Witch, Warlock, and Magician

On being examined, Weston at first denied all knowledge of the affair; but eventually he confessed that, having been rebuked by Helwys, he had thrown away the medicaments with which he had been entrusted; and next he accused Lady Somerset of instigating him to administer to Overbury a poison, which would be forwarded to him for that purpose. Then one Rawlins, a servant of the Earl, gave information that he had been similarly employed. As soon as Somerset heard that he was implicated, he wrote to the King protesting his innocence, and declaring that a conspiracy had been hatched against him. But many suspicious particulars being discovered, he was committed to the custody of Sir Oliver St. John; while Weston, on October 23, was put on his trial for the murder of Overbury, and found guilty, though no evidence was adduced against him which would have satisfied a modern jury.

On November 7 Mrs. Turner was brought before the Court. Her trial excited the most profound curiosity, and Westminster Hall was crowded by an eager multitude, who shuddered with superstitious emotion when the instruments employed by Forman in his magical rites were exposed to view.33 It would seem that Mrs. Turner, when arrested, immediately sent her maid to Forman’s widow, to urge her to burn – before the Privy Council sent to search her house – any of her husband’s papers that might contain dangerous secrets. She acted on the advice, but overlooked a few documents of great importance, including a couple of letters written by Lady Essex to Mrs. Turner and Forman. The various articles seized in Forman’s house referred, however, not to the murder of Overbury, but to the conjurations employed against the Earls of Somerset and Essex. ‘There was shewed in Court,’ says a contemporary report, ‘certaine pictures of a man and a woman made in lead, and also a moulde of brasse wherein they were cast, a blacke scarfe alsoe full of white crosses, which Mrs. Turner had in her custody,’ besides ‘inchanted paps and other pictures.’ There was also a parcel of Forman’s written charms and incantations. ‘In some of those parchments the devill had particular names, who were conjured to torment the lord Somersett and Sir Arthur Mannering, if theire loves should not contynue, the one to the Countesse, the other to Mrs. Turner.’ Visions of a dingy room haunted by demons, who had been summoned from the infernal depths by Forman’s potent spells, stimulated the imagination of the excited crowd until they came to believe that the fiends were actually there in the Court, listening in wrath to the exposure of their agents; and, behold! in the very heat and flush of this extravagant credulity, a sudden crack was heard in one of the platforms or scaffolds, causing ‘a great fear, tumult, and commotion amongst the spectators and through the hall, every one fearing hurt, as if the devil had been present and grown angry to have his workmanship known by such as were not his own scholars.’ The narrator adds that there was also a note showed in Court, made by Dr. Forman, and written on parchment, signifying what ladies loved what lords; but the Lord Chief Justice would not suffer it to be read openly. This ‘note,’ or book, was a diary of the doctor’s dealings with the persons named; and a scandalous tradition affirms that the Lord Chief Justice would not have it read because his wife’s name was the first which caught his eye when he glanced at the contents.

Mrs. Turner’s conviction followed as a matter of course upon Weston’s. There was no difficulty in proving that she had been concerned in his proceedings, and that if he had committed a crime she was particeps criminis. Both she and Weston died with an acknowledgment on their lips that they were justly punished. Her end, according to all accounts, was sufficiently edifying. Bishop Goodman quotes the narrative of an eye-witness, one Mr. John Castle, in which we read that, ‘if detestation of painted pride, lust, malice, powdered hair, yellow bands, and the rest of the wardrobe of Court vanities; if deep sighs, tears, confessions, ejaculations of the soul, admonitions of all sorts of people to make God and an unspotted conscience always our friends; if the protestation of faith and hope to be washed by the same Saviour and the like mercies that Magdalene was, be signs and demonstrations of a blessed penitent, then I will tell you that this poor broken woman went a cruce ad gloriam, and now enjoys the presence of her and our Redeemer. Her body being taken down by her brother, one Norton, servant to the Prince, was in a coach conveyed to St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, where, in the evening of the same day, she had an honest and a decent burial.’ Her sad fate seems to have appealed strongly to public sympathy, and to have drawn a veil of oblivion over the sins and follies of her misspent life. A contemporary versifier speaks of her in language worthy of a Lucretia:

‘O how the cruel cord did misbecomeHer comely neck! and yet by Law’s just doomHad been her death. Those locks, like golden thread,That used in youth to enshrine her globe-like head,Hung careless down; and that delightful limb,Her snow-white nimble hand, that used to trimThose tresses up, now spitefully did tearAnd rend the same; nor did she now forbearTo beat that breast of more than lily-white,Which sometime was the bed of sweet delight.From those two springs where joy did whilom dwell,Grief’s pearly drops upon her pale cheek fell.’

