THE QUEEN’S ORDER.
“An order pronounced by her Majesty between the Earl of Shrewsbury and the Countess his wife in the presence of the Secretary (Walsingham).
“That the said Earl shall give present order for the conveying of the said Countess to some one of his principal manor houses in Derbyshire, furnished for her to remain in, with liberty to go either to Chatsworth or Hardwick, and to return to the Earl’s house at her pleasure.
“That the said Earl shall allow to the said Countess towards the defraying of the charges of household £300 and fuel until he shall yield to cohabitation, and doth also promise in respect of her Majesty’s mediation further gratuity of yearly provision for the maintenance of her said house.
“That the said Earl shall appoint four or five of his own men to attend upon the said Countess and shall pay them their wages.
“The said Earl promiseth her Majesty to resort sometimes to the house where the said Countess shall lie, as also to send for the said Countess upon notice given of her desire to some other house where he himself shall remain, and in case she shall so behave herself toward him as one that by good and dutiful ways [?] will do her best endeavour to recover his former good opinion and love, then it is to be hoped that continual cohabitation will follow, which her Majesty greatly desires.”
All this looks highly promising. It arouses glowing hopes in the minds of the onlookers that after many toils and dangers, social and political, such a man and such a woman, born to eminence and possessed of great qualities, will enjoy many happy years together, quit of their old intolerable burden, the care of “the Daughter of Debate.” Such a letter as this from the faithful Gilbert Dickenson, which welcomes my Lord home to his manor and his acres, telling of the folk who gather to greet him, and of the fatted calf in preparation, completes the picture:—
“May it please your Lo. to understand that divers honest men have heard of your Lo. coming home and would have come to meet your Lo. but that I have stayed them till I hear further of your Lo. pleasure; and there is such running from house to house to tell that your Lo. did lie at Wingfield all night and everyone preparing to meet your L.
“Your Lo. should come into the country with such love as never did man in England, which is a greater comfort to us than any worldly riches, and for sheep, oxen, and lambs shall not be wanting nor anything which can be got, God willing.”
Alack for love and hope! Only two months after this stately cavalcade of Earl and Lady travelled home, the Countess addressed the Treasurer again. She had sore complaints to make of her husband.
“My singular good Lord,” she wrote, “I most humbly and heartily thank your Lo. for your letter sent by my son William Cavendish. It is my greatest comfort that it pleaseth your Lo. to have care of me, else grief and displeasure would have ended my days. Since my coming into the country my Lo. my husband hath come to his home Wingfield, where I most remain, not past three times; more I have not seen him; he stayed not over a day at a time at his being here.... Since my coming down, he hath allowed me gross provisions as beef, mutton, and corn to serve my house, but now not long since he hath sent me word that he will not allow me any further and doth withdraw all his provision, not suffering me to have sufficient fire.”[[81]] She goes on to say that if all were as her Majesty desired and assured her, namely, that she might be always with her husband, she would not need such allowances of provision, etc. etc.
This attitude of the Earl strikes one as a little petty at this juncture. He had, after all, large estates and many houses, and there was no need to starve his lady out of Wingfield, even if their characters and moods were finally and utterly incompatible.
All through these years 1586–7 he was still worried by Gilbert’s affairs. The letters which follow explain themselves.
The first is a denunciation of Gilbert’s extravagant wife:—
“Son Gilbert,
“I thank you for your pains taken in certifying me of those your sundry news, being the very same in effect that I heard of the day before I received your letter. For answer thereto, you shall understand my meaning towards you is as good as it was at that our departure you put me in mind of; but for any help about the payment of your debts I do advise you altogether to rely on yourself, and the best discharge you shall be able to make thereof, than any ways upon me; who, least my silence in that behalf, and at this time, might breathe some hope agreeable to your conceived opinion, do in sadness, as you did in jest, return you a short answer for your long warning; willing you either to provide for yourself, as you may, or else be disappointed; for during my life, I would not have you to expect any more at my hands than I have already allowed you, whereof I know you might live well, and clear from danger of any, as I did, if you had that governance over your wife, as her pomp and court-like manner of life were some deal assuaged. And, for mine own part, and your good, I do wish you had but half so much to relieve your necessities as she and her mother have spent in seeking, through malice, mine overthrow and dishonour, and I in defending my just cause against them: by means of whose evil dealings, together with other bargains wherein I have entangled myself of late, I am not able either to help you, or store myself for any other purpose I shall take in hand these twelve months. Thus praying God to bless you, I bid you farewell.
“Sheffield Lodge, the 17th of June, 1587.
“Your loving father,
“G. Shrewsbury.”
The next is from the newest mediator between Talbot and Cavendish, Sir Henry Lee, a long-winded but delightful personage of romantic and fantastic temperament. Lodge assures us that he was “bred from infancy in Courts and camps,” and that this induced him not only to take a leading part in tilts and tournaments, but led to his assumption of the “self-created title of Champion of the Queen,” and that he made a vow to present himself in the tiltyard in that character on the 27th of November in every year, till disabled by age. This vow he kept, and upon his retirement at the age of sixty installed as his successor the Earl of Cumberland in the presence of Queen and Court, “offering his armour at her Majesty’s feet, and clothing himself in a black velvet coat and cap.”
Sir Henry Lee to Lord Talbot.
“Sir,
“On Monday last I received your letter; on Thursday I went to Sheffield, my Lord, your father’s, where I found him much amended, after his physic, of the gout, which took him at Brierly, and troubled him until then. My being there made him much better disposed, of whom I received many sundry kindnesses and more favours than I have or ever may deserve. Acknowledgment is small requital, but that I do and will, to him, yourself, and yours, in as sundry ways as by my wit, will, and fortune I may. Dinner done, and all rising saving his Lordship and my poor self, I told him I had written to you, according to his liberty given me upon such talk as his Lordship had last with me at Worksop; that I received an answer which then I presented unto him. I left him alone; Mr. Henry Talbot, Roger Portington, your very good friend, with myself, standing at the window, where I, that knew the sundry contents of the letter, might see any alteration in himself, as they that stood by imagined by his sighs, guessed according to their humours. Your letter perused (and well marked, as it did well appear unto me by his speeches immediately after), rising from the board, with more colour in his cheeks than ordinary, he led me by the hand into his withdrawing chamber, where he told me he did well perceive the contents of your letter; that you had been long a disobedient child to him; that you joined and practiced against him, and with such as sought his overthrow, and consequently your own undoing, and the espials and parties you had in his house did show your care to be more for that he had himself; but, withal, he knew you had many good parts, but those overruled by others that should be better governed by yourself. More regard, he says, to your old father, would do well; who has been ever loving unto you and must be requited with more love and obedience, or else (by his divination) your credit will slowly increase. He is glad, as he says, that you live in those parts (but he speaks ironia) where some good may be learned, but more to be shunned; yet all well where grace is, so you are able to go through withal; but for the feeding of such vain time and superfluous excess as should do best for yourself to diminish, he is not able, he says, and I fear will never be willing, to maintain. He reckoned how many had been in hand with him for the payment of your debts; my Lord Treasurer and others. His answer was that, through the wilfulness of him, who shunned his advice, and the imperfections of others, his undoing should not grow, that they themselves might have cause to pity him in his age, through his folly and their persuasions. There, my Lord, he told that three thousand pounds nearly went out of his living to his children, and many other sums to small purpose to remember. He confessed he sent you such a letter as you write of, and written by a man of his, but altogether by his direction. But he was old, lame of the gout, and now no more able to write himself. He spake much of your inconstancy in your friendships, and especially to my Lord of Leicester; sometimes, as you favoured, there was not such; and laboured himself to rely more upon him, altogether misliking such humours as favoured and disfavoured in such sort, and in so short a time; but, for himself, he would fly such variety, and perform his friendship and faith. Truly, my Lord, he used many of these speeches before I interrupted him, and good reason I had to forbear, for he spoke not without grief, as I guess, and passion, I am sure; therefore [I] thought best to stay until the storm was somewhat overblown. At the last I besought him to tell me whether these old grievances were not remitted upon conference between yourselves; and whether your abode there was not with his good allowance, that you should procure yourself to be joined with him in his offices; further, that you should, by good means, procure some honourable office for your better understanding. All this he did not deny, but, touching his discourse, I think not fit to set it down, my messenger is so uncertain, and my meaning to do good, if I may, but no hurt. He is old and unwieldy and deceived by such he trusteth, and you shun to assist him, and therefore will let out all; but that I believe not. I found one thing in your letter: I said that I feared, and made me sorry; that your favouring so much your own credit, and finding so small means to answer your creditors, you might fall into some hard course; and, before these words were all out of my mouth, he said, ‘Yea, marry, some desperation.’ Therefore I took hold: ‘Good my Lord, license me to speak with your favour, that speak nothing by practice again, but through a dutiful mind to you, now in years, and for yours, by course of nature likely to succeed you. If he should, as you have termed it, take any desperate way, pass into those parts which this doubtful time brings, to many dangers, and especially to our nation, were not this peril great, and, by presumption, not to be recovered? You cannot be ignorant, for all your mislike, what a son you have; esteemed of the highest, favoured of the best, and the best judgments, and how much he differs from other men’s sons of your own conditions; so much your love, care, and regard should be the more by how much your loss were more (to be balanced by reason) than all the rest put together. Your country may and will challenge a part and party in him, as a wise man, fit and able to serve it. You yet find not what a Lord Talbot you have; but if he should by any extraordinary accident be taken from you, and not to be recovered, yourself, with your grief, would accompany your white hair to your end with a grave full of cares; and who doth sooner enter into desperation than great wits accompanied with mighty and honourable hearts, which hardly can away with want, but never with discredit?’ This, my Lord, sunk somewhat into him. He confessed much of this. He mused long, and spake little: he stayed, standing long, without complaining of his legs (by reason he was earnest) one hour and a half at the least before we parted. So, in many doubts, I left him, minding to send such letters as you required, to Welbeck and thence to be sent to you: wherewith I took my leave.
“I will never take upon me to advise you. You see now what passed, and upon what grounds; therefore resolve, upon temperate blood and good judgment, and free advice, for the time present: remembering both love and duty, and that you deal with a kind man. I wish a sudden journey, at the least to see him; he must needs take it well, and I know your age may endure it; your friends desire it, and I among the rest (to see you ere I go from these parts) that loveth you, whose being here with my Lady, would have made this country to me far otherwise than it is, and my abode much longer than it is like to be. I have troubled you long. The news is that my Lady Talbot, the widow, and your sister my Lady Mary, with my Lady Manners, as I take it came to Sheffield this night past. I think my Lord will to Hatfield the next week that cometh, or the week following, with such company as he hath, but the certainty I know not: but whether he go there, or no, I wish you would haste to meet him. My brother, Mr. Portington, Mr. Lascelles, with myself, and Mr. Fawley, recommendeth our love and service to your good Lordship. I beseech you let me be remembered humbly unto my Lady, and to good Sir Charles Candishe and his family, wishing them both the best happiness.
