HEIR AND DOWAGER
A family circle made up of ingredients so pugnacious could scarcely be
expected to act unanimously when it came to a question of the division
of property after the Earl’s death. Instantly the fragments in the
Talbot kaleidoscope rearranged themselves. It was my Lady who now fought
practically single-handed, and the new Earl, Gilbert, and her own child
Mary were against her. They fought, as usual, in letters, and confided
largely in their friends. Gilbert and Mary in one of their previous
letters had called upon the Almighty “speedily to grant your Ladyship
all contentment with long life.” When this new family feud began they
must have regretted that wish. Had they foreseen that they had to
encounter her strong will and keen business instinct for the space of
another seventeen years they might possibly have compromised matters
more quickly. The fact is Gilbert and Mary were innately pugnacious. It
is written in their faces as they look down from the walls of the great
picture-gallery of Hardwick. Neither face is unrefined, both are shrewd,
and Mary’s, at any rate, has, added to a touch of scorn, a certain
humorous sparkle. Neither, however, possesses the dignity of the
parents. Mary has not her mother’s good features and innately
aristocratic air. Gilbert lacks the breadth and steadiness expressed by
the Earl.
Gilbert had taken his place now as seventh Earl, received the usual
pompous letters of condolence from Lord Burghley and others, and was
duly admitted to the order of the Garter. His notions of earldom
expressed themselves chiefly in a gorgeous style of living which (in
Hunter’s opinion) “alone earned for him the title of the great and
glorious Earl of Shrewsbury,” irrespective of either intellectual or
official distinction. Naturally his wife with her “pomp and court-like
ways” was in full accord with him, and the renewal of the
“All-for-Money” family fray was inevitable. In addition to his strife
with the old Countess, he fought with Henry Talbot his younger brother,
with Lady Talbot the widow of his elder brother Francis, with his own
mother’s people the Manners family, with a prominent neighbour Sir
Richard Wortley of Wortley, and, as aforesaid, with the Stanhopes of
Nottinghamshire, to whom his wife despatched the violent message of
hatred quoted in a previous chapter. It stands to reason also that he
could not live at peace with his tenantry. As an ordinary man he does
not seem to have been mentally vigorous enough, as a man of the world
not sufficiently master of his hates and prejudices to come to an
understanding with them. It was, after all, the most difficult task of
his Lordship, and one for which his Court and town experiences had not
fitted him in the least. Most pitiful of all was his deadly feud with
his brother Edward. As Gilbert’s letters show, this arose entirely out
of the dissensions over property, though Edward and Henry, appointed as
executors of their father’s will, were wise enough to decline the task
and allow it to devolve on to the experienced shoulders of their
splendid stepmother.
This feud between Edward and Gilbert flourished wickedly. There is no
need to bore the reader with the insertion of the pages of truculent
correspondence which ensued. Gilbert eventually challenged the other to
a duel, and Edward firmly declined to fight his own flesh and blood.
From the ancient chivalric standpoint this may look like a lack of
virility. But to fight would have been the height of unwisdom for two
young, well-born men, fathers of families, and in circumstances that
would have been wholly preposterous except for their absurd expenditure.
It is this very refusal of Edward Talbot which causes one to discount
the current story—set forth with the support of arguments,
probabilities, and reasons in the Harleian MSS.—to the intent that
Edward conspired, in Medici fashion, with Gilbert’s own physician, Dr.
Wood, against Gilbert’s life, the medium chosen for the murder being a
subtly poisoned pair of perfumed gloves.
