Love, Madness, and Scandal: The Life of Frances Coke Villiers, Viscountess Purbeck

Written by Johanna Luthman
Review by Elisabeth Lenckos

This is that rare thing—a learned biography, which entertains and impresses. Love, Madness, and Scandal achieves for fans of Stuart-era England what Lady Worsley’s Whim accomplished for students of the 18th century, an insight into a historical woman’s existence told through the lens of contemporary matrimonial politics. As we learn about Frances Coke Villiers’ tumultuous marriage—forced to wed the mentally ill John Villiers, she took a lover and was duly prosecuted—the portrait of a tempest-tossed age emerges, with Charles I succeeding James I and driving the country to the brink of war. Against these monumental historical changes, Frances Coke Villiers’ vita plays out like a gothic adventure, complete with abduction, magic intervention and exile, but Luthman never allows the romance of her heroine’s escapades to overshadow the grim reality of the fates endured by 17th-century wives. Instead, she provides us with a sympathetic assessment of the Viscountess Purbeck, a woman who maintained a 22-year extramarital relationship while braving societal censure. The book comes with a list of persons, family trees, and scholarly notes. Highly recommended.