to Overbury, requesting him to bear his ill-fortune patiently, and
promising that his imprisonment should not be of long duration; for that
his friends were exerting themselves to soften the king's displeasure.
Still pretending the extreme of sympathy for him, he followed up the
letters by presents of pastry and other delicacies, which could not be
procured in the Tower. These articles were all poisoned. Occasionally,
presents of a similar description were sent to Sir Jervis Elwes, with the
understanding that these articles were not poisoned, when they were
unaccompanied by letters: of these the unfortunate prisoner never tasted.
A woman named Turner, who had formerly kept a house of ill-fame, and who
had more than once lent it to further the guilty intercourse of Rochester
and Lady Essex, was the agent employed to procure the poisons. They were
prepared by Dr. Forman, a pretended fortune-teller of Lambeth, assisted by
an apothecary named Franklin. Both these persons knew for what purposes
the poisons were needed, and employed their skill in mixing them in the
pastry and other edibles, in such small quantities as gradually to wear
out the constitution of their victim. Mrs. Turner regularly furnished the
poisoned articles to the under-keeper, who placed them before Overbury.
Not only his food but his drink was poisoned. Arsenic was mixed with the
salt he ate, and cantharides with the pepper. All this time his health
declined sensibly. Daily he grew weaker and weaker; and with a sickly
appetite craved for sweets and jellies. Rochester continued to condole
with him, and anticipated all his wants in this respect, sending him
abundance of pastry, and occasionally partridges and other game, and young
pigs. With the sauce for the game, Mrs. Turner mixed a quantity of
cantharides, and poisoned the pork with lunar-caustic. As stated on the
trial, Overbury took in this manner poison enough to have poisoned twenty
men; but his constitution was strong, and he still lingered. Franklin, the
apothecary, confessed that he prepared with Dr. Forman seven different
sorts of poisons, viz. aquafortis, arsenic, mercury, powder of diamonds,
lunar caustic, great spiders, and cantharides. Overbury held out so long
that Rochester became impatient, and in a letter to Lady Essex, expressed
his wonder that things were not sooner despatched. Orders were immediately
sent by Lady Essex to the keeper to finish with the victim at once.
Overbury had not been all this time without suspicion of treachery,
although he appears to have had no idea of poison. He merely suspected
that it was intended to confine him for life, and to set the king still
more bitterly against him. In one of his letters he threatened Rochester
that unless he were speedily liberated, he would expose his villany to the
world. He says, "You and I, ere it be long, will come to a public trial of
another nature." * * * "Drive me not to extremities, lest I should say
something that both you and I should repent." * * * "Whether I live or
die, your shame shall never die, but ever remain to the world, to make you
the most odious man living." * * * "I wonder much you should neglect him
to whom such secrets of all kinds have passed." * * * "Be these the fruits
of common secrets, common dangers?"
[Illustration: SIR THOMAS OVERBURY.]
All these remonstrances, and hints as to the dangerous secrets in his
keeping, were ill calculated to serve him with a man so reckless as Lord
Rochester: they were more likely to cause him to be sacrificed than to be
saved. Rochester appears to have acted as if he thought so. He doubtless
employed the murderer's reasoning, that "dead men tell no tales," when,
after receiving letters of this description, he complained to his paramour
of the delay. Weston was spurred on to consummate the atrocity; and the
patience of all parties being exhausted, a dose of corrosive sublimate was
administered to him in October 1613, which put an end to his sufferings,
after he had been for six months in their hands. On the very day of his
death, and before his body was cold, he was wrapped up carelessly in a
sheet, and buried without any funeral ceremony in a pit within the
precincts of the Tower.
Sir Anthony Weldon, in his _Court and Character of James I._, gives a
somewhat different account of the closing scene of this tragedy. He says,
"Franklin and Weston came into Overbury's chamber, and found him in
infinite torment, with contention between the strength of nature and the
working of the poison; and it being very like that nature had gotten the
better in this contention, by the thrusting out of boils, blotches, and
blains, they, fearing it might come to light by the judgment of
physicians, the foul play that had been offered him, consented to stifle
him with the bedclothes, which accordingly was performed; and so ended his
miserable life, with the assurance of the conspirators that he died by the
poison; none thinking otherwise than these two murderers."
