She Stands Accused

V >> Victor MacClure >> She Stands Accused

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17

Overbury was offered an embassy--but in Muscovy. He had no mind
to bury himself in Russia, and he refused the offer on the ground
of ill-health. By doing this he walked into the trap prepared
for him. Northampton had foreseen the refusal when he promoted
the offer on its rearranged terms. The King, already incensed
against Overbury for some hints at knowledge of facts liable to
upset the Essex nullity suit, pretended indignation at the
refusal. Overbury unwarily repeated it before the Privy Council.
That was what Northampton wanted. The refusal was high contempt
of the King's majesty. Sir Thomas Overbury was committed to the
Tower. He might have talked in Paris, or have written from
Muscovy. He might safely do either in the Tower--where gags and
bonds were so readily at hand.

Did Rochester know of the springe set to catch Overbury? The
answer to the question, whether yes or no, hardly matters. Since
he was gull enough to discard the man whose brain had lifted him
from a condition in which he was hardly better than the King's
lap-dog, he was gull enough to be fooled by Northampton. Since
he valued the friendship of that honest man so little as to
consort in secret with his enemies, he was knave enough to have
been party to the betrayal. Knave or fool--what does it matter?
He was so much of both that, in dread of what Sir Thomas might
say or do to thwart the nullity suit, he let his friend rot in
the Tower for months on end, let him sicken and nearly die
several times, without a move to free him. He did this to the
man who had trusted him implicitly, a man that--to adapt
Overbury's own words from his last poignant letter to
Rochester--he had ``more cause to love . . . yea, perish for . .
. rather than see perish.''

It is not given to every man to have that greater love which will
make him lay down his life for a friend, but it is the sheer
poltroon and craven who will watch a friend linger and expire in
agony without lifting a finger to save him. Knave or fool--what
does it matter when either is submerged in the coward?

% IV

Overbury lay in the Tower five months. The commission appointed
to examine into the Essex nullity suit went into session three
weeks after he was imprisoned. There happened to be one man in
the commission who cared more to be honest than to humour the
King. This was the Archbishop Abbot. The King himself had
prepared the petition. It was a task that delighted his
pedantry, and his petition was designed for immediate acceptance.
But such was Abbot's opposition that in two or three months the
commission ended with divided findings.

Meantime Overbury in the Tower had been writing letters. He had
been talking to visitors. As time went on, and Rochester did
nothing to bring about his enlargement, his writings and sayings
became more threatening Rochester's attitude was that patience
was needed. In time he would bring the King to a more clement
view of Sir Thomas's offending, and he had no doubt that in the
end he would be able to secure the prisoner both freedom and
honourable employment.

Overbury had been consigned to the Tower in April. In June he
complained of illness. Rochester wrote to him in sympathetic
terms, sending him a powder that he himself had found beneficial,
and made his own physician visit the prisoner.

But the threats which Overbury, indignant at his betrayal by
Rochester, made by speech and writing were becoming common
property in the city and at Court One of Overbury's visitors who
had made public mention of Overbury's knowledge of facts likely
to blow upon the Essex suit was arrested on the orders of
Northampton. In the absence of the King and Rochester from
London the old Earl was acting as Chief Secretary of State--thus
proving Overbury to have been a true prophet. Northampton issued
orders to the Tower that Overbury was to be closely confined,
that his man Davies was to be dismissed, and that he was to be
denied all visitors. The then Lieutenant of the Tower, one Sir
William Wade, was deprived of his position on the thinnest of
pretexts, and, on the recommendation of Sir Thomas Monson, Master
of the Armoury, an elderly gentleman from Lincolnshire, Sir
Gervase Elwes, was put in his place.

From that moment Sir Thomas Overbury was permitted no
communication with the outer world, save by letter to Lord
Rochester and for food that was brought him, as we shall
presently see, at the instance of Mrs Turner.

In place of his own servant Davies Sir Thomas was allowed the
services of an under-keeper named Weston, appointed at the same
time as Sir Gervase Elwes. This man, it is perhaps important to
note, had at one time been servant to Mrs Turner.

