Tarts and jellies wherein were poison

I've recently been researching the Overbury Poisoning of 1615-6, a famous case in which Robert Carr, the first Earl of Somerset, and his wife, Frances Howard, were accused of instigating the murder of the courtier Sir Thomas Overbury, while he was imprisoned in the Tower.  The case makes for fascinating reading and abounds with sex and scandal.  What follows is a potted overview of events.

Robert Carr (1585-1645) was for a time James I's favourite at court.  Born into a powerful Scottish Catholic family which had supported Mary, Queen of Scots, Carr was brought to the Scottish court after the death of his father.  When James VI succeeded to the English throne in 1603, Carr travelled with the court to England and was appointed groom of the bedchamber, a privileged position which ensured regular access to the royal person.  After breaking his leg in a riding accident, Carr developed a close relationship with James I who nursed him back to health and it wasn't long before Carr was recognised as the official Royal favourite.  There has been widespread speculation about the exact nature of their relationship. Some historians believe it was sexual, others suggest an intimate brotherly friendship, but it was certainly close. The king 'would pinch Carr's cheek in public, smooth his clothes, and gaze at him adoringly, even while talking to others' (Bellany).  Carr reaped the benefits of the king's patronage, accumulating great wealth and lands.  In 1611, he was created Viscount Rochester, and in 1612 he was appointed to the privy council, a role with serious political power.  He was guided in his political endeavours by his friend, Sir Thomas Overbury (1581-1613), the two men met in Edinburgh during the reign of Elizabeth I, and by 1611 were firm political allies.

 Robert Carr, first Earl of Somerset

Around 1611, Robert Carr began a secret romantic relationship with Frances Howard, Lady Essex (1590-1632).  Frances was married to Robert Devereux, third earl of Essex, but their relations were strained to say the least.  Robert Devereux (1591-1646) was the son of Elizabeth I's favourite, the courtier and soldier 'Robbie', second earl of Essex, who was widely believed to have been her lover.  Frances and Robert had married in 1606, but due to their young ages, Frances was only 16, and Robert 15, they delayed the consummation of their marriage.  Politically their marriage was a success, uniting as it did, two powerful families at court.  But personally it was a disaster.  Unable to perform sexually with his wife, Robert appeared impotent, although it was later proved he was capable of sex with other women.  In May 1613 Frances, with the support of her family and Robert Carr, petitioned for an annulment.   A long list of witnesses testified to the couple's attempt to consummate the marriage.  Frances was examined by a panel of matrons who confirmed she was still a virgin, but for all their efforts, there were some at court who were not convinced, and the petition was stalled over the summer.  Eventually, with the intervention of the king, Frances was granted an annulment in September 1613, and married Carr three months later. The annulment of Frances's marriage caused widespread outrage. She was vilified in print and in popular ballads. One poet dubbed her 'A mayde, a wyfe, a Countesse and a whore’, another wrote:

Theare was at Court a ladye of late
That none could enter shee was soe streight
But now with use shee's growne so wide
Theare is a passage for a Carre to ride.

She survived the scandal, but her efforts to ensure her annulment and subsequent marriage to Carr appear to have gone far beyond petitioning the king.

 Frances Howard (Larkin, c.1615)

One of those who had been firmly opposed to the annulment was Thomas Overbury.  He had initially supported the relationship as a secret liaison, but disapproved of any marriage between Carr and Frances on political grounds.  He was a powerful man, and his refusal to countenance the union could spell potential disaster.  He had been in the Tower since April, after falling out of favour with the king, but ten days before Frances and Carr celebrated their nuptials in a lavish court wedding, Overbury died.  For two years it was assumed his death was the result of natural causes, but in 1615, Sir Gervase Elwes, lieutenant at the Tower, admitted that Overbury had died in very suspicious circumstances. 

By 1615 a full-scale investigation into Overbury's death was underway.  Elwes had named Robert Weston, Overbury's keeper at the Tower, as the prime suspect, but it soon emerged that Frances, with the help of a friend, Anne Turner, and a small circle of accomplices, was suspected of attempting to murder Overbury. Details of the case reveal a fascinating ingenuity on the part of Frances.  She sent Overbury tarts and jellies laced with poison. She used a musician to deliver poisoned delicacies.  Overbury's manservant died after eating poisoned soup, and one of her accomplices, James Franklin, admitted he had obtained on her behalf seven different poisons, ‘that is to say, aqua fortis, Mercury water, white arsenick, powder of diamonds, lapis Cosmatis, great spiders and Cantarides [dried beetle or Spanish Fly]’.  When her attempts to poison Overbury failed, he was sick but stubbornly refused to die, the prosecution alleged Frances dispatched an apothecary's boy to give Overbury a fatal toxic enema.

Sir Thomas Overbury (Janssen, 1610)

Whatever the cause, and there are some who argue that the case against Frances was so fantastical as to be at least partially fictitious, Overbury died in September 1615 in grim conditions.  He had complained of ill-health only weeks after his imprisonment.  By May he was ‘much damaged in his health by close imprisonment’.  He was feverish, and unable to eat; he suffered nausea and vomiting, and was perpetually thirsty.  He died alone, after prolonged suffering, and was buried the same evening in the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula, due to 'the foulness of his corpse.'   

As a result of the investigations into his death, Elwes, Robert Weston, James Franklin, and Anne Turner were executed for his murder.  Frances was again vilified in print.  She was 'a witch and a whore, a sexually promiscuous, murderous, syphilitic sorceress who had used love magic to seduce the king's favourite, wax images to cripple Essex's manhood, and cruel poisons to kill the virtuous Overbury.'  Both Carr and Frances were imprisoned in the Tower in October 1615. At her trial in 1616 Frances confessed her guilt and was later pardoned by the king.  Her husband refused to confess any part in Overbury's death, and he too was  eventually pardoned.  The couple were confined to the Tower for the next five and a half years. They were released in January 1622, and retired from public life with their daughter, Anne, who was born in the Tower in 1615.  Frances died at Chiswick in 1632, probably from Ovarian cancer.  Robert continued to play a part, albeit minor, in the politics of his day.  In 1630 he was implicated in treasonous activity against Charles I, and he supported the Parliamentarians during the civil war.  He was buried in St Paul's, Covent Garden, in July 1645.

Interest in Overbury's death is evident from the many written accounts of the case at the time. Almost all condemn Frances and Carr, such as the anonymous The Bloody Downfall of Adultery, Murder, Ambition, the poem Sir T. Overburies Vision, by Richard Niccols, and the broadside poem The Poysoned Knights Complaint, by Samuel Rowlands.  John Ford's play, Sir Thomas Overburyes Ghost, entered in the Stationers' Register in 1615, is no longer extant.  Pictures of Weston, Elwes, the Somersets, and Overbury himself were also sold at the time. 'Overbury is depicted as a man with a long, thin face and large, dark, slightly sunken eyes.' His biographer comments on one image by Renold Elstrack, in which 'he wears a thoughtful, melancholy expression, and is writing a poem on his own death.'  This print is in the British Museum and can be viewed here

James Larkin (1615)

Sources: Alistair Bellany, John Considine, DNB; CSP Dom.1611-15
Further reading:  Anne Somerset, Unnatural Murder: Poison In The Court Of James I: The Overbury Murder, Phoenix (1998); Andrew Amos, Great Oyer of Poisoning: The Trial of the Earl of Somerset for the Poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury, in the Tower of London, and Various Matters Connected Therewith, from Contemp. Mss, Bibliobazzar (2010)