Devonshire Characters and Strange Events

by S. Baring-Gould

LADY HOWARD

Accordingly, at the age of nine, little Mary Fitz was taken from her mother, but under whose charge she was placed at first does not appear. A year or two later, she was living in the house of Lady Elizabeth Hatton, second wife of Sir Edmund Coke, then Master of the Court of Wards. At once the Earl of Northumberland sent his brother, Sir Allan Percy, into Devon to look over the estates of Mary Fitz and make what money he could out of them by felling timber.

Sir Allan was, apparently, quite satisfied with what he saw; he was a needy man, and resolved on marrying the heiress, and this he did about 1608, when he was aged thirty-one and she twelve. But as she was so young it was arranged that she should not live with her husband till she reached a nubile age. She never did live with him, for he caught a severe chill through lying on the damp ground when hot and tired with hunting, and he died in November, 1611. She was the wealthiest heiress in Devonshire, and the Earl of Suffolk schemed to obtain her for his third son, Sir Thomas Howard. She was not only rich, but beautiful. Her father had been a remarkably handsome man, and Lord Clarendon, long after this date, speaks of her as “having been of extraordinary beauty.” But she balked all schemers by running away with Thomas Darcy, a young man of her own age, son of Lord Darcy, of Chiche, afterwards Earl Rivers. Lord Darcy could not object to the match, but Mary Fitz was still a minor, and a ward. If proceedings were threatened, nothing came of it, for the young bridegroom died. The exact date is not known, but he could not have lived with her more than a few months after his marriage.

Mary, still a ward, was now married, for the third time before she was sixteen, to Sir Charles Howard, fourth son of the Earl of Suffolk, not to Sir Thomas, his third son, as had been at first designed. The young couple resided with the Earl at Audley End, and there her first child was born, a daughter, Elizabeth, born on 21 September, 1613, who does not seem to have lived long, as she disappears altogether within a few years. There was a second daughter, Mary, born in London, the date not known; but Sir Charles Howard died on 22 September, 1622, without leaving male issue. It was when a widow about this time, apparently, that Lady Howard was painted by Vandyke, and this was engraved by Hollar. The painting cannot now be traced. She was now one of the stateliest dames of the Court of Henrietta Maria, where she cultivated the friendship of the Duke of Buckingham, who exerted his influence with her so as to render her propitious to the addresses of one of his own dependents, Sir Richard Grenville. The Duke considered that a rich wife would help on the fortunes of his favourite, and thus did the heiress of Fitzford and Walreddon give herself to her fourth and worst husband. But before marrying him she was cautious to tie up her estate in such a manner that he could not touch it. Without breathing a word of what she was doing, she conveyed all her lands to Walter Hele, Anthony Short, and William Grills in trust to permit her during her life, whether sole or married, to receive the rents and dispose of them at her own goodwill and pleasure. Sir Richard Grenville went with his wife to Fitzford, and there in May, 1630, their first child was born, and christened Richard after his father. Sir Richard was mightily incensed when he discovered that he could not handle the revenues of the estates, and this led to incessant bickerings. Clarendon says:—

“He had nothing to depend upon but the fortune of his wife: which, though ample enough to have supported the expense a person of his quality ought to have made, was not large enough to satisfy his vanity and ambition. Nor so great as he, upon common reports, had promised himself by her. By not being enough pleased with her fortune, he grew less pleased with his wife; who, being a woman of a haughty and imperious nature, and of a wit far superior to his own, quickly resented the disrespect she received from him, and in no degree studied to make herself easy to him. After some years spent together in these domestic unsociable contestations, in which he possessed himself of all her estate, as the sole master of it, without allowing her out of her own any competency for herself, and indulging to himself all those licences in her own house which to women are most grievous, she found means to withdraw herself from him, and was with all kindness received into the family in which she had before married, and was always very much respected.”

Before proceeding with the quotation from Clarendon, it will be well to give at once some illustrative touches as to the annoyances she underwent at the hands of Sir Richard, and as to her own conduct towards him. He confined her to a corner of her own house, Fitzford, excluded her from the government of the house, and installed his aunt, Mrs. Katherine Abbott, as his housekeeper, with control over the servants and the keeping of the keys.

This was bad enough, but there was worse to come; his violence and language towards her were so intolerable that she was constrained to appeal to the justices of the peace, who ordered him to allow her forty shillings a week. This, after a time, he refused to pay, unless she would grant him an acquittance. All this is stated in the lady’s plea to obtain a divorce in 1631–2. He also called her bad names before the justices, “she being a vertuous and a chaste lady”—a pretty scene in the court at Tavistock for the citizens to witness and listen to.

“He gave directions to one of his servantes to burn horse-haire, wooll, feathers and parings of horse hoofes, and to cause the smoke to goe into the ladye’s chamber, through an hole made in the plaistering out of the kitchen. He broke up her chamber doore, and came into her chamber at night with a sword drawn. That for the key of his closett which she had taken away and denyed to give him, he tooke hold of her petty coate and tore it, and threw her upon the ground, being with childe, and, as one witness deposeth, made her eye blacke and blewe.”

Sir Richard, on his side, complained, “That they had lived quietly together for the space of two years, and till they came to this Court.... That she hath often carried herself unseemly both in wordes and deedes, and sunge unseemly songs to his face to provoke him, and bid him goe to such a woman and such a woman, and called him a poore rogue and pretty fellow, and said he was not worth ten groates when she married him; that she would make him creepe to her, and that she had good friends in London would beare her out of it. That she swore the peace against him without cause, and then asked him, ‘Art thou not a pretty fellow to be bound to the good behaviour?’ Then she said he was an ugly fellow, and when he was once gone from home, she said, ‘The Devill and sixpence goe with him, and soe shall he lacke neither money nor company!’ That she said such a one was a honester man than her husband, and loved Cuttofer (George Cutteford, her steward) better than him. That there were holes made in the kitchen wall by the lady or her daughter (i.e. Mary Howard), that he gave direction that they should be stopped up, that she might not harken to what the servants said in the kitchen, that she had ten roomes at pleasure, and had whatsoever in the house she would desire. That she locked him into his closett and tooke away the key, and it is true he endeavoured to take away the key from her, and hurt his thumb and rent her pocket.”