During the reign of Mary of England Lady Lennox passed into calmer waters. She did not abuse her opportunities, but the Queen’s favour did not make Margaret or her children heirs designate to Mary’s crown.
Exit Mary, enter Elizabeth, and with Elizabeth a short time of prosperity! Matthew Lennox secured eventually his regency in Scotland, and his wife was in waiting upon Elizabeth at Windsor. She must have felt like a bat emerging from a cellar after the constant misfortunes and rebuffs of the past. Disfavour, dispeace were, however, always her portion, and very soon closed in upon her. This time the occasion of disturbance was France. Its king died. Mary of Scotland became queen consort. Lady Lennox saw a rich chance of using influence so puissant for reinstating her husband and herself in Scotland. She sent one messenger of congratulation and again another. This seems to have been Henry Darnley, now her eldest son, who was just fifteen. Thus did she begin to lay the train of circumstances which exploded in the horrors of the night of Kirk-o’-Field. From this till the actual Darnley marriage it was the Lady Lennox even more than her husband who invited intrigue. She, like other keen aristocratic plotters of the day, employed not only codes, emissaries, and spies, but conjurors. Little she guessed at the eavesdroppers who lurked in the corners of her great house at Settrington, and of the spies whom the Earl of Leicester and Lord Burghley employed to catch every suspicious word and record every private interview within her walls. One fine day the Queen’s officers invaded and seized her household, conjurors included, and she and her family were summoned sharply to Court. A sorry journey that, though not the first piece of pitiful travelling she had done. Servants, children, lord and lady reached the capital, and were disposed of in various quarters. The Lennoxes were ordered to their own apartments in Westminster Palace, while some of their retinue were put into the old Gate House prison close by. How young Lord Darnley managed to evade watching and quietly lose himself in London is a mystery. This did not make things easier for his parents, who were instantly punished by separation and imprisonment, he in the Tower, and she to strait keeping under the roof of Sir Richard and Lady Sackville, the Queen’s cousins, at Sheen. Lady Lennox’s religion and the unjust suggestion that she had been responsible for the harsh treatment, by the late Queen, of her sister Elizabeth, seemed to aggravate the case of both prisoners. After sickness, pleadings, and indignation, husband and wife were permitted to share confinement at Sheen. It would have been best for them if they had been kept there indefinitely. How Elizabeth ever came to free them in the midst of her suspicions and fears in regard to the marriage of Mary of Scotland is extraordinary. That she should actually have been prevailed upon to give the Earl and his eldest son a passport into Scotland is still more so. With the Darnley marriage began Lady Lennox’s long incarceration in the Tower itself—a more pitiful imprisonment than any she had experienced. Her children were far from her; her husband and eldest son were too wise to risk their fate by obeying Elizabeth’s absurd order to return to Court. Freedom came hand in hand with the terrible news of Darnley’s murder. What could the woman do but break forth into loud complaints and passionate accusation in the royal presence? Was it strange that, worn with imprisonment, the beauty of her prime gone, her face disfigured with many sorrows, her dignity and royal blood degraded, she should address a petition begging the Queen to commit Mary to trial and secure the speedy execution of justice? Elizabeth would not have her hand forced. “It was not becoming,” said she, “to fix a charge so heinous upon the princess and her kinswoman without producing the clearest evidence.” She would not actually accuse, but she would not clear her enemy.
Thus there was reason enough for Elizabeth’s later clemency towards the Lennoxes. It suited the purpose of queen and prisoner that they should now join issue against the murderess, “the hure,” against “Bothwell’s wench.” It suited Lennox well that he should be installed guardian of the future James I, and Lady Lennox, as his grandmother, was now accorded a far more important position than she could have taken had her daughter-in-law been above suspicion. It is true that financially she was never unembarrassed. A mansion at Hackney, formerly the property of the ruined family of Percy, was awarded to her as a residence, but it does not seem to have been much of a home, or at least, her manner of living there seems to have been anything but luxurious. She does not appear to have been much at Court. Gilbert Talbot alludes to her in a letter already quoted, and written in this summer of 1574: “My Lady of Lennox hath not been at the Court since I came.” Up to the present her attitude towards Mary was unchanged. When Lord and Lady Burghley visited Chatsworth in 1570, Margaret Lennox thought it necessary to flog a dead horse and add by letter her exhortations to the warnings of Elizabeth that Mr. Secretary should be on his guard against the wiles of Mary. Even Margaret—a woman—knew the force of the personal equation in this case. She is careful to add: “Not for any fear you should be won, which as her Majesty tells me she did speak to you at your departing, but to let you understand how her Majesty hath had some talks with me touching my Lord.... Her Majesty says that Queen works many ways—I answered her Majesty was a good lady to her and better I thought than any other prince would have been if they were in her case, for she staid publishing abroad her wickedness which was manifestly known.” In the self-same summer from Chatsworth Mary, the daughter-in-law, writes to her. The content and tone of the letters is pitiful enough.
