Frances Carr, Countess of Somerset (31 May 1590[1] – 23 August 1632), was an English noblewoman who was the central figure in a famous scandal and murder during the reign of King James I.

[citation needed] Lady Frances Howard was married at the age of 14 to the 13-year-old Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex, the grandson of Francis Walsingham.

She was at court and on 5 June 1610 danced as the "Nymph of Lee" representing the Essex River Lea in the masque Tethys' Festival.

It was widely rumoured at the time that Sir Thomas Monson's daughter was a substitute, which is possible because she had requested to be veiled during the examination "for modesty's sake".

[4] According to a friend, one morning (while chatting with a group of male companions) he had stood up and lifted his nightshirt to show them his erection—proving, if nothing else, he was physically capable of arousal.

The Howard faction persuaded the king to offer Overbury the post of Ambassador to Russia, knowing he would refuse in order to stay in England by Somerset's side.

18 months later, in the summer of 1615, a Yorkshire apothecary's assistant confessed on his deathbed that he had been paid £20 by the Countess of Essex to supply her with poisons for murdering Overbury.

The subsequent investigation and trial revealed that Frances had been surreptitiously poisoning Overbury for some time before his death, by smuggling jellies and tarts into his chamber tainted with white arsenic and other toxic compounds.

[12] The Lieutenant of the Tower, Gervase Helwys, admitted that he had received a confession from Overbury's keeper, Richard Weston, that he had been bribed by the Countess of Essex to administer the poison.

[12] However, for fear of the Countess of Essex's political influence, and because his own patron was Frances' great uncle Henry Howard, 1st Earl of Northampton, he took no action against her.

Between mid-October and December 1615, Helwys, Turner, Weston, and the apothecary James Franklin, were all found guilty as accessories to murder and hanged.