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

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1964, copyright renewed 1992 by Jean Plaidy

Excerpt from The Wandering Prince copyright © 1956, 1971 by Jean Plaidy, included in The Loves of Charles II published by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2005.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Robert Hale & Company, London, in 1964, and subsequently published in hardcover in the United States by Putnam, New York, in 1974.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Plaidy, Jean, 1906–1993.

The murder in the tower : the story of Frances, Countess of Essex /

by Jean Plaidy. — 1st Three Rivers Press ed.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-307-71764-1

1. James I, King of England, 1566–1625—Fiction. 2. Somerset, Frances

Howard Carr, Countess of, 1593–1632—Fiction. 3. Great Britain—Kings and rulers—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6015.I3M83 2010

823′.914—dc22

2009044482

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