The Court also, at this time, was becoming unpopular. Buckingham was filling it with licentious gallants and with ladies of a type to match them. At Whitehall, there was a constant round of dissipation and libertinism. Besides the very free and easy balls, masques and banquets, there were what were called "quaint conceits" of more than doubtful decency, and there was much buffoonery of a very low type. In the Secret History of the Court of James I. it is recorded that, at this time, namely, about 1618 or 1619, there were "none great with Buckingham but bawds and parasites, and such as humoured him in his unchaste pleasures; so that since his first being a pretty, harmless, affable gentleman, he grew insolent, cruel, and a monster not to be endured."

Lord Purbeck held the appointment of Master of the Robes to Prince Charles, and he seems to have lived in the palace of the Prince; for, even as late as 1625, we read of Lady Purbeck remaining in "the Prinses house."[45] In 1620 Chamberlain wrote to Carleton[46] that when Buckingham was overpressed by business, he handed over suitors to his brother Purbeck. On the 18th of January, 1620, a letter[47] of Nethersole's states that Purbeck had resigned his post of Master of the Robes, in order to become Master of the Horse to the Prince.

At some date between that of his marriage in the year 1617 and 1622, Purbeck was received into the Catholic Church, by Father Percy, alias Fisher, a Jesuit. This step does not appear in any way to have affected his position at Court. In a manuscript in the library of the large Jesuit College of Stonyhurst,[48] in Lancashire, it is stated that "the Viscount de Purbeck (sic) brother of the Marquis of Buckingham, having been converted to the Catholic faith and reconciled to the Holy Church, by Father John Persens, S.J., betook himself to the Countess, his mother, and gave her so good an account of the said Father, and of the consolation he had received of him, that she greatly desired to speak to him, and sending him to call the Father, she heard him discourse fully of the Catholic faith, &c."

In Laud's Diary there is an entry: "1622, April 23. Being the Tuesday in Easter week, the King sent for me & set me into a course about the countess of Buckingham, who about that time was wavering in point of religion." And again: "May 24. The conference[49] between Mr. Fisher [Percy] a Jesuit, & myself, before the lord Marquis of Buckingham, & the countess, his mother."

There are people who are of opinion that for a Protestant to become a Catholic is an almost certain proof of madness; and such will rejoice to hear that, some time after Lord Purbeck had been received into the Catholic Church, he either showed, or is reputed to have shown, signs of lunacy.

Some authorities doubt whether Purbeck was ever out of his mind; but on the whole the weight of evidence is against them. Yet there are some rather unaccountable incidents in their favour. Again, when anybody is reputed to be mad, exaggerated stories of his doings are very likely to be spread about. Even in these days of advanced medical science, it is sometimes difficult to decide whether a patient is insane or not, and it is quite possible to suffer from very severe fits of depression without being the subject of maniacal melancholia, or from very violent fits of passion without being a madman.

There is just a possibility, too, that Buckingham may have wished to keep his brother quiet, or to get him out of the way, because that brother "would speake plaine English to him" about his licentious conduct and other matters, as we have already read. When a friend or a relative tells a man that he is behaving scandalously, the recipient of the information is apt to say that his informer is "cracked."

The earliest hint of Lord Purbeck's insanity was given in 1620. "The Lord Viscount Purbeck went abroad in the latter end of May 1620, under colour of drinking the waters of Spaw, but in fact, as Camden tells us, to hide his being run mad with pride."[50] The strongest evidence of anything like actual madness is in a letter[51] from Chamberlain to Carleton, written on 8th June, 1622. It may, however, be mere gossip. "The Lord of Purbecke is out of order likewise, for this day feurtnight getting into a roome next the street in Wallingford house, he beat down the glasse windowes with his bare fists and all bloudied &c." If this be true, may it not be possible that he was trying to break his way out of a room in which Buckingham had locked him up on the pretence that he was insane? Of Wallingford House the same correspondent says in another letter: "Buckingham has bought Lord Wallingford's house at Whitehall, by paying some money[52] making Sir Thomas Howard, Visct. Andover, and some say, releasing the Earl and Countess of Somerset."

In August, 1623, the Duchess of Buckingham—this would be Buckingham's wife and not his mother, the Countess of Buckingham—wrote to Conway:—

"Sir,[53]