The sudden death, the indecent haste of the funeral, and the non-holding
of an inquest upon the body, strengthened the suspicions that were afloat.
Rumour, instead of whispering, began to speak out; and the relatives of
the deceased openly expressed their belief that their kinsman had been
murdered. But Rochester was still all powerful at court, and no one dared
to utter a word to his discredit. Shortly afterwards, his marriage with
the Countess of Essex was celebrated with the utmost splendour, the king
himself being present at the ceremony.
It would seem that Overbury's knowledge of James's character was deeper
than Rochester had given him credit for, and that he had been a true
prophet when he predicted that his marriage would eventually estrange
James from his minion. At this time, however, Rochester stood higher than
ever in the royal favour; but it did not last long--conscience, that busy
monitor, was at work. The tongue of rumour was never still; and Rochester,
who had long been a guilty, became at last a wretched man. His cheeks lost
their colour--his eyes grew dim; and he became moody, careless, and
melancholy. The king, seeing him thus, took at length no pleasure in his
society, and began to look about for another favourite. George Villiers,
Duke of Buckingham, was the man to his mind: quick-witted, handsome, and
unscrupulous. The two latter qualities alone were sufficient to recommend
him to James I. In proportion as the influence of Rochester declined, that
of Buckingham increased. A falling favourite has no friends; and rumour
wagged her tongue against Rochester louder and more pertinaciously than
ever. A new favourite, too, generally endeavours to hasten by a kick the
fall of the old one; and Buckingham, anxious to work the complete ruin of
his forerunner in the king's good graces, encouraged the relatives of Sir
Thomas Overbury to prosecute their inquiries into the strange death of
their kinsman.
James was rigorous enough in the punishment of offences when he was not
himself involved. He piqued himself, moreover, on his dexterity in
unravelling mysteries. The affair of Sir Thomas Overbury found him
congenial occupation. He set to work by ordering the arrest of Sir Jervis
Elwes. James, at this early stage of the proceedings, does not seem to
have been aware that Rochester was so deeply implicated. Struck with
horror at the atrocious system of slow poisoning, the king sent for all
the judges. According to Sir Anthony Weldon, he knelt down in the midst of
them, and said, "My lords the judges, it is lately come to my hearing that
you have now in examination a business of poisoning. Lord! in what a
miserable condition shall this kingdom be (the only famous nation for
hospitality in the world) if our tables should become such a snare, as
that none could eat without danger of life, and that Italian custom should
be introduced among us! Therefore, my lords, I charge you, as you will
answer it at that great and dreadful day of judgment, that you examine it
strictly, without favour, affection, or partiality. And if you shall spare
any guilty of this crime, God's curse light on you and your posterity! and
if I spare any that are guilty, God's curse light on me and my posterity
for ever!"
[Illustration: DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.]
The imprecation fell but too surely upon the devoted house of Stuart. The
solemn oath was broken, and God's curse _did_ light upon him and his
posterity!
The next person arrested after Sir Jervis Elwes, was Weston, the
under-keeper; then Franklin and Mrs. Turner; and lastly, the Earl and
Countess of Somerset, to which dignity Rochester had been advanced since
the death of Overbury.
Weston was first brought to trial. Public curiosity was on the stretch.
Nothing else was talked of, and the court on the day of trial was crowded
to suffocation. The _State Trials_ report, that Lord Chief Justice Coke
"laid open to the jury the baseness and cowardliness of poisoners, who
attempt that secretly against which there is no means of preservation or
defence for a man's life; and how rare it was to hear of any poisoning in
England, so detestable it was to our nation. But the devil had taught
divers to be cunning in it, so that they can poison in what distance of
space they please, by consuming the _nativum calidum_, or _humidum
radicale_, in one month, two or three, or more, as they list, which they
four manner of ways do execute, viz. _haustu_, _gustu_, _odore_, and
_contactu_."
[Illustration: LORD COKE.]
When the indictment was read over, Weston made no other reply than "Lord
have mercy upon me! Lord have mercy upon me!" On being asked how he would
be tried, he refused to throw himself upon a jury of his country, and
declared that he would be tried by God alone. In this he persisted for
some time. The fear of the dreadful punishment for contumacy[38] induced
him at length to plead "Not guilty," and take his trial in due course of
law.
