Disgrace And Favour

by Jeremy Potter

  Before his eyes closed in sleep, Carey remembered his conversation with Overbury on the road southwards so many years before. Overbury was Carr’s brains and backbone. Since Cecil’s death he had allied himself openly with the Protestant opposition to the Howards, a party led by the Lord Chancellor and the Archbishop of Canterbury. With their help Overbury was working to achieve his ambition, which was no less than the total destruction of the house of Howard. To succeed he had to carry Carr with him, but Carr remained undecided, stubbornly uncommitted, the King’s creature and no other’s. The struggle for power had become the struggle for Carr. Carey dreamed of a reconciliation with Overbury and a duel with Northampton, and awoke in the morning unrefreshed.

  The Queen stood aloof from the Howards, but after her son’s death Carr and Overbury became objects of undying hatred. Soon after the funeral, Carey and his wife accompanied her on a visit to the King at Hampton Court.

  ‘What news of the poisoning?’ she asked him in the boat. They were passing between Kew and Brentford at the time, over the ford he remembered well.

  Except for the oarsmen they were alone on the journey with Lady Carey and Mistress Drummond, principal Lady of the Queen’s Bedchamber. As they wound upstream between the frosted banks, Carey glanced sharply at Mistress Drummond. She was a young Scottish widow who had followed the Queen into the Church of Rome and whose political allegiance lay he knew not where.

  ‘Who will readily make such an admission?’ he replied cautiously. ‘Yet I have men at work on your Majesty’s behalf.’

  ‘But you have nothing to report to me?’

  She was petulant, pressing. He hesitated, reluctant to give credence to the merest of rumours, but seeing his hesitation she pounced on him and demanded an immediate reply.

  ‘Come, Sir Robert. We shall soon be in the King’s presence. Meanwhile no one will overhear us in the middle of the river.’

  He lowered his voice notwithstanding. ‘It is being said,’ he whispered, ‘that mercury was found in the Prince’s body.’ He noticed Mistress Drummond start at the words.

  ‘Mercury!’ the Queen exclaimed. ‘Who told you so? The doctors made no mention of it in their report.’

  ‘I had it from Sir Arthur Mainwaring, your Majesty. He was a member of the Prince’s household.’

  ‘So it is true! Henry was poisoned.’

  ‘It is far from proven,’ Carey corrected her, ‘and there is no evidence of any guilt attaching to the King.’ Mistress Drum-mond’s gaze was averted, but he watched her eyes widen.

  ‘Who would have the temerity to accuse the King? The culprit is Carr - and his accomplice Overbury.’

  Carey and his wife exchanged glances at the Queen’s words. The reason for her change of mind was plain to both of them. With a household of five hundred to support and extravagant vanities to be indulged, she could not afford to prolong a quarrel with the King. Since the national exchequer had been reduced to a state of permanent deficit, funds were obtainable by personal appeal and through no other means.

  The boat passed Sion and Richmond, where Elizabeth had scolded him and died and the Prince had lived and bathed and walked. At the palace at Hampton the King hurried out to greet his wife by the Watergate. They embraced as though the most loving couple in Christendom, loudly mourning their lost Henry in the hearing of the attendant court. Because James entertained a royal dislike of washing, the stench of his body was overpowering and Carey could only admire the Queen’s fortitude at the length of the embrace. Acting was one of her talents and she uncoupled herself with a well-feigned expression of joy.

  The King’s pleasure was not feigned. He loved an absent wife and welcomed reunions provided they were brief. To be seen to be on good terms with the Queen served to silence criticism of his waywardness with favourites. It buttressed his failing reputation for respectability in the courts of Europe. As with England and Scotland, so with James and his Anna, he would declare at such moments. Whom God had joined, let no man put asunder.

  ‘Poor Henry!’ he wept, his head lolling on her shoulder as they walked towards the state apartments. ‘How many of the fruits of our union has God seen fit to take from us!’ Of three sons, only one remained. Henry had gone to join Baby Robert. Of their four daughters, the bodies of Margaret, Mary and Sophia lay at rest in their tiny tombs. Elizabeth was soon to be married and taken from them, perhaps never to be seen again. They had only themselves and Baby Charles. When he had finished, the Queen was weeping too, all thought of poison cleansed from her mind.

