Vulgar History - Women Behaving Badly, part 2： She Poisoned Her Enemy In Jail

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Vulgar History. My name is Anne Foster and this is a feminist women's 1.00

00:00:15.700 history comedy podcast where I just kind of like casually explain some stories to you that are

00:00:21.100 like amazing, very gossipy, and they're also, I would say, scandalous. At the end of the episode,

00:00:27.780 I'm going to give the story, I'm going to rate it on a Scandalicious scale. So their last episode,

00:00:32.820 which was about Carolina Brunswick, she ended up scoring a 20 out of 40 on the Scandalicious scale,

00:00:37.360 which I think is a good place to start because it's like exactly halfway. So there's room for 0.78

00:00:41.620 us to get like more intense, wild stories, but also some that are a bit less like, and it's not

00:00:47.440 saying that one person we're looking at is better than another person or that one person matters

00:00:53.300 more it's just kind of like just to gauge the story where it where it falls on that scale so

00:00:58.500 like depending on what kind of mood you're in you can like seek out a story that's like a more

00:01:02.660 just like excessive weirdness to it or ones that are like a bit more calm and today's story i'm

00:01:10.300 excited to see where this is going to land on the scale because it well let's let's just get into it

00:01:16.080 i guess um today we're looking at the story of a woman named frances howard she was born in 1590

00:01:22.460 so this is basically the Stuart era so this is like after there was the Tudors then there was

00:01:29.660 the Stuarts so it's like shortly after Queen Elizabeth's whole thing is when this whole

00:01:36.640 situation is going on and the thing about Frances Howard is I am so obsessed with her I love her

00:01:43.700 whole story I love her whole aesthetic I love everything about her and so I've read about her

00:01:48.800 a bunch already and today I was thinking like oh I'm just gonna see like what other podcasts are

00:01:53.460 talking about her and maybe I was like not searching well but I feel like I'm good at

00:01:57.340 searching and I couldn't find any podcast talking about her which is just like I mean I'm here

00:02:02.620 offering the service of just like making us podcasts about her because everybody should

00:02:08.200 know her story it is an amazing story when I post this podcast episode I'm gonna put a picture of

00:02:14.360 her like a portrait like painted while she's still alive so you can all see what she looked like

00:02:18.700 And the thing is, I affectionately have come to think of her and just reminder that this podcast is called Vulgar History. So there might be some vulgar language used and I'm about to say a vulgar word. And that word is tits because she is tits out Frances Howard. If you look at the portraits of her, like there's nothing else anyone could possibly call her. It's not just like, oh, this was an era where women wore like low cut dresses. Like, no.

00:02:43.880 If you look at portraits of literally any other woman from this time period, which is the early 1600s, like Frances Howard is the only one who's like entire chest cavity, her like entire décolleté, it's like tits out, like there's no nipples in these portraits.

00:03:02.320 but that's just because they're portraits that were painted and not photographs like she her

00:03:06.540 entire chest is on display in every portrait you can find of her including when she's an older

00:03:11.560 person spoiler she becomes an older person including when she's grieving like spoiler she

00:03:17.320 is in mourning at one point she's just like it's just glorious like she just like is into her 0.61

00:03:23.540 breast area and she is just like tits out francis howard and that is also how she lived her life 0.99

00:03:29.660 just tits out. And this is like, I can't, there's a lot to this story. There is a lot to the story. 0.98

00:03:36.320 The scoring is going to be pretty exciting, I think. So, Frances Howard. She was born in 1590.

00:03:43.280 Her father was called Lord Thomas Howard. And I should say her last name was Howard, as in

00:03:47.860 Catherine Howard, as in Henry VIII's fifth wife. Frances and Catherine aren't closely related,

00:03:55.160 really, because the Howards were the super powerful, influential family in England at

00:04:00.880 around this time. But like everybody in the family had like 17 children and those children

00:04:05.620 had 17 children. So basically that's the lineage we're dealing with. It's a similarly powerful

00:04:10.880 family. So Thomas Howard was married to a woman who was the Duchess of Norfolk. So Frances was

00:04:17.940 royalty, but she was a noble woman. So she was rich. Her parents had titles. And so as per

00:04:25.660 in this time and place, what that means is that the whole point of her was to grow up and marry

00:04:31.240 somebody that would be beneficial to her family and that would bring money and prosperity and

00:04:37.080 hopefully more power to their family. And so in 1604, when Frances was, if you're keeping track,

00:04:44.280 she's born in 1590 1604 she is 14 years old and she got married to a 13 year old boy named robert

00:04:52.340 devereau so i talked about this briefly in the last episode about carolina brunswick but there's

