Somerset had received bribes from Spain, and had engaged to place Prince Charles in the hands of that court.

Weston, the warder, who had been servant to Franklin, the apothecary who furnished the poison, had been arrested and examined at the first opening of these proceedings, and the countess and all the other guilty parties were secured without any difficulty, for not one of them suspected what was coming. Weston at first stood mute, but his obstinacy gave way to Coke's threats of the peine forte et dure, and to the exhortations of Dr. King, Bishop of London, and he consented to plead. But even then he pleaded not guilty, and so did Mrs. Turner, Franklin the apothecary, and Elwes the lieutenant of the Tower. Their trials disclosed a monstrous medley of profligacy and superstition; and what seems almost equally monstrous is the fact that the learned Coke, the other judges, and all the spectators believed in the force of astrology and witchcraft, and considered the credulity of two frantic women as the most damnable of their crimes. Mrs. Turner, now the widow of a physician of that name, had been in her youth a dependant in the house of the Earl of Suffolk, and a companion to his beautiful daughter Frances Howard, who contracted a friendship for her which survived their separation. As certain vices, not unknown in the court of the virgin queen, had become common and barefaced in that of her successor, it would not be fair to attribute the demoralization of the Lady Frances solely to her connexion with this dangerous woman; though it should appear that she led her into the worst of her crimes, and found her the means of executing them. When they renewed their intimacy in London, the Lady Frances was the unwilling wife of Essex, and enamoured of the favourite Rochester. Mrs. Turner had had her illicit amours also; and believing, as most ladies then believed, in the efficacy of spells and love philtres, she had found out one Dr. Forman, a great conjuror, living in Lambeth, and who was frequently consulted by court dames and people of the best quality. Forman engaged to make Sir Arthur Manwaring love Mrs. Turner as much as she loved him; and soon after Sir Arthur travelled many miles by night, and through a terrible storm, to visit the widow. Instead of ascribing this passion to her own personal charms, and she was a most beautiful woman.she attributed it entirely to the charms of the conjuror at Lambeth. All this she told to the amorous Lady Essex, who, anxious for a like spell upon Rochester, went with her to the house of Dr. Forman. Like Mrs. Turner, the fair countess thought her beauty less potent than his incantations. She was grateful to him for the favourite's love, and frequently visited him afterwards with Mrs. Turner, calling him "father!" and " very dear father!" It appeared, also, that the countess had secret meetings with Rochester at the house in Lambeth. The wizard was since dead, but they produced in court some of the countess's letters to

him, in which she styled him "sweet father!" and some of his magical apparatus, as pictures, puppets, enchanted papers, and magic spells, which made the prisoners appear the more odious, as being known to have had dealings with witches and wizards. At this moment a loud crack was heard from the gallery, which caused great fear, tumult, and confusion among the spectators and throughout the hall, every one fearing hurt, as if the devil had been present, and grown angry to have his workmanship shown by such as were not his own scholars. There was also produced a list on parchment, written by Forman, signifying "what ladies loved what lords" in the court. The Lord Chief Justice Coke grasped this startling document, glanced his eye over it, and then insisted that it should not be read. People immediately said that the first name on the list was that of Coke's own wife, the Lady Hatton. It was further proved -though in some respects the evidence seems to have been such as would not satisfy a modern jury,

-that Weston had once lived as a servant with Mrs. Turner, who had recommended him to the countess; that it was at the request of the countess and her uncle Northampton, communicated through her friend Sir Thomas Monson, chief falconer, that Elwes, the Lieutenant of the Tower, had received him as warder, and placed him over Sir Thomas Overbury; that Weston administered the poison, which was of several kinds, and procured from his former master, Franklin, in Sir Thomas's medicines, soups, and other food; that he, Weston, had told his employers that he had given him poison enough to kill twenty men, administering it in small doses at a time through a course of several months; and that Somerset had commanded, through the Earl of Northampton, that the body of the victim should be buried immediately after his death. Franklin, the apothecary, made a full confession, in the vain hope of saving his own neck; Weston also confessed the murder, and many particulars connected with it. Coke pronounced sentence of death upon all these minor criminals. As Weston was on the scaffold at Tyburn, Sir John Holles and Sir John Wentworth, with other devoted friends of the fallen Somerset, rode up to the gallows, and endeavoured to make him retract his confession; but the miserable man merely said, "Fact, or no fact, I die worthily!"-and so was hanged. Elwes, the Lieutenant of the Tower, who had made a stout defence on the trial, confessed all on the scaffold, and ascribed his misfortune to his having broken a solemn vow he had once made against gambling. The fate of the beautiful Mrs. Turner excited the most interest. Many women of fashion, as well as men, went in their coaches to Tyburn to see her die. She came to the scaffold rouged and dressed, as if for a ball, with a ruff, stiffened with yellow starch, round her neck; but otherwise she made a very penitent end.*

Mrs. Turner had introduced yellow starched ruffs, &c. The fashion went out with her exit at Tyburn.

