MY LORD LEICESTER’S CURE
My Lord of Leicester was to have his cure. The physicians insisted upon
it. It is chronicled in Gilbert Talbot’s letter with all the importance
which would attend the bulletins of the health of a king. The Queen
never resented a fuss of this kind made over her pampered darling. In
his stuffed and padded Court costume, his feathered head-dress, and his
jewels one cannot detect in him one of the virile qualities which so
dominated her imagination. His treacheries were winked at, his vices
condoned, even the people who accused him most violently of the murder
of his first wife, Amy Robsart, when in perplexity crawled to his feet,
either literally like poor Lady Catherine Grey, or in abject letters
like Lady Lennox, who was one of his bitterest accusers and who had
suffered under the spies he sent into her very house. Let us for a few
moments recall the growth of this personage, this veritable bay-tree. He
was just Robert Dudley, a younger son, the fifth of a ruined family
lying under attainder—the Dukes of Northumberland. Mary of England
restored him to his title, and drew him out of nonentity and poverty by
appointing him Master of the Ordnance at the siege of S. Quentin. As
soldier and courtier he certainly came into contact with the Princess
Elizabeth, whose visits to Court were finally forced upon her unwilling
sister. Elizabeth had scarcely been on the throne a few months before
she indulged with much too evident relief in flirtations with him, as a
counterblast to the incessant negotiations with the ambassadors of her
successive foreign suitors. She coquetted with him in her boat, she kept
his portrait in a secret cabinet, she showed off her learning, her airs
and graces before him, she danced with him, and when she formally
created him Earl of Leicester she “could not refrain from putting her
hand in his neck, smilingly tickling him.” This honour, by the way, it
will be remembered, she pretended to confer on him in order that his
rank should fit him for marriage with Mary Queen of Scots, and so avoid
the dangers and difficulties to England which would arise from her
marriage with Darnley. There never was a pretence so thin. Elizabeth
made a great show of her willingness to bestow on another her “brother
and best friend, whom she would have married herself had she minded to
take a husband.” Since she had decided to die a virgin she held that
such a procedure in regard to Leicester would “free her mind of all
fears and suspicions to be offended by any usurpation before her death,
being assured that he was so loving and trusty that he would never
suffer any such thing to be attempted in her time.” While she openly
advertised Leicester as her favourite, she dangled him as a prize over
the head of her chief enemy. She always loved playing with fire, and it
is well that this time she did not burn her fingers, for Leicester was
the complete courtier and could not decide between the two queens. In
his eyes Mary had as much chance of ruling England as his present
mistress. Mary did not at the beginning of her career in Scotland appear
very anxious for his wooing. All this helped Elizabeth. Creighton
clearly takes the view that the latter promoted the Darnley marriage by
the very pushing of Leicester’s claims. Whether or not he was personally
commendable to Mary, it was greatly to his disadvantage, that, as
creature of Elizabeth, he should be thrust upon her enemy.
Just at that period Leicester’s familiarity towards the Queen touched
gross impudence. We see him in the royal tennis-court pausing in a match
against the premier peer of England, the Duke of Norfolk, to wipe his
face with the handkerchief quickly filched from the Queen’s hand as she
sat amongst the onlookers. The Duke raged, offered violence, and,
unfortunately for royal dignity, Elizabeth’s manner showed that she took
the part of Leicester. She had already bestowed on him while a commoner
the Garter. The Order of St. Michael was his next honour, and he was
soon created Master of the Horse, Steward of the Household, Chancellor
of Oxford, Ranger of the Forests south of Trent, and, later on,
Captain-General of the English forces in the Netherlands. When age and
his last illness brooded over him his queen planned for him a last
dazzling post—a new creation—in the Lieutenancy of England and Ireland.
Despite the scandals attached to his three marriages,[37] he maintained
his place in the eyes of Elizabeth, and only in after years seriously
earned her displeasure. He had the rare art of “keeping on the right
side” of Lord Burghley, between whom and himself a sort of armed
neutrality existed, except when mutual advantage found them acting
heartily in concert. Leicester, as all his history shows, was, like
Buckingham, a gay dog, a ladies’ man. Pretty women hovered about him at
Court—_vide_ the letter from Gilbert Talbot under date May 11, 1573,
quoted in full in a previous chapter—he had to keep them at peace not to
give offence. He could play with their love, enjoy it, go to utmost
lengths, so long as the Queen believed that in his heart no other woman
could take her place. He entertained largely, he lived and dressed as
befitted his position. It was above all highly important that he should
keep his health in order, preserve the elegant lines of his soldier’s
figure, and defer as long as possible the days when he would, in his own
phrase, “grow high-coloured and red-faced.”
