My Lady Shrewsbury was forty-eight, my Lord had been but eight years an Earl. Time had not yet marked on his face the lines of anxiety and care which the next twenty-three years were to bring him. He was at the zenith of his career, and the Queen hinted mysteriously that ere long she would show him still more emphatic proofs of her trust and affection in so splendid a servitor. It is in a very happy and devoted vein that he writes love letters from Court just after marriage to his second bride, in which he addresses her as “sweet none.”[[10]]
It is regrettable that these letters to his “none” are not more numerous. Otherwise the Earl’s correspondence all his life was enormous, and the masses of letters which mirror contemporary history and his duties in connection with them are nearly all comprised in that rich heritage of manuscript known as the Talbot Papers. Cecil is his constant correspondent. As Lord-Lieutenant of three such great counties he would naturally be kept au courant of great happenings. Is there fear of French invasion? Immediately the Lords of the Privy Council send him instructions. He is to organise companies of demi-lances, to find horses for them—“a good strong and well-set gelding and a man on his back meet to wear a corselet and shoot a dagge” runs the specification. Did her Majesty receive “letters out of Spain”? Copies of the same were sent to the Earl “to the intent that you may thereby see what the humour and disposition of those parties [i.e. the King of Spain and his emissary] tend unto.” Did France goad Mary of Scotland into that unforgettable offence—the adoption of the English royal arms? Then also must his lordship be acquainted with the fact and its immense possibilities. Presently active Scottish hostility seemed imminent, and the letter which travelled to my Lord from Berwick to bid him have all his men in readiness to move to the Border is cumbrously and theatrically endorsed “Haste, haste, haste, haste, post haste with all possible haste.”
After a portrait at Rufford Abbey
GEORGE TALBOT, EARL OF SHREWSBURY
After a portrait in the possession of the Duke of Portland
ELIZABETH COUNTESS OF SHREWSBURY
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The marriage of Mary and Darnley, the exciting news of the force raised by the rebellious Earls of Moray and Arran against their Queen immediately after the ceremony, the perilous position of Mary betwixt her enemies—between Moray’s force on one side, secretly encouraged by Elizabeth, and Elizabeth’s forces, supplemented by two thousand Irish and the Earl of Argyle’s company, on the other—the details of field-pieces and “harquebusses,” all these events and matters passed in review under the eyes of the splendid and cautious Earl of Shrewsbury. Scarcely a day went by but some important paper or letter, official or private, was put into his hands. At every turn he was helping to “make history,” while he was a keen spectator of the Scottish drama up to the point when Mary fled out of her own country to implore the aid and protection of her sister sovereign.
It is now that the plot—Elizabeth’s plot which she had kept up her sleeve—begins to peep out. The first authentic news of it apparently went to the other Elizabeth, the newly made Countess of Shrewsbury, in the following letter from the English Court. The signature is torn off, but the correspondent has weighty news to tell, in spite of his deprecatory attitude towards mere rumours:—
“My most humble duty remembered unto your honourable good Ladyship. If it were not for my bounden duty’s sake I would be loth to write, because there is so small certainty in occurrences, but (seeing I am bound to write) it is but small that I see with my own eyes that is worth writing, and therefore I am forced to supply by that I do hear; which I write as I hear by credible report, otherwise I should not write at all, and therefore if I do err it is pardonable. The news is here that my Lord your husband is sworn of the Privy Council; and that the Scottish Queen is on her journey to Tutbury, something against her will, and will be under my Lord’s custody there.”
The rest of the letter is perhaps worth quoting, because it gives a picture of public events and suggests such a spacious background for the present life of Bess Hardwick. It deals with the war now beginning between Spain and the Netherlands, owing to the barbarous treatment of the latter by the Duke of Alva, and the commotion occasioned by it in France.