Sometimes a story insists on being told in a particular way. When I started work on The Poison BedI had published four novels about historical women embroiled in the dangerous power play of the Tudor and Elizabethan courts. The place and time of their setting was defined by jeopardy, when those who stepped out of lived under the threat of execution. These novels certainly had elements of the political thriller; but my aim in writing them was primarily to shine a light on these remarkable and half-forgotten women.
 
I had assumed I would take a similar approach when writing about the infamous beauty Frances Howard. A contemporary portrait shows her looking out at the viewer with a knowing half-smile. Her gaze is unusually direct, seeming to challenge the prevailing notion that women of her time should be seen and not heard. This image captivated me and when I dug into her story, discovering that she was at the heart of a scandal that rocked the Jacobean court right up to its highest echelons, I knew I wanted to explore her life and the notorious murder trial in which she became ensnared.

The Jacobean period was an age steeped in paranoia with divided political and religious loyalties, giving rise to some of the bloodiest dramas ever staged. I only had to think of Othello, Macbeth and The Duchess of Malfi, with their themes of revenge, power and manipulation to understand that the atmosphere of my novel would be dark and fraught with tension and danger. Central to Jacobean tragedy is the figure of the disruptive female.  Clever, mysterious and dangerous, these women seemed to me the forerunners to the femmes fatales of classic noir films. Invariably in Jacobean tragedy a woman is blamed for the collapse of moral order in much the same way as Frances Howard was blotted by the scandal that surrounded her.

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On researching her story, it seemed clear to me that the Howards had used Frances as a pawn for their political ambitions. The Howards were a powerful and ruthless bunch who saw an opportunity to align themselves closely to the King by marrying Frances off to the royal favourite Robert Carr. Carr was a man on the rise but the proposed marriage was not a straightforward business, because Frances already had a husband. Behaving much like a mafia don, the Howard paterfamilias negotiated an annulment which initiated the beginnings of the scandal Frances became caught in. But then a man who had vehemently opposed the annulment was found dead, poisoned whilst imprisoned in the Tower of London, and the newlyweds found themselves under arrest. 
 
The more I explored the historical record, the more I came to understand that the circumstances of this murder were condiserably more complex than they first seemed. There were several people in very high places for whom the death might have been most convenient. It seemed possible, probably even, that there had been a cover-up and various plea bargains that obscured the real circumstances of the case. The truth remained frustratingly elusive and I came to see, in a light-bulb moment, that the only way to recount Frances’s story was to place this crime, with all its untied ends, right at its heart.

It became clear that Frances and Robert would each narrate their separate stories, so the reader could understand the circumstances of this controversial marriage from two differing perspectives. In my mind it had become a tale of Jacobean noir, dependent on a central femme fatale, intricate plotting, pace and the meticulous, slow release of information. As such it had more in common with its contemporary cousin, the twisty, domestic psychological page-turner, than the historical court novel I had initially imagined. I had no choice but to write it as a thriller.
 
Now I have turned to the dark side it would seem there is no going back and I am working on a companion piece to The Poison Bed, a revenge thriller, inspired by another true crime, called The Honey and the Sting,to be published next year.
 
The Poison Bed by E. C. Fremantle is published by Michael Joseph.
This article was first published in Shots Magazine

​Two men, intimate friends, who call each other husband and wife, from our modern perspective, offers little ambiguity. We would assume them gay, on that evidence alone. But as many historians have pointed out the language of friendship between men in Early Modern England tended to be uninhibited and overblown with terms like ‘love’ thrown about liberally. Masculinity was differently defined at the time – you only have to consider the clothes men wore: festoons of pearls and lace and pom-poms on their shoes the size of cabbages. So, the letters, though compelling, and certainly convincing to this writer, are not sufficient evidence to prove James’s homosexuality.

​The recent discovery of a secret tunnel at Apethorpe House, one of James’s favourite residences, between his and George Villiers’s bedchambers, caused a flurry of supposition. But this too has a plausible and mundane explanation. Corridors between bedchambers were unremarkable in palaces of the period. Privacy, as we recognise it, didn’t exist in such buildings, which were designed to house a court of hundreds. The bed chamber was as much a place for political activities as for sexual, and corridors like this would have allowed access to the king’s close circle, including the Gentlemen of the Bedchamber, of which Villiers was one. All Early Modern kings had Gentlemen of the Bedchamber, several young courtiers who had close access to the monarch and were required to sleep in his room on a rota, as a security measure.

