CHAPTER IV.

MAGIC AND IMPOSTURE--A COUPLE OF KNAVES.


The secrecy, the mystery, and the supernatural pretensions associated
with the so-called occult sciences necessarily recommended them to the
knave and the cheat as instruments of imposition. If some of the
earlier professors of Hermeticism, the first seekers after the
philosophical stone, were sincere in their convictions, and actuated
by pure and lofty motives, it is certain that their successors were
mostly dishonest adventurers, bent upon turning to their personal
advantage the credulous weakness of their fellow-creatures. With some
of these the chief object was money; others may have craved
distinction and influence; others may have sought the gratification of
passions more degrading even than avarice or ambition. At all events,
alchemy became a synonym for fraud: a magician was accepted as, by
right of his vocation, an impostor; and the poet and the dramatist
pursued him with the whips of satire, invective, and ridicule, while
the law prepared for him the penalties usually inflicted upon
criminals. These penalties, it is true, he very frequently contrived
to elude; in many instances, by the exercise of craft and cunning; in
others, by the protection of powerful personages, to whom he had
rendered questionable services; and again in others, because the agent
of the law did not care to hunt him down so long as he forbore to
bring upon himself the glare of publicity. Thus it came to pass that
generation after generation saw the alchemist still practising his
unwholesome trade, and probably he retained a good deal of his old
notoriety down to as late a date as the beginning of the eighteenth
century. It must be admitted, however, that his alchemical pursuits
gradually sank into obscurity, and that it was more in the character
of an astrologer, and as a manufacturer of love-potions and philtres,
of charms and waxen images--not to say as a pimp and a bawd--that he
looked for clients. In the _Spectator_, for instance, that admirable
mirror of English social life in the early part of the eighteenth
century, you will find no reference to alchemy or the alchemist; but
in the _Guardian_ Addison's light humour plays readily enough round
the delusions or deceptions of the astrologer. The reader will
remember the letter which Addison pretends to have received with great
satisfaction from an astrologer in Moorfields. And in contemporary
literature generally, it will be found that the august inquirer into
the secrets of nature, who aimed at the transmutation of metals, and
the possession of immortal youth, had by this time been succeeded by
an obscure and vulgar cheat, who beguiled the ignorant and weak by his
jargon about planetary bodies, and his cheap stock-in-trade of a wig
and a gown, a wand, a horoscope or two, and a few coloured vials. This
'modern magician' is, indeed, a common character in eighteenth-century
fiction.

But a century earlier the magician retained some little of the 'pomp
and circumstance' of the old magic, and was still the confidant of
princes and nobles, and not seldom the depository of State secrets
involving the reputation and the honour of men and women of the
highest position. So much as this may be truly asserted of Simon
Forman, who flourished in the dark and criminal period of the reign of
James I., when the foul practices of mediæval Italy were transferred
for the first and last time to an English Court. Forman was born at
Quidham, a village near Wilton, in Wilts, in 1552. Little is known of
his early years; but he seems to have received a good education at the
Sarum Grammar School, and afterwards to have been apprenticed to a
druggist in that ancient city. Endowed with considerable natural gifts
and an ambitious temper, he made his way to Oxford, and was entered at
Magdalene College, but owing to lack of means was unable to remain as
a student for more than two years. To improve his knowledge of
astrology, astronomy, and medicine, he visited Portugal, the Low
Countries, and the East.

On his return he began to practise as a physician in Philpot Lane,
London; but, as he held no diploma, was four times imprisoned and
fined as a quack. Eventually he found himself compelled to take the
degree of M.D. at Cambridge (June 27, 1603); after which he settled in
Lambeth, and carried on the twofold profession of physician and
astrologer. In his comedy of 'The Silent Woman,' Ben Jonson makes one
of his characters say: 'I would say thou hadst the best philtre in the
world, and could do more than Madam Medea or Doctor Forman,' whence we
may infer that the medicines he compounded were not of the orthodox
kind or approved by the faculty. Lovers resorted to him for potions
which should soften obdurate hearts; beauties for powders and washes
which might preserve their waning charms; married women for drugs to
relieve them of the reproach of sterility; rakes who desired to
corrupt virtue, and impatient heirs who longed for immediate
possession of their fortunes, for compounds which should enfeeble, or
even kill. Such was the character of Doctor Forman's sinister
'practice.' Among those who sought his unscrupulous assistance was the
infamous Countess of Essex, though Forman died before her nefarious
schemes reached the stage of fruition.

