Robert Carr

Scottish politician

• Born: c. 1587
• Birthplace: Scotland
• Died: July 17, 1645
• Place of death: London, England

A favorite of King James I of England, Carr steadily gained political power and wealth, until he was implicated in one of the most famous murders in English history.

Early Life

Little is known of Robert Carr before his emergence as a favorite of King James I . Born about 1587, Carr was the son of Sir Thomas Ker of Ferniehurst, near Edinburgh, Scotland, who had attempted to assist James’s first favorite, Esmé Stuart, duke of Lennox, and James’s mother, the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots. James did not forget such loyalty, although he had tacitly consented to his mother’s execution in order to gain the English throne. Carr also had the protection of the earl of Dunbar, by whom he had probably been employed. First a page at James’s English court, Carr then apparently spent some time in France. On his return, possibly with Dunbar’s help, he became a groom of the royal bedchamber, a post that brought him continually into the presence of the king. What James saw was a personable, handsome young man. The weaknesses that would end Carr’s career—his lack of education, stupidity, vanity, stubbornness, insensitivity, and pride—were not yet important.

Carr was not the king’s first male favorite, but the king’s uninhibited display of affection for him drew considerable attention. It is not known whether the king was actively homosexual, then an offense that could be punished by death. Separated from his mother in infancy and witness to the bloody shooting death of one grandfather, James, as infant king, lived under three regents in his first five years. Insecure and surrounded by strong, violent men and subservient, dependent women, James certainly, with some desperation, sought emotional support from other men. Whatever his sexual life, James’s behavior brought down public censure on both himself and his favorites.

Life’s Work

Despite England’s weak economic condition, James lavished wealth and titles on his favorites, again incurring public displeasure. Carr rapidly gained both. In 1607, now a knight, he was made gentleman of the bedchamber. In 1608, after several substantial gifts of money, James, extremely short of funds, gave Carr the estate of the popular Sir Walter Ralegh, who had been condemned (if temporally reprieved) and whose property consequently was seized by the crown. Ralegh wrote an impassioned letter begging Carr not to deprive his family of this estate, but James refused to reconsider.

In 1611, Carr was made Viscount Rochester; this made him the first Scottish member of the English House of Lords. That same year, he was made knight of the garter and, in 1612, privy counselor. Although resident in England, he was appointed to Scotland’s Privy Council and named lord treasurer of Scotland in 1613. He also was made warden of the cinque ports and lord privy seal. Most of his appointments offered opportunity for financial gain.

After the 1612 death of James’s principal secretary, Sir Robert Cecil, earl of Salisbury, the king did not appoint a new secretary. Instead, Carr assumed the responsibility for serious government decisions, a responsibility he was not intellectually equipped to bear. In his need, he relied on an old friend, Sir Thomas Overbury, to handle correspondence and make decisions. Overbury was a minor writer whose death made him famous. His poem The Wife (1614), licensed for publication in 1613 while Overbury yet lived, went through five editions the following year. It was published with a collection of character sketches, the Characters, some of which were written by Overbury and others of which have been attributed to John Webster , Thomas Dekker , and John Donne. Overbury was tactless, ambitious, and argumentative; his new power badly affected his judgment. If Carr ruled the king, Overbury believed that he ruled Carr.

Overbury and Carr were brought into conflict in 1612, when Carr was attracted to Frances Howard, daughter of the powerful earl of Suffolk. The Howards were a powerful, traditionally Catholic family. (Although the practice of Catholicism was illegal under James I, there were many clandestine Catholics in England, probably including James’s queen, Anne of Denmark.) At age thirteen, Frances Howard had been married to Robert Devereux, third earl of Essex , the son of Queen Elizabeth I’s favorite. Howard was determined, however, to escape her marriage to Essex and to marry Carr. She moved to have the marriage annulled on the grounds that her husband was impotent with her.

James, who would deny his favorites nothing, put pressure on the clerics who were to hear the case, and the annulment was granted, creating another scandal. Overbury, who had approved of Carr’s affair with Howard, was appalled at the thought of a marriage; the marriage and the patronage of the Howard family would inevitably reduce Overbury’s own power. To get Overbury out of the way, James had him imprisoned in the Tower of London on April 21, 1613; he died there on September 15, 1613. In October, 1613, Carr became earl of Somerset, so that his wife, formerly countess of Essex, could remain a countess. Their marriage took place on December 26, 1613, with great celebration funded by the king.

