Meanwhile, all the Countess of Shrewsbury could do was to write abject letters to Elizabeth asking her to execute an order by which a settled allowance should be conferred on Arabella.
The Countess could obviously now have nourished no hopes of utilising Mary’s influence. The Earl was in receipt of all outside information in regard to Scotland and the English Court. It was patent that no help for Mary could come from James, well primed since his cradle by the lords who hated his mother. Bess Shrewsbury’s glorious dream of a throne for Arabella stared at her now as a somewhat sickly vision. The only hopes for the child were from an influential marriage. That Arabella’s grandmother did confide her dream to Mary is evident from the very curious revelations which the latter makes in subsequent letters, when the Countess, once so friendly and communicative, if at times brusque and inquisitorial, had turned against her to the extent of grave “scandilation,” in the language of those days.
This business of Arabella Stuart’s future marks a crisis in the Shrewsbury household. It was like the tap given to a very vivid and complex kaleidoscope, for it suddenly brought the relationship of the three important personages—Earl, Countess, and Scottish Queen—into new juxtaposition, and the true colour of the desires of the Countess shone out more vividly for the changed order of things. To the mere onlooker the matter is not made clear till much later. Only those immediately concerned were aware of her gradual change of front, especially towards her husband, and it was not yet that the full result of this apparent volte face could be perceived. In order to understand how marked was this change events must be anticipated by a year or two, and attention given to an extraordinary letter from Queen Mary which betrays all sorts of unauthorised intercourse between herself and Lady Shrewsbury. This letter, penned by an always fanciful and extremely excitable woman, is of course, an exaggeration of the Countess’s opportunism. Yet, there has evidently been a gradual cessation of the friendly intimacy between the two women, and a sufficient revelation of the Countess’s mind to give Mary occasion to flare out to such a correspondent as the ambassador Mauvissière. In this letter, of the year 1584, she speaks fiercely of the treachery of Lady Shrewsbury—“La fausseté de mon honorable hostesse”—which she wishes made clear to Elizabeth: “Rien n’a jamais aliené la susdite de moy que la vaine espérance par elle conçue de faire tomber cette couronne sur la teste d’Arbella sa petite-fille, mesmement par son mariage avec le fils du comte de Leicester, divers tokens estant passez entre les enfants nourris en cette persuasion, et leurs peintures envoyées d’une part et l’aultre.” She goes on to say that but for this imaginary hope—“une telle imagination”—of making one of her race royal the countess would never have so turned away from Mary—“ne se fult jamais divertye de moy”—for, the writer continues:[[66]] “she was so bound to me, and regardless of any other duty or regard, so affectionate towards me that, had I been her own queen, she could not have done more for me; and as a proof of this say to the Queen, pretending that you heard it from Mrs. Seton last summer when she went to France, that I had the sure promise of the said countess that if at any time my life were in danger, or if I were to be removed from here, she would give me the means of escape, and that she herself would easily elude danger and punishment in respect to this; that she made her son Charles Cavendish swear to me in her presence that he would reside in London on purpose to serve me and warn me of all which passed at the Court, and that he would actually keep two good strong geldings specially to let me have speedy intelligence of the death of the Queen, who was ill at the time; and that he thought to be able to do this.... Thereupon the said countess and her sons used every possible persuasion to prove to me the danger to which I was exposed in the hands of the Earl of Shrewsbury, who would deliver me into the hands of my enemies or allow me to be surprised by them, in such a manner that, without the friendship of the said countess, I was in very bad case. To begin with you need only put forward these two little examples, by which the Queen can judge what has gone to make up the warp and woof[[67]] of the intercourse during the past years between myself and the said countess, whom, if I wished, I could place in a terrible position by giving the names of those persons who, by her express order, have brought me letters in cypher, which she has delivered to me with her own hand. It will be sufficient for you to tell the Queen that you heard these particulars from the said Mrs. Seton, and that you are positive that if it pleased her to make skilful enquiry into the misconduct of the said countess, I could disclose other features of greater importance which would cause considerable discomfort to others about her. Contrive, if possible, that she[[68]] shall keep the matter secret without ever naming who had been induced to reveal these things by devotion to her welfare, that in short she may recognise what faith she can place in the said countess, who in your opinion could be won over to my cause, if I thought well, by a present of two thousand crowns.
“You have afforded me peculiar satisfaction by sending copies of my letters ... into France and Scotland, by which the truth of these rumours may be known, rumours which I am certain only proceed from the said countess and her son Charles; but since the witnesses by whom I can prove my case are afraid to incur the displeasure of the Queen, I am constrained to bide until I can find others to assist at a public explanation and reparation.
“Sheffield, 1584, March 21.”
This letter flies like a thunderbolt across the Shrewsbury heaven. The lady’s ambition, according to her enemy, acknowledges no bounds, is no respecter of persons. Mary she not only casts aside like an old glove, but she assumes a triumphant, hostile attitude towards her. Through Lord Leicester’s heir, Arabella will ensure the favour of the English throne, while other means will be used to secure the Scottish throne itself for the child. Portraits and “divers tokens” have passed between the children. Bess is as sure of her power now as she was in the days when she boasted that she could both assist Mary to escape and herself elude retribution. Robust, rich, prosperous, swelled with her dreams, she counts herself unassailable. Her mood of excitement tempts her, however, further than her caution. Mary has spoken to Mauvissière of “rumours,” reports so serious that they have reached even to Scotland and France. She is sure that the Countess and her son Charles, once her sworn servants, are the source of these. A letter, which must be quoted in full here, written six months later to Mauvissière, makes the substance of these rumours perfectly clear.
