She Stands Accused

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[8] Edinburgh, W. Green and Son, Ltd., 1930.

Anne, there is every cause for assurance, was in herself the best
advertisement for her wares. Rachel was a fat old hag. Anne,
prettily fair, little-boned, and deliciously fleshed, was neat
and elegant. The impression one gets of her from all the
records, even the most prejudiced against her, is that she was a
very cuddlesome morsel indeed. She was, in addition,
demonstrably clever. Such a man of talent as Inigo Jones
supported the decoration of many of the masques he set on the
stage with costumes of Anne's design and confection. Rachel
could neither read nor write.

It is highly probable that Anne Turner made coin out of the notes
which her late husband, so inquisitive of mind, had left on
matters much more occult than the manufacture of yellow starch
and skin lotions. ``It was also rumoured,'' says Mr Sabatini,
``that she amassed gold in another and less licit manner: that
she dabbled in fortune-telling and the arts of divination.'' We
shall see, as the story develops, that the rumour had some
foundation. The inquiring mind of the late Dr Turner had led him
into strange company, and his legacy to Anne included connexions
more sombre than those in the extravagantly luxurious Court of
King James.

In 1610 the elegant little widow was flourishing enough to be
able to maintain a lover in good style. This was Sir Arthur
Mainwaring, member of a Cheshire family of good repute but of no
great wealth. By him she had three children. Mainwaring was
attached in some fashion to the suite of the Prince of Wales,
Prince Henry. And while the Prince's court at St James's Palace
was something more modest, as it was more refined, than that of
the King at Whitehall, position in it was not to be retained at
ease without considerable expenditure. It may be gauged,
therefore, at what expense Anne's attachment to Mainwaring would
keep her, and to what exercise of her talent and ambition her
pride in it would drive her. And her pride was absolute. It
would, says a contemporary diarist, ``make her fly at any pitch
rather than fall into the jaws of want.''[9]

[9] Antony Weldon, The Court and Character of King James (1651).

% II

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.

[10] Fisher Unwin, 1925.
[11] State Trials (Cobbett's edition).
[12] Antony Weldon.

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.

% III

If the fate that overtook Frances Howard and Rochester, and with
them Anne Turner and many another, is to be properly understood,
a brief word on the political situation in England at this time
will be needed--or, rather, a word on the political personages,
with their antagonisms.

Next in closeness to the King's ear after Rochester, and perhaps
more trusted as a counsellor by that ``wise fool,'' there had
been Robert Cecil, Lord Salisbury, for a long time First
Secretary of State. But about the time when Lady Essex finally
parted with her husband Cecil died, depriving England of her
keenest brain and the staunchest heart in her causes. If there
had been no Rochester the likeliest man in the kingdom to succeed
to the power and offices of Cecil would have been the Earl of
Northampton, uncle of Lord Suffolk, who was the father of Lady
Essex. Northampton, as stated, held the office of Lord Privy
Seal.

The Howard family had done the State great service in the past.
Its present representatives, Northampton and Suffolk, were
anxious to do the State great service, as they conceived it, in
the future. They were, however, Catholics in all but open
acknowledgment, and as such were opposed by the Protestants, who
had at their head Prince Henry. This was an opposition that they
might have stomached. It was one that they might even have got
over, for the Prince and his father, the King, were not the best
of friends. The obstacle to their ambitions, and one they found
hard to stomach, was the upstart Rochester. And even Rochester
would hardly have stood in their way had his power in the Council
depended on his own ability. The brain that directed Robert Carr
belonged to another man. This was Sir Thomas Overbury.

On the death of Cecil the real contenders for the vacant office
of First Secretary of State--the highest office in the land--were
not the wily Northampton and the relatively unintelligent
Rochester, but the subtle Northampton and the quite as subtle,
and perhaps more spacious-minded, Thomas Overbury. There was, it
will be apprehended, a possible weakness on the Overbury side.
The gemel-chain, like that of many links, is merely as strong as
its weakest member. Overbury had no approach to the King save
through the King's favourite. Rochester could have no real
weight with the King, at least in affairs of State, except what
he borrowed from Overbury. Divided, the two were powerless. No,
more than that, there had to be no flaw in their linking.

The wily Northampton, one may be certain, was fully aware of this
possible weakness in the combination opposed to his advancement.
He would be fully aware, that is, that it was there potentially;
but when he began, as his activities would indicate, to work for
the creation of that flaw in the relationship between Rochester
and Overbury it is unlikely that he knew the flaw had already
begun to develop. Unknown to him, circumstance already had begun
to operate in his favour.

Overbury was Rochester's tutor in more than appertained to
affairs of State. It is more than likely that in Carr's wooing
of Lady Essex he had held the role of Cyrano de Bergerac, writing
those gracefully turned letters and composing those accomplished
verses which did so much to augment and give constancy to her
ladyship's love for Rochester. It is certain, at any rate, that
Overbury was privy to all the correspondence passing between the
pair, and that even such events as the supplying by Forman and
Mrs Turner of that magic powder, and the Countess's use of it
upon her husband, were well within his knowledge.

