Beatrix Walcot

From Private Sin to Public Shame: Sir John Digby and the use of Star Chamber in Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire, 1610 Midland History Essay Prize, 2018 Diane Strange Pages 39-55 | Published online: 05 Mar 2019 Download citation https://doi.org/10.1080/0047729X.2019.1583814 CrossMark LogoCrossMark In this articleClose

By analysing one Star Chamber case from 1610 relating to an allegedly forged bond, this article examines how the gentry used local disputes to defend honour, fashion identity, and enforce authority locally and in central government. The often aggressive prosecution of suits at law was designed to send out a strong message not just to those involved but also to fellow élites about ambition, reputation, and political potency. This article explores these themes through litigation pertaining to Sir John Digby, afterwards Earl of Bristol, an ambitious younger son who rose to become one of James I’s chief advisers. The article argues that beyond the protection of his assets, Digby’s management of the case comprised three main aims: to fashion a political image at court; to assert his authority as a newcomer in the localities; and to establish a patriarchal stance within his household following his marriage to a propertied widow who was older than himself. It also demonstrates how legal records can supplement other research materials to build a fuller understanding of how individuals responded under duress and manipulated the ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres to build power.

Key words: adultery, ambition, honour, litigation, manhood, public and private spheres, reputation, Star Chamber Historians have long been aware of the importance of understanding how local government affected the wider context of national politics. There is also rising interest in the use of the law at all levels of society as a means of tackling dispute. However, there have been fewer studies of how élites manipulated legal cases arising from local disagreements to defend honour and manage reputation, despite the richness of the archival sources for this thread of investigation.1 As Richard Cust has demonstrated through his study of the rivalries between Sir Thomas Beaumont and Sir Henry Hastings in Leicestershire, also fought out in Star Chamber, such contests ‘provide one of the most effective means of exploring concepts of honour amongst the élite’.2 As Cust argues, Star Chamber cases offered a public forum for the vindication of honour and honesty in front of ‘the foremost statesmen of the realm’, even, at times, the King himself.3 For a rising courtier and aspirant public servant such as Digby, the construction of a positive image and the suppression of bad publicity were essential, and he may have regarded his Star Chamber suits as an opportunity to showcase his credibility and willpower to those able to advance his career.

Digby clearly understood the importance of self-promotion in the pursuit of power. He persistently laboured his credentials as ‘a man of honesty and honour’,4 the words honest and honesty appearing more than any other throughout his correspondence as a means of describing himself.5 The word honesty, deriving from the Latin honestus, in its early modern context meant more than a mere predilection towards telling the truth, but had strong moral overtones. Honestus, much used by Cicero in his treatise De officiis, the go-to handbook for aspiring public servants, also implied ‘honourable’, or ‘worthy of honour’. Cicero defined a quadripartite set of virtues that, together, comprised all that was ‘morally right’, hence a man that embraced them was worthy of high esteem.6 This provides a cameo of the persona Digby wished to portray, and as ambassador to Spain from 1611 to 1624 charged with forwarding the unpopular Spanish marriage treaty, he had reason to labour the point.7 This court case is an early, but by no means unrelated, facet of that image.

Born in 1580, Sir John Digby was the third surviving son of Sir George and Lady Abigail Digby of Coleshill, Warwickshire. Arriving at court in 1604 with little by way of fortune, by 1620 he was a key adviser on foreign affairs, a Privy Councillor and Vice-Chamberlain, and in possession of extensive estates.8 Knighted in 1606 and created Baron Digby of Sherborne, Dorset, on 25 November 1618, he was granted the earldom of Bristol on 12 September 1622 following early successes in his negotiations for the marriage between Prince Charles and the Infanta María.9 His rapid rise attracted notice, not all of it complimentary, as John Chamberlain observed in April 1616, remarking that, ‘yt is thought somewhat straunge that so young a man of so litle meanes and standing shold be preferred before men of longer service and that have ben long candidati’. Chamberlain also regarded as ‘somwhat extraordinarie’ Digby’s acquisition of the Sherborne estates from James I, granted to him on 27 November 1615 for the sum of £10,000.10 His reputation peaked towards the end of 1621, when he adopted a pro-war stance following his mission to Vienna to negotiate peace between the Emperor and James’s nephew Frederick, Elector Palatine. His further advancement was stalled after the visit to Madrid by Prince Charles and the Duke of Buckingham in 1623.11 Despite his eclipse, Digby, alongside Buckingham and other high-flyers such as Lionel Cranfield and James Hay, Earls of Middlesex and Carlisle respectively, remains one of James I’s most successful protégées.

For many élites, litigation was more than ‘the most popular of indoor sports’, as Lawrence Stone termed it; it was a fundamental means of defending reputation and asserting authority in a cut-throat milieu.12 Fitting into this mould, Digby, an alumnus of Middle Temple, was extremely litigious. He instigated at least eight cases in the Court of Chancery and was involved in three further Star Chamber cases before the Civil War, aside from his action against Buckingham and Sir Edward Conway in the House of Lords in 1626. Digby’s use of the law could be merciless, dragging the private into the public sphere and creating a theatre of shame crafted to maim his opponents’ reputations, exhibiting a penchant for what Anthony Fletcher has termed ‘the humiliation of rivals that was part and parcel of the desire for rule’.13 This demonstrates a facet of his character that is rarely glimpsed through the roseate lens of his own correspondence. Digby styled himself as a ‘faithful, true hearted, honest free gentleman’, ‘industrious’, ‘plain’, and ‘direct’. As a royal servant he described himself as serving with ‘zeal’, ‘loyalty’, ‘faith’, and ‘love’.14 Following the line of argument proposed by Julian Pitt-Rivers that ‘words are significant within the code of honour because they are expressions of attitude which claim, accord or deny honour’, Digby was clearly conscious of the so-called ‘court of reputation’: the notion, as Aristotle had it, that ‘honour … appears to depend on those who confer it more than on him upon whom it is conferred’.15 It also manifests an ambitious courtier’s desire to fashion himself as trustworthy and loyal against the background of a corrupt court. Nevertheless, this gloss of civility cloaked a ruthless streak that presaged trouble for those who crossed him, as is evidenced by the way he handled the accusations against him following the breakdown of the Spanish match. His refusal to buckle under royal pressure, in particular his action against Buckingham, bears comparison with his earlier court cases, in particular his recourse to accusations of ‘scandal’ and ‘lust’ in an attempt to discredit his opponent.16 In both instances he was using the self-crafted vignette of himself as a man of probity to invite comparison with individuals whom he cast as less morally upstanding than himself.

