BESS OF HARDWICK
AND HER CIRCLE
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
A LADY OF THE REGENCY
JOURNEYMAN LOVE
THE APPRENTICE
TALES OF RYE TOWN
THE LABOURER’S COMEDY
THE ENCHANTED GARDEN
THE EASY-GO-LUCKIES
THE STAIRWAY OF HONOUR
HAPPINESS
[Illustration:
_Photo by Richard Keene Ltd. Derby, after the painting at Hardwick
Hall._
_Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury._
]
BESS OF HARDWICK
AND HER CIRCLE
BY
MAUD STEPNEY RAWSON
WITH THIRTY-EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS
INCLUDING A PHOTOGRAVURE FRONTISPIECE
London: HUTCHINSON & CO.
Paternoster Row ❧ 1910
TO MY HUSBAND
To you belongs, for many a reason, this, my first essay in history,
which I have carried to its end with many misgivings, but with much
delight in the matter itself.
The orthodox may be affronted at two brief incursions into fiction which
they will find in it. Let them skip these judiciously, magisterially.
For my own part, I needed consolation at times for certain hard and
bitter facts of the history. Therefore, since the way was sometimes
long, and the wind, in my imagination, very cold—as it whistled in and
out of the ruins of those manors and castles where the Scots Queen and
her married gaolers dwelt, or as it drove the snow across the splendid
grey façade of Hardwick (to say nothing of the draughts of the sombre,
public research libraries)—I first drew my Countess down from her
picture-frame to marshal her household, and then lured her child and her
child’s lover after her to gladden your road and mine.
And so I give you—besides all the thoughts which have gone to every
scrap of writing I have ever done—these last, which curl and stiffen and
again uncoil themselves about this hungry woman of Elizabethan days.
Into her life and much-abused toil, we, who have neither gold nor heirs
for whom to store it, can look together in love and pity.
Thus even while we rejoice over our diminutive home, may we never forget
to give thanks to the spirit of those who built the great houses which
nourish the little ones, and who, in place of the “scarlet blossom of
pain” that grows at great door and little, shall give to us in the end
the perfect English rose.
M. S. R.
LITTLE ORCHARD,
STREATLEY,
BERKS.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
All complete letters herein quoted have been put into modern spelling.
These, with the exception of one or two fragments and when the source is
not otherwise indicated, have been selected from the transcripts in
Lodge’s _Illustrations of British History_, from the originals amongst
the Talbot, Howard, and Cecil MSS.
The Author gratefully acknowledges the special permission of his Grace
the Duke of Devonshire to include in this work reproductions of many of
the fine pictures at Hardwick Hall, as well as a number of views of that
noble building.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE RED-HAIRED GIRL 1
II. THE MISTRESS BUILDER 11
III. “A GREAT GENTLEMAN” 34
IV. HUBBUB 52
V. MAKE-BELIEVE 62
VI. PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT 75
VII. FAMILY LETTERS 99
VIII. A CERTAIN JOURNEY 119
IX. LOVE AND THE WOODMAN 133
X. AFTERMATH 145
XI. VARIOUS OCCURRENCES 161
XII. MY LORD LEICESTER’S CURE 175
XIII. THE DIVIDED WAY 193
XIV. “BRUITS” 211
XV. RUTH AND JOYUSITIE 223
XVI. VOLTE FACE 236
XVII. THE COIL THICKENS 251
XVIII. “FACE TO FACE” 266
XIX. HAMMER AND TONGS 279
XX. FADING GLORIES 308
XXI. HEIR AND DOWAGER 324
XXII. ARABELLA DANCES INTO COURT 337
XXIII. MY LADY’S MANSIONS 349
INDEX 365
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ELIZABETH COUNTESS OF SHREWSBURY (_Photogravure_) _Frontispiece_
_To face page_
HARDWICK OLD HALL 2
SIR WILLIAM CAVENDISH 4
HARDWICK OLD HALL: THE GIANTS’ CHAMBER 6
SIR WILLIAM ST. LOE 16
GEORGE TALBOT, EARL OF SHREWSBURY 38
ELIZABETH COUNTESS OF SHREWSBURY 38
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS 64
