“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.