The alteration in the personnel of the Tower was almost
immediately followed by severe illness on the part of the
prisoner. The close confinement to which he was subjected, with
the lack of exercise, could hardly have been the cause of such a
violent sickness. It looked more as if it had been brought about
by something he had eaten or drunk. By this time the conviction
he had tried to resist, that Rochester was meanly sacrificing
him, became definite. Overbury is hardly to be blamed if he came
to a resolution to be revenged on his one-time friend by bringing
him to utter ruin. King James had been so busy in the Essex
nullity suit, had gone to such lengths to carry it through, that
if it could be wrecked by the production of the true facts he
would be bound to sacrifice Rochester to save his own face. Sir
Thomas had an accurate knowledge of the King's character. He
knew the scramble James was capable of making in a difficulty
that involved his kingly dignity, and what little reck he had of
the faces he trod on in climbing from a pit of his own digging.
By a trick Overbury contrived to smuggle a letter through to the
honest Archbishop Abbot, in which he declared his possession of
facts that would non-suit the nullity action, and begged to be
summoned before the commission.

Overbury was getting better of the sickness which had attacked
him when suddenly it came upon him again. This time he made no
bones about saying that he had been poisoned.

Even at the last Overbury had taken care to give Rochester a
chance to prove his fidelity. He contrived that the delivery of
the letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury should be delayed
until just before the nullity commission, now augmented by
members certain to vote according to the King's desire, was due
to sit again. The Archbishop carried Overbury's letter to James,
and insisted that Overbury should be heard. The King, outward
stickler that he was for the letter of the law, had to agree.

On the Thursday of the week during which the commission was
sitting Overbury was due to be called. He was ill, but not so
ill as he had been. On the Tuesday he was visited by the King's
physician. On the Wednesday he was dead.

Now, before we come to examine those evidences regarding
Overbury's death that were to be brought forward in the series of
trials of later date, that series which was to be known as ``the
Great Oyer of Poisoning,'' it may be well to consider what effect
upon the Essex nullity suit Overbury's appearance before the
commission might have had. It may be well to consider what
reason Rochester had for keeping his friend in close confinement
in the Tower, what reason there was for permitting Northampton to
impose such cruelly rigorous conditions of imprisonment.

The nullity suit succeeded. A jury of matrons was impanelled,
and made an examination of the lady appellant. Its evidence was
that she was virgo intacta. Seven out of the twelve members of
the packed commission voted in favour of the sentence of nullity.

The kernel of the situation lies in the verdict of the jury of
matrons. Her ladyship was declared to be a maid. If in the
finding gossips and scandal-mongers found reason for laughter,
and decent enough people cause for wonderment, they are hardly to
be blamed. If Frances Howard was a virgin, what reason was there
for fearing anything Overbury might have said? What knowledge
had he against the suit that put Rochester and the Howards in
such fear of him that they had to confine him in the Tower under
such miserable conditions? In what was he so dangerous that he
had to be deprived of his faithful Davies, that he had to be put
in the care of a Tower Lieutenant specially appointed? The
evidence given before the commission can still be read in almost
verbatim report. It is completely in favour of the plea of Lady
Essex. Sir Thomas Overbury's, had he given evidence, would have
been the sole voice against the suit. If he had said that in his
belief the association of her ladyship with Rochester had been
adulterous there was the physical fact adduced by the jury of
matrons to confute him. And being confuted in that, what might
he have said that would not be attributed to rancour on his part?
That her ladyship, with the help of Mrs Turner and the wizard of
Lambeth, had practised magic upon her husband, giving him powders
that went near to killing him? That she had lived in seclusion
for several months with her husband at Chartley, and that the
non-consummation of the marriage was due, not to the impotence of
the husband, but to refusal to him of marital rights on the part
of the wife because of her guilty love for Rochester? His
lordship of Essex was still alive, and there was abundant
evidence before the court that there had been attempt to
consummate the marriage. Whatever Sir Thomas might have said
would have smashed as evidence on that one fact. Her ladyship
was a virgin.

What did Sir Thomas Overbury know that made every one whose
interest it was to further the nullity suit so scared of
him--Rochester, her ladyship, Northampton, the Howards, the King
himself?

