Love, Madness, and Scandal by Johanna Luthman;

Author:Johanna Luthman; [Luthman, Johanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780191069727
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA
Published: 2016-12-14T00:00:00+00:00

Finally, Buckingham received word from his spies that Frances was hiding out in a house adjacent to Cesare Allessandro Scaglia, the ambassador of the Duke of Savoy. In order to assist Sergeant Bennet in his tricky task, one of Buckingham’s mother’s gentlemen went to Scaglia and asked for his assistance in the matter. The Countess of Buckingham wanted sergeants and other officers to be able to pass through the ambassador’s house and gardens in their process of catching the recalcitrant Frances in the neighbouring house. Scaglia was not pleased about this request, as he found the whole business distasteful. He thought it was unseemly to ask him to open up his house to ‘such persons’ (meaning the sergeants) and to make him party to ‘the surprise and arrest of a fair Lady his neighbor’. After considering the situation’s political complexities, he reluctantly let the authorities in.30

The sergeants were lying in wait at Scaglia’s, trying to determine the best time to strike. Suddenly, they were forced into action. On the street side of the house, a young woman rushed out, darted into the ambassador’s coach, and drove off at high speed. The sergeants and the officers scrambled to catch up, leading to a mad chase down the Strand: galloping horses pulled Scaglia’s coach at the front and the sergeants, both by foot and by horse, dashed behind. Curious onlookers lined the streets and windows, and fleet-footed youngsters ran along, so not to miss the conclusion of the spectacle. When the sergeants finally caught up with the coach and triumphantly got their hands on its passenger, their satisfaction turned into embarrassed rage. The young woman they had been chasing was not Frances, as they had thought, but rather the ambassador’s page, ‘a handsome Fair Boy’ dressed in women’s clothing. While the sergeants were busy chasing down the coach, Frances herself had quietly slipped away under the cover of the diversionary hubbub. Dressed as a man, with her young son in tow, she climbed into another coach and disappeared.31 To his great dismay, Sergeant Bennet had indeed ‘fayled’, outsmarted by a fugitive lady. As a consequence he soon found himself behind bars for several weeks.32

Buckingham’s rage was palpable when he found out that Frances had slipped away. Most of his fury was directed towards Scaglia, as he felt the ambassador had publicly scorned him by helping Frances, ‘she being Wife to his Brother, & bringing him Children of anothers begetting’, he seethed. Scaglia was placed in a difficult situation: he needed to be in good standing with Buckingham and King Charles in order to be able to serve the interests of his master, the Duke of Savoy. The Savoyard thus sought to rectify matters with Buckingham right away, only to find his entrance into Whitehall Palace denied. When he tried to get the Lord Chamberlain to intervene on his behalf, he received a curt message from Buckingham, ‘who took his proceeding so unkindly as he was resolved not to speak with him’. Scaglia was disappointed, but hoped that time would heal the wounds.

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