The full significance of these cautious expressions about confining and bounding the evidence, was not appreciated until the discovery of some further documents, relating to this dark subject, a few years ago. The expressions were then found to correspond with others, equally cautious, in Bacon's correspondence. Thus he talks of supplying the king with pretexts that 'might satisfy his honour for sparing the earl's life;' and in another place he says: 'It shall be my care so to moderate the matter of charging him, as it might make him not odious beyond the extent of mercy.'
The drift of all this is, in the first place, that as little of the real truth as possible should be divulged in the trial, and that Bacon and others should manage so as to let out enough to get a conviction and no more; hence the evidence is so fragmentary and unsatisfactory, that none but a tribunal prepared to be very easily satisfied could have formed any conclusion from it. In the second place, it was the king's object that Somerset should be assured all along that his life would be spared. The object of this certainly was to prevent him, in his despair, from uttering that secret, whatever it was, about which the king was so terribly alarmed. The reader may now expect some further elucidation of this part of the mystery.
In Sir Anthony Weldon's Court and Character of King James (p. 36), we have the following statement in reference to the trial:—
'And now for the last act, enters Somerset himself on the stage, who being told (as the manner is) by the lieutenant, that he must go next day to his trial, did absolutely refuse it, and said they should carry him in his bed; that the king had assured him he should not come to any trial—neither durst the king bring him to trial. This was in a high strain, and in a language not well understood by Sir George Moore, then lieutenant in Elwes's room—that made Moore quiver and shake. And however he was accounted a wise man, yet he was near at his wits' end.' This conversation had such an effect on the lieutenant, that though it was twelve o'clock at night, he sped instantly to Greenwich, to see the king. Then he 'bownseth at the back-stair, as if mad;' and Loweston, the Scotch groom, aroused from sleep, comes in great surprise to ask 'the reason of that distemper at so late a season.' Moore tells him, he must speak with the king. Loweston replies: 'He is quiet'—which, in the Scottish dialect, is fast asleep. Moore says: 'You must awake him.' We are then told that Moore was called in, and had a secret audience. 'He tells the king those passages, and requires to be directed by the king, for he was gone beyond his own reason to hear such bold and undutiful expressions from a faulty subject against a just sovereign. The king falls into a passion of tears: "On my soul, Moore, I wot not what to do! Thou art a wise man—help me in this great straight, and thou shalt find thou dost it for a thankful master;" with other sad expressions. Moore leaves the king in that passion, but assures him he will prove the utmost of his wit to serve his majesty—and was really rewarded with a suit worth to him L.1500.'
Moore returned to his prisoner, and told him, 'he had been with the king, found him a most affectionate master unto him, and full of grace in his intentions towards him; but,' he continued, 'to satisfy justice, you must appear, although you return instantly again without any further proceedings—only you shall know your enemies and their malice, though they shall have no power over you.' Somerset seemed satisfied; but Weldon states, that Moore, to render matters quite safe, set two men, placed one on each side of Somerset during his trial, with cloaks hanging on their arms, 'giving them withal a peremptory order, if that Somerset did anyway fly out on the king, they should instantly hoodwink him with that cloak, take him violently from the bar, and carry him away—for which he would secure them from any danger, and they should not want also a bountiful reward. But the earl finding himself overreached, recollected a better temper, and went calmly on his trial, when he held the company until seven at night. But who had seen the king's restless motion all that day, sending to every boat he saw landing at the bridge, cursing all that came without tidings, would have easily judged all was not right, and there had been some grounds for his fears of Somerset's boldness; but at last one bringing him word that he was condemned, and the passages, all was quiet.'
Weldon solemnly states, that he obtained all these facts from Moore's own lips. He was, however, a sarcastic, discontented writer; and being what was called an upstart, he was supposed to have a malice against kings and courts. For such reasons as these, his narrative was distrusted until its fundamental character, at all events, was confirmed by the late discovery of a bundle of letters addressed by the king to Sir George Moore. The bundle was found carefully wrapped up, and appropriately endorsed, in the repositories of Sir George's descendant. The letters will be found printed in the eighteenth volume of the Archæologia, or transactions of the English Antiquarian Society. The following brief extracts from them may suffice for the present occasion—the spelling is modernised:—
'Good Sir George—I am extremely sorry that your unfortunate prisoner turns all the great care I have of him not only against himself, but against me also, as far as he can. I cannot blame you that ye cannot conjecture what this may be, for God knows it is only a trick of his idle brain, hoping thereby to shift his trial; but it is easy to be seen, that he would threaten me with laying an aspersion upon me of being in some sort accessory to his crime.... Give him assurance in my name, that if he will yet, before his trial, confess cheerily unto the commissioners his guiltiness of this fact, I will not only perform what I promised by my last messenger both towards him and his wife, but I will enlarge it, according to the phrase of the civil law, &c. I mean not, that he shall confess if he be innocent, but ye know how evil likely that is; and of yourself ye may dispute with him what should mean his confidence now to endure a trial, when, as he remembers, that this last winter he confessed to the chief-justice that his cause was so evil likely as he knew no jury could acquit him. Assure him, that I protest upon my honour my end in this is for his and his wife's good. Ye will do well, likewise, of yourself, to cast out unto him, that ye fear his wife shall plead weakly for his innocency; and that ye find the commissioners have, ye know not how, some secret assurance that in the end she will confess of him—but this must only be as from yourself.'
That there was some secret of the divulgence of which the king was in the utmost terror, is thus beyond a doubt. What, then, was it? There are no means of deciding. James, it will be seen, hints to Moore, that it was a charge of accession to the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. But, in the same letter, James lets us see that Moore himself did not know the exact secret; and we may fairly conjecture, that the hint was intended to put him on a wrong scent.
The earl and countess were permitted to live, spending a miserable existence with the fear of punishment hanging over them. The accounts given of the condition into which the once beautiful and too fascinating woman fell, are too disgusting to be repeated. There were many other proceedings connected with the charges for poisoning Sir Thomas Overbury, which throw a curious light on the habits of the court, and especially on the criminal attempts to get rid of rivals and enemies by poison and sorcery. They may perhaps form a suitable subject for a separate paper.