Both Coke and Bacon eulogised the righteous zeal of the king for the impartial execution of justice; but their praise was at the least premature. James betrayed great uneasiness on hearing that his chief falconer, Sir Thomas Monson, was implicated, and would probably "play an unwelcomed card on his trial." And when Monson was arraigned, some yeomen of the guard, acting under the king's private orders, to the astonishment and indignation of the public, carried him from the bar to the Tower. After a brief interval he was released from that confinement, and allowed not only to go at large, but also to retain some place about the court.*

As for the trial of the great offenders, the Earl and Countess of Somerset, it was delayed for many months. The delay was imputed for a time to the necessity of waiting for the return of John Digby, the ambassador at Madrid, afterwards Baron Digby and Earl of Bristol, who, it was said, could substantiate the late favourite's treasonable dealings with the Spanish court; but, when Digby came, he could do nothing of the sort; and everything tends to prove that James had all along a dread of bringing Somerset to trial. Even from the documents which remain, we may see the king's unceasing anxiety, and a system of trick and manoeuvre almost unparalleled, and which cannot possibly admit of any other interpretation than this;-Somerset was possessed of some dreadful secret, the disclosure of which would have been fatal to the king. The two prisoners, who were kept separate, were constantly beset by ingenious messengers from court, who assured them that, if they would only confess their guilt, all would go well, that they would have the royal pardon to secure them in their lives and estates. Nay, more, there was held out to Somerset, "indirectly as it were, a glimmering of his majesty's benign intention to reinstate him in all his former favour." When we mention that James's chief messenger and agent was Bacon, it will be understood that the business was ably done, and that the hopes and fears of the prisoners were agitated with a powerful hand. The countess, after much pains had been taken with her, confessed her guilt; but Somerset resisted every attempt, most solemnly protesting his innocence of the murder of Overbury. When Bacon spoke of the king's determination to secure him in life and fortune, he replied, "Life and fortune are not worth the acceptance when honour is gone." earnestly implored to be admitted to the king's presence, saying that, in a quarter of an hour's private conversation, he could establish his innocence, and set the business at rest for ever. But James shrunk from this audience; and the prisoner's request to be allowed to forward a private letter to the king was denied him. Then Somerset threatened, instead of praying; declaring that, whenever

He

he should be brought to the bar, he would reveal such things as his ungrateful sovereign would not like to hear. James Hay, afterwards Earl of Carlisle, the friend and countryman of Somerset, and other particular friends, were despatched from time to time by the trembling king to the Tower to work upon the prisoner; but though, in the end, something must have been done by such means, they for a long time produced no visible effect upon the resolution of the earl. When the confession of his wife was obtained (it did not materially bear against him), Bacon and the other commissioners, among whom were Coke and Chancellor Ellesmere, told Somerset that his lady, being touched with remorse, had at last confessed all, and that she that led him to offend ought now, by her example, to lead him to repent of his offence; that the confession of one of them could not singly do either of them much good; but that the confession of both of them might work some further effect towards both; and that therefore they, the commissioners, wished him not to shut the gates of his majesty's mercy against himself by being obdurate any longer. But his reasoning was thrown away upon him: Somerset would not "" come any degree farther on to confess; only his behaviour was very sober, and modest, and mild; but yet, as it seemed, resolved to expect his trial." Then they proceeded to examine him touching the death of Overbury; and they made this farther observation, that, "in the questions of the imprisonment," he was "very cool and modest;" but that, when they asked him

some questions that did touch the prince,* or some foreign practice" (which they did "very sparingly"), he "grew a little stirred."+ James received a letter from the prisoner, but not a private one. The tone of the epistle was enigmatical, but bold, like that of a man writing to one over whom he had power. In it Somerset again demanded a private interview; but James replied that this was a favour he might grant after, but not before, his trial.§

Bacon was intrusted with the legal management of the case, but he appears hardly to have taken a step without previously consulting the king, who postillated with his own hand the intended charges,

It is by no means clear that Prince Henry is here alluded to. Bacon may possibly refer to the living prince, Charles, and the rumour of Somerset's undertaking to deliver him into the hands of the Spaniards. But it seems scarcely possible that Somerset should have betrayed agitation at an unfounded report. On a former examination, when, as we learn from Bacon himself, the charge was clearly that of a treasonable correspondence with Spain, Somerset showed no emotion whatever, merely saying that he had been too well rewarded by his majesty ever to think of Spain." If he (Prince Henry)," says Lord Dartmouth, in a note to Burnet's History of his Own Time' (i. 11), "was poisoned by the Earl of Somerset, it was not upon the account of religion, but for making love to the Countess of Essex; and that was what the Lord Chief Justice Coke meant, when he said, at the Earl of Somerset's trial, God knows what went with the good prince Henry, but I have heard something."