00:04:58.740 this sort of assumption i'm stereotyped that people in places like england in the 1600s got

00:05:05.560 married when they were like 12 and then they had you know 17 children and then they like retired

00:05:10.540 when they were 20, like the lives are short, et cetera, et cetera. There's a lot of fallacies in

00:05:14.320 that, including the fact that people didn't actually die young that much more. It's just the

00:05:19.540 average age of death looks low because so many children died. Anyway, getting married at age 14

00:05:26.160 is not usual, but also when you're married, when you're that young, it's not like, okay, go off,

00:05:31.660 like have a house, be adults now. It's like often people got betrothed when they're that young,

00:05:36.840 where they got engaged when they're that young. In this case, she got married when she was that 0.98

00:05:40.460 young, but no one expected them to like run off and start acting like married people.

00:05:45.500 Oh, and I should also mention, so they got married. Robert Devereaux was from also from

00:05:49.300 a powerful family. So I was just going to say Robert Devereaux, we need to explain about him

00:05:53.560 a little bit. He's one of several men who are going to be included in this story. So Robert

00:06:00.920 Devereaux, 13-year-old husband of Francis Howard, is the son of a man who is also named Robert

00:06:09.760 Devereaux, who was Queen Elizabeth's favorite towards the end of her life. So Queen Elizabeth

00:06:15.540 lived for quite a while, all things considered, and she got older and older and older, but she

00:06:20.860 sort of like in a reverse Leonardo DiCaprio situation, the men who she liked kept always

00:06:25.960 being sort of younger men. So the older Robert Devereaux was Queen Elizabeth's favorite for a

00:06:31.540 while. And then this Robert Devereaux is the son of that person. Just bear in mind as well, in 1601,

00:06:41.980 so three years before this teenage wedding happened, the older Robert Devereaux was executed

00:06:47.800 for treason because he tried to overthrow the government. So like things are not, it's not like

00:06:52.680 a calm time in the world, generally. Francis, Francis Howard, Robert Devereaux got married,

00:07:00.580 but they didn't actually consummate the marriage because they were very young children. And also

00:07:06.920 everybody knew that it was dangerous for 14 year olds to get pregnant. And they wanted to wait 0.99

00:07:11.960 until Francis had like grown up and matured a bit. So she was able to do that. Basically,

00:07:16.580 they were married, but like a marriage is not official until it is consummated. So they just

00:07:22.500 waited a few years while that was happening. Robert Devereaux, 13-year-old boy, just went

00:07:28.180 off for a gap year, just touring around Europe. And he was away for two years. And when he came

00:07:35.820 back, Frances basically did everything she could to never be alone with him ever. And so you might

00:07:41.960 think, well, isn't this the point? Aren't they now? What would they be? 16 and 14 or whatever.

00:07:49.080 Anyway, she didn't want to be alone with him partially because he had contracted smallpox

00:07:53.100 during his trip and she didn't want to catch smallpox and die.

00:07:56.740 And also because while he was away, she had fallen in love with someone else.

00:08:02.040 So the person who she had fallen in love with was called also Robert.

00:08:06.820 Literally every man in the story is called Robert.

00:08:09.220 Basically, it's going to be complicated.

00:08:11.980 The other man who she fell in love with is called Robert Carr, the Earl of Somerset.

00:08:16.160 So we're just going to call him Somerset.

00:08:18.520 to tell him apart from Devereaux, which is what we're going to call him as well.

00:08:23.660 So Somerset was around Francis's age, just a few years older, and he wasn't from a noble family.

00:08:31.680 I mean, people from noble families didn't tend to hang out with people from not noble families.

00:08:35.960 So the thing was he had elevated himself basically. So while Francis was off getting married

00:08:40.800 as a young teenager, Somerset was a teenager and he was a page in Edinburgh, which means

00:08:46.860 basically, I think, you know, like this sort of person who would like go and get a glass of wine

00:08:51.520 for somebody more important, et cetera. While he was doing this, he made friends with a writer

00:08:57.720 whose name was Thomas Overbury. And Thomas Overbury was not very important or influential

00:09:03.340 himself at the time, but the two of them just kind of hit it off. They became super great friends

00:09:08.920 in this sort of like, when there's two people who are friends, there's often the one who's

00:09:13.260 sort of like the main one and the one who's sort of the sidekick. And in this situation,

00:09:17.320 Somerset was the charismatic, ambitious one. And Overbury was kind of the like behind the scenes,

00:09:24.780 sort of quieter sort of person. So Somerset made a great impression on the king,

00:09:31.560 who at this point was King James I of England. And we'll get into that in a bit, how,

00:09:37.780 what Somerset did and why the two of them hinted off. But basically Overbury supported him. He

00:09:43.120 thought this is great. My BFF is friends with the king. Like this is great for everybody.

