THE MISTRESS BUILDER
Upon this scene of household importance and intimate family life,
making, if not for happiness in the fullest sense of the word, at any
rate for prosperity and success, fell for a second time upon the married
life of Bess Hardwick the great shadow. Sir William Cavendish, so
accomplished in business, so doughty a husband, so excellent a host,
died in 1557.
His wife made a note of the event in her own hand:—
“Memorandum, that Sir William Cavendish, Knight, my most dear and well
beloved husband, departed this present life on Monday, being the 25th
day of October, betwixt the hours of 8 and 9 of the same day at Night,
in the year of our Lord God 1557, the dominical Letter then C. On whose
soul I most humbly beseech the Lord to have mercy, and to rid me and his
poor children out of our great misery.
“ELIZABETH CAVENDISH.”
This was probably the greatest grief of her life, and all her after
energies were spent in furthering the welfare of her Cavendish children.
Now followed a period of widowhood, during which no substantial or
interesting episodes bring the lady’s name to the front. But she did not
lose her hold over society and the Court. Nor did she lay aside her
wise, worldly habits. She was still the grand dame—dispenser of
charities, recipient of Court letters, mistress of masons and woodmen
and grooms, resting securely upon her hoard like the dragon in German
legend, assuring herself and the world, “I lie and possess, and would
slumber.” But hers was not the nature to be quiescent very long. And she
had incentive enough to action. She had six children to further in the
world. Daughters must be married, sons must be brought into the charmed
circle of the Queen, to run the gauntlet of suspicions, favours, and
coldnesses from her and bear the jealousy and competition of others till
the right opportunity came for advancement. Moreover, there was
Chatsworth to complete—alone. At thirty-seven, gifted with excellent
good looks, an indomitable will, and a constitution robust and healthy,
it was not the moment for such a woman to permit either her schemes or
her zest in life to collapse. So she keeps to her road, moving no doubt
daily between the old Chatsworth and the new, the beloved fabric which
for her was at once the mausoleum of her greatest happiness, the
eloquent witness of her aspirations for her children, and a lasting
memorial of her Cavendish ambitions. So one beholds her working onward,
building for the future, impatient no doubt of the present. Fully
accustomed now to take command of her life and affairs, she controls
every item of the building of her new house. One can picture her easily
enough walking or driving to and fro, while she issues commands for the
felling of wood, signs orders for the selling of coals and stone, for
the transplantation of trees, the manufacture of hangings, the transport
of Derbyshire marbles, the employment of artificers in mosaic, and
plaster and wood. She had built six Cavendishes, bone of her bone, flesh
of her flesh, and now she was building a great and perfect house for
them and theirs. In it she would reign, so long as she lived, supreme.
One pictures her again and again—a vigorous, vital woman, in proper and
dignified weeds, with shrewd and genial face in which the lines of
intrigue and sorrow had not yet deepened, moving amongst her army of
workmen, fully conscious of the country life about her, though possibly
not playing for a while a very active part in it. But the old zest of
living, the old desire of the world, the joys of which she had tasted
only at brief intervals during the babyhood of her six children, were
ineradicable. She had acres and gold, she needed a helpmeet more than
many women. No country gentleman of sufficient importance presented
himself for whom she would think it worth while to give up the pretty
delight of being addressed as “my lady.” In this dilemma Fate brought
her face to face with Sir William St. Lo.
He was of excellent birth, and, like her second husband, a widower. His
family was, of course, originally Norman. State papers show that a
Margaret de St. Low or Laudo parted with certain rights in Cornish
property in the reign of Henry III. By the seventeenth century the
family seems to have concentrated in Gloucestershire, where it held the
manor of Tormarton, twenty-two miles south of the county town. “Livery”
of this manor, we read, was granted to William St. Loe by Elizabeth.
