‘He means no harm, your Majesty,’ Carr answered. ‘He speaks his mind with too much force. He is vain moreover.’
‘He takes advantage of thy friendship,’ said James, with his usual delight in argument. ‘‘He sees himself of an importance that doth not exist. I would have him leave the Court for some useful employment. That would be agreeable to him, I imagine? I would not injure a friend of thine, my dear one.’
Carr smiled and bowed as he was expected to do, but inwardly he began to be alarmed. Lady Essex had told him she feared Tom Overbury in the matter of her divorce because he knew too much of their relationship. Now it seemed the King had been prepared for action, had considered it in detail and was about to take it.
‘What kind of employment does your Majesty recommend?’ he asked with a lively show of interest to hide his very real misgiving.
‘I propose he shall represent us in Holland,’ said James. ‘It is an honour and a responsibility, seeing the negotiations for the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth are not yet fully complete.’
‘He must then go abroad?’
‘Will that not satisfy us all?’
All perhaps, thought Carr, but Tom himself. Well, he must speak seriously to his friend. His exile need not be a long one. When the divorce proceedings were safely over, when he was himself united in marriage with his lovely mistress. Tom’s dangerous knowledge would be no threat to their happiness. To raise scandal then would bring the man punishment for gross libel. He would not dare to speak the facts that he knew. But just now, when there was rumour, but only rumour, while the King was still debating whether or no to set up the necessary commission to break Lady Essex’s marriage, Tom Overbury would be far better abroad.
‘It is for thine own ultimate advancement,’ he told his friend.
Sir Thomas Overbury refused to see it as such.
‘How so?’ he cried fiercely. ‘Under thy patronage, my Lord Rochester, I have a considerable place about the Court.’
‘And never fail to ram it down most unwilling throats.’
‘Nay, hear me out! I have a place and an influence. The faction of my Lord Archbishop to which I belong with entire loyalty, to which thou did’st before this damnable—’
‘Have a care, Tom! Duelling is against the new law, but by God, I’ll fight thee if one word against my lady leaves thy evil-speaking mouth!’
‘I will not go from England,’ Overbury declared, turning away.
‘Thou can’st not refuse an honour bestowed by his Majesty!’ Rochester was aghast at his friend’s audacity. ‘Know you not how the King regards his prerogative? It would be treason to refuse. Treason!’
‘Nevertheless I will not go to Holland,’ Overbury declared.
In spite of further argument, stiffer warning, even ardent pleading, the foolish vain man persisted in his folly. He refused the offered post point blank with no careful preparation, no excuses on grounds of ill-health, dependent relatives, the care of ailing estates. He refused. King James was furious.
‘This insignificant rascal! This mountebank! He dares to offer us this insult! Ingrate! Villain!’
‘An ignorant fool, your Majesty,’ Lord Northampton urged.
‘One that knew no better.’
‘Then he shall learn!’ the King roared. ‘He shall go to the Tower and there learn what it is to insult a king!’
To the Tower he was taken that same day, where he found himself locked in a very bare cell and left quite alone to recover from the unkind handling he had suffered on the way there. That this was largely his own fault for resisting arrest and continuing to fight all the way to the prison, gave him no comfort. When he had got his breath back, straightened his torn clothes and recovered the strength of his legs, he walked up and down his cell shouting for help, for a lawyer to brief in his defence, for justice, in that he was innocent of any crime, being one of the most loyal of his Majesty’s subjects and would ever remain so.
But his appeals met with no response and his cries only exhausted him, reducing his voice in the end to a hoarse whisper.
Lord Rochester was shocked by his friend’s fate, though he agreed with Lady Essex that it was entirely of his own doing. However, his imprisonment, being solely brought about by the King, was not likely to last very long. He could not be held without a legal charge made against him and sustained in a court of law. The foolish man must surely see that his only course now lay in a confession of his fault and a plea for mercy. He would soon be released, Rochester said, and could then be got quickly and quietly out of the country.
