It was the greatest scandal of the Jacobean age. In 1616, Frances Howard and her husband, the Earl of Somerset, were found guilty of the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. Already vilified as a consequence of the annulment of her first marriage. Frances Howard was branded 'a lewd woman', 'a wife, a witch, a murderess and a whore', and has gone down in history as the epitome of female villainy.

But has she been misrepresented? In a fascinating examination both of the historical evidence and of the cultural assumptions which conditioned the perception of Frances Howard, David Lindley presents important new insights into the case against her. In doing so he challenges, radically, the assumptions which have constructed Howard as a deviant woman, raising questions not just about how women were perceived in the seventeenth century, but how society still judges women today. Not just a historical biography, The Trials of Frances Howard is also a close examination of the relationship between history and literature, the place of women in society and the way in which judgements of the law are bound up with politics and ideology.