+ Bacon's Letter to the King in Cabala. In his postscript the wily attorney-general savs," If it seem good unto your majesty, we think it not amiss some preacher (well chosen) had access to my Lord of Somerset, for his preparing and comfort, although it be before his trial." From the whole tenor of this correspondence there can be no doubt whatever as to the sort of service Bacon would expect from this "well-chosen" preacher! Several of the letters about the old favourite are addressed, with slavish and disgusting protestations, to the new minion, Sir George Villiers.

1 See the Letter in Somers's Tracts. Letter of James, in Archæologia.

and instructed the wily attorney-general so to manage matters in court as not to drive Somerset to desperation, or give, in his own words, "occasion for despair or flushes." He was perfectly well understood by Bacon, who undertook to have the prisoner found guilty before the peers without making him too odious to the people. The whole business of Bacon was to put people on a wrong scent, for the purpose of preventing Somerset from making any dangerous disclosure, and the other judges from getting an insight into some iniquitous secret which it imported the king to conceal. On the 24th of May, 1616, the countess was separately arraigned before the peers. The beautiful but guilty woman looked pale, and sick, and spiritless she trembled excessively while the clerk read the indictment; she hid her face with her fan at mention of the name of Weston; and she wept and spoke with a voice scarcely audible when she pleaded guilty and threw herself on the royal mercy. As soon as this was done she was hurried from the bar, and then, when she was not present to say that her confession did not involve her husband, Bacon delivered a very artful speech, stating the evidence he had to produce if she had made it necessary by pleading not guilty. After this speech the countess was recalled for a minute to the bar of the Lords to hear sentence of death, which was pronounced by the Chancellor Elles

mere, whom the king and Bacon, after long deliberation, had appointed High Steward for the trials. On the same day Somerset, who ought to have been tried with his wife, was warned by Sir George More, the present Lieutenant of the Tower, that he must stand his trial on the morrow. Owing to some causes not explained, but at which we may easily guess, the earl, who had before desired this, absolutely refused to go, telling the lieutenant that he should carry him by force in his bed; that the king had assured him he should never come to any trial, and that the king durst not bring him to trial. This language made More quiver and shake; . . . "yet away goes More to Greenwich, as late as it was, being twelve at night, and bounces up the back-stairs as if mad." The king, who was in bed, on hearing what the lieutenant had to say, fell into a passion of tears, and said, "On my soul, More, I wot not what to do! Thou art a wise man; help me in this great strait, and thou shalt find thou dost it for a thankful master." ."*"Returning to the Tower, the lieutenant told his prisoner that he had been with the king, and found him a most affectionate master unto him, and full of grace in his intentions towards him; but, said he, to satisfy justice, you must appear, although you return instantly again, with

Weldon says that Sir George More "was really rewarded with a suit worth to him 1500., although Annandale, his great friend, did cheat him of one-half; so was there falsehood in friendship."

out any further proceeding, only you shall know your enemies and their malice, though they shall have no power over you. With this trick of wit he allayed his fury, and got him quietly, about eight in the morning, to the hall; yet feared his former bold language might revert again, and, being brought by this trick into the toil, might have more enraged him to fly out into some strange discovery, that he had two servants placed on each side on him, with a cloak on their arms, giving them a peremptory order, if that Somerset did any way fly out on the king, they should instantly hoodwink him with that cloak, take him violently from the bar, and carry him away; for which he would secure them from any danger, and they should not want also a bountiful reward."

