[Illustration: HARDWICKE HALL.]
One of the great characters of the sixteenth century was Elizabeth,
Countess of Shrewsbury, familiarly known as "Bess of Hardwicke," where
she was born, and who managed to outlive four husbands, thus showing
what success is in store for a woman of tact and business talent. She
was a penniless bride at fourteen, when she married an opulent gentleman
of Derbyshire named Barley, who left her at fifteen a wealthy widow. At
the age of thirty she married another rich husband, Sir William
Cavendish, the ancestor of the Dukes of Devonshire, who died in 1557,
leaving her again a widow, but with large estates, for she had taken
good care to look after the proper marriage settlements; and in fact,
even in those early days, a pretty good fortune was necessary to provide
for the family of eight children Sir William left her. She next married
Sir William Loe, who also had large estates and was the captain of the
king's guard, the lady's business tact procuring in advance of the
wedding the settlement of these estates upon herself and her children--a
hard condition, with which, the historian tells us, "the gallant
captain, who had a family by a former marriage, felt himself constrained
to comply or forego his bride." But in time the captain died, and his
estates all went to the thrifty lady, to the exclusion of his own
family; and to the blooming widow, thus made for the third time, there
came a-courting the Earl of Shrewsbury; the earl had numerous offspring,
and therefore could hardly give Bess all his possessions, like her other
husbands, but she was clever enough to obtain her object in another way.
As a condition precedent to accepting the earl, she made him marry two
of his children to two of hers, and after seeing these two weddings
solemnized, the earl led her to the altar for the fourth time at the
age of fifty; and we are told that all four of these weddings were
actual "love-matches." But she did not get on well with the earl, whose
correspondence shows she was a little shrewish, though in most quarrels
she managed to come off ahead, having by that time acquired experience.
When the earl died in 1590, and Bess concluded not again to attempt
matrimony, she was immensely rich and was seized with a mania for
building, which has left to the present day three memorable houses:
Hardwicke Hall, where she lived, Bolsover Castle, and the palace of
Chatsworth, which she began, and on which she lavished the enormous sum,
for that day, of $400,000. The legend runs that she was told that so
long as she kept building her life would be spared--an architect's ruse
possibly; and when finally she died it was during a period of hard
frost, when the masons could not work.
[Illustration: ELIZABETHAN STAIRCASE, HARDWICKE HALL.]
Hardwicke Hall, near Mansfield, which the renowned Bess has left as one
of her monuments, is about three hundred years old, and approached by a
noble avenue through a spacious park; it is still among the possessions
of the Cavendish family and in the Duke of Devonshire's estates. The old
hall where Bess was born almost touches the new one that she built, and
which bears the initials of the proud and determined woman in many
places outside and in. It was here that Mary Queen of Scots was held in
captivity part of the time that she was placed by Queen Elizabeth in the
custody of the Earl of Shrewsbury, and her statue stands in the hall.
There is an extensive picture-gallery containing many historical
portraits, and also fine state-apartments. The mansion is a lofty oblong
stone structure, with tall square towers at each corner, the
architecture being one of the best specimens of the Elizabethan Period;
on the side, as viewed from the park, the hall seems all windows, which
accounts for the saying of that neighborhood:
"Hardwicke Hall, more glass than wall."
The ruins of the old hall, almost overgrown with ivy, are picturesque,
but from everywhere on the ancient or on the modern hall there peer out
the initials "E. S.," with which the prudent Bess was so careful to mark
all her possessions.