00:09:49.060 Somerset became one of the most influential people at court with Overbury sort of as his

00:09:53.320 hype man, like sort of supporting him. So how did he meet the king? So in 1607, which is the same

00:10:01.500 year that Devereux left to go in his gap year after the teenage wedding, Somerset was at a

00:10:06.920 jousting match. We all know what jousting is. It's this wildly dangerous, quote unquote, sport

00:10:14.160 where knights put on their armor and then they race towards another knight, also an armor on a

00:10:18.880 horse. And then you like poke at each other with your sticks. Somerset broke his leg during a

00:10:23.700 jousting match, which is just like, like in the first hand, like it's 1607 medical care, not

00:10:30.180 amazing but also it wasn't so bad there's like okay doctors around and stuff and so the king

00:10:37.020 king james was like oh my god this poor extremely handsome young man has just been injured i the

00:10:42.800 king i'm just gonna like nurse him back to health because that's just the sort of king i am slash

00:10:49.160 king james the first kind of like his aunt queen elizabeth just really liked really young hot

00:10:55.380 looking men. So basically they like bonded and sort of like a soap opera-y way where Somerset

00:11:01.180 was like convalescing and King James was, I don't think he was like personally tending to him, but

00:11:05.780 I'm sure he'd check in on him all the time and they just like got to be quite close. And Somerset

00:11:10.700 became James's favorite. The King loved him so much that he knighted him. He made him a knight,

00:11:17.800 called him the Viscount Rochester, hired him as a privy counselor. So this is just like

00:11:23.160 every good thing happening to him so the thing is that king james was easily swayed by who he liked

00:11:32.820 and who he didn't like he wasn't looking at things like very objectively he'd just be like who's my

00:11:37.860 favorite person great i'm gonna make that person like the archbishop or whatever and so since that

00:11:42.200 was his personality getting back to the francis of it all the howard family um were like okay so

00:11:48.960 this is the king's personality. Like if he likes you, he'll do nice things for you. So how can we

00:11:53.740 make him like us, the Howard family? And so the thing is that by now, so again, Robert Devereaux

00:12:00.920 is off just like getting smallpox on mainland Europe. Somerset is here in England and he and

00:12:08.480 Francis have met each other at the court because she's a noble woman and he's the king's favorite

00:12:13.880 and they basically totally fell in love. And so Francis's family was like, oh, okay. So our

00:12:20.200 little baby Francis is, has fallen in love. She's captured the heart of the King's favorite. So this

00:12:25.920 is great. Like, how can we use this relationship between this man and this woman to help bring

00:12:30.820 more power to us, the Howard family. And so ideally what they would do is marry Francis to

00:12:37.960 Somerset, but they can't do that because she was still married basically to Robert Devereux.

00:12:43.880 But the thing is that she and Robert Devereux had never consummated their relationship. And if you haven't consummated your relationship, and I feel like this might even be true now, you've grounds for an annulment. You can say like it was never a real marriage.

00:12:57.540 So basically, Francis is like, this is great. I'm just going to get my marriage to Robert Devereux annulled. And then I can marry my true love, Somerset, a man who is himself in the midst of like, a love triangle with potentially Thomas Overbury and the king. So that's a little love triangle, those three men, Somerset, the king and Overbury. But then Somerset is in love with Francis. And then Francis is still married to Devereux.

00:13:25.140 This is like a five-person, like, love quintangle.

00:13:31.740 I'm not sure what the word would be when there's five people.

00:13:35.320 So Frances is like, this is great.

00:13:37.140 This is fine. 0.54

00:13:37.820 I'm going to get my marriage annulled.

00:13:39.040 I'm going to marry this man who I love, who is Somerset.

00:13:41.580 Her family was like, this is great.

00:13:42.980 She's going to get this marriage annulled. 0.63

00:13:44.220 She's going to marry Somerset.

00:13:45.160 And then we, the Howard family, are going to get all this power and influence.

00:13:48.880 But meanwhile, Somerset's best friend, Thomas Overbury, was just kind of like,

00:13:53.420 this seems like questionable the howard family had a reputation for being like maybe overly

00:13:59.320 ambitious for being sort of like cutthroat sort of like little finger from game of thrones if he

00:14:04.880 had a family with like hundreds of people in it so overbury was just like i feel like somerset

00:14:10.320 might be trapped in some sort of like the web of this like seductress slash also overbury was maybe

00:14:16.400 jealous that Somerset was now in love with Francis because Overbury maybe had been in love

00:14:22.640 with Somerset slash maybe they were sleeping together too. I mean, a lot of things might

00:14:28.740 be going on here. But one of the things that Overbury mentioned is that he was concerned.

