August 31, 2021 • 29 mins
Frances Howard wanted to divorce her first husband and marry someone else. Someone was standing in the way. [Support Noble Blood on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/noblebloodtales. Noble Blood merch is available here: https://store.dftba.com/collections/noble-blood]
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minkie. Listener discretion is advised.
In her early twenties, Francis Howard dealt with two scandals.
The first was certainly the more significant, a scandal that
(00:23):
occupied courtly gossips for years. The scandal was she was
trying to get an annulment from her husband, Robert Devereaux.
The two had been married in their early teens, and
they had had barely any contact before Devereaux went on
his grand tour around Europe for a few years. When
he came back, he had smallpox, so you couldn't really
(00:46):
blame Francis for not wanting to go to bed with him,
even if she hadn't fallen in love with another man
at court while her husband was gone, which she had.
Francis was a daughter of the powerful Howard family, and
the gossips surrounding the impending annulment gave the Court of
James the first plenty to talk about during the early
(01:07):
sixteen hundreds. But during the long process of these annulment negotiations,
Francis Howard had to deal with the second scandal, much smaller,
and much easier resolved. Francis had a ring that went missing.
The ring was stolen, or so Francis claimed, by a
local faith healer who went by the name cunning Mary.
(01:30):
When the authorities confronted Cunning Mary, who did indeed have
the diamond ring in her possession, Cunning Mary protested. She
said that the ring wasn't stolen, that Francis Howard had
given the ring as a deposit in exchange for her
help in killing Francis's husband. Cunning Mary claimed that, of
(01:50):
course she had refused Francis's request, and in Francis's rage
at the rejection, she decided that she would frame the
old woman for robber. No one really took cunning Mary's
defense seriously, after all, she was a folk healer with
the name cunning Mary, and Francis Howard, by contrast, was
(02:13):
one of the most powerful young women in England. And
so Cunning Mary was tried and convicted of the robbery,
and Francis went back to dealing with the larger problem
of her annulment from her husband and her desire to
marry another man. This small story with the ring and
(02:33):
Cunning Mary is often omitted in larger stories about Francis Howard.
It's overshadowed by what comes next, an infamous murder trial
for an actual murder that makes gossip about her annulment
seem almost quaint by comparison. But I think the ring
(02:54):
story is important to give the larger story context. Other
or not Francis actually tried to use cunning Mary's folk
magic in her early twenties to try to kill the
husband she wanted to get rid of. I'm not sure
there's really no evidence beyond cunning Mary's word, but young
(03:15):
girls in love have done crazier things, and as you'll
soon discover, Francis Howard would do her fair share of
crazy things in order to secure her future. But what
I find so compelling about the ring story is the
power dynamic at play. Whether or not Francis Howard was
attempting murder, it was the poor woman who took the
(03:37):
blame for the missing ring, the poor woman who went
to trial, who was convicted, and who faced the consequences.
But what I do know is that Francis Howard's life
for being in the seventeenth century feels like an all
too modern indictment of the privileges of wealth. And influence.
(03:58):
Francis Howard would only ever be on trial for one murder,
but nearly half a dozen bodies would hang because of her.
Francis Howard, or as she's known later by her married name,
Countess Francis Carr, didn't murder her first husband, nor was
she ever seriously accused of it. The murder trial would
(04:20):
come later. It would be a public spectacle, with people
selling tickets for admission. Her first husband would actually be
in the courtroom that day, and at least in my imagination,
he might have smiled when the judge declared Francis Howard guilty.
(04:40):
I'm Danish Worts and this is noble blood. The War
of the Roses created something of a power vacuum among
the highest echelons of nobles in the English court. It
(05:01):
was the dawn of a brand new dynasty the Tutors,
and like it would be eventually with the American West.
With the new comes the exciting possibility that there's room
for social advancement. There were new duchies to claim, new
earldoms to be given away. Titles were given and taken
back and restored again. Families like the Bolins tried to
(05:23):
lobby for new power. They managed to get a queen
on the throne before their gambit famously collapsed. The Howards,
another powerful family, also managed to achieve the crown for
one of their daughters, the young, beautiful Catherine Howard, But
like the Bolins, their stellar rise was preceded by this
spectacular fall of another beheading. After King Henry the Eighth
(05:49):
came the brief reign of his son Edward, the brief
reign of his daughter Mary, and then the long reign
of his other daughter, Queen Elizabeth. The first Elizabeth was
Miss Lee, a virgin queen, and so after Elizabeth, the
throne went to King James, the first son of the
executed Mary, Queen of Scots. Throughout all of this, families,
(06:11):
like the Howards, continued to jockey for position, their fates
rising and falling over the decades. The Howards were dealing
with a particularly fallow period. The teenage Queen Catherine Howard
was executed. Another Howard cousin, Thomas Howard, was executed by
King Henry the Eighth, who, in a fit of petulance,
(06:33):
deemed his coat of arms to be treasonous. Thomas's son,
another Thomas Howard, was also executed for becoming involved in
a scheme to put Mary, Queen of Scotts, on the throne.