“From Lettwell, the 13th of August, 1587.
“Your Lordship’s poor and faithful friend ever,
“Henry Lee.”
The Earl of Shrewsbury to Sir Henry Lee.
“Good Sir Henry Lee,
“I have perused that enclosed letter you sent me within yours, and do account you most faithful and forward to do good where you profess friendship. Neither can the eloquence of the one, nor the earnest desire of the other, persuade me to do otherwise in that matter than I have already, upon good consideration, determined. My son compares my words with his own conceits, and means to save his credit as shall content me, but when he sealeth I will assure. I proposed to leave him in better case than my father left me, and if I give him so much as I cannot withhold, I am not in his debt. I forgave him all his faults, but I promised him not that I would trust him. He can bring the honour of his house now to make for his purpose, but he remembereth not how he went about to dishonour it. He laboured not to make sure my Lord of Leicester of their side that went about to accuse his father of treason. He did not countenance his wife and her mother against me in all their bad actions. His deceits never moved me to be displeased. Well, if they did, I pronounce forgiveness thereof to his friend, as I have done before unto him. He knoweth whereof his grief grew; let him henceforth avoid the occasions. He says he is not overruled by his wife, but attributes that to my speeches: but I say, if he be not he will quickly recover, and live better of his annuity than I could do when I bare his name, with less allowance. Yet (notwithstanding his doubtful words of your welcome hither, in respect you have moved me for his good) I beseech you come ten times for every one past; assuring you that the most eloquent orator in England can do no more with me than you have, till I perceive a new course. Thus, with my hearty commendations, I bid you farewell.
“Sheffield, September 6th, 1587.
“Your loving friend,
“G. Shrewsbury.”
The long letter from Sir Henry Lee gives a pathetic and vivid portrait of the old Government official who feels himself at last like a worn-out tool, unloved, unnecessary to the world—save when his position as a premier peer required him to raise levies for the defence and contest of Ireland, or county matters called him from retirement in his military and judicial capacity. To the very end he was a prompt official, and his family motto, “Prest d’Accomplir,” his watchword. In 1586 he was still among those who receive urgent orders to arm and prepare bodies of Derbyshire fighting men, and must give his attention to the most absurd details of uniform, such as the “convenient hose and doublet, and a cassock of motley ... either sea-green colour or russet,” noted among the regulations issued by his fellows of the Privy Council.
These things are, however, only flashes in the pan. He is getting old. All the world was growing old, and all his contemporaries, in the phrase of the day, were “a little thing sickish.” The intrepid and laborious Walsingham is described as being “troubled with his old diseases: the tympany and carnosity,” and so is absent from Court. Letters still flowed in to the Earl, news of the Netherlands campaign, from the now depressed Lord Leicester, the Governor, news of the Queen’s movements, of Spain, of the legal strife of his contemporaries and friends. They are only sticks and straws flung into the deep and turgid current of his lonely, embittered life.
It was in the midst of such disputes as these that the summons had come to him from Fotheringay.
CHAPTER XX
FADING GLORIES
His own household and many of his tenants were faithful to the Earl Marshal. Fortunately he had not at the moment much leisure for private broodings. The Babington conspiracy had churned up the old alarms about Mary, the Royal Commission for her trial was being appointed, and, though he was fortunately able to plead illness as an excuse for once more repairing to London to take his seat in this important meeting of the Council, he was obliged by letter to Burghley to assert his willingness to add his name to the decree of the Privy Council in regard to Mary’s sentence, at the same time enclosing his seal and giving the Lord Treasurer full authority to sign for him. Did he at the moment of writing recall that broidered motto which must have flashed at him many times from the dais which his prisoner contrived for herself in her imprisonment: “En ma fin est mon commencement”? If so, the pride and pathos of it must have struck home terribly. For he too was nearing his end. He too had naught but sorrow in his heir, and though Gilbert, Edward, and Henry Talbot still lived to carry on his name, it could not be in a very hopeful spirit that he thought upon the continuance of his line so long as he apprehended the renewal of family strife and could not forgive or love again his high-handed lady.
Many things had happened to Mary since they parted, notably the failure of the last great conspiracy for her freedom. Of all these he was fully informed, and sums up her affairs in a single phrase in the ensuing letter:—
“To the Right Honourable my verie good Lord the Lord Burghley, Lord Thresorer of England.
“My noble good Lord,
“I have received your Lordship’s letters both of the 12th November and the 14th of the same, whereby I find myself greatly beholden unto your Lordship for your good remembrance of me, with the proceeding of the foul matters of the Scots Queen; sentence whereof, I understand by your Lordship, is given and confirmed, and for execution to be had accordingly. I perceive it now resteth in her Majesty’s hands; for my own part I pray that God may so inspire her heart to take that course as may be for her Majesty’s own safety; the which I trust her Majesty’s grave wisdom will wisely foresee; which in my consent cannot be without speedy execution.
“And thus wishing to your good Lordship as to myself, do bid you right heartily farewell. Your Lordship’s assuredly,
“Shrewsbury.
“Orton Longville, this 17th November, 1586.”
In spite of illness, Shrewsbury could not escape the wretched responsibility of assisting at the tragedy of Fotheringay. There he was forced, on February 8th, 1587, to stand upon the high stage, seven feet square and five feet high, to receive Mary as she mounted it to her death. “At the two upper corners were two stools set,” runs the record,[[82]] “one for the Earl of Shrewsbury, another for the Earl of Kent; directly between the said stools was placed a block one foot high, covered with black, and before that stood a little cushioned stool for the Queen to sit on while her apparel was taken off.... Being come into the hall, she stayed and with a smiling countenance asked Shrewsbury why none of her own servants were suffered to be present. He answered that the Queen, his mistress, had so commanded. ‘Alas,’ quoth she, ‘far meaner persons than myself have not been denied so small a favour, and I hope the Queen’s Majesty will not deal so hardly with me.’ ‘Madam,’ quoth Shrewsbury, ‘it is so appointed to avoid two inconveniences: the one that it is likely your people will shriek and make some fearful noise in the time of your execution, and so both trouble you and us, or else press with some disorder to get of your blood and keep it for a relic, and minister offence that way.’ ‘My Lord,’ she answered, ‘I pray you for my better quietness of mind let me have some of my servants about me, and I will give you my word that they shall not offend in any sort.’ Upon which promise two of her women and five of her men were sent for, who coming into the hall and seeing the place of execution prepared and their sovereign mistress expecting death, they began to cry out in most woeful and pitiful sort; wherewith she held up her hand, willing them for her sake to forbear and be silent, ‘for,’ quoth she, ‘I have passed my word to these lords that you shall be quiet and not offend them.’ And presently there appeared in them a wonderful show of subjection and loyal obedience as to their natural prince, whom even at the instant of death they honoured with all reverence and duty. For though their breasts were seen to rise and swell as if their wounded hearts would have burst in sunder, yet did they, to their double grief, forbear their outward plaints to accomplish her pleasure.
Photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby
STATUE OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS AT HARDWICK HALL
Page [310]
“As soon as she was upon the stage there came to her a heretic called Doctor Fletcher, Dean of Peterborough, and told her how the Queen his sovereign, moved with an unspeakable care of her soul, had sent him to instruct and comfort her in the true words of God. At which she somewhat turned her face towards him, saying, ‘Mr. Doctor, I will have nothing to do with you nor your doctrine’; and forthwith kneeled down before the block and began her meditations in most godly manner. Then the doctor entered also into a form of new-fashioned prayers; but the better to prevent the hearing of him, she raised her voice, and prayed so loud, as he could not be understood. The Earl of Shrewsbury then spoke to her and told her that he would pray with her and for her. ‘My Lord,’ quoth she, ‘if you will pray for me I thank you; but, in so doing, pray secretly by yourself, for we will not pray together.’ Her meditations ended, she arose up and kissed her two gentlewomen, and bowed her body towards her men, and charged them to remember her to her sweet son, to whom she sent her blessing, with promise to pray for him in heaven; and lastly to salute her friends, and so took her last farewell of her poor servants.
“The executioners then began, after their rough and rude manner, to disrobe her, and while they were so doing, she looked upon the noblemen, and smilingly said, ‘Now truly, my Lords, I never had two such grooms waiting on me before!’ Then, being ready for the block, one of her women took forth a handkerchief of cambric—all wrought over with gold needlework—and tied it about her face; which done, Fletcher willed her to die in the true faith of Christ. Quoth she: ‘I believe firmly to be saved by the passion and blood of Jesus Christ, and therein also I believe according to the faith of the Ancient Catholic Church of Rome, and therefore I shed my blood.’”
After this the Earl went home, evidently to Sheffield, with time enough to brood once more upon his sickness and his troubles. In 1587 he was certainly at Wingfield with his wife—at least for a brief space—for he wrote to inform Burghley of the fact in obedience to her Majesty’s request. But he was still thoroughly suspicious and distrustful of her attitude. On one occasion, as it seems by the following letter from Nicholas Kynnersley, my Lady had just left Wingfield when my Lord sent his man Gilbert Dickenson to enquire her movements. The letter which puts the magnificent pair in such a pitiful light is relieved by a gracious allusion to little Arabella, left behind at Wingfield, apparently in Kynnersley’s charge:—
“The night after John was come with my letter Elizabeth told me that Gilbert Dickenson came to her in the [bakehouse] and asked if your Ho. were here; and she answered ‘No.’ And he asked when you went away, and she said ‘Yesterday.’ He asked when you would come again; she answered ‘Shortly as she thought.’ And late at night there came a boy from Sheffield in a green coat, and talked with them in the stable, and said he must go very early in the morning to Sheffield again. What the meaning of these questions and the lackey coming so late and going so early in the morning, I know not, except it be to bring me Lo. words of your absence here, and so that he might come upon you sudden and find you away. So I leave it to your Ho. wisdom to consider of it as you think best; but I think good you were there. Mr. Knifton rode by to-day to Sheffield as I was told, and called not as I ... told which I marvel of. My La. Arbella at eight of the clock this night was merry, and eats her meat well; but she went not to the school these six days; therefore I would be glad of your La. coming, if there were no other matter but that. So I beseech the Almighty preserve your La. in health, and send you soon a good and comfortable end of all your great troubles and griefs.
“Wingfield, this Tuesday, the 5th of November, at 8 of the clock at night, 1588.
“Your Ho. most dutyful bound obedient servant,
“Nicholas Kinnslay.
