Overbury, Thomas

White, Beatrice, Cast of Ravens The Strange Case of Sir Thomas Overbury (1965). 

Thomas Overbury was a poet and essayist who moved to London to seek his fortune. With his friend Robert Carr (page to Lord Dunbar) he managed to secure an appointment at the court of King James I, where they both received expeditious promotion. Carr acquired the title of Lord Rochester and Overbury was knighted. 

The Countess of Essex, still consumed by hate for Thomas Overbury, plotted to kill him. She procured the help of an apothecary named Eranklin. Eranklin supplied poisons, including rosalger (a compound of arsenic), sublimate of mercury and white arsenic, to Weston, the under-keeper of the Tower. Weston, under heavy bribery from the Countess, mixed small quantities of poison into Overbury s food over the course of 4 months. Overbury became very unwell and eventually died. At first his death was thought to be the result of syphilis, but after some time, suspicion was aroused and the case was brought to trial. 

The literature on the Overbury poisoning is enormous. For records of contemporary accounts, for example, see Andrew Amos, The Great Oyer of Poisoning The Trial of the Earl of Somerset for the Poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury, in the Tower of London (London Richard Bentley, 1846), and Francis Bacon, A True and Historical Relation of the Poysoning of Sir Thomas Overbury (London, 1651). For a recent scholarly analysis, see David Lindley, The Trials of Frances Howard Fact and Fiction in the Court of King James (London Routledge, 1993). 

Francis Bacon wrote He therein observed how adultery is most often the begetter of that sin [poisoning] see A True and Historical Relation of the Poysoning of Sir Thomas Overbury (London, 1651), 15. 

Amos, Andrew. The Great Oyer of Poisoning The Trial of the Earl of Somerset for the Poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury, in the Tower of London. London Richard Bentley, 1846. 

Thomas Overbury, Hew and Choise Characters (London, 1615), sig. Myvo, spelling modernised. 

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