That Carr and Lady Essex should have an intrigue together was not so bad,
but that Mrs. Turner should have recourse to charms and conjurations, "to
inchant the Viscount's affection towards her," that "much time should be
spent, many words of witchcraft, great cost in making pictures of wax,
crosses of silver, and little babies for that use," that specially, there
should be among the images of wax, one "very sumptuously apparrelled in
silke and sattin, as alsoe another sitting in forme of a naked woman
spreading and laying forth her haires in a glass," was terrible misdoing
against both God and the king. The murder of Sir Thomas Overbury was
venial; the intrigue between his favourite and another man's wife was
venial too; his own vices were mere kindly flea-bites on his dignity; but
charms and conjurations, and my Lady Essex calling that old wizard Foreman
her "sweet father"--this was more than the British Solomon could well
digest. So when he had got tired of Carr and wanted to be rid of him, he
suddenly remembered sweet Father Foreman, disciple of Dr. Dee, and Mrs.
Turner, inventor of yellow starch for ruffs and falling bands, and not
only smote Somerset straight in the face for his own share, but sent a
side shaft after him, through his "creatures." Well for himself was it
that sweet Father Foreman was dead and buried deep; so there only remained
Mrs. Turner and one or two inferior agents in the matter--just enough to
keep the people amused, and satisfy the royal lust for witch blood.
Somerset came to the block on another count, about as false as the rest;
and Mrs. Turner swung from the gibbet in her yellow ruff on every plea but
the right one, and for any sin but those of her real and actual life.
After her death was found her black scarf full of white crosses: and the
mould in which Father Foreman had cast his leaden images of women; and
written charms spread out on fair white parchment; and, worst of all, a
list of all the ladies who had gone to consult the sorcerer as to how they
might gain the love of other lords than their own; which list the Lord
Chief Justice would not read out in court because, said the gossips, his
own wife's name was the first that caught his eye.