Somerset, however, when brought to the bar of the Lords, was in a very composed easy humour, which Bacon took good care not to disturb by any of those invectives that were usually employed against prisoners. He abstained, he said, from such things by the king's order, though of himself he were indisposed to blazon his name in blood.† He handled the case most tenderly, never urging the guilt of Somerset without bringing forward the hope or assurance of the royal mercy. But the prisoner, who displayed far more ability than he had ever been supposed to possess, though he abstained from any accusations or out-pourings of wrath against James, was not willing to submit to a verdict of guilty, however sure of a pardon. He maintained his innocence, and defended himself so ably that the trial lasted eleven hours. In the end the peers unanimously pronounced him guilty. He then prayed them to be intercessors for him with the king, adding, however, words which meant that he thought that it would hardly be needed. "But who had seen the king's restless motion all that day, sending to every boat he saw landing at the bridge, cursing all that came without tidings, would have easily judged all was not right, and that there had been some grounds for his fears of Somerset's boldness; but at last, one bringing him word he was condemned, and the passages, all was quiet." A few weeks after sentence James granted a pardon to the countess, "because the process and judgment against her were not of a principal, but as of an accessary

Weldon. The lieutenant of the Tower may have thought of providing the two sentinels and the hood-winking cloaks, but all the rest had certainly been suggested before-hand by Bacon, in a Particular Remembrance for his Majesty." "It were good," says his miracle of genius and profligacy, that after he is come into the hall, so that he may perceive he must go to trial, and shall be retired to the place appointed till the court call for him, then the lieutenant shall tell him roundly that if in his speeches he shall tax the king, that the justice of England is that he shall be taken away, and the evidence shall go on without him; and then all the people will cry, Away with him! and then it shall not be in the king's will to save his life, the people will be so set on fire."-State Trials.

This was a hint at Coke, who was a terrible dealer in invectives. Weldon. Old Sir Anthony's pen was no doubt occasionally dipped in gall, but his account of these transactions, which he says he and a friend had from Sir George More's own mouth verbatim in Wanstead Park, after being long ascribed to his libellous spirit and hatred of James, has received the most complete confirmation by some letters from More himself, published in the Archæologia, vol. xviii. When he is found so veracious in one important particular it may be questioned whether Weldon has not been unfairly doubted in others.

before the fact." A like pardon was offered to the earl, who said that he, as an innocent and injured man, expected a reversal of the judgment pronounced by the peers. After a few years' imprisonment, Somerset and his lady retired into the country, there, as it is said, to reproach and hate one another. The king would not permit the earl's arms to be reversed and kicked out of the chapel of Windsor; and upon his account it was ordered "that felony should not be reckoned amongst the disgraces for those who were to be excluded from the Order of St. George, which was without precedent."* Further, to keep the discarded favourite and depositary of royal mysteries from desperation, he was allowed for life the then splendid income of 4000l. a-year. Considering the power of money and the baseness of the age, we are inclined to doubt the oratorical accounts of the loneliness and abandonment into which he fell.

The countess died in 1632, in the reign of Charles I.; the earl, who survived her thirteen years, will reappear on the scene towards the close of the present reign. Their daughter, an only child, the Lady Anne Carr, who was born in the Tower, was married to William, fifth Earl, and afterwards first Duke, of Bedford, by whom she had many children, one of whom was the celebrated Lord Russell, who died on the scaffold in the time of Charles II. She is described as a lady of great honour and virtue and it is said that her mother's history was so carefully concealed from her that she knew nothing of the story of the divorce of Lady Essex until a year or two before her death.† The illused Earl of Essex will appear hereafter, and most conspicuously, as the leader of the parliament army against the unfortunate successor of King James.

It should appear that the services of Bacon in the Overbury and Somerset case secured his triumph over his rival. Coke, however, had long been hated by the king, and in his irritation thereat he took an independent, and what might otherwise have been a patriotic course in administering the law. Hence he incensed James more and more, and involved himself in a quarrel with the old Chancellor Ellesmere, whom Bacon flattered and cajoled in the hope of succeeding to his high office. Many things had made the Lord Chief Justice totter in his seat, but a dispute with Villiers, the new favourite, about a patent place at court, a dispute with the king about bishoprics and commendams, and the ingenious malice of Bacon, who had James's ear, laid him prostrate at last. By the advice of Bacon, he was called before the council: the other judges had all been there before him, to kneel to the king and ask pardon for attempting to act according to law. Bacon, Ellesmere, and Abbot the primate had been employed for some time in collecting charges against him. Coke was accused of concealing a debt of 12,000l. due to the crown by the late Chancellor Hatton; of uttering on the bench Camden, Annals of King James. + Oldmixon.

words of very high contempt, saying that the common law would be overthrown, wherein he reflected upon the king; and, thirdly, of uncivil and indiscreet carriage in the matter of commendams. Coke repelled the charge about the money, and he afterwards obtained a legal decision in his favour without denying his words on the bench, he palliated the second charge; to the third he confessed, and prayed forgiveness. The king ordered him to appear a second time before the council, and then the proud lawyer was brought to his knees to hear the judgment of his royal master, which was, that he should keep away from the council-table, and not go the circuit, but employ himself in correcting the errors in his book of Reports. When Coke reported to the king that he could discover only five unimportant errors in his book, James chose to consider that he was proud and obstinate, and gave the chief justiceship to Montague, the Recorder of London. It is said that Coke, on receiving his supersedeas, wept like a child. Bacon not only made merry with the new favourite on his fall, but wrote Coke an insulting and most unmanly letter, made trebly atrocious by an assumption of exceeding great godliness.*