When he was ordered to Buxton it was imperative that he should be
properly received and housed, and not lodged in the low wooden sheds
which were used by the ordinary public during their “cure,” and where
their fare seems to have consisted of “oat cakes, with a viand which the
hosts called mutton, but which the guests strongly suspected to be dog.”
[Illustration:
_Photo by Emery Walker, after the picture in the National Portrait
Gallery_
ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER
Page 178
]
Buxton waters, under the patronage of St. Anne “of Buckstone” and St.
Andrew of Burton, were beset for many years before this with poor
crippled pilgrims, who left symbols of their gratitude in the various
shrines of the place in the way of crutches and candles. When the
Cromwell of Henry VIII wiped England of popery these testimonials were
all demolished, and he “locked up and sealed the baths and wells ...”
pending the royal permission “to wash” therein. This, however, did not
prevent the Earl of Shrewsbury from building a suitable house for
patients, and it is thus described by a physician of the day:—
“Joyninge to the chiefe sprynge betweene the river and the bathe is a
very goodly house, four square, four stories hye, so well compacte with
houses and offices underneath, and above and round about, with a great
chamber, and other goodly lodgings to the number of thirty, that it is
and will be a bewty to beholde; and very notable for the honourable and
worshipful that shall need to repair thither, as also for others.
“Yea, and the porest shall have lodgings and beds hard by for their uses
only. The bathes also so beautified with seats round; defended from the
ambyent air; and chimneys for fyre to ayre your garments in the bathes
side, and other necessaries most decent.”
Prices for baths varied according to the social position of the patient!
An archbishop seems to head the scale with a compulsory payment of £5,
while a yeoman only paid twelvepence, and was entitled to as long a cure
as the Primate. Lord Leicester, coming in the category of Earls, was
charged twenty shillings. One half of the fee went to the doctor in
command, the rest towards a fund for the cure of the poorest cripples.
The aforesaid house, which four times sheltered both Mary of Scotland
and once at least Lord Leicester, is now gone; in place of it is a
hotel, and there is no trace of the “pleasant warm bowling-green planted
about with large sycamore trees.” This, according to another authority,
was part of its garden, and it was Gilbert Talbot’s duty to entertain
his father’s dazzling guest and the Queen’s favourite in this pleasant
spot. During the week of this memorable visit the young man never lost
an opportunity of furthering his family’s cause and of sounding
influential persons at all seasons. He, like others, had constant
recourse to Leicester, both by word of mouth and pen. The letter which
follows[38] is a typical epistle of the kind which is scattered through
the society correspondence of the day.
We see by this that Gilbert was actually at “Buckstones” doing the
honours of his father’s house there to any distinguished guests, while
the Earl, his father, was nailed to his post at Sheffield, and the
Countess presumably busying herself with the killing of the fatted calf
at Chatsworth in readiness to honour Leicester on his going southward.
She must have hailed this epistle with huge satisfaction, since it
definitely announces the Earl’s presence at Buxton with his intention of
accepting her invitation to Chatsworth, and at the same time assures her
of his good offices on behalf of young Lady Lennox. Poor Elizabeth
Cavendish was by this time a widow,[39] almost penniless, and appealing
to the Queen for financial support on behalf of the baby Lady Arabella.
The letter is addressed to both of Gilbert’s parents:—
“My duty, etc,—This morning early I delivered your L.’s packet to my L.
of Leicester, who, upon reading thereof, said he would write to your L.
by a post that is here, and willed me to send away your lackey. I asked
him how long he thought to tarry here, and prayed him to tarry as long
as might be. And he said he knew not whether to go to Chatsworth on
Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday come seven nights, but one of those
three days without fail. There came some score of fowl here on Saturday,
which served here very well yesterday, and will do this three or four
days. Sir Hugh Chamley sent hither to my L. of Leicester a very fat
beef, which my L. of Leicester bade me go down to see, and to take him
to use as I listed; but I told him I was sure your L. would be angry if
I took him; yet for all this, he would force me to take him; and so I
kept him here in the town till I know your L.’s pleasure what shall be
done with him; he would serve very well for Chatsworth. Bayley thinketh
that they will tarry two or three days at Chatsworth. There is no word
yet come from my L. of Huntington and my La. whether they will meet my
L. of Leicester at Chatsworth or not; if they do (as he hath written
very earnestly to them) I think he will not come to Ashby, but go the
next way to Killingworth and there tarry but two or three days only. My
L. of Rutland, by reason of the foul afternoon yesterday, lay here all
the last night in the chamber where Sir Henry Lea lodged. I showed the
letter of my La. Lennox, your daughter, to my L. of Leicester, who said
that he thought it were far better for him to defer her suit to her
Majesty till his own coming to the Court than otherwise to write to her
before; for that he thinketh her Majesty will suppose his letter, if he
should write, were but at your La.’s request, and so by another letter
would straight answer it again, and so it do no great good; but at his
meeting your La. he will (he saith) advise in what sort your La. shall
write to the Queen Majesty, which he will carry unto her, and then be as
earnest a solicitor therein as ever he was for anything in his life, and
he doubteth not to prevail to your La. contention. To-morrow my L. of
Leicester meaneth to go to Sir Peres a Leyes to meet with my L. of
Derby, if the weather be any whit fair. And thus most humbly craving
your Lo.’s blessing with my wonted prayer for your long continuance in
all honour and most perfect health and long life I cease. At Buxton in
haste this present Monday before noon.