It was looking like all the Howards could do was
make the current monarch mad at them. But then the
third Thomas Howard, son and grandson of the executed Thomas Howard's,
(06:55):
flipped the trend. This Thomas Howard was celeb rated as
a hero in the battle against the Spanish Armada, and
then he went on to an incredibly lucrative marriage with
a young widow slash heiress. Thomas and his wife would
go on to have fourteen children. One of these children
was Francis, born in fifteen nine, and so Francis was
(07:19):
born at a precarious but cautiously optimistic time When it
came to her family's fortunes. The most important thing for
Francis to do was Mary well, and so her family
made absolutely sure of that. At fourteen years old, Francis
was married to Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex, who was
(07:40):
thirteen at the time. While young marriages were common enough
in the sixteenth and seventeen centuries, a new line of
relatively scientific thinking believed that it was dangerous and a
little unseemly to consummate marriages that young. For women, it
was thought, correctly i belief that they would be too
(08:01):
small and fragile to carry children at that young age.
And for men, it was believed that if they spent
themselves sexually at a young age, it would deplete their
vitality and vigor later in life. And so even though
Francis and Devereaux were married, they were raised completely separately.
When they were teenagers, Devereaux was sent on a three
(08:23):
year grand tour of Europe, as was fairly common at
the time, and Francis was sent to court. Here's the
problem with sending a beautiful teenage countess to court when
she doesn't really know or care about her slightly younger husband.
She might fall in love with someone else, which Francis
(08:44):
did almost as soon as she made eye contact with
Robert Carr, a handsome man a few years older than
she was, a man with an easy laugh and bright eyes.
Car was already one of King James's favorites, and stock
at court was rising quickly. When he met Francis's I,
(09:05):
he was equally besotted. They were a perfect match, an
old family and a new favorite. Two fair young, attractive people,
both with charisma and charm. There was only one problem,
the pesky issue of Francis already being married. Francis wouldn't
(09:26):
have been much interested in her slightly younger, weedy husband,
even if he hadn't come back from his grand tour
with small Box. But as it happened, he came back
from his grand tour with small Box, so perhaps justifiably,
she did everything she could to avoid him. She knew
that if the marriage was never consummated, it might be annulled,
(09:48):
so when she couldn't outright dodge her husband, she did
everything in her power to make sure that he couldn't
successfully accomplished the deed of the marriage. Bed she mocked
him and scorned him him ugly called him a coward.
By now, Francis was a woman of twenty, and she
saw her future happening one of two ways, getting to
(10:08):
marry the man she was in love with, a rising
star at court, or being saddled with a pox riden
teenager who just happened to be her husband. Being a
woman who couldn't take her own annulment case forward, Francis's
father and uncle brought the case only too happy to
encourage their daughters even more, promising second marriage to come.
(10:31):
The claim was that her first marriage had never been consummated,
which Devereaux reluctantly acknowledged was true, but not for lack
of trying on his part. He scoffed at the Howard's
claim that Francis had made herself poliant and available to
her husband at every opportunity. With the affair between Francis
(10:52):
and Robert Carr at Court being an open secret, the
whole thing was especially humiliating for Devereaux. Devereaux would take
to whipping his erect member out of his pants to
show anyone who asked. Several friends testified to seeing it.
It's not that I can't have sex, Devereau moaned, It's
just that I can't have sex with her. One of
(11:15):
the key steps in securing an annulment by non consummation
was an examination of Francis to confirm that she was
in fact still a virgin. There was a small council
of midwives who are appointed to do the examination. Yep,
the midwives said, definitely a virgin, but it was slightly
(11:36):
less clear cut than that Francis had insisted on wearing
a full veil to protect her quote modesty during the examination,
and so rumors circulated at court that she had actually
employed a virginal body double to undergo the examination for her.
That was the main gossip piece of court for a while,
(11:57):
and there was even a mocking little poem written about it.
This dame was inspected, but fraud interjected a maid of
more perfection, whom the midwives did handle whilst the night
held the candle. Oh, there was a clear inspection. Still,
the people in charge decided that yes, Francis Howard was
(12:20):
a virgin. But still the annulment was slow moving to finalize.
For one thing, the king didn't want to upset the
status quo or upset the Devereaux family and their allies.
But a larger factor was a courtier behind the scenes
doing everything that he could to prevent the annulment from happening,
(12:41):
calling in favors and influence all to keep Francis Howard
from being able to marry her love, Robert Carr. This
courtier's name was Thomas Overbury. He was Carr's best friend
and closest adviser. He hated Francis and he believe that
his friend was blinded by lust, Overbury would make sure
(13:05):
that Francis stayed married to her first husband so that
he could save his friend. What Overbury didn't realize was
that in the process he was making some very powerful enemies.
Thomas Overbury met Robert Carr when they were both young
men living in Edinburgh. They were of similar ranks, both
(13:27):
noble but not landed. Car was working as a page,
Overbury was a student. The two hit it off, and
almost immediately Overbury recognized that Car had something that he
didn't charm. Car was charming. Everyone liked him. He was
good looking, athletic fun. Overbury was smart, but no one
(13:51):
ever mistook him for fun. He just seemed to rub
people the wrong way. But Car Car would be his answer.
His friend would be his entry into the world of
power and privilege. Overbury, a few years older, positioned himself
as Carr's mentor and adviser, the staffer behind the politician,
(14:13):
the brains behind the jock. From their youth spent in Edinburgh.