The next to suffer was an apothecary named Franklin, from whom the poison had been procured. ‘Before he was executed, he threw out wild hints of the existence of a plot far exceeding in villainy that which was in course of investigation. He tried to induce all who would listen to him to believe that he knew of a conspiracy in which many great lords were concerned; and that not only the late Prince [Henry] had been removed by unfair means, but that a plan had been made to get rid of the Electress Palatine and her husband. As, however, all this was evidently only dictated by a hope of escaping the gallows, he was allowed to share with the others a fate which he richly deserved.’

After the execution of these smaller culprits, some months elapsed before Bacon, as Attorney-General, was directed to proceed against the greater. It was not until May 24, 1616, that the Countess of Somerset was put upon her trial before the High Steward’s Court in Westminster Hall. Contemporary testimony differs strangely as to her behaviour. One authority says that, whilst the indictment was being read, she turned pale and trembled, and when Weston’s name was mentioned hid her face behind her fan. Another remarks: ‘She won pity by her sober demeanour, which, in my opinion,’ he adds, ‘was more curious and confident than was fit for a lady in such distress, yet she shed, or made show of some tears, divers times.’ The evidence against her was too strong to be confuted, and she pleaded guilty. When the judge asked her if she had anything to say in arrest of judgment, she replied, in low, almost inaudible tones, that she could not extenuate her fault. She implored mercy, and begged that the lords would intercede with the King on her behalf. Sentence was then pronounced, and the prisoner sent back to the Tower, to await the King’s decision.

On the following day the Earl was tried. Bacon again acted as prosecutor, and in his opening speech he said that the evidence to be brought forward by the Government would prove four points: 1. That Somerset bore malice against Overbury before the latter’s imprisonment; 2. That he devised the plan by which that imprisonment was effected; 3. That he actually sent poisons to the Tower; 4. That he had made strenuous efforts to conceal the proofs of his guilt. He added that he himself would undertake the management of the case on the first two points, leaving his subordinates, Montague and Crew, to deal with the third and fourth.

Bacon had chosen for himself a comparatively easy task. The ill-feeling that had existed between Overbury and his patron was beyond doubt; while it was conclusively shown, and, indeed, hardly disputed, that Somerset had had a hand in Overbury’s imprisonment, and in the appointment of Helwys and Weston as his custodians. Passages from Lord Northampton’s letters to the Earl proved the existence of a plot in which both were mixed up, and that Helwys had expressed an opinion that Overbury’s death would be a satisfactory termination of the imbroglio. But he might probably have based this opinion on the fact that Overbury was seriously ill, and his recovery more than doubtful.

When Bacon had concluded his part of the case, Ellesmere, who presided, urged Somerset to confess his guilt. ‘No, my lord,’ said the Earl calmly, ‘I came hither with a resolution to defend myself.’

Montague then endeavoured to demonstrate that the poison of which Overbury died had been administered with Somerset’s knowledge. But he could get no further than this: that Somerset had been in the habit of sending powders, as well as tarts and jellies, to Overbury; but he did not, and could not prove that the powders were poisonous. Nor was Serjeant Crew able to advance the case beyond the point reached by Bacon; he could argue only on the assumption of Somerset’s guilt, which his colleagues had failed to establish.

