The rise and fall of Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset

A fluke accident at the joust

Robert Carr meets James VI

Robert’s relationship with Overbury might have been one of millions that remained obscured to history had it not been for a fluke accident in March 1607. 

Robert, by then 23, had been living at the English court for four years. His master had followed the King south after James became king of England and Ireland in 1603. 

During a jousting tournament, attended by the King, Robert came off his horse and broke his leg. King James politely went to visit the wounded combatant.

The King’s visits to Robert’s sickbed quickly turned into a daily occurrence. The arrival of this ‘new comet’ in royal favour was noted by courtiers. By the end of the year, word of Robert’s intimacy with the King had spread beyond the palace walls and onto the streets of London, where it is mentioned in surviving diary entries and letters.

'Out of mere love'

James VI falls for Robert Carr

James was soon very clearly in love with Robert Carr and, as far as we can tell, the feelings were initially reciprocated. What made their relationship unusual to those that had come before was that Robert was the only one of James’s favourites who was never referred to as exceptionally handsome. 

Robert was described as of average looks and medium height, with blond hair. More accurately, he was described that way in private. In public, the court all but fell over themselves with their acrobatic sycophancy. 

With the King settling his bills, Robert discovered a love of jewellery and clothes. What style he wore on Monday had become the fashion by Tuesday. Irked that they had backed the wrong candidate, the Howards contemptuously referred to Robert as ‘the Scottish lad’ in their letters.

Robert loved his new wardrobe and the country estates deeded to him by the King. However, correctly judging himself to lack the savage intelligence needed to triumph in the game of politics, Robert refused to participate in government. He contented himself with playing chess with James in the evenings, sharing his bed, and accompanying him on his many hunting trips to lodges in the country, some of which were renovated to suit Robert’s tastes. 

James and Robert wore bejewelled miniatures of one another, encircled with diamonds and hanging on the kind of ribbon associated with courting couples. They took the King’s pet armadillo for walks in the countryside and returned to London for lavish Christmas celebrations. During the latter, Robert was always careful to be respectful towards James’s elegant and intelligent wife, Anna of Denmark.

James would later look back on these years as ones of real happiness, when a devoted Robert ‘held grip of me but out of mere love,’ rather than ambition.

The return of Thomas Overbury

James and Robert’s relationship comes to an end

Five years was a good run, which ended in 1612 as politics finally broke through into James and Robert’s idyll. The death of James’s chief minister, Sir Robert Cecil, in May left a power vacuum at the heart of government, which the competing factions were determined to fill. 

Sensing an opportunity to create a lucrative political career for himself, Robert’s former ‘bedfellow and minion’ Thomas Overbury returned to his side. He encouraged Robert to play the factions off against one another. 

With Overbury acting as the middleman, huge bribes flowed to Robert, who offered to promote people to the King. Those who could not pay found themselves passed over for less qualified candidates. In retaliation, they formed the nucleus of a new clique at court, who now had a vested interest in seeing Robert ousted.

A scandal breaks

Robert Carr is implicated in the Overbury scandal

Then, a former employee of the Tower of London came forward with the sensational information that Frances had bribed him to poison Thomas Overbury via a friend. 

It emerged that during his imprisonment, Overbury had tried to blackmail Robert by threatening to reveal the ‘Secrets of all kinds’ that had passed in their previous ‘nine years of love.’ Robert went on a rampage, destroying every letter Overbury had sent to mutual friends. 

According to a friend, the threat of blackmail had turned Robert’s former love for Overbury into ‘a malice or hatred, mixed with deep and bottomless fears’. 

Whether Robert had known of his wife’s decision to murder Overbury is unclear, but he had done everything to destroy much of the evidence. It was only the testimony of the Tower employee and several of his colleagues that exposed the plot. 

Those who had helped Frances were hanged. She soon followed the late Overbury to the Tower of London and was tried. Both she and Robert were found guilty, which James knew he could not prevent. There was too much information indicting them. The public were revolted, fascinated, demanding justice, and paying touts for the best tickets to attend the trials.

While he could not halt their trials, James resisted pressure to sign Frances and Robert's death warrants. Instead, they spent years imprisoned at the Tower. As he lay dying nine years later, James pardoned them. It was a final gesture of love, which left Robert free to spend the last 20 years of his life back where he had started – on the fringes of relevance – dying in 1645, in his 60s.

The life that had taken Robert from anonymity to notoriety, via palace and then prison, was one shaped by love as he rose and hubris as he fell. It remains one of the most remarkable downfalls in James VI and I’s fascinating reign.