Anne Turner’s hat was one of the first things the court took from her. She stood indicted as an accessory to murder by poison; yet the judge found time to instruct her that whilst a woman might cover her head in a church, she could not do so before those who were to sit in judgment upon her. She removed her hat and arranged a kerchief over her hair. Thus began, according to the ancient account of the trial, an audience assembled to examine a murder, wherein great care was taken to demonstrate to the accused that she would not be permitted to govern even her own appearance.
The scene is Westminster, in November of 1615. Sir Thomas Overbury has been dead these two years. Anne Turner, a widow and confidante to the Countess of Somerset, must answer for the aid she is said to have lent Richard Weston in poisoning the prisoner. She pleads not guilty. About her, the throng gathered to hear the evidence will likewise be treated to love letters, magical paraphernalia, and a catalogue of sins with which a magistrate felt entirely entitled to burden her.
The Friend Turned Obstacle
Overbury had once been close to Robert Carr, the favourite of King James I. When Carr became enamoured of Frances Howard, then still Countess of Essex, his friend opposed the alliance. The young lady was seeking the annulment of her marriage; dynastic interests, royal favour, and private desires converged in this matter with an intimacy that rendered every confidence perilous.
Overbury was offered a diplomatic mission, which he refused. This refusal displeased the King and led to his imprisonment in the Tower of London. There he died in September 1613. Shortly thereafter, Frances obtained her coveted annulment and wedded Carr. Outward appearances were well suited to satisfy those who preferred to see embarrassments vanish without inquiring after the means: an adversary removed, a marriage freed from its impediment, and two spouses drawn into the very corridors of power.
Yet the prisoner’s demise was not suffered to rest quietly. In 1615, suspicions of poisoning gave rise to an official inquiry. It traced persons, parcels, and communications which the lofty station of the protagonists had not exempted from passing through subaltern hands. Weston, appointed to keep watch over Overbury, found himself at the centre of the prosecution; Anne Turner appeared among the intermediaries. A man might well be locked away safe from his friends, yet remain entirely accessible to his enemies.
The Letters Left Unburned
Anne had known Frances for a long time. In the account published in 1651, drawn from papers attributed to Bacon’s collections, she explained that she lived in dependence upon her ladyship, with children to provide for. Such a tie neither suffices to establish her innocence nor to explain all her deeds. It indicates, however, why the Countess’s letters might mingle expressions of friendship with requests to which it proved exceedingly difficult to say no.
The court heard tell of Doctor Simon Forman, an astrologer consulted in matters of love. He had died before the trial. His widow had discovered certain papers; some had been consigned to the flames, others preserved unbeknownst to those who wished them destroyed. Frances wrote of her despair, her loathing for the conjugal life forced upon her, her longing to hold Carr’s affections. She pleaded for aid, promised money, and urged that the correspondence be utterly destroyed.
A modern reader need not believe in the efficacy of enchantments to understand that of a promise. In a world where women required intermediaries to obtain what they could never demand openly, a closet filled with secrets could swiftly become an engine of influence. This did not render every consultation the contrivance of a murder. The court, however, readily confounded whatever excited public curiosity with that which was meant to establish guilt.
A Crack in the Courtroom
Figurines were produced, together with moulds and papers covered in strange characters. The old relation records that a sudden cracking sound in the scaffolding erected for the spectators caused an abrupt panic: for some minutes, the assembly seemed to dread the very presence of the Devil, whose supposed instruments were being paraded before them. The text recounts this fright with the gravity peculiar to its age. For our part, we perceive a hall already prepared to take its own imagination for a witness.
Then the depositions turned once more to substances and deliveries. James Franklin was named as the provider of the poisons. Tarts and jellies had been sent to Overbury; there was talk of strict injunctions forbidding others from tasting them, and of dishes that had to be recalled and replaced with fresh ones. The apparent solicitude shown for the captive’s nourishment became, in the narrative of the Crown, the very instrument of his destruction.
In such an inversion lies something far more unsettling than a phial discovered in a sleeve. A gift crosses thresholds because it seems to soften the rigours of captivity. A warder becomes an accomplice because he possesses the right of approach. A friend arranges a transaction because her connections are trusted. The ordinary gestures that sustain human life thus furnish suspicion with the fabric of an organised crime.
Anne maintained that she never knew the items sent to Overbury contained poison. The depositions and examinations previously taken were set against her. The narrative depicts her growing increasingly despondent, particularly upon learning that Weston had already been executed. The testimonies she might have wished to confront were not all present before her; some arrived by way of written readings, others through living witnesses. The courtroom no longer merely weighed her actions: it was fashioning the portrait of a woman whose associates made every villainy seem plausible.
The Words of the Bench
The Lord Chief Justice mingled with the charge of murder a stream of sexual and religious slurs, together with accusations of witchcraft. It would be an easy task to rehearse this litany merely to lend colour to the scene. It is of greater moment to observe what it accomplished: it transformed an individual prosecuted for specific acts into a vessel for all the court’s surrounding terrors.
The jury pronounced her guilty. She sued for mercy and wept. Another judge exhorted her not to squander what little time remained in hoping to preserve her life; he added that a person of her condition had been granted a singularly honourable bench of judges. For one who had just heard her death sentence, it was an astonishing summons to gratitude.
Anne Turner was brought to Tyburn and hanged in November 1615. The ancient chronicle records that she recalled her dependence upon the Countess, explaining that once she had been drawn into the business, to reveal it appeared certain to work her own undoing. Such words do not expunge the crime. Yet they illuminate that inner prison which so often precedes the one wherein condemned wretches are confined: knowing enough to be compromised, but too little, or too late, to believe oneself capable of escape.
The Somersets were tried in their turn in 1616. Though convicted, they escaped the scaffold. Anne and the other subordinate agents, already dead, did not live to see this final turn of fortune. This disparity of fates lends the affair its enduring resonance, without any need to exonerate the underlings to perceive the shield that birth and favour could still extend over the powerful.
At the opening of the trial, Anne had been forced to take off her hat. At the close of the history, those whose interests she had served preserved something infinitely more precious: the prospect of a tomorrow.