In our own day it would be held that the case for the prosecution had completely broken down; and I must add my conviction that Somerset was in no way privy to Overbury’s murder. He had assented to his imprisonment, because he was weary of his importunity; but he still retained a kindly feeling towards him, and was evidently grieved at the serious nature of his illness. As a matter of fact, it was not proved even that Overbury died of poison, though I admit that this is put beyond doubt by collateral circumstances. Somerset’s position, however, before judges who were more or less hostilely disposed, with the agents of the Crown bent on obtaining his conviction, and he himself without legal advisers, was both difficult and dangerous. He was embarrassed by the necessity of keeping back part of his case. He was unable to tell the whole truth about Overbury’s imprisonment. He could not make known all that had passed between Lady Essex and himself before marriage, or that Overbury had been committed to the Tower to prevent him from giving evidence which would have certainly quashed Lady Essex’s proceedings for a divorce. And, in truth, if he mustered up courage to tell this tale of shame, he could not hope that the peers, most of whom were his enemies, would give credence to it, or that, if they believed it, they would refrain from delivering an adverse verdict.

Yet he bore himself with courage and ability, when, by the flickering light of torches, for the day had gone down, he rose to make his defence. Acknowledging that he had consented to Overbury’s imprisonment in order that he might throw no obstacles in the way of his marriage with Lady Essex, he firmly denied that he had known anything of attempts to poison him. The tarts he had sent were wholesome, and of a kind to which Overbury was partial; if any had been tampered with, he was unaware of it. The powders he had received from Sir Robert Killigrew, and simply sent them on; and Overbury had admitted, in a letter which was before the Court, that they had done him no mischief. Here Crew interrupted: The three powders from Killigrew had been duly accounted for; but there was a fourth powder, which had not been accounted for, and had (it was assumed) contained poison. Now, it was improbable that the Earl could remember the exact history of every powder sent to Overbury two years before, and, besides, it was a mere assumption on the part of the prosecution that this fourth powder was poison. But Somerset’s inability to meet this point was made the most of, and gave the peers a sufficient pretext for declaring him guilty. The Earl received his sentence with the composure he had exhibited throughout the arduous day, which had shown how a nature enervated by luxury and indulgence can be braced up by the chill air of adversity, and contented himself with expressing a hope that the Court would intercede with the King for mercy.

I have dwelt at some length on the details of this celebrated trial because it is the last (in English jurisprudence) in which men and women of rank have been mixed up with the secret practices of the magician; though, for other reasons, it is one of very unusual interest. In briefly concluding the recital, I may state that James was greatly relieved when the trial was over, and he found that nothing damaging to himself had been disclosed. It is certain that Somerset was in possession of some dark secret, the revelation of which was much dreaded by the King; so that precautions had even been taken, or at all events meditated, to remove him from the Court if he entered upon the dangerous topic, and to continue the trial in his absence. He would probably have been silenced by force. The Earl, however, refrained from hazardous disclosures, and James could breathe in peace.

On July 13, the King pardoned Lady Somerset, who was certainly the guiltiest of all concerned. The Earl was left in prison, with sentence of death suspended over him for several years, in order, no doubt, to terrify him into silence. A few months before his death, James appears to have satisfied himself that he had nothing to fear, and ordered the Earl’s release (January, 1622). Had he lived, he would probably have restored him to his former influence and favour.34

DR. LAMBE

A worthy successor to Simon Forman appeared in Dr. Lambe, or Lamb, who, in the first two Stuart reigns, attained a wide celebrity as an astrologer and a quack doctor. A curious story respecting his pretended magical powers is related by Richard Baxter in his ‘Certainty of the World of Spirits’ (1691). Meeting two acquaintances in the street, who evidently desired some experience of his skill in the occult art, he invited them home with him, and ushered them into an inner chamber. There, to their amazement, a tree sprang up before their eyes in the middle of the floor. Before they had ceased to wonder at this sight surprising, three diminutive men entered, with tiny axes in their hands, and, nimbly setting to work, soon felled the tree. The doctor then dismissed his guests, who went away with a conviction that he was as potent a necromancer as Roger Bacon or Cornelius Agrippa.

