Bess of Hardwick and Her Circle

by Maud Stepney Rawson

“May, 1586.”

On June 15th Shrewsbury, writing to Walsingham, begged him to favour his suit against the Countess, and asked that the Queen should banish her from Court, adding that he was ashamed to think of his choice of such a creature, and piteously entreated Walsingham to persuade his son Gilbert Talbot to leave “that wicked woman’s company.”

The action went through against Beresford, for the next item in the State record is a note upon the York Assizes in June. At the same time the Countess petitioned the Council denying the charges of the Earl that she had ever maintained her servant Beresford against him. Next follows an important note by Charles Cavendish on the force and effect of the Queen’s order which was intended to produce a united reconciliation and cohabitation.

The Earl was by this time slowly coming to terms, but he required that Henry Cavendish should be reinstated in Chatsworth and assured of certain lands, while his debts, it was stipulated, were to be paid by the Countess. The Countess and her two sons, on the other hand, stated that they had been much out of pocket for three years by the Earl’s aggressive proceedings, and begged for redress.

Into this hotchpotch are flung notes of the yearly allowances which the Earl gave his Countess when they were together, of the amount of rent paid by certain tenants, and all other disputes about the jointures of the Countess, leases, houses, lands, and other property settled upon various members of the family by father and mother. Not a single scrap of personal or real estate seems to have been forgotten. The unhappy couple tussled especially hard over their plate. In the Hatfield MSS. catalogue the inquisitive will find a full list of the articles. They include “a podinger” (of which the dish seems to be in my Lady’s hands, while her Lord retains the lid), a “great silver salt having many little ones within it to be drawn out,” one “George,” enamelled white and set with diamonds, costing £38, “a cup of assay,” gilt “talbots,” ewers, plates, standing-pots, bowls, candlesticks, trenchers, “parcel gilt and double gilt.” Then there was the same pull-devil pull-baker business over household linen, mattresses, and hangings—those hangings which were always such a cause of bother to the couple all through their fifteen years of menage in connection with their troublesome prisoner-guest. The demands of the Earl on his part infuriate his wife, and there is a scornful and sarcastic entry in the Hatfield MSS., endorsed by Burghley, to the effect that “the parcels above demanded by the Earl are things of small value and mere trifles for so great and rich a nobleman to bestow on his wife in nineteen years.” The Countess then reminds him of her share in the way of gifts: “the Earl hath received of her at several times, pots, flagons, dishes, porringers, warming-pans, boiling-pot, a charger or voider of silver, with many other things she now remembereth not. Besides, better than £1000 of linen consumed by him, being carried to sundry of his houses to serve his Lordship’s turn. And with his often being at Chatsworth with his charge and most of his stuff there spoiled.”

In addition, she quotes an annual contribution of 30 to 40 mattresses, 20 quilts, etc. etc.

All these absurd and pitiful obstacles made the Queen’s order for cohabitation very distasteful, and in July the Earl lashed out in an important and emphatic letter to Court. His wife had of her own will left him, and he did not see why he should receive her under his roof now simply because she offered to come. “It appeareth,” goes on the statement, “by her words and deeds she doth deadly hate him, and hath called him knave, fool, and beast to his face, and hath mocked and mowed at him.” Here follow two letters from the contending parties. Her Ladyship had written to my Lord on August 4th, 1586, to which he sends the long reply quoted. She again writes on August 11th.

Earl of Shrewsbury to his Countess.