Considered broadly, the reasons for Digby’s advancement seem clear cut. Beyond ambition and any patronage he enjoyed – he was a client of the Earl of Salisbury until the latter’s death in 1612 – he was reported to be both intelligent and good looking, a fortunate combination of qualities in any man wishing to pique James I’s interest.17 His appointment as gentleman of the privy chamber and carver in 1605 was also significant, as these posts afforded him direct access to the King and an opportunity to showcase his talents.18 To understand why any Jacobean royal servant was successful, however, requires an understanding not just of his abilities, or his appeal to a monarch whose criteria for advancing some ‘candidati’ over others manifested a strong bias towards physical attraction. Such men did not live constantly at court; they were also heads of households and landowners who spent – indeed, by royal decree were required to spend – a portion of their time in their ‘countries’, managing households and estates, taking active part in local government, and extending hospitality to neighbours and charity to the poor.19 Their conduct in these areas of influence was under as much scrutiny as their work in central government, and as such were important elements of establishing power and maintaining honour.

There has been much debate about public and private spheres in early modern England and how far one impacted the other.20 As this case shows, distinctly understood spheres of activity ensured that knowledge about a neighbour’s scandalous behaviour could be a powerful tool. Beyond an individual’s conscience and relationship with God, there was no such thing as ‘private’ in a world where marital affairs and household management were among the richest subjects of gossip, and where there were witnesses ready to make domestic scandal public. This was especially true of officeholders, whose words and actions all formed a constituent part of their image.21 Thus the public sphere or spheres (court and country) were intertwined and indivisible from the private (household), each in some way influencing the other. This had important ramifications, since to be seen to run a well-governed household and to engender respect and an honourable reputation in the local community were at least as important as a winning appearance and a good name at court. As the puritan moralists John Dod and Robert Cleaver stated, ‘it is impossible for a man to understand how to gouerne the common-wealth, that doth not know to rule his owne house’.22 As such, it was incumbent upon élites wishing to undertake public service not just to avoid scandal, but actively to pursue its discovery and punishment.

In reality, then, court, country and household were intertwined microcosms forming a single macrocosm, in the words of Patricia Crawford an ‘organic whole’ within which élites sought to uphold their honour.23 Historical studies of influential élites or groups of élites therefore need to take a broad view of the material, and to assimilate evidence arising from one sphere with evidence from the others to create a single, rounded conclusion, rather than creating fragmented analyses from falsely compartmentalised domains of human existence. If dishonour was incurred in one sphere, it impinged upon the others. This presented risks at all levels of society, and for rising men such as Digby, the challenges could be significant.

Whilst on the one hand Digby’s advancement appears meteoric, a closer look at his other two spheres of influence, household and the localities, look less stable, and it is within this context that this Star Chamber suit should be considered. Digby married Lady Beatrice Dyve, the widow of Sir John Dyve of Bromham, Bedfordshire, in May 1609, seventeen months after Dyve’s death in December 1607.24 Born in 1542, Dyve was some thirty years older than Lady Beatrice, whom he married in January 1599, shortly after the death of his first wife, Douglas Denny, the daughter of Sir Anthony Denny.25 He left one surviving son by Lady Beatrice, Lewis, who was born in November 1599, and two base children by his mistress, Isabel.26 Isabel was first married, in 1595, to a steward of the Tower of London, Nicholas Rainbird, who died in 1602; in 1604, she married Thomas Bruncker, a Northamptonshire gentleman who was steward to Lord Bruce, Master of the Rolls.27 Lady Dyve secured the wardship of Lewis and he grew up in his stepfather’s household, accompanying him on diplomatic missions to Spain and Germany between 1611 and 1624.28

It is likely that in making this match Digby, like many an impoverished aspirant to high place, had an eye to his own advancement.29 Although his abilities were attracting notice, he lacked money. His father’s will had allowed him a life annuity of just £40, and it may be that he viewed the union as a means to acquire the wealth necessary to increase his local standing and fund his rise.30 For if Digby brought little to the marriage in terms of wealth, his wife more than made up for it: as well as his Bromham estates, Dyve left extensive holdings in Northamptonshire, including East Haddon, Harlestone, Quinton, and Yardley Hastings.31 Digby was already in line for a diplomatic posting, and was being employed to entertain visitors from foreign courts including the French ambassador Antoine le Fevre de la Boderie in 1606, and the Duke of Wirtemberg, whom he ‘continually attended’, in 1608.32 Although he did not depart for Madrid until April 1611, almost two years after the recall of his predecessor, Sir Charles Cornwallis, word of his appointment was circulating earlier and his chaplain John Sanford remarked in 1610 that his appointment had ‘longe since bin thought on’.33 While diplomacy was increasingly seen as an important step towards preferment in the early modern period, the cost could be devastating and it is unlikely that Digby would have been able to afford the necessary outlay without some assistance. An astute marriage would have helped to meet this financial shortfall. The need to safeguard his wife’s wealth – whether for her sake or his own – was therefore a further aspect of this litigation.

Lady Digby did not give her second husband free access to her funds, but protected her wealth by keeping separate estate, an increasingly common practice for widows in the seventeenth century.34 She granted him an annuity of £1200.35 That Digby was aware of the implications of his financial dependence is evidenced by his concern as his wife lay critically ill in Madrid in 1613. Her death would have meant the end of his annuity, and he wrote to James begging him for assistance, since ‘the present fortunes which I do enjoin, depend wholly on my wife’s life’.36 Fortunately, she survived. How Digby felt about this female control of the purse-strings goes unrecorded, but it is likely that he regarded it much as the Earl of Northumberland had described it, ‘a tie that necessitous husbands are forced to consent unto’.37

If financial dependency was not an early seventeenth-century ideal, nor was marriage to a widow: ‘Who marrieth a widdow hath a deaths head often in his dish’, went one pithy proverb.38 ‘He that marryeth a Widdow hath but a reversion in taile’, claimed another, ‘shee seems to promise security … yet invites many times to a troublesome estate.’39 Widows were considered sexually insatiable with a preference for younger men who could satisfy their appetites; those who married them were seen to be motivated by money, and of a lower status than their wives. As Elizabeth Foyster has observed, ‘widows who remarried could be extremely threatening to their new husbands because their experience gave any comparisons between lovers … a heightened credibility.’40 Born in 1574, Lady Beatrice was around six years the elder in the marriage. This disparity was not unusual, yet neither this, nor her greater wealth, conformed to contemporary Protestant mores.41 The puritan writer of conduct books William Gouge railed against men who married for money, arguing that they made ‘the worst matches, and make their marriage a kinde of bondage unto them’; ‘if a rich woman mary a poore man, she will looke to be master, and to rule him: whereby the order which God hath established will be cleane perverted: and the honour of marriage laid in the dust.’ A disparity in years also met with Gouge’s disapproval: ‘it is very meet that the husband should be somewhat elder then his wife, because he is an head, a governour, a protector for his wife’.42 A younger man, in other words, might struggle with asserting his authority.

