Chapter VIII: Royal and Historic Poisoners

Poison appears to have been employed as a political agent from an early period of history, and many stories, probably more legendary than correct, have been handed down of royal personages who used this secret and deadly method of ridding themselves of troublesome individuals and removing enemies from their path. In the same way, they themselves sometimes became the victims of jealous rivals by similar nefarious means. The greatest craft and cunning were exerted in order to introduce poison into the human body, and there are many stories concerning the curious and subtle methods said to have been employed.

There are but few authenticated records of the use of poison in England for the purpose of taking life until the sixteenth century, although according to tradition King John is said to have compassed the death of the unfortunate Maud FitzWalter by means of a poisoned egg.

The story is a romantic one, and is related by Hepworth Dixon in _Her Majesty’s Tower_. In the reign of King John the White Tower received one of the first and fairest of a long line of female victims, in the person of Maud FitzWalter, who was known to the singers of her time as Maud the Fair. The father of this beautiful girl was Robert, Lord FitzWalter, of Castle Baynard on the Thames, one of John’s most powerful and greatest barons. The King, it is said, during a fit of violence or temper with the Queen, fell madly in love with the fair Maud. As neither the lady herself nor her father would listen to his disgraceful suit, the King is said to have seized her by force at Dunmow and brought her to the Tower. FitzWalter raised an outcry, on which the King sent troops into Castle Baynard and his other houses, and when the baron protested against these wrongs his master banished him from the realm. FitzWalter fled to France with his wife and other children, leaving poor Maud in the Tower, where she suffered a daily insult in the King’s unlawful suit. She remained obdurate, however, and refused his offers. On her proud and scornful answer to his overtures being heard, John carried her up to the roof and locked her in the round turret, standing on the north-east angle of the keep. Maud’s cage was the highest and chilliest den in the Tower, but neither cold, solitude nor hunger could break her resolve, and at last, in a rage of disappointed love, the King sent one of his minions to her room with a poisoned egg, of which the brave girl ate and died.

According to the French Chronicles, “After the death of Gaultier Giffard, Count Buckingham, in the early part of the twelfth century, Agnes his widow became enamoured with Robert Duke of Normandy, and attached herself to him in an illicit manner, shortly after which time his wife Sibylle died of poison.”

Probably the earliest recorded case of secret poisoning in England is that of Sir Walter de Scotiney, who was convicted of poisoning the Abbot of Westminster and William, brother of the Earl of Gloucester. According to Leland’s account, this happened during the meeting of a parliament which had been convened at Winchester by Henry the Third about 1230. The story is told in the following words:—

“The Abbot of Westminster and William brother of the Earl of Gloucester, a person of great worth and spirit, were both destroyed. The Earl of Gloucester himself languished under the effects of the poison and only escaped death with extreme difficulty, for the hair fell from his head and the nails from his fingers. They are said to have received into their bowels the deadly drug at the table of the Lord Edward, King Henry’s eldest son, during breakfast. The Earl escaped destruction merely by the strength of his constitution with the loss of his hair, nails, skin and great injury to his teeth. These atrocious deeds struck the people with Horror. The villainy was imputed to a certain knight, Walter de Scotiney, and at the appeal of the Countess de L’Isle he was seized, judged and drawn.”

“In the same year and the latter end of February,” the chronicler continues,

“was apprehended at London Walter de Scotiney, the Chief Councillor of the Earl of Gloucester and his seneschall, being suspected of having given the poisonous potion to the Earl, who was himself hardly saved from the gate of death, and to his brother William de Clare who was really killed by it; also was taken William de Bussey whose villanies if related must excite horror and astonishment. He was the seneschal and principal councillor of William de Valence. These men, although they had been under the safe custody of sureties, being now seized and brought before the judges were committed to a viler prison and put in chains.”

In the records of Hugh de Bigot, the High Justiciar, it is stated:

“Coming to Winchester they brought Walter de Scotiney steward of the Earl of Gloucester to his trial for poisoning William de Clare the preceding year. Scotiney was convicted, condemned and executed.”

Henry VIII at one period of his life was apprehensive of being poisoned, and it was commonly stated that Anne Boleyn attempted to administer poison to him surreptitiously. It is recorded that the King, in an interview with young Prince Henry, burst into tears, saying that “he and his sister, the Princess Mary, might thank God for having escaped from the hand of that accursed and venomous harlot, who had intended to poison them.”

