1615. Sept.

X. 2. him a patron and a friend. He was kind to Jonson, more than kind to Donne. For years he maintained the closest intimacy with Overbury; a connexion not to have been kept with that haughty and sensitive man of genius had Somerset been the fool in feathers and rosettes he is commonly made. But Bacon's policy was not his policy. Blown about with every wind, the favourite swayed from west to east, now moored among the extreme Puritans, now among the most bigoted of the Papists. When he at length chose a side, it was with the party against which Bacon had spent the best of his days and the most brilliant of his powers; for he suffered his name to be used, and his influence over James to be abused, by that iniquitous Spanish faction of which Sir William Monson was the pensioned agent, Lord Northampton the pensioned chief.

A nature proof against gold was not proof against love. A pair of bright eyes, which, in the language of Donne,

"Sowed the court with stars,"

turned upon him; the eyes of Lady Essex, Lord Northampton's niece. Her uncle set her on; that venal old pander putting the young wife of Essex in Somerset's way, tempting her virtue to break its vows, and lending his house to the profligate pair for their stolen kisses. Soft of heart, inclined by youth and rivalry to vice, Somerset fell into the snares laid for him by the wily greybeard and the shameless girl.

3. Somerset won to their side, the Romanist party ruled the state. All that a doting prince has in his gift

3. Wake to Carleton, Venice Correspondence, Nov. 18, 1612; Chamberlain to Carleton, Nov. 26, 1612, S. P. O.; Bacon's Speech in Star Chamber, Nov. 10, 1615, S. P. O.

X. 3.

-rank, places, pensions, grants, monopolies, embassies,

mitres-for a time were theirs. They gave to whom they would, and they sold to whom they could. They refused to give Bacon the Court of Wards. They sold it to Cope. But their reign was short; for the actors in this drama of unholy love fell from their odious profligacy into a diabolical crime. Overbury, whom they feared, not only for his influence over Carr, but for the English vigour of his Protestantism, was done by them to death. At first they kept their secret; and in truth the accusation against them was of a kind which defies belief. That three great earls, with three or four distinguished knights holding high positions in the country, should league themselves with wizards, harlots, quacks, prentice-boys, and grooms, to murder a private gentleman for a few verses of reproof addressed to a friend in love, required the bold and morbid imagination of a Webster even to conceive. Poisoning, too, was rare: "It is neither of our country nor of our church," said Bacon; "you may find it in Rome or Italy; there is a region or perhaps a religion for it." People forgot that Northampton was of that religion, that his associates were Italians and Jesuits, and that his early days had been spent in Florence and Rome.

4. Yet suspicion spread. The poet's kinsmen murmured. Some who understood his character, many who admired his writings, spoke of his sudden death, his singular interment. Then, the publication of 'The Wife,' a poem which charmed all hearts by its wisdom and poetic beauty, kindled a burning wish to inquire into the poet's fate. Five editions of The Wife were sold in a year; five thousand

4. A Wife, now a Widowe, 1614; A Wife, now the Widow of Sir Thomas Overburye, 1614; Do., in three subsequent impressions, 1614; Bacon's Speech in Star Chamber, Nov. 10, 1615.

1615.

Sept.

1615.

Sept.

X. 4. voices began to call his enemies to account. The cry could not be stifled. Men forgot their affairs to ask about the poisoners of Overbury; the ordinary courts of law, even the playhouses, were abandoned for the development of a more striking drama. Term, says Bacon, was turned into a justicium or vacancy by it. Yet, who was to set the law in motion? Those to be touched by the officers of justice, perhaps by the hangman, stood among the highest in the land. Who would lay finger on the Howards and the Carrs?

