at 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