[38] The punishment for the contumacious was expressed by the
words _onere, frigore, et fame_. By the first was meant, that
the culprit should be extended on his back on the ground, and
weights placed over his body, gradually increased, until he
expired. Sometimes the punishment was not extended to this
length, and the victim being allowed to recover, underwent
the second portion, the _frigore_, which consisted in his
standing naked in the open air, for a certain space, in the
sight of all the people. The third, or _fame_, was more
dreadful, the statute saying, "That he was to be preserved
with the coarsest bread that could be got, and water out of
the next sink, or puddle, to the place of execution; and that
day he had water he should have no bread, and that day he had
bread he should have no water;" and in this torment he was to
linger as long as nature would hold out.
All the circumstances against him were fully proved, and he was found
guilty and executed at Tyburn. Mrs. Turner, Franklin, and Sir Jervis Elwes
were also brought to trial, found guilty, and executed between the 19th of
October and the 4th of December 1615; but the grand trial of the Earl and
Countess of Somerset did not take place till the month of May following.
On the trial of Sir Jervis Elwes, circumstances had transpired, shewing a
guilty knowledge of the poisoning on the part of the Earl of Northampton,
the uncle of Lady Somerset, and the chief falconer Sir Thomas Monson. The
former was dead; but Sir Thomas Monson was arrested and brought to trial.
It appeared, however, that he was too dangerous a man to be brought to the
scaffold. He knew too many of the odious secrets of James I., and his
dying speech might contain disclosures which would compromise the king. To
conceal old guilt it was necessary to incur new: the trial of Sir Thomas
Monson was brought to an abrupt conclusion, and himself set at liberty.
Already James had broken his oath. He now began to fear that he had been
rash in engaging so zealously to bring the poisoners to punishment. That
Somerset would be declared guilty there was no doubt, and that he looked
for pardon and impunity was equally evident to the king. Somerset, while
in the Tower, asserted confidently that James would not _dare_ to bring
him to trial. In this he was mistaken; but James was in an agony. What the
secret was between them will now never be known with certainty; but it may
be surmised. Some have imagined it to be the vice to which the king was
addicted; while others have asserted that it related to the death of
Prince Henry, a virtuous young man, who had held Somerset in especial
abhorrence. This prince died early, unlamented by his father, and, as
public opinion whispered at the time, poisoned by Somerset. Probably some
crime or other lay heavy upon the soul of the king; and Somerset, his
accomplice, could not be brought to public execution with safety. Hence
the dreadful tortures of James when he discovered that his favourite was
so deeply implicated in the murder of Overbury. Every means was taken by
the agonised king to bring the prisoner into what was called a safe frame
of mind. He was secretly advised to plead guilty, and trust to the
clemency of the king. The same advice was conveyed to the countess. Bacon
was instructed by the king to draw up a paper of all the points of "mercy
and favour" to Somerset which might result from the evidence; and Somerset
was again recommended to plead guilty, and promised that no evil should
ensue to him.
[Illustration: THE EARL OF SOMERSET.]
The countess was first tried. She trembled and shed tears during the
reading of the indictment, and, in a low voice, pleaded guilty. On being
asked why sentence of death should not be passed against her, she replied
meekly, "I can much aggravate, but nothing extenuate my fault. I desire
mercy, and that the lords will intercede for me with the king." Sentence
of death was passed upon her.
Next day the earl was brought to trial. He appears to have mistrusted the
promises of James, and he pleaded not guilty. With a self-possession and
confidence which he felt, probably, from his knowledge of the king's
character, he rigorously cross-examined the witnesses, and made a stubborn
defence. After a trial which lasted eleven hours he was found guilty, and
condemned to the felon's death.
[Illustration: THE COUNTESS OF SOMERSET.]
Whatever may have been the secrets between the criminal and the king, the
latter, notwithstanding his terrific oath, was afraid to sign the
death-warrant. It might, perchance, have been his own. The earl and
countess were committed to the Tower, where they remained for nearly five
years. At the end of this period, to the surprise and scandal of the
community, and the disgrace of its chief magistrate, they both received
the royal pardon, but were ordered to reside at a distance from the court.
Having been found guilty of felony, the estates of the earl had become
forfeited; but James granted him out of their revenues an income of
4000l. per annum! Shamelessness could go no further.