That same night a tremendous gale arose, so that the house of one of Lambe’s visitors rocked to and fro, threatening to topple over with a crash, and bury the man and his wife in the ruins. In great terror his wife inquired, ‘Were you not at Dr. Lambe’s to-day?’ The husband acknowledged that it was so. ‘And did you bring anything away from his house?’ Yes: when the dwarfs felled the tree, he had been foolish enough to pick up some of the chips, and put them in his pocket. Here was the cause of the hurricane! With all speed he got rid of the chips; the storm immediately subsided, and the remainder of the night was spent in undisturbed repose.

Lambe was notorious for the lewdness of his life and his evil habits. But his supposed skill and success as a soothsayer led to his being frequently consulted by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, with the result that each helped to swell the volume of the other’s unpopularity. The Puritans were angered at the Duke’s resort to a man of Lambe’s character and calling; the populace hated Lambe as the tool and instrument of the Duke. In 1628 the brilliant favourite of Charles I. was the best-hated man in England, and every slander was hurled at him that the resources of political animosity could supply. The ballads of the time – an indisputably satisfactory barometer of public opinion – inveighed bitterly and even furiously against his luxuriousness, his love of dress, his vanity, his immorality, and his proved incompetence as soldier and statesman. He was accused of having poisoned Lords Hamilton, Lennox, Southampton, Oxford, even James I. himself. He had sat in his boat, out of the reach of danger, while his soldiers perished under the guns of Ré. He had corrupted the chastest women in England by means of the love-philtre which Dr. Lambe concocted for him. In a word, the air was full of the darkest and dreadest accusations.

Lambe’s connection with the Duke brought on a catastrophe which his magical art failed to foresee or prevent. He was returning, one summer evening – it was June 13 – from the play at the Fortune Theatre, when he was recognised by a company of London prentices. With a fine scent for the game, they crowded round the unfortunate magician, and hooted at him as the Duke’s devil, hustling him to and fro, and treating him with cruel roughness. To save himself from further violence, he hired some sailors to escort him to a tavern in Moorgate Street, where he supped. On going forth again, he found that many of his persecutors lingered about the door; and, bursting into a violent rage, he threatened them with his vengeance, and told them ‘he would make them dance naked.’ Still guarded by his sailors, he hurried homeward, with the mob close at his heels, shouting and gesticulating, and increasing every minute both in numbers and fury. In the Old Jewry he turned to face them with his protectors; but this movement of defence, construed into one of defiance, stimulated the passions of the populace to an ungovernable pitch; they made a rush at him, from which he took refuge in the Windmill tavern. A volley of stones smashed against pane and door; and with shouts, screams, and yells, they demanded that he should be given up. But the landlord, a man of courage and humanity, would not throw the poor wretch to his pursuers as the huntsman throws the captured fox to the fangs of his hounds. He detained him for some time, and then he provided him with a disguise before he would suffer him to leave. The precaution was useless, for hate is keen of vision: the man was recognised; the pursuit was resumed, and he was hunted through the streets, pale and trembling with terror, his dress disordered and soiled, until he again sought an asylum. The master of this house, however, fell into a paroxysm of alarm, and dismissed him hastily, with four constables as a bodyguard. But what could these avail against hundreds? They were swept aside – the doctor, bleeding and exhausted, was flung to the ground, and sticks and stones rained blows upon him until he was no longer able to ask for mercy. One of his eyes was beaten out of its socket; and when he was rescued at length by a posse of constables and soldiers, and conveyed to the Compter prison, it was a dying man who was borne unconscious across its threshold.

Such was the miserable ending of Dr. Lambe. Charles I. was much affected when he heard of it; for he saw that it was a terrible indication of the popular hostility against Lambe’s patron. The murderers had not scrupled to say that if the Duke had been there they would have handled him worse; they would have minced his flesh, so that every one of them might have had a piece. Summoning to his presence the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, the King bade them discover the offenders; and when they failed in what was an impossible task, he imposed a heavy fine upon the City.

The ballad-writers of the day found in the magician’s fate an occasion for attacking Buckingham: one of them, commenting on his supposed contempt for Parliament, puts the following arrogant defiance into his mouth:

‘Meddle with common matters, common wrongs,To th’ House of Commons common things belong …Leave him the oar that best knows how to rowAnd State to him that the best State doth know …Though Lambe be dead, I’ll stand, and you shall seeI’ll smile at them that can but bark at me.’

