Bess of Hardwick, page 24
Mary’s hopes for a marriage with Norfolk were destined to fail when the Scots voted overwhelmingly that her marriage to Bothwell was legal and binding. And when Norfolk went to Court he walked into the blinding fury of an outraged Elizabeth who, it seems, was among the last to learn of the proposed marriage. Nor was Norfolk the only one to suffer from the Queen’s tempestuous outburst. She castigated Shrewsbury as well. ‘I have found no reliance on my Lord of Shrewsbury in my hour of need, for all the fine speeches he made me formerly,’ she announced angrily, ordering that Mary be returned to Tutbury. And she sent the Earl of Huntingdon, as a pointed insult, to ‘assist’ Shrewsbury in his task.
Shrewsbury was shocked and hurt that his trust, responsibility and loyalty had been called into question. He reacted with bitterness, but he had no alternative but to tag along behind the strutting Huntingdon as Mary’s rooms were searched by men brandishing pistols. Mary’s household was reduced to thirty persons, without her approval, and a number of the Shrewsbury servants who were suspected of being sympathetic to her were summarily dismissed on Huntingdon’s command. The guard was doubled (at Shrewsbury’s expense), and Huntingdon was openly patronising about Mary’s previous treatment under the Shrewsburys, and was particularly suspicious of Bess’s relationship with her. He did not trouble to withhold his opinion that the Earl and Countess had treated the Scots Queen with ‘too much affection’.
Mary, who saw that her new keeper was a different man from Shrewsbury, hated and feared him, and was astonished when he dared suggest Lord Leicester (his own brother-in-law) as a husband for her. She is said to have told her ladies that she had no intention of marrying Elizabeth’s cast-off lover (though of course Leicester was not cast off, and Elizabeth would never have allowed such a match). With the help of one of Bess’s servants Mary smuggled out a letter to the French ambassador Bertrand de la Mothe Fénèlon, begging him to speak on her behalf to the Queen, of her fear of Huntingdon:
I entreat that you will make the Spanish Ambassador accompany you…for my life is in danger while in their hands [Lord Huntingdon and his men]…Keep secret this letter, so that no one knows of it, or I shall be guarded more strictly than ever; and give your letters to this bearer secretly, for my Lord Shrewsbury’s ships*…will serve me greatly, but if it is known you [will] ruin me!
In a frantic postscript she added:
Since writing this letter, Huntingdon has returned, having from the Queen the absolute charge of me. The Earl of Shrewsbury, at my request, has prevented him from taking me away, until a second order arrives [from the Queen]. I entreat you to represent the violation of the law of nations, by placing me in the hands of one who is a competitor to the crown as well as I am. I beg also that you will write…by the ship of the Earl of Shrewsbury, by this bearer, and let it be secret.22
While Shrewsbury wallowed in aggrieved misery, Bess fumed that the effort and expense they had so far incurred was so little appreciated. And although the Earl could not leave his captive without permission, there was nothing stopping her from going to London. She persuaded Shrewsbury that she should go to the Court and explain their position to Cecil to whom she was ‘my singular good friend and so I trust you will continue’.23 Bess had already begun to realise the fruitless nature of Shrewsbury’s role as Mary’s jailer. She no longer regarded the position as desirable; but she did not want Shrewsbury relieved of his important position while under a cloud.
When Mary learned that Bess had gone to London she remembered confidences shared over their needlework which might easily rebound on her. She was also aware of her hostess’s redoubtable nature and the fact that Bess would put her husband’s interests before Mary’s. She hastily wrote to Cecil asking him not to listen to ‘the schemes and accusations of the Countess who is now with you’. She asked the Earl to forward this as a sealed note to Cecil, and the Earl enclosed it with a letter of his own, in which he wrote:
I hear to my grief that suspicion is had of overmuch goodwill, borne by my wife to this Queen, and of untrue dealings by my men. For my wife this must I say [that] she has not otherwise dealt with this Queen than I have been privy unto, and that I have had liking of. And hath so dealt that I have been the more able to discharge the trust committed unto me. And if she, for her dutiful service to Her Majesty, and true meaning unto me, shall be suspected…she and I may think ourselves unfortunate.
And when I perceive her Majesty is led to understand that by my wife’s persuasion I am the more desirous to continue this charge, I speak before God that so far from her persuading me to continue, she has been in hand with me as far as she dares, and more than I thought well of, since my sickness, to procure my discharge.
