This paragon of a bachelor, at the age of sixty-two, received a visit at his Government House in Guernsey from a youth who requested a private interview.  This having been granted, the boy, to the astonishment of Lord Danby, proclaimed himself to be his Lordship’s cousin, Frances, Lady Purbeck.[89]

In a former chapter we saw that Lady Purbeck had escaped from punishment through the medium of a boy dressed up like a woman.  The process had now been reversed:  for she had escaped from the Gate-House—­a woman dressed up like a boy.  The Sir Somebody Something of Hampshire, says Laud, “with Money, corrupted the Turn-Key of the Prison (so they call him) and conveyed the Lady Forth, and after that into France in Man’s Apparel (as that Knight himself hath since made his boast).  This was told me the Morning after the escape:  And you must think, the good Fellowship of the Town was glad of it.”  Lady Purbeck, however, did not go first into France.  As we have seen, she went to Guernsey and placed herself under the protection of her old cousin, Lord Danby.

That old cousin must have wished devoutly that she had placed herself anywhere else.  For the Governor of one of the King’s islands to receive and to shelter a criminal flying from justice was a very embarrassing position.  On the other hand, to refuse protection to a helpless lady, and that lady a kinswoman, much more to betray her into the hands of her enemies, would have been an act from which any honourable man might well shrink.  The possibility that it might be discovered in the island that he was entertaining a woman in male attire must also have been an annoying uncertainty to the immaculate Governor of Guernsey.  Over the details of this perplexing situation history has kindly thrown a veil; indeed, we learn nothing further about Lady Purbeck’s proceedings until we read, in the already noticed letter of Garrard’s, that she landed at St. Malo, whence she eventually went to Paris.

It seems safe to infer that whatever protection and hospitality her relative, Lord Danby, may have afforded to Lady Purbeck, he was heartily glad to get rid of her.  If she had originally intended to go to Paris, she would scarcely have made the long voyage of nearly two hundred miles out of her way to Guernsey, and the most natural explanation of that voyage is that she had hoped and expected to obtain concealment, hospitality, and a refuge in the house of her relative.  Instead of conceding her these privileges for any length of time, Lord Danby evidently speeded the parting guest with great celerity.

While all this was going on, Sir Robert Howard remained under arrest in London.  Laud, writing of Lady Purbeck’s escape, says:  “In the mean time, I could not but know, though not perhaps prove as then, that Sir Robert Howard laboured and contrived this conveyance.  And thereupon in the next sitting of the High-Commission, Ordered him to be close Prisoner, till he brought the Lady forth.  So he continued Prisoner about some two or three months.”