“Your Lordship’s assured friend,
“G. Shrewsbury.”[[55]]
To Walsingham the Earl also announces this news, adding, “Howbeit, I do not willingly obey unto His will who took him, who only lent him me, without grudging thereat; but my wife (although she acknowledge no less) is not so well able to rule her passions, and hath driven herself into such case by her continual weeping, as it likes to breed in her further inconvenience.” Wherefore he is particularly anxious to join her at Chatsworth, and begs that the Queen shall be “moved” for the requisite permission.
This visit was ended by the beginning of November, when Queen Mary was once more bundled back to Sheffield. At this time she seems to have been on the best of terms with Earl and Countess, and ready to do them every kindness in her power. For instance, she sent to France for a bed for them. But as this was not at the moment acceptable she mentions in a letter her intention to “fulfil my promise by another bed of finer stuff.” It came to her knowledge that they required half a dozen great hall candlesticks such as those “made at Crotelles,” whereupon she sent for “the largest, richest, and best made.” These were to be sent among articles ordered by her servants, “so that they may create no suspicion.”
It is sometimes hard to distinguish from her bribes the presents Mary made out of sheer generosity.
CHAPTER XIV
“BRUITS”
In a letter quoted in the previous chapter Lord Burghley had told Lord Shrewsbury that the Queen herself would write to him on the subject of the new-old rumours about Mary’s escape. Elizabeth, of course, did write, and very seriously, about these reports “from sundry places beyond the sea,” and in that letter (of September, 1577) she gave her servant full powers to use his own discretion in making things secure. But by the spring of 1578 she was not quite so sure of him. The mischief-making at Court had done its usual work. The Queen was very cruelly placed always between two parties—Mary’s friends and Mary’s enemies. To all, as her courtiers, she must preserve a certain show of grace and unswerving discretion, holding always the balance between the Argus-eyed alertness of the first and the many-winged suspicions of the last. These suspicions were often grossly exaggerated. There were some at least who desired the prisoner’s freedom, but not her usurpation of the English throne and a third religious revolution. On the other hand, there were men, who, though powerful under Elizabeth, could quickly have transferred their allegiance to the other sovereign. Again, at all hours “posts” from various ports could bring in secret information under the excellently inclusive system organised by Elizabeth’s chief adviser.
Tugged this way and that in her fears for the stability of the kingdom, and at times driven to a pitch of intense alarm, the Queen’s confidence in the capacity of the Earl at Sheffield varied according to the tales poured into her ear.
A crisis of this kind had been slowly brewing since the autumn, till in the opening of this year it was actually decided to remove Mary to Leicestershire, and place her under the roof and guard of Lord Huntingdon. Everything was arranged, even down to the despatch of the usual warnings to the surrounding officials of the counties through which the Scots Queen must pass. And then—the usual hitch. Shrewsbury, of course, scented trouble and disgrace, and before definite orders could reach him as to the change, he wrote to the Queen: “To answer somewhat,” he rightly says, “in this letter is part of my duty, lest my silence should breed suspicion.” And no wonder! For “I am informed that there are reports ... that I am too much at the devotion of this lady, and so the less to be trusted, and that it was considered better to dispose her elsewhere out of my custody, to my dishonour and disgrace.” He pleads stoutly, as always, for the recognition of his single-heartedness and loyalty. He desires only “to be acquitted of blame by the Queen’s own goodness.” He challenges her equity and good faith: “I presume with your favour not to excuse myself, but to be cleared thereof by your own just judgment.”
He points out that had he desired to espouse Mary’s cause he might have done so far earlier in the day:—