Lady Essex did not dispute with her lover but she had other plans and though she did not confide them to her father or to Lord Northampton or any of his friends, she did suggest it would do the insolent fool good to taste confinement for a considerable time. Lord Northampton, who never forgot the lady’s earlier reputation in dealing with those she considered her enemies, anticipated her present likely behaviour and took steps to assist her.
The first of these was to exchange the present Lieutenant of the Tower for someone entirely of their own way of thinking, who would not scruple to follow the advice of his patron and would not be too eager to secure justice and a right process of law for those who had been shut up for their proclaimed ideas rather than their unruly or violent deeds.
So Northampton consulted with his friends and a certain Sir Gervase Helwys was put forward. This was an old soldier, experienced in the wars abroad, hardened and made callous by his experiences and now retired from active campaigning, forced to live at a very reduced standard from that he had known.
His circumstances were such that the offer of the Lieutenancy of the Tower seemed to him a kind of miracle. He had not improved his retirement by his continued practice of gambling. At the Tower where money passed freely in ways both honest and markedly illegal, he looked to satisfy his need to his heart’s content.
When first offered the post he was inclined to be suspicious. But the gentleman who approached him, a certain Sir Thomas Monson, came indirectly from the great Earl of Northampton himself. So how could he refuse one who was known to wield the greatest power in the kingdom, now the hated Cecil had gone to his rest. Or more likely to his everlasting damnation in the fires of Hell.
This appointment was made only two weeks after Overbury was sent to the Tower. In another fortnight a man appeared with a special recommendation. He had been told he was to undertake the work of gaoler to Sir Thomas Overbury, to guard him well, to let him out for exercise, to lock him up again, to supply his meals, take them to him, clear them away.
This special recommendation seemed to come from Sir Thomas Monson, again at one remove from the Lord Northampton himself. Sir Gervase Helwys made play with a few questions, to which the man, Richard Weston, gave quite open and seemingly honest replies. He did not, however, disclose that he was in fact a servant in Mistress Anne Turner’s household. Nor that the Lady Frances Howard had obtained him his post by her influence with her father. Nor that his work as keeper to Sir Thomas Overbury had more in view than a piece of extra security in case the prisoner should attempt to break out of his prison by physical bravery or by bribery. Or again by offering to disclose all he knew, at a price, about the intrigue between Rochester and the lady, which was well known in Mistress Turner’s establishment, with dates of meetings and other pertinent facts. It was explained to the man by his mistress that Overbury was of a marked choleric constitution and temperament and therefore one would take confinement very ill and suffer from it in his general health. He must report daily to Mistress Turner concerning his charge and she would supply potions and remedies to help the prisoner during his punishment until such time as the King should relent towards him.
This considerate, even pious approach, aroused all of Richard Weston’s suspicion, for he did not like Mistress Turner nor approve of her ways. She paid him very well for his services and besides he knew, as did all her servants, that my Lady Frances Howard was behind, or rather in front of,
Mistress Turner in most of her more complicated activities.
So Weston took service under Sir Gervase Helwys, who determined to watch the fellow carefully, but at present neither to do nor say anything that might betray his own suspicion of evil intention lying like a coiled asp at the heart of the business.
The day after Weston’s appointment Sir Gervase received a considerable sum of money done up in a canvas bag with a leather band fastening it closely. The old soldier was not deceived. Whatever was toward boded no good for the unfortunate Overbury. Helwys determined to be on his guard and deal as fairly with his prisoner as he could without giving him or anyone else a direct warning.
As a gambler whose losses always exceeded his gains the money came at a most convenient time, when funds were low and debts proportionately large. He had no wish to discover who had sent him the valuable coins. He accepted them as secretly as they had appeared. He paid his gambling debts and continued to play with anyone who would give him a game, prisoner or free, man or woman.
‘Poor Tom hath been shut up near four weeks,’ Rochester said to Lady Frances. ‘Time enough and more to purge his insults to Jamie. I must plead for his release.’
