Jean Plaidy - The Murder in the Tower: The Story of Frances, Countess of Essex

“I hear he only gave the stuff and was paid well for it.”

“By those that could afford to pay him.”

“Did you hear what he said? It was that he believed the big fish would be allowed to escape from the net while the little ones were brought to justice.”

“Oh, there’s more to this than we have heard. My Lord and Lady Somerset …”

“Somerset!”

“The King won’t have Somerset hurt….”

Jennet was almost swept off her feet, so great was the press.

She looked at the scaffold with the dangling rope. Weston was talking to the priest who rode with him in the cart; the moment had almost come, and the noose was about to be placed round his neck, when a group of galloping horsemen arrived on the scene.

There was a gasp of surprise among the watchers when it was seen that these were led by Sir John Lidcott, who was Sir Thomas Overbury’s brother-in-law.

The hangman paused and Sir John was heard to say: “Did you poison Sir Thomas Overbury?”

“You misjudge me,” answered Weston.

Sir John addressed the crowd. “This man is sheltering some great personages.”

But the hangman continued with his task, saying that he had his orders and Weston had received his sentence.

“The matter shall not rest here,” shouted Sir John. “This is but a beginning.”

The crowd was silent while Richard Weston was hanged.

Jennet made her way back to her mistress. She had little comfort to offer her.

It was indeed a beginning.

A month later Anne Turner was brought out from her prison, after having been found guilty, and condemned to be hanged. She looked very beautiful in her yellow starched ruff, the fashion and color she had always favored and which many had copied, that it was a silent crowd who watched her go to her death and scarcely one voice was raised to revile her.

But every woman who possessed a yellow ruff made up her mind that she would never wear it again; and the fashion Anne Turner had made died with her.

In the early stages of her cross examination she had done her best to shield Frances, but when she realized that the truth was known, when the letters which Frances had written to Forman were produced, when the waxen images were shown to her, she understood that there was no point in attempting to conceal that which had already been discovered.

Then she had cried bitterly: “Woe to the day I met my lady Somerset. My love for her and my respect for her greatness has brought me to this dog’s death.”

She died bravely, making a further confession on the scaffold; and her brother, who held a good post in the service of the Prince of Wales, waited in his coach and then took her body to St. Martins-in-the-Field that he might decently bury it.

The next to die was Sir Gervase Helwys. His crime was that he had known efforts were being made to poison Sir Thomas Overbury but had done nothing to stop the crime; in fact he had made of himself an accessory by allowing the murder to take place under his eyes.

He was followed by Franklin.

There was a little time left to her, Frances knew, because of the child she carried.

They would not bring a pregnant woman into the Court.

“There is only one thing I can do,” she told Jennet; “and that to die. I shall never survive the birth of my child.”

Jennet could not comfort her, she was too fearful for her own safety. Weston had been right when he had said that small mercy was shown to the little fish.

But everyone was waiting for the big fish to be caught in the net; and there was growing indignation throughout the country because four people had been hanged already for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury and the chief murderers had as yet not been brought to trial.

“What shall I do?” moaned Frances. “What can I do?”

On a dark December day her child was born.

Her women brought the baby to her and laid it in her arms.

“A little girl,” they told her.

She looked at the child and pity for her state was so great that the tears fell on to the child’s face.

“The child is born,” she said, “and I still live. Oh, what will become of me?”

She was in great despair because she knew now that soon she must be brought to justice.

It occurred to her then that if she named her daughter Anne the Queen might be pleased and would surely do something to help her namesake; and how could she best help this child than by showing a little comfort to her mother?

So the Lady Anne Carr was christened; but Queen Anne and all the Court ignored the event.

Frances now understood that there was to be no special treatment. She must face her judges.

THE TRIAL OF THE BIG FISH

W hen Jennet came to tell her that the guards were below, Frances began to weep quietly.

“They will separate me from my baby,” she said.

“The child will be well looked after,” Jennet assured her.

“They will take me to the Tower, Jennet.”

“My lord Somerset is already there, my lady.”

“What will become of us all?” moaned Frances.

Jennet thought of the dangling bodies of Weston, Anne Turner, Sir Gervase Helwys and Franklin, and she was silent.

Along the river from Blackfriars to the grim fortress. Never had it looked more forbidding. Under the portcullis; the impregnable walls closing about her.

Here they had brought Thomas Overbury. How had he felt when they brought him in? It had never occurred to her to wonder until now.

