The King being sick of a tertian ague, and that in the spring which was of itself never found deadly, the Duke took his opportunity when all the King’s doctors of physic were at dinner upon the Monday before the King died, without their knowledge or consent, offered to the King a white powder to take, the which the King long-time refused, but overcome by his flattering importunity at length took it, drunk it in wine, and immediatly became worse and worse, falling into many soundings and pains, and violent fluxes of the belly so tormented, that his Majesty cried out aloud, ‘Oh this white powder! This white powder! Would to God I had never taken it; it will cost me my life.’ In like manner the Countess of Buckingham, my Lord of Buckingham’s mother upon the Friday thereafter, the physicians also being absent and at dinner, and not made acquainted with her doings, applied a plaster to the King’s heart and breast, whereupon his Majesty grew faint, short-breathed and in great agony. Some of the physicians after dinner returning to see the King, by the offensive smell of the plaster perceived some thing to be about the King hurtful to him, and searched what it could be, found it out and exclaimed that the King was poisoned. Then Buckingham entering commanded the physicians out of the room, caused one to be committed prisoner to his own chamber, and another to remove from court, quarrelled others of the King’s servants in the sick King’s own presence, so far that he offered to draw his sword against them in the King’s sight. And Buckingham’s mother kneeling before the King, with a brazen face cried out, ‘Justice, justice, Sir I demand justice of your Majesty’. The King asking, ‘for what?’, she answered, ‘For that which their lives is no sufficient satisfaction, for saying, that my son and I have poisoned your Majesty.’
