By the death of her brother, Lady Katherine, whose more advanced years, and probably, whose courage and sense enabled her to master the dark terrors of the wicked Joan and her daughters, became a personage of no little importance in those venal times, when even a show of affection was scarcely thought necessary for the preliminary arrangements of the nuptial tie. Belvoir, her father’s proud possession, stands upon the eminence, the fine prospect from which gave it the name it bears, in all its stately antiquity.[[276]] It was built in the time of the Conqueror, by Robert de Belvedeir, standard-bearer to the monarch. The edifice is seated on the confines of the counties of Lincoln and Leicester, Nottingham and Rutland, and it commanded, in the time of Francis Manners, until the present day, fourteen lordships.[[277]] Of this domain, Lady Katherine was now sole heiress. Repeated visits had been made by King James to it, and, indeed, a sojourn at Belvoir was always a principal feature in a royal progress. A singular custom was formerly observed on the occasion of a royal visit to this castle. A family in Nottinghamshire, who held the Manor of Staunton, by the office of castle guard of the strong hold of Belvoir Castle, called the Staunton Tower, were required to present the keys of that tower to the monarch, in the same manner as the keys of a town are offered. The tenure required, in feudal times, that—
“Unto this forte with force and flagge,
The Staunton’s stock should sticke,
For to defende against the foe,
Which at the same might kicke.”[[278]]
The office of castle guard has long become a sinecure, but the importance of maintaining all those forms was such, that in 1618 a writ of inquiry was issued to show why the Castle of Belvoir should not fall into the king’s hands, on account of some alienation. “This,” says a modern writer, “might appear an ungrateful return to the earl for his hospitality; but it was
the customary process when property held under the crown became, on any occasion, alienated.”[[279]]
At Belvoir, James made, on one occasion, a considerable number of knights, and, notwithstanding his writ of inquiry, he visited the hospitable palace every second or third year, from 1612 to 1621. In 1612, Henry, Prince of Wales, met his father at Belvoir Castle, riding thither from Richmond in two days, and received “very honourable entertainment” from Francis, Earl of Rutland, who, but a fortnight before, had attended the funeral of his brother at Bottesford.[[280]]
In August, 1619, the king again visited Belvoir, but it does not appear certain that Buckingham accompanied his royal master. Probably, the preliminaries to the union which subsequently took place, may have been entered into on that occasion. Early in the following year, the marriage contract was signed, a ceremonial which generally preceded the completed marriage by a period of forty days. In this instance, that event did not take place until the sixteenth of May.
In the interim, Buckingham, either through the impatience of a lover, or, what is more likely, fearful of losing, from objections, the heiress of Belvoir, took a step which cannot be condemned without a full knowledge of every circumstance connected with it; but which seemed, on the first view, alike discreditable to the lover and to his mistress. He induced the Lady Katherine to leave her father’s house, and conveyed her to his own apartments at Whitehall. Of this transaction, an account is given by Arthur Wilson, whose puritanical principles caused him to regard Buckingham with dislike, and perhaps to misrepresent his conduct, and Buckingham is stated to have kept the lady there for several days, and then to have returned her to her father. “The stout old earl,” pursues the same writer, “sent him this threatening message, ’That he was too much of a gentleman to suffer such an indignity, and if he did not marry his daughter, to repair her honour, no greatness should protect him from his justice.’” It is conjectured that this elopement may have been contrived by Buckingham, in order to extort from the Earl of Rutland an unwilling consent. He quickly, therefore, says Wilson, “salved the wound before it grew to a quarrel; and if this marriage stopped the current of his sins, he had the less to answer for.”[[281]]