It was never proved that it was Anne Turner and Lady Essex who corrupted the lad Reeves, who with Weston administered the poisoned clyster that murdered Overbury. Nothing was done at all to absolve the apothecary Loubel, Reeves's master, of having prepared the poisonous injection, nor Sir Theodore Mayerne, the King's physician, of having been party to its preparation. Yet it was demonstrably the injection that killed Overbury if he was killed by poison at all. It is certain that the poisons sent to the Tower by Turner and the Countess did not save in early instances, get to Overbury at all--Elwes saw to that--or Overbury must have died months before he did die. According to Weldon, who may be supposed to have witnessed the trials, Franklin confessed "that Overbury was smothered to death, not poisoned to death, though he had poison given him." And Weldon goes on to make this curious comment: Here was Coke glad, how to cast about to bring both ends together, Mrs Turner and Weston being already hanged for killing Overbury with poison; but he, being the very quintessence of the law, presently informs the jury that if a man be done to death with pistols, poniards, swords, halter, poison, etc., so he be done to death, the indictment is good if he be but indicted for any of those ways. But the good lawyers of those times were not of that opinion, but did believe that Mrs Turner was directly murthered by my lord Coke's law as Overbury was without any law. Though you will look in vain through the reports given in the State Trials for any speech of Coke to the jury in exactly these terms, it might be just as well to remember that the transcriptions from which the Trials are printed were prepared UNDER Coke's SUPERVISION, and that they, like the confessions of the convicted, are very often in his own handwriting. At all events, even on the bowdlerized evidence that exists, it is plain that Anne Turner should have been charged only with attempted murder. Of that she was manifestly guilty and, according to the justice of the time, thoroughly deserved to be hanged. The indictment against her was faulty, and the case against her as full of holes as a colander. Her trial was 'cooked' in more senses than one. It was some seven months after the execution of Anne Turner that the Countess of Essex was brought to trial. This was in May. In December, while virtually a prisoner under the charge of Sir William Smith at Lord Aubigny's house in Blackfriars, she had given birth to a daughter. In March she had been conveyed to the Tower, her baby being handed over to the care of her mother, the Countess of Suffolk. Since the autumn of the previous year she had not been permitted any communication with her husband, nor he with her. He was already lodged in the Tower when she arrived there.