rson; and a jury of matrons
was found to give their opinion that the Lady Essex was a
maiden.' Divorce was accordingly pronounced, and with all
possible haste the king married his favourite to the
appellant with great pomp at Court. After the conspirators
had been arraigned by the public indignation, a curious
incident of the trial, according to a cotemporary report,
was, that there being 'showed in court certain pictures of a
man and a woman made in lead, and also a mould of brass
wherein they were cast; a black scarf also full of white
crosses which Mrs. Turner had in her custody; enchanted paps
and other pictures [as well as a list of some of the devil's
particular names used in conjuration], suddenly was heard a
crack from the scaffold, which carried a great fear, tumult,
and commotion amongst the spectators and through the hall;
every one fearing hurt as if the devil had been present and
grown angry to have his workmanship known by such as were
not his own scholars' (_Narratives of Sorcery and Magic_, by
Thomas Wright). Whatever may have been the crime or crimes
for the knowledge of which Sir Thomas Overbury was doomed,
it is significant that for his own safety the king was
compelled to break an oath (sworn upon his knees before the
judges he had purposely summoned, with an imprecation that
God's curse might light upon him and his posterity for ever
if he failed to bring the guilty to deserved punishment),
and to not only pardon but remunerate his former favourite
after he had been solemnly convicted and condemned to a
felon's death. The crime, the knowledge of which prevented
the appearance of Somerset at the gibbet or the scaffold,
has been supposed by some, with scarcely sufficient cause or
at least proof, to be the murder by the king of his son
Prince Henry. Doubt has been strongly expressed of the
implication at all of the favourite in the death of
Overbury: the evidence produced at the trial about the
poisoning being, it seems, made up to conceal or to mystify
the real facts.

Two women were executed at Lincoln, in 1618, for bewitching Lord
Rosse, eldest son of the Earl of Rutland, and others of the
family--Lord Rosse being bewitched to death; also for preventing
by diabolic arts the parents from having any more children.
Before the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and one of the
Barons of the Exchequer, it was proved that the wi