His death, which took place on the 12th of September, 1611, was
attended (it is said) by remarkable circumstances. The Sunday night
previous, 'his wife and he being at supper in their garden-house, she
being pleasant, told him she had been informed he could resolve
whether man or wife should die first. "Whether shall I," quoth she,
"bury you or no?" "Oh, Truais," for so he called her, "thou shalt bury
me, but thou wilt much repent it." "Yea, but how long first?" "I
shall die," said he, "on Thursday night." Monday came; all was well.
Tuesday came, he not sick. Wednesday came, and still he was well, with
which his impertinent wife did much twit him in his teeth. Thursday
came, and dinner was ended, he very well; he went down to the
water-side, and took a pair of oars to go to some buildings he was in
hand with in Puddle Dock. Being in the middle of the Thames, he
presently fell down, only saying, "An impost, an impost," and so died.
A most sad storm of wind immediately following.'

It seems as if these men could never die without bringing down upon
the earth a grievous storm or tempest! The preceding story, however,
partakes too much of the marvellous to be very easily accepted.

According to Anthony Wood, this renowned magician was 'a person that
in horary questions, especially theft, was very judicious and
fortunate' (in other words, he was well served by his spies and
instruments); 'so, also, in sickness, which was indeed his
masterpiece; and had good success in resolving questions about
marriage, and in other questions very intricate. He professed to his
wife that there would be much trouble about Sir Robert Carr, Earl of
Somerset, and the Lady Frances, his wife, who frequently resorted to
him, and from whose company he would sometimes lock himself in his
study one whole day. He had compounded things upon the desire of Mrs.
Anne Turner, to make the said Sir Robert Carr calid _quo ad hanc_, and
Robert, Earl of Essex frigid _quo ad hanc_; that his, to his wife the
Lady Frances, who had a mind to get rid of him and be wedded to the
said Sir Robert. He had also certain pictures in wax, representing Sir
Robert and the said Lady, to cause a love between each other, with
other such like things.'


A CAUSE CÉLÈBRE.

Lady Frances Howard, second daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, was
married, at the age of thirteen, to Robert, Earl of Essex, who was
only a year older. The alliance was dictated by political
considerations, and had been recommended by the King, who did not fail
to attend the gorgeous festivities that celebrated the occasion
(January 5th, 1606). As it was desirable that the boy-bridegroom
should be separated for awhile from his child-wife, the young Earl was
sent to travel on the Continent, and he did not return to claim his
rights as a husband until shortly after Christmas, 1609, when he had
just passed his eighteenth birthday. In the interval his wife had
developed into one of the most beautiful, and, unfortunately, one of
the most dissolute, women in England. Naturally impetuous,
self-willed, and unscrupulous, she had received neither firm guidance
nor wise advice at the hands of a coarse and avaricious mother. Nor
was James's Court a place for the cultivation of the virtues of
modesty and self-restraint. The young Countess, therefore, placed no
control upon her passions, and had already become notorious for her
disregard of those obligations which her sex usually esteem as sacred.
At one time she intrigued with Prince Henry, but he dismissed her in
angry disgust at her numerous infidelities. Finally, she crossed the
path of the King's handsome favourite, Sir Robert Carr, and a guilty
passion sprang up between them. It is painful to record that it was
encouraged by her great-uncle, Lord Northampton, who hoped through
Carr's influence to better his position at Court; and it was probably
at his mansion in the Strand that the plot was framed of which I am
about to tell the issue. But the meetings between the two lovers
sometimes took place at the house of one of Carr's agents, a man named
Coppinger.

At first, when Essex returned, the Countess refused to live with him;
but her parents ultimately compelled her to treat him as her husband,
and even to accompany him to his country seat at Chartley. There she
remained for three years, wretched with an inconceivable wretchedness,
and animated with wild dreams of escape from the husband she hated to
the paramour she loved.