  Carr had been careful to absent himself from the touching scene. Not so Overbury. He smirked among the other courtiers and pressed forward so that when he bowed the King felt obliged to introduce him.

  ‘Your Majesty will recall Sir Thomas, who has been my server these four years?’

  ‘I recall him well,’ she replied, as frosty as the winter ground. ‘He is no longer the pretty fellow he was.’ She swept on, leaving Overbury crimson at the public insult.

  Furiously he sought out Carr and they avenged themselves later in the day walking in the privy garden when the Queen was there. Pretending not to notice her, they kept their hats on in her presence.

  ‘There go Carr and his governor,’ she said to Elizabeth Carey, raising her voice for them to hear.

  Overbury retorted with a coarse laugh which so enraged the Queen that she went instantly to the King to demand on her knees that the insult be punished by imprisonment. Otherwise she vowed to return, not to Denmark House, but to Denmark itself, so that all Europe might know that he had refused to protect her honour.

  ‘Woe is me if my Queen goes from me,’ was James’s reply with a sigh and a vain attempt to placate her. He would not imprison Overbury for a peccadillo. The reconciliation had not lasted a day.

  The Queen retired to her apartments to sulk. She sent for Carey, who again found himself offered employment as an intermediary between crowned heads. Patiently he explained her situation to her. Whatever she might threaten, she was in no position to leave the court without the certainty of money. Even if the King agreed that she might have it, he would depend on Carr to conjure it from empty coffers. To contrive this, Carr would need to rely on Overbury’s cleverness at plundering what revenue might be available and diverting it from its proper destination. Overbury’s insolence sprang from a well-rooted belief in his own indispensability.

  Carey’s arguments were backed by his wife while Mistress Drummond sat silent. In the end they prevailed. But after a whole week of delicate negotiation Carey confessed himself defeated. The Queen’s influence was too weak to undermine Carr’s. Despite his outward show of affection for her, it was Carr alone whom the King loved. While Carr stood by Overbury, ‘that base fellow’, as the Queen called him, could snigger at her to his heart’s content and go free. In a fit of tantrums she determined to carry out her threat to leave the country. She became hysterical and swore to return home as a beggar in rags and throw herself on the charity of her brother, the Danish King. She saw herself as the spurned Katharine of Aragon, with Carr playing the part of Anne Boleyn.

  As a last throw Carey advised her to write to Northampton, begging the Council to intervene on her behalf. He drafted the letter himself in a manner best calculated to appeal to the Earl’s vanity and self-interest. The response was immediate. Northampton wrote to Carr proposing a settlement: let Overbury be arrested, then released after making an apology.

  Carr told Carey that this would be unacceptable. He would not allow Overbury to be arrested, and Overbury refused to apologize unless he first received an apology from the Queen. Walking to and fro between the palace and the river, they discussed the matter in the privy garden, the scene of the incident.

  ‘My lord,’ said Carey, ‘pray be warned by me. It would be as well for Sir Thomas to submit to the wishes of the Queen and the Earl of Northampton. Consider that he is but the son of a country squire living by his wits. Too much pride and too many enemies are luxuries which even the high-born ca
nnot afford.’

  ‘Am I too a target of your warning?’

  Overbury’s looks were faded, as the Queen had maliciously pointed out, but Carr’s still dazzled the eye. Smooth-faced and straight-limbed, he had acquired grace and manners. With his beauty unblemished, and wearing his finery as though born in a palace, how far he had come from the squalors of the Border! Was his question a rebuke or an appeal? The thought crossed Carey’s mind that if he had treated the boy’s ruffian cousin less harshly that evening at Norham he, not Overbury, might have become Carr’s governor.

  ‘Next to God,’ he replied, ‘I worship Nemesis. She is the goddess of balance. She will raise a man up when his fortune sinks low, but of pride and insolence she is the avenger. For his own sake and yours, for the sake of the country and the Protestant cause, Sir Thomas must acquire humility. For if he falls, he will not fall alone.’