Digby, then, at the time of his marriage was subject to circumstances that might have been seen to menace his masculinity: he was a second husband, ergo comparable as a sexual partner with Dyve; he was younger than his wife by several years; she held control over their finances; and she was the owner of the family estates. He was styled lord of the manor of Bromham in a terrier of 1610, but only in right of his wife, the manor having been settled on her for life.43 In all ways this inverted the ideals of patriarchy, and whatever Digby’s actual relationship with his wife was, his honour and his public image as a husband and master of his household were threatened by these contexts. Furthermore, because Digby moved into his wife’s property, a place he felt able to term ‘myne owne home’, he also inherited Sir John Dyve’s tenants, neighbours, and servants in both Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire.44 Here, too, challenges presented themselves, for he needed to assert himself whilst building stable relationships with his stepson and extended family. Thus, if the marriage suggests that the match was designed with at least a glance towards his own rise, then it also risked loss of face.45 A man’s place in and management of his household were important measures by which his ability to serve in public office might be judged. It was imperative that Digby established some counterbalance to these potential disadvantages.

Digby’s marriage gifted him with an early opportunity to use the law to his advantage as he took on the Star Chamber case relating to an ongoing feud between his wife and Dyve’s erstwhile lover, Isabel, and her husband concerning non-payment of a bond for six thousand pounds.46 The Brunckers insisted that the bond had been granted to Isabel by Dyve for the use of her illegitimate children, John and Katherine; Lady Beatrice claimed it was forged. Digby must have known about the dispute at the time of his marriage, since the Brunckers had first sued Lady Beatrice, unsuccessfully, in 1607.47 The Brunckers continued to pursue Lady Beatrice after her marriage, endeavouring to have the Digbys ‘arrested and sued upon the said Obliga[c]ion’.48 It may therefore be assumed that Attorney General v. Bruncker, which came to court in Hilary Term 1610, was the Digbys’ response to this litigation.

Cases concerning disputed bonds were not uncommon. Tim Stretton has demonstrated that the ‘lion’s share’ of lawsuits arising in the equity courts of Chancery and Requests in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were ‘related to debts and bonds’. His findings further suggest that such litigation was brought primarily by those who went to the law for personal ends. This conclusion is also reflected in the records of Star Chamber, which saw its fair share of litigation regarding bonds, especially relating to forgery – there were eighty-four such cases in the reign of James I alone.49

Much of the legislation studied by Stretton relates to default, and many cases arose from unscrupulous creditors ready to pounce on those who, without criminal intent, were guilty of little more than human error. This could also work the other way. Payment of a genuine bond could be deflected by those unable or unwilling to meet it, especially where underlying hostilities and old feuds were in the equation. An engineered case that used subtly crafted allegations of fraud and forgery, that hauled old misdoings out from the private into the public arena, that employed circumstantial evidence to engender notions of moral deviance and social disharmony, and that used as evidence testimonies from witnesses who had been bribed or intimidated – a practice that, as Bernard Capp has found, was ‘not uncommon’ – had the potential to sway the court against those suing in the bond’s favour.50 Such action might not have been solely related to financial gain, although where substantial sums of money were concerned it is difficult not to see this as a contributory factor; in some instances it may have been a vehicle for escalating disputes, righting old wrongs, or asserting authority.51 These are all characteristics that are evinced by the case investigated here.

It is noteworthy that the case was brought by the Attorney General, Sir Henry Hobart. The reasons for this are unclear. It is difficult to differentiate such cases from private suits, in that neither the issues dealt with nor the motivations of the litigants are, at first reading, significantly diverse. The crime of forgery was certainly taken seriously in early modern England; William Hudson’s 1621 work, A treatise of the court of Starr-chamber, writes of forgery as the next worst after ‘the offences of Treasone ffelony, and premunire’. Yet of the eighty-four Star Chamber litigations relating to forged bonds in the reign of James I, only thirteen were introduced by the Attorney General. It is possible, then, that the reason for his taking on the case lies not in the forgery itself, but in the sub-plot, a sordid tripartite relationship embracing sexual impropriety, coercion, and collapse of domestic order, which, if it went unpunished, would have been, as the bill urged, ‘an encoridgm[en]t and evill example for oth[e]r mallefacto[r]s to offende in the like kinde’.52 In early modern society such abuses of social convention were believed to have implications beyond their effects on the litigants’ lives – ‘The family was a social, public institution, not a private one that could be left to its own devices.’53 A single household’s disrepute manifested a dangerous flaw in society, an insidious creeping sin that threatened the gentry’s view of itself as the cornerstone of an honourable, civil society. When this broke down, it could have disastrous consequences, and in extreme cases it could be seen to threaten the fabric of royal policy and the power of the ruling class.54 This consideration added a further layer to the allegations, lending them a weight within the fabric of the state that could not have been exhibited by a mere private pleading against a disputed bond.

A foremost concern in the crafting of the plaintiff’s case was how to manipulate information about the defendants’ behaviour to construct an image that instilled in the judges the notion that they were untrustworthy, and freighted with sins that robbed them of credibility. In this vein, the core of the allegation was that Isabel Rainbird had lived an ‘ungodlye’ life with Dyve with the knowledge and consent of her husband, Nicholas, while they benefitted from Dyve’s generosity with lands and money. It was reported that they lived in this way during the lifetime of Dyve’s first wife, but after her death, Dyve, ‘willinge to reforme’, decided to ‘betake himself to an other course of life’, and married again, ending the affair and, with it, the Rainbirds’ financial perquisites.55 In settlement Dyve granted them four leases of land and a number of bonds. These bonds were not disputed, but the plaintiffs claimed that the Rainbirds had forged a further bond for six thousand pounds in Dyve’s name, believing that ‘The secret thereof would be harde when he should be deade to be discovered.’ They claimed that Rainbird had crafted the bond in his own ‘hande writinge’, being, as one witness for the plaintiff asserted, ‘verie expert & cunning to write w[ith] his penne’. The pair were then alleged to have set Dyve’s ‘seale of armes’ to it, which Dyve had sent to his lover ‘as a token’.56

Early modern women were particularly vulnerable to attacks on their sexual integrity, which was fundamental in defining how their characters were assessed.57 So it is no surprise that the central premise of the plaintiff’s suit was that the origin of the crime lay in Isabel’s wanton behaviour. Isabel, the court was persuaded, was guilty of what Gouge termed ‘one of the most capitall vices’ in marriage, being Dyve’s ‘concubyne by the space of 10. or 12. yeares’.58 The posthumous memory of Rainbird was also shattered. To be a cuckold in early modern society was the ultimate weakness. He was regarded as deviant, sexually inadequate, less than a man because he was unable to meet his wife’s needs, driving her to seek satisfaction elsewhere. Cuckolds had lost control of their wives, resulting in ‘unruly women and failed patriarchs’ a form of ‘gendered inversion’ that upset the social order and turned the world upside down.59 As it was feared that the breakdown of male sexual honour would destabilise society, cuckoldry was a matter of public concern.60 Yet Rainbird was presented to the court as being worse than a cuckold: he was a wittol cuckold, a contented cuckold who knew about his wife’s infidelity but took no action. Even worse than that, he was an opportunist, avaricious, wittol cuckold who, as one witness claimed, sold all his rights to his wife for a thousand pounds. Again, this was a credible accusation: financial settlements of this nature did take place.61 Rainbird had thereby lost any claim to honour, respect, manhood, and patriarchal authority. By implication, a man such as this, feeble and fallen, was eminently capable of forging a bond.