00:14:33.240 And this is like, seems to me looking at this from the 21st century in Canada, reading about

00:14:42.120 what happened centuries after it happened that overbury was jealous that francis had taken all

00:14:48.780 of somerset's attention away from him francis was also from this like notoriously conniving family

00:14:54.680 but also i think overbury was just like jealous like basically and so he sort of coached this

00:15:00.920 in saying like oh i'm just concerned because francis has a reputation for immodesty quote

00:15:06.940 unquote which like if you look at the portraits of her i i'm sure she had a reputation for immodesty 1.00

00:15:13.240 because basically the tops of her dresses were just sleeves and then like waistband like her 1.00

00:15:22.200 breasts were just like voila constantly all the time look up any portrait of her that's how you 0.99

00:15:28.860 know it's a portrait of her so basically overbury was like i don't trust this woman tits out francis 0.99

00:15:34.660 Howard. She's just like a bit extreme. And I feel like I just want to get back to just when things 0.97

00:15:39.840 were like me and Somerset and we were bros and things are great. So he's a writer, remember

00:15:45.480 Thomas Overbury. So he published a poem called A Wife. And it was basically sort of like,

00:15:52.880 like a 17th century sort of like incel manifesto where he just sort of like described where he was

00:15:58.700 like, here's what an ideal wife should be like. Like number one, like ideal wife, she should have

00:16:04.520 dresses that cover her breasts. She should be like nice and quiet and not be called Francis 1.00

00:16:10.600 and et cetera, et cetera. So it was basically a subtweet trying to get Francis to back off.

00:16:16.880 And for some reason to realize like, oh my God, I have been fooled by this like femme fatale.

00:16:21.760 What am I doing with Francis? Like I'm going to break up with her. But guess what? That did not 0.74

00:16:27.000 happen, but it made Francis and Somerset want to get married even more. And so Overbury was like,

00:16:33.840 well, what can I do to stop my friend from making what seems to me like a terrible mistake?

00:16:38.100 And this is like, if you, here's my unsolicited advice for just like the world. If your friend

00:16:44.340 is with somebody who's terrible, you can tell your friend the person is terrible. But if your

00:16:49.620 friend doesn't listen to you, like what you should not do is like publish a poem. And then you should

00:16:55.540 also try to not like actively break up your friend and this person i mean maybe there's

00:17:01.060 situations where you should do that but mostly like just let your friend make their own mistakes

00:17:05.980 basically so thomas overbury was like okay my poem didn't work so what i'm gonna do is i'm just gonna

00:17:11.160 like start like lobbying the judges or whatever to not let francis get her annulment because she's

00:17:19.000 still married to robert devereau at this point and as long as she's still married to robert

00:17:22.660 Devereaux. She can't marry Somerset. And that's all Overbury wants for Somerset to not be married

00:17:29.060 to Frances. So Frances was like, okay, I see what's going on because she was both tits out 1.00

00:17:37.460 physically, emotionally, but also mentally. She was super smart, really savvy, super clever. 1.00

00:17:44.500 And so she realized that Overbury was scheming against her. So she enlisted the help of her

00:17:49.340 the howard family which were basically sort of like just sort of like a mafia almost a family 0.68

00:17:55.140 where it's just like this is what's happening and her whole family's like we're on it and so they

00:17:59.520 they said about getting thomas overbury kicked out of court so she she had a plan to trick overbury

00:18:07.260 into committing treason and it seems like this whole thing goes all the way to the top as they

00:18:12.240 say on my favorite murder georgia hart stark where even like the king's wife queen anne might

00:18:17.700 have been involved like basically it seems like everybody just like really hated thomas overbury

00:18:23.360 and so they were everyone like literally everyone was on board of just like just sort of like

00:18:28.620 kicking him out of court and now we're just going to take a break for a word from our sponsors

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00:21:22.740 And we're back. The scheme was this.

00:21:25.400 So Overbury was obsessed with staying near Somerset.

00:21:29.720 He didn't want to leave him ever, basically, because they were best friends and he wanted was best for him.