CHAPTER V

THE LAST OF THE ENGLISH MAGICIANS: WILLIAM LILLY

‘Lilly was a prominent, and, in the opinion of many of his contemporaries, a very important personage in the most eventful period of English history. He was a principal actor in the farcical scenes which diversified the bloody tragedy of civil war; and while the King and the Parliament were striving for mastery in the field, he was deciding their destinies in the closet. The weak and the credulous of both parties who sought to be instructed in “destiny’s dark counsels,” flocked to consult the “wily Archimagus,” who, with exemplary impartiality, meted out victory and good fortune to his clients, according to the extent of their faith and the weight of their purses. A few profane Cavaliers might make his name the burthen of their malignant rhymes – a few of the more scrupulous among the saints might keep aloof in sanctified abhorrence of the “Stygian sophister” – but the great majority of the people lent a willing and reverential ear to his prophecies and prognostications. Nothing was too high or too low, too mighty or too insignificant, for the grasp of his genius. The stars, his informants, were as communicative on the most trivial as on the most important subjects. If a scheme was set on foot to rescue the King, or to retrieve a stray trinket; to restore the royal authority, or to make a frail damsel an honest woman; to cure the nation of anarchy, or a lap-dog of a surfeit – William Lilly was the oracle to be consulted. His almanacks were spelled over in the tavern, and quoted in the Senate; they nerved the arm of the soldier, and rounded the period of the orator. The fashionable beauty, dashing along in her calash from St. James’s or the Mall, and the prim starched dame from Watling Street or Bucklersbury, with a staid foot-boy, in a plush jerkin, plodding behind her – the reigning toast among “the men of wit about town,” and the leading groaner in a tabernacle concert – glided alternately into the study of the trusty wizard, and poured into his attentive ear strange tales of love, or trade, or treason. The Roundhead stalked in at one door, whilst the Cavalier was hurried out at the other.

‘The confessions of a man so variously consulted and trusted, if written with the candour of a Cardan or a Rousseau, would indeed be invaluable. The “Memoirs of William Lilly,” though deficient in this particular, yet contain a variety of curious and interesting anecdotes of himself and his contemporaries, which, when the vanity of the writer or the truth of his art is not concerned, may be received with implicit credence.

‘The simplicity and apparent candour of his narrative might induce a hasty reader of this book to believe him a well-meaning but somewhat silly personage, the dupe of his own speculations – the deceiver of himself as well as of others. But an attentive examination of the events of his life, even as recorded by himself, will not warrant so favourable an interpretation. His systematic and successful attention to his own interest, his dexterity in keeping on “the windy side of the law,” his perfect political pliability, and his presence of mind and fertility of resources when entangled in difficulties, indicate an accomplished impostor, not a crazy enthusiast. It is very possible and probable that, at the outset of his career, he was a real believer in the truth and lawfulness of his art, and that he afterwards felt no inclination to part with so pleasant and so profitable a delusion… Of his success in deception, the present narrative exhibits abundant proofs. The number of his dupes was not confined to the vulgar and illiterate, but included individuals of real worth and learning, of hostile parties and sects, who courted his acquaintance and respected his predictions. His proceedings were deemed of sufficient importance to be twice made the subject of a Parliamentary inquiry; and even after the Restoration – when a little more scepticism, if not more wisdom, might have been expected – we find him examined by a Committee of the House of Commons respecting his foreknowledge of the Great Fire of London. We know not whether it “should more move our anger or our mirth” to see our assemblage of British Senators – the contemporaries of Hampden and Falkland, of Milton and Clarendon, in an age which moved into action so many and such mighty energies – gravely engaged in ascertaining the cause of a great national calamity from the prescience of a knavish fortune-teller, and puzzling their wisdoms to interpret the symbolical flames which blazed in the misshapen woodcuts of his oracular publications.

‘As a set-off against these honours may be mentioned the virulent and unceasing attacks of almost all the party scribblers of the day; but their abuse he shared in common with men whose talents and virtues have outlived the malice of their contemporaries.’ —Retrospective Review.