The two men would be reunited at court in London,
ready to fulfill the glorious promise of their futures. As
it happened, Overbury's prediction that Carr was a star was
about to prove itself correct. In sixteen o seven, the
(14:34):
very same year that Francis Howard's poor husband was about
to go leave on his smallpox infected tour of Europe,
Carr participated in a joust at court where the King
James the First just so happened to be in attendance. Carr,
looking handsome as ever on his horse, lost around and
(14:56):
fell from his mount, breaking his leg with a sickening snap.
The King visited Car personally in the hospital, and from
there a close personal friendship formed. The King spent days
at Carr's bedside, teaching him Latin and then ultimately knighting him,
gifting him the confiscated estates of Sir Walter Raleigh, and
(15:19):
all in all just ensuring that Carr would have a
favorable future at court. Much has been written and said
about the rumors of King James's homosexuality or bisexuality, and
I'll leave it to historians smarter than I am to
tease out the exact nature of the parents relationship. But
it's true that James openly had male favorites, even if
(15:43):
the law at the time would have prohibited him from
publicly acting on any gay feelings he might have had,
and even if respect for the crown might have meant
that gossip at the time that might have surrounded those
relationships was more muted than it otherwise might have been.
But everything was comin' up Car, and by extension, coming
(16:04):
up Overbury. That was until Overbury noticed Car beginning to
entangle himself with the very pretty young Francis Howard. Her
reputation already preceded her. She was married, first of all,
but always flirtatious and famous for wearing particularly low cut dresses.
(16:28):
In Overbury's opinion, at least, she was not nearly the
type of woman that Carr should be marrying. Frances was
outgoing and powerful. Her family was almost serpent like in
their machinations around court. Overbury didn't want Car to get
sucked up in all of that. Carr needed a good girl,
(16:48):
an unmarried girl from a good family who wouldn't say
too many opinions, and Overbury also privately thought a girl
whose family wouldn't take over the managerial role in Car's life.
That was his job to try to convince his friend
that Francis was totally wrong for him. Overbury wrote a
(17:11):
poem called The Wife, all about what a perfect wife
should be in short, dutiful, modest, chased everything Francis wasn't.
The poem was a wild hit, going into six printings
in its first year alone. Meanwhile, Overbury was working overtime
behind the scenes to ensure that Francis Howard wouldn't be
(17:34):
able to get an annulment from her first husband. But
Overbury underestimated his opponents. The Howards wanted their daughter to
get her second brighter marriage, and the Howards knew all
too well how to play the games of court. The
first step in their plan was manipulating Overbury into saying
(17:55):
something distasteful about the Queen Anne of Denmark. I couldn't
discover exactly what the insult was, but the Queen was
apparently so put off by the already unlikable man that
she wrote that Overbury shouldn't even be allowed to any
event that she'd be present at. But that wasn't good
enough for the Howards. They wanted to get rid of
(18:16):
Overbury altogether, and so using their influence, they sweet talked
to the King into appointing Overbury an ambassadorship to Russia.
It was a checkmate They knew that Overbury would want
to refuse the post so that he could stay close
to Car, which he did, but of course that meant
(18:38):
turning down a very prestigious post directly given by the King,
which was a gross insult, and so when Overbury refused,
the King locked Overbury in the tower. Some speculate that
it was also partially thanks to the King's jealousy of
Overbury's close friendship with Car, the King's favorite, but whatever
(18:59):
the reason, there it was Overbury was locked up and
out of the picture. Five months after that, Overbury died
in his cell. No one really cared or paid much attention.
It was seemingly of natural causes, but we'll get to
that later. Two weeks after Overbury's death, the King tipped
(19:19):
the scales in the five to five stalemate for Francis
Howard's annulment and granted it. Francis Howard and her lover,
Robert Carr, were almost immediately married, too much rejoicing, and
no one gave a moment's more thought to the unlikable
curmudgeon rotting six feet under. At least they didn't think
(19:39):
about him. Then. Two years later, Frances and Robert Carr
were happily married the newly minted Countess and Earl of Somerset,
but there was about to be a ripple in there.
Happily ever after, on his deathbed, a young assistant to
an apothecary may a startling confession. He had sold the
(20:03):
poison that had been used to murder Thomas Overbury in prison,
and he had received twenty pounds for it. The King
didn't really want to get involved, but at this point
his hands were tied, and so he ordered an investigation.
It probably didn't help things that Carr was losing favor,
becoming replaced by another favorite. The investigation led to the
(20:28):
governor of the prison, Mr Elwis, who had suspected that
maybe something illicit was going on, but he had done
his best to try to keep Overbury safe. A guard, Weston,
was put in place by some well connected nobleman, and
Mr Elwis was suspicious of him from the start, especially
after seeing their prisoners condition begin to deteriorate. When Elwis
(20:51):
suspected that Overbury's food was being poisoned, he tried to
prepare his own food for Overbury. The fact that he
wasn't direct complicit in the murders didn't prevent his trial
and subsequent execution. As an accessory to the murder, also
executed the guard Weston, who had actually made the deliveries
(21:12):
of what the investigators determined had killed Overbury. The investigators
figured out that Overbury hadn't died of natural causes. It
had instead been poisoned tarts and jellies, and then finally
a fatal enema laced with sulfuric acid. I have no
(21:33):
more information on how the animal was delivered, or whether
Overbury knew at the time that it was poisoned. I
have to assume that an animal was just considered part
of his standard daily treatment, and that Overbury wasn't aware
that this one was poison On the day of his hanging,
(21:53):
the prison governor Mr. Elwis continued to deny his guilt
on the gallows. He stated, quote, I was so far
from thinking myself foul in the fact that until I
was told how deeply I had imbrowed my hands in
the blood of Overbury, making me, by God's law as
guilty in the concealing of it, as if I had
(22:15):
been a personal actor in it. Till then I held
myself ignorant of the deed, and my conscience so clear
that I did never ask God's forgiveness. Before he was hanged,
Always also asked God's forgiveness for his gambling habit. Two
more individuals were also hanged as accessories to Overbury's murder
(22:37):
that chilly November day. First, the apothecary James Franklin, a
seedy man who immediately admitted his guilt. Franklin claimed that
he had sold the poison directly to Mr Elwis, even
though always own personal letters proved that that wasn't true.
