In his romance The Minion, Rafael Sabatini makes the first meeting of
Anne Turner and the Countess of Essex occur in 1610 or 1611. With this
date Judge A. E. Parry, in his book The Overbury Mystery,[10] seems to
agree in part. There is, however, warrant enough for believing that the
two women had met long before that time. Anne Turner herself, pleading
at her trial for mercy from Sir Edward Coke, the Lord Chief Justice, put
forward the plea that she had been "ever brought up with the Countess of
Essex, and had been a long time her servant."[11] She also made the like
extenuative plea on the scaffold.[12] Judge Parry seems to follow some
of the contemporary writers in assuming that Anne was a spy in the pay
of the Lord Privy Seal, the Earl of Northampton. If this was so there
is further ground for believing that Anne and Lady Essex had earlier
contacts, for Northampton was Lady Essex's great-uncle. The longer
association would go far in explaining the terrible conspiracy into
which, from soon after that time, the two women so readily fell
together--a criminal conspiracy, in which the reader may see something
of the "false nurse" in Anne Turner and something of Jean Livingstone in
Frances Howard, Lady Essex.
It was about this time, 1610-1611, that Lady Essex began to find herself
interested in the handsome Robert Carr, then Viscount Rochester. Having
reached the mature age of eighteen, the lovely Frances had been brought
by her mother, the Countess of Suffolk, to Court. Highest in the King's
favour, and so, with his remarkably good looks, his charm, and the
elegant taste in attire and personal appointment which his new wealth
allowed him lavishly to indulge, Rochester was by far the most brilliant
figure there. Frances fell in love with the King's minion.
Rochester, it would appear, did not immediately respond to the lady's
advances. They were probably too shy, too tentative, to attract
Rochester's attention. It is probable, also, that there were plenty of
beautiful women about the Court, more mature, more practised in the arts
of coquetry than Frances, and very likely not at all 'blate'--as Carr
and his master would put it--in showing themselves ready for conquest by
the King's handsome favourite.
Whether the acquaintance of Lady Essex with Mrs Turner was of long
standing or not, it was to the versatile Anne that her ladyship turned
as confidante. The hint regarding Anne's skill in divination will be
remembered. Having regard to the period, and to the alchemistic nature
of the goods that composed so much of Anne's stock-in-trade at the sign
of the Golden Distaff, in Paternoster Row, it may be conjectured that
the love-lorn Frances had thoughts of a philtre.
With an expensive lover and children to maintain, to say nothing of her
own luxurious habits, Anne Turner would see in the Countess's appeal a
chance to turn more than one penny into the family exchequer. She was
too much the opportunist to let any consideration of old acquaintance
interfere with working such a potential gold-mine as now seemed to lie
open to her pretty but prehensile fingers. Lady Essex was rich. She
was also ardent in her desire. The game was too big for Anne to play
single-handed. A real expert in cozening, a master of guile, was wanted
to exploit the opportunity to its limit.
It is a curious phenomenon, and one that constantly recurs in the
history of cozenage, how people who live by spoof fall victims so
readily to spoofery. Anne Turner had brains. There is no doubt of it.
Apart from that genuine and honest talent in costume-design which made
her work acceptable to such an outstanding genius as Inigo Jones, she
lived by guile. But I have now to invite you to see her at the feet of
one of the silliest charlatans who ever lived. There is, of course, the
possibility that Anne sat at the feet of this silly charlatan for what
she might learn for the extension of her own technique. Or, again, it
may have been that the wizard of Lambeth, whom she consulted in the Lady
Essex affair, could provide a more impressive setting for spoof than she
had handy, or that they were simply rogues together. My trouble is to
understand why, by the time that the Lady Essex came to her with her
problem, Anne had not exhausted all the gambits in flummery that were at
the command of the preposterous Dr Forman.
The connexion with Dr Forman was part of the legacy left Anne by Dr
Turner. Her husband had been the friend and patron of Forman, so that
by the time Anne had taken Mainwaring for her lover, and had borne him
three children, she must have had ample opportunity for seeing through
the old charlatan.
Antony Weldon, the contemporary writer already quoted, is something
too scurrilous and too apparently biased to be altogether a trustworthy
authority. He seems to have been the type of gossip (still to be met in
London clubs) who can always tell with circumstance how the duchess came
to have a black baby, and the exact composition of the party at which
Midas played at 'strip poker.' But he was, like many of his kind, an
amusing enough companion for the idle moment, and his description of Dr
Forman is probably fairly close to the truth.
"This Forman," he says,
was a silly fellow who dwelt in Lambeth, a very silly fellow, yet had
wit enough to cheat the ladies and other women, by pretending skill in
telling their fortunes, as whether they should bury their husbands, and
what second husbands they should have, and whether they should enjoy
their loves, or whether maids should get husbands, or enjoy their
servants to themselves without corrivals: but before he would tell them
anything they must write their names in his alphabetical book with
their own handwriting. By this trick he kept them in awe, if they should
complain of his abusing them, as in truth he did nothing else. Besides,
it was believed, some meetings were at his house, wherein the art of the
bawd was more beneficial to him than that of a conjurer, and that he was
a better artist in the one than in the other: and that you may know his
skill, he was himself a cuckold, having a very pretty wench to his wife,
which would say, she did it to try his skill, but it fared with him as
with astrologers that cannot foresee their own destiny.
And here comes an addendum, the point of which finds confirmation
elsewhere. It has reference to the trial of Anne Turner, to which we
shall come later.
