Unnatural Murder: Poison In The Court Of James I: The Overbury Murder by Somerset Anne

Author:Somerset, Anne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2021-02-17T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

In his statement to the King Elwes had not mentioned either the Earl or Countess of Somerset. Nevertheless, from the start the King was aware that ‘great persons’ were believed to be implicated in Overbury’s murder. Presumably Winwood had informed him that the Somersets were both suspects. To his credit James never doubted that the matter had to be further investigated. Critics of the King later claimed that he sanctioned this, not from a desire to see justice done, but because Somerset had been so obstructive about James’s relationship with Villiers that the King welcomed an excuse to be rid of him. Simonds d’Ewes asserted that, having ‘fixed his eyes upon the delicate personage and features of Mr George Villiers’, the King ‘was the more easily induced to suffer the Earl of Somerset to be removed from his court and presence to the Tower of London’. Anthony Weldon was positive that ‘had Somerset complied with Villiers, Overbury’s death had still lain raked up in his own ashes’. This, however, was mere conjecture. In fairness to the King it should be noted that he appeared genuinely appalled by the possibility that Overbury had been murdered, making it hard to believe that he would ever have been prepared to overlook a crime of such magnitude. At one point during the enquiry he wrote, ‘We cannot satisfy our own conscience if any course should be left unattempted whereby the foulness of so heinous a fact may be laid open to the world.’1 Such words convey a strong sense of his horror at what was unfolding. It is idle to speculate whether he would have acted differently if he had remained as devoted to Somerset as formerly. Perhaps the issue would simply not have arisen: one wonders if Winwood would have dared delve into Sir Thomas Overbury’s death if Somerset’s star had not already been waning.

James at once issued instructions about what should be done, urging that Richard Weston, Anne Turner and the apothecary and doctor who had tended Overbury should be questioned. The indications are that at this stage he still hoped that these enquiries would exonerate the Somersets. The Attorney-General Sir Francis Bacon later stated that James initially suspected that ‘wicked persons of mean condition’ might be deliberately telling lies in order to ‘alienate his mind’ from Somerset. Seeming confirmation of this is provided by the memorandum the King wrote after reading Elwes’s story. There James noted that if, upon investigation, Elwes’s allegations could not be substantiated, ‘then there must be a foul conspiracy … for the finding out no pains is to be spared. The punishment … will be the best example that ever came in my court.’ Nevertheless, James was adamant that the only means of clearing the Somersets’ name lay in mounting a thorough investigation, ‘for when innocency is not clearly tried, the scar of calumny can never be clearly cured’.2

James had good reason for hoping that it was untrue that Overbury had been murdered. In theory the

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