CHAPTER II
THE MISTRESS BUILDER
Upon this scene of household importance and intimate family life, making, if not for happiness in the fullest sense of the word, at any rate for prosperity and success, fell for a second time upon the married life of Bess Hardwick the great shadow. Sir William Cavendish, so accomplished in business, so doughty a husband, so excellent a host, died in 1557.
His wife made a note of the event in her own hand:—
“Memorandum, that Sir William Cavendish, Knight, my most dear and well beloved husband, departed this present life on Monday, being the 25th day of October, betwixt the hours of 8 and 9 of the same day at Night, in the year of our Lord God 1557, the dominical Letter then C. On whose soul I most humbly beseech the Lord to have mercy, and to rid me and his poor children out of our great misery.
“Elizabeth Cavendish.”
This was probably the greatest grief of her life, and all her after energies were spent in furthering the welfare of her Cavendish children.
Now followed a period of widowhood, during which no substantial or interesting episodes bring the lady’s name to the front. But she did not lose her hold over society and the Court. Nor did she lay aside her wise, worldly habits. She was still the grand dame—dispenser of charities, recipient of Court letters, mistress of masons and woodmen and grooms, resting securely upon her hoard like the dragon in German legend, assuring herself and the world, “I lie and possess, and would slumber.” But hers was not the nature to be quiescent very long. And she had incentive enough to action. She had six children to further in the world. Daughters must be married, sons must be brought into the charmed circle of the Queen, to run the gauntlet of suspicions, favours, and coldnesses from her and bear the jealousy and competition of others till the right opportunity came for advancement. Moreover, there was Chatsworth to complete—alone. At thirty-seven, gifted with excellent good looks, an indomitable will, and a constitution robust and healthy, it was not the moment for such a woman to permit either her schemes or her zest in life to collapse. So she keeps to her road, moving no doubt daily between the old Chatsworth and the new, the beloved fabric which for her was at once the mausoleum of her greatest happiness, the eloquent witness of her aspirations for her children, and a lasting memorial of her Cavendish ambitions. So one beholds her working onward, building for the future, impatient no doubt of the present. Fully accustomed now to take command of her life and affairs, she controls every item of the building of her new house. One can picture her easily enough walking or driving to and fro, while she issues commands for the felling of wood, signs orders for the selling of coals and stone, for the transplantation of trees, the manufacture of hangings, the transport of Derbyshire marbles, the employment of artificers in mosaic, and plaster and wood. She had built six Cavendishes, bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh, and now she was building a great and perfect house for them and theirs. In it she would reign, so long as she lived, supreme. One pictures her again and again—a vigorous, vital woman, in proper and dignified weeds, with shrewd and genial face in which the lines of intrigue and sorrow had not yet deepened, moving amongst her army of workmen, fully conscious of the country life about her, though possibly not playing for a while a very active part in it. But the old zest of living, the old desire of the world, the joys of which she had tasted only at brief intervals during the babyhood of her six children, were ineradicable. She had acres and gold, she needed a helpmeet more than many women. No country gentleman of sufficient importance presented himself for whom she would think it worth while to give up the pretty delight of being addressed as “my lady.” In this dilemma Fate brought her face to face with Sir William St. Lo.
He was of excellent birth, and, like her second husband, a widower. His family was, of course, originally Norman. State papers show that a Margaret de St. Low or Laudo parted with certain rights in Cornish property in the reign of Henry III. By the seventeenth century the family seems to have concentrated in Gloucestershire, where it held the manor of Tormarton, twenty-two miles south of the county town. “Livery” of this manor, we read, was granted to William St. Loe by Elizabeth.
William and his brother John had fought bravely in Ireland against Desmond. In 1536 the former—the family name is spelt variously as Seyntlow, Seyntloe, and Santclo—is mentioned in despatches. There is a vivid glimpse in various letters of an attack on the castle of “Carreke Ogunell.”[[3]] Says Lord Leonard Grey, writing to Henry VIII in England, “It was taken by assault by William Seyntloe and his men before scaling ladders could arrive.” But the writer is not quite sure if the success was due to “hope of fame or lack of victuals, for a halfpenny loaf was worth 12d., but there was none to be sold.” The castle has marble walls thirteen feet thick. It is the strongest Lord Leonard has ever seen. An Englishman could take it at a rush, in spite of the fact that besides being set in a fine moat, “in an island of fresh water,” the place was guarded with watch towers of hewn marble. But Lord Leonard does not think that any Irishman could have built it!
Later there is mutiny and rumour of sore disruption in the English-Irish army. Young Captain St. Loe’s men forgather with discontented spirits, and the whole of his stalwart retinue of three hundred, “men of high courage and activity,” revolts so badly that, though he and his captains are cleared of all blame, it is necessary to “bend the ordnance” on the mutineers and proceed against them in “battle array.” Little wonder that the men, henchmen and yeomen, doubtless, of Gloucestershire, hated the campaign. Even Lord Leonard himself shared the destitution of the privates and was pinched for the lack of a loaf. “And so,” he goes on after his comment on the price of bread, “I among others lay in my harness, without any bed, almost famished with hunger, wet, and cold.”