very morning. That Helwys was privy to the murder there can be no reasonable doubt ; but Coke's conduct of the trial was severely criticized even by his contemporaries. By royal favour Helwys was hanged on Tower Hill (November 20th), being spared the ignominy of execution at Tyburn.
Franklin, the apothecary, came up for trial on the 27th of November. His confession was read, he was found Guilty, sentenced to death, and duly hanged at Tyburn. Before his trial he had been frequently examined, and after his con- viction the Rev. Dr. Whiting took him in hand. The wretched creature alleged that Lord Suffolk was implicated
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in the murder, and that "more were to be poisoned and murdered than are yet known." He hinted at plots against the Queen, and the Palsgrave, and declared " I can make one discovery that should deserve my life."
On the 4th of December, Sir Thomas Monson (patron of Dr. Thomas Campion, the poet and musician), was arraigned. He had recommended Helwys and Weston for their posts in the Tower, and had been in frequent communication with the Countess of Somerset. At Monson's trial Coke dropped some insinuations that Overbury's murder was not unconnected with Prince Henry's death, " intimating, though not plainly," in Wilson's words, "that Overbury's untimely remove had something in it of retaliation, as if he had been guilty of the same crime against Prince Henry." Monson was committed to the Tower, and was liberated on bail in October, 1616, finally receiving his pardon in February, \6\6-\J. The King was greatly incensed with Coke for his indiscreet observations at Monson's trial.
Meanwhile a close watch was kept upon the arch-con- triver of the murder, the Countess of Somerset. It was feared that she meditated suicide. On the 17th of November her keeper, Sir William Smithe, reported that, laying her hand on her belly, she had exclaimed, " If I were rid of this burden it is my death that is looked for, and my death they shall have." She was brought to bed on the 9th of December, of a daughter, and on the 27th of March, 1616, she was parted from her infant and committed to the Tower, where her husband had been imprisoned for more than five months. She passionately entreated the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir George More, that she might not be placed in the room where Overbury had died ; so he gave up his own chamber for two or three nights until the lodging lately occupied by Sir Walter Raleigh could be made ready. Her trial was first fixed for the 1 5th of April, and Somerset was to be tried on the following day. But from time to time the trials were deferred, much to the annoyance of peers who had been summoned from the country to attend at Westminster Hall ; to the annoyance, too, of people who had paid heavy prices in advance for seats
LADY FRANCES HOWARD. 91
in court, and, unable to wait in town when the term was over, had been called into the country before the trials began. A lawyer paid ten pounds for a seat for himself and his wife ; and fifty pounds was the price paid for a small corner that would barely contain a dozen persons. In the second week of May the Countess was prostrated by violent sickness, some suspecting that she had taken poison ; but finally, on the 24th of May, she was brought up for trial before the Peers at Westminster Hall. She wore a dress of black tammel, a cypress chaperon, a ruff and cuffs of cobweb lawn. She trembled and shed tears during the reading of the indictment ; and concealed her face with her fan when Weston's name was mentioned. Her sober demeanour at her trial won pity from the beholders, though Chamberlain thought that her manner was more curious and confident than was fitting for the occasion. The Attorney-General, Sir Francis Bacon, bearing well in mind the King's instructions, treated her with more consideration than was usually shown to prisoners ; he neither aggravated her offence nor indulged in invective. The proceedings were quickly at an end, for the Countess pleaded Guilty. When she was asked what defence she could offer why sentence of death should not be passed upon her, she answered that she could much aggrave but nothing extenuate her fault ; she desired mercy, and that the Lords would intercede for her to the King. The Lord Chancellor Elles- mere, acting for the time as Lord High Steward, in pronoun- cing sentence assured her that he did not doubt the Lords would commend her to the King's grace. Among the spec- tators in Court, but not obtrusively conspicuous, was her former husband, the Earl of Essex.
Somerset's trial followed next day. Bacon had employed every mean and cunning device to induce him to con- fess. The King had written with his own hand several letters to the Lieutenant of the Tower, and had sent a trusted agent to confer with the prisoner. But Somerset stood firm in his denial of guilt. It was feared that in open court he would speak words derogatory to the King's dignity, and elaborate precautions were taken with a view to silencing him instantly and forcibly — if he should attempt to give the
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rein to his tongue. The King waited at Greenwich : his un- easiness increased as the day of the trial approached, and during the trial he was in an agony of suspense. At ten o'clock the proceedings began, but long before that hour the Hall was thronged. Chamberlain arrived at six o'clock in the morning, and for ten shillings procured a reasonable place. He had never seen so many great personages gathered together before. Bacon's speech for the prosecution was most skilful and elaborate, but grossly unfair : he relied on tainted evidence, he suppressed facts that might have told in the prisoner's favour, and exaggerated whatever might tend to his discredit. The Earl's able and dignified defence did not avail him before the Peers, but was not without its effect on public opinion. All day long the trial continued, and when night fell the proceedings were conducted by torchlight, and the heat grew intolerable. At ten o'clock the prisoner was sentenced to death.
Outside the court there was a general wish that the King should spare his life (Pallavicino to Carleton, May 29, 1616). Weldon says that, though many believed him to be guilty of Overbury's death, "the most thought him guilty only of a breach of friendship (and that in a high point) by suffering his imprisonment, which was the highway to his murder ; and this conjecture, I take to be of the soundest opinion." Sir George More, Lieutenant of the Tower, held the same view, which has also found favour with modern authorities. But Northampton's letters are a stumbling-block.
