terly against him. In one of his letters, he threatened Rochester
that, unless he were speedily liberated, he would expose his villany to
the world. He says, "You and I, ere it be long, will come to a public
trial of another nature." * * * "Drive me not to extremities, lest I
should say something that both you and I should repent." * * * "Whether
I live or die, your shame shall never die, but ever remain to the
world, to make you the most odious man living." * * * "I wonder much
you should neglect him to whom such secrets of all kinds have passed."
* * * "Be these the fruits of common secrets, common dangers?"

All these remonstrances, and hints as to the dangerous secrets in his
keeping, were ill-calculated to serve him with a man so reckless as
Lord Rochester: they were more likely to cause him to be sacrificed
than to be saved. Rochester appears to have acted as if he thought so.
He doubtless employed the murderer's reasoning that "dead men tell no
tales," when, after receiving letters of this description, he
complained to his paramour of the delay. Weston was spurred on to
consummate the atrocity; and the patience of all parties being
exhausted, a dose of corrosive sublimate was administered to him, in
October 1613, which put an end to his sufferings, after he had been for
six months in their hands. On the very day of his death, and before his
body was cold, he was wrapped up carelessly in a sheet, and buried
without any funeral ceremony in a pit within the precincts of the Tower.

Sir Anthony Weldon, in his "Court and Character of James I," gives a
somewhat different account of the closing scene of this tragedy. He
says, "Franklin and Weston came into Overbury's chamber, and found him
in infinite torment, with contention between the strength of nature and
the working of the poison; and it being very like that nature had
gotten the better in this contention, by the thrusting out of boils,
blotches, and blains, they, fearing it might come to light by the
judgment of physicians, the foul play that had been offered him,
consented to stifle him with the bedclothes, which accordingly was
performed; and so ended his miserable life, with the assurance of the
conspirators that he died by the poison; none thinking otherwise than
these two murderers."

The sudden death--the indecent haste of the funeral, and the
non-holding of an inquest upon the body, strengthened the suspicions
that were afloat. Rumour, instead of whisper