Thus it was as well for the whole family that my Lady came to the fore
again and wrestled with Gilbert, for he had flattery enough from some of
his friends to feed his vanity in his new position. The garrulous
Richard Topcliffe covered several pages in a letter expressing gladness
that it had pleased God to set the heir in the seat of his noble
ancestors. “At such an alteration of a house as now hath chanced by your
father’s death, there is ever great expecting towards the rising of the
sun.” It is an absurd, toadying letter, of which the only sincere part
is the writer’s definition of it at the close as “my tedious dream.” Of
such letters Gilbert received his share, like his father, and was
flooded with all sorts of other correspondence—official, semi-official,
and private. He assumes his father’s office in the lieutenancy of three
counties, issues his orders for armament. He meant excellently well no
doubt, but was not in the worldly sense a success. He could never, like
his father, have borne the Queen’s heavy burdens from sheer devotion to
a patriotic ideal and from horror of incurring her disfavour. His
disputes with his tenantry so overpowered him that he was forced to
refer the matter to the Queen. Her opinion was against him and on the
side of the tenants. Meanwhile the Stanhope quarrel became a regular
county affair, and, as Hunter puts it, “was pursued by both parties with
such precipitation and violence that it was rendered impossible for the
neighbouring gentry to preserve neutrality.” It is not surprising that
five years after his father’s death he was thoroughly out of favour. Yet
Elizabeth could be very kind to his children. One of her gentleman
ushers, his friend, Richard Brakenbury, writing from Court, sent him in
a letter to Rufford a pretty picture of the way she fondled his little
girl:—
“If I should write how much her Majesty this day did make of the little
lady your daughter, with often kissing (which her Majesty seldom useth
to any) and then amending her dressing with pins, and still carrying her
with her Majesty in her own barge, and so into the Privy Council
lodgings, and so homeward from the running, you would scarce believe me.
Her Majesty said (as true it is) that she is very like my Lady her
grandmother. She behaved herself with such modesty as I pray God she may
possess at twenty years old.”
Indirectly the magnificent Dowager could only be gratified by such
favours. Her main energies now were given to “pushing” Arabella in the
great world. Incidentally also it was her affair to go on building,
building, that she might live and flourish. Constructive imagination of
a certain kind she undoubtedly had. She loved grandeur, comfort, and
domestic beauty, and could conceive and plan their achievement. She was
led to her building by her sense of importance, coupled with the
praiseworthy desire to establish her offspring in a fine house, and so
increase their social advantages. That was the beginning, and her
practical imagination aided her. But rumour says that it is not by the
golden light of imagination that she was helped to expand and continue
her enterprises, but by the glare of morbid superstition. Some
soothsayer she met—history does not say at what period of her life—told
her that so long as she went on building she would never die. All
hard-headed as she was she has not escaped the imputation of credence in
fortune-telling, for she went on building to the end. Moreover, there is
the more excuse for her superstition, since, as we know, crystal-gazers
and conjurers with their charmed plates of gold, their phials and
symbols, came and went in the country and about the English and foreign
courts. It is more than possible that such persons, though included in
Shrewsbury’s roll of “practicers” and suspects, occasionally found their
way into my Lady’s parlour in Chatsworth or Hardwick. There is behind
this old soothsayer’s story a deeper meaning. She built that she might
exist, but in her building she truly lived, for in her strongly
constructive instinct all her higher faculties, in their finest, their
Aristotelian sense, found their outlet, while her heart realised a
certain happiness.
By this time she was just seventy, and still in full vigour, though
tolerably scarred and embittered in heart and soul. Through Arabella and
her second son William, both of whom she really seems to have adored,
she had still a great hold upon life. It was her main business now to
fight old age, face her fourth widowhood resolutely, live in comfort,
and provide for those she loved or who were in any sense dependent on
her.
Arabella cannot, of course, have had a particularly joyous or smooth
childhood under the sway of that keen, tempestuous temperament, but at
any rate she imbibed and inherited an enormous amount of vitality. She
was too young to be overcast by the pitiful, short-lived love story of
her parents, and her grandmother brought her up jealously and in an
atmosphere of state which helped to single her out from the other
grandchildren of the family and from the family circle. A letter from
the Countess, written when Arabella was but a baby, may be included
here:—
“_The Countess of Shrewsbury to Lord Burghley, respecting the
assignment of an Income to the Lady Arabella._ A.D. 1582.[85]
“After my very hearty commendations to your good Lo. where it pleased
the Queen’s Majesty my most gracious Sovereign, upon my humble suit to
grant unto my late daughter Lennox four hundred pounds, and to that her
dear and only daughter Arbella two hundred pounds yearly for their
better maintenance, assigned out of part of the land of her inheritance:
whereof the four hundred pounds is now at her Majesty’s disposition by
the death of my daughter Lennox, whom it pleased God (I doubt not in
mercy for her good, but to my no small grief, in her best time) to take
out of this world, whom I cannot yet remember but with a sorrowful
troubled mind. I am now, my good L., to be an humble suitor to the
Queen’s Majesty that it may please her to confirm that grant of the
whole six hundred pounds yearly for the education of my dearest jewel
Arbella, wherein I assuredly trust to her Majesty’s most gracious
goodness, who never denied me any suit, but by her most bountiful and
gracious favours every way hath so much bound me as I can never think
myself able to discharge my duty in all faithful service to her Majesty.