Public feeling, which favoured the Earl, ran high against the Countess. On one occasion, in July, 1616, the populace, in a wild belief that the Countess and her mother were inside, attacked a coach in which the Queen was riding privately with some friends. But in well-informed circles it was soon known that both Somerset and his lady would be pardoned. On the 20th of July Chamberlain saw and actually held in his hand the Countess's pardon before it went to the Seal. The grounds on which it was granted were four — the public services of her father and family ; her penitence, and her confession made before and after her arraignment ; the pro- mise of the Lord Steward and the Peers to intercede for her ;
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the fact that she was not principal but accessory, and had been influenced by base persons. In December it was rumoured that the Earl would receive not only his pardon (he steadfastly refused to acknowledge that he was guilty) but an allowance of .£4,000 per annum and permission to keep his jewellery. Meanwhile the prisoners were comfortably lodged and had the freedom of the Tower, spending much of their time with the Earl of Northumberland, who had been com- mitted at the time of the Gunpowder Plot, and was now a privileged prisoner of long standing. Lord Hay, afterwards Viscount Doncaster, renowned for his lavish extravagance, was a frequent visitor. He was paying his addresses to Northumberland's daughter, Lady Lucy Percy. North- umberland strongly objected to the suit, and Lady Somerset encouraged it ; a difference of opinion which led Northumberland to indulge in violent language against Lady Somerset.
Finally, in January, 1621-2, Somerset and his Countess were released from the Tower on the understanding that they were to reside at Grays in Oxfordshire, a seat of William Knollys, Lord Wallingford, afterwards Earl of Banbury. The latter was husband of Lady Somerset's elder sister Elizabeth, whose two sons were presumably the off- spring of Lord Vaux.1 On several occasions Somerset petitioned James I. and Charles I. on the subject of his allow- ance, claiming that more generous treatment should be accorded to him ; but his complaints were not regarded, and in Charles I.'s reign pressing requests were made to him that he should give up some valuable jewellery which (it was alleged) belonged to the Crown. Chiswick House became the permanent home of Somerset and the Countess. Of their later life little is known. Wilson declares that they lived to hate the sight of one another, and that they finally ceased to hold any conversation. The Countess died on the 23rd of August, 1632, aged about thirty-nine. Wilson gives a description, too loathsome for reproduction, of her illness and death (which resulted from uterine disorder). Somerset 1 The doubt as to their paternity occasioned the Banbury Peerage Case, finally settled against her in 1813.
94 TWELVE BAD WOMEN.
was buried on the 17th of July, 1645, m the Church of St. Paul's, Covent Garden.
Their only child Anne, married in 1637, William, Lord Russell, afterwards Duke of Bedford. The latter's father, Francis Earl of Bedford (one of the Peers who had con- demned Somerset), was at first violently opposed to the match. To raise a dowry of £12,000 Somerset was com- pelled to sell his jewellery and mortgage Chiswick House. Anne had been carefully brought up in ignorance of her parents' history. The story goes that one day in the library at Chiswick, she chanced to pick up a pamphlet on the Over- bury inquiry, and was so affected by the reading of it that she fell on the floor in a swoon. William, Lord Russell, the patriot, was her son, and he owed his tragic death to the evidence of his treacherous ally, his cousin, Lord Howard of Escrick. The latter was nephew of Lady Frances. The son of the " patriot martyr " became the second Duke of Bedford in succession to his grandfather : one of Lord Russell's two daughters (Rachel) married the second Duke of Devonshire, and the other (Catherine) married the second Duke of Rut- land. Thus, at the present day, the three dukes, of Bedford, Devonshire, and Rutland respectively, trace their descent in direct line from the infamous Frances Howard.
Lady Frances escaped a violent death, but disgrace, seclu- sion, and disease deprived the last seventeen years of her career of all that makes life valuable. The sordid story has no lack of tragic elements. She set forth on her worldly pilgrimage endowed with beauty, rank, and wealth in rare unison and abundance. To education she owed nothing, and her inherited temperament left her powerless as a girl to control her unlawful passions, and reckless by what modes she gratified them. As she grew to womanhood, her grand- uncle's counsel taught her, too, to long for the sweets of worldly power and predominance. The King's favourite offered her a lover's homage. She barely needed a coun- sellor to suggest to her that marriage with so potent a suitor would bring her, besides an assured continuance of private happiness, a personal ascendancy over those who helped to rule the realm. To reach her twofold goal, she did
LADY FRANCES HOWARD. 95
not flinch from divorcing her first husband by means that a modest woman would have hesitated to adopt, or from murdering her lover's friend, when he threatened to obstruct her path. But retribution came swiftly. No sooner was her design to all appearance successfully accomplished, than she stood before the world a convicted murderess and adulteress — the guiding spirit of a vulgar crew of heartless criminals. In earlier days her graces had been the frequent theme of courtly song, but as she sank into the grave there only echoed in her ears the harsh-tongued curses of a nation on whose fair fame her sins had cast a slur.
Geoffrey Martin.
DUCHESS OF CLEVELAND.
l;.\k[i.\KA VILLIKRS.
BARBARA VILLIERS,
DUCHESS OF CLEVELAND.
(1640 — 1709.)
" You have that perfection of beauty (without thinking it' so) which others of your sex but think they have ; that generosity in your actions which others of your quality have only in their promises ; that spirit, wit, and judgment and all other qualifications which fit heroes to command and would make any but your Grace proud."
Wycherley to the Duchess of Cleveland.
BARBARA VILLIERS was born at the end of the year 1640, but her </