“’I must now humbly desire your patience in giving me leave to declare myself to you, which is, that without your allowance and liking, all the world shall never make me entangle or tie myself.  But now, by my father’s especial commandment, I obey him in presenting to you my humble duty in a tedious letter, which is to know your Ladyship’s pleasure, not as a thing I desire:  but I resolve to be wholly ruled by my father and yourself, knowing your judgments to be such that I may well rely upon, and hoping that conscience and the natural affection parents bear to children will let you do nothing but for my good, and that you may receive comfort, I being a mere child and not understanding the world nor what is good for myself.  That which makes me a little give way to it is, that I hope it will be a means to procure a reconciliation between my father and your Ladyship.  Also I think it will be a means of the King’s favour to my father.  Himself [Sir John Villiers] is not to be misliked:  his fortune is very good, a gentleman well born....  So I humbly take my leave, praying that all things may be to every one’s contentment.

          “’Your Ladyship’s most obedient
                “’and humble daughter for ever,
                “’FRANCES COKE.

“’Dear Mother believe there has no violent means been used to me by words or deeds.’”

* * * * *

This, as Campbell says, has every appearance of being a letter copied from one written by her father.  There is also reason for believing that Coke added the postscript for a very special purpose; for the question arises how Frances, who is admitted on all sides to have hated Sir John Villiers, could have been induced to copy and to sign this letter.  Was she literally forced to do so?  There happens to be an answer to that question.

          “Notes of the Villiers Family.[33]

“N.B.  I.B.N. have heard it from a noble Peer, a near relation of the Danvers family, and Mr. Villiers, Brother to the person who now claims the Earldom of Buckingham, as his Brother assumed the Title, that the Lady Frances Viscountess Purbeck was tyed to the Bed-Poste and severely whipped into consent to marry with the Duke of Buckingham’s Brother, Sir John Villiers, A deg. 1617, who was 2 years after created Viscount Purbeck.”

This was written after the death of Frances, but it has been accepted as true, and that may well be.  It is difficult in our days to believe that a young lady could be put to physical torture by her father, until she consented to marry a man whom she loathed; but the parental ethics of those times were very different from those of our own.  A man like Coke would have no difficulty in persuading himself that a marriage with Sir John Villiers would be for his daughter’s welfare, and, consequently, that a whipping to bring that marriage about would also be for her welfare.