"I well remember there was much mirth made in the Court upon the showing
of the book, for, it was reported, the first leaf my lord Cook [Coke,
the Lord Chief Justice] lighted on he found his own wife's name."
Whatever Anne's reason for doing so, it was to this scortatory old scab
that she turned for help in cozening the fair young Countess. The devil
knows to what obscene ritual the girl was introduced. There is evidence
that the thaumaturgy practised by Forman did not want for lewdness--as
magic of the sort does not to this day--and in this regard Master Weldon
cannot be far astray when he makes our pretty Anne out to be the veriest
baggage.
Magic or no magic, philtre or no philtre, it was not long before Lady
Essex had her wish. The Viscount Rochester fell as desperately in love
with her as she was with him.
There was, you may be sure, no small amount of scandalous chatter in the
Court over the quickly obvious attachment the one to the other of this
handsome couple. So much of this scandalous chatter has found record by
the pens of contemporary and later gossip-writers that it is hard indeed
to extract the truth. It is certain, however, that had the love between
Robert Carr and Frances Howard been as chaste as ice, as pure as snow,
jealousy would still have done its worst in besmirching. It was not, if
the Rabelaisian trend in so much of Jacobean writing be any indication,
a particularly moral age. Few ages in history are. It was not, with
a reputed pervert as the fount of honour, a particularly moral Court.
Since the emergence of the lovely young Countess from tutelage at Audley
End there had been no lack of suitors for her favour. And when Frances
so openly exhibited her preference for the King's minion there would be
some among those disappointed suitors who would whisper, greenly, that
Rochester had been granted that prisage which was the right of the
absent Essex, a right which they themselves had been quite ready to
usurp. It is hardly likely that there would be complete abnegation of
salty gossip among the ladies of the Court, their Apollo being snatched
by a mere chit of a girl.
What relative happiness there may have been for the pair in their
loving--it could not, in the hindrance there was to their free mating,
have been an absolute happiness--was shattered after some time by the
return to England of the young husband. The Earl of Essex, now almost
come to man's estate, arrived to take up the position which his rank
entitled him to expect in the Court, and to assume the responsibilities
and rights which, he fancied, belonged to him as a married man. In
respect of the latter part of his intention he immediately found himself
balked. His wife, perhaps all the deeper in love with Rochester for this
threat to their happiness, declared that she had no mind to be held by
the marriage forced on her in infancy, and begged her husband to agree
to its annulment.
It had been better for young Essex to have agreed at once. He would
have spared himself, ultimately, a great deal of humiliation through
ridicule. But he tried to enforce his rights as a husband, a proceeding
than which there is none more absurd should the wife prove obdurate. And
prove obdurate his wife did. She was to be moved neither by threat nor
by pleading. It was, you will notice, a comedy situation; husband
not perhaps amorous so much as the thwarted possessor of the
unpossessable--wife frigid and a maid, as far, at least, as the husband
was concerned, and her weeping eyes turned yearningly elsewhere. A
comedy situation, yes, and at this distance almost farcical--but for
certain elements in it approaching tragedy.
Badgered, not only by her husband but by her own relatives, scared no
doubt, certainly unhappy, unable for politic reasons to appeal freely
to her beloved Robin, to whom might Frances turn but the helpful Turner?
And to whom, having turned to pretty Anne, was she likely to be led but
again to the wizard of Lambeth?
Dr Forman had a heart for beauty in distress, but dissipating the
ardency of an exigent husband was a difficult matter compared with
attracting that of a negligent lover. It was also much more costly. A
powder there was, indeed, which, administered secretly by small regular
doses in the husband's food or drink, would soon cool his ardour,
but the process of manufacture and the ingredients were enormously
expensive. Frances got her powder.
The first dose was administered to Lord Essex just before his departure
from a visit to his wife at Audley End. On his arrival back in London he
was taken violently ill, so ill that in the weeks he lay in bed his life
was despaired of. Only the intervention of the King's own physician, one
Sir Theodore Mayerne, would appear to have saved him.
Her husband slowly convalescing, Lady Essex was summoned by her family
back to London. In London, while Lord Essex mended in health, she was
much in the company of her "sweet Turner." In addition to the house
in Paternoster Row the little widow had a pretty riverside cottage at
Hammersmith, and both were at the disposal of Lady Essex and her lover
for stolen meetings. Those meetings were put a stop to by the recovery
of Lord Essex, and with his recovery his lordship exhibited a new mood
of determination. Backed by her ladyship's family, he ordered her to
accompany him to their country place of Chartley. Her ladyship had to
obey.
The stages of the journey were marked by the nightly illness of his
lordship. By the time they arrived at Chartley itself he was in a
condition little if at all less dangerous than that from which he had
been rescued by the King's physician. His illness lasted for weeks, and
during this time her ladyship wrote many a letter to Anne Turner and to
Dr Forman. She was afraid his lordship would live. She was afraid his
lordship would die. She was afraid she would lose the love of Rochester.
She begged Anne Turner and Forman to work their best magic for her aid.
She was afraid that if his lordship recovered the spells might prove
useless, that his attempts to assert his rights as a husband would begin
again, and that there, in the heart of the country and so far from any
refuge, they might take a form she would be unable to resist.
His lordship did recover. His attempts to assert his rights as a husband
did begin again. The struggle between them, Frances constant in her
obduracy, lasted several months. Her obstinacy wore down his. At long
last he let her go.