Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/72

58 house if you spare nay of them; and God's curse be upon me and mine, if I pardon any of them."

Coke seemed quite willing to act as vigorously and unsparingly as the king could desire. The commissioners, of whom he was the chief, subjected the adulterous pair to no less than three hundred examinations, and then announced that they found ample proofs of their guilt. That Frances Howard, formerly countess of Essex, had resorted to sorcery to incapacitate her then husband, the earl of Essex, and to procure the love of lord Rochester. That, finding Sir Thomas Overbury an obstacle to their criminal designs, they had, by the assistance of the countess's late uncle, the earl of Northampton, procured the commitment of Sir Thomas to the Tower, and the removal of the lieutenant, and the appointment in his place of their creature Elwes, and of one Weston to be the warder of the prisoner. That this Weston had formerly been the servant of Mrs. Turner, a woman famous for the introduction of yellow starch for ruffs, and an early companion of the said lady Frances Howard; and that through Weston and Mrs. Turner the countess had procured three kinds of poison from one Franklin, an apothecary. That Weston had administered these poisons to his prisoner Overbury, and thus procured his death. Coke added that, from private memorandum books and letters which he had found amongst the papers of the prisoners, he had discovered that Somerset had undoubtedly poisoned prince Henry. The queen is said to have been greatly excited by this intelligence, and had all her former belief of this poisoning revived. She declared her full conviction that Somerset and his clique had planned the removal of herself and her son Charles also, in order to marry the princess Elizabeth to the son of the earl of Suffolk, brother to the countess. But James was too well satisfied by the post-mortem examination of the body of prince Henry, and by the insufficiency of Coke's proofs, to be led into this absurd belief, though he admitted a persuasion that Somerset had received money from Spain on condition of delivering up the prince Charles to that monarch.

The letter of Overbury to Somerset, on which Coke grounded these atrocious charges, has since been published, and bears no such inferences. He, indeed, alludes to certain secrets of Somerset's in his possession, but from the slight manner in which they are referred to, they do not appear to be of any importance; nor does he in any way menace revealing them to the government, but merely says that he has written a history of their whole acquaintance, from which it would be seen with what ingratitude the earl had treated him. What was more curious, if true, as related by Bacon, Wotton, and Weldon, was the fact that Coke, in rummaging after written evidence of the prisoner's guilt, had got hold of the pocket-book of Forman, a conjurer, who had been consulted by the countess of Essex and other ladies of the court, but on the very first page finding the name of his own wife, very quickly put it away.

Weston, Franklin, the apothecary, and Mrs. Turner, were all secured and examined. The facts which came out on their trials were these: Mrs. Turner, who was a remarkably fine woman, had been an early companion of the countess of Exeter. That, whilst a maid in her father's house, this beautiful but bad woman had initiated the young lady Howard into much of the profligacy so rife amongst the courtiers, male and female, of queen Elizabeth. But after being separated for some years, by the marriage of Mrs, Turner to a physician in London, they then again met there, Mrs. Turner now being a widow, and Frances Howard the reluctant wife of Essex. Mrs. Turner, who appears to have been leading a very criminal life, immediately took steps to rid her of her husband, and to secure for her her lover Rochester. She informed her of the means by which she had been successful in her own love affairs. She assured her that Forman, the conjurer of Lambeth, had a wonderful power in compelling love by philter, and was in consequence greatly resorted to by the ladies of the court. That in her own case, she had brought Sir Arthur Mainwaring, spite of himself, to entertain the most violent passion for her, and caused him to ride many miles in night and tempest to her house. She introduced the young countess to this fashionable sorcerer, who thenceforth became in great request with her. By letters of the countess produced in court, it appeared that she called this notorious quack "her dear father," "her very dear father," and "her sweet father;" and had had frequent meetings with Rochester at the conjuror's house.

The court of justice was at once amused and horrified by the production, not of Forman, for with all his supernatural science he was dead, but of his conjuring charms and apparatus; his pictures, diagrams, spells, and images. Such was the effect of this trumpery on the spectators, that a loud crack being heard in the gallery, the whole court was terrified; not by the natural danger of the gallery being too much crowded for its strength, but from an impression that the devil was present along with all that diabolical machinery, and was ready to overwhelm the whole audience in resentment at its exposure. Amongst his papers appeared that pocket-book of the sorcerer—in which was catalogued the court dames who had consulted him, and the lords they sought to win to themselves—which so startled Coke.

It appeared that Mrs. Turner had not only thus led the willing countess into all the arcana of fashionable sin, but had also procured her the instruments for its accomplishment. She had furnished her with the fellow Weston, who had lived with Franklin, the apothecary, who supplied the poison, and who undertook to administer it to Overbury. This wretch confessed to his crimes, and that he had given Sir Thomas poison enough to have killed twenty men, dosing him through a space of several months, to give his illness the appearance of natural disease; and that Somerset, as soon as the victim was dead, ordered him, through the earl of Northampton, to be immediately buried. Franklin also confessed his share in the business.

These inferior criminals were all condemned to be hanged at Tyburn, before the trial of the prime agents. Though they were clearly convicted on suspect evidence, yet there were no few who attributed their condemnation to the court conspiracy against Somerset; and when Weston was on the scaffold, some of Somerset's friends. Sir John Hollis, Sir John Wentworth, Sir Thomas Vavasour, Sir Henry Vane, and Mr. Sackville rode up, and called on him to state honestly whether he were actually guilty of the fact or not. Weston merely replied, "Fact or no fact, I die worthily," and so