5. Men sprang up for this desperate duty. By his union with the wife of a living man, Somerset grieved the church of which Abbott was the hierarchical head, not less than the Puritan congregations of which Winwood was considered the parliamentary chief. The Archbishop, having strained his strength and jeopardized his life to prevent the divorce, was ready to fight, with such allies as God might send him, against the malign ambition and insatiable greed of Lady Somerset's kin. Therefore, when the cry for justice on the murderers of Overbury rose to heaven, he offered his high rank and holy character as a shield to such witnesses as, without this august protection, would scarcely have dared to wag their tongues. Winwood, Egerton, Zouch, Southampton, Essex, Pembroke, and Montgomery, all the more patriotic peers, the friends of poets, the founders of Free States, joined hands with the brave Archbishop in this crusade against vice and crime. Bacon, who had known the poet and admired the qualities of his genius, went with the English churchman and the English peers.

5. Archbishop Abbott's Narrative, in Rushworth, i. 460; Bacon's Speech in Star Chamber, Nov. 10, 1615; Weston's Examination, Sept. 28, 29, Oct. 2, 3, 5, 6, 1615, S. P. O.; Sir Thomas Monson's Examination, Oct. 5, 1615, S. P. O.

PROCEEDINGS AGAINST POISONERS.

209

1615.

The bright eyes and soft cheek of George Villiers, a X. 5. prettier man than even Carr, reconciled the King's heart to a general arrest and rigorous examination of his old favourite's bosom friends. Coke managed the case against them.

Soon the confessions of Franklin, Weston, and Anne Turner implicated high persons. Northampton was beyond the reach of law; but his tools or dupes, Sir Gervase Helwys, Sir Thomas and Sir William Monson, were still alive. Coke lodged them in the Tower; sent Helwys to the gallows; got a true bill found against Sir Thomas Monson at Guildhall, and would have put him to death, with or without evidence of his guilt, but for the necessity of keeping him, an unconvicted man, as evidence against Carr.

6. In these trials of the assassins, it is remarkable that Bacon, though holding office as Attorney-General, has no share. Either his gentle nature shrinks from the horrors of a criminal prosecution, or Coke excludes him from proceedings in which he expects to find abundant profit and fame. Either supposition may be true. It is obvious from the record of the criminal courts that Bacon must often have left to others, when he might have taken the part himself, the dramatic and exciting task of chasing criminals to death. None of Coke's thirst for blood parched up his soul: the trials of Essex and Sanquhair are almost the sole cases in which Bacon took part that ended in the loss of life. Coke, bent on hanging and bowelling all these miserable wretches, may have feared his tender heart and his respect for the forms of law. Certain it is that Sir Lawrence Hyde acts as Crown prosecutor, and that one at least of the prisoners,

6. State Trials, ii. 911-948; Welden, 101.

P

Sept.

Nov.

X. 6. that one a woman, is hurried to the gallows in a way which no lawyer can now defend.

1616.

7. In the more important trials of the Earl and Countess May 24. of Somerset, not before Coke, but before the highest court in the realm, the House of Peers, Bacon assumes his place. Lady Somerset pleads guilty, throwing herself on the mercy of God and the King-drawn to that course by an understanding, or a promise, that her appeal to the Crown shall be mercifully heard. Bacon is prepared for either course: the notes of a speech intended to have been made against her are preserved among his works. They are singularly merciful and gentle. Somerset's case comes last. Lord Campbell assumes his guilt; but such a study of the confessions as he gave to the evidence against Sarah Chesham or William Palmer would convince him that, though guilty of some depravity of heart and understanding, as well as of criminal weakness towards his wife and her associates, it is very far indeed from sure that he was guilty of any share in Overbury's death. No proof was given, nor has any proof been yet found, that Somerset knew of Weston being put into the cell to kill Overbury, or of the Countess sending the relays of poisoned tarts and soups. It is certain that he was deceived throughout by Lord Northampton. Yet, on the other hand, it is not to be denied that his indolent selfishness led him to the very verge of connivance in the crime. It was a case of doubt, and will remain so to the end of time. Bacon claimed strict justice from the Peers, while he left the gates of mercy open to the Crown. The Peers condemn Somerset, but with a tacit understanding that his life shall not be taken away.

7. Sherburne's Report of Lady Somerset's Trial, May 24, 1616, S. P. O.; Winwood to Wotton, May 2, 1616, Venice Correspondence, S. P. O.; Bacon's Charge, in Montagu, vi. 235.