William and his brother John had fought bravely in Ireland against
Desmond. In 1536 the former—the family name is spelt variously as
Seyntlow, Seyntloe, and Santclo—is mentioned in despatches. There is a
vivid glimpse in various letters of an attack on the castle of “Carreke
Ogunell.”[3] Says Lord Leonard Grey, writing to Henry VIII in England,
“It was taken by assault by William Seyntloe and his men before scaling
ladders could arrive.” But the writer is not quite sure if the success
was due to “hope of fame or lack of victuals, for a halfpenny loaf was
worth 12d., but there was none to be sold.” The castle has marble walls
thirteen feet thick. It is the strongest Lord Leonard has ever seen. An
Englishman could take it at a rush, in spite of the fact that besides
being set in a fine moat, “in an island of fresh water,” the place was
guarded with watch towers of hewn marble. But Lord Leonard does not
think that any Irishman could have built it!
Later there is mutiny and rumour of sore disruption in the English-Irish
army. Young Captain St. Loe’s men forgather with discontented spirits,
and the whole of his stalwart retinue of three hundred, “men of high
courage and activity,” revolts so badly that, though he and his captains
are cleared of all blame, it is necessary to “bend the ordnance” on the
mutineers and proceed against them in “battle array.” Little wonder that
the men, henchmen and yeomen, doubtless, of Gloucestershire, hated the
campaign. Even Lord Leonard himself shared the destitution of the
privates and was pinched for the lack of a loaf. “And so,” he goes on
after his comment on the price of bread, “I among others lay in my
harness, without any bed, almost famished with hunger, wet, and cold.”
Fortune and personality carried William St. Loe onward. In the forties
of the sixteenth century he appears as seneschal of Waterford, and
complains bitterly of the way in which he is hampered in office by the
Lord Chancellor in Ireland. The contention of his official companions,
however, as given in a letter to the Court, describes him as “a good
warrior, but unfit to administer justice.” Military disorder is stated
to be the result, and if the complainants only “had the disposal of the
farms Seyntlow now has” things would be very different. It is suggested
that he is turning into a regular freebooter.... And so on.
However this may be, we find the gentleman in 1557 not only safely
established in England, but holding important Court posts with
high-sounding titles. He is at once Grand Butler of England and captain
of the Queen’s Guard. In these capacities Bess Hardwick, as Lady
Cavendish, must have already met him. Had she not married him and had he
lived long enough, she might have been committed to his tender mercies
and guardianship in a very different sense. But at present her genius
for intrigue only threw her into the apparently pleasant fetters of
marriage. This “Grand Botelier,” this dashing swashbuckler who now rode
at the head of the royal guards, and was in constant touch with the
governor of the Tower, with the interior of which building she made
acquaintance later, took her as his second wife. The whole thing seems
to have been most amicable, affectionate, and excellent—amicable and
affectionate on his part, excellent from her point of view. It did not
interfere with his important duties; it did not necessarily nail her to
the Court. Above all, it did not interfere with her building. Indeed, it
gave her the more heart to it because the good captain would now assume
by her side the duties of Derbyshire host. Moreover, he could help her
materially in her building. She did not need his advice about
architecture of course. But she saw that she could draw under her hand
the dues of his manor in Gloucestershire for the glory of the
Cavendishes and the surer foundation of her own comfort. The fine
dashing soldier had children. Yet this was no serious block in her way.
She might arrange it all, while leaving them not destitute but dependent
on her wise financial dispositions. The marriage was duly solemnised and
gave satisfaction. The Queen approved of my Lady St. Loe, and the more
so because the latter did not wish to monopolise her bridegroom. There
was enough at the Derbyshire estate to amuse her, and Sir William’s
letters to her kept her advised of things “about” the Queen’s Majesty.
Scottish affairs were brewing hotly. Elizabeth was but newly a queen.
There were processions and enactments, enquiries, and excursions at
Court. Bess Hardwick held the post of Lady of the Bedchamber, and
naturally took the keenest interest in all that went on. Except through
letters, reliable news did not filter at all to the wilds of the Peak
and its lovely dales. But Sir William loved her and appreciated her
deeply. In his affectionate letters he identifies her quaintly and
sweetly with her house. “My honest, sweet Chatsworth” is one of the
expressions. Elsewhere she is “My own, more dearer to me than I am to
myself,” and in another letter he has seized her enthusiasm for
management and construction, for he calls her “My own good servant and
chief overseer.”
