The Murder in the Tower: The Story of Frances, Countess of Essex

THE TRIAL OF THE BIG FISH

When Jennet came to tell her that the guards were below, Frances began to weep quietly.

“They will separate me from my baby,” she said.

“The child will be well looked after,” Jennet assured her.

“They will take me to the Tower, Jennet.”

“My lord Somerset is already there, my lady.”

“What will become of us all?” moaned Frances.

Jennet thought of the dangling bodies of Weston, Anne Turner, Sir Gervase Helwys and Franklin, and she was silent.

Along the river from Blackfriars to the grim fortress. Never had it looked more forbidding. Under the portcullis; the impregnable walls closing about her.

Here they had brought Thomas Overbury. How had he felt when they brought him in? It had never occurred to her to wonder until now.

Thomas Overbury, who had been brought here for no crime, who had been sentenced to death not by a Court of law but by Frances, Countess of Somerset!

She was overcome by a chill fear.

What if they were to take her to the cell where he had died in agony? What if his ghost remained there to haunt her in the dead of night? He had haunted her since his death in one way; but what if he were to come to her when she was alone in her cold cell?

She began to scream: “Where are you taking me? You are taking me to Overbury’s cell. I won’t go there. I won’t.”

The guards exchanged glances, believing those to be the protests of a guilty woman; but she was so beautiful even in her grief, that they were sorry for her.

“My lady,” they said, “we are taking you to the apartments recently vacated by Sir Walter Raleigh.”

“Raleigh,” she repeated; and she thought of Prince Henry who had talked to her of that great adventurer and told her that he had often visited him in prison.

How life had changed for them all! Henry dead; Raleigh preparing to leave for Orinoco; she herself a prisoner about to stand her trial for murder.

She looked about the room over the portcullis; she sat at the table where Raleigh had worked and she buried her face in her hands.

What will become of me? she asked herself.

It was late May when Frances was brought from the Tower to Westminster Hall. Crowds had gathered in the streets because the case had aroused greater interest than any within living memory. The people were angry that the humbler prisoners should have been so promptly brought to justice while the Earl and Countess, who, it appeared, had been the authors of the crime, were allowed so far to go unpunished.

“Justice!” grumbled the mob. “Let us have justice.”

This was a State trial and all the trappings of ceremony must be observed. Many of the foremost lords led by the Lord Chancellor Ellesmore had been summoned to appear; everyone wanted to be at the trial; and many of the lesser nobility traveled up from the country for the express purpose of seeing the Countess of Somerset brought to justice.

The bells were chiming as the Lord Chancellor followed the six sergeants-at-arms, all carrying maces, into the hall. After him came all the dignitaries of the Court. The Lord High Steward and the peers of the realm. There was the Recorder, somberly clad in black; and Sir George More, the Lieutenant of the Tower, who had taken the place of the executed Helwys, was already at the Bar.

The Sergeant Crier demanded silence while the indictments were read; and when this was done he cried in a voice which could be heard all over the court: “Bring the prisoner to the Bar.”

The Lieutenant of the Tower disappeared for a few minutes and when he returned he brought Frances with him.

She was very pale and her lovely eyes betrayed her fear. She was dressed in black with a ruff and cuffs of finest lace; and as she stood at the Bar and raised her eyes toward the Lord High Steward she looked so exquisite that she might have stepped, exactly as she was, from a picture frame.

“My Lords,” began the Lord High Steward, “you are called here today to sit as peers of Frances, Countess of Somerset.”

A voice echoed through the Court: “Frances, Countess of Somerset, hold up your hand.”

Frances obeyed.

The accusation of murder was then read to her in detail and when it was finished the Clerk of the Crown cried in a resonant voice: “Frances, Countess of Somerset, what say you? Are you guilty of this felony and murder, or not guilty?”

Everyone in the hall was strained forward to hear her reply.

She gave it unfalteringly, because, knowing her letters to Forman and Anne Turner were in the hands of her judges, there was only one answer she could give.

“Guilty,” she answered.

The trial was not long. Because she had confessed her guilt, there was no need then to bring out those lewd wax figures, those revealing letters. But it did not matter; many of these people had already seen the images, heard the letters read.

There was nothing she could say in her defense. The whole cruel story was known: The attempt to bewitch Essex, and everyone believed, murder him, which had failed. The attempt to murder Overbury which had succeeded.

The Chancellor delivered the sentence.

“Frances, Countess of Somerset, whereas you have been indicted, arraigned and pleaded Guilty, and have nothing to say for yourself, it is now my part to pronounce judgment…. You shall be carried hence to the Tower of London and from thence to a place of execution where you are to be hanged by the neck till you are dead. The Lord have mercy upon your soul.”

As the Chancellor was speaking Frances saw a pair of brooding eyes fixed upon her from among those assembled to watch her tried.

Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, could not completely loathe this woman who had tried to make such havoc of his life, and as he looked at the prisoner at the bar he could not shut out of his mind the memory of a laughing girl who had once danced with him so merrily at their wedding.

Frances turned away. She did not wonder what her first husband was thinking of her now. Her future loomed before her so terrible, so frightening that the past meant little to her.

Out into the fresh air. Once again to enter the gloomy precincts of the Tower.

When next she left it—

But Frances could not bear to contemplate that terror.

She lifted her face to the May sun; never had it seemed so desirable; never had the river danced and sparkled so brightly; never did the world seem so beautiful as it did now when she was condemned to leave it forever.

The next day the scene at Westminster Hall was similar but this time there was a different prisoner at the Bar.

“Robert, Earl of Somerset, hold up your hand.”

“Robert, Earl of Somerset, what say you? Are you guilty of this felony and murder whereof you stand indicted, or not guilty?”

Robert could give a different answer to this question from that which Frances had been compelled to give.

“Not guilty!” he said firmly.

Robert’s trial was longer than his wife’s; she had admitted her guilt and condemnation had come swiftly; but Robert was determined to prove his innocence and to fight for his life.

So the days passed while the evidence was brought and considered; and the letters were read once more and the images displayed.

Some of the most sorrowful moments were those when he must listen to the words Frances had written to people such as Forman and Anne Turner; when he must hear an account of the orgies in which she took part.

He realized then that he was only just beginning to know the woman who was the mother of his child; and he felt lost and bewildered.

There was one friend from whom he longed to hear; but James had nothing more to give to a man who could stand accused of such a dreadful crime. And innocent though he might be, he was allied to the woman who had admitted that she was one of the most wicked in England.

The court was against him. Robert sensed it. He knew before they gave their verdict that they would find him guilty; that they would condemn him to the same fate as that which they had decided on for Frances.

He was not surprised when it came, when he was led from the hall out into the sun, to make, as she had made, that journey back to the Tower.