Those letters conveniently were left out of evidence. Also being
(23:02):
hanged was a woman, a former lady's servant to Francis Howard,
named Anne Turner. Anne Turner is a fascinating woman, actually
briefly referenced as a murderess in the novel The Scarlet Letter.
She was the widow of a fashionable London doctor. She
ran two brothels and popularized the use of saffron to
(23:23):
dye the boring old white ruffs that the glitterati were
wearing in the seventeenth century. When the inspectors ransacked her home,
they found pornography and other heretical material, which meant that
Anne was all too happy to confess to being an
accessory to murder. She confessed that she had informed a
certain Francis Howard of where she might buy certain poisons.
(23:47):
Being an accessory to murder meant that Anne would hang
instead of burning at the stake for being a heretic.
When Anne was sentenced to death, she was told to
wear her fashionable yellow ruffs around her neck and wrists
so that her shame would finally cause the trend to die.
Four individuals, the governor of the prison, the guard, the apothecary,
(24:10):
and the lady's maid all arrested and all hanged the
same day for playing tiny rolls in a murder orchestrated
by those with real power. Francis and Robert Carr's guilt,
at least of being involved in the murder seemed like
a foregone conclusion, but their connections in Royal court made
(24:31):
it so that their trial was delayed by almost a year.
Francis was twenty five years old when she was finally
brought before the court on May twenty four, sixteen sixteen.
The man who tried the case for the king was
none other than the father of the scientific method, Sir
Francis Bacon, who tried his best to treat Francis with
(24:54):
the utmost kindness after she immediately pleaded guilty and burst
into tears. The court case was a public spectacle. Not
only was Frances already infamous for her earlier annulment, but
this was a countess on the stand accused of murder.
One man was recorded paying ten pounds for seats for
(25:15):
him and his wife in the stands. Extra scaffolding had
to be built in Westminster Hall to contain all of
the onlookers. Accounts at the time described Frances as incredibly beautiful,
but also as faint and delicate. What those accounts don't
usually remark on is the fact that Frances was heavily
(25:36):
pregnant at the time she was found guilty and sentenced
to death, and while she was imprisoned, she gave birth
to what would be the couple's only child, a daughter
named Anne. The baby was cared for by Frances's sister
until Frances was released, which she was fairly quickly. Within months,
(25:57):
the King commuted her death sentence. Francis's husband, Robert Carr,
was also tried, but unlike his wife, he denied all
knowledge of any wrongdoing. While he was imprisoned, the King
wrote him letters begging him to plead guilty, saying that
of course he would pardon him immediately, he just needed
to plead guilty. The King, it appeared, was a little
(26:20):
afraid of what Robert Carr might reveal over the course
of a trial, which some historians believe indicates that the
King too was responsible in some way for Overbury's murder.
But still Carr maintained that he had no involvement in
the actual poisoning, and that his only guilt was helping
to cover up for his wife after the fact by
(26:43):
burning some documents. Carr was convicted and sentenced to death,
but he too was almost immediately spared. The pair was
released from prison, Francis in sixteen twenty two and Robert
Carr in sixteen twenty four, and they went on to
live perfectly happy, private lives in the relative obscurity of Oxfordshire. Scandalized, sure,
(27:07):
but still wealthy, and with their heads still attached. Noble
blood and the King's goodwill has the power to do
plenty when it comes to self preservation. That's the story
of the infamous Countess Francis Carr, but keep listening after
(27:28):
a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more
about her trial. There's actually still some speculation today among
historians as to whether Francis Carr was actually guilty or
(27:52):
if she was just manipulated into taking the fall because
she knew the King would pardon her. But most people
do believe that she played, if not an active role
in Overbury's death, then at least an orchestral role. Enemies
had real consequences in the seventeenth century. For some it
was truly kill or be killed. But I hope you
(28:14):
haven't forgotten that Francis's first husband, poor pox ridden Devereaux,
who was so publicly humiliated when the entire world had
to hear about him being unable to have sex with
his wife, well he got his revenge. Robert Devereaux, Earl
of Sussex, was one of the members of the jury
(28:35):
during Francis's trial, and he was one of the men
who listened to the evidence, listened to her weep, and
then proclaimed his former wife guilty. Noble Blood is a
(28:55):
production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from
Aaron Minky. The show was written and hosted by Dana Schwartz.
Executive producers include Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.
The show is produced by rema Ill Kali and Trevor Young.
Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales,
and you can learn more about the show over at
(29:16):
Noble Blood Tales dot com. For more podcasts from I
Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M M
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minkie. Listener discretion is advised.
In her early twenties, Francis Howard dealt with two scandals.
The first was certainly the more significant, a scandal that
(00:23):
occupied courtly gossips for years. The scandal was she was
trying to get an annulment from her husband, Robert Devereaux.
The two had been married in their early teens, and
they had had barely any contact before Devereaux went on
his grand tour around Europe for a few years. When
he came back, he had smallpox, so you couldn't really
(00:46):
blame Francis for not wanting to go to bed with him,
even if she hadn't fallen in love with another man
at court while her husband was gone, which she had.
Francis was a daughter of the powerful Howard family, and
the gossips surrounding the impending annulment gave the Court of
James the first plenty to talk about during the early
(01:07):
sixteen hundreds. But during the long process of these annulment negotiations,
Francis Howard had to deal with the second scandal, much smaller,
and much easier resolved. Francis had a ring that went missing.
The ring was stolen, or so Francis claimed, by a
local faith healer who went by the name cunning Mary.
(01:30):
When the authorities confronted Cunning Mary, who did indeed have
the diamond ring in her possession, Cunning Mary protested. She
said that the ring wasn't stolen, that Francis Howard had
given the ring as a deposit in exchange for her
help in killing Francis's husband. Cunning Mary claimed that, of
(01:50):
course she had refused Francis's request, and in Francis's rage
at the rejection, she decided that she would frame the
old woman for robber. No one really took cunning Mary's
defense seriously, after all, she was a folk healer with
the name cunning Mary, and Francis Howard, by contrast, was
(02:13):
one of the most powerful young women in England. And
so Cunning Mary was tried and convicted of the robbery,
and Francis went back to dealing with the larger problem
of her annulment from her husband and her desire to
marry another man. This small story with the ring and
(02:33):
Cunning Mary is often omitted in larger stories about Francis Howard.
It's overshadowed by what comes next, an infamous murder trial
for an actual murder that makes gossip about her annulment
seem almost quaint by comparison. But I think the ring
(02:54):
story is important to give the larger story context. Other
or not Francis actually tried to use cunning Mary's folk
magic in her early twenties to try to kill the
husband she wanted to get rid of. I'm not sure
there's really no evidence beyond cunning Mary's word, but young
(03:15):
girls in love have done crazier things, and as you'll
soon discover, Francis Howard would do her fair share of
crazy things in order to secure her future. But what
I find so compelling about the ring story is the
power dynamic at play. Whether or not Francis Howard was
attempting murder, it was the poor woman who took the
(03:37):
blame for the missing ring, the poor woman who went
to trial, who was convicted, and who faced the consequences.
But what I do know is that Francis Howard's life
for being in the seventeenth century feels like an all
too modern indictment of the privileges of wealth. And influence.
(03:58):
Francis Howard would only ever be on trial for one murder,
but nearly half a dozen bodies would hang because of her.
Francis Howard, or as she's known later by her married name,
Countess Francis Carr, didn't murder her first husband, nor was
she ever seriously accused of it. The murder trial would
(04:20):
come later. It would be a public spectacle, with people
selling tickets for admission. Her first husband would actually be
in the courtroom that day, and at least in my imagination,
he might have smiled when the judge declared Francis Howard guilty.
(04:40):
I'm Danish Worts and this is noble blood. The War
of the Roses created something of a power vacuum among
the highest echelons of nobles in the English court. It
(05:01):
was the dawn of a brand new dynasty the Tutors,
and like it would be eventually with the American West.
With the new comes the exciting possibility that there's room
for social advancement. There were new duchies to claim, new
earldoms to be given away. Titles were given and taken
back and restored again. Families like the Bolins tried to
(05:23):
lobby for new power. They managed to get a queen
on the throne before their gambit famously collapsed. The Howards,
another powerful family, also managed to achieve the crown for
one of their daughters, the young, beautiful Catherine Howard, But
like the Bolins, their stellar rise was preceded by this
spectacular fall of another beheading. After King Henry the Eighth
(05:49):
came the brief reign of his son Edward, the brief
reign of his daughter Mary, and then the long reign
of his other daughter, Queen Elizabeth. The first Elizabeth was
Miss Lee, a virgin queen, and so after Elizabeth, the
throne went to King James, the first son of the
executed Mary, Queen of Scots. Throughout all of this, families,
(06:11):
like the Howards, continued to jockey for position, their fates
rising and falling over the decades. The Howards were dealing
with a particularly fallow period. The teenage Queen Catherine Howard
was executed. Another Howard cousin, Thomas Howard, was executed by
King Henry the Eighth, who, in a fit of petulance,
(06:33):
deemed his coat of arms to be treasonous. Thomas's son,
another Thomas Howard, was also executed for becoming involved in
a scheme to put Mary, Queen of Scotts, on the throne.
