igh-treason: those found guilty of it, were to be
boiled to death.

One of the first in point of date, and hardly second to any in point of
atrocity, is the murder by this means of Sir Thomas Overbury, which
disgraced the court of James I, in the year 1613. A slight sketch of it
will be a fitting introduction to the history of the poisoning mania,
which was so prevalent in France and Italy fifty years later.

Robert Kerr, a Scottish youth, was early taken notice of by James I,
and loaded with honours, for no other reason that the world could ever
discover than the beauty of his person. James, even in his own day, was
suspected of being addicted to the most abominable of all offences, and
the more we examine his history now, the stronger the suspicion
becomes. However that may be, the handsome Kerr, lending his smooth
cheek, even in public, to the disgusting kisses of his royal master,
rose rapidly in favour. In the year 1613, he was made Lord High
Treasurer of Scotland, and created an English peer, by the style and
title of Viscount Rochester. Still further honours were in store for
him.

In this rapid promotion he had not been without a friend. Sir Thomas
Overbury, the King's secretary-who appears, from some threats in his
own letters, to have been no better than a pander to the vices of the
King, and privy to his dangerous secrets--exerted all his backstair
influence to forward the promotion of Kerr, by whom he was, doubtless,
repaid in some way or other. Overbury did not confine his friendship to
this, if friendship ever could exist between two such men, but acted
the part of an entremetteur, and assisted Rochester to carry on an
adulterous intrigue with the Lady Frances Howard, the wife of the Earl
of Essex. This woman was a person of violent passions, and lost to all
sense of shame. Her husband was in her way, and to be freed from him,
she instituted proceedings for a divorce, on grounds which a woman of
any modesty or delicacy of feeling would die rather than avow. Her
scandalous suit was successful, and was no sooner decided than
preparations, on a scale of the greatest magnificence, were made for
her marriage with Lord Rochester.

Sir Thomas Overbury, who had willingly assisted his patron to intrigue
with the Countess of Essex, seems to have imagined that his marriage
with so vile a woman might retard his advancement; he accordingly
employed all his influence to dissuade him from it. But Rochester was
bent