“Your Lo.’s most humble and obedient son,
“G. TALBOT.
“The Lords do pray your L. to remember their case (of) knives.”[40]
[Illustration:
_From a photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby, after the picture at
Hardwick Hall
By permission of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire_
QUEEN ELIZABETH
Page 182
]
There is no further comment from him on the subject of this visit, but
later letters will show that it went off smoothly and resulted in
benefit to the patient. As for his visit to Chatsworth it appears to
have been a triumphant success. Many things were talked out between
host, hostess, and guest in the few days of his sojourn. They had many
experiences in common—to wit, the insane jealousy and suspicions of
their Sovereign. But on this occasion their meeting hatched no
unpleasant results in this respect. The Queen herself wrote to thank
them for their good entertainment of her valued friend. And hereby hangs
a little comedy, a mystery. Two letters, evidently of the same date,
were dictated by the Queen. The skittish original in the handwriting of
Sir Francis Walsingham was not sent. A sedate version of it was the one
which the Shrewsburys opened. This is among the Talbot manuscripts. The
lively edition remains in the Record Office among the Mary Queen of
Scots MSS. for the amusement of posterity. Opinions differ as to the
mood in which Elizabeth wrote it.[41] It has been suggested that it was
done in a flippant ironical spirit; it has also been taken as a symptom
of wild elation born of Elizabeth’s belief that her marriage with Lord
Leicester would really be achieved. It seems most likely that she
certainly dashed it off in a flippant mood, with the intention of
chaffing the serious apprehensive High Steward of England and his wife,
and that Lord Burghley, or Walsingham, advised her to desist and to
allow a copy to be made, excluding the “larky” passages.
This is what she sent:—
“The Queen to the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury.
“By the Queen.
“Your most assured loving cousin and sovereign,
Elizabeth R.
“Our very good Cousins,
“Being given to understand from our cousin of Leicester how honourably
he was received by you our cousin the Countess at Chatsworth, and his
diet by you both discharged at Buxtons, but also presented with a very
rare present, we should do him great wrong (holding him in that place of
favour we do) in case we should not let you understand in what thankful
sort we accept the same at your hands, not as done unto him, but to our
own self, reputing him as another ourself; and, therefore, ye may assure
yourselves, that we taking upon us the debt not as his but as our own,
will take care accordingly to discharge the same in such honourable sort
as so well-deserving creditors as ye are shall never have cause to think
ye have met with an ungrateful debtor. In this acknowledgment of new
debts we may not forget our old debt, the same being as great as a
sovereign can owe to a subject; when through your loyal and most careful
looking to this charge committed to you, both we and our realm enjoy a
peaceable government, the best good hope that to any prince on earth can
befall: This good hap, then, growing from you, ye might think yourselves
most unhappy if you served such a prince as should not be as ready
graciously to consider of it as thankfully to acknowledge the same,
whereof ye may make full account, to your comfort when time shall serve.
Given under our signet in our manor of Greenwich, the 25th day of June,
1577, and in the 19th year of our reign.”
