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Shortly afterwards, his marriage with the Countess of Essex was celebrated with the utmost splendour, the King himself being present at the ceremony. It would seem that Overbury's knowledge of James's character was deeper than Rochester had given him credit for, and that he had been a true prophet when he predicted that his marriage would eventually estrange James from his minion.
Turner introduced into England a French custom of using yellow starch in getting up bands and cuffs, and, by Lord Coke's orders, she appeared in that fashion at the place of execution. She was the widow of a physician, and had been eminently beautiful, as appears from the description of her in the poem called Overbury's Vision.
It was plain, however, both from Weston's statements and from Sir Gervase's own, that the Lieutenant of the Tower had done his very best to defeat the Turner-Essex-Northampton plot for the poisoning of Overbury, throwing away the ``rosalgar'' and later draughts, as well as substituting food from his own kitchen for that sent in by Turner. ``Although it must have been clear that if any of what was alleged against him had been true Overbury's poisoning would never have taken five months to accomplish, he was sentenced and hanged.
In what was he so dangerous that he had to be deprived of his faithful Davies, that he had to be put in the care of a Tower Lieutenant specially appointed? The evidence given before the commission can still be read in almost verbatim report. It is completely in favour of the plea of Lady Essex. Sir Thomas Overbury's, had he given evidence, would have been the sole voice against the suit.
Enough evidence remains to this day of Overbury's kindness for Robert Carr, there is enough proof of the man's abounding resource and wit, to give warrant for belief that he would have had the will, as he certainly had the ability, to help his friend. Overbury was one of the brightest intelligences of his age.
Not for worlds! You may find it dull. Sir Richard lives the life of a hermit, and you won't get anything fit to eat at Lord Overbury's. He never knows what he's eating, and his cook has long given up trying to do credit to herself. I believe that only for his dining-out he'd be starved. Even as it is, he's been known to take mustard with his soup and red-currant jelly with his cheese.
When one considers these circumstances, that furious bigotry of the Catholics which broke out in the gunpowder conspiracy, appears the less surprising. All the accomplices in Overbury's murder received the punishment due to their crime: but the king bestowed a pardon on the principals, Somerset and the countess.
He did this to the man who had trusted him implicitly, a man that to adapt Overbury's own words from his last poignant letter to Rochester he had ``more cause to love . . . yea, perish for . . . rather than see perish.
Maids were also told to gather the sweet May dew from the grass in the early morning to make a fair face, and like Sir Thomas Overbury's milkmaid, "put all face-physic out of countenance." And pretty it were to see Cicely, Peg, and Joan in petticoat and sack or smock, each with a "faire linnen cloath" a-dipping her rosy face in the fresh May dew.
There was an aged handicraftsman, it is true, who had been a citizen of London at the period of Sir Thomas Overbury's murder, now some thirty years agone; he testified to having seen the physician, under some other name, which the narrator of the story had now forgotten, in company with Doctor Forman, the famous old conjurer, who was implicated in the affair of Overbury.
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