Prince Charles, now created Prince of Wales, was in his seventeenth year, and the king had not yet succeeded in negociating what he considered a suitable marriage for him. The religious feelings of his subjects, both in England and Scotland, were violently opposed to any Catholic match; but James's pride led him to prefer a family alliance with some one of the royal houses in Europe, and of those houses the greatest were all Catholic. Suspecting at last that the court of Spain had no intention to conclude any arrangement with him, he opened negociations with that of France for the hand of Madame Christine, sister to the young King Louis XIII.; but, notwithstanding an extravagant and pompous embassy, the French court preferred an alliance with the Duke of Savoy. Shortly after the failure of this treaty Concini, Marshal d'Ancre, a Florentine, who had accompanied the Queen Mother, Marie de' Medici into France, and who, since the death of Henry IV., had ruled the whole kingdom, was murdered on the drawbridge of the Louvre by Vitry, one of the captains of the body-guard. The deed was done in broad daylight by order of Louis, who had been kept in a state of subjection, and almost of bondage, by his mother's favourite. On the following day the people of Paris raised a cry against the excommunicated Jew and wizard; they dug up his body, which had been hastily buried, -dragged it through the streets,-hung it by the heels on a gibbet on the Pont Neuf,-cut it up,burned part of it before the statue of Henry IV., and threw the rest into the Seine. The parliament of Paris proceeded against the memory of the deceased favourite, declared him to have been guilty of treason both against God and the king,-con-, * Scrinia Sacra; a Supplement to the Cabala,

demned his wife to be beheaded, and her body afterwards burnt,-and declared his son to be ignoble and incapable of holding any property or place in France. In this strange process there was more talk of sorcery and devil-dealing than there had been on the trial of the murderers of Overbury; and it was pretended that monstrous proofs were discovered of the Judaism and magic of the wretched Florentine. As soon as Louis saw Concini fall on the drawbridge, he presented himself at a window, exclaiming, "Praised be the Lord, now I am a king!" and the officers of his guard went through the streets of Paris shouting, "God save the king! The king is king!" James made haste to congratulate his most Christian majesty; and Sir Thomas Edmonds, his special ambassador, was instructed by the king or Villiers, or by both, to pay a high compliment to Vitry, the actual murderer;* But France, after

all, did not gain much by the change, for Louis soon submitted to a contemptible favourite of his own, the Duke de Luines, who misgoverned the country as much as Concini had done.

In the mean while James's new favourite, Villiers, was becoming far more powerful and mischievous than his predecessor, Somerset. The old Earl of Worcester was made to accept a pension and the honorary office of President of the Council, and to resign his place of Master of the Horse to the minion, who was now Viscount Villiers, and was soon after (on the 5th of January, 1617) created Earl of Buckingham. Bacon, who told the king that he was afraid of nothing but that his excellent servant the new Master of the Horse and he should fall out as to which should hold his majesty's stirrup best, and who, on Villiers's first advancement, had written an elaborate treatise to show him how to demean himself in his post of prime favourite, got some reward at the same time. The old Chancellor Ellesmere, who in moments of sickness had repeatedly complained of his great age, his griefs, and infirmities, of the dulness and heaviness of his sense, and his decaying memory, but who, when the fit was past, had baffled the hopes of the attorney-general and had clung to his place, having been gratified with the title of Viscount Brackley in November, 1616, felt his end approaching in the month of February, formally resigned the seals in March, and died a fortnight after. James gave the seals, with the title of Lord Keeper, to Bacon, who had pledged himself to do the royal will in all things. The great philosopher, now in the fifty-fourth year of his age, was made giddy by his elevation: he rode to

Birch, Negoc.-Secretary Winwood, writing to Sir Guy Carleton, ambassador in Holland, about this murder and special embassy, says," But what opinion soever private particular men, who aim at nothing else but the advancement of their own fortunes, have of this action (the murder of Concini), his majesty is pleased to approve of it, which doth appear not only by the outward demonstration of his exceeding joy and contentment when first he received the news thereof, but also by letters which, with his own hand, he hath written to the French king. Besides, Mr. Comptroller, who hath charge in all diligence to return into France, hath express order to congratulate with the Marshal de Vitry, for so now he is, that by his hands the king his master was delivered out of captivity."

+ Cabala, and Bacon's works.