Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/380

H one Richard Weston, who was clearly employed by Overbury's enemies to administer slow poisons to him. Helwys soon accidentally discovered Weston with a suspicious glass in his hand; learned that its contents were poisonous; flung them away, and hotly rebuked Weston, terrifying him ‘with God's judgments.’ He directed that none but an apothecary who had been previously in attendance on Overbury should supply him with drugs. Meanwhile Helwys was corresponding with Lady Frances and her relatives. The lady sent him tarts and jellies to be given to Overbury, and in one communication warned Helwys that the food contained ‘letters.’ Helwys afterwards avowed that by ‘letters’ he and the countess understood ‘poison;’ but he emphatically asserted, with every appearance of truth, that none of the suspected dishes ever reached Overbury's table (cf., Hist. ii. 183 n.) Mayerne, a physician above suspicion, was, it should be remembered, Overbury's chief medical adviser. Weston, however, apparently without Mayerne's knowledge, arranged with a disreputable apothecary named James Franklin to supply the patient with medicine, and Overbury, whose health had long been very bad, gradually sank. He died at seven o'clock on the morning of Wednesday, 15 Sept. 1613. Helwys at once sent the news to Northampton, who at first suggested that the body should be delivered to Overbury's friends, but its decaying condition led Helwys, before receiving any reply from Northampton, to hold an inquest, with a jury of prisoners and warders in the Tower. A verdict of death from natural causes was returned, and the corpse was buried in the Tower precincts at three or four o'clock in the afternoon of the day of death (cf., pp. 171 sq.; , Memorials, iii. 481–2). At the time Overbury's death excited little public notice.

Early in 1615 Helwys conducted the cruel torture of Edmund Peacham [q. v.] by means of manacles, and he was in frequent controversy with the corporation of London respecting their rights over the Tower precincts and environs (Remembrancia, p. 82). In July 1615 ‘there were whisperings that Sir Thomas Overbury's death would be called in question.’ A boy formerly in the employment of the apothecary Franklin was said to have confessed, while sick, at Flushing, that a clyster had been wilfully applied to Overbury with fatal effect.

A month later Secretary Winwood and Helwys were both guests at the Earl of Shrewsbury's dinner-table. Winwood, who had learned the boy's story and taken it seriously, declined an introduction to Helwys on the ground that his reputation was blackened by the rumours regarding Overbury's death. Helwys heard the remark, and privately informed Winwood that the death was suspicious, but that he knew little about it. By direction of the king, to whom Winwood at once carried the conversation, Helwys drew up a statement, dated 16 Sept. 1615, in which he admitted his early suspicions of Weston, but insisted that he had dissuaded him, as he believed effectually, from pursuing his evil design, and that he knew nothing of any other agents employed. On 1 Oct. Weston, under examination by Coke, told how emissaries from the Earl and Countess of Somerset had sought to corrupt him, and Helwys, together with all the persons implicated, was arrested. His place at the Tower was taken by Sir George More. Helwys was frequently examined, but did not directly incriminate himself. His evidence, however, was subsequently used against the Earl and Countess of Somerset, and Northampton, who had died 15 June 1614, was seriously compromised by his testimony. At his trial before Coke and a jury on 18 Nov. 1615, Helwys protested with dignity against Coke's harsh usage of him, and solemnly reasserted his ignorance of the plot against Overbury's life. But Coke produced a confession which he had received that morning from the apothecary Franklin. Franklin testified that he had seen a letter from Helwys to the Countess of Somerset, in which Helwys wrote of Overbury: ‘This scab is like the fox, who the more he is cursed the better he fareth.’ At these words Helwys is said to have changed colour; the jury returned a verdict of guilty, and he was condemned to death (cf. Court and Times of James I, i. 377 sq.). The incriminating letter was not produced nor legally proved, and there was no evidence that Helwys was more than technically an accessory before the fact. When his suspicions were aroused he seems, as far as his weak will permitted, to have taken steps for the safety of his prisoner, but was outwitted by his desperate associates. The trial was conducted with inhuman indifference to the rights of an accused person. On 20 Nov. Helwys was hanged on Tower Hill instead of at Tyburn by his special request. Dr. Whiting and Dr. Felton attended him to the scaffold. He heaped reproaches on himself, confessed the justice of his sentence, and recited a prayer of his own composition. But he refrained from confessing any direct hand in the murder. ‘The effect … of his speech’ and a ballad on his execution were entered on the ‘Stationers' Registers,’ 19 Dec. 1615 (ed. Arber, iii. 580). R. Niccols, in his