For this purpose she sought the assistance of Mrs. Anne Turner, the
widow of a respectable physician, and a woman of considerable personal
charms, who had become the mistress of Sir Arthur Mainwaring.[32] Mrs.
Turner introduced her to Dr. Simon Forman, and an agreement was made
that Forman should exercise his magical powers to fix young Carr's
affections irrevocably upon the Countess. The intercourse between the
astrologer and the ladies became very frequent, and the former
exercised all his skill to carry out their desires. At a later period,
Mrs. Forman deposed in court 'that Mrs. Turner and her husband would
sometimes be locked up in his study for three or four hours together,'
and the Countess learned to speak of him as her 'sweet father.'

The Countess next conceived the most flagitious designs against her
husband's health; and, to carry them out, again sought the assistance
of her unscrupulous quack, who accordingly set to work, made waxen
images, invented new charms, supplied drugs to be administered in the
Earl's drinks, and washes in which his linen was to be steeped. These
measures, however, did not prove effectual, and letters addressed by
the Countess at this time to Mrs. Turner and Dr. Forman complain that
'my lord is very well as ever he was,' while reiterating the sad story
of her hatred towards him, and her design to be rid of him at all
hazards. In the midst of the intrigue came the sudden death of Dr.
Forman, who seems to have felt no little anxiety as to his share in
it, and, on one occasion, as we have seen, professed to his wife 'that
there would be much trouble about Carr and the Countess of Essex, who
frequently resorted unto him, and from whose company he would
sometimes lock himself in his study a whole day.' Mrs. Forman, when,
at a later date, examined in court, deposed 'that Mrs. Turner came to
her house immediately after her husband's death, and did demand
certain pictures which were in her husband's study, namely, one
picture in wax, very mysteriously apparelled in silk and satin; as
also another made in the form of a naked woman, spreading and laying
forth her hair in a glass, which Mrs. Turner did confidently affirm to
be in a box, and she knew in what part of the room in the study they
were.' We also learn that Forman, in reply to the Countess's
reproaches, averred that the devil, as he was informed, had no power
over the person of the Earl of Essex. The Countess, however, was not
to be diverted from her object, and, after Forman's death, employed
two or three other conjurers--one Gresham, and a Doctor Lavoire, or
Savory, being specially mentioned.

What followed has left a dark and shameful stain on the record of the
reign of James I. The King personally interfered on behalf of his
favourite, and resolved that Essex should be compelled to surrender
his wife. For this purpose the Countess was instructed to bring
against him a charge of conjugal incapacity; and a Commission of right
reverend prelates and learned lawyers, under the presidency--one
blushes to write it--of Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, was appointed
to investigate the loathsome details. A jury of matrons was empanelled
to determine the virginity of Lady Essex, and, as a pure young girl
was substituted in her place, their verdict was, of course, in the
affirmative! As for the Commission, it decided, after long debates, by
a majority of seven to five, that the Lady Frances was entitled to a
divorce--the majority being obtained, however, only by the King's
active exercise of his personal influence (September, 1613). The lady
having thus been set free from her vows by a most shameless intrigue,
James hurried on a marriage between her and his favourite, and on St.
Stephen's Day it was celebrated with great splendour. In the interval
Carr had been raised to the rank and title of Earl of Somerset, and
his wife had previously been made Viscountess Rochester.

A strenuous opponent of these unhallowed nuptials had been found in
the person of Sir Thomas Overbury, a young man of brilliant parts, who
stood towards Somerset in much the same relation that Somerset stood
towards the King. At the outset he had looked with no disfavour on his
patron's intrigue with Lady Frances, but had actually composed the
love-letters which went to her in the Earl's name; but, for reasons
not clearly understood, he assumed a hostile attitude when the
marriage was proposed. As he had acquired a knowledge of secrets which
would have made him a dangerous witness before the Divorce Commission,
the intriguers felt the necessity of getting him out of the way.
Accordingly, the King pressed upon him a diplomatic appointment on the
Continent, and when this was refused committed him to the Tower. There
he lingered for some months in failing health until a dose of poison
terminated his sufferings on September 13, 1613, rather more than
three months before the completion of the marriage he had striven
ineffectually to prevent. This poison was unquestionably administered
at the instigation of Lady Essex, though under what circumstances it
is not easy to determine. The most probable supposition seems to be
that an assistant of Lobell, a French apothecary who attended
Overbury, was bribed to administer the fatal drug.

