by King James in
1608. He strongly opposed the policy of a divorce obtained on false
pretences followed by his patron's marriage to the divorced wife. The
grounds of his opposition may have been part private, part political.
His opposition was determined, and if he offered himself as witness
before the Commission, he probably knew enough about the lady's secret
practisings to give such evidence as would frustrate her designs. It was
thought desirable, therefore, to get Overbury out of the way. The King
offered him a post abroad. He was unwilling to accept it, and at last
was driven to an explicit refusal. The King was angry, and caused his
Council to commit Sir Thomas Overbury to the Tower for contempt of His
Majesty's commands. He was to be seen by no one, and to have no servant
with him. Sir William Wood, the Lieutenant of the Tower, was superseded,
and Sir Gervase Helwys was put in his place with secret understandings,
of which the design may only have been to prevent Sir Thomas Overbury
from saying anything that could come to the ears of the world until the
divorce was granted. But Lady Essex wished Sir Thomas Overbury to be
more effectually silenced. She had tried and failed to get him
assassinated. Now she resolved to get him poisoned. She obtained the
employment of a creature of her own, named Weston, as his immediate
keeper. Weston falsely professed to Lady Essex that he had administered
the poison she had given him, and that the result had been not death but
loss of health. There is much uncertainty about the evidence of detail
and of the privity of others in the designs of Lady Essex, who seems at
last to have completed her work by the agency of an apothecary's
assistant. He gave the fatal dose in an injection, by which Overbury was
killed ten days before the Commission gave judgment in favour of the
divorce. At Christmas the favourite married the divorced wife, having
been created Earl of Somerset, that as his wife she might be Countess
still. In the following year, 1614, Sir Thomas Overbury's "Characters"
were published, together with his Character in verse of A Wife, who was
described as "A Wife, now a Widow." This had been published a little
earlier in the same year separately, without any added "Characters."
When the Characters appeared they were described as "Many Witty
Characters and conceited Newes written by himselfe and other learned
Gentlemen his Friends." The twenty-one Characters in that edition wer