Of the after-life of these criminals nothing is known, except that the
love they had formerly borne each other was changed into aversion, and
that they lived under the same roof for months together without the
interchange of a word.
The exposure of their atrocities did not put a stop to the practice of
poisoning. On the contrary, as we shall see hereafter, it engendered that
insane imitation which is so strange a feature of the human character.
James himself is supposed, with great probability, to have fallen a victim
to it. In the notes to Harris's _Life and Writings of James I._, there is
a good deal of information on the subject. The guilt of Buckingham,
although not fully established, rests upon circumstances of suspicion
stronger than have been sufficient to lead hundreds to the scaffold. His
motives for committing the crime are stated to have been a desire of
revenge for the coldness with which the king, in the latter years of his
reign, began to regard him; his fear that James intended to degrade him;
and his hope that the great influence he possessed over the mind of the
heir-apparent would last through a new reign, if the old one were brought
to a close.
In the second volume of the _Harleian Miscellany_, there is a tract,
entitled the _Forerunner of Revenge_, written by George Eglisham, doctor
of medicine, and one of the physicians to King James. Harris, in quoting
it, says that it is full of rancour and prejudice. It is evidently
exaggerated, but forms nevertheless a link in the chain of evidence.
Eglisham says, "The king being sick of an ague, the duke took this
opportunity, when all the king's doctors of physic were at dinner, and
offered to him a white powder to take, the which he a long time refused;
but, overcome with his flattering importunity, he took it in wine, and
immediately became worse and worse, falling into many swoonings and pains,
and violent fluxes of the belly, so tormented, that his majesty cried out
aloud of this white powder, 'Would to God I had never taken it!'" He then
tells us "of the Countess of Buckingham (the duke's mother) applying the
plaister to the king's heart and breast, whereupon he grew faint and
short-breathed, and in agony; that the physicians exclaimed that the king
was poisoned; that Buckingham commanded them out of the room, and
committed one of them close prisoner to his own chamber, and another to be
removed from court; and that, after his majesty's death, his body and head
swelled above measure; his hair, with the skin of his head, stuck to his
pillow, and his nails became loose on his fingers and toes." Clarendon,
who, by the way, was a partisan of the duke's, gives a totally different
account of James's death. He says, "It was occasioned by an ague (after a
short indisposition by the gout), which, meeting many humours in a fat
unwieldy body of fifty-eight years old, in four or five fits carried him
out of the world,--after whose death many scandalous and libellous
discourses were raised, without the least colour or ground, as appeared
upon the strictest and most malicious examination that could be made, long
after, in a time of license, when nobody was afraid of offending majesty,
and when prosecuting the highest reproaches and contumelies against the
royal family was held very meritorious." Notwithstanding this confident
declaration, the world will hardly be persuaded that there was not some
truth in the rumours that were abroad. The inquiries which were instituted
were not strict, as he asserts, and all the unconstitutional influence of
the powerful favourite was exerted to defeat them. In the celebrated
accusations brought against Buckingham by the Earl of Bristol, the
poisoning of King James was placed last on the list; and the pages of
history bear evidence of the summary mode in which they were, for the
time, got rid of.
The man from whom Buckingham is said to have procured his poisons was one
Dr. Lamb, a conjuror and empiric, who, besides dealing in poisons,
pretended to be a fortune-teller. The popular fury, which broke with
comparative harmlessness against his patron, was directed against this
man, until he could not appear with safety in the streets of London. His
fate was melancholy. Walking one day in Cheapside, disguised, as he
thought, from all observers, he was recognised by some idle boys, who
began to hoot and pelt him with stones, calling out, "The poisoner! the
poisoner! Down with the wizard! down with him!" A mob very soon collected,
and the doctor took to his heels and ran for his life. He was pursued and
seized in Wood Street, and from thence dragged by the hair through the
mire to St. Paul's Cross; the mob beating him with sticks and stones, and
calling out, "Kill the wizard! kill the poisoner!"
Charles I., on hearing of the riot, rode from Whitehall to quell it; but
he arrived too late to save the victim. Every bone in his body was broken,
and he was quite dead. Charles was excessively indignant, and fined the
city six hundred pounds for its inability to deliver up the ring-leaders
to justice.
