throughout as an innocent spectator of the trials of Overbury's murderers- his ill fortune and bad had done to her formerly, and thereupon prescribes ye same; usually I went in a morning for his advise, about 7 of ye clock, where I us'd to find him set in his study, wch was a large room furnish'd wth books and pictures; and as one of ye cheifest he had ye picture of ye head of Hyppocrates yt great physitian; and upon his table he had the proportion of a man in wax, to set forth ye ordure and composure of every part: before his table he had a frame wth shelves, wheron he set some books; and behind this he sat to receive those yt came for his advice, for he seldom went to any, for he was corpulent and unweildy; and yn again he was rich, and ye King's physician, and á Knight, wch made him more costly to deal with all." 66 Among Mayerne's Medicinal Counsels and Advices, 1676, are some startling receipts. He gives a gout powder, one of the ingredients of which is raspings of a human skull unburied; and again, speaking of the good effects of absorbents, he particularly recommends human bones of the same kind with the part affected. "These tokens of superstition," says Aikin in his Biographical Memoirs of Medicine (1780, p. 261), are not invalidated by a recipe contained in the same book, of an unguent for hypochondriacal persons, which he calls his balsam of bats. In the composition of this there enters, adders, bats, sucking whelps, earth-worms, hog's grease, the marrow of a stag, and of the thigh-bone of an ox-ingredients fitter for the witches' cauldron in Macbeth, than a learned physician's prescription." Mayerne died at Chelsea in the 82nd year of his age, March 15, 1655. It is said that the immediate cause of his death proceeded from the effects of bad wine-which the weakness of old age rendered a quick poison, and that he foretold the event to some friends with whom he had been drinking moderately at a tavern in the Strand. He was buried in the church of St. Martin's in the Fields. Many of Mayerne's papers, are in the Ashmolean Library; others are in the British Museum. He left his library to the Royal College of Physicians. We are glad to hear that his "Ephemerides," or Case books, are to be published by the Camden Society. e management were equally deplorable. But we are not inclined to look upon him as a mere spectator in the affair. He was fully capable of being the principal in all the villany that can be laid to his charge. It may be asked, why did he seek the death of Overbury? It is sufficient to know that he hated him. The Earl of Southampton writing to Sir R. Winwood, on the 4th of August, 1613, observes, "And much ado there hath been to keep Sir T. Overbury from a public censure of banishment and loss of office, such a rooted hatred lyeth in the King's heart towards him." The true cause of this" rooted hatred" is not known. There is a tradition that Overbury was concerned in the murder of Prince Henry, and that his death was only a just retribution.* Some terrible bond of secrecy certainly existed between King James, Somerset, and Overbury, which time has not unravelled, and probably never will.+ "The Scots have a constant report amongst them, as I learned from one of them, that Sir Thomas Overbury, seeing divers crossings and oppositions to happen between that peerless Prince and the said Rochester, by whose means only he expected to rise; and fearing it would in the end be a means to ruin Rochester himself, did first give that damnable and fatal advice of removing out of the way and world that royal youth by fascination, and was himself afterwards in fact an instrument for the effecting of it; and therefore, say they in Scotland, it happened by the just judgment of God, afterwards as a punishment upon him that he himself died by poison."-Sir Simonds D'Ewes' Autobiography, vol. i. p. 91. Historians relate numerous instances of the extent of Somerset's influence with the King; and Mr. Amos remarks, "The records of the State Paper Office supply a variety of particulars to the same effect." The letter from Much-very much could be said upon the Overbury murder, and documents, damning to the King, could, if space permitted, be adduced. But the writer reserves them for an opportunity of entering more fully into the subject. The character of Mayerne yet remains to be thoroughly investigated, and his connection with the King fully explained. When this has been accomplished it will then probably be found that Dr. Mayerne, the courtly pander to the vices of the great, was the instrument, and James the First, the double-faced," serpent-tongued," King of England, the murderer! James to Somerset, printed in Mr. Halliwell's Letters of the Kings of England. vol. ii. p. 126, is perhaps the most extraordinary epistle from a king to a subject on record. As it has been remarked, "it prepares the mind for the darker hints and threatened revelations that followed shortly afterwards." ERRATA. Page 1, line 14, for "Griffit" read "Griffin." many new ELEGIES upon his AS ALSO New Newes, and diuers more Characters, (never before annexed) written by him felfe and other much learned Gentlemen. The ninth impreffion augmented. LONDON, Printed by Edward Griffit for Laurence Lifle, and are to be fold at his fhop at the Tigers Head in Paules Churchyard. 1616. |