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS’ APARTMENTS AND DUNGEONS AT TUTBURY,
FROM THE NORTH-WEST 66
WINGFIELD 70
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS’ BOWER, CHATSWORTH 72
WILLIAM CECIL, LORD BURGHLEY 80
THOMAS HOWARD, DUKE OF NORFOLK 86
THE MANOR HOUSE, SHEFFIELD 90
GILBERT TALBOT, SEVENTH EARL OF SHREWSBURY 100
LADY MARGARET DOUGLAS, COUNTESS OF LENNOX 120
ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER 178
QUEEN ELIZABETH 182
ELIZABETH COUNTESS OF SHREWSBURY 198
GEORGE TALBOT, SIXTH EARL OF SHREWSBURY 202
MARY CAVENDISH, COUNTESS OF SHREWSBURY 252
HARDWICK HALL, SHOWING ENTRANCE GATEWAY 258
STATUE OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS 310
QUEEN ELIZABETH (_by Zucchero_) 316
ARABELLA STUART AS A CHILD 330
ARABELLA STUART 332
HARDWICK HALL: THE PICTURE GALLERY FROM THE NORTH 336
WELBECK ABBEY 340
HARDWICK HALL: THE DINING-ROOM 342
JAMES THE FIFTH 344
TOMB OF ELIZABETH COUNTESS OF SHREWSBURY 346
THE ENTRANCE HALL, HARDWICK HALL 348
BOLSOVER CASTLE 352
HARDWICK HALL: THE PICTURE GALLERY 354
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS (_by P. Oudry_) 356
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS’ BED, HARDWICK HALL 358
HARDWICK HALL: THE PRESENCE-CHAMBER 360
HARDWICK HALL FROM THE WEST GARDEN 362
BESS OF HARDWICK
AND HER CIRCLE
CHAPTER I
THE RED-HAIRED GIRL
Among the hills and dales of Derbyshire, that great county of august
estates, there came into the world in the year 1520 a certain baby girl.
Her father, John Hardwick of Hardwick House, and her mother Elizabeth,
daughter of Thomas Leake of Hasland, in the same county, christened the
child Elizabeth, naturally enough after her mother. Like the great Queen
of England to whom she was senior, and with whom in after years she had
so much traffic of a highly dramatic kind, this Elizabeth has come down
to posterity under the shorter name of Bess.
Derbyshire, always a great county, was specially important in her day.
Far from London and Court it seemed like a little England within
England. Its great families wove its life step by step, its varied
landscape, its heights and dales rendered it an important strategical
centre in the event of rebellion, and the roughness and slough of
pack-road and cart-road made even local expeditions affairs of moment.
The little red-haired baby girl inherited from her native soil, from her
race, and from the neighbours about her all that sense of county
importance, that desire to found, establish and endow a great family
with great estates which her life developed to so remarkable a degree.
That consciousness of county importance was inevitable in those days
when families gave their names not only to their mansions, but to the
hamlets or village which clustered round them. Bess of Hardwick was
brought up amongst them all—the Hardwicks of Hardwick, the Barleys of
Barley (or Barlow), the Pinchbecks of Pinchbeck, the Blackwalls of
Blackwall, the Leakes, and the Leches. Not all of them were so very
opulent. The Hardwicks, though not rich, were of honourable standing as
county gentry, and the Barleys and Leakes were of the same social rank.
John Hardwick could not afford to give his daughters large dowries, and
consequently when my Lady Zouche, her aunt, took Bess into her household
in London the parents were probably glad enough to embrace such a social
chance for her. Up to this time she led naturally the life of the
ordinary young gentlewoman of tender years, said her prayers, learnt to
sew and embroider, and had seen something of the ordering of a household
and the disposal of country produce, while she heard and treasured up
such scraps of news as filtered through to her family and neighbours by
letters and travellers who came to the houses about her, or such rumours
as were bruited in the county town. She was but twelve years old when
she made her entry at once into my Lady Zouche’s house and into history.