‘Madness!’ cried the lady. ‘Know’st not the King himself wished to dispose of him? Out of jealousy, belike, for his regard for thee, thou stupid, darling knave!’
‘But he cannot be left, like poor Ralegh, to eat his heart out for want of a little humility, a little humble plea for pardon, a little necessary obedience to his royal Master.’
‘He will not suffer long,’ Lady Frances told him with a most unmirthful smile. ‘I do assure thee, he will very soon be freed.’
‘By the King? Without encouragement? Without special pleading? His Majesty is just now sadly preoccupied by the state of the Prince. Have you not seen it? His Majesty sends for Sir Charles Cornwallis daily, for his Royal Highness will not see the physicians swearing he is well enough and will soon be recovered, when it is known he can sometimes scarce sit his horse at the hunt.’
Lady Frances nodded. This reference to the Prince’s illness was a very timely warning. Should the poor young man die, as many now thought inevitable, the whole nation together with the Court would be thrown into grief and confusion and her personal cause become totally irrelevant. Patience, she told herself. Patience and the utmost secrecy.
So Lord Rochester did nothing to distract the King from his unwilling anxiety over his son. He knew very well the anxiety was intermittent, since there was nothing James abhorred so much as illness in any form whatever. Robbie took his accustomed place, gave expression to his accustomed devotion in his usual manner. While, always near him, her shining beauty a sufficient mask for the dark spirit behind it, Lady Essex, great lady of the Court, graced all occasions, inspired many, repelled a few, and in her murderous heart considered, planned and reconsidered the death of her chosen victim.
Chapter Ten
Lady Leslie rode with her husband to Oxford on the day he had named, without making her usual complaints about the swift passage of their London visit, or pleas to extend it. She had taken her fill of the pleasures and wonders of the Court. She hoped she had preserved her position among Lady Essex’s female friends and confidantes. Any small misgivings she had felt on this score were wiped out by her parting with her patroness.
‘So Kate, I must lose thee for a time,’ Lady Frances had said with her kindest, most benevolent smile. ‘To Oxford with that serious, profound scholar, thy husband.’
‘I fear me for the whole winter, my lady,’ Katharine answered. ‘But there will be much to occupy me in the arranging afresh of our new house there, only a-building this last year.’
‘Indeed?’ Lady Essex was still smiling but her eyes had hardened. ‘Scholarship then hath proved rewarding? Or doth it perhaps scarce fill Sir Francis’s whole day, so he may study to increase his fortune? Master Angus Leslie, the alderman, prospers prettily, I have been told. With trade to the New World.’
Katharine was astonished, even awed, by this intimate knowledge of her family affairs. Lady Essex laughed to see her confusion.
‘Do I seem to know too much?’ she asked. ‘Nay, I have more besides. Of thy father and mother and that pretty small house and garden in Paternoster Row and the learned brother at Oxford, his wife and babes. What shall we say of thy mother, Kate? That she missed her true vocation in marrying into scholarship? As did her daughter?’
Katharine turned away her crimson face to hide the tears that had started to her eyes. She was dismayed by Lady Essex’s wide knowledge, but she was not cowed. So she held her head up, forcing a smile in her turn, and renewed her leave-taking with dignified formality. Lady Essex let her go. She had more important visitors waiting to see her.
Oxford, two days later, was beautiful, the grey and yellow stone of the great colleges shining in the low sun under a misty blue-grey sky, the leaves glowing on the trees but still not fallen. The new house was welcoming, quiet and dignified after the turmoil of London. The children destroyed the peace and dignity in their first encounter with their parents but were easily reduced to a proper decorum before being dismissed to their own quarters.
Francis, even after so short an interval, found them grown, splendidly healthy, wholly delightful. It was Katharine who quickly tired of their shouts and questions and leapings to and fro. Francis would have played with them for an hour.
