This is probably a partial exaggeration. Of course Elizabeth could not free him from his wife. It was her pleasurable business to bring them together again. A lengthy matter and badly begun!
CHAPTER XIX
HAMMER AND TONGS
There is no other title possible for the condition of things with which this chapter deals. That public vindication of the Earl, it will be remembered, was in 1584, coupled with his wife’s formal disclaimer of the scandal circulated about him. Still there is nothing to heal the estrangement, and the Earl, hearing disturbing reports, writes to Lord Burghley from his country seclusion in the autumn of the following year, 1585:—
“My noble good Lord,
“Since my coming into the country, my wife and her children have not ceased to inform her Majesty, most slanderously of me, that I have broken her Highness’s order; and at length they have obtained her gracious letters, and Mr. Secretary’s to me, the which I have answered, and sent up my servant Christopher Copley with them; praying your Lordship that he may, with your favour, attend on you, and acquaint you thoroughly from time to time with my causes, and that it would please you to further him with your advice and continuance of your good favour. My Lord, she makes all means she can to be with me, and her children have her living, whereunto I will never agree, for if I have the one, I will have the other, which was thought reasonable by the Lord Chancellor, and the Lord of Leicester; but by her letters she desires to come to me herself, but speaks no word of her living.[[79]] I have been much troubled with her, and almost never quiet to satisfy her greedy appetite for money, to pay for her purchases to set up her children; besides the danger I have lived in, to be compassed daily with those that most maliciously hated me, that if I were out of the way, presently they might be in my place. It were better we lived as we do, for in truth, I cannot away with her children, but have them in jealousy; for till Francis Talbot’s death, she and her children sought my favour, but since those times they have sought for themselves and never for me. Thus, with my hearty commendations, I commit your good Lordship to the tuition of the Almighty.
“Sheffield, this twenty-third of October, 1585.
“Your Lordship’s most faithful friend,
“G. Shrewsbury.”
“My noble good Lord,
“Finding you so honest and constant a friend to me, I have been willing, and yet doubtful to trouble you with my gouty fist, unless I had matters of some importance, knowing your Lordship so troubled with her Majesty’s affairs; but now, perceiving what untrue surmises have and are daily invented by my wife and her children of me, and I think will be during their lives, I am therefore to request your Lordship thus much; if they shall exclaim of me from time to time without cause as they do, considering how manifestly they have disproved in all their accounts, that they may make trial of their complaints against me before they are heard; and so shall her Majesty and her Council be less troubled with these untrue surmises, and by the Grace of God, my doings and dealings have and shall be such as I wish, my wife and her imps, who I know to be mortal enemies, might daily see into my doings which I took for no less but they will do their best. So, wishing your Lordship health as my own, I take my leave.