James never tried to hide these relationships, bestowing honours on them and promoting them to high office. Stuart became Duke of Lennox, Carr, Earl of Somerset and Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and they were given great political responsibilities, though in some cases were not particularly suited for such roles. These men played a key role in James’s life and, in the case of Carr, stretched his good will almost to breaking point. Carr became mixed up in a poisoning plot, for which he and his wife were convicted. There is reason to believe that James’s actions around the trial indicated some fear that Carr might have revealed too much in his scaffold speech, were he condemned to death. It is also a matter of historical record that courtiers schemed to place beautiful young men in the King’s path in the hope of creating some advantage out of it, in much the same way pretty daughters were dangled under Henry VIII’s nose. They saw a weakness to exploit.

‘There is no denying that James I was fond of his favourites, who happened to be young men, but we cannot say for certain if this attraction resulted in sexual relations. There is no actual evidence to support such claims and the act of sodomy was in fact illegal and deemed a sin in 17th century England and James was a man who feared sin’. 

​Does this though assume that homosexuality is only about penetration? There is always a fascination about who puts what in which hole – think of the did-they-didn’t-they obsession about Elizabeth and Dudley – but for me this misses the point. (s’cuse the pun!) The focus on the penetrative act as defining sexuality would exclude sex between women, but also other sexual practices between men, that don’t involve sodomy. It was sodomy specifically that was the legal and religious infringement at the time. The law had nothing to say about most other intimate acts. It is possible to imagine, then, even considering his fear of sin, that James may have indulged in practices we might consider homosexual but not in sodomy itself.

​This was no Harry and Megan love match. As was the norm for aristocrats in Early Modern England, it was a dynastic marriage, but unusual in that it was designed to unite two opposing political factions. The Howards had long been a powerful force and were shown great favour by the new King James when he came to the throne. They publically held the same religiously tolerant political position as the King and were keen to strike treaties with old Catholic enemies like Spain. The Essex faction, back in favour having helped James to the English throne, supported a hard-line Protestant agenda and were more inclined to war than ‘jaw’. Consequently, the wedding, as a catalyst for peace between warring parties, heralded an air of optimism and unity in the early Stuart court.  

​There was a new star at court. Robert Carr had attracted the attention of the King, who had a penchant for beautiful young men, and had consequently risen to a position of power as the royal favourite. Carr, in the market for a wife, was taken with Frances, and her family saw an opportunity to consolidate their close ties to the King. Their intention was to extract Frances from her marriage with Essex, whose star was on the wane, and hitch her to Carr, whose star was rising. But, even with the backing of the King, who could refuse his favourite nothing, this would not be easy.

​His friends testified that though he was unable to perform with his wife, he was certainly capable with other women – they had seen it for themselves. One can only imagine the atmosphere in court while the discussion of the young man’s erection took place before the bishops. Frances bore the brunt of the public shaming, being labelled a whore and a witch who had made her husband impotent by nefarious means. She was charged to undergo an inspection, which involved several respectable matrons and midwives all having a prod around her nether regions to see if she remained virgo intacta. 

​A scandal of vast proportions blew up with ribald news-sheets having the kind of field day the red-tops have when a footballer beds a woman who is not his wife. It was generally believed that Frances must have been substituted by another, purer, woman for the purposes of hoodwinking the respectable matrons. A contemporary rhyme put it thus: this dame was inspected but fraud interjected/ A maid of more perfection. 
 
The church commission deliberated for months and proceedings were further delayed by an old friend of Carr’s, Sir Thomas Overbury, who was vehemently opposed to the plan, threatening to prevent the annulment. He was thrown into the Tower on orders of the King, where he died. Eventually the King, who was keen to see his favourite married for reasons of his own, intervened by appointing two further bishops to push the decision in his favour. The annulment was eventually granted. The favourite, now the Earl of Somerset, was married to Frances Howard by the same bishop who performed her first marriage and in equal splendour. An entire week of court celebrations marked the nuptials.