“To the right Ho. my singular good La. and Mistress the Countess of Salop give this with speed.”[[83]]
While this “singular good lady” was still busy trying to induce the Earl to live with her “in house,” he had sundry official business to transact. In 1588 he was hard at work “routing recusants,” egging on the Sheffield Commissioners appointed to that duty, and certifying himself and the Queen of the military efficiency of the counties under his lieutenancy—for the Spanish fleet hovered ever round the English coast. More “seminary priests” did he rout, and used his energy in inducing folk to go to the Established Church, offering his old “lame body” for the Queen’s service, since “her quarrel should make him young again.” Within a few months of his death he is mentioned in State records as having successfully pounced upon a certain papistical Lady Foljambe and committed her to polite imprisonment in the house of her relative.
This next letter from Gilbert and Mary Talbot to their mother shows entire devotion to her at this difficult period, and is happily free from the old tale-bearing and espionage of previous years:—
“Our bounden duty most humbly remembered. In like humbleness we render your La. thanks for your letter; the last though not the least of your infinite goodnesses towards us and ours. We are safely come hither to Dunstable (we thank God) this Shrove Monday at night; and for that the foul way is past, we think best to return your La. letter again from hence.
“Such news as on the Queen’s highways we have met with, your La. shall now understand. First that her Majesty (royally in person) was at the parliament house the first day of this parliament; where Serjeant Snagge was admitted for the Speaker of the lower house. My Lord of Derby is Lord Steward during this session. That yesterday one told a man of mine that as yet nothing of any moment hath been touched in the lower house, neither any expectation that any great matters will be handled, but it will shortly end. That a day or two before the parliament began, the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Treasurer, with one or two more of the privy council, and Mr. Attorney and Mr. Solicitor were with the Earl of Arundel in the Tower; since which time there hath been no such speech of his arraignment, as there was before. This is all the Queen’s highways hath afforded us of news. Yet further we hear that all your Ladyship’s ...[[84]] are very well. And thus in haste, most humbly beseeching your La. blessing to us and all ours who pray evermore to the most highest to grant unto your La. all contentment with long life, we humbly cease, till our next letter, which shall not be long.
“Your La. most humble and obedient loving children,
“Gilb. Talbott. Mary Talbott.
“We have desired your La. letter men to bring a letter to your La. from Beskewood, where Mrs. Markham’s earnest entreaty made us to leave her till the return thereof. I beseech the Almighty to send your La. my La. Arball and the rest of your La.’s a most happy long life.
“To my Lady.”
The date of this is 1589. Shrewsbury by this time has lapsed into retirement. He falls finally into old age. Elizabeth’s boasting promise that she would give him still greater proof of her trust he would be justified in receiving with a sardonic grunt. Of what use were her favours to him now? She, well into her fifties, could dance, sing, ride, pester her ladies, and flirt with her gentlemen. “The Queen,” writes a friend of the Talbots in 1589, “is so well as I assure you: six or seven gallyards in a morning, besides music and singing, is her ordinary exercise.” This is just a year after the death of her adored Leicester, immediately upon his return from his governorship of the Netherlands, which he had so hated. The days of his departure for that task were the days of Elizabeth’s disfavour. “My Lord,” he wrote pathetically to Shrewsbury in 1585, “no man feeleth comfort but they that have cause of griefe, and no men have so much neede of reliefe and comfort as those that go in these doubtful services. I pray you, my Lord, help us to be kept in comfort, for that we wyll hazard our lyfe for it.” Shrewsbury and his Countess could echo that cry from the depths of their hearts, for they too were of the company of those “that go in ... doubtful services.”
Thus Leicester, the splendid lover, was dead—of a fever caught on his way home to Kenilworth. Elizabeth still danced, still had zest and appetite for masque and ceremonial. But Shrewsbury and Burghley, after they had written their stately condolences to the Queen, corresponded with one another about health matters. In 1589 the former sends a pathetic old man’s gift to his friend of ointment for his joints and “a small rug” to wrap about his legs “at times convenient,” while a flask of fine “oyle of roses” was in these days more necessary than ale to the once stalwart Earl Marshal of England.
From time to time Burghley sends to his friend the State news, with suppressed allusions here and there to his illnesses and sorrows. Lady Burghley was dead, and though her husband was able to write in his old dignified fashion of affairs at Court, he avoids all its recreations. “The Queen is at Barn Elms, but this night I will attend her at Westminster, for I am no man meet for feastings,” runs a pathetic postscript from him.
Photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby, from the painting by Zucchero at Hardwick Hall
By permission of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire
QUEEN ELIZABETH
Page [316]
To Elizabeth, Shrewsbury had played the part which she assigned to one of her lovers, the Duke of Anjou, to whom she wrote apropos of his persistency that she should never cease to love and esteem him as the dog which, being often chastised, returns to its master: “comme le chien qui estant souvent batu retourne a son maitre.” To her lovers she could say such things with impunity, to her servants she only implied them. Her beaten yet steadfast hound, Shrewsbury, true to his family’s emblem of the faithful “Talbot dog,” lay chiefly in these days at his small manor of Handsworth pouring out his soul in letters. There seem to be none available from his wife during his last years, though she was to the end truly anxious to be on happier terms with him, and made every possible effort to achieve this. Once more Elizabeth used her good offices with the honest intent to restore him to happiness. In what was practically the last private letter she ever wrote him, despatched in December, 1589, she addressed him as “her very good old man,” was anxious for news of his health, particularly at this inclement season, sympathised with his gout, and begged him to permit his wife sometimes to have access to him according to her long-cherished wish. He seems to have brooded heavily, as of yore—to a conscience so tender the brooding nature is often a sorry twin brother—and to have discussed the matter without any happy result. About this time he wrote to his intimate friend the Bishop of Lichfield on the subject. The Bishop’s views are set forth in his reply. His view of the married estate is a highly morose one. Yet he begs the Earl, for decency’s sake, to patch up the quarrel finally.
The Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry to the Earl of Shrewsbury.
“Right honourable, my singular good Lord,
“I am bold according to my promise, to put you in remembrance of some matters already passed between us in talk. It is an old saying, and as true as old, a thing well begun is half ended. It pleased your good Lordship, at my late being with you, to confer with me about divers points touching the good estate of this our shire, whereof yourself, next under her Majesty, is the chief governor; and I hope, as you then begun them in good time, so very shortly they will be brought to very good perfection.... Thus much for those common affairs we had in conference; now the chief and last matter that we talked of, and a matter indeed both in conscience chiefly to be regarded of you, and in duty still to be urged and called upon by me, was the good and godly reconciliation of you together, I mean my Lordship and my Lady your wife. I humbly thank your good Lordship you were content then to take my motion in good part, and to account it for a good piece of mine office and charge to travel in such cases, as indeed it is, and therefore, I trust you will be as willing now to see me write as you were then to hear me speak in that matter; and the more, because I speak and write as well of mere love and goodwill to yourself, as for any respect also of discharging my duty unto God; and yet, also, you must think chiefly and principally that I speak and write to discharge my duty to God, and must take all that I do to proceed, not as from a common friend and hanger-on, but as from a special ghostly father, stirred up of God purposely, as I hope, to do good unto you both by my ghostly advice. My honourable good Lord, I cannot see but that it must needs rest as a great clog to your conscience, if you consider the matter as it is, and will weigh the case according to the rule of God’s word: I say I cannot see but that it must needs rest and remain a great clog and burthen to your conscience to live asunder from the Countess your wife, without her own good liking and consent thereto; for, as I have told you heretofore, it is the plain doctrine of Saint Paul that the one should not defraud the other of due benevolence nor of mutual comfort and company, but with the agreement of both parties, and that also but for a time, and only to give yourselves to fasting and prayer. This is the doctrine of Saint Paul, and this doctrine Christ Himself confirmed in the Gospel when He forbiddeth all men to put away their wives unless for adultery, a thing never suspected in my Lady your wife. I could bring forth many authorities and examples both of the Holy Scriptures and other, profane writers, to prove that such kind of separations have always been holden unlawful and ungodly, not only among the people of God, but also among the heathen themselves that never knew God; and I could likewise show what fearful judgments of God have followed such unlawful separations, and what great plagues have fallen upon not only the offenders themselves, but also upon their houses and children, and all their posterity after them; but I shall not need to use any such discourse to your Lordship, because so wise, so grave, so well disposed as indeed you are of yourself if other evil counsellors did not draw you to the contrary; who also shall not want their part in the play, for, as the proverb saith, so experience proveth the same to be true, consilium malum consultori pessimum, evil counsel falleth out worst to the counsel giver.
“But some will say in your Lordship’s behalf that the Countess is a sharp and bitter shrew, and therefore like enough to shorten your life if she should keep you company. Indeed, my good Lord, I have heard some say so, but if shrewdness or sharpness may be a just cause of separation between a man and wife, I think few men in England would keep their wives long; for it is a common jest, yet true in some sense, that there is but one shrew in all the world and every man hath her; and so every man might be rid of his wife that would be rid of a shrew. My honourable good Lord, I doubt not but your great wisdom and experience hath taught you to bear some time with the woman as with the weaker vessel; and yet, for the speeches I have had with her Ladyship in that behalf, I durst pawn all my credit unto your Lordship (and, if need be, also bind myself in any great bond), she will so bridle herself that way, beyond the course of other women, that she will rather bear with your Lordship, than look to be borne withal; and yet to be borne withal sometimes is not amiss for the best and wisest and patientest of us all. But peradventure some of your friends will object greater matter against her; as that she hath sought to overthrow your whole house; but those that say so I think are not your Lordship’s friends, but rather her Ladyship’s enemies, and their speech carrieth no resemblance of truth; for how can it be likely that she should seek or wish the overthrow of you or your house, when not only, being your wife, your prosperity must needs profit her very much, but also, having joined her house with your house in marriage, your long life and honourable state must needs glad her heart to the uttermost; if not for your own sake, yet for the issue of both your bodies, whom she loveth, I dare say, as her own life, and would not see by her goodwill to fall into any decay, either of honour or any other good state of life or livings; although, also, I dare say she wisheth all good unto you for your own sake, as well as theirs, or else she would not be so desirous of your life and company as she is. And therefore, I beseech your Lordship remove all such conceits far from you as are beaten into your head by evil counsellors, and rather think this unlawful separation to be a stain to your house, and a danger to your life; for that God, indeed, is not well pleased with it, Who will visit with death or sickness all that live not after His laws, as of late yourself had some little touch or taste given you of it by those or the nearest friends of those whom you most trusted about you. For my own part, I wish your Lordship all good, even from my heart; both long life and honourable state, with all increase of honour, and joy and comfort in the Lord to your own heart’s desire; but yet both I and you, and all of us that are God’s children, must think that such visitations are sent us of God to call us home, and if we despise them when they are sent, He will lay greater upon us. Thus I am bold, my good Lord, both in the fear of God and in goodwill towards yourself, to discharge the duty of your well-willing ghostly father, and if your Lordship accept it well, as I hope you will, I beseech you let me understand it by a line or two, that I may give God thanks for it; if not, I have done my part; the success I leave to God; and rest yours, notwithstanding, in what I may, and so I humbly take my leave of your good Lordship.