Thomas Overbury, who had been brought here for no crime, who had been sentenced to death not by a Court of law but by Frances, Countess of Somerset!

She was overcome by a chill fear.

What if they were to take her to the cell where he had died in agony? What if his ghost remained there to haunt her in the dead of night? He had haunted her since his death in one way; but what if he were to come to her when she was alone in her cold cell?

She began to scream: “Where are you taking me? You are taking me to Overbury’s cell. I won’t go there. I won’t.”

The guards exchanged glances, believing those to be the protests of a guilty woman; but she was so beautiful even in her grief, that they were sorry for her.

“My lady,” they said, “we are taking you to the apartments recently vacated by Sir Walter Raleigh.”

“Raleigh,” she repeated; and she thought of Prince Henry who had talked to her of that great adventurer and told her that he had often visited him in prison.

How life had changed for them all! Henry dead; Raleigh preparing to leave for Orinoco; she herself a prisoner about to stand her trial for murder.

She looked about the room over the portcullis; she sat at the table where Raleigh had worked and she buried her face in her hands.

What will become of me? she asked herself.

It was late May when Frances was brought from the Tower to Westminster Hall. Crowds had gathered in the streets because the case had aroused greater interest than any within living memory. The people were angry that the humbler prisoners should have been so promptly brought to justice while the Earl and Countess, who, it appeared, had been the authors of the crime, were allowed so far to go unpunished.

“Justice!” grumbled the mob. “Let us have justice.”

This was a State trial and all the trappings of ceremony must be observed. Many of the foremost lords led by the Lord Chancellor Ellesmore had been summoned to appear; everyone wanted to be at the trial; and many of the lesser nobility traveled up from the country for the express purpose of seeing the Countess of Somerset brought to justice.

The bells were chiming as the Lord Chancellor followed the six sergeants-at-arms, all carrying maces, into the hall. After him came all the dignitaries of the Court. The Lord High Steward and the peers of the realm. There was the Recorder, somberly clad in black; and Sir George More, the Lieutenant of the Tower, who had taken the place of the executed Helwys, was already at the Bar.

The Sergeant Crier demanded silence while the indictments were read; and when this was done he cried in a voice which could be heard all over the court: “Bring the prisoner to the Bar.”

The Lieutenant of the Tower disappeared for a few minutes and when he returned he brought Frances with him.

She was very pale and her lovely eyes betrayed her fear. She was dressed in black with a ruff and cuffs of finest lace; and as she stood at the Bar and raised her eyes toward the Lord High Steward she looked so exquisite that she might have stepped, exactly as she was, from a picture frame.

“My Lords,” began the Lord High Steward, “you are called here today to sit as peers of Frances, Countess of Somerset.”

A voice echoed through the Court: “Frances, Countess of Somerset, hold up your hand.”

Frances obeyed.

The accusation of murder was then read to her in detail and when it was finished the Clerk of the Crown cried in a resonant voice: “Frances, Countess of Somerset, what say you? Are you guilty of this felony and murder, or not guilty?”

Everyone in the hall was strained forward to hear her reply.

She gave it unfalteringly, because, knowing her letters to Forman and Anne Turner were in the hands of her judges, there was only one answer she could give.

“Guilty,” she answered.

The trial was not long. Because she had confessed her guilt, there was no need then to bring out those lewd wax figures, those revealing letters. But it did not matter; many of these people had already seen the images, heard the letters read.

There was nothing she could say in her defense. The whole cruel story was known: The attempt to bewitch Essex, and everyone believed, murder him, which had failed. The attempt to murder Overbury which had succeeded.

The Chancellor delivered the sentence.

“Frances, Countess of Somerset, whereas you have been indicted, arraigned and pleaded Guilty, and have nothing to say for yourself, it is now my part to pronounce judgment…. You shall be carried hence to the Tower of London and from thence to a place of execution where you are to be hanged by the neck till you are dead. The Lord have mercy upon your soul.”

As the Chancellor was speaking Frances saw a pair of brooding eyes fixed upon her from among those assembled to watch her tried.

Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, could not completely loathe this woman who had tried to make such havoc of his life, and as he looked at the prisoner at the bar he could not shut out of his mind the memory of a laughing girl who had once danced with him so merrily at their wedding.

Frances turned away. She did not wonder what her first husband was thinking of her now. Her future loomed before her so terrible, so frightening that the past meant little to her.

Out into the fresh air. Once again to enter the gloomy precincts of the Tower.

When next she left it—