00:21:35.780 slash he was maybe in love with him slash was maybe sleeping with him. So Francis and the

00:21:41.240 queen, they sort of like use their womanly wiles and exposed chests to manipulate the king into 0.98

00:21:47.760 offering Overbury the job of ambassador to Russia. And Overbury was like, oh my God, what an honor, 0.99

00:21:54.200 but I can't go to Russia. I need to literally stay here. Tied at the hip to my best friend,

00:21:59.360 Somerset. And so basically when the king tells you to go be the Russian ambassador,

00:22:03.140 if you don't do it then that's treason and so there's also sort of hints that at this point

00:22:09.840 the king himself might have not even needed to have been manipulated to do this like he wanted

00:22:14.760 to get rid of overbury as well because the king was probably in love with probably sleeping with

00:22:20.500 somerset as well so this is just like it's not a love triangle it's just like somerset in the

00:22:26.380 middle and around him are there like three to five people who are all in love with him and who are

00:22:32.460 all sleeping with him. And where it all sort of turns is that one of those people is Francis

00:22:37.820 Howard and she's just like tits out and she's going to make this happen for her. So basically 0.89

00:22:42.880 the King was on board with getting rid of Thomas Overbury because he was jealous of the time that

00:22:48.640 Overbury spent with Somerset because the King liked to be with Somerset. And this is just all

00:22:53.360 like, this is where it gets complicated. This is where I feel like, of course, other podcasts

00:22:58.120 started talking about this this is like not a straightforward narrative so just to recap so we've

00:23:05.940 got somerset who is this man who is the favorite of the king they're probably sleeping together

00:23:11.960 somerset's best friend is thomas overbury they're probably sleeping together so the king is jealous

00:23:19.160 of somerset's relationship with overbury but overbury is jealous of somerset's relationship

00:23:23.680 with Frances Howard, tits out Frances Howard, who is still technically married to Robert

00:23:29.440 Devereaux, formerly a teenage boy, now an adult man, recovered from smallpox, hasn't

00:23:35.600 been in the same city as her for a really long time.

00:23:38.620 So these are the puzzle pieces and what's becoming rapidly sort of a weird, sexy version

00:23:45.220 of Clue set in Stewart era.

00:23:48.900 so basically overbury had been tricked into committing treason by refusing to become the

00:23:55.600 ambassador to russia and so he was arrested and put into jail in the tower of london and after

00:24:02.440 five months he died of quote-unquote natural causes so with overbury out of the way francis

00:24:11.300 finally was able to get on with the whole annulment scenario the way that this worked

00:24:15.960 in this time for this married sort of couple was that, um, Francis and Devereaux both sort of went

00:24:24.420 into a courtroom. And so Francis testified that she had done her best to have sex with, with

00:24:30.040 Devereaux. And she says that like, she, you know, she tried to have sex with him, but he was just 0.60

00:24:34.320 like not able to have sex with her. He was impotent, she alleged. Um, and so the proof of this 0.97

00:24:42.000 is that I just want to clarify because I think I got a bit mixed up, which means you're probably

00:24:46.600 a bit mixed up as well. So they got married when they were 13 or 14 years old. Deborah went away

00:24:52.560 on a trip for two years. Then he came back. While he was away, Frances had fallen in love with

00:24:58.740 Somerset. And then once he was back, she basically, even though they were husband and wife, she just

00:25:03.220 like never went to bed with him ever is what she did. And so she alleges that he was impotent,

00:25:10.080 so they couldn't have sex, which means the marriage was invalid, which means that

00:25:14.540 she should be able to get an annulment. So the main evidence in a trial where you're trying to

00:25:19.180 prove that your husband, when you're Francis and you're in this time and place and she's trying to

00:25:24.940 prove that her husband was impotent, the main evidence is her virginity. Basically, was her

00:25:31.560 hymen intact or not? Because this is a culture and a time and place where a young woman was 1.00

00:25:38.380 sort of expected to just never have sex until she was married. And so Francis is saying like

00:25:44.540 that she never had sex with her husband, even though she was married. So technically she should 0.71

00:25:50.120 be intact. In order to investigate this, super fun. So she was examined by 10 matrons and two

00:25:58.100 midwives who just did a little gynecological exploration to see whether her hymen was intact.

00:26:04.900 and in so doing they found that yes she was still a virgin but um plot twist it wasn't really

00:26:12.340 francis who they were examining so francis was like i am happy for you guys to investigate my

00:26:20.560 hymen's intactness but i'm also so shy i'm so shy can we just do it in a room with a veil covering

00:26:29.560 my face and can i just like go in the room for a minute first put a veil over my face and then

00:26:33.980 you'll come in and they're like that's totally reasonable we've seen portraits of you and have

00:26:38.700 no reason to think that you're not a shy person so basically she allegedly rumor has it switched

00:26:46.880 places with somebody who was a virgin for this inspection it's entirely possible frances herself

00:26:56.140 did not ever have sex to this point if you're looking for the occam's razor of it all like

00:27:03.220 And then the investigation was actually of her. But that's just like, I'm guessing that she switched places with somebody. So this is all happening. The midwives examined her and they found they're like, yep, she's totally virgin. That means her husband must have been impotent. But Devereaux, who was guess what, the worst. So he got up on the stand and he was like, actually, I am super virile. I've had sex with so many people before. And it's actually Francis's fault that we never had sex.

