Abstract

Frances Coke, daughter of Sir Edward Coke and Lady Elizabeth Hatton, was married in 1617 to Sir John Villiers, brother of the royal favorite George Villiers, then earl of Buckingham. Although history has little to say about Frances, reading gossip about her in letters provides an alternative, subjective means of gaining insight into her social existence. While most letters about the wedding are preoccupied by the evidence events provided of the king’s favor to Coke, one writer, Castle, passed on a secondhand observation that the bride had cried at the wedding, with some speculative interpretations of her tears. This article explores representations of the wedding in that letter, and others as a contrast to it, to gain an understanding of the cultural, rather than historical, meanings in circulation around this episode in Frances’s life.

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