off his Messengers
Badge knocked at the doore to gett in. There came a Mayd to the doore
that would not open it, but peeped through a grating and asked his
businesse. He sayd, he was not in such hast but he could come againe
to-morrow. But the Mayd and the rest of the household having charge
not to open the doore, but to suche as were well knowne, the Messenger
could not gett in."

This first failure would not in itself have much alarmed the
Ambassador; but he says: "In the afternoone, I understood that the
Lady had received notice 15 days before, that a privy seale was to
come for her, which had caused her ever since to keep her house
close."

This made him nervous, and he tried to push the matter with greater
speed.

"We endeavoured by severall ways," he wrote, "to have gotten the
Messenger into the house. But having considered and tryed till the
next day in the afternoone, we grew very doubtfull that the Messenger
might be suspected and that the Lady might slip away from that place
of her residence that night."

Unless the writ could be properly served upon her, proceedings against
her could not be carried out in England, and, once out of the house in
which she now was known, or at least believed, to be, so slippery a
lady, as she had already proved herself, would be very difficult to
find. To effect an entrance into the house and to serve the writ upon
her personally was evidently impossible, and the only alternative was
to make sure that she was in the house and then to put the writ into
it in such a way that she could not avoid learning of its presence.
Therefore, says the Ambassador, "I directed this Bearer to put the Box
with the Privy Seale in it through some pane of a lower window into
the house and leaving it there to putt on his Badge, and knocking at
the doore of the house, if they would not suffer him to enter, then to
tell that party, whoe should speak to him at the dore, that he was
sent from the K. of Grate Britaine to serve his Majesties Privy Seale
upon the Lady Viscountess Purbeck, and that in regard he could not be
admitted in, he had left the Privy seale in a Box in such a place of
the house, and that in his Majesties name he required the Lady Purbeck
to take notice thereof at her perill." So far as getting the Privy
Seal inside the house was concerned, all went well. "The Messenger
being there, found an upper windowe neath the casements open, and
threw up the Box with the Privy seale in it t