For two years the murder thus foully committed remained unknown, but
in the summer of 1615, when James's affection for Somerset was rapidly
declining, and a new and more splendid favourite had risen in the
person of George Villiers, some information of the crime was conveyed
to the King by his secretary, Winwood. How Winwood obtained this
information is still a mystery; but we may, perhaps, conjecture that
he received it from the apothecary's boy, who, being taken ill at
Flushing, may have sought to relieve his conscience by confession. A
few weeks afterwards, Helwys, the Lieutenant of the Tower, under an
impression that the whole matter had been discovered, acknowledged
that frequent attempts had been made to poison Overbury in his food,
but that he had succeeded in defeating them until the apothecary's boy
eluded his vigilance. Who sent the poison he did not know. The only
person whose name he had heard in connection with it was Mrs. Turner,
and the agent employed to convey it was, he said, a certain Richard
Weston, a former servant of Mrs. Turner, who had been admitted into
the Tower as a keeper, and entrusted with the immediate charge of
Overbury.

On being examined, Weston at first denied all knowledge of the affair;
but eventually he confessed that, having been rebuked by Helwys, he
had thrown away the medicaments with which he had been entrusted; and
next he accused Lady Somerset of instigating him to administer to
Overbury a poison, which would be forwarded to him for that purpose.
Then one Rawlins, a servant of the Earl, gave information that he had
been similarly employed. As soon as Somerset heard that he was
implicated, he wrote to the King protesting his innocence, and
declaring that a conspiracy had been hatched against him. But many
suspicious particulars being discovered, he was committed to the
custody of Sir Oliver St. John; while Weston, on October 23, was put
on his trial for the murder of Overbury, and found guilty, though no
evidence was adduced against him which would have satisfied a modern
jury.

On November 7 Mrs. Turner was brought before the Court. Her trial
excited the most profound curiosity, and Westminster Hall was crowded
by an eager multitude, who shuddered with superstitious emotion when
the instruments employed by Forman in his magical rites were exposed
to view.[33] It would seem that Mrs. Turner, when arrested,
immediately sent her maid to Forman's widow, to urge her to
burn--before the Privy Council sent to search her house--any of her
husband's papers that might contain dangerous secrets. She acted on
the advice, but overlooked a few documents of great importance,
including a couple of letters written by Lady Essex to Mrs. Turner and
Forman. The various articles seized in Forman's house referred,
however, not to the murder of Overbury, but to the conjurations
employed against the Earls of Somerset and Essex. 'There was shewed in
Court,' says a contemporary report, 'certaine pictures of a man and a
woman made in lead, and also a moulde of brasse wherein they were
cast, a blacke scarfe alsoe full of white crosses, which Mrs. Turner
had in her custody,' besides 'inchanted paps and other pictures.'
There was also a parcel of Forman's written charms and incantations.
'In some of those parchments the devill had particular names, who were
conjured to torment the lord Somersett and Sir Arthur Mannering, if
theire loves should not contynue, the one to the Countesse, the other
to Mrs. Turner.' Visions of a dingy room haunted by demons, who had
been summoned from the infernal depths by Forman's potent spells,
stimulated the imagination of the excited crowd until they came to
believe that the fiends were actually there in the Court, listening in
wrath to the exposure of their agents; and, behold! in the very heat
and flush of this extravagant credulity, a sudden crack was heard in
one of the platforms or scaffolds, causing 'a great fear, tumult, and
commotion amongst the spectators and through the hall, every one
fearing hurt, as if the devil had been present and grown angry to have
his workmanship known by such as were not his own scholars.' The
narrator adds that there was also a note showed in Court, made by Dr.
Forman, and written on parchment, signifying what ladies loved what
lords; but the Lord Chief Justice would not suffer it to be read
openly. This 'note,' or book, was a diary of the doctor's dealings
with the persons named; and a scandalous tradition affirms that the
Lord Chief Justice would not have it read because his wife's name was
the first which caught his eye when he glanced at the contents.