This was ‘the heart of the narrative to which the judges would respond’, the background against which Digby’s own moral rectitude could be compared.62 The case was framed to depict the breakdown of domestic order, rendering it impossible for the Brunckers to present themselves to the court as honest, believable people. Isabel’s private sphere, her sin-ridden domestic space, was dragged into the public arena, old sins opening her up to general condemnation and ridicule.63

Isabel Bruncker may have thought she had, if not a strong case, then at least powerful connections. Her husband was, after all, steward to Lord Bruce. Yet against this character assassination, and with counter-claims aimed at the defunct Dyve – long past any ability to speak in his own defence – and offering little of substance to attack the living, the Brunckers were largely powerless. Nor did the verifiable facts play in Isabel’s favour. ‘Élite women lived with the knowledge that their behavior was likely to be scrutinised for any hint of impropriety, and they fought back if they thought they were unjustly censured’, writes Linda Pollock. But Isabel had little plausible ammunition with which to fight.64 Having borne illegitimate children by Dyve, and having continued the relationship with him after her marriage to Rainbird, she was unable to repudiate the charges against her for her sin; she could only attempt to shift the blame, stating that she was drawn in by Dyve’s ‘many entysem[en]ts great promises and p[er]swasions’. The ongoing liaison she excused by alleging that that Dyve would not accept her marriage, but attempted to murder Rainbird to have him out of the way.65

The disgrace which the allegations imputed to all parties, Dyve included, and which was boosted by salacious coverage from witnesses, fatally undermined the defendants’ believability before the court. The Brunckers’ accusations levelled at Dyve were insufficient to counter the slur inflicted on Isabel’s name by exposing her inability to hold out against preconceived ideas, the vulnerability of women to lust and temptation, and the subsequent ruin of their husbands’ reputation, that were repeatedly brought to the notice of audiences by playwrights such as Shakespeare and Middleton and didactic authors such as Gouge.

Known facts about the defendants assisted the vilifying process. How far reputations were known, how subtly they were manipulated, and how they were interpreted in relation to the bill is irrecoverable, but given that a number of those involved in the case had either been at law previously or had featured in former suits, they had the potential significantly to affect the outcome. The Brunckers had attempted to sue Lady Digby both as a widow and as a married woman; Nicholas Rainbird had also attempted to sue Dyve for attempted murder; Dyve had formerly been sued by his neighbour Thomas Boteler for assault.66 Thus there was a spiralling background attached to these litigants, and ‘in a legal structure where prior experience with, and preconceived views of, defendants were valuable parts of the evidentiary process, biographical impressions were influential.’67

Given that Digby might have been using the case as a mechanism to showcase his own domestic authority within to his marriage, it is noteworthy that manhood was a facet of these allegations. Dyve, Rainbird, and Bruncker are all variously represented as manifesting character faults that undermined their authority in the household and challenged their patriarchy in ways that would not have been missed by an early modern audience; specifically, their inability to control their own greed and passions or sufficiently to control their womenfolk. By contrast, Digby’s own readiness to take up his wife’s case and counter the alleged wrongdoing is a reaffirmation of his own patriarchal authority and moral probity, which at no point, significantly, do the defendants attempt to impugn, presumably because he had not afforded them the wherewithal to do so. Dyve was to some extent protected from scandal by being cast as the victim of a scheming woman and her covetous husband, but he was not wholly exonerated. Thus a comparison was invited between Lady Beatrice’s former husband – wealthy, older than his wife, and locally dominant, but weak and with a disreputable past (sin cancels out honour) – and the present husband – financially dependent, younger than his wife, and new to the locality, but honourable and intolerant of sin (probity accentuates honour, authority, and manhood).

Digby’s management of his key witnesses is also of interest. The witnesses seem to have been chosen as men who would corroborate the bill of complaint. In total, five witnesses were called by the plaintiff, four by the defendants. Of the former, three are worthy of examination, firstly because they have most to say about the litigants, secondly because their personal circumstances and answers to the interrogatories suggest that Digby used persuasive means with them, and that they had reason to be susceptible to his overtures.

William Sare was a husbandman living in Diss, Norfolk. He had lived with the Rainbirds as a servant circa 1599, for ‘one whole yeare & no more’. The defendants claimed that Sare had set his name to the bond as a witness; he claimed the signature was forged. He said that the first he knew of the bond for six thousand pounds was in 1609 when Isabel asked him if he recollected it. Thinking she meant a legitimate bond for a smaller sum, Sare ‘unadvisadlie did affirme’ that he did, and upon being shown the paper, but ‘onely his name written to the same’, acknowledged his signature. He claimed that he then asked Isabel how much the bond was worth, and she replied, ‘six thowsand pounds’. Sare concluded ‘that the s[ai]d bond … is rather forged then otherwise’, and his name ‘counterfeited’. Finding him resolute against her, Isabel threatened to keep him ‘in suit fowre or five yeare’ and ‘have [his] eares’,68 a permanent branding that would define him as unworthy and remind society of how he had impugned her honour and how revenge had been justly taken.

Henry Tomes was a labourer living in Finedon, Northamptonshire. A former servant firstly to Dyve and then to the Rainbirds, he was now a tenant of the Digbys, from whom ‘he doeth hould foure acres of meadowe’.69 His relationship with the Rainbirds appears to have ended sourly; so much so that he was named in Nicholas Rainbird’s 1599 Star Chamber bill of complaint against Sir John Dyve as Dyve’s chosen agent to ‘kyll and murder’ him.70 Of all the witness statements, Tomes’s is the most descriptive, and his deposition the most damning. Overall it exhibits gratification at having the opportunity to revenge himself on his former mistress. Rainbird, he alleged, ‘had once made a writinge under his hands … whereby for a Thousand pounds he sold his interest in the s[ai]d Isabell to him the s[ai]d S[i]r John and gave him libertie to com unto her & see her at his pleasure’, a potent counterbalance to Isabel’s claim that Rainbird had lived in fear of her ex-lover. The Brunckers claimed that, like Sare, Tomes had signed the bond; like Sare, Tomes denied all association with it. Bribes from the Brunckers followed, and upon his refusal the same threat was made to him as had been made to Sare, to ‘hold them in suit five yeares & never leave them untill she had of their eares’.71

Notably, Tomes’s name also appears in Boteler v. Dyve (1589), where he was named as ‘a yeoman’ acting as Dyve’s accomplice in an assault on his Bedfordshire neighbour William Boteler of Biddenham.72 This demotion to labourer from yeoman, a place in society that gave him ‘a certain preheminence’, surely aggrieved Tomes and may help to explain his readiness to testify for Digby.73 He claimed he was owed money by Isabel, and if, as the defendants’ second set of interrogatories imply, he had been coached or bribed by Digby, it is easy to see how he might have decided to comply.