Like Overbury, Carr allowed his newfound power to affect his judgment. He became cold and insulting to the king. By 1615, when rumors about Overbury’s death led to a formal investigation, Carr had been replaced by a new favorite, George Villiers, first duke of Buckingham. In September, 1615, Sir Gervase Elwes, lieutenant of the tower, confessed that, while he had managed to keep Richard Weston, deputy tower keeper, from poisoning Overbury, Sir Thomas had indeed been poisoned. Implicated were Anne Turner, a Catholic friend of Frances Howard, and the countess herself, who had hated Overbury for his opposition to her marriage.

Turner admitted she had consulted with Simon Forman, a physician, astrologer, and wizard, who died in 1611, before he could be involved in Overbury’s death. Famed legal authority Edward Coke , a fanatic in his hatred of Catholicism, attempted to link the plot against Overbury with a Catholic plot against the throne itself, reminiscent of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Coke was in charge of establishing the cases against the suspects, and he served as judge at the trials after which Turner, Elwes, Weston, and James Franklin—an employee of the countess and of Turner—were executed. Somerset, who maintained his innocence, and his wife, who confessed to the poisoning, were imprisoned, but their trials were postponed until May 24 and 25, 1616. Sir Francis Bacon, not the zealous Coke, conducted the trials, at which both Somersets were found guilty.

Although the Somersets received death sentences, James did not want them executed. Instead, they were exiled from London and the court. According to rumor, their marriage failed. They had one daughter, Anne, who married into the important Russell family. Frances Carr—no longer countess of Somerset—died painfully of cancer on August 22, 1632. Her husband lingered on until 1645, deprived of wealth, titles, glamour, and power. Long before then, much of the public had been aroused against them. Carr was a Scottish favorite upon whom much English money had been wasted, despite England’s poor financial condition; he was from a Catholic background, allied with the house of the Howard, and had urged a Catholic Spanish marriage upon the king’s son at a time when anti-Catholic fervor was intense.

Significance

Carr is best remembered for his role in Overbury’s death. Once it was revealed that Overbury had been murdered, the ensuing scandal became a focal point for English hatred of the Scottish king James and his favorites, especially Carr, both because of the waste of English money on favorites and because of the suggestion that the Stuart court was a hotbed of vice. It also became a focus for Puritan hatred of anything savoring of Catholicism. Overbury’s death was, arguably, the most important single scandal involving the court in English history, since the ferment stirred up by the Overbury affair became part of the contempt for and hatred of the Stuarts, their behavior, and their policies that erupted into revolution in the 1640’s and resulted in the execution of James’s son, Charles I , in 1649.

Popular writers, as well as historians, have repeatedly returned to the subject. In his notes to The Fortunes of Nigel (1822), the influential novelist Sir Walter Scott admitted modeling one of his characters on Anne Turner, while equally influential novelist and journalistCharles Dickens included the affair in A Child’s History of England (1852-1854). The case has also attracted the attention of distinguished true crime writers, including William Roughead in The Fatal Countess and Other Studies (1924) and Miriam Allen deFord in The Overbury Affair (1960). The latter is still sometimes cited as one of the finest works of its kind.

Bibliography

Bellany, Alastair. The Politics of Court Scandal in Early Modern England: News Culture and the Overbury Affair, 1603-1660. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. The only comprehensive source for information about how media of the time influenced public reaction to Overbury’s death; extremely detailed, however, and designed for a scholarly audience.

Bergeron, David M. Royal Family, Royal Lovers: King James of England and Scotland. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991. Shows the cool and distant relationships between King James and members of his family, as contrasted with his highly emotional relationships with male favorites.

Croft, Pauline. King James. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. A brief study emphasizing the king’s strengths, while acknowledging weakness involving such favorites as Somerset.

Somerset, Anne. Unnatural Murder: Poison at the Court of James I. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997. Comprehensively researched and clearly written study of crime and trials, with background of those involved; sympathetic to Frances Howard.

Stewart, Alan. The Cradle King: The Life of James VI and I, the First Monarch of a United Great Britain. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003. Views Somerset in the context of the king’s insecurity, born of the brutal conditions that surrounded him during his early years.