“Wife, in the three first lines of your last letter dated Thursday, 4 August, 1586, you hold yourself importunate for demanding my plate and other things, part whereof, in the same letter you confess, which at your being with me you desired to have, and the residue of the plate and hangings you pass over in silence, for which I take light occasion to be displeased with you by writing (as you say) and demand this question of me—What new offence is committed since her Majesty reconciled us? To the first part of your letter I answer that there is no creature more happy and more fortunate than you have been for when you were defamed and to the world a byword, when you were St. Loo’s widow, I covered those imperfections (by my intermarriage) with you and brought you to all the honour you have, and to the most of that wealth you now enjoy. Therefore, you have cause to think yourself happier than others, for I know not what she is within this realm that may compare with you either in living or goods; and yet you cannot be contented. The reconciliation that her Majesty moved betwixt us was—that I should take a probation of your good behaviour toward me for a year, and send you to Wingfield upon my charges, to which I yielded (being much pressed by her Highness) with these conditions: that I should not bed nor board with you; those servants that were now about you, I would put from you and put others to you; your children, nor Gilbert Talbot, nor his wife should come at you whilst you were with me; your living I would have, and my goods (which you and William Cavendish had taken) I would have restored. Yet you still pressed her Majesty further, that you might come to me at my house to Chelsea, which I granted, and at your coming I told you that you were welcome upon the Queen’s commandment, but though you were cleared in her Majesty’s sight for all offences, yet I had not cleared you, nor could trust you till you did confess that you had offended me. Nor can I be contented to accept of you, if you do not this in writing and upon your knees and before such as her Majesty shall appoint. It was promised that I should find you obedient unto me in all points. I thought it unfit that there should be suits betwixt your children and me, if I should accept of you, which made me to try you, and demand my plate of you, etc. What greater disobedience could you shew unto me than deny me that which is my own? You will hardly suffer me to be master of any of yours, when you cannot be pleased to restore me mine own. Is it fit that you should gage my plate and mine arms upon it? Can you do me greater dishonour? You say that, if your estate were able, you would not stand with me upon such toys. You never esteemed how largely you cut quarters out of my cloth; but you have carried always this mind towards me, that, if you once got anything of me, you cannot be contented to restore it again. As (if you remember) you borrowed £1000 of me, etc., and gave me your bill for it; I was not ignorant that I could not recover any money by it, but it is a witness that you had the money and yet you never paid it me again. As touching her Majesty’s order for your living, she pronounced the same at Greenwich, and ordered me £500 a year and divers other things which they thought fit, and we assented to be set down in the draft of the books, as may appear. And as touching this, that if I did at any time receive you and cohabit with you, the Lords thought it reasonable—and you assented to it—that I should have your living during the time of our cohabitation, and hereupon I refer myself to their opinions. Marry, this difference there was, that if you disliked to cohabit and dwell with me, then your sons to have your living, upon a signification to be made, the form whereof could not be agreed upon, as may appear. Your children’s names were used only for this cause, because you were not capable yourself, but they were thought meetest to deal for you, till I liked to take you to me. And I think their commission extended to it, or else you would not have laboured their great pains which they took in it, and they would have been glad then that I should have taken you and your living also, which your children desired not, if I could have agreed to it. I am sorry to spend all these words with you, but assure yourself this shall be the last time that I will write much to you in the matter or trouble myself; and likewise, if you intend to come to me, advise yourself in these points before remembered, that I will have you to confess that you have offended me, and are heartily sorry for it, in writing, and upon your knees (without either if or and). Your living you shall bring with you to maintain you with, and to pay such debts as is expressed in the consideration of the deed. For neither by the said deed, nor yet by her Majesty’s order, it was meant that your sons should have your living, which appertaineth to me, being my enemies, and have sought my defamation and destruction of my house, and I to have you without that which the laws giveth me. My goods you shall restore me before we come together. And, if you cannot be content to do this I protest before God, I will never have you come upon me, whatever shall [happen]. I could allege many causes why you have thus disobediently behaved yourself against me. One chief cause was when I had made you my sole executrix you persuaded me to make a lease in trust to two of your friends for threescore years, minding thereby to have the benefit thereof by the executorship. You caused me in my extremity of sickness to pass my lands by deed enrolled—to your friends—in bargain and sale, and the indenture which did lease the houses was not enrolled, so that if I had then died, the same might have been embezzled, and so my posterity for that land in the case of St. Loo. But, when I perceived in what danger I stood, I put you out of my will, and have since started to remedy those my great imperfections that I was not able to benefit my children nor recompense my servants. At length it came to your ear, though there were not many that knew it, and then you began to play your part, and hath used me ever since in such despiteful sort as I was not able to bear or abide it: and this is one of the causes that you deal with me in this wise as you do, and not such causes as you allege to her Majesty of my dislike of you. All offences done by you are esteemed nothing as was the offence of Henry Beresford, that was found guilty of such slanderous speeches that he had spoken of me, that, if they had been true, as they be most false, had overthrown me and my house. Also, in regard to your confederacy with him and his son, I cannot but remember that the young fellow should swear he never spoke any such speeches by me as was laid in my action which, till it was discovered, moved great favour towards Beresford, and had like both to have abused both her Majesty and Mr. Secretary, and clearly to have dishonoured me (as Mr. Secretary informed me). This I take to be a grievous offence done unto me. I thought good not to omit this, but to put you in remembrance thereof, what great favour you have showed him, and was very unfit to have been supported by you, when the case did touch me so near, which I look for at your hands that you will confess.

“And thus I end.