Thus did their Lordships pour oil on the bruises of their battered colleague. But he needed more than words. The pain was too deep to be healed by that bland reminder of the general prevalence of false witnesses in the world. The phrase “if any person could be particularly charged ... it was reason that he should be called to answer the same” is far more curative. Two such persons had been dealt with. But his lady was not to escape. Beale, his good friend, took a serious view of the situation. “I have dealt with the Earl,” he wrote to Walsingham, “touching his son, and find him well affected towards him save that he says he is ruled by his wife, who is directed by her mother. I think his hatred for her will hardly be appeased, as he thinks the slanders and other information made to her Majesty have proceeded from her.”

Both Mary and Shrewsbury were to have their full satisfaction. Mary was from the first most explicit, and, not content with her excited outpourings to the French Ambassador, herself wrote to Elizabeth at this date from Wingfield Manor after Shrewsbury and she had parted. She alludes in this letter to Elizabeth’s “honourable promise.” She declares that she will never desist from her demands for satisfaction until her reputation is formally cleared in regard to the Countess’s slanders. It is a final challenge which Elizabeth could not in decency resist.

In December of this year Bess Shrewsbury with William and Charles were called to their account before the Lords of the Council. Full satisfaction was received—of a kind. There could be nothing very triumphant about it from Mary’s point of view. There was really none of that magnificent abasement of her trio of enemies which she painted subsequently to a correspondent in one of her letters after her removal to Chartly. This is her version:—

“The Countess of Shrewsbury (I thank God) hath been tried and found to her shame, in her attempt against me, the same woman indeed that many have had opinion that she was, and at the request of my secretary Nau, he being at the Queen of England’s Court in the month of December, ’84, the said lady upon her knees, in presence of the Queen of England and some principals of her Council, denied to her the shameful bruits by herself spread abroad against me.”[[75]]

As a matter of fact, the accused three unanimously asserted total ignorance of the entire scandal and its possible sources alike, and their declaration made before the Privy Council was solemnly recorded, and is included in the mass of State documents, while an exact copy of it is among the Talbot papers. It is not a very interesting or savoury little document, but highly important to George Talbot and his heirs as a second certificate of merit. It covers exactly the same ground as the extract quoted from Fletewood’s “dyarium.” At its conclusion, after testifying boldly to the dignity and honour of Mary, the mother and sons offer to uphold the truth of their wholesale disclaimer against any person whomsoever, whenever the occasion should arise. Thus, though posterity is afforded that vision of their abject position “on their knees in the royal presence” as stated by Mary, the attitude, contrasted with their denial, is rather that of reverent dignity than of sheer abasement.

Thus was the honour of the Talbots saved, but at such cost and after such a pitiful process of the public washing of family linen that it does very little real credit to the parties concerned. The poor Earl could only point to his Queen’s testimonial and console himself by thinking on his family doggerel:—

The Talbot true that is,

And still hath so remaynde,

Lost never noblenesse

By princke of spot distaynde: