Lady Frances, on December 26, married Carr, who had been created Earl of Somer set on November 3. For nearly two years the crime lay secret. But the Earl of Somerset himself invited comment by his moody and morose demeanor, which was so entirely foreign to his nature. It may be that, if not actually cognizant of Lacly Frances' operations, he readily divined them, and a guilty conscience may have been a 'heavy weight for his volatile nature. How ever, the secret leaked out in July, 1615, through a boy in the employ of one of the apothecaries in attendance on Overburv. An investigation and. the arrest of the conspira tors quickly followed. The minor personages were first brought to trial (2 State Trials, 911 et seq.). There was little doubt about their guilt, and they were speedily convicted and executed. Lord Chief Justice Coke displayed unpardonable zeal in accomplishing this result. A con fession had been wrung from Weston, but when arraigned he seemed disposed to make я contest. He at first stood mute, apparently with an idea that this would block the pro ceedings against him. But an account of the cruel punishment inflicted upon a refusal to plead eventually overcame his resolution. Coke's conduct towards Mrs. Turner was simply brutal. After the evidence was all in and before the jury had retired, he told the prisoner that she had committed the seven deadly sins, as she was a whore, a bawd, a sorcerer, a witch, a papist, a felon and a murderer, and he advised her to pray God to cast out of her those seven devils. Sir Gervase Helwys, the keeper of the Tower, was the only prisoner who put up any sort of defence. He pleaded that although he had conveyed various preparations to Overbury he did not know that they con tained poison. There is a bare chance that he might have escaped, if Coke had not taken him in hand and exposed his pre tensions. After the evidence had been concluded, Coke produced against him a confession by Franklin, the apothecary,
which had been made privately before him on the morning of the trial. This confession was not even under oath. Helwys seems to have been a hardened villain. In view of his sinful life the long speech that he made on the scaffold was the height of blasphemy. The following passage illustrates his curious complacency: "I had almost forgotten to show you a strange thing, which God brought to my memory the last night, which was this: I confess I have been a great gamester, and especially on the other side have wasted and played many sums of money, which ex hausted a great part of my means; which I perceiving vowed seriously (not slightly or unadvisedly) to the Lord by my vows and prayers, 'Lord, let me hanged if ever I play any more;' which not long after is most justly come upon me, whereof you are all eye witnesses, because a thousand times since I broke this my vow." Finally, in the trial of Sir Thomas Monson, who seems to have been implicated in some way in the crime, Chief Justice Coke overstepped the bounds of discretion, with disastrous results to himself. Throughout the excitement caused by the discovery of the cause of Overbury's death there appears to have been an undercurrent of suspicion that there had been some sort of connection between this plot and the sudden death of Prince Henry, the King's promising son. It is impossible to unravel the mystery. The report of Monson's case simply records the fact that Coke having let drop some insinua tions that Overbury's death was in retalia tion, as if he had been guilty of some crime against Prince Henry, Monson's trial was suspended and he was soon afterwards liberated. Bacon is authority for the state ment that the King rebuked Coke, and before the end of the following year removed him from office in consequence of this indis cretion. The trial of the Earl and Countess of Somerset would ordinarily have followed at once. But it was postponed for several
