It is interesting and piquant to find that Mary’s suspicions should alight upon that egregious Papist-baiter Topcliffe, but this pompous gentleman does not appear to have been successfully impugned in this case. Otherwise Mary eventually had her will. The Earl at last succeeded in obtaining permission to go to Court to clear himself, and to relinquish finally his heavy duty. Indeed, he was soon formally delivered from his charge, but the change of officers did not take place immediately. Some time elapsed before formalities and details were carried through, and he and his prisoner paid in July, 1584, their last visit in company to Buxton. There Mary wrote her famous Latin couplet with a diamond on a window-pane:—
Buxtona quae calidae celebraris nomine Lymphae,
Forte mihi post hac non adennda, Vale.
The permission for which the Earl longed came in August, and his successor was Sir Ralph Sadler, who has previously figured in this record. It was not an easy transfer. The poor Earl’s departure was complicated by the business of transferring his prisoner to Wingfield Manor from Sheffield. There were delay and trouble, so that the cavalcade did not leave till early in September, and it was not till the 7th of that month, after fifteen years of hard service, that he was a free man.
CHAPTER XVIII
“FACE TO FACE”
A free man, a free agent! But at what a price was Shrewsbury free!
His honour was undermined by his own family, his fortunes impaired by his Queen’s penuriousness, his prime was past, his best given in return for apparently naught. Even the gratitude of his captive—and she never seems to have been regardless of such leniency as he was permitted to show her—had it been emphatically expressed, would have been no real reward to him, for it would only have placed him under suspicion. He had but one testimonial to his credit—the fact that in the midst of Mary’s dangers and terrors she felt that she was safer in his keeping “than in that of any other.” His farewell to her cannot have been anything but a strained and painful matter, with the hateful barrier of “scandilation” to mar the dignity and courtesy of it on both sides. She wished him to convey her letters to Elizabeth. He declined, and her new gaoler sent them with his official correspondence. Thus parted, after the strange intimacy of fifteen years, Mary of Scotland and George Talbot. When they met again it was as principal actors in the “tragedy of Fotheringay” in the autumn of 1586.
The Earl travelled to London with his retinue of gentlemen and grooms—a business of four to five days. Face to face he and his sovereign stood at last and the second formal step in the scandal affair was taken.
He was “very graciously used by her Majesty,” who showed herself “very desirous to comprehend the controversies between him and the lady, his wife.” Walsingham, commenting on this, writes that he feared this reconciliation would “not be performed over easily.” Elizabeth kept her promise and set to work at once. The Lords of the Council were summoned to testify to his loyalty, uprightness, and honour, and he was called to face them and receive their magnificent and pompous declaration, “a memorable testimonial by Queen Elizabeth and the Lords of the Council as to the discharge of his duty faithfully, and trust in the custody of the Queen of Scots.” It is not necessary to quote the whole document here. The actual domestic scandal is only touched very vaguely in it thus:—
“And if in some trifles, and private matters of small moment, not appertaining to the Queen’s Majesty, his Lordship thought that his honour and reputation had been touched by the evil reports of any, he was required to think that the same was common to them and others as well as to himself in this world, howbeit, if any person could be particularly charged by his Lordship, it was reason that he should be called to answer the same; and, therefore, his Lordship was desired to assure himself of this their Lordships’ good and honourable opinion concerning his Lordship, and so to sit down as a person that was very meet for the company, then to serve her Majesty and the realm; and so, therewith, he took his place in Council according to his degree and office.”