But he understood his wife’s mood. Though he despised its cause, her sense of loss and boredom away from that dissolute herd of sycophants, he determined to humour her until she should have settled down to the Oxford life again. He knew he could run upstairs to his nursery whenever less pressing concerns did not hold him to his study. The house was his, he was master here. There was ample space for all their needs and activities.
He found his brother-in-law Richard very actively engaged with the management of the new library founded by Sir Thomas Bodley, who had deserted politics and public life to retire to Oxford and there set up the nucleus of a great collection of books in all subjects and all tongues used for scholarship in the civilized world. Sir Thomas had already secured royal letters patent for his collection which was now known as the Bodleian Library at Oxford.
This Sir Thomas Bodley was a friend of the great writer, Clerk to the Privy Council and Solicitor-General, Sir Francis Bacon. At one time this highly gifted man, frustrated by his cousin Salisbury, without office and deep in debt, had wondered if he might himself retire from public life. But he knew he would not be content if he excluded himself from politics and from advising the King, even if his advice was seldom taken and then not in its entirety. His nephew, Edmund Bacon, was in Oxford at the time of the Leslies’ return. He was studying natural history and medicine. Young Edmund knew both Bodley and Richard Ogilvy and so, very soon this autumn, he met Francis Leslie and the three of them paid several visits to the new library.
‘My uncle is to visit here in the spring,’ Master Bacon said. ‘You must meet him then. As I have been saying to Doctor Ogilvy here, his father hath a considerable collection of books in his house in Paternoster Row in London.’
‘As I know full well,’ Francis told him. ‘Having used them to good purpose during the work on the new bible.’
‘Indeed yes, sir,’ Edmund answered. ‘But Doctor George Ogilvy grows old, Richard tells me, and there must be a danger the books will go to be sold or dispersed and so lost as a collection.’
‘I have told you,’ Richard insisted. ‘They will all be mine, seeing I am the elder son. My mother hath no interest at all in learning.’
‘But is like to do Doctor Ogilvy’s bidding in the matter of his books as of all things related to his profession,’ Francis added. ‘My wife Katharine, likewise. Not that her opinion comes into the matter.’
His voice held a bitter note that was heard by both his listeners, who exchanged a look that meant a need for explanation later. But Francis did not notice this. He was remembering his early months in London, arrived fo
r the first time from Scotland, at work for a degree, sitting at his books in Doctor Ogilvy’s library, with the windows open on a small town garden, sunshine and the scent of gilliflowers and Kate stepping thoughtfully across the little grass plot to the arbour just out of sight round the corner of the house. He had written poems then in praise of her beauty and of his love. A young man’s foolishness, he decided now. He wrote no poems these days nor ever would again, he vowed silently.
Young Master Bacon’s stay in Oxford was short, but from Francis’s point of view very profitable, for the young man introduced him to Sir Thomas Bodley and to a Sir Tobias Matthew, a sometime close friend of the Solicitor-General in his troubled years of thwarted ambition, poverty and frequent humiliation. The friendship had been interrupted by Matthew’s incautious behaviour and critical pronouncements about affairs of state. This had earned him two periods of exile abroad. But at this time he was in England again, disputing Bacon’s theories of learning, his plans for promoting scientific discovery, his recently published enlarged volume of Essays.
‘The people of this country will have none of his clear reasoning,’ Toby Matthew declared. ‘They see in it heresy, a new sect, where nothing could be further from his intention. He doth but state the clear necessity for noting facts before attributing causes and not the contrary process. We English keep the time-honoured habit of drawing causes from the imagination, calling this revelation from God and gathering facts round it to prove the imagined thing.’
‘And yet Doctor William Harvey will have none of Sir Francis Bacon’s scheme of scientific discovery. But he is himself engaged—for he hath spoken of it to my kinsman in London City at dinner when I was present—he hath begun upon experiments, of a kind implied in your uncle’s book, and that upon the function of the heart in relation to the blood.’
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