It is perfectly clear that the Countess of Somerset was led to confess
on the promise of the King's mercy. It is equally clear that she did not
know what she was confessing to. Whatever might have been her conspiracy
with Anne Turner it is a practical certainty that it did not result in
the death of Thomas Overbury. There is no record of her being allowed
any legal advice in the seven months that had elapsed since she
had first been made a virtual prisoner. She had been permitted no
communication with her husband. For all she knew, Overbury might indeed
have died from the poison which she had caused to be sent to the Tower
in such quantity and variety. And she went to trial at Westminster
guilty in conscience, her one idea being to take the blame for having
brought about the murder of Overbury, thinking by that to absolve her
husband of any share in the plot. She could not have known that her plea
of guilty would weaken Somerset's defence. The woman who could go to
such lengths in order to win her husband was unlikely to have done
anything that might put him in jeopardy. One can well imagine with what
fierceness she would have fought her case had she thought that by doing
so she could have helped the man she loved.
But Frances Howard, no less than her accomplice Anne Turner, was the
victim of a gross subversion of justice. That she was guilty of a cruel
and determined attempt to poison Overbury is beyond question, and, being
guilty of that, she was thoroughly deserving of the fate that overcame
Anne Turner, but that at the last she was allowed to escape. Her
confession, however, shackled Somerset at his trial. It put her at the
King's mercy. Without endangering her life Somerset dared not come to
the crux of his defence, which would have been to demand why Loubel had
been allowed to go free, and why the King's physician, Mayerne, had not
been examined. To prevent Somerset from asking those questions, which
must have given the public a sufficient hint of King James's share in
the murder of Overbury, two men stood behind the Earl all through his
trial with cloaks over their arms, ready to muffle him. But, whatever
may be said of Somerset, the prospect of the cloaks would not have
stopped him from attempting those questions. He had sent word to King
James that he was "neither Gowrie nor Balmerino," those two earlier
victims of James's treachery. The thing that muffled him was the threat
to withdraw the promised mercy to his Countess. And so he kept silent,
to be condemned to death as his wife had been, and to join her in the
Tower.
Five weary years were the couple to eat their hearts out there, their
death sentences remitted, before their ultimate banishment far from the
Court to a life of impoverished obscurity in the country. Better for
them, one would think, if they had died on Tower Green. It is hard to
imagine that the dozen years or so which they were to spend together
could contain anything of happiness for them--she the confessed would-be
poisoner, and he haunted by the memory of that betrayal of friendship
which had begun the process of their double ruin. Frances Howard died
in 1632, her husband twenty-three years later. The longer lease of life
could have been no blessing to the fallen favourite.
There is a portrait of Frances Howard in the National Portrait Gallery
by an unknown artist. It is an odd little face which appears above
the elaborate filigree of the stiff lace ruff and under the
carefully dressed bush of dark brown hair. With her gay jacket of red
gold-embroidered, and her gold-ornamented grey gown, cut low to show the
valley between her young breasts, she looks like a child dressed up. If
there is no great indication of the beauty which so many poets shed ink
over there is less promise of the dire determination which was to pursue
a man's life with cruel poisons over several months. It is, however, a
narrow little face, and there is a tight-liddedness about the eyes which
in an older woman might indicate the bigot. Bigot she proved herself
to be, if it be bigotry in a woman to love a man with an intensity that
will not stop at murder in order to win him. That is the one thing that
may be said for Frances Howard. She did love Robert Carr. She loved him
to his ruin.