rsuaded that there was not some
truth in the rumours that were abroad. The inquiries which were instituted
were not strict, as he asserts, and all the unconstitutional influence of
the powerful favourite was exerted to defeat them. In the celebrated
accusations brought against Buckingham by the Earl of Bristol, the
poisoning of King James was placed last on the list; and the pages of
history bear evidence of the summary mode in which they were, for the
time, got rid of.

The man from whom Buckingham is said to have procured his poisons was one
Dr. Lamb, a conjuror and empiric, who, besides dealing in poisons,
pretended to be a fortune-teller. The popular fury, which broke with
comparative harmlessness against his patron, was directed against this
man, until he could not appear with safety in the streets of London. His
fate was melancholy. Walking one day in Cheapside, disguised, as he
thought, from all observers, he was recognised by some idle boys, who
began to hoot and pelt him with stones, calling out, "The poisoner! the
poisoner! Down with the wizard! down with him!" A mob very soon collected,
and the doctor took to his heels and ran for his life. He was pursued and
seized in Wood Street, and from thence dragged by the hair through the
mire to St. Paul's Cross; the mob beating him with sticks and stones, and
calling out, "Kill the wizard! kill the poisoner!"

Charles I., on hearing of the riot, rode from Whitehall to quell it; but
he arrived too late to save the victim. Every bone in his body was broken,
and he was quite dead. Charles was excessively indignant, and fined the
city six hundred pounds for its inability to deliver up the ring-leaders
to justice.

[Illustration: PAUL'S CROSS; SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.]

But it was in Italy that poisoning was most prevalent. From a very early
period, it seems to have been looked upon in that country as a perfectly
justifiable means of getting rid of an enemy. The Italians of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries poisoned their opponents with as
little compunction as an Englishman of the present day brings an action at
law against any one who has done him an injury. The writings of
contemporary authors inform us that, when La Spara and La Tophania carried
on their infernal trade, ladies put poison-bottles on their
dressing-tables as openly, and used them with as little scruple upon
others, as modern dames use _Eau de Cologne_ or lavender-water upon
themselves. So powerful