The third witness, Dyve’s former servant John Hawkes, also denied knowledge of the bond. Like Tomes, Hawkes emphasised the illicit relationship between Dyve and Isabel. He too had been accused by Rainbird of being a party to Dyve’s attempt to murder him.74 There was clearly bad blood between the parties, and by 1610 Hawkes was Digby’s man. By November of that year at the latest he was employed by Digby as a falconer.75

It was common practice for witnesses’ fees to be paid whilst they were in London, but Sare and Tomes seem to have enjoyed more than usual favour from Digby, as the defendants were at pains to point out. The two erstwhile servants of Isabel Bruncker were ‘lodged … & tabled by his [Digby%E2%80%99s] owne direc[i]on and appoyntm[en]t’ at The Chequer inn at Charing Cross, close to Digby’s lodging.76 The defendants' interrogatories further attest that Digby attempted to influence their testimonies in a number of ways. The interrogatories alleged that he caused them to swear an oath not to contact the Brunckers in London; encouraged them to ‘sweare or testifie spareinglie or doubtfullie’ against the Brunckers; offered ‘p[er]swasions’ to dissuade them from speaking the truth; offered protection ‘to save yow harmelesse’ from the defendants; and told them that breaking a sworn oath ‘doth not endanger the hazard of your salvac[i]on but that it is a thing ordinary where men are at variance’.77

Caution needs to be used in analysing this alleged meddling, as the imputations originate in statements made by a witness for the defendants.78 However, the statements of both Sare and Tomes bear a strong affinity and manifest a number of inconsistencies that, given the known animosity between themselves and the accused, cast some doubt on the Brunckers’ guilt. The best gauge of the likelihood of Digby manipulating the witnesses lies not in these answers per se, but in the character of the man himself. As an ambassador Digby proved himself a wily negotiator and an outspoken, stubborn opponent.79 It is probable that his handling of this case and its witnesses is an early indicator of his employment of the powers of persuasion and manipulation that were part of an ambassador’s core skill set.

How much Digby had at stake, and why he needed to win the case, can be set further into context by considering the potential rewards to ambitious litigants of pressing a suit through Star Chamber, especially those with an agenda beyond the simple satisfaction of taking an opponent down. Firstly, the court’s sessions were open to the public, and therefore afforded plaintiffs a forum in which to denounce defendants and publicise their alleged wrongdoing.80 Manipulating an opponent’s reputation to their detriment while fashioning an image of probity for oneself was a powerful weapon in an age when honour and a good name were crucial benchmarks of social acceptability. Secondly, given that Star Chamber sessions were effectively meetings of the Privy Council for judicial purposes, it was also a stage on which aspirants could prove their acumen, dexterity, and willpower in front of those who had the power to advance them.81 Paradoxically, given that many cases were blatant manipulations of the truth based on old stories and tenuous evidence, it was also a way to show personal integrity by taking the moral high ground. Thus in this instance Digby invited, publicly and before powerful ministers, a contrast between the depravity of the defendants and his own moral uprightness, decrying behaviour that would have been termed ‘filthy’ or ‘bestial’ in defence of his wronged wife.82

Whether Digby was the legal victor cannot be gleaned from the outcome of the litigation because, as with many Star Chamber suits, there is no surviving decree.83 It can be argued, anyway, that guilt or innocence is largely immaterial in such cases. Star Chamber records are not the place to look for legal culpability. Geoffrey Elton summed it up when he wrote that ‘The reconstruction of a Star Chamber case is … attended with every sort of difficulty’, and given the paucity of the surviving documentation, ‘we can only conjecture the truth of statements recorded or guess at the court’s decision.’84 The true value for the historian lies in seeking to understand the litigants’ motivations and the efficacy of case construction, as well as illuminating how early modern men and women used the law for self-promotion and personal and political gain.

The questions thus arise whether Digby was successful, whether his litigation helped him to establish himself in Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire, and whether the strategy of showcasing himself as honourable and worthy of advancement had been effective. The answers are difficult to determine with any certainty, partly because his residence in the locality was curtailed by his departure for Spain in 1611. There was, however, an interesting corollary that sheds some light on the popularity or otherwise of the Brunckers in the months following, and, by extension, that of Digby himself. On 27 July 1610, Digby sent John Hawkes and one Thomas Raynes, a yeoman, to the Brunckers’ empty house in Harlestone to occupy it in the name of Lewis Dyve, ‘to whome the reversion of the said premisses by right of inheritance discended’.85 This was one of the properties leased to the Brunckers by Dyve as part of their settlement, and they had occupied it since 1598, although for the past two years they had been living in London.86 They responded with a further Star Chamber suit, in November 1610, claiming the entry had been forced and chests wrenched open and papers seized.87 Digby’s answer protested that, contrariwise, the entry was not violent; Hawkes and Raynes ‘peaceablie entedd [sic] thereunto’ as they had been commanded by him; the constable was summoned to take an inventory. He argued that the Brunckers had not fulfilled the terms of the lease, which had opened a loophole giving Lady Beatrice, as committee for Lewis’s wardship, a legal right to have it repossessed on the boy’s behalf.88

Possibly Digby was provoked into action following the bond case; as likely, he resorted to forced disseisin as a means to goad the Brunckers into further litigation, giving him a platform upon which he could prove his stepson’s title. Undoubtedly, it was a further assertion of power over the Brunckers. It is also possible that the Brunckers instigated legal proceedings as a forerunner to an out-of-court settlement; doubtless they hoped their tit-for-tat would discredit Digby.89 What the case does prove, however, is how little support the Brunckers had in the region, for twenty-five witnesses are named in the bill as assisting the Digbys in seizing and holding Harlestone, and those who gave statements came out in their support. There are four potential reasons for this: firstly, the Brunckers were inherently unpopular; secondly, the impact of the earlier court case had affected local opinion; thirdly, there was a growing loyalty to Sir John Digby among his servants and in the locality. Some indication of the latter is given by the longevity of service of at least two of his active supporters in the case, Hawkes and Goff, both of whom were still in his service in 1622.90 Fourthly, it may be that the absent Brunckers had less impact on the local community than the Digbys, if they were making an effort to ingratiate themselves.

Additional clues may be gleaned from later litigation. In November 1618 the Attorney General, Sir Henry Yelverton, ‘at the suit of Sir John Digby’ brought a case against one John Mere of Sherborne, Dorset, a gentleman.91 The dispute concerned ‘sundry grounds lands & tenements p[ar]cell of the Castels and Mannors of Sherborne and Castleton’, which Digby claimed Mere had fraudulently attempted to claim ‘for the use of him selfe his wife and Children’. The circumstances in which this case was brought, and the language it employed, bear notable similarities to the Bruncker cases. Mere was described as: ‘a very lewd and dissolute p[er]son, … a common barator’ who was guilty of ‘very foule offences’; he ‘did fraudulently make contrive and counterfeit diverse false and forged deeds and leases’.92 There are clear parallels: the bringing of the case by the Attorney General; the timing of the suit, which occurred, again, a short time after Digby took possession of his Sherborne estate; the accusations of forgery; the allegation of crimes against a dead man; and the representation of the defendant as ‘subtle’, ‘false’, a man of ‘wicked practizes’. As in the Bruncker case, Digby shored up his case by physical intervention, sending his servants to take physical possession of the disputed property.93

In this as in the other cases, Digby was assisted by his lawyer, Anthony Lowe. Digby and Lowe enjoyed a long working relationship. Lowe was closely involved with Digby in 1626, when (as Earl of Bristol) he extracted what Noah Millstone has termed his ‘revenge’ on the Duke of Buckingham for three or more years of what amounted to little better than torment, and he was still working for Bristol in the 1630s.94 This repeated formula suggests some measure of success; it was a formula, in other words, that worked.