00:27:31.960 So he confirms the fact that they never had sex, but he's saying it was her fault because she was so gross and ugly. He got some of his friends to come up and testify for things like I've seen him with an erection, which means he's capable of being aroused. So like he clearly could have sex just for some reason. With Frances, he wasn't able to. So Devereux was like, Frances was mean to me. She's sexually unappealing. So I was just unable to have sex with her, but it's her fault. 0.98

00:28:01.960 And basically, this was all happening in court. 0.99

00:28:04.760 Lots of witnesses there hearing all this talk about sex and hymens and erections. 0.79

00:28:10.380 And it got really, everyone was kind of talking.

00:28:13.600 If you've seen, like, The Favorite, the movie that was from, like, just a few decades later.

00:28:19.020 People around the court, they like a good little piece of gossip.

00:28:21.780 And this is just, like, beyond.

00:28:24.820 But wait, it gets weirder.

00:28:28.280 So suspicions start to come up that perhaps Devereaux has been bewitched, like Satanism 0.94

00:28:36.080 might be involved in why he can't, he wasn't able to have sex with Francis.

00:28:40.260 So for a while, it was looking like he might be sent to Poland for an exorcism, because

00:28:44.960 apparently that is where he went for exorcisms back then.

00:28:47.940 But basically, eventually the king, King James, intervened and was just like, you know what,

00:28:54.980 we're just going to like grant this annulment. And the trial basically was ended. Three months

00:29:01.180 later, Francis was able to marry Somerset. And so things sort of were looking happily ever after

00:29:08.640 adjacent until it wasn't because two years after Overbury had died, someone finally noticed that

00:29:17.260 he hadn't actually died in prison of natural causes. He'd actually been murdered by poisoning.

00:29:23.660 this is where we get into the next whole weird bit of the whole saga. So basically what happens

00:29:29.220 is Frances and Somerset go back to court. And this time, instead of her virginity being on trial,

00:29:36.280 Frances is on trial for murder with accomplices. So one of the accomplices is Somerset. And then

00:29:41.460 there's four other accomplices. During the trial, the whole scheme came out. So basically what

00:29:47.260 happened was this. So Frances had conspired with some other people to get Thomas Overbury thrown

00:29:54.680 in prison because she knew that once he was in prison, she had enough safeguards in there to

00:29:59.120 poison him to death. So she had used her presumably tits out powers to have the Lord 0.99

00:30:07.880 Lieutenant of the Tower of London removed and had him replaced by a man much more morally flexible. 0.72

00:30:13.220 the new lord lieutenant was a man named Gervais Helwis which is like quite a name and then there

00:30:20.900 was also another jailer who she had who was working for her on the inside who is a man named

00:30:25.640 Robert Weston who knew a lot about how to kill people with various pharmaceuticals and the thing

00:30:32.960 is that even though Overbury was in jail he was still like a wealthy person so he wasn't like

00:30:37.620 shackled to a wall in a cell he sort of got like an okay room sort of like a hotel room and Richard

00:30:42.700 Weston was like his concierge. And then finally, the final conspirator was somebody named Mrs. Ann

00:30:49.040 Turner, who was the wife of a physician. And slash, she was also herself a part-time brothel 0.52

00:30:55.460 owner. So she had access to a lot of drugs. So she was able to get the drugs. Weston was able to 0.92

00:31:01.140 smoosh up the drugs and mix them in the food. And Gervais Helwes was sort of like there to look the

00:31:05.980 other way. Oh, and there was one other person whose name was Simon Franklin, who was an apothecary,

00:31:11.220 presumably. He had something to do with the drugs as well. And the drug they decided to use to kill

00:31:16.420 him with was sulfuric acid. How do we know all of these things? This is like a lot of details to know

00:31:21.920 about something. And the reason we know this is because Frances basically pled guilty. She admitted 1.00

00:31:27.440 to having done all of this stuff, but Somerset pled innocent. So the couple is sort of, there's

00:31:34.520 a novel that came out a bit ago called The Poison Bed by E.C. Fremantle. And side note, it's because

00:31:40.460 the novel that I first started reading up about this actual historical event. But the novel is

00:31:44.480 sort of like Gone Girl, where you're not sure if she's guilty, if he's guilty, if they're both

00:31:49.820 guilty, like who's telling the truth and who's not. But what happened in history was Francis

00:31:53.440 pled guilty and it copped everything. And Somerset said he had nothing to do with it. It was totally

00:31:58.060 all Francis doing everything. Either seems plausible to me. I feel like Francis was obviously

00:32:03.280 capable of planning this all herself, but also like, how would Somerset not have known about it?