Occasionally Bess wanted her “grand botelier” to herself, and it must
have been hard for Sir William to tear himself away from the rich
security and ease of the house. One of his letters from Court shows that
he is in trouble with his Queen for delayed return.
[Illustration:
_Photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby, from the picture at Hardwick
Hall_
_By permission of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire_
SIR WILLIAM ST. LOE
]
“She hath found great fault with my long absence, saying she would talk
with me farther and that she would well chide me. Whereunto I answered,
that when her highness understood the truth and the cause she would not
be offended. Whereunto she says, ‘Very well, very well’; howbeit, hand
of hers I did not kisse.”
A portrait which hangs in the great gallery at Hardwick shows the writer
of the following letters (quoted in Hunter’s _Hallamshire_) in his habit
as he lived—a kindly fellow, but at this period not a man of power.
_Sir William Saint-Loe to Lady Saint-Loe._
“My own, more dearer to me than I am to myself, thou shalt understand
that it is no small fear nor grief unto me of thy well doing that I
should presently see what I do, not only for that my continual nightly
dreams beside my absence hath troubled me, but also chiefly for that
Hugh Alsope cannot satisfy me in what estate thou nor thine is, whom I
regard more than I do William Seyntlo. Therefore I pray thee, as thou
dost love me, let me shortly hear from thee, for the quieting of my
unquieted mind, how thine own sweet self with all thine doeth; trusting
shortly to be amongst you. All thy friends here saluteth thee. Harry
Skipwith desired me to make thee and no other privy that he is sure of
mistress Nell, with whom he is by this time. He hath sent ten thousand
thanks unto thyself for the same: she hath opened all things unto him.
To-morrow Sir Richard Sackville and I ride to London together; on
Saturday next we return hither again. The queen yesterday, her own self
riding upon the way, craved my horse; unto whom I gave him, receiving
openly for the same many goodly words. Thus wishing myself with thyself,
I bid thee, my own good servant and chief overseer of my works, most
heartily farewell: by thine who is wholly and only thine, yea and for
all thine while life lasteth. From Windsor the fourth of September by
thy right worshipful master and most honest husband master Sir
“WILLIAM SEYNTLO, esquire.
“Commend me to my mother and to all my brothers and sisters, not
forgetting Frank with the rest of my children and thine. The Amnar[4]
saluteth thee and sayeth no gentleman’s children in England shall be
better welcome nor better looked unto than our boys. Once again,
farewell good honest sweet.
“Myself or Greyves shall be the next messenger.
“To my own dear wife at
Chatsworth deliver this.”
_Sir William Saint-Loe to Lady Saint-Loe._
“My hap is evil, my time worse spent; for that my reward as yet is
nothing more than fair words with the like promises. Take all in good
part; and if I should understand the contrary, it would trouble me more
than my pen shall express. I have leave to come and wait upon thee, I
and my brother Clement, with two or three good fellows more: [we] had
been with thee by this day if it had not been for our —— matter, the
which I will not leave over rawly. I will forbear the answering of all
particularities in thy last letter written unto me, for that God willing
I will this next week be the messenger myself. Master Man came home the
night before the date hereof. He putteth me in great hope of the matter
you know of. Thus trusting that God provideth for us all things for the
best, I end; committing thee and all thine which are mine unto his
blessed will and ordinance. Farewell, my own sweet Bess. From Master
Man’s house in Redcross Street, the 12th of October, by him who dareth
not so near his coming home to term thee as thou art: yet thine
“WILLIAM SEYNTLO.
“My cousin Clarke saluteth thee, who was by me at the writing hereof.
“To my own good wife at
Chatsworth deliver this.
In this letter he complains of the heavy charge for his hired Court
apparel.
