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