The Notorious Lady Essex

"The saucy sinner Fanny Howard, Countess of Essex, and the lascivious age in which she lived, have found their perfect biography in this witty, urbane history which is at once a racy love story, a true crime-and-trial tale, and a work of original scholarship about the corrupt court of King James I. When Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, She was succeeded on the English throne by James of Scotland, who repaid one of his many debts of gratitude to the great Howard family and to the memory of the late Earl of Essex by personally blessing a marriage between the Earl's son and Fanny, the titian-haired Howard daughter. Love was not involved, only politics, and since the bride was but thirteen, her boy-husband hardly older, the marriage remained unconsummated. But when Essex returned from his studies abroad to claim his bride and his due, Fanny had not only already had one flirtation (some said it was more than that) with the Prince of Wales, she had now really fallen in love with the King's handsome Scottish favorite, Robert Carr. With the aid of witchcraft, adolescent wiliness, and some very unaristocratic friends, Fanny engaged in a passionate affair with Carr while at the same time resisting her husband's advances. In the annulment proceedings of 1613 (the scandal of the season), she claimed to be a virgin still, her husband impotent, and with the King's influence, she secured her freedom. But something even more unwholesome was going on in that scandalous season: the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury while a prisoner in the Tower of London. This minor author and major adviser to Carr had seriously opposed Fanny's planned marriage to the favorite, and received in his soup and desserts her deadly revenge. That case broke open in 1615, and Fanny and her new husband, by then the Earl and Countess of Somerset, went on trial for murder. This is the first biography of a defiant teen-ager of 350 years ago who has to be called remarkable (whatever else she is called!), and to whose story Professor Le Comte brings both wit and sympathy, a novelist's interest in psychology, a scholar's respect for the known and lesser-known facts."--Dust jacket.