Sir Thomas Overbury was much too cool-minded, too intelligent, to
indulge in threats unless he was certain of the grounds, and
solid upon them, upon which he made those threats. He had too
great a knowledge of affairs not to know that the commission
would be a packed one, too great an acquaintance with the
strategy of James to believe that his lonely evidence, unless of
bombshell nature, would have a chance of carrying weight in a
court of his Majesty's picking. And, then, he was of too big a
mind to put forward evidence which would have no effect but that
of affording gossip for the scandal-mongers, and the giving of
which would make him appear to be actuated by petty spite. He
had too great a sense of his own dignity to give himself anything
but an heroic role. Samson he might play, pulling the pillars of
the temple together to involve his enemies, with himself, in
magnificent and dramatic ruin. But Iachimo--no.

In the welter of evidence conflicting with apparent fact which
was given before the commission and in the trials of the Great
Oyer, in the mass of writing both contemporary and of later days
round the Overbury mystery, it is hard indeed to land upon the
truth. Feasible solution is to be come upon only by accepting a
not too pretty story which is retailed by Antony Weldon. He says
that the girl whom the jury of matrons declared to be virgo
intacta was so heavily veiled as to be unidentifiable through the
whole proceedings, and that she was not Lady Essex at all, but
the youthful daughter of Sir Thomas Monson.

Mrs Turner, we do know, was very much a favourite with the ladies
of Sir Thomas Monson's family. Gossip Weldon has a funny, if
lewd, story to tell of high jinks indulged in by the Monson women
and Mrs Turner in which Symon, Monson's servant, played an odd
part. This Symon was also employed by Mrs Turner to carry food
to Overbury in the Tower. If the substitution story has any
truth in it it might well have been a Monson girl who played the
part of the Countess. But, of course, a Monson girl may have
been chosen by the inventors to give verisimilitude to the
substitution story, simply because the family was friendly with
Turner, and the tale of the lewd high jinks with Symon added to
make it seem more likely that old Lady Monson would lend herself
to such a plot.

If there was such a plot it is not at all unlikely that Overbury
knew of it. If there was need of such a scheme to bolster the
nullity petition it would have had to be evolved while the
petition was being planned--that is, a month or two before the
commission went first into session. At that time Overbury was
still Rochester's secretary, still Rochester's confidant; and if
such a scheme had been evolved for getting over an obstacle so
fatal to the petition's success it was not in Rochester's nature
to have concealed it from Overbury, the two men still being fast
friends. Indeed, it may have been Overbury who pointed out the
need there would be for the Countess to undergo physical
examination, and it may have been on the certainty that her
ladyship could not do so that Overbury rested so securely--as he
most apparently did, beyond the point of safety--in the idea that
the suit was bound to fail. It is legitimate enough to suppose,
along this hypothesis, that this substitution plot was the very
matter on which the two men quarrelled.

That Overbury had knowledge of some such essential secret as this
is manifest in the enmity towards the man which Lady Essex
exhibited, even when he lay, out of the way of doing harm, in the
Tower. It is hard to believe that an innocent girl of twenty,
conscious of her virgin chastity, in mere fear of scandal which
she knew would be baseless, could pursue the life of a man with
the venom that, as we shall presently see, Frances Howard used
towards Overbury through Mrs Turner.

% V

As a preliminary to his marriage with Frances Howard, Rochester
was created Earl of Somerset, and had the barony of Brancepeth
bestowed on him by the King. Overbury was three months in his
grave when the marriage was celebrated in the midst of the most
extravagant show and entertainment.

The new Earl's power in the kingdom was never so high as at this
time. It was, indeed, at its zenith. Decline was soon to set
in. It will not serve here to follow the whole process of decay
in the King's favour that Somerset was now to experience. There
was poetic justice in his downfall. With hands all about him
itching to bring him to the ground, he had not the brain for the
giddy heights. If behind him there had been the man whose
guidance had made him sure-footed in the climb he might have
survived, flourishing. But the man he had consigned to death had
been more than half of him, had been, indeed, his substance.
Alone, with the power Overbury's talents had brought him,
Somerset was bound to fail. The irony of it is that his downfall
was contrived by a creature of his own raising.

Somerset had appointed Sir Ralph Winwood to the office of First
Secretary of State. In that office word came to Winwood from
Brussels that new light had been thrown on the mysterious death
of Sir Thomas Overbury. Winwood investigated in secret. An
English lad, one Reeves, an apothecary's assistant, thinking
himself dying, had confessed at Flushing that Overbury had been
poisoned by an injection of corrosive sublimate. Reeves himself
had given the injection on the orders of his master, Loubel, the
apothecary who had attended Overbury on the day before his death.
Winwood sought out Loubel, and from him went to Sir Gervase
Elwes. The story he was able to make from what he had from the
two men he took to the King. From this beginning rose up the
Great Oyer of Poisoning. The matter was put into the hands of
the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Edward Coke.

