We pass on to one of the foulest records in the history of our great fortress. Thomas Overbury, the son of a judge, was sent by his father “on a voyage of pleasure” to Edinburgh in 1601, and there made acquaintance, which ripened into intimate friendship, with one Robert Carr, page to the Earl of Dunbar. On the accession of King James to the English throne he showed Carr great favour, and brought him to London. Carr, conscious of his own defective education and training, leaned much on Overbury’s ability, who thus to some extent shared his prosperity and was knighted in 1608. Carr was made Earl of Rochester in 1610. Their intimacy continued so close that men about court cringed to Overbury with a view to gaining Rochester’s favour, but now came a bitter feud. Rochester involved himself in a liaison with the Countess of Essex, a woman of altogether abandoned character, and she obtained a divorce with a view of marrying Rochester. But against this marriage Overbury raised an indignant protest, and entreated his friend to abandon the idea. Rochester resented his interference, and the countess in wrath excited him to retaliate. Rochester hesitated—probably Overbury was in possession of secrets which it was not desirable to bring out—and tried to persuade him to accept a diplomatic appointment abroad. He steadily refused all offers, and the Earl of Northampton, the countess’s uncle, who was keen for the match, persuaded the king, who was already prejudiced against Overbury, to send him to the Tower, on a charge of having spoken disrespectfully of the queen. Rochester regarded this imprisonment as a temporary expedient only; but far other was the idea of the countess. After making one or two proposals to officers to assassinate Overbury, she procured the dismissal of Wade from the governorship, and put in a tool of her own, Sir Gervase Helwys, by whose management the wretched captive was slowly and skilfully poisoned, September 15, 1613, three months and seventeen days after his first committal. A few weeks later Rochester was created Earl of Somerset. Nearly two years later a boy in the employment of one of the apothecaries revealed the crime. Investigations were made and proofs were abundantly forthcoming. Helwys and the attendants were hanged. The Earl of Northampton, it was clearly proved, had been an accomplice, but he had died. The Earl and Countess of Somerset were arrested, tried and convicted in May, 1616, but were pardoned and released from the Tower in 1621. Public opinion was much outraged; there were demonstrations in the streets, and it was even broadly intimated that King James must have been privy to the murder. There was a tradition that Mrs. Turner, one of the principal agents employed in this crime by Lady Essex, appeared at her trial in a stiffened ruff which was all the fashion, and which we constantly see in portraits of that time, and in the same decoration was hanged (March, 1615), the