It was looking like all the Howards could do was
make the current monarch mad at them. But then the
third Thomas Howard, son and grandson of the executed Thomas Howard's,
(06:55):
flipped the trend. This Thomas Howard was celeb rated as
a hero in the battle against the Spanish Armada, and
then he went on to an incredibly lucrative marriage with
a young widow slash heiress. Thomas and his wife would
go on to have fourteen children. One of these children
was Francis, born in fifteen nine, and so Francis was
(07:19):
born at a precarious but cautiously optimistic time When it
came to her family's fortunes. The most important thing for
Francis to do was Mary well, and so her family
made absolutely sure of that. At fourteen years old, Francis
was married to Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex, who was
(07:40):
thirteen at the time. While young marriages were common enough
in the sixteenth and seventeen centuries, a new line of
relatively scientific thinking believed that it was dangerous and a
little unseemly to consummate marriages that young. For women, it
was thought, correctly i belief that they would be too
(08:01):
small and fragile to carry children at that young age.
And for men, it was believed that if they spent
themselves sexually at a young age, it would deplete their
vitality and vigor later in life. And so even though
Francis and Devereaux were married, they were raised completely separately.
When they were teenagers, Devereaux was sent on a three
(08:23):
year grand tour of Europe, as was fairly common at
the time, and Francis was sent to court. Here's the
problem with sending a beautiful teenage countess to court when
she doesn't really know or care about her slightly younger husband.
She might fall in love with someone else, which Francis
(08:44):
did almost as soon as she made eye contact with
Robert Carr, a handsome man a few years older than
she was, a man with an easy laugh and bright eyes.
Car was already one of King James's favorites, and stock
at court was rising quickly. When he met Francis's I,
(09:05):
he was equally besotted. They were a perfect match, an
old family and a new favorite. Two fair young, attractive people,
both with charisma and charm. There was only one problem,
the pesky issue of Francis already being married. Francis wouldn't
(09:26):
have been much interested in her slightly younger, weedy husband,
even if he hadn't come back from his grand tour
with small Box. But as it happened, he came back
from his grand tour with small Box, so perhaps justifiably,
she did everything she could to avoid him. She knew
that if the marriage was never consummated, it might be annulled,
(09:48):
so when she couldn't outright dodge her husband, she did
everything in her power to make sure that he couldn't
successfully accomplished the deed of the marriage. Bed she mocked
him and scorned him him ugly called him a coward.
By now, Francis was a woman of twenty, and she
saw her future happening one of two ways, getting to
(10:08):
marry the man she was in love with, a rising
star at court, or being saddled with a pox riden
teenager who just happened to be her husband. Being a
woman who couldn't take her own annulment case forward, Francis's
father and uncle brought the case only too happy to
encourage their daughters even more, promising second marriage to come.
(10:31):
The claim was that her first marriage had never been consummated,
which Devereaux reluctantly acknowledged was true, but not for lack
of trying on his part. He scoffed at the Howard's
claim that Francis had made herself poliant and available to
her husband at every opportunity. With the affair between Francis
(10:52):
and Robert Carr at Court being an open secret, the
whole thing was especially humiliating for Devereaux. Devereaux would take
to whipping his erect member out of his pants to
show anyone who asked. Several friends testified to seeing it.
It's not that I can't have sex, Devereau moaned, It's
just that I can't have sex with her. One of
(11:15):
the key steps in securing an annulment by non consummation
was an examination of Francis to confirm that she was
in fact still a virgin. There was a small council
of midwives who are appointed to do the examination. Yep,
the midwives said, definitely a virgin, but it was slightly
(11:36):
less clear cut than that Francis had insisted on wearing
a full veil to protect her quote modesty during the examination,
and so rumors circulated at court that she had actually
employed a virginal body double to undergo the examination for her.
That was the main gossip piece of court for a while,
(11:57):
and there was even a mocking little poem written about it.
This dame was inspected, but fraud interjected a maid of
more perfection, whom the midwives did handle whilst the night
held the candle. Oh, there was a clear inspection. Still,
the people in charge decided that yes, Francis Howard was
(12:20):
a virgin. But still the annulment was slow moving to finalize.
For one thing, the king didn't want to upset the
status quo or upset the Devereaux family and their allies.
But a larger factor was a courtier behind the scenes
doing everything that he could to prevent the annulment from happening,
(12:41):
calling in favors and influence all to keep Francis Howard
from being able to marry her love, Robert Carr. This
courtier's name was Thomas Overbury. He was Carr's best friend
and closest adviser. He hated Francis and he believe that
his friend was blinded by lust, Overbury would make sure
(13:05):
that Francis stayed married to her first husband so that
he could save his friend. What Overbury didn't realize was
that in the process he was making some very powerful enemies.
Thomas Overbury met Robert Carr when they were both young
men living in Edinburgh. They were of similar ranks, both
(13:27):
noble but not landed. Car was working as a page,
Overbury was a student. The two hit it off, and
almost immediately Overbury recognized that Car had something that he
didn't charm. Car was charming. Everyone liked him. He was
good looking, athletic fun. Overbury was smart, but no one
(13:51):
ever mistook him for fun. He just seemed to rub
people the wrong way. But Car Car would be his answer.
His friend would be his entry into the world of
power and privilege. Overbury, a few years older, positioned himself
as Carr's mentor and adviser, the staffer behind the politician,
(14:13):
the brains behind the jock. From their youth spent in Edinburgh.
The two men would be reunited at court in London,
ready to fulfill the glorious promise of their futures. As
it happened, Overbury's prediction that Carr was a star was
about to prove itself correct. In sixteen o seven, the
(14:34):
very same year that Francis Howard's poor husband was about
to go leave on his smallpox infected tour of Europe,
Carr participated in a joust at court where the King
James the First just so happened to be in attendance. Carr,
looking handsome as ever on his horse, lost around and
(14:56):
fell from his mount, breaking his leg with a sickening snap.
