es, and when the Commissioners were
evenly divided in their judgement the king added two known partizans of
the Countess to turn their verdict. By means such as these, after four
months of scandal and shame, a sentence of divorce was at last procured,
and Lady Essex set free to marry the favourite.

[Sidenote: Overbury's murder.]

In the foul process of the divorce James had been either dupe or
confederate. But throughout the same four months he had been either
confederate or dupe in a more terrible tragedy. In his rise to greatness
Rochester had been aided by the counsels of Sir Thomas Overbury.
Overbury was a young man of singular wit and ability, but he had as few
scruples as his master, and he was as ready to lend himself to the
favourite's lust as to his ambition. He dictated for him in fact the
letters which won the heart of Lady Essex. But if he backed the
intrigue, he seems, from whatever cause, to have opposed the project of
marriage. So great was his power over Rochester that the Howards deemed
it needful to take him out of the way while the divorce was being
brought about, and with this end they roused the king's jealousy of this
influence over the favourite. James became as resolute to get rid of him
as the Howards; he offered him an embassy if he would quit England, and
when he refused, he treated his refusal as an offence against the state.
Overbury was committed to the Tower, and he remained a close prisoner
while the suit took its course. Whether more than imprisonment was
designed by the Howards, or what was the part the two Earls played in
the deeds that followed, is hard to tell. Still harder is it to tell the
part of Rochester or of the king. But behind the web of political
intrigue lay a woman's passion, and the part of Lady Essex is clear.
Overbury had the secret of her shame to disclose, and she was resolved
to silence him by death. A few days after the sentence of divorce was
pronounced, he died in his prison, poisoned by her agents. The crime
remained unknown; and not a whisper of it broke the king's exultation
over his favourite's success. At the close of 1613 the scandal was
crowned by the elevation of Rochester to the Earldom of Somerset and his
union with Frances Howard. Murderess and adulteress as she was, the girl
moved to her bridal through costly pageants which would have fitted the
bridal of a queen. The marriage was celebrated in the king's presence.
Ben Jonson devised the wedding son