If the correspondence already quoted come like a thunderbolt, this next letter conveys a shock even greater. There is one really extraordinary passage in the first letter which, though it concerns the Earl, does not prepare the onlooker for the scandalous matter of the second epistle. This passage is the one in which his wife has the audacity, according to Mary, to warn the latter against the Earl. What is the psychological process which forces such a statement from the shrewd, worldly-wise woman whose fortunes, socially, are entirely bound to those of her husband? What can it be but blind jealousy arising from consciousness of their opposite natures and from the hostility of sex? The intrigues with Mary, the opportunism, the blatant ambition—these are comprehensible. Was it all true? In the light of later letters from Mary all such statements must be regarded very sceptically. Division there certainly was in the great household: scolding and bitterness, a great weariness of heart, a series of sordid misunderstandings. If in a wild reckless mood the emotional, powerful spirit of Bess Shrewsbury had escaped control, and she had uttered the ghost of such a warning as that quoted, it must have sprung from nothing but the blind hatred of Mary and jealousy of her husband, the last having its source in her fierce consciousness of an utter clash of temperaments. Her opportunism, her immense ambitions are conceivable; even, to a certain degree, the longing to intrigue with Mary. They are comprehensible if one estimates the Countess’s nature as one in which the love of domination, the quick sense of advantage, and the keen perception of the melodrama of life were combined. The Earl’s nature was the very opposite. To him she must have acted latterly like a goad, while his obstinacy maddened her. His dogged patience under unwilling service, his bitter and almost stupid resignation under the meanness and suspicion of his Queen, his caution and method, his intense sensitiveness to any unjust criticism, his horror of plots, his dread of any unauthorised move, be it ever so trifling, formed a granite barrier to his wife’s independent, self-concentrated, restless spirit. Her pugnacity tussled with his resolution, and discord ensued.
She whom Elizabeth darkly called “The Daughter of Debate,” the captive Queen—was suddenly become as much of a thorn in the side of husband and wife as in that of their sovereign. Wheresoever Mary was there stalked complexity. This of itself, given the intricacies of her Stuart nature and her extraordinary life and circumstances, was sufficient. But that the Countess should have piled complexity upon complexity in such a way as to wreck her own household reduces the observer to stupefaction. By the second letter to Mauvissière it is seen that she was at Court. The mere fact of her presence there seems to rouse Mary to a sort of fury at her own helplessness. This letter is even more detailed, more excited than the one just quoted:—
“Wingfield, October 18, 1584.
“No reply having come from the Queen of England concerning the treaty proposed between her, me, and my son, and not having received any news from you for six weeks I cannot but doubt that this delay has been purposed to give time and advantage to the Countess of Shrewsbury, in order that she may play her game and trouble those on every side possible, to escape the just punishment of her fault and treason, and to give the lie to the Queen her sovereign, to the malicious reports, so harmful to me. I would make, with all affection possible, the request from myself, and in the name of Monsieur, my good brother, and the noblemen, my relations in France, that you will give a satisfactory and clear explanation to the Queen of England and those of her Council of the false and scandalous rumours that everybody knows have been invented and spread abroad by the Countess of my intercourse with the Count of Shrewsbury. I beg you to proceed with all haste in a public examination or at least before the Council, and in your presence particularly, of her and her two sons, Charles and William Cavendish, whether they will confirm or refute the rumours and language they have previously maintained, that in the cause of reason and justice they may be punished as an example, there being no subject so poor, vile, and abject in this kingdom to whom common justice can be denied. Such satisfaction would be granted to the meanest subject, how much more to one of my blood and rank, and so closely related to the Queen. But here I am, bound hand and foot, and, I might say, almost tongue-tied. I can do nothing for myself to avenge this atrocious and wicked calumny. May it please you to remember the definite promise made to me by the Queen, which I have mentioned before in four or five letters to you, that she had always hated the liberty and insolence, so largely encouraged in this corrupt age in the slander of Kings and primates, and that she would do all in her power to repress this evil. I will give her the names of the guilty originators of this scandal, and in proof of her words she will be obliged to execute a rigorous and exemplary punishment upon them. I name to her now the Countess of Shrewsbury and her son Charles especially, to convict them of this unhappy slander. If not, I ask but their own servants and those of the Count usually in the house should be put on their oath to God, and their allegiance to the Queen, and examined, for I know too well that some of them otherwise would never have the chance of giving witness, and the Countess would maintain her rumours were truth. One of her servants has told me that she has caused this scandal to be spread in divers parts of the kingdom, and that they have heard her in the room of the Count reproaching him similarly. And to come to particulars, for some months at Chatsworth there was staying one of the grooms of Lord Talbot specially to enquire concerning this. He has nothing to say of me under the name of the Lady of Bath. I cannot but think the Countess has power to silence her friends, who would otherwise be too convincing witnesses of the falsehood of their rumours against the Queen, her sovereign, so that she will do wisely not to force me to rouse the witnesses, for if I demand justice on them, and am refused, I will produce, before all the princes of Christendom, by articles signed by my own hand, an account of the honourable proceedings of this lady, as much against the Queen as against me, against whom she had formerly spread this rumour. I will give a declaration of the time, persons, and all friends, so necessary that it will not be pleasing to those who are constant in condemning. And in the wrongs that she has done them, if there are any of them to support her and to countenance those injuries which I have received from her, or if in such a case there is a question of my honour, it will always be to me more than earthly life. It may be after so long and painful captivity I am constrained and obliged to put before the public anything which may offend them or do harm. In that it is for them to remedy and obviate by giving me reparation and satisfaction for scandals and impostures. God grant that at the end I may find true what the Countess has formerly told me, that the more she could show herself my enemy, and work against me, she would be so much the more welcome and more favoured at Court.