“Richmond, this Thursday.”
Like a pedal note through the long jangle runs the Queen’s order, upon which Sir Charles Cavendish comments more than once. The main part of it, of course, deals with the disposal of property, the outcome of the affair being that the couple should travel down to the country together, and the lands belonging to the Cavendishes revert to them. A footnote to one copy of the order says that the meaning of this is not to take away anything in the way of concessions already arranged, but only “to better the Countess’s part.”
Elizabeth was accused of partiality by the Earl. Her own attitude towards him had been rather like that of some of his children, for she had always made use of his possessions to suit her own purpose without any intention of repayment. It is possible that from the innate stinginess of her disposition she may have resented the fashion in which he coupled accusations against his wife’s rapacity with his sore, justifiable complaint that Mary’s imprisonment had impoverished him. In a letter to Lord Leicester he can no longer control his feelings against the Queen. Though written in 1585, it is quoted here as being pertinent.
Bitter and rambling, it is in reply to one from Leicester, which shows plainly that the Queen, as arbitrator, has thrown her weight into the balance with the Countess. The document is quoted by Lodge from a rough copy endorsed “The Earl of Shrewsbury’s answer to the Earl of Leicester’s letter ... ultimo Aprilis, 1585,” and is therefore unsigned.
“My good Lord,
“Since her Majesty hath declared her mind in the matter betwixt me and my wife, and doubts not but in every respect I will observe it as her Highness hath set it down and that the Lord Chancellor should take order with me for the accomplishment thereof, well weighing her Majesty’s hard censure of me and my causes; since my coming to Chelsea, I have not been well, nor able to return my answer by your Lordship’s servant so speedily as I would, but have now thought good to send this bearer, my servant, Christopher Copley, unto your Lordship with this answer; that as her Majesty doth demand and look for at my hands faith and due obedience, as is the duty of every good subject to spend lands and life in the defence of her Majesty’s person and realm, which I and my ancestors have done and am ready at her Majesty’s commandment, so, for the maintenance of my honour and credit, do I claim and demand of her Majesty justice and benefit of her Majesty’s laws, never denied by her Majesty nor by any of her noble progenitors, to any of the meanest of her subjects before this; yet not doubting but that her Majesty will have better consideration of me and my cause when she hath thoroughly weighed of it; and that if she (for all my careful and faithful service, to my great charges above my allowance in the keeping of that Lady for sixteen years last past: with the extraordinary charges and expense of her Majesty’s commissioners sent down, as of Sir Walter Mildmay, Mr. Beale, and Sir Ralph Sadler, and others, their horse and men, for so long time as they continued with me), will bestow nothing on me yet I even thought she would have left me with what her Majesty’s laws had given me. Since that her Majesty hath set down this hard sentence against me, to my perpetual infamy and dishonour, to be ruled and overrun by my wife, so bad and wicked a woman, yet her Majesty shall see that I will obey her commandment, though no curse or plague in the earth could be more grievous to me. These offers of my wife’s enclosed in your letters I think them very unfit to be offered to me. It is too much to make me my wife’s prisoner, and set me down the demesnes of Chatsworth, without the house and other lands leased, which is but a pension in money. I think it stands with reason that I should choose the £500 by year ordered by her Majesty where I like best, according to the rate William Cavendish delivered to my Lord Chancellor; or else I shall think myself doubly wronged, which I am sure her Majesty will not offer unto me. And thus I commit your Lordship to the tuition of the Almighty.”
The last sentence is entirely ironical after the preceding outburst. Leicester was not the man to take spiritual counsel or to bestir himself to his own disadvantage. He was essentially a “trimmer,” and the guardianship of the Almighty was only a matter of speech for him. He seems to have remained fairly neutral after this, to judge from what Henry Talbot writes from London on the 6th of August to his father:—
“All your Lordship’s affairs here are well; and your wife doth exclaim against my Lord Leicester, because, as she saith, he hath not been so good as his promise. Her Majesty, praise to God, is well, and marvelleth she can hear nothing from your Lordship, and she useth the best speeches that may be of your Lordship.”
To this letter there is a delightful postscript giving a suggestive and greedy message from one of Shrewsbury’s friends:—
“My Lord Mayor hath his humble duty remembered unto your Lordship, and says he hopes your Lordship’s bucks are fat this summer.”