[Illustration: PAUL'S CROSS; SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.]
But it was in Italy that poisoning was most prevalent. From a very early
period, it seems to have been looked upon in that country as a perfectly
justifiable means of getting rid of an enemy. The Italians of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries poisoned their opponents with as
little compunction as an Englishman of the present day brings an action at
law against any one who has done him an injury. The writings of
contemporary authors inform us that, when La Spara and La Tophania carried
on their infernal trade, ladies put poison-bottles on their
dressing-tables as openly, and used them with as little scruple upon
others, as modern dames use _Eau de Cologne_ or lavender-water upon
themselves. So powerful is the influence of fashion, it can even cause
murder to be regarded as a venial peccadillo.
In the memoirs of the last Duke of Guise, who made a Quixotic attempt, in
1648, to seize upon the government of Naples, we find some curious
particulars relative to the popular feeling with regard to poisoning. A
man named Gennaro Annese, who, after the short and extraordinary career of
Masaniello the fisherman, had established himself as a sort of
captain-general of the populace, rendered himself so obnoxious to the Duke
of Guise, that the adherents of the latter determined to murder him. The
captain of the guard, as the duke himself very coolly informs us, was
requested to undertake this office. It was suggested to him that the
_poniard_ would be the most effectual instrument, but the man turned up
his eyes with pious horror at the proposition. He was ready to _poison_
Gennaro Annese whenever he might be called upon to do so; but to poniard
him, he said, would be disgraceful, and unbecoming an officer of the
guards! At last, poison was agreed upon, and Augustino Molla, an attorney
in the duke's confidence, brought the bottle containing the liquid to shew
it to his master. The following is the Duke's own account:
"Augustino came to me at night, and told me: 'I have brought you something
which will free you from Gennaro. He deserves death, and it is no great
matter after what fashion justice is done upon him. Look at this vial,
full of clear and beautiful water: in four days' time, it will punish all
his treasons. The captain of the guard has undertaken to give it him; and
as it has no taste at all, Gennaro will suspect nothing.'"
The duke further informs us that the dose was duly administered; but that
Gennaro, fortunately for himself, ate nothing for dinner that day but
cabbage dressed with oil, which acting as an antidote, caused him to vomit
profusely, and saved his life. He was exceedingly ill for five days, but
never suspected that he had been poisoned.
In process of time, poison-vending became a profitable trade. Eleven years
after this period, it was carried on at Rome to such an extent, that the
sluggish government was roused to interference. Beckmann, in his _History
of Inventions_, and Lebret, in his _Magazin zum Gebrauche der Staaten
Kirche Geschichte_, or _Magazine of Materials for a History of a State
Church_, relates that, in the year 1659, it was made known to Pope
Alexander VII. that great numbers of young women had avowed in the
confessional that they had poisoned their husbands with slow poisons. The
Catholic clergy, who in general hold the secrets of the confessional so
sacred, were shocked and alarmed at the extraordinary prevalence of the
crime. Although they refrained from revealing the names of the penitents,
they conceived themselves bound to apprise the head of the Church of the
enormities that were practised. It was also the subject of general
conversation in Rome that young widows were unusually abundant. It was
remarked, too, that if any couple lived unhappily together, the husband
soon took ill and died. The papal authorities, when once they began to
inquire, soon learned that a society of young wives had been formed, and
met nightly, for some mysterious purpose, at the house of an old woman
named Hieronyma Spara. This hag was a reputed witch and fortune-teller,
and acted as president of the young viragos, several of whom, it was
afterwards ascertained, belonged to the first families of Rome.
In order to have positive evidence of the practices of this female
conclave, a lady was employed by the government to seek an interview with
them. She dressed herself out in the most magnificent style; and having
been amply provided with money, she found but little difficulty, when she
had stated her object, of procuring an audience of La Spara and her
sisterhood. She pretended to be in extreme distress of mind on account of
the infidelities and ill-treatment of her husband, and implored La Spara
to furnish her with a few drops of the wonderful elixir, the efficacy of
which in sending cruel husbands to "their last long sleep" was so much
vaunted by the ladies of Rome. La Spara fell into the snare, and sold her
some of her "drops" at a price commensurate with the supposed wealth of
the purchaser.