would not suffer it to be read in open court." The good-natured world believed that he found the name of his own wife in the first page.

The active agency of Mrs. Turner in the poisoning was in the end abundantly proved to the jury, and Coke pronounced sentence upon her with evident satisfaction; not forgetting to tell her that she was guilty of the seven deadly sins, of which he reckoned witchcraft as one and popery as another.

Many ladies of fashion, as well as men, went in their coaches to Tyburn to witness the death of this woman, who edified the spectators, it is said, with a very penitent end; though she could not deny her vanity the slight gratification of making this her last appearance in a ruff stiffened with yellow starch,a favorite fashion imported by herself from France, but to which this exhibition of it proved immediately fatal.

On the trial of sir Gervase Elways, which was the next proceeded in, the guilty and disgusting letters of the earl of Northampton were read, and several fresh indications of the participation of Somerset in the murder of his friend were produced. The name of sir Thomas Monson, the chief falconer, was also brought in question, as an assistant in the unwarrantable measure of keeping the unfortunate Overbury in close custody, and as a probable depositary of the whole atrocious plot. Elways defended himself stoutly; but the evidence of some of his own letters appeared conclusive, and a verdict of Guilty was promptly returned. The voluntary con

fession

fession of one Franklin an apothecary, read on the trial of Elways, contains a curious list of the most approved poisons of that day, which Franklin had procured for the countess by order of Mrs. Turner. These were, aqua fortis, white arsenic, corrosive sublimate, powder of diamonds, lunar caustic, great spiders and cantharides. Franklin himself was next put to the bar, and, notwithstanding his confession and his penitence, shared the fate of his predeces

sors.

Sir Thomas Monson was now arraigned, and strenuously exhorted by the crown lawyers to acknowledge his offence, one of them declaring that he was "as guilty as the guiltiest ;" but he steadily persisted in the assertion of his innocence, and in the midst of the proceedings he was suddenly carried off from the bar by several yeomen of the Tower, and, after a short interval, liberated from that place of confinement without further process of any kind. Not the least mysterious of the many strange circumstances attendant on this memorable casea!"

After the unsparing chastisement of so many accomplices in this deed of darkness, the public must naturally have anticipated a similar infliction on the still more guilty principals; and the emphatic eulogiums of the chief-justice, and of Bacon as attorneygeneral, on the righteous zeal of the king for the

a

The preceding account of the trials of these delinquents has been derived from the minute and apparently authentic narrative affixed to a tract entitled "Truth brought to light by time," first printed in 1651.

VOL. II.

C

impartial

impartial execution of justice, even upon those who had been nearest and dearest to him, were calculated to confirm the expectation. But long delays were interposed which served to weary out the indignation originally excited by the fact, and gradually to prepare the minds of men for the unjustifiable act of lenity which was contemplated.

Amid the various and contradictory accounts of ́this affair handed down to us by the memoir-writers of the age, often ill-informed and always prejudiced, our best clue to the truth is supplied by the official letters of sir Francis Bacon to the king and to Villiers. From these documents it appears, that the interval between the conviction of the other delinquents and the trials of the earl and countess of Somerset, which did not take place till May 1616, was occupied in frequent examinations of the prisoners, and strenuous endeavours to bring them to confession. With the lady, these efforts were at length successful; after many denials, she appeared touched with a late remorse, and owned her guilt. But the mind of her husband was of a tougher texture, and from him not the slightest concession could be obtained, either by threats or promises. Meantime lord Digby returned from his Spanish embassy, and conveyed to the king an intimation of certain clandestine negotiations which had been carried on between his late favorite and the court of Spain; and Somerset was in consequence subjected to fresh interrogations relative to this matter, which appear to have disturbed him more than those which had

his concern in the fate of Overbury for their object. Sir Robert Cotton, who had been in some manner privy to these intrigues, was also examined, as was likewise sir William Monson, the yice-admiral, who had been deeply involved in them, and of whom it was popularly reported that he was under an agreement to carry over the English fleet to the Spaniards. No treasonable charge however could be substantiated against Somerset, and it was therefore determined to proceed against him on the former accusation. But even this was treated like a matter of state, in which it was inexpedient to permit law and justice to take their free and natural course.

Bacon, to whom the conduct of the prosecution was committed, went into the house of lords armed with particular directions in the king's own hand applicable to all contingencies;-the prisoner's pleading Guilty, pleading Not guilty, or standing mute, his being convicted or acquitted by the peers. James earnestly desired that he might make a full and free confession, in which case he would apparently have been spared the disgrace of a trial; but in any event the monarch was resolved to save his life, and even to grant him further favors; on which account Bacon judiciously advised that all reviling should be forborne, and that he should be made "guilty to the peers but not odious to the people a "

It is certainly in no degree surprising, that a

* Letters and memoirs of sir F. Bacon, letters LXVI. LXVIII. prince

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prince who was on all occasions governed much more by his prejudices or his personal attachments than by a correct sense of justice, should feel an insurmountable repugnance to the idea of suffering the blood of a man for whom he had entertained, so extravagant a fondness to flow on the scaffold; and these precautions would therefore have in them nothing suspicious, did not several circumstances indicate that fear rather than love was the sentiment which operated on the mind of the monarch for the preservation of his guilty minion. Of this nature was the sudden conveyance of sir Thomas Monson from the bar, said by Weldon to have been occasioned by a menace conveyed to the king the night before by his card-holder, in the dark phrase, that sir Thomas would there "play his master's prize." The assurance of mercy which Bacon was directed to hold out to Somerset previously to his being put upon his trial, and the bold and haughty tone which this criminal maintained towards the king both before and after his conviction, convey a similar impression; which is further strengthened by some extraordinary letters of James's own writing to sir Thomas More, lieutenant of the Tower, urging him, if possible, to bring the prisoner to a more submissive frame of mind, before he was trusted to appear publicly at the bar of the house of lords. The excessive agitation of the king during the trial, remarked by Weldon, is also a strong circumstance: in fact, it cannot be doubted that Somerset was in possession of some important secret of the king's, which he threatened

to