_Sir William Saint-Loe to Lady Saint-Loe._
“My honest sweet Chatsworth: I like the weekly price of my hired court
stuff so evil that upon Thursday next I will send it home again, at
which day the week endeth. I pray you cause such stuff as Mowsall left
packed in a sheet to be brought hither by the next carrier: there be
hand towels and other things therein that I must occupy when I shall lie
at Whitehall. My men hath neither shirt nor any other thing to shift
them until that come. Trust none of your men to ride any [of] your
housed horses, but only James Cromp or William Marchington; but neither
of them without good cause serve speedily to be done. For nags there be
enough about the house to serve other purposes. One handful of oats to
every one of the geldings at a watering will be sufficient so they be
not laboured. You must cause some[one] to oversee the horsekeeper for
that he is very well learned in loitering.
“The Queen hath found great fault with my long absence saying that she
would talk with me farther, and that she would well chide me. Whereunto
I answered that when her highness understood the truth and the cause she
would not be offended. Whereunto she said ‘Very well, very well.’
Howbeit hand of hers I did not kisse.
“The Lord Keeper hath promised me faithfully to be at both days’
hearing; and that if either law or conscience be on my side I shall have
it to my contentment. Vaughan is come unto town, but not yet Bagott.
Stevens and we shall go through on Friday night next, at which time his
brother will be here, who hath disbursed seven hundred of the twelve
hundred pounds. I have an extreme pain in my teeth since Sunday dinner.
Thus with aching teeth I end, praying the living [God] to preserve thee
and all thine. Written at London, against my will where I am if other
ways our matters might well be ended, this 24th of October:
“Your loving husband with aching heart until we meet,
“WILLIAM SEYNTLO.
“If you think good, lease your fishing in Dove unto Agard. We are the
losers of suffering it as we have done.
“To my loving wife at Chatsworth
give this with speed.”
This next letter is from Sir George Pierrepoint in gratitude of her
kindly offices. His family was afterwards closely connected with that of
Bess of Hardwick, for her eldest daughter married Sir Henry Pierrepoint.
_Sir George Pierrepoint to Lady Saint-Loe._
“Right worshipful and very good Lady: after my heartiest manner I
commend me to your Ladyship: even so pray you I may be to good Mr.
Seyntloe: most heartily thanking you both for your great pains taken
with me at Holme, accepting everything (though it were never so rudely
handled) in such gentle way as you did; which doth and will cause me to
love you the better while I live if I were able to do you other pleasure
or service; and the rather because I understand your Ladyship hath not
forgotten my suit to you at your going away as specially to make Mr.
Sackville and Mr. Attorney my friends in the matter between Mr. Whalley
and me, wherein he doeth me plain wrong (as I take it is my conscience)
only to reap trouble and unquiet me. But I trust so much in God’s help,
and partly by your Ladyship’s good means, and continuance of your
goodness towards me, that he shall not overthrow me in my righteous
cause. And touching such communication as was between us as at Holme, if
your Ladyship and the gentlewoman your daughter like or be upon sight as
well as I and my wife like the young gentlewoman, I will not shrink from
it I said or promised; by the grace of God who preserve your Ladyship
and my Master your husband long together in wealth, health and
prosperity to his pleasure, and your gentle heart’s desire. From my poor
house at Woodhouse the 4th of November 1561, by the rude lusty hands of
your good Ladyship’s assuredly always to command.
“GEORGE PIERREPOINT.
“To the right worshipful and my
singular good Lady, my Lady
Sentloo at London this be delivered.”
This other letter is highly typical for the good lady’s literary style
and her attitude towards her employees. It is to James Crompe, her man
of affairs.
