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

THE RETRIBUTION

But neither the Earl nor the Countess of Somerset were hanged by their necks until they died. That was something which the King could not tolerate.

He had loved that man and he understood that it was ill fortune, circumstances, fate—whatever one cared to call it—which had brought Robert Carr close to the scaffold; it was not Robert’s nature. He had been easy going in those days when his life had been uncomplicated; and that was how it was natural for the lad to be. He had been trapped though, as young men will be, by a scheming woman; and it was she who had brought him low.

“Robbie shall not hang,” said James to himself, “because he was once my good friend; and as long as my friends seek not to harm me they remain my friends.”

As for Frances—she was a member of the great Howard family who had, at times, served their country well and she had shown herself to be truly penitent.

No, they had sinned and they had suffered; they must be punished but not by death.

In the streets the people murmured.

“It is one thing for the humble to commit murder and quite another for noble lords and ladies.”

“Who were the true murderers? Tell me that! And they are to be pardoned, while lovely Anne Turner hung in her yellow ruff until she died.”

“Weston said the big fish would break out of the net and the little ones be caught. Weston was right.”

It was a sad state of affairs. No public hanging for the Countess and the Earl. What a spectacle that would have been! Mrs. Turner in her yellow ruff had not provided half the excitement they would have had at the hanging of the Earl and Countess of Somerset.

Frances was hilariously gay when she heard the news.

She realized now how she had dreaded the thought of death. She was young; she was vital; and passionately she wanted to live.

And now she would live; and in time she and Robert would be back at Court.

The King was enamored of this boy Villiers—but let him wait.

Would she say in time that all had been worth while? A few weeks ago she would have believed that to be impossible; but now she was going to live again, richly, gloriously.

But when she discovered that, although the death sentence was not to be carried out, they were still prisoners and might not leave the Tower, Frances’s joy diminished considerably and she was subject to fits of melancholy. How could she plan for a future which was to be spent within the precincts of the Tower of London? What hope had she of taking up her place at Court, of regaining her old influence, when she was a prisoner who was expected to be grateful because she was not dead.

Her baby was in the care of Lady Knollys who had been a good friend to her; and often little Anne was brought to the Tower to be with her mother.

Nor was she kept apart from Robert; but gradually she began to understand that she could not resume her old relationship with her husband.

Every time he looked at her he saw the waxen images which had been displayed in court; every time he heard her voice he remembered the words she had written to her “sweet father,” Dr. Forman.

In place of the beautiful young girl whom he had loved, he saw an evil woman, whose hands were stained with the blood of a man who had been his closest friend.

She no longer attracted him; he found even her beauty repulsive.

His feelings were obvious to her, and she wept and stormed, threatening to end her life; she was angry with him, and bitterly sorry for herself.

But it was of no use.

Sometimes she would awake at night and fancy she heard the laughter of Sir Thomas Overbury.

Robert spent his time in writing pleading letters to the King.

He asked forgiveness and leniency; he asked that he might be permitted to leave the Tower with his wife and retain his estates.

James was always upset when he received these letters. He longed to forgive Robert although he had no wish to see him again. To have had him at Court would have been too embarrassing; besides young Steenie would not have tolerated it.

Yet James did not forget the old days of friendship; and on occasions—when Steenie was a little overbearing—he thought with longing of the early days of friendship with Robbie, when the lad had been so modest and happy to serve his King.

But he could not bring him back to Court. The people would never hear of it. They had been angry when a pardon had been granted the Earl and his lady. They had said then that there was no justice in England. There had been an occasion when a noble lady in her carriage had been mistaken for the Countess of Somerset and that poor lady had narrowly escaped with her life.

No, Robbie and his wife must remain prisoners, until such time as they could be quietly released; but of one thing James was certain; Robert must never come back to Court while James lived.

It was not until some six years after their pardons that James thought they could safely be released; and in order that they should not come to Court, one of the conditions of their freedom was that they should reside only in places which the King would choose for them. These houses were Grays and Cowsham in Oxfordshire and they must not travel more than three miles’ radius of either.

