INDEX

[1]. Collins’ Noble Families.

[2]. The Marquis of Dorset.

[3]. State MS.

[4]. ? Almoner.

[5]. Avoid = clear out.

[6]. Lady Jane Grey.

[7]. State MS.

[8]. According to Leland, “Halamshire beginneth a ii. mile from Rotheram. Sheffield iii miles from Rotheram, wher the lord of Shreusbyre’s castle, the chefe market towne of Halamshire. And Halamshire goeth one way vi or vii miles above Sheffield by west, yet as I here say, another way the next village to Sheffield is in Derbyshire. Al Halamshire go to the seesions of York and is counted as a membre of Yorkshire. Aeglesfield and Bradfeld ii townelettes or villages long to one paroche chirche. So by this meanes (as I was enstructed) ther be but iii paroches in Halamshire that is of name, and a great Chapelle.”

Hunter sums up these three parishes as Sheffield, Ecclesfield, and Hansworth, with the chapelry of Bradfield.

[9]. Hunter’s Hallamshire.

[10]. None = own. Probably an abbreviation of “mine own.”

[11]. Hunter’s Hallamshire.

[12]. His disaffected tenants at Bolsover.

[13]. Construction.

[14]. When Lady Catherine Grey was imprisoned in the Tower for her secret marriage with the Earl of Hertford she took amongst her belongings some pet monkeys. These played havoc with the hangings, not in first-rate condition, with which, by Elizabeth’s order, the cheerlessness of her prison apartments was mitigated.

[15]. The famous scandal-letter about the Countess of Shrewsbury from Mary to Elizabeth, to which reference follows later.

[16]. Blank in the MS.

[17]. Of Norfolk.

[18]. A servant of the Shrewsburys.

[19]. Daughters of William, Lord Howard of Effingham.

[20]. Blank In the MS.

[21]. Hunter’s Hallamshire.

[22]. In the light of after events this is a somewhat rash offer!

[23]. Corker had apparently eaten his words in a whining counter statement.

[24]. Hunter’s Hallamshire.

[25]. His death took place in 1575, but Mary did not hear of it till a year later.

[26]. Leader, Mary Queen of Scots in Captivity.

[27]. The Cavendish motto, meaning “Secure by taking care.”

[28]. Mary Queen of Scots: Her Environment and Tragedy, by T. F. Henderson.

[29]. State Papers—Domestic, quoted by Miss Strickland.

[30]. State Papers—Domestic.

[31]. Blank in the original, as given in Lodge’s Illustrations of British History.

[32]. Hunter’s Hallamshire.

[33]. Explain or set aside.

[34]. Lady Grace’s letter.

[35]. The Queen had a small palace here, in Northamptonshire.

[36]. Gilbert Talbot had apparently fallen out of favour. The matter is, however, so unimportant that no explanation remains of it.

[37]. His three wives were: Amy or Anne, daughter and heir to Sir John Robsart; Douglas, daughter of William Lord Howard of Effingham and widow of John Lord Sheffield, by whom he had one son, Sir Robert Dudley; and Lettice Knollys, daughter of Sir Francis Knollys and widow of Walter Earl of Essex. Amy Robsart died suddenly at Kenilworth, and he did not even attend her funeral; Lady Sheffield he repudiated because of his passion for Lettice Knollys, whose death took place under suspicious circumstances. He declared his son by Lady Sheffield to be illegitimate, and she, though married to him, was so frightened by his attempt to remove her by poison, in order that he might wed the widowed Countess of Essex, that, though legally bound to him, she became the wife of Sir Edward Stafford, of Grafton.

[38]. Hunter’s Hallamshire.

[39]. Her husband died of consumption within two years of the hasty and romantic wedding at Rufford Abbey.

[40]. Hallamshire knives, or “whittles,” were famous, and the Earl often sent gifts of sets to his friends in these early days of the development of Sheffield cutlery.

[41]. Creighton takes the view that this was Elizabeth’s elaborate method of flogging the couple at Chatsworth for luring Leicester to Chatsworth, and that she highly disapproved of the visit.

[42]. Ambrose Earl of Warwick, to whom Lord Leicester bequeathed his estates, only making his own son, Robert Dudley, heir in the second place.

[43]. In sending her thanks for Leicester’s entertainment Elizabeth apparently despatched also to Shrewsbury a separate letter embodying her old suspicious fears.

[44]. Could this be the Earl of Warwick, who, as suggested in Elizabeth’s skittish letter just quoted, had been invited to Chatsworth with Lord Leicester?

[45]. Hunter’s Hallamshire.

[46]. Letters of Mary Queen of Scots, quoted by Leader.

[47]. Hunter’s Hallamshire.

[48]. The Earl and Sir John Zouch, a kinsman of the Countess, were contesting the right to sell some Derbyshire lead mines.

[49]. Hunter’s Hallamshire.

[50]. Ibid.

[51]. Goodrich Castle, in Herefordshire; also one of the Shrewsbury properties at this date.

[52]. His little son.

[53]. The mouth of a coal-pit.

[54]. Probably “detailing” or “appealing to.”

[55]. Hunter’s Hallamshire.

[56]. That is, clearly a plot against Shrewsbury.

[57]. The Duke of Anjou, Elizabeth’s new suitor, whom she called her “Frogg,” while his ambassador, Simier, who so nearly, in his own opinion, secured for his master the bride of his ambitions, was known at Court as the “Monkey.”

[58]. Leader.

[59]. Evidently his elder brother Francis Talbot, who was probably about to visit his parents.

[60]. Quoted in Creighton’s Elizabeth.

[61]. Ellis’s Letters (Lansdowne MSS.).

[62]. Ellis’s Letters.

[63]. Labanoff.

[64]. Ibid.

[65]. Ellis’s Letters.

[66]. Labanoff. State Papers, Mary Queen of Scots.

[67]. I have translated this freely. Mary means the tissue of treachery, the fabrications of the Countess during their acquaintance.

[68]. The Queen.

[69]. Labanoff. This translation is the one given by Leader.

[70]. Steele.

[71]. Vol. CCVII State Papers.

[72]. This “dyarium” is reprinted by Wright, Vol. II, Queen Elizabeth and her Times.

[73]. The day after Michaelmas.

[74]. Ere.

[75]. Letter to Liggons, May 18, 1586. State MSS. Mary Queen of Scots.

[76]. Labanoff.

[77]. Killigrew was a deadly enemy of Mary, for he had been sent in 1572 to Scotland by Elizabeth to propose the demand by the Scots of the surrender of Mary on condition that she should be executed.

[78]. Rolson was a gentleman pensioner of Elizabeth who betrayed his father, one of the conspirators who engaged in 1570 with the sons of the Earl of Derby in a plot to convey Mary out of Chatsworth through a window. She mentioned him four years later in a letter to “Monsieur de Glasgo” with the greatest abhorrence, both as filial traitor and as author of a design to poison her.

[79]. I.e. Of her keep and its cost.

[80]. The Act referred to is one passed in the reign of Richard II to punish the slander of high personages or officials.

[81]. State MSS.

[82]. By “A Catholic,” State MSS.

[83]. Hunter’s Hallamshire.

[84]. Blank in the MS.

[85]. Ellis’s Letters.

[86]. Ellis’s Letters.

[87]. Costello.

[88]. “None-Such”—one of the royal palaces at this time.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

  1. P. [326], changed “prosperous except for their absurd expenditure” to “preposterous except for their absurd expenditure”.
  2. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
  3. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
  4. Footnotes were re-indexed using numbers and collected together at the end of the last chapter.