d
that they lived under the same roof for months together without the
interchange of a word.

The exposure of their atrocities did not put a stop to the practice of
poisoning. On the contrary, as we shall see hereafter, it engendered
that insane imitation which is so strange a feature of the human
character. James himself is supposed, with great probability, to have
fallen a victim to it. In the notes to "Harris's Life and Writings of
James I," there is a good deal of information on the subject. The guilt
of Buckingham, although not fully established, rests upon circumstances
of suspicion stronger than have been sufficient to lead hundreds to the
scaffold. His motives for committing the crime are stated to have been
a desire of revenge for the coldness with which the King, in the latter
years of his reign, began to regard him; his fear that James intended
to degrade him; and his hope that the great influence he possessed over
the mind of the heir-apparent would last through a new reign, if the
old one were brought to a close.

In the second volume of the "Harleian Miscellany," there is a tract,
entitled the "Forerunner of Revenge," written by George Eglisham,
doctor of medicine, and one of the physicians to King James. Harris,
in quoting it, says that it is full of rancour and prejudice. It is
evidently exaggerated; but forms, nevertheless, a link in the chain of
evidence. Eglisham says:--"The King being sick of an ague, the Duke
took this opportunity, when all the King's doctors of physic were at
dinner, and offered to him a white powder to take, the which he a long
time refused; but, overcome with his flattering importunity, he took it
in wine, and immediately became worse and worse, falling into many
swoonings and pains, and violent fluxes of the belly, so tormented,
that his Majesty cried out aloud of this white powder, 'Would to God I
had never taken it?" He then tells us "Of the Countess of Buckingham
(the Duke's mother) applying the plaister to the King's heart and
breast, whereupon he grew faint and short-breathed, and in agony. That
the physicians exclaimed, that the King was poisoned; that Buckingham
commanded them out of the room, and committed one of them close
prisoner to his own chamber, and another to be removed from court; and
that, after his Majesty's death, his body and head swelled above
measure; his hair, with the skin of his head, stuck to his pillow, and
his nails became loose on his fingers an