“From Eccleshall, the 12th of October, 1590.
“Your Lordship’s in all duty to command,
“W. Coven. and Lich.”
It is not necessary to lay stress on the sheer fatuity and unwisdom of three-fourths of such a letter. But the gross injustice of it has never been fully appreciated by historians. In the first place, Bess of Hardwick was not a mere shrew—as has been amply set forth. She was a woman of great capabilities, and superabundant driving power which, insufficiently controlled, ended in a blindness to any point of view but her own, and so caused her to utter under provocation, stress, and disappointment hard and foolish things which the Earl could not forget. The estrangement had certainly gone too far for peace. The time for such things as a renewal of trust and love between the two was past. Within a month or two—in the January of 1591—the Earl died. Gossip—wise after the event—declared that with his last breath he groaned over the possibilities of disaster which would descend upon his family through his wife’s schemes for Arabella.
In the previous year the great Walsingham, worn out by stress of affairs and labour, succumbed also—to his “tympany and carnosity.”
And, since the world and his wife must be amused, and the Queen needed distraction from heavy cares of State, she went forth to be entertained at a public fête a day after the death of her much-enduring “good old man.”
To the last he could not forget the great slander. Even his tomb witnesses, in his own words, to his virtue. He must have brooded carefully over this epitaph and the memorial which bears it in Sheffield Church. All allusion to his second wife is omitted, and in regard to the scandal he urges the fact of his official presence at the execution of Mary as the surest proof of the innocence of his relations with her. All he asked of his posterity was that upon his death the date should be added to the tomb. This they omitted to do.
CHAPTER XXI
HEIR AND DOWAGER
A family circle made up of ingredients so pugnacious could scarcely be expected to act unanimously when it came to a question of the division of property after the Earl’s death. Instantly the fragments in the Talbot kaleidoscope rearranged themselves. It was my Lady who now fought practically single-handed, and the new Earl, Gilbert, and her own child Mary were against her. They fought, as usual, in letters, and confided largely in their friends. Gilbert and Mary in one of their previous letters had called upon the Almighty “speedily to grant your Ladyship all contentment with long life.” When this new family feud began they must have regretted that wish. Had they foreseen that they had to encounter her strong will and keen business instinct for the space of another seventeen years they might possibly have compromised matters more quickly. The fact is Gilbert and Mary were innately pugnacious. It is written in their faces as they look down from the walls of the great picture-gallery of Hardwick. Neither face is unrefined, both are shrewd, and Mary’s, at any rate, has, added to a touch of scorn, a certain humorous sparkle. Neither, however, possesses the dignity of the parents. Mary has not her mother’s good features and innately aristocratic air. Gilbert lacks the breadth and steadiness expressed by the Earl.
Gilbert had taken his place now as seventh Earl, received the usual pompous letters of condolence from Lord Burghley and others, and was duly admitted to the order of the Garter. His notions of earldom expressed themselves chiefly in a gorgeous style of living which (in Hunter’s opinion) “alone earned for him the title of the great and glorious Earl of Shrewsbury,” irrespective of either intellectual or official distinction. Naturally his wife with her “pomp and court-like ways” was in full accord with him, and the renewal of the “All-for-Money” family fray was inevitable. In addition to his strife with the old Countess, he fought with Henry Talbot his younger brother, with Lady Talbot the widow of his elder brother Francis, with his own mother’s people the Manners family, with a prominent neighbour Sir Richard Wortley of Wortley, and, as aforesaid, with the Stanhopes of Nottinghamshire, to whom his wife despatched the violent message of hatred quoted in a previous chapter. It stands to reason also that he could not live at peace with his tenantry. As an ordinary man he does not seem to have been mentally vigorous enough, as a man of the world not sufficiently master of his hates and prejudices to come to an understanding with them. It was, after all, the most difficult task of his Lordship, and one for which his Court and town experiences had not fitted him in the least. Most pitiful of all was his deadly feud with his brother Edward. As Gilbert’s letters show, this arose entirely out of the dissensions over property, though Edward and Henry, appointed as executors of their father’s will, were wise enough to decline the task and allow it to devolve on to the experienced shoulders of their splendid stepmother.
This feud between Edward and Gilbert flourished wickedly. There is no need to bore the reader with the insertion of the pages of truculent correspondence which ensued. Gilbert eventually challenged the other to a duel, and Edward firmly declined to fight his own flesh and blood. From the ancient chivalric standpoint this may look like a lack of virility. But to fight would have been the height of unwisdom for two young, well-born men, fathers of families, and in circumstances that would have been wholly preposterous except for their absurd expenditure. It is this very refusal of Edward Talbot which causes one to discount the current story—set forth with the support of arguments, probabilities, and reasons in the Harleian MSS.—to the intent that Edward conspired, in Medici fashion, with Gilbert’s own physician, Dr. Wood, against Gilbert’s life, the medium chosen for the murder being a subtly poisoned pair of perfumed gloves.
Thus it was as well for the whole family that my Lady came to the fore again and wrestled with Gilbert, for he had flattery enough from some of his friends to feed his vanity in his new position. The garrulous Richard Topcliffe covered several pages in a letter expressing gladness that it had pleased God to set the heir in the seat of his noble ancestors. “At such an alteration of a house as now hath chanced by your father’s death, there is ever great expecting towards the rising of the sun.” It is an absurd, toadying letter, of which the only sincere part is the writer’s definition of it at the close as “my tedious dream.” Of such letters Gilbert received his share, like his father, and was flooded with all sorts of other correspondence—official, semi-official, and private. He assumes his father’s office in the lieutenancy of three counties, issues his orders for armament. He meant excellently well no doubt, but was not in the worldly sense a success. He could never, like his father, have borne the Queen’s heavy burdens from sheer devotion to a patriotic ideal and from horror of incurring her disfavour. His disputes with his tenantry so overpowered him that he was forced to refer the matter to the Queen. Her opinion was against him and on the side of the tenants. Meanwhile the Stanhope quarrel became a regular county affair, and, as Hunter puts it, “was pursued by both parties with such precipitation and violence that it was rendered impossible for the neighbouring gentry to preserve neutrality.” It is not surprising that five years after his father’s death he was thoroughly out of favour. Yet Elizabeth could be very kind to his children. One of her gentleman ushers, his friend, Richard Brakenbury, writing from Court, sent him in a letter to Rufford a pretty picture of the way she fondled his little girl:—
“If I should write how much her Majesty this day did make of the little lady your daughter, with often kissing (which her Majesty seldom useth to any) and then amending her dressing with pins, and still carrying her with her Majesty in her own barge, and so into the Privy Council lodgings, and so homeward from the running, you would scarce believe me. Her Majesty said (as true it is) that she is very like my Lady her grandmother. She behaved herself with such modesty as I pray God she may possess at twenty years old.”
Indirectly the magnificent Dowager could only be gratified by such favours. Her main energies now were given to “pushing” Arabella in the great world. Incidentally also it was her affair to go on building, building, that she might live and flourish. Constructive imagination of a certain kind she undoubtedly had. She loved grandeur, comfort, and domestic beauty, and could conceive and plan their achievement. She was led to her building by her sense of importance, coupled with the praiseworthy desire to establish her offspring in a fine house, and so increase their social advantages. That was the beginning, and her practical imagination aided her. But rumour says that it is not by the golden light of imagination that she was helped to expand and continue her enterprises, but by the glare of morbid superstition. Some soothsayer she met—history does not say at what period of her life—told her that so long as she went on building she would never die. All hard-headed as she was she has not escaped the imputation of credence in fortune-telling, for she went on building to the end. Moreover, there is the more excuse for her superstition, since, as we know, crystal-gazers and conjurers with their charmed plates of gold, their phials and symbols, came and went in the country and about the English and foreign courts. It is more than possible that such persons, though included in Shrewsbury’s roll of “practicers” and suspects, occasionally found their way into my Lady’s parlour in Chatsworth or Hardwick. There is behind this old soothsayer’s story a deeper meaning. She built that she might exist, but in her building she truly lived, for in her strongly constructive instinct all her higher faculties, in their finest, their Aristotelian sense, found their outlet, while her heart realised a certain happiness.
By this time she was just seventy, and still in full vigour, though tolerably scarred and embittered in heart and soul. Through Arabella and her second son William, both of whom she really seems to have adored, she had still a great hold upon life. It was her main business now to fight old age, face her fourth widowhood resolutely, live in comfort, and provide for those she loved or who were in any sense dependent on her.
Arabella cannot, of course, have had a particularly joyous or smooth childhood under the sway of that keen, tempestuous temperament, but at any rate she imbibed and inherited an enormous amount of vitality. She was too young to be overcast by the pitiful, short-lived love story of her parents, and her grandmother brought her up jealously and in an atmosphere of state which helped to single her out from the other grandchildren of the family and from the family circle. A letter from the Countess, written when Arabella was but a baby, may be included here:—
“The Countess of Shrewsbury to Lord Burghley, respecting the assignment of an Income to the Lady Arabella. A.D. 1582.[[85]]
“After my very hearty commendations to your good Lo. where it pleased the Queen’s Majesty my most gracious Sovereign, upon my humble suit to grant unto my late daughter Lennox four hundred pounds, and to that her dear and only daughter Arbella two hundred pounds yearly for their better maintenance, assigned out of part of the land of her inheritance: whereof the four hundred pounds is now at her Majesty’s disposition by the death of my daughter Lennox, whom it pleased God (I doubt not in mercy for her good, but to my no small grief, in her best time) to take out of this world, whom I cannot yet remember but with a sorrowful troubled mind. I am now, my good L., to be an humble suitor to the Queen’s Majesty that it may please her to confirm that grant of the whole six hundred pounds yearly for the education of my dearest jewel Arbella, wherein I assuredly trust to her Majesty’s most gracious goodness, who never denied me any suit, but by her most bountiful and gracious favours every way hath so much bound me as I can never think myself able to discharge my duty in all faithful service to her Majesty. I wish not to leave after I shall willingly fail in any part thereof to the best of my power. And as I know your L. hath special care for the ordering of her Majesty’s revenues and of her estate every way, so trust I you will consider of the poor infant’s case, who under her Majesty is to appeal only unto your Lo. for succour in all her distresses; who, I trust, cannot dislike of this my suit on her behalf, considering the charges incident to her bringing up. For although she were ever where her mother was during her life, yet can I not now like she should be here nor in any place else where I may not sometimes see her and daily hear of her, and therefore charged with keeping house where she must be with such as is fit for her standing, of whom I have special care, not only such as a natural mother hath of her best beloved child, but much more greater in respect how she is in blood to her Majesty: albeit one of the poorest as depending wholly on her Majesty’s gracious bounty and goodness, and being now upon seven years, and very apt to learn, and able to conceive what shall be taught her. The charge will so increase as I doubt not her Majesty will well conceive the six hundred pounds yearly to be little enough, which as your Lo. knoweth is but so much in money, for that the lands be in lease, and no further commodity to be looked for during these few years of the child’s minority. All which I trust your L. will consider and say to her Majesty what you think thereof; and so most heartily wish your L. well to do.