“Crompe, I do understand by your letters that Wortly saith he will
depart at our Ladyday next. I will that you shall have him bound in an
obligation to avoid[5] at the same day, for sure I will trust no more to
his promise. And when he doth tell you that he is any penny behind for
work done to Mr. Cavendish or me, he doth lie like a false knave: for I
am most sure he did never make anything for me but two vanes to stand
upon the house. I do very well like your sending sawyers to Pentrege and
Medoplecke, for that will further my works: and so I pray you in any
other thing that will be a help to my building, let it be done. And for
Thomas Mason, if you can hear where he is, I would very gladly he were
at Chatsworth. I will let you know by my next letter what work Thomas
Mason shall begin at first, when he doth come. And as for the other
mason which Sir James told you of, if he will not apply his work, you
know that he is not the man for me; and the mason’s work which I have to
do is not much, and Thomas Mason will very well oversee that work. I
perceive Sir James is much misliked for his religion; but I think his
wisdom is such that he will make small account of that matter. I would
have you tell my aunt Lenecker that I would have the little garden which
is by the new house made a garden this year. I care not whether she
bestow any great cost thereof; but to sow it with all kinds of herbs and
flowers and some pieces of it with mallows. I have sent you by this
carrier three bundles of garden seeds all written with William
Marchington’s hand; and by the next you shall know how to use them in
every point.
“From the Court the 8th of March,
“Your mistress,
“E. SEYNTLO.”
The “Aunt Lenecker” (more correctly known as Lynacre) was a Leake and
sister of Lady St. Loe’s mother. She seems to have lived for some years
with her niece, possibly since her first widowhood.
Nothing very exciting happened to the St. Loe couple in their short
married life. When not at Court they paid visits, were entertained, or
entertained their own visitors, as scraps of correspondence show. They
must have had traffic already with the great family of Talbot—which,
besides Sheffield Castle, owned so many large seats in Derby and
Nottingham—and both of them naturally held intercourse with “Mr.
Secretary Walsingham” and “Mr. Treasurer Cecil.”
When Sir William St. Loe died—tolerably soon, alas!—Bess Hardwick had
gone far with her building, social and actual. Her third widowhood found
her richer, bolder, better known at Court, and able to play her part in
an ever-widening circle of the powerful and prosperous.
Such a lady would naturally make enemies. In 1567 she was slandered by
Henry Jackson, an ex-scholar of Merton College, Oxford, the tutor of her
children. Instantly the matter went to the Council, and the Council
wrote in September to the Archbishop of Canterbury. “Lady St. Loo,
widow, having retained as schoolmaster Henry Jackson ... is disturbed by
scandalous reports raised against her family by him; you are to examine
the matter thoroughly and speedily with the assistance of the
Solicitor-General Mr. Oseley and Mr. Peter Osborne or other
Ecclesiastical Commissioners, that the lady’s good name may be
preserved; if he has unjustly defamed her he is to be severely
punished,” runs the digest of the draft in the State MS. And immediately
upon the conclusion of the examination the Queen herself intervenes on
behalf of the lady “who has long served with credit in our Court,” and
forthwith she commands the punishment of the wicked clerk: “extreme
punishment, corporal or otherwise, openly or private, and that
speedily.”
Besides the danger of slander there was the trap of intrigue. Up to the
present Bess Hardwick had kept clear of mischief, but, native curiosity
apart, she could not, as Lady of the Bedchamber, help being often the
recipient of the secrets of her friends. The romantic love story of Lady
Catherine Grey, who held a similar Court post to herself, brought her
into a tight place. For the benefit of those who do not recall the tale
it shall be set forth again here.
The Lady Catherine was the sister of Lady Jane Grey. By a curious
combination of circumstances—the exclusion given by the will of Henry
VIII to the posterity of Margaret of Scotland, the publication of the
will of Edward VI, and the non-repeal of certain Acts of Parliament—it
was judged that the right to the crown rested with the House of Suffolk.