We are told that she had reddish hair and small eyes, but no picture of
her remains to give any idea of her appearance at this moment when she
left her childhood behind her. Physique she must always have had, and
with it tenacity and tact in furthering her own prospects. She was of
the type in which the art of “getting on” is innate. London and my Lady
Zouche’s excellent social position gave her her first chance.
[Illustration:
_Photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby_
HARDWICK OLD HALL
Page 2
]
There is almost a touch of Becky Sharp in the way that this young girl,
dowerless save for the forty marks of _dot_ allotted by John Hardwick to
each of his daughters, settled down in that household. There came to
London one of her Derbyshire neighbours—a youth of the Barley or Barlow
family, named Robert. Under Lady Zouche’s roof he fell sick and the
little niece helped to tend him. Whether he also fell in love, whether
Mistress Hardwick the mother was minded to “settle” one at least of her
girls early, or whether Lady Zouche was of a strong match-making
tendency does not appear. But a marriage between the niece and the guest
was arranged and quickly carried through. A strange pitiful affair it
must have been—that London wedding between the red-haired child and the
sickly young man—a ceremony trailing after it a sorry hope of happiness
in the midst of physicking and nostrums, weakness and watching, until
the death of the bridegroom before the bride had reached her fourteenth
year. His death left no apparent gap in my Lady Zouche’s household and
no mark upon history. But it bestowed on the child-wife the dignity of
widowhood, and such importance, plus her forty marks, as attached to any
property that Robert Barlow left her. The Barlows were not wealthy. Some
of them in after years were in sore straits for a living. The State
Papers show the existence of piteous letters from a certain Jane Barlow
who writes in January, 1583, to her father, Alexander Barlow, “from a
foreign land.” She is in extreme want, forced to borrow money to carry
on her “business,” and assures him that the meanest servant he has
“liveth in far better condition than she.” There is nothing to show that
the Barlows applied to their relation “Bess” in after years for help.
Such property as there was passed to her, and she travelled out of their
ken into richer circles.
In 1547, at the age of twenty-seven, a woman in the height of her powers
and the perfection of her womanhood, with considerable knowledge of the
world and a tremendous store of physical and mental vitality, she
secured a second husband and a man of considerable means—Sir William
Cavendish. He was the second son of Thomas Cavendish, and his family,
like that of Bess, took its name from its hamlet or manor. Says the
pompous Bishop Kennet of those days: “The Cavendishes, like other great
Families of greatest Antiquity derived a Name from their Place of
Habitation. A younger branch of the Germons, famous in Norfolk and
Essex, settled at Cavendish in Suffolk, and from that Seat and Estate
were soon distinguished by that Sirname.” Thomas Cavendish, like the
father of Bess, was “a well-to-do but undistinguished Squire,” but his
sons made names for themselves.
[Illustration:
_From a photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby, after the painting at
Hardwick Hall_
_By permission of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire_
SIR WILLIAM CAVENDISH
Page 4
]
In 1539 his son William was appointed one of the auditors of the Court
of Augmentation. This Court, of which one at least of the members had
been employed as a commissioner for the surrender of religious houses,
was ostensibly founded to ensure the increase of the royal exchequer to
such a point as would enable the sovereign duly to establish and
strengthen the defences of the realm. Within a year Mr. Cavendish had so
well played his cards and acquitted himself that he received from Henry
VIII a grant of Church property—the lordships and manors of Northawe,
Cuffley, and Childewicke in Hertfordshire. In 1548, the year after his
marriage, he was further rewarded not only by the post of “Treasurer of
the Chamber to the King” which, we are assured, was “a place of great
trust and honour,” but the knighthood which brought his third wife the
title that raised her above the majority of her fellow-gentlewomen. He
did not bring her a virgin heart, for he had been twice married and
twice a widower without male heir. But he conferred on her important
social position, a great deal of land—additional prizes fell to his
share in the way of lesser glebe properties, abbeys, and rectories,
because his appointment in the royal exchequer kept him _au courant_ of
the places which were being given or going cheap in the market—and she
in her turn brought him the sons he doubtless so greatly desired.