From a photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby, after the painting at Hardwick Hall
By permission of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire
ARABELLA STUART
Page [330]
“Sheffield this 6th day of May.
“Your L. most assured loving friend,
“E. Shrewsbury.
“To the right honourable and my very good Lord the Lord Burghley, L. Treasurer of England.”
To this Arabella, aged seven, adds her pretty French postscript:—
“Je prieray Dieu Monsr. vous donner en parfaicte en entiere santé, tout heureux et bon succes, et seray tousjours preste a vous faire tout honneur et service.
“Arbella Steward.”
The new Hardwick, the present hall, was not actually finished till seven years after the Earl’s death, and there and at the older house the Dowager and the semi-royal grandchild spent many years together. The former was, as has been instanced, busy betimes with making matches for the child. After the disappointment about Lord Leicester’s little son, the old ambitious spirit flares up gloriously in the proposal that Arabella, who was just ten years old, should marry James of Scotland. She was suggested by Walsingham, presumably at the Queen’s desire, as an alternative bride to a Danish princess. James was not inclined to make up his mind at the moment, and in the following year another bridegroom was suggested—Rainutio, son of the Duke of Parma. Since the Duke was suspected of laying claim to the English throne, these negotiations were carried on secretly, not so secretly, however, that they escaped the knowledge of Burghley. State papers show that he was well aware that a servant of Sir Edward Stafford was employed “from beyond the sea, to practise with” Arabella about this marriage. “He was sent once before for her picture, and has been thrice to England this year,” is the conclusion of the secret information sent to Court. It is likely that the picture named might be a copy of one of the two hanging now in the great gallery at Hardwick Hall. Both are deeply interesting, and one, in which she is shown as a little, dignified, grandly dressed child of two holding a gay stiff doll, is very moving. The other, of which the original seems to be at Welbeck, shows her “in her hair,” in the old phrase. Part of her hair is drawn over a puff above her forehead and adorned with a drop jewel, and the rest hangs down fine and straight like a soft veil behind her shoulders. Her dress is white, with sleeves either of ermine or white velvet with black spots; her gold fan has a dull red cord, and a girdle of jewels is about her waist. On either side of her hangs a portrait of James VI as a little boy. In one he carries a hawk—symbol of the passion for sport which seems to have been, save for his obstinacy, his only strong point; in the other he is in correct fashionable dress and plumed cap, and wears a tiny sword—symbol of the courage he never possessed, and forerunner of the full-grown weapon which he could carry with swagger, but dared not use on his mother’s behalf. Even as his little presence hedges Arabella in this gallery on both sides, so in life his position dominated hers most cruelly in years to come.
Photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby, from the picture at Hardwick Hall
By permission of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire
ARABELLA STUART
Page [332]
The proposed marriage alluded to, which set abroad all manner of fears of conspiracy in connection with Arabella in 1592, caused Lord Burghley to write warnings to the Countess. All the old caution and authority show in her reply:—
The Countess of Shrewsbury to Lord Burghley: representing her care of the Lady Arabella.[[86]]
“My honourable good Lord,—I received your Lordship’s letter on Wednesday towards night, being the 20th of this September, by a servant of Mr. John Talbott, of Ireland. My good Lord, I was at the first much troubled to think that so wicked and mischievous practices should be devised to entrap my poor Arbell and me, but I put my trust in the Almighty, and will use such diligent care as I doubt not but to prevent whatsoever shall be attempted by any wicked persons against the poor child. I am most bound to her Majesty that it pleased her to appoint your Lordship to give me knowledge of this wicked practice, and I humbly thank your Lordship for advertising it: if any such like hereinafter be discovered I pray your Lordship I may be forewarned. I will not have any unknown or suspected person to come to my house. Upon the least suspicion that may happen here, anyway, I shall give advertisement to your Lordship. I have little resort to me: my house is furnished with sufficient company: Arbell walks not late, at such time as she shall take the air, it shall be near the house, and well attended on: she goeth not to anybody’s house at all: I see her almost every hour in the day: she lieth in my bedchamber. If I can be more precise than I have been I will be. I am bound in nature to be careful for Arbell: I find her loving and dutiful to me, yet her own good and safety is not dearer to me, nor more by me regarded than to accomplish her Majesty’s pleasure, and that which I think may be for her service. I would rather wish many deaths than to see this or any such like wicked attempt to prevail.
“About a year since, there was one Harrison, a seminary, that lay at his brother’s house about a mile from Hardwick, whom I thought then to have caused to be apprehended, and to have sent him up; but found he had licence for a time. Notwithstanding, the seminary, soon after, went from his brother’s, finding how much I was discontented with his lying so near me. Since my coming now into the country, I had some intelligence that the same seminary was come again to his brother’s house: my son William Cavendish went thither of a sudden to make search for him, but could not find him. I write this much to your Lordship that if any such traitorous and naughty persons (through her Majesty’s clemency) be suffered to go abroad, that they may not harbour near my houses Wingfield, Hardwick, or Chatsworth in Derbyshire: they are the most likely instruments to put a bad matter in execution.
“One Morley, who hath attended on Arbell, and read to her for the space of three years and a half, showed to be much discontented since my return into the country, in saying he had lived in hope to have some annuity granted him by Arbell out of her lands during his life, or some lease of grounds to the value of forty pounds a year, alleging that he was so much damaged by leaving the University, and now saw that if she were willing, yet not of ability, to make him any such assurance. I understanding by divers that Morley was so much discontented, and withal of late having some cause to be doubtful of his forwardness in religion (though I cannot charge him with papistry), took occasion to part with him. After he was gone from my house, and all his stuff carried from hence, the next day he returned again, very importunate to serve without standing upon any recompense, which made me more suspicious, and the more willing to part with him. I have no other in my house who will supply Morley’s place very well for the time. I will have those that shall be sufficient in learning, honest, and well disposed so near as I can.
“I am forced to use the hand of my son William Cavendish, not being able to write so much myself for fear of bringing great pain to my head. He only is privy to your Lordship’s letter, and neither Arbell nor any other living, nor shall be.
“I beseech your Lordship I may be directed from you as occasion shall fall out. To the uttermost of my understanding, I have and will be careful. I beseech the Almighty to send your Lordship a long and happy life, and so I will commit your Lordship to His protection. From my house at Hardwick the 21st of September, 1592.
“Your Lordship’s as I am bound,
“E. Shrewsbury.”
Photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby
THE PICTURE GALLERY FROM THE NORTH, HARDWICK HALL
Page [336]
CHAPTER XXII
ARABELLA DANCES INTO COURT
The death of Mary Queen of Scots was the signal for the Countess to insure that Arabella should be as near the Court as possible. She was kept hard at her lessons, but, though the various members of the family were at variance over property, the Dowager was far too wise to spoil the girl’s prospects by forbidding her intercourse with her “Court-like” aunt, Gilbert’s Mary. As regards the young Shrewsbury pair she was, of course, at once a possible stumbling-block and a possible stepping-stone to their advantage. Her parentage gave her social precedence, and though her present worldly status was not very great, she might at any time, by an important marriage, assume a position far above them and be regarded as a source of Court favours. In fact, both sides of the complicated family co-operated to help her on in the world.
Already at the age of thirteen she was introduced to the Court. Her young uncle, Sir Charles Cavendish, writes of it with great appreciation: “My Lady Arbell, has been once to Court. Her Majesty spoke twice to her ... she dined in the presence, but my Lord Treasurer had her to supper; and at dinner, I dining with her, and sitting over against him, he asked me whether I came with my niece. I said I came with her: then he spake openly, and directed his speech to Sir Walter Rawley, greatly in her recommendation, as that she had the French, the Italian, played of instruments, dances, and writ very fair; wished she were fifteen years old, and with that rounded Mr. Rawley in the ear, who answered it would be a happy thing.... My Lady Arbelle and the rest are very well, and it is wonderful how she profiteth in her book, and believe she will dance with exceeding good grace, and can behave herself with great proportion to everyone in their degree.”[[87]]
Old Lady Shrewsbury worked hard for Arabella and played for Elizabeth’s favour now more than ever, with a keen hope of seeing the girl named as her Majesty’s successor. James of Scotland was, of course, playing a similar game, and while he pressed the Queen in regard to the succession, up to the point of making her angry, he kept on good terms with Arabella, to whom he wrote now and then an affectionate, cousinly letter. His tactics were practical, for he now proposed as her bridegroom Esmé Stuart, a piece of diplomacy on which, under the magnificent guise of her restoration to her own title of Lennox, he must have prided himself enormously. This offer was declined; a shortsighted refusal, as it proved both in the future and in the present, for matters in regard to Elizabeth’s favour did not prosper. Old age and bitterness made her resentful and increased her hydra-headed suspicion. It was always so easy for any ill-minded person to raise a papistical scare and accuse Arabella—whose aunt, the young Countess, was notoriously in favour of the proscribed priesthood—as being the heart and soul of every such plot.
Yet the Dowager Countess still laboured on. We find Arabella sending the Queen a “rare New Year gift,” to which her Majesty’s return was acknowledged by a confidential correspondent as a very poor one. The Queen, however, in discussion with the writer announced her intention to be kind and promised to be “very careful of Arabella.” Again this was a case of “Words, words!”
It was in 1592 that Arabella refused Esmé Stuart. In 1596 no less a person than the French King discussed her as a possible bride for the Dauphin. Meanwhile she, who was in no sense an intrigante, and seems to have inherited all the simplicity of her mother, with the energy and the joie de vivre of her grandmother, was in no way concerned in the wretched schemes attributed to her by wild gossip. She was more desirous of love and companionship than of place and glory, and of a decent competence than the splendour of courts. In her twenty-eighth year (1603) she attempted to make her own choice. It was a curious one as regards discrepancy in age. She sought to betroth herself to a boy fifteen years old, young William Seymour. This was no less than the grandson of that same unhappy Earl Hertford who had wedded poor Lady Catherine Grey. The whole affair would be puzzling if it were not for the fact that Arabella’s thoughts were turned in this direction by the fact that he, like herself, was partly of royal blood. At the same time, he was not hampered by the possession of a crown, and with all the attendant difficulties and dangers of a royal marriage. The matter did not go very far, for the bare suggestion of such a thing aroused the most absurd excitement in the Queen’s mind. Arabella was at once arrested.
Elizabeth, it will be remembered, was already dying by inches in the cold spring of 1603. The accusation that Arabella’s action killed her has no ground whatsoever; but it was an unfortunate moment to incur royal displeasure. Naturally when the question of succession came up finally and Elizabeth was asked if she could contemplate young William Seymour’s father, Lord Beauchamp, as her heir, the old irritation against the Hertford marriage flared up in that memorable dying retort of hers: “I will have no rascal’s son in my place.”