Robert came to Frances’s cell to tell her the news.

“We are to leave the Tower. I have the King’s letter here.”

“Freedom at last!”

“Nay,” he said coldly, because his voice was always cold when he addressed her, “this is not freedom. Rather is it a change of prison. It is a concession because in these houses we shall not be treated as prisoners and shall have our own servants.” His face lit up with pleasure as he added: “We shall have our daughter with us.”

Frances’s joy turned to indignation. She had set her heart on returning to Court.

Yet it would be pleasant to leave the Tower and all the evil memories which she longed to thrust behind her.

“I always hated living in the country,” she said.

“Then you must perforce learn to like it,” retorted Robert.

He was less unhappy than she was. He hated his wife but there was someone whom he could love; and during the last years he had become devoted to his little daughter.

One day, thought Frances, was so like another, that she believed she would die of very boredom.

How tired she was of green fields! How she longed for a sight of Whitehall! She would dream that she was seated at the King’s table, that the minstrels were playing and the dance about to begin. Everyone was seeking her favors because not only was she the wife of Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset, who held more sway over the King than any ever had, but she was the most beautiful woman at Court.

Then she would wake to the sound of wind sweeping over the meadows, or the song of the birds, and remember with bitterness that Whitehall was far away—and not only in mileage.

I shall die, she would say, if I never see Whitehall again.

Then she would weep into her pillows, or storm at her servants; hoping to find comfort from either action. But there was no comfort; there was only regret.

Each day she must live with a man who could not hide his feeling for her. He could never see her without remembering some evil deed from her past; he could never forget that he owed his downfall to her. His only happiness was to shut her from his thoughts.

For months they lived in wretchedness, dreading to be together, yet unable to avoid it; each day Robert’s loathing grew a little stronger; each day her anger against him grew more bitter.

But Robert found a way out of his despondency. Sometimes from her window, Frances would watch two figures in the paddock; a sturdy little girl and a tall, still handsome man. He was teaching her to ride. The child’s high laughter would come to her ears and sometimes Robert’s would mingle with it.

They were always together, those two.

Frances could find no such joy. She had never wanted children, only power, adulation and what she called love—but that did not include the love of a child.

She continued to fret while Robert learned to live for his daughter.

Occasionally news came from the world beyond them; it was like, thought Frances miserably, looking at a masque through a misty window; a masque in which one was barred from playing a part. This was no life; she was poised between living and dying.

Life was the Court where people jostled for power and wealth; but she was no longer of it; nor could she break through to it; she must live out the dreary years in a limbo, poised between vital life and a living death.

They were still in exile when Raleigh returned from his ill-fated journey and when, soon after, he laid his head on the block in Old Palace Yard. And when Frances heard that her father and mother had been summoned to the Star Chamber and there sentenced to a term in the Tower for embezzlement, she was not deeply moved. That life now seemed so far away.

When Queen Anne died of dropsy, no one was surprised. She was in her forty-sixth year and had been ailing for some time; a certain Dr. Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood and confirmed this by his experiments; a comet appeared in the sky to cause great consternation and speculation but even this could not interest Frances.

Sometimes Robert thought wistfully of the old days; he wondered whether there would be a Spanish marriage for Charles after all, or whether that sly Gondomar would have worked in vain. It would have been good to be there in the thick of intrigue.

He pictured himself with the King, proudly bringing forward a girl who was growing to be as beautiful as her mother, yet with a different kind of beauty.

“My daughter, Your Majesty.”

He could almost see James’s emotional smile, almost hear his tender voice: “So ye’ve a lass now, eh, Robbie. And a bonny one!”

He would have asked for favors for her. He wished he could have given her great wealth and titles. But what did she want with them? She had her horses to ride—and she was already a good horsewoman; she had her father to be her companion. She did not ask for more, so why should he?

