“The Third.  That you counterfeited a treaty from my Lord of Oxford to yourself.

“Answer.  I know it not counterfeit; but be it so, to whose injury?  If to my Lord of Oxford’s (for no man else is therein interested), it must be either in honour or in free-hold.  Read the treaty; it proves neither! for it is only a complement; it is no engagement presently nor futurely; besides the law shows what forgery is; and to counterfeit a private man’s hand, nay a magistrate’s, makes not the fault but the cause:  wherefore,

“Secondly, the end justifies—­at the least, excuses the fact; for it was only to hold up my daughter’s mind to her own choice and liking: for her eyes only, and for no other’s, that she might see some retribution, and thereby with the more constancy endure her imprisonment, having this only antidote to resist the poison of that place, company, and conversation; myself and all her friends barred from her, and no person or speech admitted to her ear, but such as spoke Sir Thomas Villiers’s language.

“The fourth.  That you plotted to surprise your daughter to take her away by force, to the breach, of the king’s peace and particular commandment, and for that purpose had assembled a number of desperate fellows, whereof the consequence might have been dangerous; and the affront to the king was the greater that such a thing was offered, the king being forth of the kingdom, which, by example, might have drawn on other assemblies to more dangerous attempts.  This field is large for a plentiful babbler.

“Answer.  I know no such matter, neither in any place was there such assembly; true it is I spoke to Turner to provide me some tall fellows for the taking a possession for me, in Lincolnshire, of some lands Sir William Mason had lately dis-seised me; but be it they were assembled and convoked to such an end, what was done? was any such thing attempted? were they upon the place? kept they the heath or the highways by ambuscades? or was any place, any day, appointed for a rendezvous?  No, no such matter; but something was intended:  and I pray you what says the law of such a single intention, which is not within the view or notice of the law?  Beside, who intended this—­the mother? and wherefore? because she was unnaturally and barbarously secluded from her daughter, and her daughter forced against her will, contrary to her vow and liking, to the will of him she disliked; nay, the laws of God, of nature, of man, speak for me, and cry out upon them.  But they had a warrant from the king’s order from the commissioners to keep my daughter in their custody; yet neither this warrant nor the commissioners’ did prohibit the mother coming to her, but contrarily allowed her; then by the same authority might she get to her daughter, that Sir Edward Cook had used to keep her from her daughter; the husband having no power, warrant, or permission from God, the king, or the law, to sequester the mother from her own child, she only endeavouring the child’s good, with the child’s liking, and to her preferment; and he, his private end against the child’s liking, without care of her preferment; which differing respects, as they justify the mother in all, so condemn they the father as a transgressor of the rules of nature, and, as a perverter of his rights, as a father and a husband, to the hurt both of child and wife.