Thomas Overbury

Sir Thomas Overbury (1581 – 15 September 1613), English poet and essayist, and the victim of one of the most sensational crimes in English history, was the son of Nicholas Overbury, of Bourton-on-the-Hill, and was born at Compton Scorpion, near Ilmington, in Warwickshire.

Background

In the autumn of 1595 he became a gentleman commoner of Queen's College, Oxford, took his degree of BA in 1598 and came to London to study law in the Middle Temple. He found favour with Sir Robert Cecil, travelled on the Continent and began to enjoy a reputation for an accomplished mind and free manners. About the year 1601, being in Edinburgh on a holiday, he met Robert Carr, then an obscure page to the earl of Dunbar; and so great a friendship was struck up between the two youths that they came up to London together.

The early history of Carr remains obscure, and it is probable that Overbury secured an introduction to Court before his young associate contrived to do so. At all events, when Carr attracted the attention of James I, in 1606, by breaking his leg in the tilt-yard, Overbury had for some time been servitor-in-ordinary to the king. He was knighted in June 1608, and in 1609 he travelled in France and the Low Countries. He seems to have followed the fortunes of Carr very closely, and "such was the warmth of the friendship, that they were inseparable,… nor could Overbury enjoy any felicity but in the company of him he loved [Carr] ." When the latter was made Viscount Rochester in 1610, the intimacy seems to have been sustained.

After the death of Robert Cecil, in 1612, the Howard party, consisting of Northampton, Suffolk, Suffolk's son-in-law Lord Knollys, and Charles Howard, earl of Nottingham, along with Sir Thomas Lake, soon took control of much of the government and its patronage. The powerful Carr, unfitted for the responsibilities thrust upon him and often dependent on his intimate friend, Sir Thomas Overbury, for assistance with government papers, [Willson, p 349; "Packets were sent, sometimes opened by my lord, sometimes unbroken unto Overbury, who perused them, registered them, made table-talk of them, as they thought good. So I will undertake the time was, when Overbury knew more of the secrets of state, than the council-table did." Francis Bacon, speaking at Carr's trial. Quoted by Perry, p 105.] fell into the Howard camp, after beginning an affair with the married Frances Howard, countess of Essex, daughter of the earl of Suffolk.

To this intrigue Overbury was from the first violently opposed, pointing out to Rochester that an indulgence in it would be hurtful to his preferment, and that the woman, even at this early stage in her career, was already "noted for her injury and immodesty." But Rochester was now infatuated, and he repeated to the Countess what Overbury had said. It was at this time, too, that Overbury wrote, and circulated widely in manuscript, the poem called "His Wife", which was a picture of the virtues which a young man should demand in a woman before he has the rashness to marry her. It was represented to Lady Essex that Overbury's object in writing this poem was to open the eyes of Rochester to her defects. The situation now resolved itself into a deadly duel for the person of Rochester between the mistress and the friend.

The Countess contrived to lead Overbury into such a trap as to make him seem disrespectful to the king. James I was instigated to offer Overbury an assignement as ambassador to the court of Michael of Russia. Overbury declined, as he sensed the urgency to remain in England and at his friend's side. James I was so irate at Overbury's arrogance in declining the offer that he had him thrown into the Tower on 22 April 1613. The Howards won James's support for an annulment of Frances's marriage to Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, on grounds of impotence, to free her to marry Carr. With James's assistance, the marriage was duly annulled on 25 September 1613, despite Essex's opposition to the charge of impotence. [The commissioners judging the case reached a 5–5 verdict, so James quickly appointed two extra judges guaranteed to vote in favour, an intervention which aroused public censure. When, after the annulment, the son of Bishop Bilson, one of the added commissioners, was knighted, he was given the nickname "Sir Nullity Bilson". Lindley, p 120.] The marriage two months later of Frances Howard and Robert Carr, now the earl of Somerset, was the court event of the season, celebrated in verse by John Donne. The Howards' rise to power seemed complete.

