Note 582 — Chapter VI · (continued 2)

The circumstances to which I allude are well known to the curious in English history, and might furnish materials for a separate dissertation, had I leisure to stray in these by-paths. Hume has treated them as quite unimportant; and Carte, with his usual honesty, has never alluded to them. Those who read carefully the new edition of the State Trials, and various passages in Lord Bacon's Letters, may form for themselves the best judgment they can. A few conclusions may, perhaps, be laid down as established, 1. That Overbury's death was occasioned, not merely by Lady Somerset's revenge, but by his possession of important secrets, which in his passion he had threatened Somerset to divulge. 2. That Somerset conceived himself to have a hold over the king by the possession of the same or some other secrets, and used indirect threats of revealing them. 3. That the king was in the utmost terror at hearing of these measures; as is proved by a passage in Weldon's Memoirs, p. 115, which, after being long ascribed to his libellous spirit, has lately received the most entire confirmation by some letters from More, lieutenant of the Tower, published in the Archæologia, vol. xviii. 4. That Bacon was in the king's confidence, and employed by him so to manage Somerset's trial, as to prevent him from making any imprudent disclosure, or the judges from getting any insight into that which it was not meant to reveal. See particularly a passage in his letter to Coke, vol. ii. 514, beginning, "This crime was second to none but the powder-plot."

Upon the whole, I cannot satisfy myself in any manner as to this mystery. Prince Henry's death, as I have observed, is out of the question; nor does a different solution, hinted by Harris and others, and which may have suggested itself to the reader, appear probable to my judgment on weighing the whole case. Overbury was an ambitious, unprincipled man; and it seems more likely than anything else, that James had listened too much to some criminal suggestion from him and Somerset; but of what nature I cannot pretend even to conjecture; and that through apprehension of this being disclosed, he had pusillanimously acquiesced in the scheme of Overbury's murder.

It is a remarkable fact, mentioned by Burnet, and perhaps little believed, but which, like the former, has lately been confirmed by documents printed in the Archæologia, that James in the last year of his reign, while dissatisfied with Buckingham, privately renewed his correspondence with Somerset, on whom he bestowed at the same time a full pardon, and seems to have given him hopes of being restored to his former favour. A memorial drawn up by Somerset, evidently at the king's command, and most probably after the clandestine interview reported by Burnet, contains strong charges against Buckingham. Archæologia, vol. xvii. 280. But no consequences resulted from this; James was either reconciled to his favourite before his death, or felt himself too old for a struggle. Somerset seems to have tampered a little with the popular party in the beginning of the next reign. A speech of Sir Robert Cotton's in 1625 (Parl. Hist. ii. 145) praises him, comparatively at least with his successor in royal favour; and he was one of those against whom informations were brought in the star-chamber for dispersing Sir Robert Dudley's famous proposal for bridling the impertinences of parliament. Kennet, iii. 62. The patriots, however, of that age had too much sense to encumber themselves with an ally equally unserviceable and infamous. There cannot be the slightest doubt of Somerset's guilt as to the murder, though some have thought the evidence insufficient (Carte, iv. 34); he does not deny it in his remarkable letter to James, requesting, or rather demanding, mercy, printed in the Cabala and in Bacon's Works.