  ‘You are jealous of my success, Sir Robert, and I can see that you would rejoice at my disgrace.’

  ‘You misjudge me, my lord. As God is my witness, I would assist you.’

  ‘If I could,’ said Carr, ‘I would oblige my lord of Northampton.’

  ‘That would be prudent,’ Carey told him, ‘but be guided by me and keep your distance from the Howards.’

  The question, he felt sure now, had been an appeal. Carr was governable. With Overbury out of sight for a bare hour, he had grown uncertain. Small wonder he could not countenance his friend’s arrest. At Carey’s mention of the Howards he had flushed, began to speak and then changed his words.

  ‘Nor would I have the Queen enraged,’ he said. ‘Pray advise me how the affair may be settled.’

  ‘Money settles most affairs,’ Carey answered him. ‘Let the Queen have the funds she seeks and the quarrel will be quickly composed.’

  ‘Very well. I will give orders for her to receive the money through the Privy Seal. Sir Thomas assures me that the business can be effected within a week, although others dependent on the King will go short. Yet money will not heal the slight to her honour.’

  ‘That will be mended by your swearing to the King in public audience that neither you nor Sir Thomas saw the Queen when walking in the garden. Otherwise you would assuredly have doffed your hats.’

  ‘And the laughter?’

  ‘Sir Thomas was laughing at a jest which you were repeating to him. His laughter was so loud because it was of outstanding merit. You had heard it from the King’s own lips.’

  On these terms the quarrel closed. The Queen stayed in her apartments until the money was paid and then rode hunting with the King to signal the return of peace and harmony. Delighted, he hailed her as Diana of the chase, then galloped away in pursuit of the first stag sighted in the home park, leaving her far behind.

  On his return to the palace he received news that his favourite hound, a dog called Jewel, had been shot by accident. He would rather have heard of the death of one of the huntsmen and furiously ordered the culprit to be brought before him. It had to be explained to him that the Queen, whose aim was poor, had loosed the shaft which buried itself in the dog instead of the young roebuck it was pursuing. He retired at once and was seen no more that day. Some whispered that he would never speak to the Queen again. Others, more superstitious, regarded the dog’s death as an omen. Another arrow from the Queen would bring down another of the King’s favourites.

  After a night alone with Carr the King confounded all the wagered odds by appearing in a forgiving mood. He presented the Queen with a diamond, declaring that there must be another Jewel to replace that which was lost, and she, herself the most precious jewel in the realm, should have it.

  The next day she returned triumphant to London and Carey with her, wondering whether his enmity with Carr had reached its end. But the King’s mood of forgiveness had not infected the Queen. On the river she demanded that he resume inquiries into Prince Henry’s death with a view to bringing the favourite and his friend to trial. This he no longer wished to do, and he attempted to dissuade her on the grounds that Carr was not clever enough to have accomplished it and Overbury too clever to be detected. Accusations of poisoning were made after every untimely death and were too commonplace to be believed. She would not listen to him: nothing short of the death of Carr and Overbury would satisfy her. At Chelsea, where Henry had been received in state when he came of age, she burst into tears.

  At Denmark House, with the Queen still fretting, Carey was glad to make his escape. A servant in a familiar livery was awaiting him. According to the porter, the man had come the previous day and had returned at daybreak, requesting that Sir Robert Carey would attend his master without delay. The distance was short and Carey, all curiosity, hastened to follow him without so much as changing his clothes after the journey.

  At Essex House the servant led him to the young Earl, who received him gravely and thanked him for his speed.

  ‘There is no service,’ Carey assured him, ‘which I would not gladly perform for the son of my dear captain.’ The youth was twenty-one, and what troubled him was known to all the world.

  ‘My marriage goes ill,’ he confessed. ‘I would travel abroad again, but the King forbids it. I am at a loss to know how to mend matters with my wife.’

  It was three years since he had returned from his travels in Europe to claim the wife he had married as a child at the King’s insistence. By then Frances Howard, his bride, had eyes for any man but her husband.

