ere weakness on King James's part that he
conceded power to a favourite. In a letter to Robert Carr he describes
what he thought he had found in him, viz. a man who did not allow
himself to be diverted a hair's-breadth from his service,[390] who
never betrayed a secret, and who had nothing before his eyes but the
advantage and good name of his sovereign. The greater share that he
secured for such a man in the management of affairs the greater the
power which he believed that he himself exercised in them. The
favourite who depended entirely on the will of the king and knew his
secrets, he supposed would be both feared and powerful as a first
minister, and would pave the way by his influence upon the state for
the carrying out of the views of the sovereign. He thought that he
could combine the government of the state and the advance of
monarchical ideas, with the comfort of a domestic friendship with an
inferior.

James himself brought about the alliance, which we noticed, between
Robert Carr, whom he raised to the earldom of Somerset, and the house
of Howard. By the union of the hereditary importance of an old family
that had almost always held the highest and most influential offices,
with the favour of the King which carried with it the fullest
authority, a power was in fact consolidated which for a while governed
England. Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, the Lord Treasurer Thomas
Howard, Earl of Suffolk, and Robert Carr were considered the triumvirs
of England.[391] In the midst of this combination appears Lady Frances
Howard, the daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, whose divorce from Essex
and marriage with Somerset had sealed the political alliance between
the two families. She was young and beautiful, with an expression of
modesty and gentleness, but at the same time stately and brilliant, a
fit creature to move in a society that revelled in the enjoyment of
life, in the culture of the century, and in the possession of high
rank. But what an abyss of dark impulses and unbridled passion
sometimes lies hid under such a shining exterior! The Lady Frances had
once sought to draw Prince Henry into her net. Many said that she had
employed magic for this purpose; indeed they assumed that the early
death of the Prince had been brought on partly by this means.[392] Her
marriage with the king's favourite was, if this be true, only a
secondary satisfaction of her ambition, but yet a satisfaction which
she could not forego. So