Mrs. Turner's conviction followed as a matter of course upon Weston's.
There was no difficulty in proving that she had been concerned in his
proceedings, and that if he had committed a crime she was _particeps
criminis_. Both she and Weston died with an acknowledgment on their
lips that they were justly punished. Her end, according to all
accounts, was sufficiently edifying. Bishop Goodman quotes the
narrative of an eye-witness, one Mr. John Castle, in which we read
that, 'if detestation of painted pride, lust, malice, powdered hair,
yellow bands, and the rest of the wardrobe of Court vanities; if deep
sighs, tears, confessions, ejaculations of the soul, admonitions of
all sorts of people to make God and an unspotted conscience always our
friends; if the protestation of faith and hope to be washed by the
same Saviour and the like mercies that Magdalene was, be signs and
demonstrations of a blessed penitent, then I will tell you that this
poor broken woman went _a cruce ad gloriam_, and now enjoys the
presence of her and our Redeemer. Her body being taken down by her
brother, one Norton, servant to the Prince, was in a coach conveyed to
St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, where, in the evening of the same day, she
had an honest and a decent burial.' Her sad fate seems to have
appealed strongly to public sympathy, and to have drawn a veil of
oblivion over the sins and follies of her misspent life. A
contemporary versifier speaks of her in language worthy of a Lucretia:

'O how the cruel cord did misbecome
Her comely neck! and yet by Law's just doom
Had been her death. Those locks, like golden thread,
That used in youth to enshrine her globe-like head,
Hung careless down; and that delightful limb,
Her snow-white nimble hand, that used to trim
Those tresses up, now spitefully did tear
And rend the same; nor did she now forbear
To beat that breast of more than lily-white,
Which sometime was the bed of sweet delight.
From those two springs where joy did whilom dwell,
Grief's pearly drops upon her pale cheek fell.'

The next to suffer was an apothecary named Franklin, from whom the
poison had been procured. 'Before he was executed, he threw out wild
hints of the existence of a plot far exceeding in villainy that which
was in course of investigation. He tried to induce all who would
listen to him to believe that he knew of a conspiracy in which many
great lords were concerned; and that not only the late Prince [Henry]
had been removed by unfair means, but that a plan had been made to get
rid of the Electress Palatine and her husband. As, however, all this
was evidently only dictated by a hope of escaping the gallows, he was
allowed to share with the others a fate which he richly deserved.'

* * * * *

After the execution of these smaller culprits, some months elapsed
before Bacon, as Attorney-General, was directed to proceed against the
greater. It was not until May 24, 1616, that the Countess of Somerset
was put upon her trial before the High Steward's Court in Westminster
Hall. Contemporary testimony differs strangely as to her behaviour.
One authority says that, whilst the indictment was being read, she
turned pale and trembled, and when Weston's name was mentioned hid her
face behind her fan. Another remarks: 'She won pity by her sober
demeanour, which, in my opinion,' he adds, 'was more curious and
confident than was fit for a lady in such distress, yet she shed, or
made show of some tears, divers times.' The evidence against her was
too strong to be confuted, and she pleaded guilty. When the judge
asked her if she had anything to say in arrest of judgment, she
replied, in low, almost inaudible tones, that she could not extenuate
her fault. She implored mercy, and begged that the lords would
intercede with the King on her behalf. Sentence was then pronounced,
and the prisoner sent back to the Tower, to await the King's decision.

On the following day the Earl was tried. Bacon again acted as
prosecutor, and in his opening speech he said that the evidence to be
brought forward by the Government would prove four points: 1. That
Somerset bore malice against Overbury before the latter's
imprisonment; 2. That he devised the plan by which that imprisonment
was effected; 3. That he actually sent poisons to the Tower; 4. That
he had made strenuous efforts to conceal the proofs of his guilt. He
added that he himself would undertake the management of the case on
the first two points, leaving his subordinates, Montague and Crew, to
deal with the third and fourth.

Bacon had chosen for himself a comparatively easy task. The
ill-feeling that had existed between Overbury and his patron was
beyond doubt; while it was conclusively shown, and, indeed, hardly
disputed, that Somerset had had a hand in Overbury's imprisonment, and
in the appointment of Helwys and Weston as his custodians. Passages
from Lord Northampton's letters to the Earl proved the existence of a
plot in which both were mixed up, and that Helwys had expressed an
opinion that Overbury's death would be a satisfactory termination of
the imbroglio. But he might probably have based this opinion on the
fact that Overbury was seriously ill, and his recovery more than
doubtful.

When Bacon had concluded his part of the case, Ellesmere, who
presided, urged Somerset to confess his guilt. 'No, my lord,' said the
Earl calmly, 'I came hither with a resolution to defend myself.'