Bitterly indeed must Bess Shrewsbury have raved at Hardwick against the unjust fate which caused the fortunes of her “juwell” to decline so miserably at this critical moment. The succession of James was thereby assured, and when it became fact was a bitter pill for Talbot and Cavendish to swallow. By this time the good Burghley was dead, and his son, Sir Robert Cecil, undertook to mediate for Arabella with James. She was for the moment removed to polite imprisonment in the country, whence she wrote breezy and innocent letters to her family, notably to her step-uncle, Edward Talbot, in which she disclaims her guilt in a somewhat veiled and fantastic manner. “Noble gentleman,” runs one sentence, “I am as unjustly accused of contriving a comedy as you in my conscience a tragedy.”
While she awaited the King’s pleasure James was making his first royal progress, and Gilbert Shrewsbury had the honour of entertaining him magnificently at Worksop Manor, which must have made the Dowager fearfully jealous. Cecil set to work as soon as possible on his protégée’s behalf, and, seeing that she presented no problem of political danger, eventually procured her liberty—that is, with certain reservations. He undertook that she should reside with the Marchioness of Northampton at Sheen.
From an engraving by Walker, after a drawing by Malton
WELBECK ABBEY
Page [340]
All this while the Countess Dowager kept well in the background. Arabella, she knew, was of an age to manage her own affairs, and could deal shrewdly and promptly with Cecil in regard to her maintenance by the King in her right as one of royal blood. She managed this difficult situation so well that she was presently taken into the bosom of the Court. This happy event was gracefully achieved thus. The arrival in England of the Queen-Consort some months after her husband was the cause for further display on the part of both Cavendishes and Talbots. Bess Shrewsbury planned a great reception for Anne of Denmark at Chatsworth, and tendered the invitation through Arabella. It was declined, and it has been suggested that the royal motive for this was the unhappy association of the great hostess with the mother of James. Though the mere fact of the Countess’s former position of assistant-gaoler may not have sufficed, memories of strife and “scandilation” would certainly stick in the memory of those who surrounded James, and their advice could scarcely favour the invitation. Arabella was, however, authorised to go to Welbeck to assist her uncle, Sir Charles Cavendish, to receive Anne. At the same time she was to be introduced to the young Princess, to whom she was appointed State governess. Earl Gilbert’s house was once more honoured, and his wife and he incited to impoverish themselves anew for their second magnificent royal entertainment in the year of the accession.
At Welbeck Sir Charles Cavendish vied with his half-brother and contrived an elaborate sylvan pageant in which Arabella figured as Diana. Poor Diana! At twenty-seven she could personate with zest the chaste, invincible, tireless goddess. Could she have foreseen that rôle assigned to her for life by the criminal selfishness of James, she would have forsworn all courts in that hour, and preferred the groves in which she and William Seymour would willingly have walked in years to come, hand in hand, poor and happy.
So—as in Elizabeth’s day—the girl, spirited, cultured, good, and warm-hearted, danced herself into the heart of Queen Anne, and above all into that of the young Elizabeth, whom she charmed instantly. Away went Arabella now to Court in the new Queen’s train, and thenceforward appeared constantly in the company of her clever, tart, intriguing Shrewsbury aunt. Her uncle Gilbert kept a steady eye on her. For she was lively, brilliant; not beautiful, but of great magnetic attraction. Withal, she was quick of tongue, and he feared lest she should slip into indiscretion of speech and give advantage to back-biters at Court.
Photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby
THE DINING-ROOM, HARDWICK HALL
Page [342]
She escaped at least one danger this autumn—infection from the plague. In spite of all her duties and dangers she was in close touch with her relatives. Naturally there were difficult moments. Now she displeases her tremendous grandmother, and now her pugnacious aunt. Again and again she tries to act as go-between, and at odd times secures favours for one or the other—a barony for William Cavendish, a bride for his son. At intervals she visited her grandmother, but generally with a view to making peace between Gilbert and the hostess of Hardwick. To him she wrote in a very touching manner after a visit to the old lady: “I found so good hope of my grandmother’s good inclination to a good and reasonable reconciliation betwixt herself and her divided family that I could not forbear to impart to your Lordship with all speed. Therefore I beseech you, put on such a Christian and honourable mind as becometh you to bear to a lady so near to you and yours as my grandmother is. And think you cannot devise to do me greater honour and contentment than to let me be the only mediator, moderator, and peacemaker betwixt you and her. You know I have cause only to be partial on your side, so many kindnesses and favours I have received from you, and so many unkindnesses and disgraces have I received from the other party. Yet will I not be restrained from chiding you (as great a lord as you are) if I find you either not willing to be asken to this good notion or to proceed in it as I shall think reasonably.... If I be not sufficient for this treaty never think me such as can add strength and honour to your family.”
Such matters were hard for both sides, and one’s sympathy inclines to the ageing, fighting, building Dowager. “Your unkindness sticks sore in her teeth,” wrote one of Gilbert’s informants. To Gilbert, however, she managed to maintain a proud front, and busied herself about a fresh building enterprise.
This project was partly the outcome of her extraordinary pugnacity. Her neighbour, Sir Francis Leake, had designed and was building in the county a fine house, Sutton, which rivalled Hardwick in magnificence. Invidious comparisons were evidently drawn, and she declared scornfully that she would build as good a house “for owls” as he for men. The mansion she built was therefore called Owlcotes, and was not far from Hardwick.
The first year of Arabella’s royal post was certainly one fraught with peril, for it closed with the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh, accused, as all will remember, of plotting to dethrone James in favour of Arabella. Even Henry Cavendish was suspected of complicity. It is not necessary here to go into the details which proved Arabella’s innocence. It was quickly proved and her Court life went on as before, gaily, with masques, drawing-rooms, ballets, and even the nursery games in which it pleased the ladies of the Danish Anne to indulge.
At the close of her second year at Court (1605) another proposal, this time from the King of Poland, reached Arabella and was refused. She does not yet seem to have tired of the frivolous and exhausting life, though her letters—whimsical, affectionate, quaintly sententious, often highly graphic—are shortened at times, and, though loyal, she complains roundly of “this everlasting hunting.” For in their passion for sport King and Queen dragged their courtiers hither and thither, and the latter were often miserably housed and served during these expeditions.
From a photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby, after the painting at Hardwick Hall
By permission of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire
JAMES THE FIFTH OF SCOTLAND
Page [344]
The Dowager at Hardwick was well informed of Court affairs, for she paid a handsome retaining fee to no less a person than the Dean of the Chapel Royal in order that he should keep her well posted. In this year (1605) she was taken seriously ill and summoned Arabella. The girl was evidently afraid of her, for she took precautions to insure welcome in the shape of a letter from the King himself, desiring the Countess to receive her granddaughter with kindness and bounty. This incensed the old lady a good deal. Though she was now more or less like a sleeping dragon guarding her hoard, as in the Norse legend, she could still rouse herself to snarl in a letter. She did not write to the King direct, but devised an epistle to the Dean, in which she emphatically declared her astonishment at the royal message. This he was ordered to show to the King. “It was very strange to her,” she said, “that my Lady Arabella should come to her with a recommendation as either doubting of her entertainment or desiring to come to her from whom she had desired so earnestly to come away. That for her part she thought she had sufficiently expressed her good meaning and kindness to her that had purchased her seven hundred pounds by year land of inheritance, and given her as much money as would buy a hundred pound by year more. And though for her part she had done very well for her according to her poor ability, yet she should always be welcome to her, though she had divers grandchildren that stood more in need than she, and much the more welcome in respect of the King’s recommendation; she had bestowed on Arabella a cup of gold worth a hundred pound, and three hundred pound in money which deserved thankfulness very well, considering her poor ability.”
James could afford to laugh at such a communication, which fortunately did not prejudice Arabella in his eyes. Her return to Court was not long delayed, for her grandmother recovered, and the Court lady was once more free to stand godmother to royal babies, play, hunt, and dance, and suffer perpetual financial embarrassment owing to the ridiculous expenditure to which courtiers of both sexes were put in making royal gifts and providing the costly, fantastic costumes which the successive masques entailed.
It was during the production of the famous “Masque of Beauty,” written for Twelfth Night, and produced in honour of the visit of the King of Denmark, that Bess Shrewsbury sank into her last illness. For this masque Arabella, it is recorded, appeared in jewels and robes worth more than £100,000. From such scenes of colour and luxuriance she was called to that stately, lonely deathbed at Hardwick.
Of the Countess’s danger her relatives were fully aware, and the various family partisans took good care to be on the look-out for any hostile movements with regard to property from their opponents. The following extract from one of Gilbert’s letters to Henry Cavendish gives an ugly little picture of the situation. The date is January 4th, 1607:—
“When I was at Hardwick she did eat very little, and not able to walk the length of the chamber betwixt two, but grew so ill at it as you might plainly discern it. On New Year’s Eve, when my wife sent her New Year’s gift, the messenger told us she looked pretty well and spoke heartily; but my Lady wrote that she was worse than when we last saw her, and Mrs. Digby sent a secret message that her Ladyship was so ill that she could not be from her day nor night. I heard that direction is given to some at Wortley to be in readiness to drive away all the sheep and cattle at Ewden instantly upon her Ladyship’s death.
“These being the reasons that move me thus to advise you, consider how like it is that when she is thought to be in danger your good brother will think it time to work with you to that effect, and—God forgive me if I judge amiss—I verily think that, till of late, he hath been in some hope to have seen your end before hers, by reason of your sickliness and discontentment of mind. To conclude, I wish and advise you to take no hold of any offer that shall be made unto you, etc.
Photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby
TOMB OF ELIZABETH COUNTESS OF SHREWSBURY
Page [346]
“You have not been forgot to my Lady, neither for yourself nor for Chatsworth, but we have forborne to write you thereof, knowing that one of your brother’s principallest means to keep us all so divided one from another, etc.”
“Your good brother” is certainly William Cavendish, of whom the whole family were wildly jealous, and who planned to seize certain cattle belonging to the Countess, in advance of his brothers, so soon as she had drawn her last breath.
Very few details are extant of the death of the great Bess. Grateful pensioners she had, and certainly some devoted servants. Her intimate friends were few, and nearly all her contemporaries predeceased her. We come across nothing more interesting as a bare record of her death than the following entry in Simpson’s National Records of Derby for 1607:—
“The old Countess of Shrewsbury died about Candlemas this year, whose funeral was about Holy Thursday. A great frost this year. The witches of Bakewell hanged.”
So into limbo this contemptuous entry dismisses a great lady. Pouf! Out with the candles! The frost is over; some women have been hung at Bakewell; an old lady is dead.