00:32:08.160 Anyway, the king, still James I, who's still infatuated with Somerset, was basically, he's

00:32:15.820 like, ooh, this is starting to look bad for me.

00:32:17.820 People are starting to suspect that maybe the king and the queen had something to do

00:32:20.820 with it because the whole like sending overbury to Russia scenario.

00:32:25.060 So he tried to encourage Somerset to plead guilty so they could like wrap this up quickly.

00:32:30.280 And basically, if Somerset pled guilty, then James could pardon him and it would all be

00:32:33.620 done.

00:32:34.360 But Somerset was just like, no, I'm not going to plead guilty, which is where I feel like

00:32:38.120 it could be that he's innocent but also if he pled guilty yeah the king could pardon him

00:32:42.580 but what if that didn't happen what if he's feeling guilty and then got to be executed

00:32:47.260 anyway um fun fact so there was a jury of all men because it was a time of all men juries and do

00:32:54.620 you know who one of the jurors was this might be part of why somerset didn't want the jury to

00:32:59.520 decide his fate because one of the jurors was robert devereau francis howard's ex-husband the

00:33:06.700 who was proven in a court to be impotent, who had smallpox as a teenager, etc. So basically,

00:33:14.320 Devereaux was eager to sentence both of them to death because they had crossed him. They had 0.82

00:33:19.120 forced him to stand up in front of everybody in England and be like, yes, I can have erections. 0.63

00:33:24.480 This is just like, I can't even. So the verdict was decided upon. So what happened was that they

00:33:31.420 were not sentenced to death, but to life in prison. Francis and Somerset were because they were rich

00:33:37.100 and also James, you know, liked them. But the other four who were not wealthy were all hanged

00:33:44.320 for the role in the death. So that means Gervais Helwis, Richard Weston, Anne Turner, and Simon

00:33:49.100 Franklin were all executed for the role in this whole situation. Francis and Somerset both found

00:33:54.940 guilty, sentenced to life in jail, but Francis was pardoned almost immediately. Somerset was also

00:34:00.680 soon after so they weren't even in jail for that long basically they spent about two years in the

00:34:05.760 tower of london which again as rich people it wasn't like shackled to the wall it was sort of

00:34:10.020 just like an okay hotel situation clearly they got to visit each other sometimes because francis got

00:34:15.220 pregnant and gave birth to a child while they were living there it was a daughter who they called

00:34:19.720 ann nice name and basically they they left prison and just like kept kept going they lived the rest

00:34:27.800 of their lives out of the public eye basically they stayed away from royal court they were just

00:34:32.560 sort of notorious people that everybody would sort of be like oh my god do you know who that is when

00:34:37.000 they went out anywhere the whole thing was so dramatic that a number of plays and poems and

00:34:41.460 other writings came out over the next few years inspired both by the events of francis's annulment

00:34:47.480 trial and the whole like virgin switcheroo as well as the whole murder thing um posthumously

00:34:55.440 Thomas Overbury's poem, A Wife, became a best-selling poem because of his connection

00:35:01.420 to the crime in that he was murdered. And because the poem, A Wife, everybody knew is a subtweet of

00:35:07.680 Francis Howard, who is like the most notorious woman in the world. Basically, the poem was not

00:35:13.500 out of print for the next 60 years. And if you're wondering what happened to Robert Devereaux,

00:35:18.560 he did get married again, but he never fathered any children, legitimate or illegitimate. So

00:35:24.140 maybe he was impotent? Who's to say? Francis Howard passed away in 1632, aged 42 years old.

00:35:33.160 Her husband, Robert Carr, passed away 12 years later. Their daughter, Anne, lived a long and

00:35:38.460 healthy life. And the king, King James, stayed king for a while, but this is just like one of

00:35:45.140 many examples of why he kind of got a reputation of being like not a squeaky clean sort of guy,

00:35:51.540 sort of like a morally questionable type person if you want to read more about this there's uh

00:35:59.980 so as i said there's the novel the poison bed by easy freemantle and there's also two non-fiction

00:36:05.540 books that i read to consult to write this um there's the overbury affair by miriam allen

00:36:10.600 defond as well as unnatural murder poison in the court of james the first by anne somerset

00:36:15.600 who is an author who seems to be a descendant of Francis Howard and her daughter, Anne.

