Somerset had appointed Sir Ralph Winwood to the office of First Secretary of State. In that office word came to Winwood from Brussels that new light had been thrown on the mysterious death of Sir Thomas Overbury. Winwood investigated in secret. An English lad, one Reeves, an apothecary's assistant, thinking himself dying, had confessed at Flushing that Overbury had been poisoned by an injection of corrosive sublimate. Reeves himself had given the injection on the orders of his master, Loubel, the apothecary who had attended Overbury on the day before his death. Winwood sought out Loubel, and from him went to Sir Gervase Elwes. The story he was able to make from what he had from the two men he took to the King. From this beginning rose up the Great Oyer of Poisoning. The matter was put into the hands of the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Edward Coke. The lad Reeves, whose confession had started the matter, was either dead or dying abroad, and was so out of Coke's reach. But the man who had helped the lad to administer the poisoned clyster, the under-keeper Weston, was at hand. Weston was arrested, and examined by Coke. The statement Coke's bullying drew from the man made mention of one Franklin, another apothecary, as having supplied a phial which Sir Gervase Elwes had taken and thrown away. Weston had also received another phial by Franklin's son from Lady Essex. This also Sir Gervase had taken and destroyed. Then there had been tarts and jellies supplied by Mrs Turner. Coke had Mrs Turner and Franklin arrested, and after that Sir Gervase was taken as an accessory, and on his statement that he had employed Weston on Sir Thomas Monson's recommendation Sir Thomas also was roped in. He maintained that he had been told to recommend Weston by Lady Essex and the Earl of Northampton. The next person to be examined by Coke was the apothecary Loubel, he who had attended Overbury on the day before his death. Though in his confession the lad Reeves said that he had been given money and sent abroad by Loubel, this was a matter that Coke did not probe. Loubel told Coke that he had given Overbury nothing but the physic prescribed by Sir Theodore Mayerne, the King's physician, and that in his opinion Overbury had died of consumption. With this evidence Coke was very strangely content--or, at least, content as far as Loubel was concerned, for this witness was not summoned again. Other persons were examined by Coke, notably Overbury's servant Davies and his secretary Payton. Their statements served to throw some suspicion on the Earl of Somerset.