Disgrace And Favour

by Jeremy Potter

  With the aid of Villiers’ access to the King’s ear at night - and a heavy bribe paid to the new favourite by Southampton - the majority faction on the Council gained a double victory: Ralegh’s release from the Tower after thirteen years, and the imprisonment of Carr and Frances Howard in his stead.

  As state prisoners awaiting trial, the couple were not permitted the intimacies of husband and wife. Separate lodgings were therefore allotted to them. The Countess screamed in terror at the suggestion that she be locked in Overbury’s. She had her way and was granted those vacated by Ralegh. It was the Earl who was forced to compose himself as best he might in the quarters where his friend had suffered the torment of death by the most noxious of poisons.

  The End Of An Age

  I

  ‘Guilty!’

  There was no equivocation about the plea of the Countess of Somerset. Arraigned on a charge of murder before her peers in Westminster Hall, she appeared humble and contrite. Fetchingly attired in a black dress bordered with a white ruff and white cuffs of cobweb lawn, she looked penitent as a nun, as beautiful - and as cold - as the incomparable marble Venus shipped from Italy that very month by her cousin, the Earl of Arundel.

  Carey caught his breath at the sight of her. He was present in the company of the Earl of Essex, who had remained implacably unforgiving and wished for nothing more than the disgrace and execution of the woman who had rejected him. The hall was filled and overflowing. All other legal business - indeed business of every kind - had been suspended for the day. A pair of seats had cost the Earl ten pounds.

  When proceedings opened and the Countess made her confession to poisoning Sir Thomas Overbury, the man who would have denied her a divorce, she uttered the single word in a soft trembling voice which could scarcely be heard, and the Earl loudly demanded that the plea be repeated.

  Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, who presided, rebuked him but ordered the accused to plead a second time, more clearly. Obediently she lifted her bowed head and repeated the word, her eyes directed to the rafters as though addressing God. A trained actor could not have played the part to such perfection. The solemn plea was greeted with echoing sighs - one of relief from those responsible for the conduct of the trial, and one of disappointment from those who had paid so dearly for their seats and were reckoning on a full day’s sport.

  The prosecution began with a speech from the Attorney General, Sir Francis Bacon. It proved long enough to satisfy the most demanding. He described the crime in all its villainy, not omitting a single circumstance to the discredit of the accused. He hailed the trial as a triumph of English justice and ended with a peroration of lickspittling praise for its fountainhead, the all-wise and all-just King James. Like the Lord Chief Justice, the Attorney General had more than one eye on the failing health of the elderly Lord Chancellor and the resulting prospect of early advancement.

  The probity of the King was publicly affirmed a second time with the reading to the court of his strict command that the crime be investigated without fear or favour. High or low, noble or base-born, all were subject to the majesty of the law and must be seen to be so.

  ‘What does this King of ours fear?’ demanded Essex of Carey in what, with him, passed for a whisper. ‘What so frightens his glorious Majesty that his innocence must be publicly protested? Why was such light not ordered to be shed on the darkness of Prince Henry’s death?’

  ‘You are overheard, my lord,’ Carey whispered back, urging him to be discreet. No defence was offered, and the Countess was asked whether she had any cause to allege why sentence of death should not be passed on her.

  She stood alone before an entire bench of judges and the peers who had been chosen to represent all the nobility in the land. Her father and mother had fled to their country palace at Audley End to avoid the contamination of her guilt. Her former husband was present, gloating. Her present husband lay in the Tower, awaiting a trial of his own. The King, who had managed her two marriages and had treated her like a daughter, had retired to Greenwich in evident apprehension of what the trial might reveal. She was deserted - and made the most of it.

  ‘I cannot extenuate my fault,’ she declared. ‘I desire only mercy and that the lords will intercede for me with the King.’ Her head and voice were low again, in token of shame and humility.