  ‘If you so desire me I will speak with her,’ said Carey, ‘but I would not count on success. I do not stand high in Lady Essex’s favour.’

  ‘You cooled Prince Henry’s ardour for her. Cool another’s. That is my earnest prayer.’ The Earl spoke hurriedly. His dark eyes were restless. Being the son of a traitor was burden enough without being cuckolded nightly. Not caring to cloak his discontent, he had earned the name of ‘grumbling Essex’.

  ‘Forgive me, my lord, but are you incapable of directing her ardour towards yourself?’

  ‘I have taken her into the country to have her at Chartley without distraction, but she is loath to stay. If she is in the same house with me, she demands to sleep in another chamber. If I force her to share a bed, she withholds her body from me.’

  ‘The consummation of marriage is a sacrament. Will you not force her further?’

  ‘She is violent and her mind unalterable. She has even threatened to poison me. I have caught her putting powders in my drink to take away my desire.’

  ‘Then let her be. Take your pleasures elsewhere.’

  ‘She dishonours me with other men, my lord of Rochester above all. It is useless to waste words on her, but I pray you speak with him. I have warned him solemnly myself, but he pays no heed. The pair of them are beyond shame.’

  ‘What would you have me say?’

  ‘If you can think of nothing else, deliver a challenge from me.’

  ‘A challenge to the King’s favourite will obtain you no satisfaction, rather lodgings in the Tower. It would serve better to approach the King, since he made the match between the Countess and yourself.’

  ‘The King panders to his favourite’s lust. He regrets the match-making: he has told me as much himself.’

  ‘He is too late by years. What is done is done.’

  ‘There you err. Her uncle Northampton is urging a divorce.

  ‘On what grounds?’ As he spoke, Carey recalled Carr’s desire to oblige Northampton, and his flush at being advised to keep his distance from Howards.

  ‘A nullity is proposed. I am said to be impotent. My wife’s kin are spreading the slander that there is no ink in my pen. They lie through their foul teeth. I will show any woman that they are mistaken - and any man who chooses to stand by and bear witness.’

  The Earl was strongly built, lusty beyond doubt, hot in blood and temper. Not handsome like his father but bold, he reminded Carey of himself when young.

  ‘You stand in peril,’ Carey warned him. ‘It is not your marriage, but England, which is at stake. If
they can capture Carr, the Howards will rule the country unopposed. Northampton and Suffolk are playing your wife as a pawn to achieve their ambitions, and they are ruthless. Should you not consent to a divorce, look to yourself or they will have you murdered.’

  ‘Let them murder me then, for I will never consent. Tell Carr that from me. Nothing else will dissuade him; he is besotted with her.’

  ‘He is a fool then. An alliance with the Howards would be the end of Carr’s power. Northampton would twist him as he pleased. It would mean victory for the Catholic party.’

  ‘So I have told him, but he is blind. If I will not let him have my wife, he says, then he will take steps himself to make her his own.’

  ‘If he will not heed you, how will he heed me?’

  ‘I am blunt, you are skilled in words.’

  ‘They will not avail with Carr if your Countess has enchanted him, but I will try them in another quarter.’

  ‘That will not serve. The King is agreeable to sharing his Robin with Frances. He wants him to be happy.’

  ‘It is not the King I have in mind. There is another who will oppose the divorce as violently as you.’ Two weeks passed without Carey receiving an acknowledgment of his humble letter soliciting an audience. By the time the reply came, he had concluded that Overbury was too busy or too proud to answer. He broke the seal impatiently. The lines were few but friendly, more full of promise than he had dared hope. If Sir Robert had a message for him from the Earl of Essex, Overbury wrote, it would be most conveniently delivered at the time and place stated below.

  When Essex was shown the letter he decided to make one of the party. On the appointed evening he and Carey made their way together to a house on the riverside near St Paul’s. This was to be no surreptitious assignation. The April day had been free of rain and they walked through the city in fine style, surrounded by an escort of the Earl’s attendants. No man standing between the Howards and their ambitions could count himself safe on the streets at night without an armed retinue. The Earl recounted grimly how he had discovered that his own wife had attempted to hire a man to kill him.