Politically, there were no apparent repercussions to the legal action. Simon Healy has suggested that it adversely affected Digby in 1610, when he was sitting in the Commons as MP for Hedon-in-Holderness, in East Yorkshire, possibly due to the involvement of Lord Bruce.95 If this was so, then his troubles were short lived, for he was in the house on 26 March 1610, and sat on committees during the spring and summer of that year.96 Further, it had no apparent negative impact on his reputation in his wider circle of influence, and perhaps the opposite, for he had an inkling of his posting to Spain by August 1610.97

What such cases lack in evidence they provide abundantly in supposition and ‘story’, and if they do not give historians solid grounds from which to analyse certainties, they nonetheless have much to tell about how widely we should set the boundaries of the credible. These cases were crafted to be won, and to be won they had to be believable within the mentality of early modern life. Wandering too far from the credible was to give the opposing party the upper hand. The moral treatises of the age set down rules for conduct in didactic terms, but court records suggest that realities could be far different, and that men of place such as Sir John Dyve could hide dishonourable traits that would have scandalised a puritan readership increasingly concerned with household morality and exemplary patriarchal governance. Given this, it is possible to conclude that early modern men and women strayed further than we sometimes think from the norms of honesty, civility, and courtesy that were supposed to define and set limits to élite behaviour.

Conclusion As this study has shown, the law was a sharp weapon in the armoury of ‘new men’ and aspirant courtiers whose credentials were under assessment from both mentors and rivals, and whose perceived deficiencies were likely to be exploited to their disadvantage. Local disputes could be elevated to a high level through the public forum of the law courts, and used to promote an external show of honour, probity, and credibility in the presence of powerful officers of state – albeit that this external show may have been undermined by dishonourable practices such as witness manipulation. The astute manipulation of language and honour concepts, and the creation of plausible stories out of what was often tenuous evidence, blurring the distinctions between ‘public’ and ‘private’, gave wily litigants a leading hand, especially those trained at the universities and the Inns of Court who understood legal nuances and acknowledged the power of a well-crafted case. Sir John Digby assumed control of his wife’s legal battles for moral and material gain, and used them to make an outward declaration of personal uprightness and political effectiveness designed to increase his authority in the localities and his household, as well as promoting himself as a man of probity. At the same time he negated adverse comment that might have arisen from his marriage to an older, wealthy widow whilst asserting himself before members of the Privy Council and the wider public, exhibiting a morally upstanding philosophy of domestic life and public service that proved he would be a credible and dependable royal servant.

Thus, while legal cases cannot be relied upon to provide clear-cut evidence of guilt or innocence, they can nonetheless be a valuable adjunct to political documents and correspondence, offering insights into the workings of politicians behind the smokescreen of official papers and the stylised language of honour and duty.

Acknowledgements I am indebted to Dr David Appleby, Professor Richard Cust, and Professor Andrew Hopper for their helpful comments on this article.

Notes 1 See particularly R.P. Cust, ‘Honour and Politics in Early Stuart England: the Case of Beaumont v. Hastings’, Past & Present, 149 (1995), p. 61; A. Fletcher, ‘Honour, Reputation and Local Officeholding in Elizabethan and Stuart England’, in A. Fletcher, ed., Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 99; G. R. Elton, Star Chamber Stories (London: Methuen & Co., Limited, 1958), p. 10; J. Guy, in T. Stretton, Women Waging Law in Elizabethan England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 12.

2 Cust, ‘Honour and Politics’, p. 61.

3 Cust, ‘Honour and Politics’, pp. 75–6; M. Stuckey, ‘A Consideration of the Emergence and Exercise of Judicial Authority in the Star Chamber’, Monash University Law Review, 19:1 (1993), p. 118.

4 Bristol to Williams, 24 September 1623, Cabala Sive Scrinia Sacra (London: 1663), p. 99.

5 For an analysis of Digby’s use of language to fashion his identity, see D. Strange, ‘In Honour and Honesty: the Political Career of Sir John Digby, 1611–1616’, (MRes thesis, University of Leicester, 2016).

6 Cicero, De officiis, tr. Walter Miller (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1913), p. 17.

7 Digby was ambassador to Spain between 1611 and 1624. The most comprehensive study of his diplomacy remains S.R. Gardiner, A History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War, 10 vols (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1864–1886) and Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage: 1617–1623, 2 vols (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1869). See also F. de Jesus, El Hecho de los Tratados del Matrimonio Pretendido por el Principe de Gales con la Serenissima Infanta de España Maria, ed. by S.R. Gardiner, Camden Society, Old Series, Vol. 101 (London: Camden Society, 1869).

8 Lady Digby to Cranborne, 1604. Historical Manuscripts Commission (HMC), Cecil, Vol. XVI, 431; Dorset History Centre, D-SCH/KG/1480; D-CRI/A/116/1-1a; The National Archives (TNA), SP 16/524/93; The Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland, Stoke Dry 44.

9 S. Healy, ‘Sir John Digby’, <https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1604-1629/member/d...>

[accessed 5 October 2018]; TNA, SP 14/141/117. Bristol was being referred to by his title in Madrid a month earlier. M.A. Everett Green, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, Vol. CXVI (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1858), (CSPD), 1619–1623, p. 446; Aston to Carleton, 18 August 1622, British Library (BL) Add MS 72285, f. 162; Wilson to [unknown], 13 September 1622, TNA, Secretaries of State: State Papers Foreign, Spain: SP 94/25/212.

10 Chamberlain to Carleton, 6 April 1616, TNA, Secretaries of State: State Papers Domestic, James I: SP 14/86/228; the same to the same, TNA, SP 14/88/196; P. White and A. Cook, Sherborne Old Castle, Dorset: Archaeological Investigations 1930–90 (London: The Society of Antiquaries of London, 2016), p. 28; Digby to James 1, 3 April 1616, TNA, SP 94/22/28; E.G. Atkinson, ed., Acts of the Privy Council of England, Vol. 34, 1615–1616 (London: 1890), p. 469; TNA, Chancery, the Wardrobe, Royal Household, Exchequer and Various Commissions: C2/Jas1/D9/80 Digby v. Meere, 10 February 1616.

11 N. Millstone, Manuscript Circulation and the Invention of Politics in Early Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), p. 136.

