serviceable to us and our State; wee therefore will and comaunde you, our said Lieutenant of our said Tower, ymediately upon the receipt of theis p'sente, fully and wholly to enlarge, deliver out of our said Tower, and sett at lib'tye the said Sir Walter Ralegh, the aforesaid conviction, attainder, condempnac'on, or judgment given and passed against him, or any com'andement, order, or direc'ion from us or our Privy Councell, or otherwise conc'ning the same, to the contrary thereof in any wise notwithstanding. And theis p'sente shall be your sufficient warrant and discharge in this behalf. In witness whereof, wee have caused theis our l'res to be made patent. Witness ourself, at Westm', the thirtith day of January, in the fourteenth yeare of our raigne of England, Fraunce, and Ireland, and of Scotland the fiftith.

Coppin.

p bre de privato sigillo.

Overbury's Murder. The Earl and Countess of Somerset's confinement in the Tower, and trial, as accomplices therein, &c.

The following documents, with the four original letters of King James to Sir George More, who had been appointed to the office of Lieutenant of the Tower, in the place of Sir Gervas Elwes, form a singularly curious elucidation corroborative of the statements of some writers on the secret history of James's court, respecting that mysterious affair the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury.

Robert Carr, or Kerr, a Scottish gentleman about twenty years of age, of a handsome person, and elegant, according to the fashion of the day, in the style of his attire, (a matter of no small importance in the King's eyes,) attended on the anniversary of his Majesty's Ac

cession a tilting at the court in the character of page or esquire to the Lord Dingwall.

In these martial lists every champion assumed some quaint distinctive device and motto, which his page was to present for the inspection of the King before the feats of chivalry began.

Carr, mounted on a fiery horse, and bearing his lord's device, approached the King for this purpose, when his steed, curveting and plunging at the sound of the trumpets, the glitter of the arms, and murmur of the assembled crowd, threw him, and in the fall his leg was fractured.

He was removed to a house in the neighbourhood of Whitehall, visited by the King himself, attended by his own surgeons, and, as marked for a future royal favourite, soon loaded with the inquiries of the courtly crew, to such an oppressive degree that the King was obliged to issue particular orders that he should be left in quiet until his recovery could be perfected.

James knighted him, made him a gentleman of his bedchamber, and took the pains himself to give him lessons in the Latin tongue. The Earl of Dunbar, the King's ancient confidant, dying about this time, Carr was appointed Lord High Treasurer of Scotland in his room, and elevated to the dignity of Viscount Rochester, not without exciting the jealousy of the Prince of Wales, who beheld in him a dangerous rival in his father's favour.

The Lord Treasurer, Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, had formed an alliance with the family of Howard, by marrying his elder son, William Lord Cranbourne, to Catherine, elder daughter of Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, the Lord Chamberlain, second son of the last Duke of Norfolk, and was further instrumental in marrying the Lady Frances Howard, another daughter of the

same stock, to the Earl of Essex. This last was a match of a most premature nature, the bride being only thirteen years of age, the bridegroom fourteen. Thus affianced, the young Earl of Essex set out to travel in foreign parts, and his Countess returned to the care of her mother.

Her father being Lord Chamberlain, and her mother not altogether of that unblemished character, which in the female sex is always accompanied by a prudent circumspection, the Countess of Essex was suffered to mix, at the early age above mentioned, in all the vanities and temptations of a profligate court; the danger of which measure was heightened by her acknowledged beauty, which soon constituted her the idol of general admiration, and the object of amorous addresses.

Henry Prince of Wales was himself one of her unlawful suitors; but the lady lent a more complacent ear to the aspirations of the King's new favourite, the fortunate page, now Earl of Rochester.

In the mean time, after an absence of three or four years, her husband Essex returns; he finds the affections of his youthful consort to all appearance cold and indifferent towards him; she declines to live with him as his wife, and he attributing this unwillingness to the diffidence of youth, applies to her father to prevail on her to abandon so unreasonable a line of conduct.

The first principles of virtue in the Countess being undermined, her mind revolted at the idea of retiring with her husband to his seat in the country, or residing with him on conjugal terms.

A belief in the arts of necromancy is well known to have characterized this age; a creed which had the king himself for its patron, and rooted superstition for its source. Nay, there is little doubt but many practised and studied it from a confidence in its efficacy, and thus

had really dealings with the Prince of Darkness, as far as the gross impiety and turpitude of such attempts could place them in connexion with him.

The Countess determines to apply to some black magician of the day, in order to divert the affection of her husband from her, debilitate his body, and heighten and inflame the illicit passion of Rochester. Shakspeare has caught the prevailing idea of the time, which attributed such power to love potions, and beautifully described their effects, in his Midsummer Night's Dream :

"Having once this juice,

I'll watch Titania when she is asleep,
And drop the liquor of it in her eyes.
The next thing then she waking looks upon,

Be it a lion, bear, or wolf, or bull,

Or meddling monkey, or busy ape,

She shall pursue it with the soul of love."

The Countess of Essex finds a willing assistant in a profligate woman, Mrs. Turner, who introduces her to Dr. Forman, of Lambeth, a reputed wizard. He is made acquainted with the nature of the case, and of the operation required from his spells. He produces several little images, intended to represent Viscount Rochester, the Earl of Essex, and the Countess herself, assuming a power of working upon them by these forms, sympathetically.

He dispenses also his philtrous doses, to be administered to the respective parties; and Mrs. Turner having an inclination for Sir Arthur Manwaring, a gentleman of the Prince's household, some of the love-powder was secretly administered by her intervention to him, by the effect of which they believed he was made to ride fifteen miles in a dark night, through a storm of rain and thunder, to visit her. The most absurd circumstances are turned to matters of credence by the superstitious, and

1

Providence often chooses to confound the wicked by a false confidence in their own machinations.

The Countess was equally credulous as to the operation of these doses on her own husband and on Rochester, and observed with admiration their effects, although the licentious passion of the one which she encouraged, and her coldness towards the other, were quite sufficient to fan the lawless flame on one side, and extinguish conjugal affection on the other, without the aid of the Sidrophel of Lambeth.

The Earl of Essex, however, now beginning too plainly to observe the misdirected inclinations of his wife, interfered once more with her father, to point out to her the obedience due to him as a husband, and, fortified by his authority, removed his Countess to his seat at Chartley, one hundred miles from the court.

On her arrival there, she affected to be overcome with a deep melancholy, refused all society whatever with the Earl, shut herself up in her chamber with her female attendants, and stirred out only in the dead of the night.

In the mean time, she continues to receive and administer Forman's damnable compositions to her husband, by means of her corrupted agents. He, wearied at length with her humour, and thinking he had married one either lunatic or possessed of a devil, even let her return to the Court, as the sphere most suitable to her phantasies.

The Earl of Salisbury now dying, Rochester becomes principal Secretary in his stead, manager of all court business, and dispenser of all court favours.

In the mean time the Countess of Essex, hastening to consummate the objects of her machinations, institutes a suit for a divorce from her husband, on grounds which prove her to have been destitute of the bare assumption of an outward modesty, and submitted to such a proce