The first of these was Robert Carr, or Ker, a young border Scot of the Kers of Fernihurst. He had been some years in France, and being a handsome youth—"straight-limbed, well-formed, strong-shouldered, and smooth-faced"—he had been led to believe that if he cultivated his personal appearance and a gaiety and courtliness of address, he was sure of making his fortune at the Court of James. Accordingly he managed to appear as page to Lord Dingwall at a grand tilting match at Westminster, in 1606. According to chivalric usage, it became his duty to present his lord's shield to his Majesty; but in manœuvring his horse on the occasion, it fell and broke his leg. That fall was his rise. James was immediately struck with the beauty of the youth who lay disabled at his feet, and had him straightway carried into a house near Charing Cross, and sent his own surgeon to him. As soon as he could get away from the tilt-yard, he hastened to him himself. He renewed his visits daily, waiting upon him himself, and displaying to the whole Court the intensity of his sudden regard for him. "Lord!" says Weldon, "how the great men flocked then to see him, and to offer to his shrine in such abundance, that the king was forced to lay a restraint, lest it might retard his recovery."
The lad's fortune was made; and though James, in conversing with him, found that he was very ignorant—the whole of his education having been directed to his outside—this did not abate his regard, for he condescended to be at once his nurse and schoolmaster. "The prince," says Harrington, "leaneth on his arm, pinches his cheek, smooths his ruffled garments. The young man doth study much art and device; he hath changed his tailors and tiremen many times, and all to please the prince. The king teaches him Latin every morning, and I think some one should teach him English too, for he is a Scotch lad, and hath much need of better language."
SIR FRANCIS BACON (VISCOUNT ST. ALBANS).
(From the Portrait by Van Somer.)
James found that Carr had been his page in Scotland, and that his father had suffered much in the cause of the unhappy Mary Stuart; these were additional causes of favour. On Christmas-day, 1607, James knighted him and made him a gentleman of the bed-chamber, so as to have him constantly about his person. Such was his favour that every one pressed around him to obtain their suits with the king. He received rich presents; the ladies courted his attention; the greatest lords did him the most obsequious and disgusting homage. Carr, however, had an eye to pleasing the public and therefore, Scotsman as he was, he turned the cold shoulder to his countrymen, and associated with and favoured the English; probably, too, finding this the most profitable. Those about him were almost wholly English; and his affairs were in the hands of one Sir Thomas Overbury, a man of an evil look, and with a countenance said to be shaped like that of a horse. The dark ability of this man supplied the lack of talent in his patron, and became a mine of wealth to Overbury himself. Even Cecil and the Earl of Suffolk strove to avail themselves of his services; and when Cecil quitted the scene, Carr, through Overbury's management, carried all before him. In March, 1611, he had been created Viscount Rochester; in April, 1612, he became a member of the Privy Council, and was invested with the order of the Garter. The Earl of Suffolk succeeding to Cecil's post of Lord Treasurer, Carr stepped into Suffolk's office of Lord Chamberlain, at the same time discharging the duties of the post of Secretary by the aid of Sir Thomas Overbury. The favourite's favourite, however, was no favourite of the king, who was jealous of having so much of the time and confidence of Carr occupied by Overbury, and this feeling was probably much heightened by the queen, who had an instinctive aversion to the man. On one occasion the queen succeeded in obtaining his expulsion from Court, for alleged discourtesy to her, but he soon returned; and though the king appointed Sir Ralph Winwood and Sir Thomas Lake to occupy jointly the office of Secretary of State, yet Carr, by the king's favour and Overbury's ability, remained lord paramount in the Court; Overbury himself being the avenue to every favour. On April 21, 1613, Overbury boasted to Sir Henry Wotton of his good fortune, and his flattering prospects, yet that very day saw him committed close prisoner to the Tower. Adept as he was in all Court intrigues, he had yet committed an irremediable blunder, and aroused a spirit of vengeance which nothing but his blood could quench. This spirit lived in the bosom of a beautiful girl not yet twenty years of age.
Lady Frances Howard, the daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, had been married at the age of thirteen to the Earl of Essex, the son of Elizabeth's unfortunate favourite, who was only a year older. It was a match promoted by the king out of regard, as he said, for the memory of the young earl's father. The ceremony being performed, the bride returned to the care of her mother, and the boy bridegroom proceeded, under care of a tutor, on his travels. At the end of four years he returned, and claimed his wife, whom he found the beauty and pride of the Court. But whilst he was enraptured with her loveliness, he was mortified to find that she treated him with every mark of aversion. It was only by the stern command of her father that she consented to live with him at all, and he soon discovered that in his absence her affections had been stolen away by the profligate favourite Rochester, who had won her even from another and a royal suitor, Prince Henry.
This discovery, and the constant bickerings which took place between the earl and countess, made Essex willing that a divorce should be obtained. There were others who were glad of this expedient: Lady Howard's father, Lord Suffolk, and the Earl of Northampton, Lord Privy Seal, saw in her marriage with Rochester a mode of putting an end to the rivalry which existed between them, and the king was equally eager for this result. But to Overbury the scheme boded the destruction of his power, which would be at an end if his patron coalesced with his enemies. He therefore commenced a determined opposition to the match. He it was who had written the glowing and eloquent love-letters of Rochester, and had promoted the liaison to the utmost of his power; but he had never dreamt of its leading to a marriage which must work his own ruin. He therefore represented to Rochester the odium of such a marriage; the base and abandoned character of the woman, who might do for his mistress, but was not to be thought of as a wife. When he found that his arguments did not produce the effect which he wished, he took the dangerous step of menaces, and declared that he could and would throw an insuperable bar in the way of the divorce from Essex, without which there could be no marriage. This bar was undoubtedly Overbury's knowledge of the adulterous connection which had existed between the parties, and which would certainly ruin the countess's demand of a separation.
The master of deep policy could not see the rock upon which he was running, and which would have been very clear to him in another person's case. Rochester repeated to the countess all that he said, and the rage of a sinful woman, proverbially fierce as hell, seized upon her. She vowed that she would have his life. In her first fury she offered £1,000 to Sir John Wood to kill him in a duel, but her friends interposed, and suggested a less hazardous and less criminal method of getting Overbury out of the way, which was to send him on an embassy to France or Russia. If he accepted the office, he would be detained abroad till the divorce was effected; if he refused, it would be easy to construe his conduct into a contempt of the king's service.
Overbury was sounded on the subject of a mission to Russia, and listened to it with apparent pleasure; but the young beauty could not thus satisfy her revenge, and at her instigation Rochester affected to feel his projected absence intolerable. He declared his presence and counsel were indispensable to him, and he promised to satisfy the king, if he agreed to decline the offer. No sooner did Overbury consent than Rochester, so far from excusing him to the king, represented his conduct as not only disobedient to his Majesty, but as insolent and intolerable to himself. James was only too glad to clear the Court of the hated man; a warrant was immediately issued, and Overbury was committed to the Tower. By the arrangement of Rochester and the Earl of Northampton, the lieutenant of the Tower, Sir William Wade, was removed, and a creature of theirs, Sir Jervis Elwes, was installed in his place. Under the care of Elwes, Sir Thomas Overbury was at once cut off from all communication with the outer world. Neither servant nor relative was permitted to see him; he was already dead to the world, and the world was soon to be dead to him.