to buy "arsenic sublimat" from the hotels of the apothecaries in Pampeluna, Bordeaux, Bayonne, and other towns through which he would pass. He was to powder this, and get into the kitchens of the eminent persons who were to be his victims, and then, when he could do it with safety, he was to sprinkle some of the powder in the soups and meats served to the masters. Wondreton was arrested before he had done any mischief, and was executed.
King John of England is alleged to have caused Maud Fitzwalter to be killed in the Tower by a poisoned egg because she would not yield to his illicit passion.
The sorcery practised so largely in the Middle Ages must have frequently developed into poisoning. The philtres were to a large extent the same as those which the Romans had used. Opium, belladonna, datura, Cannabis Indica, and arsenic were capable of producing astonishing effects, and there was but little chance of detection except the chance which was just as likely to result in the conviction of an innocent as a guilty person. Poisons, or at least the terror of them, played a considerable part in the history of Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the country acquired the nickname of Venenosa Italia. Even earlier the famous Venetian "Council of Ten" was believed to have made a systematic business of assassination by poison. It employed experts and had a regular tariff—so much for a king, so much for a duke and downwards, which was allowed, plus expenses. The crime having been accomplished, the books of the Council recorded the fee, and the single word "factum" was added. The Medicis and the Borgias, and other of the great aristocrats of the nation are supposed to have kept skilled poisoners in their pay. Giambaptista Porta, Mercurialis, and other scientific