To this great house Lady Catherine was the heir. She was formally
contracted in extreme youth to Lord Herbert, the son of the Earl of
Pembroke. But the wise Earl, in dread of the acute complications which
such a marriage might entail, arranged for a divorce. This probably
affected the lady but little. She was young, she was attractive and
romantic, she could meet cavaliers enough and to spare in the immediate
circle of the Queen. But, as all the world knows, her Majesty, while she
kept a dozen men languishing about her, was very loth to have any of her
ladies wed. Love affairs must be very secret, lest the parties incurred
her disfavour and the loss of benefits. As for Lady Catherine, her
birth, as has been shown, rendered her a mark for all manner of
suspicion. At Court she was the close companion of Lady Jane Seymour,
daughter of the Duke of Somerset. This Lady Jane had a brother, no less
than the Earl of Hertford. What more inevitable than a love affair
between him and Catherine? There were sorrows enough in the background
of her history, slavery enough—despite pageant and hunting and the
comings and goings of great persons from foreign courts—to endure at the
hands of the energetic, alert, excitable, witty, jealous royal mistress.
Little by little the love story wove itself in the manner of every love
tale. A community of interest, a series of assemblies which passed in
array her Majesty’s ladies before the eyes of her gentlemen, little
incidents which brought out the personalities of the two, mere
propinquity, a look here and a word there, did their work. The two were
soon secretly plighted, with the Lady Jane to share and shield their
dear secret. Many anxious moments must have gone to their councils. To
declare their troth would only be a signal for their instant separation.
The same result would arise if they humbly asked the royal permission to
be betrothed. To marry and fly would only savour of deep State
conspiracy. To marry and bide quietly and then face the astonished and
scandalous world with an air of “Indeed, and it is true. So part us you
shall not. And, moreover, ’tis our affair. Wherefore, fling your mud
elsewhere!” seemed the wisest way in the end, and also followed the line
of least resistance.
One morning—surely as crisp and heartening a day as could be desired for
such a purpose—the Queen’s Majesty went to Eltham in Kent to hunt. My
Lady Jane and my Lady Catherine stayed behind. When all was quiet they
left the Palace (Westminster) “by the stairs at the orchard” and
strolled quietly “along the sands.” Those sands led to the Earl of
Hertford’s house in “Chanon Row.” He was waiting for his lady; he did
not even leave her to call the priest. That was the Lady Jane’s errand.
There is something very delightful about this incident, and the steady
chaperon’s part undertaken by the Earl’s sister. The priest came, the
wedding took place. After the brief ceremony there could not be much
dalliance or entertainment. It was not yet the time to give the secret
to the world. The ladies must reach the Palace again before hue and cry
could be raised. They did not go back by “the sands,” probably because
the tide had risen. They went back by boat. The Earl did not accompany
them. But he led his bride and his sister to the boat which waited for
them at the foot of the water-stairs of his house. He assisted them
in—it must have been very hard to let go the hand of the woman so newly
pledged to him—and the shallop went quietly on its way and delivered its
fair passengers at the Palace stairs without exciting comment. A little
later the two ladies were demurely seated at dinner “in Master
Comptroller’s chamber.” Probably neither of them played that evening
much of a table part.
The bride was left to bear the onus of the affair. After a few stolen
meetings the Earl went to France. And presently the world began to point
and stare. The report grew, but no one seemed able to credit it. At the
close of August, 1561, the Earl’s mother wrote to Cecil mentioning the
rumour, denying all knowledge of it, and hoped that the wilfulness of
her unruly child, Hertford, would not diminish the Queen’s favour. On
the same date Sir Edward Warner, Lieutenant of the Tower, wrote to the
Queen stating that he had questioned Lady Catherine as to her “love
practices,” but she would confess nothing. It is said that Lady St. Loe
burst into tears when Lady Catherine made confession to her. Probably
the older woman knew what was in store for them both. The royal warrant
to Sir Edward Warner not only required him to “examine the Lady
Catherine very straightly how many hath been privy to love between her
and the Lord of Hertford from the beginning,” but continues: “Ye shall
also send to Alderman Lodge, secretly, for St. Low and shall put her in
awe of divers matters confessed by the Lady Catherine; and so also deal
with her that she may confess to you all her knowledge in the same
matters. It is certain that there hath been great practices and
purposes; and since the death of the Lady Jane[6] she hath been most
privy. And as ye shall see occasion, so ye may keep St. Low two or three
nights, more or less, and let her be returned to Lodge’s or kept still
with you, as ye shall think meet.”