This is what Elizabeth, a sovereign of nineteen years’ standing, a woman
over forty years of age, wanted to send:—
“Being given to understand from our cousin of Leicester how honourably
he was lately received and used by you, our Cousin the Countess of
Chatsworth, and how his diet is by you both discharged at Buxtons, we
should do him great wrong (holding him in that place of favour we do) in
case we should not let you understand in how thankful sort we accept the
same at both your hands—which we do not acknowledge to be done unto him
but unto ourselves; and therefore do mean to take upon us the debt and
to acknowledge you both as creditors, so you can be content to accept us
for debtor, wherein is the danger unless you cut off some part of the
large allowance of diet you give him, lest otherwise the debt thereby
may grow to be so great as we shall not be able to discharge the same,
and so become bankrupt, and therefore we think it meet for the saving of
our credit to prescribe unto you a proportion of diet which we mean in
no case you shall exceed, and that is to allow him by the day of his
meat two ounces of flesh referring the quality to yourselves, so as you
exceed not the quantity; and for his drink one-twentieth of a pint of
wine to comfort his stomach and as much of St. Anne’s sacred water as he
lusteth to drink. On festival days, as is fit for a man of his quality,
we can be content you shall enlarge his diet by allowing unto him for
his dinner the shoulder of a wren, and for his supper a leg of the same,
besides his ordinary ounces. The like proportion we mean you shall allow
unto our brother of Warwick,[42] saying that we think it meet, in
respect that his body is more replete than his brother’s, that the
wren’s leg allowed at supper on festival days be abated; for that light
suppers agreeth but with the rules of physic. This order our meaning is
you shall inviolably observe, and so you may right well assure
yourselves of a most thankful debtor to so well-deserving creditors.”
This letter is endorsed “M. of her Mates Ires to the Earl and Countess
of Shrewsbury, of thanks for the good usage of my L. of Lec.”
Indeed, it was well that it was not sent. From one point of view it
reads suspiciously like a skit devised by Elizabeth on the statements
periodically sent her by Lord Shrewsbury with regard to the “diet” of
the Queen of Scots, and the number of courses and dishes allowed her on
festival days.
The Earl writes presently to the Queen in his wife’s name, on this, his
own, and other matters. His tone is artful, astute, and conventional:—
“May it please your most excellent Majesty,
“The comfortable letters I lately received, of your own blessed
handwriting, made me by oft looking on them, think my happiness more
than any service (were it never so perfect) could merit; and myself more
bounden to your Highness for the same than by writing I can express. And
as it pleased your Majesty to write with assured confidence you have in
my fidelity, and safe keeping of this lady, doubting nothing but lest
her fair speech deceive me, so I am sure, although it please your
Majesty to warn[43] me of her, yet doth your wisdom see well enough by
my many years’ service past any inclination to her was never further,
nor otherwise than of her Majesty’s service....
“Nor have I cause to trust her. Were her speech fair or crabbed my only
respect hath been, is still, and so shall continue, to the duty I owe
unto your Majesty.... I have her forthcoming at your Majesty’s
commandment....
“And may it now further please your Majesty to license my wife and me
humbly to acknowledge ourselves the more bound to your Majesty, as well
as for the comfortable message Mr. Julio brought us lately from your
Majesty, as that it pleased your Majesty to vouchsafe our rude and gross
entertainment of our devout friend, my kinsman, my Lord of Leicester;
which although in respect of our duties to your Majesty and the great
goodwill we bear to him, is not so well as it ought to be, yet are we
sure it contenteth him, and displeaseth not your Majesty, that he is the
welcomed friend to us of all others. My wife also bids me yield her
humble thanks to your Majesty ... and now (since we can do no more, nor
your Highness have no more of us than our true and faithful hearts and
service, wherein we will spend our lives and all we have, if your
Majesty command it) we pray to God for your most excellent Majesty, as
we are bounden. Sheffield, 4th of July, 1577.
“Your Majesty’s most humble, faithful servant,
“GEORGE SHREWSBURY.”
In this year, whether or no the weather specially tended to develop
rheumatism or aggravate it, there seems to have been a positive rush of
great persons to Buxton. A fortnight later Lord Burghley wrote to inform
the Shrewsburys of his expedition to the baths and, like others, to beg
for hospitality.
“I am now thoroughly licensed by her Majesty to come thither with as
much speed as my old crazed body will suffer me. And, because I doubt
your Lordship is and shall be pressed with many other like suits for
your favour, to have the use of some lodgings there, I am bold at the
present to send this my letter by post”—that is to say, by special
messenger. He goes on: “I am to have in my company but Mr. Roger Manners
and my son, Thomas Cecil, for whom I am also to interest your Lordship
to procure them, by your commandment, some lodging as your Lordship
shall please.”
