“My very good Lord,
“Upon my Lady Lennox’s earnest request, as to your Lordship I am sure shall appear, I have written to my Lords of the Council all I can find out of her behaviour towards this Queen and dealing when she was in these north parts; and if some disallowed of my writing (as I look they will, because they would have it thought that I should have enough to do to answer for myself) let such ...[[31]] reprove, or find any ...[[31]] respect to her Majesty in me or my wife is sought for, and then there is some cause to reprehend me, and for them to call out against me as they do. I take that Lady Lennox be a subject in all respects worthy the Queen’s Majesty’s favour, and for the duty I bear to her Majesty I am bound, methinks, to commend her so as I find her; yea, and to intreat you, and all of my Lords of the Council for her, to save her from blemish, if no offence can be found in her towards her Majesty. I do not nor can find the marriage of that Lady’s son to my wife’s daughter can any way be taken with indifferent judgment, be any offence or contemptuous to her Majesty; and then, methinks, that benefit any subject may by law claim might be permitted to any of mine as well. But I must be plain with your Lordship. It is not the marriage matter nor the hatred some bear to my Lady Lennox, my wife, or to me, that makes this great ado and occupies heads with so many devices. It is a greater matter; which I leave to conjecture, not doubting but your Lordship’s wisdom hath foreseen it, and thereof had due consideration, as always you have been most careful for it.
“I have no more to trouble your Lordship withal, but that I would not have her Majesty think, if I could see any cause to imagine any intent of liking or insinuation with this Queen the rather to grow by this marriage, or any other inconvenience might come thereby to her Majesty, that I could or would bear with it, or hide it from her Majesty, for that Lady’s sake, or for my wife, or any other cause else; for besides the faith I bear her Majesty, with a singular love I look not by any means but by her Majesty only to be made better than I am; nor by any change to hold that I have—so take my leave of your Lordship.
“Sheffield Castle (where my charge is safe), the 27th of December, 1574.
“Your Lordship’s assured friend to my power,
“G. Shrewsbury.”
This letter is dignified, slightly defiant—claiming common justice for his people, as “any subject” may do—and doggedly loyal. He is no opportunist, and for any improvement in his fortunes he looks to Elizabeth only. He has acted whole-heartedly and with a single mind. He has tendered to the Lords of the Council all possible details which would assist in clearing Lady Lennox from imputations in regard to co-operation with Mary of Scotland. He fully recognises that this is the “greater matter” which “occupies heads with so many devices” and wherein lies the crux of the affair. He knew that a long official enquiry was inevitable. This took the form of a special Court under the Earl of Huntingdon, whom Mary of Scots and the Earl alike detested. The choice of him as grand inquisitor must have been the more galling just now, because reports were rife that this rash marriage had finally decided the Queen to supersede Lord Shrewsbury as incapable and unworthy of her reliance. Such rumours were always a part of her policy. She knew perfectly well who was most useful to her, and she was not going to relax her grip upon Shrewsbury, his endurance, his loyalty, his houses, and his income.
Lord Huntingdon’s enquiry went forward, and both ladies were ultimately acquitted of “large treasons.” If the gaoler-soldier Earl did not give his wife a sound verbal drubbing for endangering the peace of his whole house in so gratuitous a fashion it would be strange. From the very first, in spite of his assurances to the Queen, he must have scented his lady’s ambition with regard to any possible semi-royal offspring of the Rufford marriage. The matter weighed on him greatly in after life. One can only assume that his Bess at this period lost her sense of perspective, and that in one sense her noted long-headedness deserted her. The enquiry over, the principal offenders, crushed and humble (Lady Lennox at all events seemed so), retired to their homes. It is mentioned that the royal order giving Lady Shrewsbury her freedom included permission for her to repair to the baths at Buxton, a change of air which must have been extremely salutary after the poor ventilation of the Tower of London, even under the less rigorous conditions accorded to prisoners of quality.
By the middle of May, Lady Lennox was once more at her Hackney house. A visit to Buxton waters for her was out of the question, both as regards policy and expense. At Hackney she rested, very much out of the world and very poor, with her gentle little daughter-in-law and son, who spent the first year of their married life in a tolerably morose atmosphere of suspicion and unpopularity. They had, of course, a few visitors. Gilbert Talbot, who seems always to have been the spokesman of the family, and to have kept in touch with its various members, records the impression made by the Lennoxes on a certain “Mr. Tyndall,” who subsequently carried letters down to Derbyshire to the mother of Elizabeth Lennox:—
“This bearer, Mr. Tyndall, was at Hackney, where he found them there well. And I trust very shortly that the dregs of all misconstruction will be wiped away, that their abode there after this sort will be altered.”