To the end she never ceased her doughty and defiant game with stone, wood, and mortar. While her “home for owls” was in erection there came that same “great frost” named in the old Derby chronicle. Naturally the mortar at “Owlcotes” froze. The masons could do nothing. Instantly she issued orders that it was to be thawed with boiling water. This was unavailing, and the order came to use ale also, in the hope that the thicker fluid might prevent crystallisation. About this there is the true Elizabethan touch. But even ale, poured out like water, failed, and my Lady went out—with the holy candles.
How Arabella—faithful, loyal, vital, intense—danced, toiled, and loved—to her doom; how energetic, ambitious Mary Shrewsbury, like her mother before her, enjoyed imprisonment in the Tower because of her match-making intrigues; how William Cavendish became not only an earl, but one of the first colonists in Virginia and Bermuda; how Henry Cavendish died of his “sickliness and discontentment of mind”; how Henry Talbot, also, passed away before he could share the splendour or the thriftlessness of his race; how Charles Cavendish made Bolsover Castle a fit guesthouse for the King, for whom his son prepared a famous masque and banquet; how Gilbert Shrewsbury, his presence-chamber crowded with spongers and creditors, pawned his plate and jewels, and how his younger brother and chief enemy, Edward Talbot, became eighth Earl in his stead, belong to an epoch which escapes the limit of this survey.
Photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby
ENTRANCE HALL, HARDWICK HALL
Page [348]
CHAPTER XXIII
MY LADY’S MANSIONS
It is universally conceded by our nation that the French have a sense of the theatre which we shall never possess. The only set-off we can produce is a pre-eminent “sense of the house.” In France this has to a great extent died out. In French and in most continental cities the greater number of people live like pigeons in large cotes. It is the tendency of all towns, though in England the notion takes hold slowly. In the country the sense of the house is as strong as ever, with this change—that it is the day of the little house. Of the great house in its perfect sense as a home there are but few happy instances. It is the day of little things—little books, little songs, little pictures, little buildings, little frequent journeys, little incomes, and little sports. Above all, the little incomes! Little incomes laugh defiance at great houses. For great houses, as aforesaid, are great thieves. Bess and her Lord knew it, in the end, to their sorrow. Slowly English men and women have come to realise this, and not to aspire enviously to great houses. That notion was long a-dying, that obsession of the great house. Its long decline meant assuredly much that was tragic, wounding, self-torturing. Oh! those mistaken, ostentatious shams and pomposities of the early Victorian days when many a kindly, highly cultured, hypersensitive group of persons dwelt the lives of immured cabbages! And all this because of false pride, because of a penury they deliberately huddled round them, like a coward, who flings his cloak over his head so that he may not see even the opportunity for the courage which must go to the changed order of things.
And so the little incomes of to-day—the day of the triumph of the exploitation of limited resources—laugh at the great houses because the first have been forced to learn that trick of defiance side by side with the bitter lesson of monetary limitations which they share with the last. Yet behind their defiance is a great admiration of the big mansions. And behind the admiration, if they but guessed it, a great sense of indebtedness. For it is the little incomes, and not the little houses, which laugh at great mansions. Is it not by virtue of the past life and compassion of the great houses that the little ones achieve their beauty in miniature, and, lastly, their sweet appropriateness to the usages of modern life? The great house begat these little ones of to-day—no hovels, but decent homes—which spring up all over England and Scotland and Ireland—in the hollows or heights of downs, in richly watered places, on ridges, by the fringes of woods, upon the sea flank—creeping up almost impudently to the very skirts of the great “places” which have passed into the traditions of history. Some of these remain to us as dazzling show places, some few are also emphatically homes. Whether applied in the present to this most beautiful and intimate purpose or not, all the great mansions of Elizabeth Lady Shrewsbury were most truly intended for sweet daily uses. Two principal houses had she of her own—Hardwick and Chatsworth. Eight more George Talbot brought her—Wingfield, Sheffield, Rufford, Welbeck, Worksop, Tutbury, Bolsover. One smaller place he cherished for his old age, a little country house at Handsworth in the same county, and one more, as already explained, she in her old age founded—Owlcotes or Oldcotes—besides beginning the rebuilding of Bolsover Castle. Great houses indeed! Four of them, in especial, were widely sung and praised. How runs the curious old rhyme?
“Hardwicke for hugeness, Worsope for height,
Welbecke for use, and Bolser for sighte.
Worsope for walks, Hardwicke for hall,
Welbecke for brewhouse, Bolser for all.
Welbecke a parish, Hardwicke a Court,
Worsope a pallas, Bolser a fort.
Bolser to feast in, Welbecke to ride in,
Hardwicke to thrive in, and Worsope to bide in.
Hardwicke good house, Welbecke good keepinge,
Worsope good walkes, Bolser good sleepinge.
Bolser new built, Welbecke well mended,
Hardwicke concealed, and Worsope extended.
Bolser is morn, and Welbecke day bright,
Hardwicke high noone, Worsope good night;
Hardwicke is now, and Welbecke will last,
Bolser will be and Worsope is past.
Welbecke a wife, Bolser a maide,
Hardwicke a matron, Worsope decaide.
Worsope is wise, Welbecke is wittie,
Hardwicke is hard, Bolser is prettie.
Hardwicke is riche, Welbecke is fine,
Worsope is stately, Bolser divine.
Hardwicke a chest, Welbecke a saddle,
Worsope a throne, Bolser a cradle.
Hardwicke resembles Hampton Court much,
And Worsope, Welbecke, Bolser none such.[[88]]
Worsope a duke, Hardwicke an earl,
Welbecke a viscount, Bolser a pearl.
The rest are jewels of the sheere
Bolser pendant of the eare.
Yet an old abbey hard by the way—
Rufford—gives more alms than all they.”
It is curious that Chatsworth, so famous in history, has no part in the rhyme. Save for an old engraving of it in the new, the present Chatsworth, no trace of the fabric of the second mansion, the house planned by William Cavendish the first, exists; and in the grounds no relic is to be found belonging to the date of Queen Mary’s imprisonment except a scrap of ivied ruin known as her “bower.”
What is the fate of the rest of the long list? Wingfield is an exquisite ruined fragment. The relic of that which was once Sheffield Castle is only to be found thickly embedded among the workshops and factories of a great smoke-belching town; and the whole property has passed to the dukedom of Norfolk.
Photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby
BOLSOVER CASTLE
Page [352]
Oldcotes, as we know, Bess Hardwick never finished, nor Bolsover, for that last duty fell upon her son, Sir Charles Cavendish, who “cleared away the loose cement and tottering stones and began to lay the foundation of the newe house at Bolsover,” only finished by his son, Marquis of Newcastle. Strangely enough, it is not this—the beautiful Elizabethan mansion, which witnessed now glorious pageants and now civil war—that remains for habitation, but a portion of the original stronghold. Says one descriptive writer: “The figure of Hercules, supporting the balcony over the principal doorway, is an appropriate symbol of the Castle’s strength. The fortress is habitable, and makes a very unconventional and picturesque residence, with its pillar parlour ornamented with old-fashioned devices; its noble Star Chamber lined with sombre portraits of the twelve Cæsars and ceilinged with blue and gold to represent the firmament at night; and its quaint bed-chambers, two of which are covered with pictures indicative of Heaven and Hades ... pictures ... of angels reclining on clouds, or wandering in delightful glades; and of angels of darkness, hideous ... and writhing in torment.” The which, says this chronicler, so affected the conscience of one inhabitant that he effaced them—“took a lime brush and ruthlessly wiped out both sinners and saints.” The ruin near this building must have stood finely “on the grand terrace to the south” in its heyday when the elasticity of good Bolsover steel spears and buckles was a household word in England.
Tutbury Castle lies a ruin by the Dove, unregretted, well detested by all who were ever immured there.
Welbeck—how true to the rhyme!—lasts and “will last”—“day bright,” a “saddle,” a place to “ride in,” a great “parish,” a home for use, for “good keepinge,”—in a word, an institution for posterity to wonder at. Such also is Rufford, one of the few great buildings which have escaped fire. Among the list of the disestablished monasteries it passed into the hands of the Talbots, who made good use of its Elizabethan gallery and its state chambers. On the other hand, the original manor house of Worksop—“the wise,” the “pallas,” the “throne,” was burnt down in 1761, was “decaide” very soon. Bolser the “maid” as aforesaid is now grown very grey, but is still lovely, the more wonderful in its isolation because of the ugly little new town below it. Welbeck “the wife” flourishes, has grown, is much increased.
Hardwick the “matron” endures. In her “hugeness,” in her character of spacious court and hall, in her seclusion and peace, her well-being, her riches and comfort, well warmed with the sun of prosperity, as at “high noone”—in her rôle as “chest,” as storehouse of unassailable fortunes, as a place “to thrive in,” Hardwick is the chiefest of all these houses, because, saving the church of All Saints at Derby, with the monument Bess Shrewsbury erected in it to herself, and the almshouses in the same town, it is the only thing of all her “workes” upon which her sole impress remains. Into this grey stone house, which bears her maiden name, has passed her extraordinary and very fine “sense of the home,” and the doggerel just quoted adds to that almost a portrait of herself. Time was when she wore stiff outstanding dresses, encrusted with network of jewels or bordered and lined with fur, like others who visited Court or the weddings and pageants of her circle. In the principal portrait of her, the one which hangs in the centre of the Cavendish group in the glorious Hardwick gallery—a stretch of 170 feet, of which the walls carry nearly two hundred portraits—she is, however, presented just in the character of matron and widow. Her child-bearing days were over, her schemes were many. One cannot read the rhymes quoted without feeling that when Hardwick is named in the jingle she herself passes in and out of the string of words, which in itself is like a ladies’ chain in a country dance. She is in black velvet with a rich quadruple necklace of pearls. Her chest, with gold and documents and household “stuff,” goes with her; we hear the jingle of her household keys, her ringing, authoritative voice, meet the glance of those clear, keen eyes, and follow the line of the thin, sensitive mouth, which could help that far-seeing brain of hers so much. That mouth could flatter, but it could also speak with terrible sharpness; it could repeat a good joke, a spicy scandal, or quiver with grief; it could say tender things—“my juwell and love, my dearest harte”—and it could bargain finely. “Hardwick is hard,” says the rhyme, and her lips seem to tighten to that phrase. She could certainly be both terribly hard and tender.
Photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby
PICTURE GALLERY, HARDWICK HALL
(Showing the fireplace and a portrait of Mary Queen of Scots)
Page [354]
There is another smaller portrait of her, in her Countess’s coronet and an ermine tippet, which is rather more gracious in expression than the stiff, beruffed, matronly picture above mentioned. Close about her are her husbands—all save Barlow. Most comfortable of these is Sir William Cavendish, sturdy, bearded, and well-liking, in his furred robe and flat cap. Close by, and matching the figure of Arabella Stuart in sheer pathos, is that of the quiet, childless Grace Talbot, whom Fate so soon made the widow of the much-travelled Henry Cavendish. It is that of a dumpy little woman in black, holding in one hand a single pale eglantine—the flower of the Cavendishes. Her reddish-brown hair, her pale lips, a spinet of which the under portion of the open lid is faintly decorated with red-winged cherubs, and a dark green table-cloth, are the only scraps of colour in the sombre scheme. Her psalter, with diamond notation, lies open at the words “Sois moy seigneur ma garde et mon appuy, Car en toy gist toute mon esperance.”