The Earl of Sussex who preferred a doughty cure, drinking as much as
three pints a day, made tender enquiries as to the result of the water
on the Lord Treasurer. As to its effects on Lord Leicester, one can
judge best by this letter from a friend to the Shrewsburys—Richard
Topclyffe, a tremendous Protestant, by the way, and hunter of
“mass-mongers and recusants,” to the Countess. He reassures her fully as
to the health of the guest who had just quitted Chatsworth, quotes
Leicester’s promise to further her welfare and that of her young
stepsons, Henry and Edward Talbot, his kinsmen:—
“We did yesternight come to Ricote, my Lo. Norris’s, where late did
arrive the Countesses of Bedford and Cumberland and the Earl of
Cumberland, the Lord Wharton and his wife. The fat Earl[44] cometh this
day, my L. of Leicester being departed towards the Court, to Sir Thomas
Gresham’s, thirty-three miles hence (whereby you may perceive of his
health), only a little troubled with a boil drawing to a head in the
calf of the leg, which maketh him use his litter. The Countess kept him
long waiting, asking if Buxton sent sound men halting home. But I never
did hear him commend the place, nor the entertainment half so much: and
did sware that he wished he had tarried three weeks longer with his
charge ... but, saith he, it hath, and would have cost my friends
deeply. His L. wished her Majesty would progress to Grafton and
Killingworth, which condition he would see Buxton this summer again. But
the next year is threatened that journey. I can send your La. no more
unpleasant news but that his Lo. hath said with me in vows that he will
be as tender over your Lord and yourself, and both yours, as over his
own health: and my Lo. is very careful over his two young cousins, Mr.
Ed. and Mr. Hen., to have them placed at Oxford, wishing that he may
find of his kindred to work his goodwill upon, as he hath done hitherto
on many unthankful persons. Good madam, further you my good Lo., your
husband’s disposition that way for your son Charles.... And therewith I
end; in very humble sort. The 9th of July, 1577.
“Your La. ever at command,
“RIC. TOPCLIFFE.”[45]
Everything as regards the Talbot and Cavendish family was going
well—merrily as a marriage-bell, so far as “Bess” was concerned. The
widowhood of her youngest daughter, Lady Lennox, did not affect her. It
was only one more tool to her hand in scheming for the Queen’s favour,
the Queen’s largesse, and in balancing any foolish and unwise notions
which the Countess might have previously entertained in regard to Queen
Mary’s cause.
Mary, it may be recalled here, had had more than one chance of marriage
with Lord Leicester. He had, so to speak, meandered in and out of her
affairs, now as suitor, now as go-between. As recently as 1574, three
years previous to his Buxton visit, he seems for the second time to have
entertained thoughts of making her an offer of marriage, whereas
previously he had used his influence on behalf of the Duke of Norfolk’s
wooing, and again with a view to averting his condemnation. In 1574 Mary
was so firmly impressed with his attitude towards her that she advised
her relations in France to pave the way for friendly overtures with a
gift to Leicester. She was also about this time very anxious to
refurbish her wardrobe, and took a great interest in securing brilliant
and becoming materials and millinery of the kind most in vogue: “Send by
and by Jean de Compiègne,” she writes, “and let him bring me patterns of
dresses and samples of cloth of gold and silver and silk, the most
beautiful and rare that are worn at Court, to learn my pleasure about
them. Order Poissy to make me a couple of headdresses, with a crown of
gold and silver, such as they have formerly made for me; and tell Breton
to remember his promise, and obtain for me from Italy the newest
fashions in headdresses, and veils and ribbons, with gold and
silver....” There was no blindness about the way she regarded the
possibility of such a marriage. She held that Leicester’s motives were
anything but romantic or altruistic. But if so powerful a suitor could
be secured, and above all seduced from allegiance to Elizabeth, Mary had
no objection to the match. Her letters to France are full of allusions
to him:—[46]
“Leicester talks over M. de La Mothe to persuade him that he is wholly
for me, and endeavours to gain over Walsingham my mortal enemy to this
effect.”
And again: “M. de La Mothe advises me to entreat that my cousin of
Guise, my grandmother and yours, will write some civil letters to
Leicester, thanking him for his courtesy to me, as if he had done much
for me, and by the same medium send him some handsome present, which
will do me much good. He takes great delight in furniture; if you send
him some crystal cup in your name, and allow me to pay for it, or some
fine Turkey carpet, or such like as you may think most fitting, it will
perhaps save me this winter, and will make him much ashamed, or
suspected by his mistress, and all will assist me. For he intends to
make me speak of marriage or die, as it is said, so that either he or
his brother may have to do with this crown. I beseech you try if such
small device can save me and I shall entertain him with the other, at a
distance.”
How this letter reveals her impulse for romance, her pathetic, dogged
attempts to believe herself all-powerful!
Leicester, naturally, was far too cautious to take the tremendous risk
involved, and contented himself with keeping at a distance and in
exchanging polite and friendly letters with the Shrewsburys, such as the
one quoted on page 170. He was an adept at this kind of sugary
testimonial. Certainly no finer instance could be given in support of
the dignity, virtue, and innocence of an intriguing and busy lady from
the pen of an arch-courtier—a man accused of wife-murder, seduction,
poisoning, and political treachery.