Montague then endeavoured to demonstrate that the poison of which
Overbury died had been administered with Somerset's knowledge. But he
could get no further than this: that Somerset had been in the habit of
sending powders, as well as tarts and jellies, to Overbury; but he did
not, and could not prove that the powders were poisonous. Nor was
Serjeant Crew able to advance the case beyond the point reached by
Bacon; he could argue only on the assumption of Somerset's guilt,
which his colleagues had failed to establish.

In our own day it would be held that the case for the prosecution had
completely broken down; and I must add my conviction that Somerset was
in no way privy to Overbury's murder. He had assented to his
imprisonment, because he was weary of his importunity; but he still
retained a kindly feeling towards him, and was evidently grieved at
the serious nature of his illness. As a matter of fact, it was not
proved even that Overbury died of poison, though I admit that this is
put beyond doubt by collateral circumstances. Somerset's position,
however, before judges who were more or less hostilely disposed, with
the agents of the Crown bent on obtaining his conviction, and he
himself without legal advisers, was both difficult and dangerous. He
was embarrassed by the necessity of keeping back part of his case. He
was unable to tell the whole truth about Overbury's imprisonment. He
could not make known all that had passed between Lady Essex and
himself before marriage, or that Overbury had been committed to the
Tower to prevent him from giving evidence which would have certainly
quashed Lady Essex's proceedings for a divorce. And, in truth, if he
mustered up courage to tell this tale of shame, he could not hope that
the peers, most of whom were his enemies, would give credence to it,
or that, if they believed it, they would refrain from delivering an
adverse verdict.

Yet he bore himself with courage and ability, when, by the flickering
light of torches, for the day had gone down, he rose to make his
defence. Acknowledging that he had consented to Overbury's
imprisonment in order that he might throw no obstacles in the way of
his marriage with Lady Essex, he firmly denied that he had known
anything of attempts to poison him. The tarts he had sent were
wholesome, and of a kind to which Overbury was partial; if any had
been tampered with, he was unaware of it. The powders he had received
from Sir Robert Killigrew, and simply sent them on; and Overbury had
admitted, in a letter which was before the Court, that they had done
him no mischief. Here Crew interrupted: The three powders from
Killigrew had been duly accounted for; but there was a fourth powder,
which had not been accounted for, and had (it was assumed) contained
poison. Now, it was improbable that the Earl could remember the exact
history of every powder sent to Overbury two years before, and,
besides, it was a mere assumption on the part of the prosecution that
this fourth powder was poison. But Somerset's inability to meet this
point was made the most of, and gave the peers a sufficient pretext
for declaring him guilty. The Earl received his sentence with the
composure he had exhibited throughout the arduous day, which had shown
how a nature enervated by luxury and indulgence can be braced up by
the chill air of adversity, and contented himself with expressing a
hope that the Court would intercede with the King for mercy.

I have dwelt at some length on the details of this celebrated trial
because it is the last (in English jurisprudence) in which men and
women of rank have been mixed up with the secret practices of the
magician; though, for other reasons, it is one of very unusual
interest. In briefly concluding the recital, I may state that James
was greatly relieved when the trial was over, and he found that
nothing damaging to himself had been disclosed. It is certain that
Somerset was in possession of some dark secret, the revelation of
which was much dreaded by the King; so that precautions had even been
taken, or at all events meditated, to remove him from the Court if he
entered upon the dangerous topic, and to continue the trial in his
absence. He would probably have been silenced by force. The Earl,
however, refrained from hazardous disclosures, and James could breathe
in peace.

On July 13, the King pardoned Lady Somerset, who was certainly the
guiltiest of all concerned. The Earl was left in prison, with sentence
of death suspended over him for several years, in order, no doubt, to
terrify him into silence. A few months before his death, James appears
to have satisfied himself that he had nothing to fear, and ordered the
Earl's release (January, 1622). Had he lived, he would probably have
restored him to his former influence and favour.[34]

FOOTNOTES:

[32] This woman has a place in the records of fashion as introducer of
the novelty of yellow-starching the extensive ruffs which were then
generally worn. When Lord Chief Justice Coke sentenced her to death
(as we shall hereafter see) for her share in the murder of Overbury,
he ordered that 'as she was the person who had brought yellow-starched
ruffs into vogue, she should be hanged in that dress, that the same
might end in shame and detestation.' As the hangman was also adorned
with yellow ruffs, it is no wonder that Coke's prediction was amply
fulfilled.

