_Sir Thomas Overbury died poisoned in the Tower on the_ 15_th of September_ 1613. _On the_ 5_th of January_ 1606, _by desire of James the First, the young Earl of Essex, aged fourteen, had been married to the Lady Frances Howard, aged thirteen, the younger daughter of the Earl of Suffolk. Ben Jonson's "Masque of Hymen" was produced at Court in celebration of that union. The young Robert Devereux, third Earl of Essex, had good qualities too solid for the taste of a frivolous girl; and when, after travel abroad, the husband of eighteen claimed the wife of seventeen, he found her happy in flirtation with the King's favourite, Sir Robert Carr. Though compelled to live with her husband, she repelled all his advances, and after three years of this repugnance tried for a divorce. The King's Scotch favourite, Carr, had been made, in March 1611, an English peer, as Viscount Rochester, when the age of the young Countess of Essex was nineteen. He was the man highest in King James's favour. If the divorce sought by the Countess early in 1613 were obtained for her, it was understood that Carr would marry her, and that support of the divorce would be a way to future benefit through his good offices. Thus she obtained the support of her father and uncle, the Earls of Suffolk and Northampton. The King's influence went with the wishes of the favourite. The trial, in 1613, ending in a decree of nullity of marriage, was a four months' scandal in the land. Among the familiar friends of Robert Carr, Lord Rochester, was Sir Thomas Overbury, born in Warwickshire in 1581, and knighted by King James in 1608. He strongly opposed the policy of a divorce obtained on false pretences followed by his patron's marriage to the divorced wife. The grounds of his opposition may have been part private, part political. His opposition was determined, and if he offered himself as witness before the Commission, he probably knew enough about the lady's secret practisings to give such evidence as would frustrate her designs. It was thought desirable, therefore, to get Overbury out of the way. The King offered him a post abroad. He was unwilling to accept it, and at last was driven to an explicit refusal. The King was angry, and caused his Council to commit Sir Thomas Overbury to the Tower for contempt of His Majesty's commands. He was to be seen by no one, and to have no servant with him. Sir William Wood, the Lieutenant of the Tower, was superseded, and Sir Gervase Helwys was put in his place with secret understandings, of which the design may only have been to prevent Sir Thomas Overbury from saying anything that could come to the ears of the world until the divorce was granted. But Lady Essex wished Sir Thomas Overbury to be more effectually silenced. She had tried and failed to get him assassinated. Now she resolved to get him poisoned. She obtained the employment of a creature of her own, named Weston, as his immediate keeper.