The story of the Countess of Somerset, who was tried with others for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury in the reign of James I, forms an interesting episode in the history of romantic poisoning. Robert Earl of Essex, son of Queen Elizabeth’s favourite, and who afterwards became Commander-in-Chief of the Parliamentary forces, married, at the age of fourteen, Frances Howard, a younger daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, the bride being just a year younger than her husband. The match had been arranged and brought about through the influence of relatives, who thought it expedient that the youthful bridegroom should be sent off to travel on the Continent immediately after the marriage had taken place, and he remained away for three or four years. During this period the countess, who was brought up at Court, developed into a very beautiful woman, but seems to have been equally unprincipled and capricious. On the return of the earl from his travels, she shrank from all advances on his part, and showed the utmost repugnance to her husband on all occasions. Their dispositions were entirely different. He loved retirement, and wished to live a quiet country life, while she, who had been bred at Court, and accustomed to adulation and intrigue, refused to leave town. The King about this time had a number of young men of distinguished appearance and good looks attached to the Court, and of these, one Robert Carr, at length became an exclusive favourite. Between him and the self-willed young countess there sprang up an attachment, which, at least on her side, amounted to infatuation. Her opportunities for meeting her lover were short and rare, and in this emergency she applied to a Mrs. Turner, who introduced her to Dr. Forman, a noted astrologer and magician at that time, and he, by images made of wax and other devices of the black art, undertook to procure the love of Carr for the lady. At the same time he was also to practise against the earl in the opposite direction. These measures, however, were too slow for the wayward countess, and having gone to the utmost lengths with her inamorato, she insisted on a divorce from her husband, and a legal marriage with her lover.

One of Carr’s greatest friends was Sir Thomas Overbury, a young courtier and a man of honour and kindly disposition. He was much against this intimacy, and besought his friend to break it off, assuring him it would ruin his prospects and reputation if he married the lady. Carr unwisely made this known to the countess, who at once regarded Overbury as a bitter enemy, and resolved to do what she could to overthrow him. The pair plotted together with evident success, for the unfortunate Sir Thomas was shortly afterwards committed to the Tower by an arbitrary mandate of the King, and was not allowed to see any visitors. Finally, his food was poisoned, and, after several unsuccessful attempts on his life, he at last died from the effects of poison. Cantharides, nitrate of silver, spiders, arsenic, and last of all, corrosive sublimate, are said to have been administered in turn to this unfortunate individual. Meanwhile, the countess obtained a divorce from her husband on the ground of impotency, and married Carr, who was soon after made Earl of Somerset by King James.

Two years elapsed before the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury was brought to light, when the inferior criminals, Mrs. Turner and others, were convicted and executed; but the Earl of Somerset and his countess, although found guilty with their accomplices, received the royal pardon. The happiness of the earl and countess, however, was not of long duration, as it is stated they afterwards became so alienated from each other, that they resided for years under the same roof with the most careful precautions that they might not by any chance come into each other’s presence. Mrs. Turner, implicated in the crime, is said to have been the first to introduce into England the yellow starch that was then applied to ladies’ ruffs. Her last request was that she should be hanged in a ruff dyed with her own yellow starch, and her wish is said to have been carried out.

Whether Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Prime Minister and favourite of Queen Elizabeth, was as black as he is painted by some of the historians of his time, it is difficult to judge. His ambition to marry his royal mistress, who, shrewd woman as she was, appears to have had no insight into his unscrupulous character, was apparently the cause of his attempting to move every human obstacle from his path by insidious methods. The death of Amy Robsart, a mystery which has never been completely solved and a description of which is given in a following chapter, is attributed to Leicester’s machinations. He was suspected of causing the death of Lord Sheffield, and the Earl of Essex, another rival, is stated to have been also the victim of his hatred.

The death of the latter peer is said, in the language of a contemporary chronicler, as having been due to “an extreme flux cause by an Italian Receit, the maker whereof was a surgeon that was then newly come to my Lord from Italy, a cunning man and sure in operation.” The inventor of this recipe was known as Dr. Julio, who was said to be able “to make a man dye in what manner of sickness you will.” Essex died when on his way back to England from Ireland, with the object, it is said, of revenging himself on Leicester for his domestic wrongs. “With the Earl of Essex, one Mrs. Alice Drakott, a godly gentlewoman, is also said to have been poisoned.” This lady happened to be accompanying the earl on her way towards her own house, when after partaking of the same cup she was also seized with violent pain and vomiting, which continued until she died, a day or two before the earl succumbed. “When she was dead,” says the chronicler, “her body was swollen into a monstruous bigness and deformity; whereof the good earl, hearing the day following, lamented the case greatly, and said in the presence of his servants, ‘Ah! poor Alice, the cup was not prepared for thee, albeit it was thy hard fortune to taste thereof.’”

According to all accounts, Leicester’s list of victims did not cease here, and, rightly or wrongly, the death of Cardinal Chatillian, who was taken suddenly ill and died in Canterbury, is also attributed to him. The Cardinal had accused the earl of preventing the marriage of the Queen to the King of France, and was journeying back to Dover when he was taken ill and died in a mysterious manner.