Death and aftermath

In summer 1615, it emerged that Sir Thomas Overbury had died on 14 September 1615 in the Tower of London where he had been placed at the king's request in advance of the annulment case of Frances Howard. [It is very likely that he was the victim of a 'set-up' contrived by the earls of Northampton and Suffolk, with Robert Carr's complicity, to keep him out of the way during the annulment proceedings. Sir Thomas Overbury knew too much of Carr's dealings with Frances and, motivated by a deep political hostility to the Howards, he opposed the match with a fervour that made him dangerous. the Queen had sown discord between the friends; she had called Overbury Rochester's "governor." It is indeed apparent Overbury waxed arrogant with success and was no longer a favourite at Court. It cannot have been difficult to secure James's compliance because he disliked Sir Thomas Overbury and his influence over Robert Carr. Lindley, p 145; John Chamberlain (1553–1628) reported at the time the king "hath long had a desire to remove him from about the lord of Rochester, as thinking it a dishonour to him that the world should have an opinion that Rochester ruled him and Overbury ruled Rochester". Willson, p 342.] Overbury had been poisoned. [Lindley, p 146; "Rumours of foul play involving Rochester and his wife with Overbury had, however, been circulating since his death. Indeed, almost two years later, in September 1615, and as James was in the process of replacing Rochester with a new favourite, George Villiers, the Governor of the Tower of London sent a letter to the king informing him that one of the warders in the days before Overbury had been found dead had been bringing the prisoner poisoned food and medicine." Barroll, "Anna of Denmark", p 136.] Among those suspected were Frances Howard and Robert Carr, who had been replaced in the meantime as the king's favourite by a young man called George Villiers, with whom James was said to have been infatuated. Frances Howard, who admitted a part in Overbury's murder, and Carr, who did not, [Fearing what Carr might say about him in court, James repeatedly sent messages to the Tower pleading with him to admit his guilt in return for a pardon. "It is easy to be seen that he would threaten me with laying an aspersion upon me of being, in some sort, accessory to his crime". Stewart, p 275.] were both found guilty and sentenced to death though they were eventually pardoned. Four other accused were also executed. The implication of the king in such a scandal provoked much public and literary conjecture and irreparably tarnished James's court with an image of corruption and depravity. ["Probably no single event, prior to the attempt to arrest the five members in 1642, did more to lessen the general reverence with which royalty was regarded in England than this unsavoury episode." Davies, p 20.]

The details of the murder were teased out by Edward Coke and Francis Bacon during the trials of the six accused in late 1616 and early 1616. It was not known at the time, and it is not certain now, how far Rochester participated in the first crime, or whether he was ignorant of it. Lady Essex, however, was not satisfied with having had Overbury shut up; she was determined that "he should return no more to this stage." She had Sir William Wade, the honest Governor of the Tower, removed to make way for a creature of her own, Sir Gervaise Elvis (or Heiwys); and a gaoler, of whom it was ominously said that he was "a man well acquainted with the power of drugs," was set to attend on Overbury. This fellow, Weston, afterwards aided by Mrs Turner, the widow of a physician, and by an apothecary called Franklin, plied the miserable poet with sulfuric acid in the form of copper vitriol.

Overbury's constitution long withstood the timid doses they gave him, and he lingered in exquisite sufferings until 15 September 1613. Two months later, Rochester, now Earl of Somerset, married the chief murderess, Lady Essex. More than a year passed before suspicion was roused, and when it was, the king showed a disinclination to bring the offenders to justice. In the celebrated trial which followed, however, evidence of a plot came to light. The four accomplices were hanged; the countess of Somerset pleaded guilty but was spared, and Somerset himself was disgraced.

Meanwhile, Overbury's poem, "The Wife", was published in 1614, and ran through six editions within a year, the scandal connected with the murder of the author greatly aiding its success. It was abundantly reprinted within the next sixty years, and it continued to be one of the most widely popular books of the 17th century. Combined with later editions of "The Wife", and gradually adding to its bulk, were "Characters" (first printed in the second of the 1614 editions). "The Remedy of Love" (1620), and "Observations in Foreign Travels" (1626). Later, much that must be spurious was added to the gathering snowball of Overbury's Works.

For an alternative account of the trial, see:: Anne Somerset, "Unnatural Murder" (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997).

The dramatist John Ford wrote a lost work titled "Sir Thomas Overbury's Ghost, containing the history of his life and untimely death" (1615). Its nature is uncertain, but Ford scholars have suggested it may have been an elegy, prose piece, or pamphlet. [L. E. Stock et al (ed.), "The Nondramatic Works of John Ford" (Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1991). Pg. 340.] Their old child, a daughter, married William Russell, 1st Duke of Bedford in 1637.

Nathaniel Hawthorne mentions this murder in his book The Scarlet Letter.

Charles Mackay devoted much of the chapter on "The Slow Poisoners" in Volume 2 of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds to Overbury's death and the various fates of his murderers.

Notes

References

*Barroll, J. Leeds (2001) "Anna of Denmark, Queen of England: A Cultural Biography". Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. ISBN 0812235746.
*Davies, Godfrey ( [1937] 1959). "The Early Stuarts". Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0198217048.
*Lindley, David (1993). "The Trials of Frances Howard: Fact and Fiction at the Court of King James". Routledge. ISBN 0415052068.
*Perry, Curtis (2006). "Literature and Favoritism in Early Modern England". Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521854059.
*Stewart, Alan (2003). "The Cradle King: A Life of James VI & 1." London: Chatto and Windus. ISBN 0-7011-6984-2.
*Willson, David Harris ( [1956] 1963 ed). "King James VI & 1." London: Jonathan Cape Ltd. ISBN 0-224-60572-0.
*1911

External links

* [http://quote.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Overbury Wikiquote — Quotes by Thomas Overbury]