It was not often that they spoke to each other; they avoided each other’s eyes. They both wanted to forget and they were a constant reminder to each other.

But one day she could not restrain herself. “My lord Buckingham I hear is going to Spain with the Prince.”

“Is it so then?”

“My lord Buckingham—that upstart Villiers. A Duke no less!”

Robert shrugged his shoulders. But he pictured the scene at Court so well; James, grown older now, but no less affectionate, he was sure; and at his feet the handsome man, seated on the stool once occupied by himself.

“They say there is no end to the honors that man has taken to himself.”

“It may well be.”

“You do not care?”

“I am past caring.”

“I am not then. And never shall be.”

“That is a tragedy for you.”

She turned on him angrily; his calmness maddened her, the knowledge that he had been able to build a life for himself out of these ruins, while she had failed, was more than she could bear.

“It might never have happened. You could have persuaded James. You should have been more subtle … a little more like his newest friend, my Lord Buckingham.”

“And you, Madam,” he retorted, “should never have stained your hands with the blood of my friend.”

She turned away and ran to her bedchamber where she locked herself in and wept until she believed she had no tears left. Tears of rage and frustration.

“Better would it have been if they had taken me to Tyburn,” she cried. “Better if they had hanged me by the neck as they did poor Anne Turner. Anything would have been more desirable than this life of mine.”

After that they avoided each other. It was better so.

In one of his favorite palaces—Theobald’s in the parish of Cheshunt—the King lay dying.

James had no illusions; he knew this was the end. He was in his fifty-ninth year and had been a king for almost the whole of his life: James VI of Scotland since he was little more than a baby and his mother’s enemies had insisted that she abdicate in his favor; James I of England for the last twenty-three years.

“A goodly span,” he murmured, “and when a man suffers from a tertian ague and gout it is time he said goodbye to earthly pleasures. Perhaps I have been over-fond of my wine, but it is no bad thing to be over-fond of the things life has to offer.”

It was characteristic of him that he wondered what posterity would think of him. The British Solomon! How much had his wisdom profited his country? Would they remember him as a wise ruler, or the King who had gone in terror of the assassin’s knife since the Gowrie and Gunpowder Plots? Would they remember him as the King who was excessively fond of his favorites?

Steenie had not always been a comfort. He had grown arrogant like the rest. Steenie would look after himself. He was already a friend of Charles and they had jaunted to Spain together when Charles went to woo the Infanta. And Charles was affianced now to Henrietta Maria the daughter of Henry IV of France and sister of the reigning King Louis XIII. It would be a Catholic marriage for Charles which might cause trouble; there could clearly be no more persecution of recusants with a Catholic Queen on the throne. But that was Charles’s affair—no longer his.

It was strange to think of the end. No more hunting, no more golf, no more laughter at the pranks of Steenie and the rest; no longer would he sign to a handsome young man to give him his arm to lean on.

The old life was passing.

And as he thought back over the years there was one whom he could not forget, and had never forgotten. Often during the years he had longed to recall him. Yet how could he recall a man who had been condemned for murder?

“Robbie was no murderer,” he told himself, as he had often during the hours of the night when he had awakened from some vague dream of the past, haunted by a handsome affectionate young man. “I’ll bring him back. He shall have his estates back.”

But by light of day he would say: “I canna do it. It would serve no good purpose. How could Robert take up his old place now?”

It was nearly ten years since he had seen Robert, and that was a long time for a King to remember. And for all those years Robert had remained virtually a prisoner.

There was one thing he would do before he died. Robert should have a full pardon. His estates should be returned to him. As for the woman—she must have her freedom. He could not keep one prisoner and not the other.

It must be his first concern to pardon Robert.

The pardon was given; and the documents drawn up which would make Robert a rich man once more.

But James had not known how little time there was left to him, and he died before he could sign those documents.

But for Robert and Frances there was change at last: and that March of the year 1625 when James died in Theobald’s Palace, they were at liberty to go where they would. James’s last gift to them was freedom from each other.