Another mysterious death at this time that occasioned considerable sensation was that of Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, a wealthy city magnate of Elizabeth’s time, whose name is still perpetuated in the City. Sir Nicholas is said to have been an associate of Leicester’s and the one who was ready to do his bidding in thwarting the doings of the Lord Treasurer, Sir William Cecil, who was thought by Leicester to be playing him false. He invited him one night to a supper at his house in London, and, just as the meal was served, hurriedly left for Court, to which he said he had been called suddenly by her Majesty. Sir Nicholas was told to proceed with the meal in his absence, which he did, but soon after was seized with violent vomiting, from which he never recovered. The story continues, that the day before his death he declared to a dear friend “all the circumstances and causes of his complaint, which he affirmed plainly to be poison given him in a sallet at supper, inveighing most earnestly against the earl’s cruelty and bloody disposition, and affirming him to be the wickedest, most perilous and perfidious man under heaven.”

Whether Leicester was the unscrupulous villain he was made out to be or not, there is no evidence to prove. Many writers aver that he kept his professional poisoners ready to do his will and carry out his designs. There seems little doubt that he had some needy physicians in his pay. His personal doctor, one Bayly, is said to have boasted of the fact that “he knew of poisons which might be so tempered that they should kill the party afterwards at what time it should be appointed.” This method, which is alluded to by many writers of the fifteenth century as slow poisoning, was probably due to the effect of administering some poison, such as arsenic or antimony in small doses until the cumulative effect of the substance proved fatal.

An Italian doctor whom Leicester brought home from his travels in Italy, is mentioned in several stories as one of the unscrupulous physicians employed by him who were ready to administer the “Italian Comfortive,” as the poison was called, at his bidding. Those whose sudden deaths were attributed to Leicester’s instrumentality were commonly said to have succumbed to “Leicester’s cold.”

There is little doubt, however, that Leicester was suspected of being the instigator of many murders which probably he may have had nothing to do with, as he made many enemies.

His name is also associated with the sudden demise of Lord Sheffield, whose death is said to have been due to “Leicester’s cold.” A short time afterwards the earl married his widow, but under pretence that the Queen would be offended at the marriage, compelled her to keep it secret. After some time, the more effectually to conceal the connection, he required her to marry Sir Edward Stafford. This she refused to do, till under the gentle discipline of Leicester it is recorded that “her hair fell off and her nails fell out, and she did what was demanded of her to save her life.” This story is certified by her own testimony on oath, and recorded by Sir William Dugdale.

The Earl of Sussex, his great rival, is also said to have been one of his victims. On his death-bed he is said to have warned his friends in the following words: “I am passing into another world and must now leave you to your good fortunes and to the Queen’s grace and goodness; but beware of the gipsy’s son [Leicester] for he will be too hard for you all. You know the beast as well as I do.”

Camden, the historian, who does not discredit many of these stories, asserts that Leicester actually proposed in Council that Mary Queen of Scots should be removed by poison.

There was a curious mystery about the death of Prince Alexander, the son of Peter the Great, the story of which is related by Henry Bruce, an Englishman in Peter’s service in 1782. Bruce states that he was at the citadel of St. Peter and St. Paul, where the Tsarevitch was imprisoned on a charge of _lèse-majesté_, the Tsar and Marshal Veide being also present. The latter ordered Bruce to go to the apothecary Beer, who lived close by, and tell him “the potion must be made strong, for the Prince was very bad indeed.” The apothecary trembled and turned pale at the message, but refused to explain to Bruce why he was thus agitated. The Marshal, who had sent Bruce, followed him, and told Beer to “hurry, for the Prince had had an apoplectic fit.” The apothecary handed him a silver cup, which the Marshal carried to the Prince, “staggering all the time like a drunken man.” Half an hour after the Tsar left the citadel, gloomy, like all his retinue. Bruce was ordered to stay and dine at a table set for the Tsarevitch. “Two doctors and two surgeons dined apart. They were called in to the Prince; he was in convulsions, and died at 5 p.m., after atrocious suffering. Bruce informed the Marshal, who told the Tsar. The viscera were removed by Peter the Great’s orders before the body was coffined.”

In India, when powdered glass is employed for lethal purposes, it is generally given with sherbet or some kind of food. It acts as a powerful irritant to the coats of the stomach or intestines and produces gastro-enteritis.

A celebrated case in which this substance was used occurred in India in 1874, when the Gaekwar or reigning prince of Baroda, was tried for attempting to kill the British political resident, Colonel Phayre, by administering powdered glass to him in sherbet. He was brought to trial before a court composed of three Indian and three English judges, and after a trial lasting thirty-five days the English judges pronounced for a conviction and the three Indian ones for an acquittal. In the end the Gaekwar was deposed and deported to Madras.