of her own
possessions, luxuries and comforts. From what we have seen of her
mother, it is difficult to believe that she was a tenderhearted woman,
to whom a daughter would go for consolation in her affliction: nor
could that daughter place much confidence in a mother who had once
deceived her with a forged letter. To her father, who had treated her
with great brutality and had sold her just as he might have sold a
beast among his farm stock, she would be still less likely to turn for
comfort or for counsel. Add to all this that, as the wife of an
official in Prince Charles's household, and as the sister-in-law of
the reigning favourite, she was a good deal at the Court of James I.
at a time when it was one of the most dissolute in Europe; and it
will be easy to recognise that her whole life had been spent in
unwholesome atmospheres.

When we consider the position of a very beautiful girl of between
twenty-one and twenty-four, who had had such an education, had endured
such villainous treatment, and was now placed under such trying
conditions, we can but feel prepared to hear that some or other of the
usual results of bad education, bad treatment, and bad surroundings
exhibited themselves, and surely if trouble, and worse than trouble,
was ever likely to come of a marriage that had been an empty form,
Lady Purbeck's was one after which it might be expected.

And it came! Near Cripple Gate, at the North Wall of London, in
October, 1624, was born a boy named Robert Wright. More than a century
later the Vicar of the Parish was asked to refer to his registers
about this event, and he sent the following reply:--[60]

"London, _April 10 1740._

SIR,

"I have searched my Parish Register according to your directions and
have found the following Entry concerning Robert Wright.

"Christening in October 1624.

"Robert, Son of John Wright, Gentleman, of Bishopthorpe in Yorkshire,
baptised in the Garden House of Mr. Manninge at the upper end of
White Cross Street ... 20th.

"I am, Sir,
"Your very humble servant,
"WILL NICHOLLS,
"Vicar of St. Giles's Cripplegate."

The father of this boy was, in reality, Sir Robert Howard, the fifth
son of the Earl of Suffolk, the Earl to whose vigilance the discovery
of the Gunpowder Plot is attributed by some authorities. But Suffolk
had incurred the enmity of Buckingham, had been deprived of the o