The King visited Car personally in the hospital, and from
there a close personal friendship formed. The King spent days
at Carr's bedside, teaching him Latin and then ultimately knighting him,
gifting him the confiscated estates of Sir Walter Raleigh, and
(15:19):
all in all just ensuring that Carr would have a
favorable future at court. Much has been written and said
about the rumors of King James's homosexuality or bisexuality, and
I'll leave it to historians smarter than I am to
tease out the exact nature of the parents relationship. But
it's true that James openly had male favorites, even if
(15:43):
the law at the time would have prohibited him from
publicly acting on any gay feelings he might have had,
and even if respect for the crown might have meant
that gossip at the time that might have surrounded those
relationships was more muted than it otherwise might have been.
But everything was comin' up Car, and by extension, coming
(16:04):
up Overbury. That was until Overbury noticed Car beginning to
entangle himself with the very pretty young Francis Howard. Her
reputation already preceded her. She was married, first of all,
but always flirtatious and famous for wearing particularly low cut dresses.
(16:28):
In Overbury's opinion, at least, she was not nearly the
type of woman that Carr should be marrying. Frances was
outgoing and powerful. Her family was almost serpent like in
their machinations around court. Overbury didn't want Car to get
sucked up in all of that. Carr needed a good girl,
(16:48):
an unmarried girl from a good family who wouldn't say
too many opinions, and Overbury also privately thought a girl
whose family wouldn't take over the managerial role in Car's life.
That was his job to try to convince his friend
that Francis was totally wrong for him. Overbury wrote a
(17:11):
poem called The Wife, all about what a perfect wife
should be in short, dutiful, modest, chased everything Francis wasn't.
The poem was a wild hit, going into six printings
in its first year alone. Meanwhile, Overbury was working overtime
behind the scenes to ensure that Francis Howard wouldn't be
(17:34):
able to get an annulment from her first husband. But
Overbury underestimated his opponents. The Howards wanted their daughter to
get her second brighter marriage, and the Howards knew all
too well how to play the games of court. The
first step in their plan was manipulating Overbury into saying
(17:55):
something distasteful about the Queen Anne of Denmark. I couldn't
discover exactly what the insult was, but the Queen was
apparently so put off by the already unlikable man that
she wrote that Overbury shouldn't even be allowed to any
event that she'd be present at. But that wasn't good
enough for the Howards. They wanted to get rid of
(18:16):
Overbury altogether, and so using their influence, they sweet talked
to the King into appointing Overbury an ambassadorship to Russia.
It was a checkmate They knew that Overbury would want
to refuse the post so that he could stay close
to Car, which he did, but of course that meant
(18:38):
turning down a very prestigious post directly given by the King,
which was a gross insult, and so when Overbury refused,
the King locked Overbury in the tower. Some speculate that
it was also partially thanks to the King's jealousy of
Overbury's close friendship with Car, the King's favorite, but whatever
(18:59):
the reason, there it was Overbury was locked up and
out of the picture. Five months after that, Overbury died
in his cell. No one really cared or paid much attention.
It was seemingly of natural causes, but we'll get to
that later. Two weeks after Overbury's death, the King tipped
(19:19):
the scales in the five to five stalemate for Francis
Howard's annulment and granted it. Francis Howard and her lover,
Robert Carr, were almost immediately married, too much rejoicing, and
no one gave a moment's more thought to the unlikable
curmudgeon rotting six feet under. At least they didn't think
(19:39):
about him. Then. Two years later, Frances and Robert Carr
were happily married the newly minted Countess and Earl of Somerset,
but there was about to be a ripple in there.
Happily ever after, on his deathbed, a young assistant to
an apothecary may a startling confession. He had sold the
(20:03):
poison that had been used to murder Thomas Overbury in prison,
and he had received twenty pounds for it. The King
didn't really want to get involved, but at this point
his hands were tied, and so he ordered an investigation.
It probably didn't help things that Carr was losing favor,
becoming replaced by another favorite. The investigation led to the
(20:28):
governor of the prison, Mr Elwis, who had suspected that
maybe something illicit was going on, but he had done
his best to try to keep Overbury safe. A guard, Weston,
was put in place by some well connected nobleman, and
Mr Elwis was suspicious of him from the start, especially
after seeing their prisoners condition begin to deteriorate. When Elwis
(20:51):
suspected that Overbury's food was being poisoned, he tried to
prepare his own food for Overbury. The fact that he
wasn't direct complicit in the murders didn't prevent his trial
and subsequent execution. As an accessory to the murder, also
executed the guard Weston, who had actually made the deliveries
(21:12):
of what the investigators determined had killed Overbury. The investigators
figured out that Overbury hadn't died of natural causes. It
had instead been poisoned tarts and jellies, and then finally
a fatal enema laced with sulfuric acid. I have no
(21:33):
more information on how the animal was delivered, or whether
Overbury knew at the time that it was poisoned. I
have to assume that an animal was just considered part
of his standard daily treatment, and that Overbury wasn't aware
that this one was poison On the day of his hanging,
(21:53):
the prison governor Mr. Elwis continued to deny his guilt
on the gallows. He stated, quote, I was so far
from thinking myself foul in the fact that until I
was told how deeply I had imbrowed my hands in
the blood of Overbury, making me, by God's law as
guilty in the concealing of it, as if I had
(22:15):
been a personal actor in it. Till then I held
myself ignorant of the deed, and my conscience so clear
that I did never ask God's forgiveness. Before he was hanged,
Always also asked God's forgiveness for his gambling habit. Two
more individuals were also hanged as accessories to Overbury's murder
(22:37):
that chilly November day. First, the apothecary James Franklin, a
seedy man who immediately admitted his guilt. Franklin claimed that
he had sold the poison directly to Mr Elwis, even
though always own personal letters proved that that wasn't true.