“Madame,—If the wrong and false reports of enemies well known as traitors to you, alas! too much trusted by me, by your advice, had not so far stirred you against my innocence (and I must say against all kindness) that you have not only as it were condemned me wrongfully, but cherished, as your words and deeds have testified to all the world, a manifest misliking against your own blood, I would not have omitted this long ago duty in writing to you, excusing me for those untrue reports made of me, but hoping with God’s grace and time to have my innocence confirmed, as I trust it is already, even to the most indifferent persons. I thought best not to trouble you for a time till now another matter is moved that toucheth us both, which is the transporting of your little son, and my only child, to the which I were never so willing, yet I would be glad to have your advice therein, as in all other things touching him. I have borne him, and God knoweth with what danger to him and to me, and of you he is descended. So I mean not to forget my duty to you in showing therein any unkindness to you notwithstanding how unkindly you have dealt with me, but will love you as my aunt and respect you as my mother-in-law. And if it please you to know further of my mind, in that and all things betwixt us, my ambassador, the Bishop of Ross, shall be ready to confer with you.
“And so after my hearty commendations, remitting you to the said ambassador and your better consideration, I commit you to the protection of Almighty God, whom I pray to preserve you, and my brother Charles, and cause you to know my part better than you do—By your loving daughter-in-law.
“(To my Lady Lennox, my mother-in-law.)”[[26]]
This letter was delivered to Lady Lennox in the Queen’s presence some months after it was written, and Elizabeth was still at work defaming the writer to her mother-in-law. That was during the close of 1570. In 1574 their relations were in no wise altered. Lady Lennox evidently still believed her son’s wife guilty, while she pathetically insisted upon her rights as the grandmother of a king. In this capacity she applied to the Queen for a safe-conduct to her northern house of Settrington—now restored to her—whither she wished to repair with her son Charles because she had been informed of a plot to carry off her royal grandson and bring him to England. This seems to have been a rather well-worn excuse and was mistrusted by Elizabeth, who about this time began to entertain doubts of her lady’s real attitude towards the imprisoned “dowager of Scotland.” She and Lady Shrewsbury were old acquaintances at Court. The latter heard of the projected long journey, and invited the party to break it at one of the Shrewsbury “places.” Chatsworth offered itself as most suitable, but she was right in her surmise that this choice would only appear in a suspicious light to Elizabeth, who anticipated it in the admonition she bestowed on Lady Lennox before her departure. Her Ladyship showed a fine indignation at such a suggestion, but one wonders whether this was not merely a piece of “bluff,” for the complicity of Mary had been repeatedly denied by Bothwell and by other Scottish lords implicated in the dark business at Kirk-o’-Field. At any rate this northern journey gave colour to all kinds of imputations. It was suggested that Lady Lennox’s ultimate aim was simply a visit of tender enquiry and that she was bound actually for Scotland to assure herself of the welfare of the boy James. It was thought, again, that she herself would kidnap the child and bring him into England for her own purposes or for those of her daughter-in-law. At all events she had her way and started. Lady Shrewsbury also knew that Chatsworth was much too near Sheffield Castle to allow of the reception of this guest without literally disobeying orders from Court. She decided, therefore, upon Rufford Abbey as the most suitable place. Unhappily the scheme which lay behind this hospitality has not descended to posterity in the form of letters. But gradually the motives underlying the invitation show themselves clearly enough. Lady Shrewsbury had still one unmarried daughter for whom she was exerting herself to find a good match. She had her eye upon a certain young Bertie, a son of the Duchess of Suffolk by a second marriage. This affair could not be accomplished, and she therefore worked upon the Duchess’s sympathy so as to secure her co-operation in a new direction. Lady Lennox and her son Charles on their journey halted first at the gates of the Duchess’s house. Six miles away was Rufford, where Lady Shrewsbury had taken her daughter and made all ready for goodly entertainment. To the Duchess’s house she sent a messenger, and backed up the invitation by a personal visit. Lady Lennox accepted the invitation, and with her son, coach, baggage-carts, mules, and attendants arrived at the Abbey. Previous to this there must surely have taken place an interesting three-cornered interview between the three great ladies. Though the Duchess of Suffolk may have been genuinely interested in helping to find a husband for wistful young Elizabeth Cavendish, one cannot acquit her of a certain malice. Her part in the transaction wears a very innocent air. Nothing happened under her roof for which she could be called to book by the Queen. At the same time she was a hot Protestant and could not have felt any very great sympathy for the Lady Lennox, nor for Lady Shrewsbury, who, as regards mere creed, must always have been a religious opportunist.
At Rufford Lady Lennox fell ill. There was excuse enough after the exposure to cold and flood in the uncertain autumn weather during which she undertook her journey. She was forced to keep her room. Nothing could have fallen out more happily to assist the plot of the hostess. Her hands were occupied with her friend’s ailments. Their children must amuse one another. In five days the close companionship between Charles and Elizabeth could not but grow, fostered by the cleverness of the girl’s mother. Free to go and come in gardens and woodland, young and lithe, eager to escape from rules and duties and tutors, to forget sad things—Elizabeth Cavendish, the grim details of Sheffield Castle, its alarums and excursions, Charles Stuart, the tragedies of his family—they wooed each other readily. Glimpses of their courtship are visualised for the reader in imaginary dialogue following.
CHAPTER IX
LOVE AND THE WOODMAN
Scene: A parlour in Rufford Abbey, October, 1574. Elizabeth Cavendish bending over her embroidery frame. The Countess of Shrewsbury seated writing.