12 L. Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 242.

13 Fletcher, p. 93.

14 For example, Digby to James I, 9 August 1611, SP 94/18/137; the same to Rochester, 27 May 1613, SP 94/19/386; the same to James I, 4 September 1613, SP 94/20/64; the same to the same, 6 October 1617, SP 94/22/167; the same to Carleton, 26 November 1623, SP 94/29/86–87.

15 Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, tr. H. Rackham (London: Heinemann, 1926), p. 15; J. Pitt-Rivers, ‘Honour and Social Status’, in Honour and Shame: the Values of Mediterranean Society ed. by J.G. Peristiany (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966), p. 27.

16 W.B. Bidwell and M. Jansson, Proceedings in Parliament 1626. Vol. I, House of Lords (Yale: Yale University Press, 1991), p. 331; S.R. Gardiner, ed., ‘The Earl of Bristol’s Defence of his Negotiations in Spain’, Camden Society, Camden Miscellany, Vol. 6 (London: 1871), pp. 1–29. A contemporary copy is in the Sherborne Castle papers, ‘Manuscript volume containing copies of the Earl of Bristol’s letters, speeches, petitions, interrogations and answers in the articles against him’, c. 1627, ff. 40–66. Also see J. Rushworth, Historical Collections of the Great Affairs of State, Vol. I (London: 1793); T. Cogswell, ‘The Return of the “Deade Alive”: The Earl of Bristol and Dr Eglisham in the Parliament of 1626 and in Caroline Political Culture’, English Historical Review, 128:532 (June 2013), 534–70; Millstone, pp. 129–164.

17 E. Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and the Civil Wars in England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1886), Vol. III, p. 544; Digby to Holles, 18 April 1612, HMC Portland, Vol. IX, p. 103; Digby to James I, 4 September 1613, SP 94/20/37; Digby to Holles, 12 November 1612, HMC Portland, Vol. IX, p. 102.

18 N. Cuddy, ‘The Revival of the Entourage: the Bedchamber of James I, 1603–1625’, in The English Court: from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War, ed. by D. Starkey (New York: 1987), p. 184.

19 R. Cust, Charles I and the Aristocracy 1625–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 95; F. Heal, Hospitality in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 13.

20 P. Lake and S. Pincus, eds, The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007); C. Condren, ‘Public, Private and the Idea of the ‘Public Sphere’ in Early Modern England’, Intellectual History Review, 19: 1 (January 2009), pp. 15–28.

21 E. Foyster, ‘A Laughing Matter? Marital Discord and Gender Control in Seventeenth-Century England’, Rural History, 4:1 (1993), pp. 5–21. For a discussion of concepts of the private see Condren, pp. 23–24.

22 J. Dod and R. Cleaver, A Godly Forme of Household Government for the Ordering of Private Families, According to the Direction of Gods Word (London: 1630), f. A8v.

23 A. Fletcher, Honour, Reputation and Local Officeholding, p. 93; Cust, ‘Honour and politics’, 61; P. Crawford, ‘Public Duty, Conscience, and Women in Early Modern England’ in Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England. Essays Presented to G.E. Aylmer, ed. by J. Morrill, P. Slack and D. Woolf (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 58.

24 ‘A True Register of the Christenings, Marriages and Burialles in the Parishe of St. James, Clarkenwell’, The Harleian Society, Vol. 3, 1551–1574 (London: Harleian Society, 1887), p. 34.

25 A. Willis, ed., ‘The Estate Book of Henry de Bray of Harleston’, Camden Society, Third Series, Vol. 27, p. 97; L.F. Salzman, ed., The Victoria History of the County of Northampton, Vol. IV (London: 1937), p. 283; W. Page, ed., The Victoria History of the County of Bedford: Vol. 3 (London: Constable, 1912), p. 45; F.G. Emmison (ed.), Bedfordshire Parish Registers, Vol. XVI, ‘Bromham, Oakley, Clapham and Biddenham’ (Bedford: County Record Office, 1937), 28A.

26 TNA, STAC 8/13/4 ‘Attorney General v. Bruncker’.

27 TNA, Prerogative Court of Canterbury and Related Probate Jurisdictions: Will Registers: PROB 11/100/305, 19 October 1602; ‘Genealogy of Nicholas Rainbird’, Northamptonshire County Record Office.

28 TNA, STAC 8/69/20 ‘Bruncker v. Digby’; H.G. Tibbutt, ‘The Life and Letters of Sir Lewis Dyve’, The Publications of the Bedfordshire Historical Society, Vol. 38 (Streatley: Bedford Historical Record Society, 1958), p. 2; P.E. Russell, ‘A Stuart Hispanist: James Mabbe’, Journal of Hispanic Studies, 30 (1953), pp. 76–7; ‘A list of the company which attend the Lord Digby … to Brussels’, BL Add MS 72285, f. 89; Bristol to Prince Charles, 11/21 September 1623, SP 94/28/44.

29 Stone, p. 617.

30 PROB 11/70/268; Rushworth, p. 270; Udall to Salisbury, 28 June 1606, HMC Salisbury, Vol. XVIII, p. 181.

31 Page, p. 45. TNA, Court of Wards and Liveries: Inquisitions Post Mortem: WARD 7/25/112.

32 Wilson to Salisbury, 14 August 1608, CSPD, 1603–1610, 433; A.B. Hinds, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Venetian Series, Vol. XI, 1607–1610 (London: HMSO, 1904), p. 777.

33 There is an entry in CSPD 1603–1610 that refers to papers being drawn up for Digby’s embassy in April 1610. This should read April 1611. There is no other reference to his departure as early as this, and Digby’s earliest surviving reference to it is in a letter to Sir Dudley Carleton dated 22 August 1610, as being ‘an incertaintye’. CSPD, 1603–1610, p. 597; Digby to Carleton, 22 August 1610, TNA, Secretaries of State: State Papers Foreign, Venice, SP 99/6/70; Digby to Carleton, 22 March 1611, TNA, SP 84/18/43; Beaulieu to Trumbull, 2 June 1610, HMC Downshire, Vol. II (London: HMSO, 1936), p. 299; Cottington to Trumbull, 27 September 1609, R. Winwood, Memorials of Affairs of State in the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I (London, 1725), p. 73; Sanford to Trumbull, 2 November 1610, BL Add. Ms 22309, f. 39.

34 E.A. Foyster, ‘Marrying the Experienced Widow in Early Modern England: the Male Perspective’, in S. Cavallo and L. Warner, eds, Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Harlow: Longman, 1999), pp. 114–5.

35 Sanford to Trumbull, 6 March 1611. G. Goodman, The Court and Times of King James the First (London: Richard Bentley, 1849), Vol. II, pp. 134–5.

36 Digby to James I, 4 September 1613, SP 94/20/37; the same to Rochester, SP 94/19/77; Sanford to Trumbull, 6 March 1611. Goodman, Court of King James, p. 135.