After poor Lady Catherine took Lady Loe into her confidence, she made
frantic application for help to Lord Robert Dudley—not yet Earl of
Leicester—so high in the Queen’s good graces. In this there is sheer
drama as well as pathos—this confession and piteous appeal from the
young and comely lady of quality, whose only fault was that she had
married for love, to the handsome, pampered, arrogant cavalier, the
Queen’s darling. Lady Hertford went to his very chamber in Court to
implore him to stand between her parlous state as prospective mother and
the Queen’s anger. Yet nothing in such contingencies could divert
Elizabeth’s fury, or make her act in a humane fashion. Lord Hertford was
summoned to England to undergo trial with his wife, and very soon both
were committed separately to the Tower. But before this could be done
the farce of a public enquiry had to be played. A commission was
ordained, pompously headed by no less a person than Archbishop Parker.
The accused were requested to produce, within a given time, witnesses of
their marriage. That they failed to do this is extraordinary. The priest
seems to have disappeared, and Lady Jane Seymour appeared unable to find
him or to assist in furnishing the required evidence. But as this couple
could not satisfy the Commission in time they were sentenced to be
imprisoned during the Queen’s pleasure. “Displeasure” would be the
correct word. For Elizabeth knew little but vanity and vexation of
spirit at this period. The very word marriage must have been a red rag
to her. With the strong vitality and virility of her father warring
within her against the heritage of the feminine instincts of her mother,
Anne Boleyn, with countless suitors and innumerable flatterers to
encourage and keep at bay alternately, with one eye fixed on Mary of
Scotland and another on the “devildoms of Spain,” her life just now was
a constant turmoil. Her whole entourage was forced to share in it. She
would not decide upon a consort to help her; she belittled the estate of
marriage one day and dallied with it the next. No wonder that poor Mr.
Treasurer Cecil wrote as he did on the eve of the New Year of 1564.
Schemes matrimonial whirled round him like the winter snow. Elizabeth
was being wooed by a French monarch and an Austrian Emperor at the same
moment; the Lennox family and Mary of Scotland were working to achieve
the marriage of the latter with Darnley, and the Lady Mary Grey, fired
no doubt by her sister’s intrigue and sick of loneliness, had actually
surreptitiously married John Keys, the Serjeant Porter to the Queen.
Meanwhile the Earl and Countess of Hertford were in the Tower. In
addition, the Queen was putting up her beloved Dudley, now Earl of
Leicester, to oppose Darnley as a possible consort for Scottish Mary.
Shrewd old Cecil shows, however, that she is only half-hearted about it:
“I see the qn M^{ty} very desyroos to have my L. of Lecester placed in
this high degree to be the Scottish Queen’s husband, but whan it commeth
to the conditions which are demanded I see her then remiss of her
earnestness.”[7]
He concludes wearily enough:—
“This also I see in the Qn Ma^{ty}, a sufficient contentation to be
moved to marry abrood, and if it is so may [it] plese Almighty God, to
leade by the hand some mete person to come and lay hand on her to her
contentation, I cold than wish my self more helth to endure my yeres
somewhat longar to enjoye such a world here as I trust wold follow:
otherwise I assure yow, as now thyngs hang in desperation, I have no
comfort to lyve.”
My Lady St. Loe, as confidante, was forced to weather the storm and
endure reprimand. The married lovers, meanwhile, dragged out their days
in durance. Their son was born in the Tower. In vain they languished,
pined, and implored the intercession of friends. In 1562 the Earl was
allowed a little more ease. Husband and wife managed to meet again.
Another child was born to them, and my Lord was duly fined fifteen
thousand pounds by the Star Chamber, for this event was construed into a
new State offence. In 1563 the dreaded plague caused Elizabeth to remove
her poor love-birds from the Tower. Lady Catherine went to the house of
her uncle, Sir John Grey, in Essex, and he was roused to uttermost
compassion and distress by her wretched mental and physical condition.