Never surely did a couple settle down so whole-heartedly or so
harmoniously to the founding of a family, to the increase and
consolidation of their patrimony. As to the first—their offspring—Sir
William made a proud and careful list in writing, being, as Collins[1]
says, “A learned and exact Person.” He had in all sixteen children,
eight of whom were borne to him by “this beautiful and discreet Lady,”
as Collins describes Bess Cavendish.
The fact that his second wife’s name was also Elizabeth has at times
given rise to misstatements with regard to the place and date of his
third marriage, but he was careful to record this: “I was married to
Elizabeth Hardwick, my third wife, in Leicestershire, at Brodgate, my
Lord Marquess’s[2] House, the 20th of August, in the first yeare of King
Ed. the 6, at 2 of the Clock after midnight.”
Of the eight children of this marriage six survived. The others were
Temperance, “my 10 childe and the second by the same woman,” and Lucrece
the youngest. The surviving daughters were Frances Cavendish, the
eldest, married to Sir Henry Pierrepoint, of Holme Pierrepoint, Notts;
Elizabeth Cavendish, who espoused Charles Stuart, Earl of Lennox; and
Mary, the youngest girl, who became the wife of Gilbert Talbot. Of the
three sons, the eldest, Henry Cavendish, who settled later at Tutbury
Castle, married Lady Grace Talbot; William Cavendish, who wedded
successively Anne, daughter of Henry Kighley, of Kighley, and Elizabeth,
daughter of Sir Edward Boughton, and to whom his adoring mother left
Chatsworth; and Charles. Frances Cavendish by her marriage became the
ancestress of the Earls and Dukes of Kingston, and (through a female
heiress) of the Earls Manvers, inheritors of the Pierrepoint property.
Her brother Henry, though he died young, was the ancestor of the Barons
Waterpark; while William, duly knighted in time, was the first Earl of
Devonshire and progenitor of that great ducal house. Mary, though her
husband was but a younger son of the Talbot race, became eventually
Countess of Shrewsbury on his unexpected accession to the title; while
Charles, besides a knighthood, secured as bride one of the twin
heiresses of the Barony of Ogle, by which means the possessions of
Welbeck Abbey and other great estates were insured to the Cavendishes.
All these matters, however, belong to the future. The present was
all-important to the welfare of Sir William and his lady. A fast growing
family must be provided for, and scattered estates meant waste of cost
and labour. The clear, keen eyes of the newly-wedded Bess looked far
into the future. She did not care for the notion of separation from her
own lands and the unwieldy business of dealing with her husband’s
estates in different parts of the South of England. At the time of their
marriage he had sold the aforesaid manors in Hertfordshire,
Lincolnshire, Cardigan, and Cornwall, in favour of others in Derbyshire,
Nottingham, and Stafford. The county instinct of his wife asserted
itself. Her heart was in Derbyshire where her own dowry was
concentrated. She desired the transfer of her bridegroom’s interests and
property thither. Her resolution and her vitality naturally carried the
day, and Sir William sold all the rest of his southern estates and
settled with her in a manor which had originally been built by her old
county friends the Leeches (or Leches) of Leech—Chatsworth.
