And so without farther aggravation of that, which in itself bears its own tragedy, I will conclude with the confessions of this lady herself, which is the strongest support of justice; and yet is the footstool of mercy. For, as the scripture says, Mercy and Truth have kissed each other; there is no meeting or greeting of mercy, till there be a confession, or trial of truth. For these read, Franklin, November 16, The Countess's letter without date, The Countess's confession, January 8. THE CHARGE, BY WAY OF EVIDENCE, BY SIR FRANCIS BACON, KNIGHT, HIS MAJESTY'S ATTORNEY-GENERAL, BEFORE THE LORD HIGH STEWARD, AGAINST FRANCES COUNTESS OF SOMERSET, Concerning the poisoning of Sir THOMAS OVERBURY. It may please your Grace, my lord High Steward of England, and you my lords the peers: I AM very glad to hear this unfortunate lady doth take this course, to confess fully and freely, and thereby to give glory to God and to justice. It is, as I may term it, the nobleness of an offender to confess and therefore those meaner persons, upon whom justice passed before, confessed not; she doth. I know your lordships cannot behold her without compassion : many things may move you, her youth, her person, her sex, her noble family; yea, her provocations, if I should enter into the cause itself, and furies about her; but chiefly her penitency and confession. But justice is the work of this day; the mercy-seat was in the inner part of the temple; the throne is public. But since this lady hath by her confession prevented my evidence, and your verdict, and that this day's labour is eased; there resteth, in the legal proceeding, but for me to pray that her confession may be recorded, and judgment thereupon. The lord chancellor Egerton, lord Ellesmere, and earl of Bridgwater. Given May 24, 1616. But because your lordships the peers are met, and that this day and to-morrow are the days that crown all the former justice; and that in these great cases it hath been ever the manner to respect honour and satisfaction, as well as the ordinary parts and forms of justice; the occasion itself admonisheth me to give your lordships and the hearers this contentment, as to make declaration of the proceedings of this excellent work of the king's justice, from the beginning to the end. It may please your grace, my lord high steward of England: this is now the second time, within the space of thirteen years reign of our happy sovereign, that this high tribunal-seat, ordained for the trial of peers, hath been opened and erected, and that with a rare event, supplied and exercised by one and the same person, which is a great honour unto you, my lord steward. In all this mean time the king hath reigned in his white robe, not sprinkled with any one drop of the blood of any of his nobles of this kingdom. Nay, such have been the depths of his mercy, as even those noblemen's bloods, against whom the proceeding was at Winchester, Cobham and Grey, were attainted and corrupted, but not spilt or taken away: but that they remained rather spectacles of justice in their continual imprisonment, than monuments of justice in the memory of their suffering. It is true that the objects of his justice then and now were very differing: for then it was the revenge of an offence against his own person and crown, and upon persons that were malcontents, and contraries to the state and government; but now it is the revenge of the blood and death of a particular subject, and the cry of a prisoner: it is upon persons that were highly in his favour; whereby his majesty, to his great honour, hath shewed to the world, as if it were written in a sun-beam, that he is truly the lieutenant of Him with whom there is no respect of persons; that his affections royal are above his affections private ; that his favours and nearness about him are not like popish sanctuaries, to privelege malefactors; and that his being the best master in the world doth not let him from being the best king in the world. His people, on the other side, may say to themselves, I will lie down in peace, for God, the king, and the law, protect me against great and small. It may be a discipline also to great men, especially such as are swoln in their fortunes from small beginnings, that the king is as well able to level mountains, as to fill valleys, if such be their desert. But to come to the present case: The great frame of justice, my lords, in this present action, hath a vault, and hath a stage; a vault, wherein these works of darkness were contrived; and a stage, with steps, by which it was brought to light. For the former of these, I will not lead your lordships into it, because I will engrieve nothing against a penitent; neither will I open any thing against him that is absent. The one I will give to the laws of humanity, and the other to the laws of justice: for I shall always serve my master with a good and sincere conscience, and, I know, that he accepteth best. Therefore I will reserve that till to-morrow, and hold myself to that which I called the stage or theatre, whereunto indeed it may be fitly compared: for that things were first contained within the invisible judgments of God, as within a curtain, and after came forth, and were acted most worthily by the king, and right well by his ministers. Sir Thomas Overbury was murdered by poison, September 15, 1613. This foul and cruel murder did for a time cry secretly in the ears of God; but God gave no answer to it, otherwise than by voice, which sometimes he useth, which is vox populi, the speech of the people: for there went then a murmur that Overbury was poisoned; and yet the same submiss and low voice of God, the speech of the vulgar people, was not without a counter-tenor or counter-blast of the devil, who is the common author both of murder and slander; for it was given out that Overbury was dead of a foul disease; and his body, which they made corpus Judaicum with their poisons, so as it had no whole part, must be said to be leprosed with vice, and so his name poisoned as well as his body. For as to dissoluteness, I have not heard the gentleman noted with it; his faults were of insolency, turbulency, and the like of that kind. Mean time there was some industry used, of which I will not now speak, to lull asleep those that were the revengers of the blood, the father and the brother of the murdered. And in these terms things stood by the space of two years, during which time God did so blind the two great procurers, and dazzle them with their greatness, and blind and nail fast the actors and instruments with security upon their protection, as neither the one looked about them, nor the other stirred or fled, or were conveyed away, but remained here still, as under a privy arrest of God's judgments; insomuch as Franklin, that should have been sent over to the Palsgrave with good store of money, was, by God's providence and the accident of a marriage of his, diverted and stayed. But about the beginning of the progress the last summer, God's judgments began to come out of their depths. And as the revealing of murder is commonly such as a man said, a Domino hoc factum est; it is God's work, and it is marvellous in our eyes: so in this particular it was most admirable; for it came forth first by a compliment, a matter of courtesy. My lord of Shrewsbury, that is now with God, recommended to a counsellor of state, of special trust by his place, the late lieutenant Helwisse, only for acquaintance, as an honest and worthy gentleman, and desired him to know him, and to be acquainted with him. That counseller answered him civilly, that my lord did him a favour, and that he should embrace it willingly; but he must let his lordship know, that there did lie a heavy imputation upon that gentleman, Helwisse; for that Sir Thomas Overbury, his prisoner, Called in Sir H. Wotton's Reliq. p. 413. Elvis. In Sir A. Welden's Court of King James, p. 107, Elwaies. In Aulic. Coquin. p. 141. Ellowaies. In Sir W. Dugdale's Baron, of England, tom. ii. p. 425. Elwayes. In Baker, p. 434. 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