with him at all, and he soon discovered that in his absence her affections had been stolen away by the profligate favourite Rochester, who had won her even from another and a royal suitor, Prince Henry. In short, a criminal connection had long existed betwixt her and Rochester.
This discovery, and the constant bickerings which took place betwixt the earl and countess, made Essex willing that a divorce should be obtained. There were others who were glad of this expedient: lady Howard's father, lord Suffolk, and the earl of Northampton, lord privy seal, saw in her marriage with Rochester a mode of putting an end to the rivalry which existed betwixt them, and the king was equally eager for this result. But to Overbury the scheme boded the destruction of his power, which would be at an end if his patron coalesced with his enemies. He therefore commenced a determined opposition to the match. He it was who had written the glowing and eloquent love-letters of Rochester, and had promoted the liaison to the utmost of his power; but he had never dreamt of its leading to a marriage, which must work his own ruin. He therefore represented to Rochester the odium of such a marriage; the base and abandoned character of the woman, who might do for his mistress, but was not to be thought of as a wife. When he found that his arguments did not produce the effect which he wished, he took the dangerous step of menacing, and declared that he could and would throw an insuperable bar in the way of the divorce from Essex, without which there could be no marriage. This bar was undoubtedly his knowledge of the adulterous connection which had existed betwixt the parties, and which must ruin the countess's demand of a separation.
The master of deep policy could not see the rock upon which he was running, and which would have been very clear to him in another person's case. Rochester repeated to the countess all that he said, and the rage of a sinful woman, proverbially fierce as hell, seized upon her. She vowed that she would have his life. In her first fury she offered £1,000 to Sir John Wood to kill him in a duel, but her friends interposed, and suggested a less hazardous and less criminal way to get Overbury out of the way, which was to send him on an embassy to France or Russia. If he accepted the office, he would be detained abroad till the divorce was effected; if he refused, it were easy to construe his conduct into a contempt of the king's service, and get him confined.
Overbury was sounded on the subject of a mission to Russia, and listened to it with apparent pleasure; but the young beauty could not thus satisfy her revenge, and at her instigation Rochester affected to feel his projected absence intolerable. He declared his presence and counsel were indispensable to him, and he promised to satisfy the king, if he agreed to decline the offer. No sooner did Overbury consent than Rochester, so far from excusing him to the king, represented his conduct as not only disobedient to his majesty, but as insolent and intolerable to himself. James was only too glad to clear the court of the hated man; a warrant was immediately issued, and Overbury was committed to the Tower. By the arrangement of Rochester and the earl of Northampton, the Lieutenant of the tower. Sir William Wade, was removed, and a creature of theirs. Sir Jervis Elwes, was installed in his place. Under the care of Elwes, Sir Thomas Overbury was at once cut off from all communication with the outer world. Neither servant nor relative was permitted to see him; he was already dead to the world, and the world was soon to be dead to him.
The dangerous man secured, the measures for the divorce commenced. The countess petitioned for it, alleging serious grounds, and her father signed the petition. But no one was more forward and determined in carrying this disgraceful transaction through than the king. He appointed without delay a commission to try the cause. The commissioners were Abbot, the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of London, Winchester, Rochester, Ely, Lichfield, and Coventry; Sir Julius Cæsar, Sir John Barry, Sir Daniel Dunne, Sir John Bennet, Francis James and Thomas Edwards, doctors of civil law.
The earl of Essex was only too glad to be rid of his virago, and consented to anything, even to the most humiliating imputations on his manhood. The real causes of the vile business were sufficiently notorious; and the primate, though at the heart of the commission, revolting at being made a tool for the accommodation of aristocratic licentiousness, strongly opposed the divorce. But James took him sharply to task, telling him, in so many words, that it was his duty to resign his own judgment and follow that of his sovereign. "If," he writes, in a most imperative letter, "a judge should have a prejudice in respect of persons, it should become you rather to have a kind of implicit faith in my judgment, as well in respect of some skill I have in divinity, as also that I hope no honest man doubts the uprightness of my conscience; and the best thankfulness that you, that are so far my creature, can use towards me, is to reverence and follow my judgment, and not to contradict it, except where you may demonstrate unto me that I am mistaken or wrong informed."
But James did not content himself with recommending implicit obedience, he influenced and controlled the proceedings, and intimidated the judges by all means in his power. His zeal was quickened by the receipt of twenty-five thousand pounds from Rochester, at a moment when his officers were at their wit's end for money. But do what he would, he could not bond the integrity of the primate, who to the last resisted the divorce, and three of the doctors of law supported him. The bishop of London also voted with him, but the rest of the bishops and civil lawyers voted for the divorce, which was carried by seven voices against five. The bishop of Winchester showed himself so servile on the occasion, that the king knighted his son, who was ever afterwards dubbed by the people Sir Nullity Bilson. The other judges and bishops who voted according to his wish were also rewarded by James, and the sentence of divorce was pronounced on the 25th of September.
The public at large, to whom the facts of the case were no secret, condemned the whole proceeding in no measured terms, and this reprobation rose into actual horror when the news oozed out, that the very day before the verdict for the divorce, Sir Thomas Overbury was found dead in his cell. He was buried in all haste, and with profound secrecy, the officials diligently propagating a report that he died of a loathsome and contagious disease: the public entertained no doubt of his perishing of poison.