The lad Reeves, whose confession had started the matter, was
either dead or dying abroad, and was so out of Coke's reach. But
the man who had helped the lad to administer the poisoned
clyster, the under-keeper Weston, was at hand. Weston was
arrested, and examined by Coke. The statement Coke's bullying
drew from the man made mention of one Franklin, another
apothecary, as having supplied a phial which Sir Gervase Elwes
had taken and thrown away. Weston had also received another
phial by Franklin's son from Lady Essex. This also Sir Gervase
had taken and destroyed. Then there had been tarts and jellies
supplied by Mrs Turner.

Coke had Mrs Turner and Franklin arrested, and after that Sir
Gervase was taken as an accessory, and on his statement that he
had employed Weston on Sir Thomas Monson's recommendation Sir
Thomas also was roped in. He maintained that he had been told to
recommend Weston by Lady Essex and the Earl of Northampton.

The next person to be examined by Coke was the apothecary Loubel,
he who had attended Overbury on the day before his death. Though
in his confession the lad Reeves said that he had been given
money and sent abroad by Loubel, this was a matter that Coke did
not probe. Loubel told Coke that he had given Overbury nothing
but the physic prescribed by Sir Theodore Mayerne, the King's
physician, and that in his opinion Overbury had died of
consumption. With this evidence Coke was very strangely
content--or, at least, content as far as Loubel was concerned,
for this witness was not summoned again.

Other persons were examined by Coke, notably Overbury's servant
Davies and his secretary Payton. Their statements served to
throw some suspicion on the Earl of Somerset.

But if all the detail of these examinations were gone into we
should never be done. Our concern is with the two women
involved, Anne Turner and the Countess of Somerset, as we must
now call her. I am going to quote, however, two paragraphs from
Rafael Sabatini's romance The Minion that I think may explain why
it is so difficult to come to the truth of the Overbury mystery.
They indicate how it was smothered by the way in which Coke
rough-handled justice throughout the whole series of trials.

On October 19th, at the Guildhall, began the Great Oyer of
Poisoning, as Coke described it, with the trial of Richard
Weston.

Thus at the very outset the dishonesty of the proceedings is
apparent. Weston was an accessory. Both on his own evidence and
that of Sir Gervase Elwes, besides the apothecary's boy in
Flushing, Sir Thomas Overbury had died following upon an
injection prepared by Loubel. Therefore Loubel was the
principal, and only after Loubel's conviction could the field
have been extended to include Weston and the others. But Loubel
was tried neither then nor subsequently, a circumstance regarded
by many as the most mysterious part of what is known as the
Overbury mystery, whereas, in fact, it is the clue to it. Nor
was the evidence of the coroner put in, so that there was no real
preliminary formal proof that Overbury had been poisoned at all.

Here Mr Sabatini is concerned to develop one of the underlying
arguments of his story--namely, that it was King James himself
who had ultimately engineered the death of Sir Thomas Overbury.
It is an argument which I would not attempt to refute. I do not
think that Mr Sabatini's acumen has failed him in the least. But
the point for me in the paragraphs is the indication they give of
how much Coke did to suppress all evidence that did not suit his
purpose.

Weston's trial is curious in that at first he refused to plead.
It is the first instance I have met with in history of a prisoner
standing `mute of malice.' Coke read him a lecture on the
subject, pointing out that by his obstinacy he was making himself
liable to peine forte et dure, which meant that order could be
given for his exposure in an open place near the prison, extended
naked, and to have weights laid upon him in increasing amount, he
being kept alive with the ``coarsest bread obtainable and water
from the nearest sink or puddle to the place of execution, that
day he had water having no bread, and that day he had bread
having no water.'' One may imagine with what grim satisfaction
Coke ladled this out. It had its effect on Weston.

