There was nothing she could say in her defense. The whole cruel story was known: The attempt to bewitch Essex, and everyone believed, murder him, which had failed. The attempt to murder Overbury which had succeeded.

The Chancellor delivered the sentence.

“Frances, Countess of Somerset, whereas you have been indicted, arraigned and pleaded Guilty, and have nothing to say for yourself, it is now my part to pronounce judgment…. You shall be carried hence to the Tower of London and from thence to a place of execution where you are to be hanged by the neck till you are dead. The Lord have mercy upon your soul.”

As the Chancellor was speaking Frances saw a pair of brooding eyes fixed upon her from among those assembled to watch her tried.

Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, could not completely loathe this woman who had tried to make such havoc of his life, and as he looked at the prisoner at the bar he could not shut out of his mind the memory of a laughing girl who had once danced with him so merrily at their wedding.

Frances turned away. She did not wonder what her first husband was thinking of her now. Her future loomed before her so terrible, so frightening that the past meant little to her.

Out into the fresh air. Once again to enter the gloomy precincts of the Tower.

When next she left it—

But Frances could not bear to contemplate that terror.

She lifted her face to the May sun; never had it seemed so desirable; never had the river danced and sparkled so brightly; never did the world seem so beautiful as it did now when she was condemned to leave it forever.

The next day the scene at Westminster Hall was similar but this time there was a different prisoner at the Bar.