[Illustration:
_Photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby_
HARDWICK OLD HALL: THE GIANTS CHAMBER
(So called from the two colossal figures, dubbed Gog and Magog, in
raised plaster-work over the fireplace)
Page 6
]
Gradually her great hobby asserted itself—the desire to build—and this
constructive energy, as her story will show, went hand in hand with her
master passion, the love of power and possession, to the end of her
days. The mansion of the Leeches did not please her. It must be rebuilt
for the glory of the Cavendishes. Her knight yielded to the wish. They
set about the work quickly, living meanwhile, one supposes, in the
original mansion. Hardwick Hall, it will be remembered, was not yet
hers. John Hardwick, her father, had passed away in the nineteenth year
of Henry VIII. That reign was at an end, and the reign of Edward VI
drawing to its close. Hardwick House eventually became the portion of
the red-haired daughter, some say through the will of her brother, who
apparently died without heir. But for the moment the Cavendishes needed
a fine house for domesticity on a large scale and old Chatsworth did not
suffice them. Elizabeth Cavendish had plenty to do in founding her
family. These were great and busy times for the great lady. Shoulder to
shoulder husband and wife worked at their building, at their estate, at
the management of their tenants, their parks and palings, their farms
and holdings. The red-haired girl was in her element as matron and
comptroller and lady bountiful. Fortune smiled on her enterprise, and
when the crown of Edward VI descended to Mary of England, Sir William
Cavendish still held securely his valuable post in the Exchequer.
It is a fine English picture as one looks upon it, this married life of
the Cavendishes—knight and lady amongst their babies, enlarging their
county circle, increasing their county honours, holding intercourse with
Court and capital, with market and county town.
Here is a letter on domestic matters from Sir William to his lady
showing his trust in her management of their joint affairs:—
“To Bess Cavendish,
“My Wife.
“Good Bess, having forgotten to write in my letters that you should pay
Otewelle Alayne eight pounds for certain oats that we have bought of him
over and above twelve that I have paid to him in hand, I heartily pray
you for that he is desirous to receive the rest at London to pay him
upon the sight hereof. You know my store and therefore I have appointed
him to have it at your hands. And thus fare you well. From Chatsworth
the XIIIth of April.
W. C.”
And here is a characteristic letter from his good lady during her
absence from home in 1552 to her man of affairs, in which she soundly
takes him to task for discourtesy to her “sister Jane,” orders beer to
be brewed against her own return, and issues commands for building and
repairs:—
“Francis, I have spoken with your master for the deals or boards that
you wrote to me of; and he is content that you shall take some for your
necessity by the appointment of Neusante, so that you take such as will
do him no service about his building at Chatsworth. I pray you look well
to all things at Chatsworth till my aunt’s coming home, which I hope
shall be shortly, and in the meantime cause Broushawe to look to the
smithy and all other things at Penteridge. Let the weaver make beer for
me forthwith, for my own drinking and your master’s; and see that I have
good store of it, for if I lack either good beer or good charcoal or
wood I will blame nobody so much as I will do you. Cause the floor in my
bedchamber to be made even, either with plaster, clay, or lime: and all
the windows where the glass is broken to be mended: and all the chambers
to be made as close and warm as you can. I hear that my sister Jane
cannot have things that is needful for her to have amongst you: If it be
true, you lack a great of honesty as well as discretion to deny her
anything that she hath a mind to, being in my house; and then assure
yourself I cannot like it to have my sister so used. Like as I would not
have any superfluity or waste of anything, so likewise would I have her
to have that which is needful and necessary. At my coming home I shall
know more, and then I will think as I shall have cause. I would have you
give to my midwife from me, and from my boy Willie and to my nurse from
me and my boy, as hereafter followeth: first to the midwife from me ten
shillings, and from Willie five shillings: to the nurse from me five
shillings, and from my boy three shillings and four pence: so that in
the whole you must give to them twenty-three shillings and four pence.
Make my sister privy to it, and then pay it to them forthwith. If you
have no other money, take so much of the rent at Penteridge. Tell my
sister Jane that I will give my daughter something at my coming home:
and praying you not to fail to see all things done accordingly, I bid
you farewell. From London the 14th of November.
“Your Mistress,
“ELIZABETH CAVENDISH.
“Tell James Crompe that I have received the five pounds and nine
shillings that he sent me by Hugh Alsope.
“to my servant Francis Whitfield,
give this at Chatsworth.”