00:36:21.680 And now it is time to score this on the Scandaliciousness score scale.

00:36:26.260 And this is like, okay, there's four categories.

00:36:31.220 And this is just like, first we're going to go, we're going to start with Scandaliciousness.

00:36:36.920 So this is like the quality, like how juicy and gossipy and like messed up is this story.

00:36:44.120 and this is like like this has got murder the francis howard admitted to that she was sent to

00:36:53.040 jail for we've got the scandalous neckline of literally every bodice of every dress she ever

00:37:00.360 wore we've got the whole was she a virgin or not trial like i i can't not give this a 10 this is a

00:37:08.620 10 out of, I can't think of anything she could have done. Like the scandalousness of the fact

00:37:14.540 that Somerset was in his own gay love triangle with the king. Like this whole story, if I could 0.95

00:37:21.380 give it more than 10, I would for scandalousness. In terms of scheminess, again, I feel like

00:37:27.200 Frances Howard, she had the scheminess, like with the support of her family. I guess the question

00:37:32.360 is like, how much was her and how much was her family sort of helping figure all these plans

00:37:37.920 out for her but basically a lot of this rested on her and she was able to pull off a lot of stuff

00:37:42.980 she's able to pull off getting the annulment the virginity switcheroo like conscripting five other 1.00

00:37:50.420 people to murder somebody with her like her scheminess i'm gonna give her an eight an eight

00:37:57.140 for scheminess the next category is significance which is interesting because like so the

00:38:04.560 significance category that would be like did Francis Howard invent algebra did she I don't

00:38:10.300 know you know like did one of her descendants end up becoming the next queen or whatever like

00:38:16.060 basically in terms of the like it was a huge scandal at the time I mean 10 out of 10 for

00:38:20.620 scandalousness the significance was a factor in the reputation of James the first which sort of

00:38:27.480 tarnished the reputation of his son Charles the first who was kicked off the throne by

00:38:32.500 revolution. So it was like, there's some significance to this, but it's like one

00:38:37.040 part of a bigger thing that affected British history. So I love her. Francis Howard is my girl,

00:38:44.240 but I'm just going to give her, I think, a three for significance. And the final category is sexism.

00:38:50.700 This is like giving more points dependent on how much did being a woman in a patriarchal society 0.92

00:38:57.620 affect what happened to her. And this is an interesting one to think about because Francis

00:39:03.580 Howard kind of saw the card she was dealt being the daughter of this wealthy family,

00:39:09.380 being married off to this guy. And she kind of didn't, she found ways to work with that

00:39:14.380 and to make it work for her. Like I don't, obviously sexism, basically everybody's going 0.85

00:39:20.560 to always at least get a five in sexism because that was just always a part of everyone's life.

00:39:25.440 I mean, the fact that she had to prove her virginity in the trial, like that's pretty, that's pretty shitty where she had to prove that she wanted to have sex, but couldn't like, other than that, though, like people didn't like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna stick with a five, like a five, five in the category of sexism.

00:39:45.220 So that gives her 18, 26, 26 out of 40 in the Scandaliciousness scale, which is like a really good score.

00:39:58.540 I mean, we just went through literally everything that she got up to.

00:40:02.520 I mean, this is the highest score so far.

00:40:04.480 I know it's just the second episode, but I'm interested to see where other people are going to score.

00:40:10.440 So basically, my name is Anne Foster.

00:40:13.720 This is Vulgar History.

00:40:15.220 You can follow me on social media at Anne Foster Writer. I have a website at AnneFosterWriter.com

00:40:22.840 where I wrote about Frances Howard and other scandalicious women from history. I have a

00:40:27.800 Patreon, which is Patreon.com slash Anne Foster Writer. And I am going to be working on some

00:40:33.980 shorter little mini episodes that I think are going to be Patreon only. So when I find like

00:40:38.580 a cool story, but it's not long enough to do a full episode, those are going to be there.

00:40:42.360 so you can check me out on Patreon.

00:40:44.300 And if you are a fan of Vulgar History

00:40:46.860 and why wouldn't you be,

00:40:47.840 please subscribe and rate and review

00:40:49.520 on your favorite podcast app.

00:40:52.260 And I'll talk to you all next time.

00:40:57.220 Vulgar History is hosted, written, 0.92

00:40:58.860 and researched by Anne Foster

00:41:00.240 and edited by Christina Lumagi.

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Vulgar History - November 13, 2019

Women Behaving Badly, part 2： She Poisoned Her Enemy In Jail

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