  Now that matters had reached a satisfactory conclusion, the court could afford to take pity on her and this time Ellesmere excused her inaudibility like a kindly grandfather. ‘The accused is so touched with remorse,’ he announced in a tone of compassion, ‘that grief has conquered her.’

  Prompt to pick up a cue, the Countess burst into tears. They spattered the stone flags like raindrops and melted every heart except the most hardened. Only Essex sneered.

  ‘Since the lords have heard with what humility you have confessed your crime,’ the Lord Chancellor resumed, ‘I do not doubt that they will signify as much to the King and mediate for his grace towards you. But in the meantime, according to the law, the sentence must be this: That you shall be carried from hence to the Tower of London, and from thence to the place of execution, where you are to be hanged by the neck until you are dead, and may the Lord have mercy on your soul.’

  The passing of the sentence brought a momentary hush, broken only by the prisoner’s sobs. Then Essex spoke.

  ‘Is this the King’s much vaunted justice?’ he demanded, while the convicted murderess was being led still weeping from the hall. ‘The underlings who obeyed her orders have been hanged, but the President of the Court has as good as announced that this woman will go free. For shielding others by confessing her crime, she has been pardoned in advance of this mockery of a trial. So much for investigation without fear or favour! Without fear on the part of the real felons or favour shown to the wretches who did their bidding!’

  The dignitaries of the court retired without choosing to heed the outburst, and the Earl’s anger burned more fiercely. He leaped on to a bench.

  ‘You may be mistaken, my lord. Does a sentence of death not content you? The Countess is not pardoned yet.’ Carey attempted to placate him, fearing that he intended to cause a riot.

  ‘How much will you wager, then, that she will be hanged?’ Essex challenged him. ‘Did she not faithfully keep her side of the bargain and avoid any admission of the guilt of the King’s minion?’

  ‘If you do not guard your tongue, my lord, you will join them both in the Tower.’ It was Carey’s turn to become fierce.

  ‘If you will not take my wager, Sir Robert, will you take another instead - that James Stuart will not have the courage to arrest me?’

  ‘Come,’ said Carey, ignoring the boast, ‘such words are better spoken outside these walls, and I have promised the Prince a timely account of the trial.’

  He thrust his way towards the door and after a minute’s hesitation Essex followed him ill-humouredly. Attended by armed retainers in the Earl’s livery, they crossed the park towards St James’s Palace.

  ‘You are in error about the consequences of the Countess not incriminating Carr,’ said Carey. ‘It will not endear her to the King. He desires it to be acknowledged openly that Carr was implicated in the poisoning. That done, no one can accuse him of protecting a favourite from being brought to justice. Carr too must plead guilty and the affair will then be at an end. The royal prerogative of mercy not being in dispute, the King can pardon them without offending the law.’

  ‘Carr’s plea will make no difference. The villain will not be punished so long as the King lives. If I know him, he will make a show of blamelessness.’

  ‘I have known Carr for twenty years. He will plead guilty in accordance with the King’s wish. To protest his innocence would place his life in danger.’

  ‘Life before honour! That is the way of courtiers,’ scoffed Essex, ‘and you, to your shame, have become one yourself. You and your caution! You and your discretion! You and your Prince whom you despise and yet grow fat on! Thank God I am no courtier. After today I sh
all have no more dealings with you and your Stuarts.’ He signed abruptly to his men to follow him towards his palace on the Strand and and stalked proudly away like the ghost of Carey’s youth.

  During the next few days strange rumours escaped from the Tower. Sir George More, the new Lieutenant, had the unenviable task of acting as intermediary between the King and the imprisoned favourite. He was seen scurrying up and down stream between London and Greenwich, journeying more frequently each day, like a tennis ball struck harder and harder from either side. As he sped anxiously to and fro, it became plain to those who could read the omens - and the King’s countenance - that the prisoner was remaining obdurate in the face of every blandishment, steadfastly refusing to plead guilty in exchange for the promise of a pardon.