I wish not to leave after I shall willingly fail in any part thereof to
the best of my power. And as I know your L. hath special care for the
ordering of her Majesty’s revenues and of her estate every way, so trust
I you will consider of the poor infant’s case, who under her Majesty is
to appeal only unto your Lo. for succour in all her distresses; who, I
trust, cannot dislike of this my suit on her behalf, considering the
charges incident to her bringing up. For although she were ever where
her mother was during her life, yet can I not now like she should be
here nor in any place else where I may not sometimes see her and daily
hear of her, and therefore charged with keeping house where she must be
with such as is fit for her standing, of whom I have special care, not
only such as a natural mother hath of her best beloved child, but much
more greater in respect how she is in blood to her Majesty: albeit one
of the poorest as depending wholly on her Majesty’s gracious bounty and
goodness, and being now upon seven years, and very apt to learn, and
able to conceive what shall be taught her. The charge will so increase
as I doubt not her Majesty will well conceive the six hundred pounds
yearly to be little enough, which as your Lo. knoweth is but so much in
money, for that the lands be in lease, and no further commodity to be
looked for during these few years of the child’s minority. All which I
trust your L. will consider and say to her Majesty what you think
thereof; and so most heartily wish your L. well to do.
[Illustration:
_From a photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby, after the painting at
Hardwick Hall
By permission of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire_
ARABELLA STUART
Page 330
]
“Sheffield this 6th day of May.
“Your L. most assured loving friend,
“E. SHREWSBURY.
“To the right honourable and my very good Lord the Lord Burghley, L.
Treasurer of England.”
To this Arabella, aged seven, adds her pretty French postscript:—
“Je prieray Dieu Monsr. vous donner en parfaicte en entiere santé, tout
heureux et bon succes, et seray tousjours preste a vous faire tout
honneur et service.
“ARBELLA STEWARD.”
The new Hardwick, the present hall, was not actually finished till seven
years after the Earl’s death, and there and at the older house the
Dowager and the semi-royal grandchild spent many years together. The
former was, as has been instanced, busy betimes with making matches for
the child. After the disappointment about Lord Leicester’s little son,
the old ambitious spirit flares up gloriously in the proposal that
Arabella, who was just ten years old, should marry James of Scotland.
She was suggested by Walsingham, presumably at the Queen’s desire, as an
alternative bride to a Danish princess. James was not inclined to make
up his mind at the moment, and in the following year another bridegroom
was suggested—Rainutio, son of the Duke of Parma. Since the Duke was
suspected of laying claim to the English throne, these negotiations were
carried on secretly, not so secretly, however, that they escaped the
knowledge of Burghley. State papers show that he was well aware that a
servant of Sir Edward Stafford was employed “from beyond the sea, to
practise with” Arabella about this marriage. “He was sent once before
for her picture, and has been thrice to England this year,” is the
conclusion of the secret information sent to Court. It is likely that
the picture named might be a copy of one of the two hanging now in the
great gallery at Hardwick Hall. Both are deeply interesting, and one, in
which she is shown as a little, dignified, grandly dressed child of two
holding a gay stiff doll, is very moving. The other, of which the
original seems to be at Welbeck, shows her “in her hair,” in the old
phrase. Part of her hair is drawn over a puff above her forehead and
adorned with a drop jewel, and the rest hangs down fine and straight
like a soft veil behind her shoulders. Her dress is white, with sleeves
either of ermine or white velvet with black spots; her gold fan has a
dull red cord, and a girdle of jewels is about her waist. On either side
of her hangs a portrait of James VI as a little boy. In one he carries a
hawk—symbol of the passion for sport which seems to have been, save for
his obstinacy, his only strong point; in the other he is in correct
fashionable dress and plumed cap, and wears a tiny sword—symbol of the
courage he never possessed, and forerunner of the full-grown weapon
which he could carry with swagger, but dared not use on his mother’s
behalf. Even as his little presence hedges Arabella in this gallery on
both sides, so in life his position dominated hers most cruelly in years
to come.
