Frances Coke, Viscountess Purbeck

Frances Coke, Viscountess Purbeck (1601 – May, 1645), was the sister-in-law of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, and the central figure in a notorious sex scandal within the English of the early 17th century that was known at the time as “the Lady Purbeck’s business”.

Frances Coke was the younger daughter of the judge and privy councillor Sir Edward Coke and his second wife Lady Elizabeth Hatton.

In 1617, her father betrothed Frances against her will to Sir John Villiers, 1st Viscount Purbeck. Villiers was the elder brother of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, the favourite of King James VI and I. The match was an apparent bid by Sir Edward Coke to win back royal favour, following his dismissal as Lord Chief Justice and from the Privy Council.

Both Frances and her mother opposed the marriage. Lady Hatton sent Frances away from Hatton House in Holborn, on 10 July, without informing her father. Lady Hatton's plans involved a rented house and her extended family of cousins. She placed her daughter first with Lady Withipole; she was the former Frances Cornwallis, daughter of Sir William Cornwallis of Brome. The next step would be a pre-emptive betrothal to Henry de Vere, 18th Earl of Oxford.

Sir Edward Coke located his daughter Frances, by chance on his own account, at a house near Oatlands, rented by Sir Edmond Withipole from the Earl of Argyll, and took her away. By legal means he had her kept at the house of Sir Henry Yelverton, the Attorney-General; and then at the house of Thomas Knyvet, 1st Baron Knyvet, who owned Staines. It was rumoured that Frances was “tyed to the Bed-Poste and severely whipped into consent”. In September 1617, she was married to Viscount Purbeck at Hampton Court in the presence of the King and Queen.

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