  Ground between the pair of them, Sir George considered resigning the lucrative post which he had bid so high to get. He confided in his friends and his friends confided in the rest of the court. Carr was maintaining not only that he was innocent but that the King knew it and had given his word that he would never be brought to trial. His enemies, he vowed, would never enjoy the satisfaction of seeing him, as they had seen his wife, stand at the bar in Westminster Hall. If the King betrayed him and gave orders for him to be taken there, the Lieutenant would have to carry him by force and he would lie on the floor. When the King in a rage threatened to have this done, Carr threatened in retaliation to address his peers in open court and reveal what the King would regret for ever. When this last message was delivered, Sir George reported, his Majesty became convulsed as though with an ague and took to his privy stool.

  There seemed no key to the deadlock, but no sooner had the gossips become reconciled to being deprived of their pleasure than the trial of the Earl of Somerset was announced for the very next day. Villiers and the Archbishop had combined to convince James that if there were no trial the damage to his reputation would be beyond repair, and that the prisoner would not dare to carry out his threats.

  The scramble for seats exceeded even that for the Countess’s trial. Nine o’clock was the appointed hour and Carey, arriving at five, found every place taken. He was forced to bribe an usher with no fewer than six pounds for the privilege of squeezing into the last vacant corner. Essex had preceded him, flamboyantly dressed as for a wedding. He sat in the front row of seats whence, as he proclaimed to all about him, he could look the murderer in the nose.

  When the summons had reached him in the chamber where Overbury died, Carr decided to accept it, stand on his own feet and make a brave showing. Like his wife, he dressed himself in black, the hue of death, but across his doublet he defiantly hung the bright blue ribbon of the Order of the Garter. His once bright eyes had sunk into their sockets, his cheeks grown wan, his beard untrimmed, but he strode into the hall with the calm assurance of a martyr.

  Ellesmere again presided, the man who had frustrated the general pardon, and he did not preside by virtue of his office. The King had appointed him High Steward for the occasion. The jury of peers who would decide the verdict of life or death numbered twenty-two. They had been nominated by the Council and included every lord who had attended the meeting at Baynard’s Castle which had first plotted the prisoner’s downfall.

  In response to the first question, Carr consented to be tried by God and his peers. But that was the limit of his acquiescence. In response to the second he returned a fervent ‘not guilty’, putting Carey and his prediction to shame.

  ‘Robert, Earl of Somerset,’ Ellesmere warned him sternly, ‘remember that God is the God of truth. A fault defended is a double crime. Take heed, lest your wilfulness cause the gates of mercy to be shut upon you.’

  The hint could not have been broader, but Carr ignored it. His lips tightened and he stood unsubmissive.

  Further attempts to move him proved unavailing, and the Attorney General began his speech for the prosecution. Like those of the Lord Chief Justice at the earlier trials, it sought to arouse prejudice against the prisoner by stressing the heinous nature of the offence.

  ‘Next to high treason,’ Bacon told their lordships in his most terror-striking tones, ‘this is of all crimes the greatest. It is the foulest of felonies. Its degrees of foulness are threefold. First, it is murder by impoisonment. Secondly, it is murder committed on the King’s prisoner in the Tower. Thirdly, it is murder committed under the colour of friendship. Consider well, my lords, that Sir Thomas Overbury has been the only victim of murder in the Tower of London for more than a century. None has suffered such a fate since the lamentable death of those two innocent princes, the royal babes of King Edward IV.’

  After an hour or more he reached matters of relevance, reading passages from letters which had passed between Carr and Overbury when the latter was in the Tower. These proved the accused’s knowledge of Overbury’s sickness. Overbury was shown to be growing increasingly reproachful and Carr to be playing a double game.

  The Attorney General then set out to prove that the accused was privy to the appointments of Elwes as Lieutenant of the Tower and Weston as keeper, the only two men with access to the murdered man. Since both had already been hanged they could not give evidence themselves, but Overbury’s father was called as a witness and described how the accused had several times refused petitions that his son might be attended by one of his own servants. At the sight of the venerable country magistrate bowed with sorrow at his loss, the court was much affected.