[Illustration:
_Photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby, from the picture at Hardwick
Hall
By permission of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire_
ARABELLA STUART
Page 332
]
The proposed marriage alluded to, which set abroad all manner of fears
of conspiracy in connection with Arabella in 1592, caused Lord Burghley
to write warnings to the Countess. All the old caution and authority
show in her reply:—
_The Countess of Shrewsbury to Lord Burghley: representing her care of
the Lady Arabella._[86]
“My honourable good Lord,—I received your Lordship’s letter on Wednesday
towards night, being the 20th of this September, by a servant of Mr.
John Talbott, of Ireland. My good Lord, I was at the first much troubled
to think that so wicked and mischievous practices should be devised to
entrap my poor Arbell and me, but I put my trust in the Almighty, and
will use such diligent care as I doubt not but to prevent whatsoever
shall be attempted by any wicked persons against the poor child. I am
most bound to her Majesty that it pleased her to appoint your Lordship
to give me knowledge of this wicked practice, and I humbly thank your
Lordship for advertising it: if any such like hereinafter be discovered
I pray your Lordship I may be forewarned. I will not have any unknown or
suspected person to come to my house. Upon the least suspicion that may
happen here, anyway, I shall give advertisement to your Lordship. I have
little resort to me: my house is furnished with sufficient company:
Arbell walks not late, at such time as she shall take the air, it shall
be near the house, and well attended on: she goeth not to anybody’s
house at all: I see her almost every hour in the day: she lieth in my
bedchamber. If I can be more precise than I have been I will be. I am
bound in nature to be careful for Arbell: I find her loving and dutiful
to me, yet her own good and safety is not dearer to me, nor more by me
regarded than to accomplish her Majesty’s pleasure, and that which I
think may be for her service. I would rather wish many deaths than to
see this or any such like wicked attempt to prevail.
“About a year since, there was one Harrison, a seminary, that lay at his
brother’s house about a mile from Hardwick, whom I thought then to have
caused to be apprehended, and to have sent him up; but found he had
licence for a time. Notwithstanding, the seminary, soon after, went from
his brother’s, finding how much I was discontented with his lying so
near me. Since my coming now into the country, I had some intelligence
that the same seminary was come again to his brother’s house: my son
William Cavendish went thither of a sudden to make search for him, but
could not find him. I write this much to your Lordship that if any such
traitorous and naughty persons (through her Majesty’s clemency) be
suffered to go abroad, that they may not harbour near my houses
Wingfield, Hardwick, or Chatsworth in Derbyshire: they are the most
likely instruments to put a bad matter in execution.
“One Morley, who hath attended on Arbell, and read to her for the space
of three years and a half, showed to be much discontented since my
return into the country, in saying he had lived in hope to have some
annuity granted him by Arbell out of her lands during his life, or some
lease of grounds to the value of forty pounds a year, alleging that he
was so much damaged by leaving the University, and now saw that if she
were willing, yet not of ability, to make him any such assurance. I
understanding by divers that Morley was so much discontented, and withal
of late having some cause to be doubtful of his forwardness in religion
(though I cannot charge him with papistry), took occasion to part with
him. After he was gone from my house, and all his stuff carried from
hence, the next day he returned again, very importunate to serve without
standing upon any recompense, which made me more suspicious, and the
more willing to part with him. I have no other in my house who will
supply Morley’s place very well for the time. I will have those that
shall be sufficient in learning, honest, and well disposed so near as I
can.
“I am forced to use the hand of my son William Cavendish, not being able
to write so much myself for fear of bringing great pain to my head. He
only is privy to your Lordship’s letter, and neither Arbell nor any
other living, nor shall be.
“I beseech your Lordship I may be directed from you as occasion shall
fall out. To the uttermost of my understanding, I have and will be
careful. I beseech the Almighty to send your Lordship a long and happy
life, and so I will commit your Lordship to His protection. From my
house at Hardwick the 21st of September, 1592.
“Your Lordship’s as I am bound,
“E. SHREWSBURY.”
[Illustration:
_Photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby_
THE PICTURE GALLERY FROM THE NORTH, HARDWICK HALL
Page 336
]