While the affair between his alter ego and the Lady Essex might
be looked upon as mere dalliance, a passionate episode likely to
wither with a speed equal to that of its growth, Overbury, it is
probable, found cynical amusement in helping it on. But when, as
time went on, the lady and her husband separated permanently, and
from mere talk of a petition for annulment of the Essex marriage
that petition was presented in actual form to the King, Overbury
saw danger. Northampton was backing the petition. If it
succeeded Lady Essex would be free to marry Rochester. And the
marriage, since Northampton was not the man to give except in the
expectation of plenty, would plant the unwary Rochester on the
hearth of his own and Overbury's enemies. With Rochester in the
Howard camp there would be short shrift for Thomas Overbury.
There would be, though Rochester in his infatuation seemed blind
to the fact, as short a shrift as the Howards could contrive for
the King's minion.

In that march of inevitability which marks all real tragedy the
road that is followed forks ever and again with an `if.' And we
who, across the distance of time, watch with a sort of Jovian
pity the tragic puppets in their folly miss this fork and that
fork on their road of destiny select, each according to our
particular temperaments, a particular `if' over which to shake
our heads. For me, in this story of Rochester, Overbury, Frances
Howard, and the rest, the point of tragedy, the most poignant of
the issues, is the betrayal by Robert Carr of Overbury's
friendship. Though this story is essentially, or should be, that
of the two women who were linked in fate with Rochester and his
coadjutor, I am constrained to linger for a moment on that point.

Overbury's counsel had made Carr great. With nothing but his
good looks and his personal charm, his only real attributes, Carr
had been no more than King James's creature. James, with all the
pedantry, the laboured cunning, the sleezy weaknesses of
character that make him so detestable, was yet too shrewd to have
put power in the hands of the mere minion that Carr would have
been without the brain of Overbury to guide him. Of himself Carr
was the `toom tabard' of earlier parlance in his native country,
the `stuffed shirt' of a later and more remote generation. But
beyond the coalition for mutual help that existed between
Overbury and Carr, an arrangement which might have thrived on a
basis merely material, there was a deep and splendid friendship.
`Stuffed shirt' or not, Robert Carr was greatly loved by
Overbury. Whatever Overbury may have thought of Carr's mental
attainments, he had the greatest faith in his loyalty as a
friend. And here lies the terrible pity in that `if' of my
choice. The love between the two men was great enough to have
saved them both. It broke on the weakness of Carr.

Overbury was aware that, honestly presented, the petition by Lady
Essex for the annulment of her marriage had little chance of
success. But for the obstinacy of Essex it might have been
granted readily enough. He had, however, as we have seen, forced
her to live with him as his wife, in appearance at least, for
several months in the country. There now would be difficulty in
putting forward the petition on the ground of non-consummation of
the marriage.

It was, nevertheless, on this ground that the petition was
brought forward. But the non-consummation was not attributed, as
it might have been, to the continued separation that had begun at
the altar; the reason given was the impotence of the husband.
Just what persuasion Northampton and the Howards used on Essex to
make him accept this humiliating implication it is hard to
imagine, but by the time the coarse wits of the period had done
with him Essex was amply punished in ridicule for his primary
obstinacy.

Sir Thomas Overbury, well informed though he usually was, must
have been a good deal in the dark regarding the negotiations
which had brought the nullity suit to this forward state. He had
warned Rochester so frankly of the danger into which the scheme
was likely to lead him that they had quarrelled and parted. If
Rochester had been frank with his friend, if, on the ground of
their friendship, he had appealed to him to set aside his
prejudice, it might well have been that the tragedy which ensued
would have been averted. Enough evidence remains to this day of
Overbury's kindness for Robert Carr, there is enough proof of the
man's abounding resource and wit, to give warrant for belief that
he would have had the will, as he certainly had the ability, to
help his friend. Overbury was one of the brightest intelligences
of his age. Had Rochester confessed the extent of his commitment
with Northampton there is little doubt that Overbury could and
would have found a way whereby Rochester could have attained his
object (of marriage with Frances Howard), and this without
jeopardizing their mutual power to the Howard menace.

In denying the man who had made him great the complete confidence
which their friendship demanded Rochester took the tragically
wrong path on his road of destiny. But the truth is that when he
quarrelled with Overbury he had already betrayed the friendship.
He had already embarked on the perilous experiment of straddling
between two opposed camps. It was an experiment that he, least
of all men, had the adroitness to bring off. He was never in
such need of Overbury's brain as when he aligned himself in
secret with Overbury's enemies.

It is entirely probable that in linking up with Northampton
Rochester had no mind to injure his friend. The bait was the
woman he loved. Without Northampton's aid the nullity suit could
not be put forward, and without the annulment there could be no
marriage for him with Frances Howard. But he had no sooner
joined with Northampton than the very processes against which
Overbury had warned him were begun. Rochester was trapped, and
with him Overbury.

For the success of the suit, in Northampton's view, Overbury knew
too much. It was a view to which Rochester was readily
persuaded; or it was one which he was easily frightened into
accepting. From that to joining in a plot for being rid of
Overbury was but a step. Grateful, perhaps, for the undoubted
services that Overbury had rendered him, Rochester would be eager
enough to find his quondam friend employment. If that employment
happened to take Overbury out of the country so much the better.
At one time the King, jealous as a woman of the friendship
existing between his favourite and Overbury, had tried to shift
the latter out of the way by an offer of the embassy in Paris.
It was an offer Rochester thought, that he might cause to be
repeated. The idea was broached to Overbury. That shrewd
individual, of course, saw through the suggestion to the
intention behind it, but he was at a loss for an outlet for his
talents, having left Rochester's employ, and he believed without
immodesty that he could do useful work as ambassador in Paris.

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