It was in mid-Lent that he wrote to Cecil emphatically and ironically:—
“It is a great while me thinkethe, Cousin Cecile, since I sent unto you,
in my neices behalf, albeit I knowe, (opportunitie so servinge) you are
not unmindful of her miserable and compfortlesse estate. For who
wantinge the Princes favor, maye compt himselfe to live in any Realme?
And because this time of all others hathe ben compted a time of mercie
and forgevenes I cannot but recommende her woefull liffe unto you. In
faithe I wolde I were the Queen’s confessor this Lent, that I might
joine her in penaunce to forgive and forget; or otherwise able to steppe
into the pulpett to tell her Highness, that God will not forgive her,
unleast she frelye forgeve all the worlde.”
This letter is worth quoting because it shows the prevailing attitude of
the Elizabethan courtier. No one who lacked the favour of the sovereign
could be accounted as one living. Lady Catherine, once under that heavy
cloud of disfavour, never emerged, but died broken and miserable within
six years of her unhappy marriage. Wherefore Lady St. Loe had chance
enough to learn her lesson, and was fortunate in that her share of the
affair was visited only by a cross-examination and warning. She was not
at all the sort of woman to brook being left out in the cold. She was
too wise, of course, ever to have engulfed herself in a marriage of this
sort, but in such a case, had she not managed to divert Elizabeth’s
anger by some master stroke of wit and diplomacy, she would certainly
not have languished of “woofull griefe” nor starved herself to death,
like Lady Catherine, for sorrow.
At such a time and in face of the fresh hubbub caused at Court by the
marriage of Lady Mary Grey (“an unhappy chance and monstruoos,” comments
Cecil, in a letter to the English Ambassador in France), the peace and
security of Chatsworth offered themselves as a happy refuge against all
complications. There is a grotesque humour in Cecil’s use of that word
monstrous, for Lady Mary was almost a dwarf, and Keys, whom Cecil calls
“the biggest gentleman in this Court,” had secured his post of Serjeant
Porter owing to his magnificent size and height. He was twice Lady
Mary’s age, and was a widower with several children. The Queen clapped
him in the Fleet, and condemned Lady Mary to confinement in the houses
of successive friends. The pair never met after their hasty wedding.
Thus, on all sides, Court was a place of “dispeace,” while in Derbyshire
Lady St. Loe had good neighbours, people of quality and substance, and
was safe within her parks and palings. She did not share her royal
mistress’s distrust of matrimony, for she was free to choose her next
lord, and there was no reason why she should remain a widow longer than
she could help.
It is not to be suggested for a moment that she had no suitors and that
she was not the subject of all kinds of matrimonial gossip. One Fowler
(subsequently committed to the Tower in connection with the discovery of
suspicious papers) opines in his “notes” that “either Lord Darcy or Sir
John Thynne are to marry my Lady St. Loe, and not Harry Cobham.”
Doubtless the Cobham match would have pleased her well, and she would
have been quite in her element in the place which afforded a seat and a
surname to that noble and splendid family upon whom the evil days of
Jacobean confiscation and the betrayal of Sir Walter Raleigh had not yet
fallen. A sister of Lord Cobham was married to Mr. Secretary Cecil, “and
the match would have been advantageous, but possibly my Lady, with her
deep insight into character, divined that the gentleman was not of the
steady stuff which makes for worldly security.” Moreover the best
matches are by no means to be found near the Court, and close at hand,
in the same county, lived one greater than the Cobhams, a man whom many
a maid and every widow would be proud to espouse. He was a widower, an
earl, the owner of seven seats, bearer of a high government post, and he
came of a long line of distinguished soldiers. Lady St. Loe went to work
wisely. She had the assistance of her dear gossip and contemporary, Lady
Cobham. No one could have acted the go-between more discreetly. Before
long the fashionable world had something to talk about in the
announcement of the fourth marriage of Bess Hardwick.