37 Cited by Stone, p. 623.

38 J. Howell, Proverbs … English, Italian, French and Spanish (London, 1659), p. 17.

39 A. Niccholes, A Discourse of Marriage and Wiving (London, 1615), p. 24.

40 E.A. Foyster, Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex and Marriage (London and New York: Longman, 1999), p. 71.

41 Foyster, ‘Marrying the Experienced Widow’, pp. 109, 112.

42 W. Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties (London, 1622), p. 189.

43 B. Capp, When Gossips Meet: Women, Family, and Neighbourhood in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 79; Foyster, Manhood, p. 71; Page, Bedford, Vol. III, 45; WARD 7/25/112.

44 Digby to Carleton, 22 August 1610, SP 99/6/70.

45 Stone, p. 617.

46 Anon., The Lawes Resolutions of Womens Rights: or, The Lawes Provision for Woemen (London, 1632), p. 196.

47 STAC 8/13/4. Rainbird’s will mentions no bond, but bequeathes to his wife his ‘readie money credits and debts’, the word ‘credit’ perhaps having been taken to embrace the supposed bond. PROB 11/100/305. Author’s italics. There is no surviving will for Dyve, possibly suggesting that it was removed by his widow.

48 STAC 8/13/4. No further evidence has yet been found relating to this case.

49 T. Stretton, ‘Written Obligations, Litigation and Neighbourliness, 1580–1680’ in Remaking English Society: Social Relations and Social Change in Early Modern England, ed. by S. Hindle, A. Shepherd, J. Walter and K. Wrightson (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2013), pp. 194; 207–8. Numbers of cases listed in TNA, STAC 8; data from <http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk> [accessed 9 January 2018].

50 Capp, p. 207.

51 J.A. Sharpe ‘“Such Disagreement Betwyx Neighbours”: Litigation and Human Relations in Early Modern England’, in Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West, ed. by J. Bossy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 185.

52 STAC 8/13/4.

53 S.D. Amussen, An Ordered Society. Gender and Class in Early Modern England (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. 36.

54 C.B. Herrup, A House in Gross Disorder: Sex, Law, and the 2nd Earl of Castlehaven (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). passim.

55 STAC 8/13/4.

56 STAC 8/13/4. On the significance of tokens as emblems of bonding see F. Heal, The Power Of Gifts: Gift-Exchange in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 31–5.

57 L. Gowing, ‘Language, Power and the Law: Women’s Slander Litigation in Early Modern London’, in Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England, ed. by J. Kermode and G. Walker (London: UCL Press, 1994), pp. 30, 39.

58 Gouge, Domesticall Duties, 127; STAC 8/13/4.

59 S.D. Amussen and D.E. Underdown, Gender, Culture and Politics in England, 1540–1640: Turning the World Upside Down (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), p. 4.

60 Foyster, ‘A Laughing Matter?’, p. 9.

61 G.R. Quaife, Wanton Wenches and Wayward Wives – Peasants and Illicit Sex in Early Seventeenth Century England (London: Croom Helm, 1979), p. 142. Quoted in Foyster, ‘A Laughing Matter?’, p. 8.

62 L. Gowing, Domestic Dangers, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 44.

63 Capp, p. 207.

64 L. Pollock, ‘Honour, Gender and Reconciliation in Élite Culture, 1570–1700’. Journal of British Studies, 46: 1 (January 2007), p. 23.

65 TNA, STAC 8/13/4.

66 TNA, STAC 8/251/11 ‘Raynberd v. Dyve, Hawkes, Skurrall and Tommes’; Bedfordshire County Record Office (BCRO), TW 1016.

67 Herrup, p. 24.

68 STAC 8/13/4.

69 STAC 8/13/4

70 STAC 8/251/11.

71 STAC 8/13/4.

72 BCRO, TW 1016 .

73 T. Smith, De Republicam Anglorum (London, 1584), pp. 30–1, 33; K. Wrightson, English Society 1580–1680 3rd edn (London: Hutchinson, 1986), pp. 20–1.

74 STAC 8/251/11.

75 STAC 8/69/20.

76 STAC 8/13/4.

77 STAC 8/13/4.

78 STAC 8/13/4, Deposition of Richard Spitter.

79 See, for example, Digby to the Cardinal of Toledo, June 1611, ‘Earl of Bristol’s letters’, Sherborne Castle MS, ff. 43–44; Digby to James I, 16 June 1611, SP 94/18/103–104; Bristol to James I, 6 December 1623, SP 94/29/130–3; Gardiner, ‘The Earl of Bristol’s Defence’, pp. 1–29.

80 E.P. Cheyney, ‘The Court of Star Chamber’, The American Historical Review, 18: 4 (July 1913), p. 737; Cust, ‘Honour and Politics’, pp. 75–6.

81 E. Coke, The Fourth Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England Concerning the Jurisdiction of Courts (London, 1648), p. 65; G.R. Elton, The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), pp. 158–163.

82 M. Ingram, ‘Sexual Manners: the Other Face of Civility in Early Modern England’, in Civil Histories: Essays Presented to Sir Keith Thomas, ed. by P. Burke, B. Harrison and P. Slack, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 102.

83 ‘The sentences, decrees and Acts of this Court are ingrossed in a fair book.’ Coke, Institutes, 64–65. These ‘fair books’ of decrees were lost, ‘probably within the first half century after the abolition of the court in 1641’. Public Record Office Handbook (London: HMSO, 1995), p. 2.

84 Elton, Star Chamber Stories, p. 17.

85 STAC 8/69/20.

86 STAC 8/69/20; Isabel Rainbird to Lord Douglas, 6 January c. 1598, E. Salisbury, ed., Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Hon. the Marquis of Salisbury, Vol. 13 (London: HMSO, 1915), p. 426; the same to the same, c. 1598, ibid, p. 444.

87 STAC 8/69/20.

88 STAC 8/69/20.

89 Cust, ‘Honour and Politics’, p. 77; Sharpe, pp. 182–83, 185.

90 ‘A passe for John ffitch and John Hawkes’, 7 November 1622, Acts of the Privy Council, 1621– 1623, 352; Digby to Calvert, 5 August 1622, TNA, SP 94/25/159.

91 TNA, STAC 8/25/7 ‘Attorney General v. Meere [sic]’; TNA, STAC 8/217/19 Mere v. Digby, Goffe, Foster, Swetnam, Scryven, Starr, Walcott, Roe, Morgan and others’; C2/JasI/D9/80.

92 STAC 8/25/7.

93 STAC 8/217/19.

94 Millstone, pp. 129–164; e.g. TNA, C2/ChasI/B85/57 Bristol v. Dewdney.

95 Simon Healy, ‘Sir John Digby’.

96 Journal of the House of Commons, Vol. 1, 1547–1629 (London: HMSO, 1802), pp. 414, 418, 419, 447.

97 Digby to Carleton, 22 August 1610, SP 99/6/70; SP 94/18/50–55.

Additional information Author information Diane Strange Diane Strange, PhD student, Centre for English Local History, University of Leicester (PhD title: ‘“The Contempt and Reproach of Our Nation”: the Court of Wards and Liveries, 1625–1650’).