[33] Arthur Wilson, in his 'Memoirs,' furnishes a strange account of
the practices in which Lady Essex, Mrs. Turner, and the conjurer took
part. 'The Countess of Essex,' he says, 'to strengthen her designs,
finds out one of her own stamp, Mrs. Turner, a doctor of physic's
widow, a woman whom prodigality and looseness had brought low; yet her
pride would make her fly any pitch, rather than fall into the jaws of
Want. These two counsel together how they might stop the current of
the Earl's affection towards his wife, and make a clear passage for
the Viscount in his place. To effect which, one Dr. Forman, a reputed
conjurer (living at Lambeth) is found out; the women declare to him
their grievances; he promises sudden help, and, to amuse them, frames
many little pictures of brass and wax--some like the Viscount and
Countess, whom he must unite and strengthen, others like the Earl of
Essex, whom he must debilitate and weaken; and then with philtrous
powders, and such drugs, he works upon their persons. And to practise
what effects his arts would produce, Mrs. Turner, that loved Sir
Arthur Manwaring (a gentleman then attending the Prince), and willing
to keep him to her, gave him some of the powder, which wrought so
violently with him, that through a storm of rain and thunder he rode
fifteen miles one dark night to her house, scarce knowing where he was
till he was there. Such is the devilish and mad rage of lust,
heightened with art and fancy.

'These things, matured and ripened by this juggler Forman, gave them
assurance of happy hopes. Her courtly incitements, that drew the
Viscount to observe her, she imputed to the operation of those drugs
he had tasted; and that harshness and stubborn comportment she
expressed to her husband, making him (weary of such entertainments) to
absent himself, she thought proceeded from the effects of those
unknown potions and powders that were administered to him. So apt is
the imagination to take impressions of those things we are willing to
believe.

'The good Earl, finding his wife nurseled in the Court, and seeing no
possibility to reduce her to reason till she were estranged from the
relish and taste of the delights she sucked in there, made his
condition again known to her father. The old man, being troubled with
his daughter's disobedience, embittered her, being near him, with
wearisome and continued chidings, to wean her from the sweets she
doted upon, and with much ado forced her into the country. But how
harsh was the parting, being sent away from the place where she grew
and flourished! Yet she left all her engines and imps behind her: the
old doctor and his confederate, Mrs. Turner, must be her two
supporters. She blazons all her miseries to them at her depart, and
moistens the way with her tears. Chartley was an hundred miles from
her happiness; and a little time thus lost is her eternity. When she
came thither, though in the pleasantest part of the summer, she shut
herself up in her chamber, not suffering a beam of light to peep upon
her dark thoughts. If she stirred out of her chamber, it was in the
dead of the night, when sleep had taken possession of all others but
those about her. In this implacable, sad, and discontented humour, she
continued some months, always murmuring against, but never giving the
least civil respect to, her husband, which the good man suffered
patiently, being loth to be the divulger of his own misery; yet,
having a manly courage, he would sometimes break into a little passion
to see himself slighted and neglected; but having never found better
from her, it was the easier to bear with her.'

[34] See 'The State Trials;' 'The Carew Letters;' Spedding, 'Life and
Letters of Lord Bacon;' Amos, 'The Grand Oyer of Poisoning;' and S. R.
Gardiner, 'History of England,' vol. iv., 1607-1616.


DR. LAMBE.

A worthy successor to Simon Forman appeared in Dr. Lambe, or Lamb,
who, in the first two Stuart reigns, attained a wide celebrity as an
astrologer and a quack doctor. A curious story respecting his
pretended magical powers is related by Richard Baxter in his
'Certainty of the World of Spirits' (1691). Meeting two acquaintances
in the street, who evidently desired some experience of his skill in
the occult art, he invited them home with him, and ushered them into
an inner chamber. There, to their amazement, a tree sprang up before
their eyes in the middle of the floor. Before they had ceased to
wonder at this sight surprising, three diminutive men entered, with
tiny axes in their hands, and, nimbly setting to work, soon felled the
tree. The doctor then dismissed his guests, who went away with a
conviction that he was as potent a necromancer as Roger Bacon or
Cornelius Agrippa.

