s figured in the civil war--a grave, conscientious,
earnest man, who could have had little sympathy with a woman so giddy
and unprincipled. She suited better with the profligate Somerset; but
had it not been that the king's favourite demanded it to be dissolved,
the original union would have been held sacred.

Great court pageants and festivities hailed the marriage of Carr with
the divorced Lady Essex, and the proudest of England's nobility vied
with each other in doing honour to the two vile persons thus
unpropitiously united. The chief-justice, Coke, and the illustrious
Bacon, bowed in the general crowd before their ascendancy. It has been
maintained that Ben Jonson, in his rough independence, refused to
write a masque for the occasion of these wicked nuptials; but this has
been denied; and it is said, that the reason why his works contain no
avowed reference to the occasion, is because they were not published
until Somerset's fall. The event took place in 1613: three years
afterwards, the same crowd of courtiers and great officers were
assembled in Westminster Hall, to behold the earl and countess on
their trial for murder.

Sir Thomas Overbury, a man of great talent, who lived, like many other
people of that period, by applying his capacity to state intrigues,
had been committed to the Tower at the instigation of Somerset. He
died there suddenly; and a suspicion arose that he had been poisoned
by Somerset and his countess. A curious account of the transactions
which immediately followed, has been preserved in a work called _A
Detection of the State and Court of England during the last Four
Reigns_. It is the more curious, as the author, Roger Coke, was a
grandson of Sir Edward, the great chief-justice, who was a principal
actor in the scene. The king was at Royston, accompanied by Somerset,
when it appears that Sir Ralph Winwood informed his majesty of the
suspicions that were abroad against the favourite. The king
immediately determined to inform Coke; but it is feared that the
determination arose not from a desire to execute strict justice, but
because another favourite, George Villiers, who afterwards became Duke
of Buckingham, had already superseded Somerset in the king's esteem.

A message was immediately despatched to Sir Edward Coke, who lived in
the Temple. He was in bed when it arrived, and his son, even for one
who came in the king's name, would not disturb him; 'For I know,' he
said, 'my father's disp