He confessed that Mrs Turner had promised to give him a reward if
he would poison Sir Thomas Overbury. In May she had sent him a
phial of ``rosalgar,'' and he had received from her tarts
poisoned with mercury sublimate. He was charged with having, at
Mrs Turner's instance, joined with an apothecary's boy in
administering an injection of corrosive sublimate to Sir Thomas
Overbury, from which the latter died. Coke's conduct of the case
obscures just how much Weston admitted, but, since it convinced
the jury of Weston's guilt, the conviction served finely for
accusation against Mrs Turner.

Two days after conviction Weston was executed at Tyburn.

The trial of Anne Turner began in the first week of November. It
would be easy to make a pathetic figure of the comely little
widow as she stood trembling under Coke's bullying, but she was,
in actual fact, hardly deserving of pity. It is far from
enlivening to read of Coke's handling of the trial, and it is
certain that Mrs Turner was condemned on an indictment and
process which to-day would not have a ghost of a chance of
surviving appeal, but it is perfectly plain that Anne was party
to one of the most vicious poisoning plots ever engineered.

We have, however, to consider this point in extenuation for her.
It is almost certain that in moving to bring about the death of
Overbury she had sanction, if only tacit, from the Earl of
Northampton. By the time that the Great Oyer began Northampton
was dead. Two years had elapsed from the death of Overbury. It
would be quite clear to Anne that, in the view of the powerful
Howard faction, the elimination of Overbury was politically
desirable. It should be remembered, too, that she lived in a
period when assassination, secret or by subverted process of
justice, was a commonplace political weapon. Public executions
by methods cruel and even obscene taught the people to hold human
life at small value, and hardened them to cruelties that made
poisoning seem a mercy. It is not at all unlikely that, though
her main object may have been to help forward the plans of her
friend the Countess, Anne considered herself a plotter in high
affairs of State.

The indictment against her was that she had comforted, aided, and
abetted Weston--that is to say, she was made an accessory. If,
however, as was accused, she procured Weston and Reeves to
administer the poisonous injection she was certainly a principal,
and as such should have been tried first or at the same time as
Weston. But Weston was already hanged, and so could not be
questioned. His various statements were used against her
unchallenged, or, at least, when challenging them was useless.

The indictment made no mention of her practices against the Earl
of Essex, but from the account given in the State Trials it would
seem that evidence on this score was used to build the case
against her. Her relations with Dr Forman, now safely dead, were
made much of. She and the Countess of Essex had visited the
charlatan and had addressed him as ``Father.'' Their reason for
visiting, it was said, was that ``by force of magick he should
procure the then Viscount of Rochester to love the Countess and
Sir Arthur Mainwaring to love Mrs Turner, by whom she had three
children.'' Letters from the Countess to Turner were read. They
revealed the use on Lord Essex of those powders her ladyship had
been given by Forman. The letters had been found by Forman's
wife in a packet among Forman's possessions after his death.
These, with others and with several curious objects exhibited in
court, had been demanded by Mrs Turner after Forman's demise.
Mrs Turner had kept them, and they were found in her house.

As indicating the type of magic practised by Forman these objects
are of interest. Among other figures, probably nothing more than
dolls of French make, there was a leaden model of a man and woman
in the act of copulation, with the brass mould from which it had
been cast. There was a black scarf ornamented with white
crosses, papers with cabalistic signs, and sundry other exhibits
which appear to have created superstitious fear in the crowd
about the court. It is amusing to note that while those exhibits
were being examined one of the scaffolds erected for seating gave
way or cracked ominously, giving the crowd a thorough scare. It
was thought that the devil himself, raised by the power of those
uncanny objects, had got into the Guildhall. Consternation
reigned for quite a quarter of an hour.

There was also exhibited Forman's famous book of signatures, in
which Coke is supposed to have encountered his own wife's name on
the first page.

Franklin, apothecary, druggist, necromancer, wizard, and born
liar, had confessed to supplying the poisons intended for use
upon Overbury. He declared that Mrs Turner had come to him from
the Countess and asked him to get the strongest poisons
procurable. He ``accordingly bought seven: viz., aqua fortis,
white arsenic, mercury, powder of diamonds, lapis costitus, great
spiders, cantharides.'' Franklin's evidence is a palpable tissue
of lies, full of statements that contradict each other, but it is
likely enough, judging from facts elicited elsewhere, that his
list of poisons is accurate. Enough poison passed from hand to
hand to have slain an army.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17