That same night a tremendous gale arose, so that the house of one of
Lambe's visitors rocked to and fro, threatening to topple over with a
crash, and bury the man and his wife in the ruins. In great terror his
wife inquired, 'Were you not at Dr. Lambe's to-day?' The husband
acknowledged that it was so. 'And did you bring anything away from his
house?' Yes: when the dwarfs felled the tree, he had been foolish
enough to pick up some of the chips, and put them in his pocket. Here
was the cause of the hurricane! With all speed he got rid of the
chips; the storm immediately subsided, and the remainder of the night
was spent in undisturbed repose.

Lambe was notorious for the lewdness of his life and his evil habits.
But his supposed skill and success as a soothsayer led to his being
frequently consulted by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, with the
result that each helped to swell the volume of the other's
unpopularity. The Puritans were angered at the Duke's resort to a man
of Lambe's character and calling; the populace hated Lambe as the tool
and instrument of the Duke. In 1628 the brilliant favourite of
Charles I. was the best-hated man in England, and every slander was
hurled at him that the resources of political animosity could supply.
The ballads of the time--an indisputably satisfactory barometer of
public opinion--inveighed bitterly and even furiously against his
luxuriousness, his love of dress, his vanity, his immorality, and his
proved incompetence as soldier and statesman. He was accused of having
poisoned Lords Hamilton, Lennox, Southampton, Oxford, even James I.
himself. He had sat in his boat, out of the reach of danger, while his
soldiers perished under the guns of Ré. He had corrupted the chastest
women in England by means of the love-philtre which Dr. Lambe
concocted for him. In a word, the air was full of the darkest and
dreadest accusations.

Lambe's connection with the Duke brought on a catastrophe which his
magical art failed to foresee or prevent. He was returning, one summer
evening--it was June 13--from the play at the Fortune Theatre, when he
was recognised by a company of London prentices. With a fine scent for
the game, they crowded round the unfortunate magician, and hooted at
him as the Duke's devil, hustling him to and fro, and treating him
with cruel roughness. To save himself from further violence, he hired
some sailors to escort him to a tavern in Moorgate Street, where he
supped. On going forth again, he found that many of his persecutors
lingered about the door; and, bursting into a violent rage, he
threatened them with his vengeance, and told them 'he would make them
dance naked.' Still guarded by his sailors, he hurried homeward, with
the mob close at his heels, shouting and gesticulating, and increasing
every minute both in numbers and fury. In the Old Jewry he turned to
face them with his protectors; but this movement of defence, construed
into one of defiance, stimulated the passions of the populace to an
ungovernable pitch; they made a rush at him, from which he took refuge
in the Windmill tavern. A volley of stones smashed against pane and
door; and with shouts, screams, and yells, they demanded that he
should be given up. But the landlord, a man of courage and humanity,
would not throw the poor wretch to his pursuers as the huntsman throws
the captured fox to the fangs of his hounds. He detained him for some
time, and then he provided him with a disguise before he would suffer
him to leave. The precaution was useless, for hate is keen of vision:
the man was recognised; the pursuit was resumed, and he was hunted
through the streets, pale and trembling with terror, his dress
disordered and soiled, until he again sought an asylum. The master of
this house, however, fell into a paroxysm of alarm, and dismissed him
hastily, with four constables as a bodyguard. But what could these
avail against hundreds? They were swept aside--the doctor, bleeding
and exhausted, was flung to the ground, and sticks and stones rained
blows upon him until he was no longer able to ask for mercy. One of
his eyes was beaten out of its socket; and when he was rescued at
length by a posse of constables and soldiers, and conveyed to the
Compter prison, it was a dying man who was borne unconscious across
its threshold.

Such was the miserable ending of Dr. Lambe. Charles I. was much
affected when he heard of it; for he saw that it was a terrible
indication of the popular hostility against Lambe's patron. The
murderers had not scrupled to say that if the Duke had been there they
would have handled him worse; they would have minced his flesh, so
that every one of them might have had a piece. Summoning to his
presence the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, the King bade them discover the
offenders; and when they failed in what was an impossible task, he
imposed a heavy fine upon the City.

The ballad-writers of the day found in the magician's fate an occasion
for attacking Buckingham: one of them, commenting on his supposed
contempt for Parliament, puts the following arrogant defiance into his
mouth:

'Meddle with common matters, common wrongs,
To th' House of Commons common things belong ...
Leave him the oar that best knows how to row
And State to him that the best State doth know ...
Though Lambe be dead, _I'll_ stand, and you shall see
I'll smile at them that can but bark at me.'