attendants, dressed him in women's clothes.
He then ordered his coach to be brought round, and when it came, his
attendants, ostentatiously, but with a show of great hurry and fear of
discovery, ran out of the house with the sham-lady and "thrust her
suddenly into" the carriage, which immediately drove off.

The constable, congratulating himself upon his sharpness in
discovering, as he thought, the escape of Lady Purbeck, at once gave
the alarm to his followers outside. The coach "drove fast down the
Strand, followed by a multitude of people, and those officers, not
without danger to the coachman, from their violence, but with ease to
the Ambassador, that had his house by this device cleaned of the
constable."

While all this turmoil was going on in the Strand, Lady Purbeck went
quietly away to another place of hiding; but her escape got the
gallant and kind-hearted Ambassador into great trouble. Buckingham was
enraged when he heard of the trick. Sir John Finett shall himself tell
us what followed. Buckingham, he says, declared that "all this was
done of designe for the ladies escape, (which in that hubbub she
made), to his no small prejudice and scorn, in a business that so
nearly he said concerned him, (she being wife to his brother), and
bringing him children of anothers begetting; yet such as by the law
(because begotten and born while her husband was in the land) must be
of his fathering.

"The ambassador for his purgation from this charge, went immediately
to the Duke at Whitehall, but was denied accesse: Whereupon repairing
to my Lord Chamberlain for his mediation, I was sent to him by his
lordship, to let him know more particularly the Duke's displeasure,
and back by the ambassador to the Duke with his humble request but of
one quarter of an hours audience for his disblaming. But the duke
returning answer, that having always held him so much his friend and
given him so many fair proofs of his respects, he took his proceeding
so unkindly, as he was resolved not to speak with him. I reported this
to the ambassador, and had for his only answer, what reason cannot do,
time will. Yet, after this the Earls of Carliel and Holland
interposing; the ambassador, (hungry after his peace from a person of
such power, and regarding his masters service and the public affairs),
he a seven night after obtained of the duke an interview in Whitehall
garden, and after an hours parley, a reconciliation."

As has just been seen,