  Another witness was Paul de Lobell, the apothecary to whom the elusive William Reeve had been apprenticed. According to his testimony, he had prescribed physic for Overbury on the instructions of Sir Thomas Mayerne, the King’s physician and a fellow Huguenot. He recounted several conversations with the accused, who had questioned him in suspicious detail about the state of Overbury’s health. The form of the questions he could not recall, but assuredly they were not the fruit of friendship, rather the unconscious voicing of guilt. Mayerne himself was not called.

  At length the Attorney General moved on to firm ground. He had no difficulty in demonstrating that, when the investigation began long after Overbury’s death, the behaviour of the accused was suspicious in the extreme and highly suggestive of guilt. Carr had made vigorous efforts to retrieve incriminating letters and, when he had succeeded, some had been destroyed and others misdated. Above all, he had endeavoured to secure a general pardon which would have excused him from punishment for the terrible crime with which he was now charged. That alone their lordships might regard as sufficient and ample proof of guilt.

  Lest this indictment were deemed insufficient, two further prosecution speeches were delivered to reinforce the Attorney General’s. Finally, other witnesses were called to allay any residue of doubt in the minds of the jury of peers. When the last stood down, night had fallen. The hall had become stale with summer heat and the odour of bodies pressed together. It was dark as Domesday above the flickering of the torchlight. Eleven hours had passed and not a word been spoken in Carr’s defence. Even from his corner, Carey could see that the accused was exhausted.

  Yet justice, in the person of Lord Chancellor and High Steward Ellesmere, demanded that the trial continue and arrive at its conclusion within the day. It mattered not that the accused had no lawyer or friend to assist him and had heard the evidence against him for the first time. That was the law. Small wonder Carr looked dazed and drawn as he began to speak haltingly in defence of his life. Carey, who had hated him, felt nothing but pity as he looked down from shadows as black as those about to close over his enemy’s head. In shame he listened to the doomed man addressing the court with all the courage of the Border lairds whose blood ran in his veins: a Scotsman at bay among Englishmen.

  With earnestness, Carr promised their lordships nothing but the truth. He freely admitted consenting to Overbury’s imprisonment because his friend had become an impediment to his marriage, but he strongly denied any culpability in procuring his death. ‘I designed the imprisonment of Sir Thomas Overbury for his reformation,’ h
e declared, ‘not his ruin.’

  Through fatigue his speech gradually became incoherent, wandering inconsequentially and running on seemingly without end. As point after point came tumbling disordered into the prisoner’s mind and fell from his lips, the Attorney General could not contain his concern at what might come next. At intervals he would interrupt impatiently and complain to the President that my lord of Somerset had had a sufficiently gracious hearing.

  Was Carr about to make good his threat to the King, Carey wondered - and the rest of the vast crowd with him. If so, Ellesmere would have no part in its suppression. He dismissed the appeals curtly and allowed the prisoner to proceed.

  Carr barely acknowledged the ruling, making it plain that if the court wanted to silence him it would have to stop his mouth with a gag. He complained of the lies told against him. Weston he had never met, nor sent him a single instruction of any kind. Lobell he had met once, but had never conversed with, as the apothecary had falsely claimed. As for the general pardon, their lordships should know that he had been forbidden to call Sir Robert Cotton, who would have given evidence that the document was drawn up according to precedent and without the motive attributed to him by the Attorney General.

  ‘My lords,’ he concluded wearily, ‘before you go to consider your verdict, I beseech you give me leave to recommend myself and my cause to you. As the King has raised me to your degree, so he has now disposed me to your censures. Because any one of you might be in my place, I assure myself that you will not take circumstances for evidence, for if you should a man’s life is worth nothing. I protest before God that I was neither guilty of, nor privy to, any wrong suffered by Sir Thomas Overbury which may have caused his death.’

  ‘Is that all which you desire to be heard in your defence?’ asked Ellesmere.