In the same group one finds Burghley, rosy, astute, richly clad, a prince of dignitaries, than whom no statesman ever had richer experience of men and things, of power and place, of sovereigns and the royal caprice, who on the eve of death could still write to his first-born, over the trembling signature of “Your anguished father,” the words “Serve God by serving of the Queen, for all other service is indeed bondage to the devil.”
Very warm and full of life is the portrait of William Cavendish the younger, the Countess’s favourite son. To him in his right as first Earl and ancestor of the Dukes of Devonshire belongs, after his mother, the whole of this glorious gallery, typical of this magnificent house.
From a photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby, after the picture by P. Oudry
at Hardwick Hall, by permission of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS
Page [356]
The end wall is given up to the portraits of the three English Queens. In the centre is Elizabeth, magnificent and monstrous, the clothes hiding the woman, the whole art of portraiture merged in the painter’s dogged intent to reproduce every detail of her jewels, her lace, and the birds, beasts, and reptiles with which her enormous, billowing dress is embroidered. On her right stands Queen Anne, very dull, complacent, and richly attired; on her left Queen Mary, solemn, handsomely robed, dignified. An opposite wall bears the other often-painted Mary, the Arch-Enigma, she whose personality, to my thinking, is so much more subtle and dominant than that of her magnificent English sisters. This is the famous Mary of Oudry’s brush, graceful, simple, subtle, the face diaphanous and elusive. There is an odd likeness between the motto she chose for her dais and that which the baby Arabella bears on the jewel pendent from her necklace: “Pour parvenir j’endure” is the legend. And both women bear witness to that determination in their faces, in their tragic fates. That and the old “En ma fin est mon commencement” ring in your ears as you turn from the gallery and from the beautiful presence-chamber with its wonderful coloured plaster frieze to the little bedroom dedicated to the relics of the Scots Mary. The curtains she embroidered, the coverings for the chairs, the tapestry, the very bed in which she slept and tossed and wept, are all proudly cherished. Mary never stayed at Hardwick, pace Horace Walpole, nor possibly ever saw it. Nor was she ever housed at the old Hardwick, which stands now like a ghostly, ruined parent of the newer building, at right angles to it. The old house served “Building Bess” not only as model for her new hall, but furnished her, it is said, with actual material. It was, for those days, a good model that she took, and its high and countless windows made it hygienically a great improvement upon the gloom of Tutbury and Sheffield. No trace of superstition or pettiness has gone to the building, begun soon after she acquired the house—either by purchase or by legacy from her brother James Hardwick—some years before the death of her fourth husband, and completed seven years or so after it—that is in 1597. At first, says tradition, she seems to have intended to make her home at the older house and reserve the new one for ceremonial and entertainment, “as if she had a mind to preserve her Cradle and set it by her Bed of State.” The stones of that “Cradle” she eventually took for the “Bed,” and into that bed she literally wove all that was best of herself. Of mere personal feminine vanity she expresses little, of personal importance much. She was fond of her crest, and the modelled stags of her own family are devised to flatter her duly in an inscription (in the great drawing-room) to the intent that noble as is the stag, in all its animal perfection, its nobility is enhanced by bearing the arms of the Countess. She doted also on her initials. They are worked into the stone scrolling which adorns her four towers, into the main gateway, and into the low wall which flanks the square garden where you enter. They are repeated in the flower-beds. She must have loved signing her name also, for scarcely a scrap, it seems, of the household accounts concerning her buildings exists but bears evidence of her minute scrutiny. Here is her signature as it appears often repeated under such items as “thre ponde hyght pence,” or at the close of a letter thus:—
The Hardwick wages-book between New Year, 1576, and the close of December, 1580, with the list of her men—stone-breakers, gardeners, moss-gatherers, thatchers, wall-builders, ditchers—was made up by her once a fortnight and signed. Inside the house too are her initials, with the arms of her father, the stags and the roses of the Hardwicks, and into a famous inlaid table (brought, it is said, by her son Henry from the East) is woven the cryptic poetical motto of her father’s family:—
Photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS BED, NOW AT HARDWICK HALL
Page [358]
“The redolent smell of aeglantyne
We stagges exault to the deveyne.”
This legend is to be faintly traced in the interior of the ruined old hall. With the exception of the Shrewsbury coronet and the initials, you find very little suggestion of the Talbots. Everywhere the arms of Hardwick predominate in panel, fireplace, and lock. They strike the eye the instant you enter the house by the great entrance-hall. Large and magnificent, they are set forth on the right wall: in heraldic language, “a saltire engrailed azure; on a chief of the second three cinquefoils of the field,” set in a lozenge-shaped shield and bearing the aforesaid coronet. The supporters are two “stags proper, each gorged with a chaplet of roses, argent, between two bars azure.” To these supporters the lady had no right because her family had none. But she assumed them, turning to account the stag of her family crest. Her son William adopted a variation of this, and in the Devonshire arms of to-day we again find the wreathed stags proper, while the shield bears three harts’ heads. In the Mary Queen of Scots bedroom you will find in plaster work again the Hardwick arms, but also those of Cavendish and of the Countess’s mother, Elizabeth Leake. Needless to say, the house is built in the grand manner. The great entrance-hall runs to the height of two stories, and besides its panelling and old furniture has screens of tapestry. Just off the stairway on the left is the curious little chapel shut off from the landing by an open-work oak screen. Close by is a state bedroom, and adjoining it is a fine dining-room, whence a minstrels’ gallery leads to the wainscoted and tapestried drawing-room. The splendid presence-chamber, sixty-five feet long, thirty-three wide, and twenty-six high, is another remarkable feature, and besides its pictures and tapestry has the famous ancient frieze, already mentioned, in coloured plaster relief representing the Court of Diana. The choice of theme was, no doubt, out of compliment to the Queen, for her initials and arms are in this room substituted for those of the Countess, who, in spite of her dreams, never had the delight of receiving Elizabeth here.
In regard to the sheer details of furniture and tapestries the guide-books have sufficiently noted such items, and this is not the place for an inventory. But in the household lists, carefully catalogued and cherished, are noted “silver cloath of tissue and cloath of gold, velvet of sundry colours, needlework twelve feet deep, one piece of the picture of Faith and her contrary Mahomet, another piece with Temperance and her contrary Sardynapales.” And there are others “wrought with Flowers and slipps of Needlework,” while a “white Spanish rugg,” great chairs and little chairs, French stools, “a little desk of mother o’ pearl, a purple sarcanet quilt,” are duly noted, in addition to carpets and hangings galore storied with myth and legend. Good rich things over which to fight when it was a case of family quarrels! Many of these and the other famous tapestries with which the lovely house is crammed are being wisely guarded, and, where possible, delicately repaired, while taste and gracious sympathy with every object are turning the Hall into a place which is a perfect museum with the added grace of a house. The very ring—attached to the foot of the Countess’s writing-table—through which she slipped the leash of her dog, is still preserved.
Photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby
THE PRESENCE-CHAMBER, HARDWICK HALL
Page [360]
Set high upon a fine hill in the centre of a park, encircled with rolling country, and facing east and west, the great, old windows of Hardwick look out above colonnades upon a new world. At no great distance are mines like those which have spoiled Bolsover and Worksop. The masons still labour at the stonework of Hardwick, for storms have worn the elaborate scrolling of those four proud towers, and the flagged pathway from gate to house-door is pitted and hollowed by frost and rain and the feet of generations. And still it stands, a monument and a living record of one who knew in her strange, active life much grief and much joy, who loved flattery and self-assertion and the struggle for individual development, and yet could write in letters of stone over the door of her presence-chamber: “The conclusion of all thinges is to feare God and keepe His commaundements.”
She had the great secret of living almost to the last in the “high noone” of her desires. When the western sun bathes her façade she lives again, walks again upon her terrace and under her colonnades. And with her goes that great procession, pathetic and vital, of her “workes”—her children, her friends, her buildings, her household gods, her intrigues, her dazzling dreams, her bargains—and all of them seem to have a part in the music of that duet of notions ever running in her head—“of bricks and mortar to yield grandeur, of human beings to yield wealth.”
She has been turned into ridicule by Horace Walpole, whose flippant vulgarity nevertheless acknowledged her magnificence. She was called shrew by a pompous bishop, but she had too much brain for a shrew. She could certainly scold—“like one from the banke”—but so could her royal mistress. In these two Elizabeths there is, after one allows for the difference in their actual circumstances, a strange likeness. Both were violent natures; both, in spite of their extraordinary sense of dignity, had a strong dash of the hoyden. Both had immense vitality, relished life intensely, loved to play with schemes. Both were obstinate, affectionate, vindictive, pugnacious, essentially women of their era, a type to which Elizabeth herself set the measure and called the tune. While the sum of all sorrow is the same, their sorrows differed in detail. Elizabeth of England, called to the immense sacrifice of her womanhood for England, fell back in private on petty vanities, and had her reward in the love of the larger public of her day and in the enlightened homage of posterity to her sacrifice and her statesmanship. Elizabeth Shrewsbury justly refused to sacrifice herself to the official burdens put upon her earl, unjustly refused to go shares with him in their common responsibilities, and so in her the “combat for the individual” ran to exaggeration, with its harvest of sheer bitterness and errors. In body and soul she represented that spirit of individualism set in an epoch of intrigue, sensation, change, uncertainty, wide and violent contrast, in days of large treasons and international piracy, of high feeding and large ideas, of scented gloves, masks, doublets, and ill-managed kitchen heaps, of plot and counter-plot, of Court splendour and national drama.
Photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby
HARDWICK HALL FROM THE WEST GARDEN
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Tobie Matthew, Archbishop of York, preached a fine funeral sermon upon this “costly Countess,” in which she was likened to the ideal virtuous woman of Solomon, while Hunter, on the other hand, ironically suggests that Massinger based his character of Sir Giles Overreach upon her. Lodge has termed her violent, treacherous, tyrannical. Such in many ways was the nature of England’s Elizabeth. Yet both women were makers and builders, often blind, always resourceful, achieving immense results in their several capacities. And since the royal symbol of the one is the stately Tudor rose, so also shall the lovely “redolent aeglantyne” of the motto of the other entwine and weave through the ages the memory of all that was finest in the amazing Lady of Hardwick. With that sweet savour—regarding it as the final evaporation of her complex, rampant, thorny, vital nature—let all harsher thoughts of her now be chased away.