Those letters conveniently were left out of evidence. Also being
(23:02):
hanged was a woman, a former lady's servant to Francis Howard,
named Anne Turner. Anne Turner is a fascinating woman, actually
briefly referenced as a murderess in the novel The Scarlet Letter.
She was the widow of a fashionable London doctor. She
ran two brothels and popularized the use of saffron to
(23:23):
dye the boring old white ruffs that the glitterati were
wearing in the seventeenth century. When the inspectors ransacked her home,
they found pornography and other heretical material, which meant that
Anne was all too happy to confess to being an
accessory to murder. She confessed that she had informed a
certain Francis Howard of where she might buy certain poisons.
(23:47):
Being an accessory to murder meant that Anne would hang
instead of burning at the stake for being a heretic.
When Anne was sentenced to death, she was told to
wear her fashionable yellow ruffs around her neck and wrists
so that her shame would finally cause the trend to die.
Four individuals, the governor of the prison, the guard, the apothecary,
(24:10):
and the lady's maid all arrested and all hanged the
same day for playing tiny rolls in a murder orchestrated
by those with real power. Francis and Robert Carr's guilt,
at least of being involved in the murder seemed like
a foregone conclusion, but their connections in Royal court made
(24:31):
it so that their trial was delayed by almost a year.
Francis was twenty five years old when she was finally
brought before the court on May twenty four, sixteen sixteen.
The man who tried the case for the king was
none other than the father of the scientific method, Sir
Francis Bacon, who tried his best to treat Francis with
(24:54):
the utmost kindness after she immediately pleaded guilty and burst
into tears. The court case was a public spectacle. Not
only was Frances already infamous for her earlier annulment, but
this was a countess on the stand accused of murder.
One man was recorded paying ten pounds for seats for
(25:15):
him and his wife in the stands. Extra scaffolding had
to be built in Westminster Hall to contain all of
the onlookers. Accounts at the time described Frances as incredibly beautiful,
but also as faint and delicate. What those accounts don't
usually remark on is the fact that Frances was heavily
(25:36):
pregnant at the time she was found guilty and sentenced
to death, and while she was imprisoned, she gave birth
to what would be the couple's only child, a daughter
named Anne. The baby was cared for by Frances's sister
until Frances was released, which she was fairly quickly. Within months,
(25:57):
the King commuted her death sentence. Francis's husband, Robert Carr,
was also tried, but unlike his wife, he denied all
knowledge of any wrongdoing. While he was imprisoned, the King
wrote him letters begging him to plead guilty, saying that
of course he would pardon him immediately, he just needed
to plead guilty. The King, it appeared, was a little
(26:20):
afraid of what Robert Carr might reveal over the course
of a trial, which some historians believe indicates that the
King too was responsible in some way for Overbury's murder.
But still Carr maintained that he had no involvement in
the actual poisoning, and that his only guilt was helping
to cover up for his wife after the fact by
(26:43):
burning some documents. Carr was convicted and sentenced to death,
but he too was almost immediately spared. The pair was
released from prison, Francis in sixteen twenty two and Robert
Carr in sixteen twenty four, and they went on to
live perfectly happy, private lives in the relative obscurity of Oxfordshire. Scandalized, sure,
(27:07):
but still wealthy, and with their heads still attached. Noble
blood and the King's goodwill has the power to do
plenty when it comes to self preservation. That's the story
of the infamous Countess Francis Carr, but keep listening after
(27:28):
a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more
about her trial. There's actually still some speculation today among
historians as to whether Francis Carr was actually guilty or
(27:52):
if she was just manipulated into taking the fall because
she knew the King would pardon her. But most people
do believe that she played, if not an active role
in Overbury's death, then at least an orchestral role. Enemies
had real consequences in the seventeenth century. For some it
was truly kill or be killed. But I hope you
(28:14):
haven't forgotten that Francis's first husband, poor pox ridden Devereaux,
who was so publicly humiliated when the entire world had
to hear about him being unable to have sex with
his wife, well he got his revenge. Robert Devereaux, Earl
of Sussex, was one of the members of the jury
(28:35):
during Francis's trial, and he was one of the men
who listened to the evidence, listened to her weep, and
then proclaimed his former wife guilty. Noble Blood is a
(28:55):
production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from
Aaron Minky. The show was written and hosted by Dana Schwartz.
Executive producers include Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.
The show is produced by rema Ill Kali and Trevor Young.
Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales,
and you can learn more about the show over at
(29:16):
Noble Blood Tales dot com. For more podcasts from I
Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M M
Host
Dana Schwartz
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