From a photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby, after the picture at Hardwick Hall
By permission of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire
QUEEN ELIZABETH
Page [182]
There is no further comment from him on the subject of this visit, but later letters will show that it went off smoothly and resulted in benefit to the patient. As for his visit to Chatsworth it appears to have been a triumphant success. Many things were talked out between host, hostess, and guest in the few days of his sojourn. They had many experiences in common—to wit, the insane jealousy and suspicions of their Sovereign. But on this occasion their meeting hatched no unpleasant results in this respect. The Queen herself wrote to thank them for their good entertainment of her valued friend. And hereby hangs a little comedy, a mystery. Two letters, evidently of the same date, were dictated by the Queen. The skittish original in the handwriting of Sir Francis Walsingham was not sent. A sedate version of it was the one which the Shrewsburys opened. This is among the Talbot manuscripts. The lively edition remains in the Record Office among the Mary Queen of Scots MSS. for the amusement of posterity. Opinions differ as to the mood in which Elizabeth wrote it.[[41]] It has been suggested that it was done in a flippant ironical spirit; it has also been taken as a symptom of wild elation born of Elizabeth’s belief that her marriage with Lord Leicester would really be achieved. It seems most likely that she certainly dashed it off in a flippant mood, with the intention of chaffing the serious apprehensive High Steward of England and his wife, and that Lord Burghley, or Walsingham, advised her to desist and to allow a copy to be made, excluding the “larky” passages.
This is what she sent:—
“The Queen to the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury.
“By the Queen.
“Your most assured loving cousin and sovereign,
Elizabeth R.
“Our very good Cousins,
“Being given to understand from our cousin of Leicester how honourably he was received by you our cousin the Countess at Chatsworth, and his diet by you both discharged at Buxtons, but also presented with a very rare present, we should do him great wrong (holding him in that place of favour we do) in case we should not let you understand in what thankful sort we accept the same at your hands, not as done unto him, but to our own self, reputing him as another ourself; and, therefore, ye may assure yourselves, that we taking upon us the debt not as his but as our own, will take care accordingly to discharge the same in such honourable sort as so well-deserving creditors as ye are shall never have cause to think ye have met with an ungrateful debtor. In this acknowledgment of new debts we may not forget our old debt, the same being as great as a sovereign can owe to a subject; when through your loyal and most careful looking to this charge committed to you, both we and our realm enjoy a peaceable government, the best good hope that to any prince on earth can befall: This good hap, then, growing from you, ye might think yourselves most unhappy if you served such a prince as should not be as ready graciously to consider of it as thankfully to acknowledge the same, whereof ye may make full account, to your comfort when time shall serve. Given under our signet in our manor of Greenwich, the 25th day of June, 1577, and in the 19th year of our reign.”
This is what Elizabeth, a sovereign of nineteen years’ standing, a woman over forty years of age, wanted to send:—