(Vol. ix., pp. 105. 160.)
That this infamous man _did_ die of poison, is, I believe, the general
opinion. The late Dr. Cooke Taylor has the following passage upon the
subject, in his _Romantic Biography of the Age of Elizabeth_, vol. i.
p. 115.:
"Nearly all the cotemporary writers assert that Leicester fell a victim
to poison; Naunton declares that he, by mistake, swallowed the potion
he had prepared for another person; and, as there can be no doubt that
the Earl was a poisoner of great eminence and success, the story is far
from being improbable. The Privy Council must have believed that his
death was not natural, for they minutely investigated a report that he
had been poisoned by the son of Sir James Crofts, in revenge for the
imprisonment of his father. Some suspicious circumstances were elicited
during the examination; but the matter was suddenly dropped, probably
because an inquiry into any one of the complicated intrigues of
Elizabeth's court would have involved too many persons of honour and
consequence."
Drummond of Hawthornden, in his _Notes of Conversations with Ben Jonson_,
has the following curious note:
"The Earl of Leicester gave a bottle of liquor to his lady, which he
willed her to use in any faintness; which she, after his returne from
Court, not knowing it was poison, gave him, and so he died."
This is a strong confirmation of the statement given by Sir Robert Naunton.
In one of the many valuable notes appended by Dr. Bliss to the _Athenae
Oxonienses_, is the following cotemporary narrative, copied from a MS.
memoranda on a copy of _Leicester's Ghost_:
"The author (of the poem) hath omitted the end of the Earle, the which
may thus and truely be supplied. The Countesse Lettice fell in love
with Christopher Blunt, gent., of the Earle's horse; and they had many
secret meetings, and much wanton familiarity; the which being
discovered by the Earle, to prevent the pursuit thereof, when Generall
of the Low Countreys, hee tooke Blunt with him, and theire purposed to
have him made away: and for this plot there was a ruffian of Burgundy
suborned, who, watching him in one night going to his lodging at the
Hage, followed him and struck at his head with a halbert or battle-axe,
intending to cleave his head. But the axe glaunced, and withall pared
off a great piece of Blunt's skull, which was very dangerous and longe
in healinge: but he recovered, and after married the Countesse; who
took this soe ill, as that she, with Blunt, deliberated and resolved to
dispatch the Earle. The Earle, not patient of this soe greate wrong of
his wife, purposed to carry her to Kenilworth; and to leave here there
untill her death by naturall or by violent means, but rather by the
last. The Countesse also having a suspicion, or some secret
intelligence of this treachery against her, provided artificial meanes
to prevent the Earle; which was by a cordiall, the which she had no fit
opportunity to offer him till he came to Cornebury Hall, in
Oxfordshire; where the Earle, after his gluttonous manner, surfeiting
with excessive eating and drinking, fell soe ill that he was forced to
stay there. Then the deadly cordiall was propounded unto him by the
Countesse; as Mr. William Haynes, sometimes the Earle's page, and then
gentleman of his bed-chamber, told me, who protested hee saw her give
that fatall cup to the Earle, which was his last draught, and an end of
his plott against the Countesse, and of his journey, and of himselfe;
and soe--_Fraudis fraude sua prenditur artifex._"--_Athenae Oxon._, vol.
ii. col. 74, 75. note.