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He began to be weary of his favourite, the Earl of Somerset, who, by the instigation and wickedness of his wife, became at least privy to the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury. For this crime both he and his wife, after trial by their peers, were condemned to die, and many persons of quality were executed for the same. While this was in agitation, Mr.

He might as well have written, or better, on the "Characters" of Sir Thomas Overbury, which are rather less remote from the ken of the British public than those of the Greek.

The plot being thus formed, and success promising so fair, Franklin buys various poisons, White Arsenick, Mercury-Sublimate, Cantharides, Red-Mercury, with three or four other deadly ingredients, which he delivered to Weston, with instructions how to use them; who put them into his broth and meat, increasing and diminishing their strength according as he saw him affected; besides these, the Countess sent him by way of present, poisoned tarts and jellies: but Overbury being of a strong constitution, held long out against their influence: his body broke out in blotches and blains, which occasioned the report industriously propagated by Somerset, of his having died of the French Disease.

Even at the last Overbury had taken care to give Rochester a chance to prove his fidelity. He contrived that the delivery of the letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury should be delayed until just before the nullity commission, now augmented by members certain to vote according to the King's desire, was due to sit again.

The Tragedy of Sir Thomas Overbury, written by his early companion in London, Richard Savage was brought out with alterations at Drury-lane theatre . The Prologue to it was written by Mr. Richard Brinsley Sheridan; in which, after describing very pathetically the wretchedness of 'Ill-fated Savage, at whose birth was giv'n No parent but the Muse, no friend but Heav'n:

Its only predecessors are such serious essays as those of Bacon, Cowley, and Temple, the turgid paragraphs of Shaftesbury, the vigorous but crude and rough papers of Collier, and the 'characters' of Overbury and Earle.

With the sauce for the game, Mrs. Turner mixed a quantity of cantharides, and poisoned the pork with lunar-caustic. As stated on the trial, Overbury took in this manner poison enough to have poisoned twenty men; but his constitution was strong, and he still lingered. Franklin, the apothecary, confessed that he prepared with Dr.

Without Northampton's aid the nullity suit could not be put forward, and without the annulment there could be no marriage for him with Frances Howard. But he had no sooner joined with Northampton than the very processes against which Overbury had warned him were begun. Rochester was trapped, and with him Overbury. For the success of the suit, in Northampton's view, Overbury knew too much.

Carre could enter into no scheme, nor pursue any measures, without the advice and concurrence of Overbury, nor could Overbury enjoy any felicity but in the company of him he loved; their friendship was the subject of court-conversation, and their genius seemed so much alike, that it was reasonable to suppose no breach could ever be produced between them; but such it seems is the power of woman, such the influence of beauty, that even the sacred ties of friendship are broke asunder by the magic energy of these superior charms.

Somerset had appointed Sir Ralph Winwood to the office of First Secretary of State. In that office word came to Winwood from Brussels that new light had been thrown on the mysterious death of Sir Thomas Overbury. Winwood investigated in secret.