I am not to be led by her, otherwise than I think well of, [but] if I had not found myself well recovered, I would have been a humble suitor for my despatch.24
Bess had private interviews with Cecil, Walsingham and the Queen, and she remained in London for some weeks, where a contemporary noted that the Countess of Shrewsbury’s ‘carriage was so graceful, discreet, wise and obliging, that the whole Court was much taken with her’.25 During her time there she and Shrewsbury corresponded; he addressed her as ‘My own sweetheart’26 and Bess called him, ‘My jewel’.27 Her business in London is not mentioned in either letter; however, when Huntingdon made his next move, saying that his continued residence at the house of Lord Shrewsbury was untenable, and confidently requesting that either he be removed from his present post, or that Mary be transferred to his own house at Asheby, neither of his options were accepted. Instead, another ‘assistant keeper’ was sent to Tutbury, Walter Devereux, Viscount Hereford, to ease the tension between Shrewsbury and Huntingdon. Hereford did what he was sent to do, but after a short time he requested a release from his tedious duties. As one historian put it, ‘it was no employment for a Devereaux’.28
The year 1569 – the first year of Mary’s imprisonment under Shrewsbury – ended with the first serious attempt to liberate her. The leaders of this ‘northern uprising’, Thomas Percy, Earl of Northumberland and Charles Neville, Earl of Westmorland, were supporters of the Duke of Norfolk. With their small but determined army they marched towards York and Tutbury. Shrewsbury and Huntingdon received orders to remove their charge to the walled town of Coventry, where it was thought that a long siege could be resisted, if necessary. Mary was at Coventry for only a few weeks before the northern army was suppressed without a battle being fought, and in January Mary and her keepers returned to a bitterly cold and damp Tutbury, the most hated of all her places of imprisonment.
A lengthy official inquiry followed, held in tandem with the trials of the principals. One witness, Thomas Bishop, reported that several months earlier he had met the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury, near Wingfield. They were riding out together ‘for their past time abroad’, in the company of the Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland. Bishop testified that he had fallen in with the party, and that, significantly, all their talk was of the Duke of Norfolk, who had been committed to the Tower on 11 October 1569. Although there was never any suggestion that the Shrewsburys had conspired with Northumberland and Westmorland, it was thought that they might have been ‘used’ by their honoured guests to obtain information about Mary’s captivity.
Each small criticism of Shrewsbury and his care of the Scottish Queen injured his sense of loyalty, his dutiful nature and his self-esteem. Already nervous and stressed, this latest development made him testy and short-tempered, which rebounded on Bess and inevitably upon his captive, whose limited outdoor privileges were gradually withdrawn.
As the winter gave way to spring, matters improved. Huntingdon was removed, and in mid-May 1570 permission was granted for Mary to be transferred to Chatsworth, while Tutbury was ‘cleansed and sweetened’. A more relaxed regimen came into force. Cecil wrote that the Queen might ‘take the ayre about your howss on horseback [in] your Lordship’s company…and not to pass from your howss above one or twoo myles, except it be on ye moors’.29 At Chatsworth, for the first time in many months, Mary was again allowed a few visitors. Having learned the hard way, Shrewsbury had become a far more careful jailer by this time, and as a result he was able to frustrate a plot to rescue Mary.
Prior to the northern rising there had been another plan to release Mary, concocted by a cousin of the Earl of Northumberland, Leonard Dacre (whose dead brother had once been the proposed bridegroom of Shrewsbury’s small daughter Grace). This plan had been squashed by Norfolk who, still hoping to marry Mary, thought that an escape would ruin all hope of ever gaining Elizabeth’s approval to the match.
Now this old scheme was resurrected by a number of young men of the county under the leadership of Sir Thomas Gerard, a Catholic squire. Those involved were few: the brothers Francis and George Rolleston, John Hall (a former servant of the Earl of Shrewsbury) and two men from Lancashire, Sir Thomas and Sir Edward Stanley. The idea was that while riding out over the high moor, as she often did, Mary would be snatched. She would then be taken to the coast, and from there by boat to the Isle of Man, where she would be able to negotiate with Elizabeth from a position of strength. One morning at 5 a.m. the two Rolleston brothers met Mary’s Master of Household, John Beaton, on the bleak and chilly ‘high moor’ above Chatsworth to coordinate the escape. Beaton was not convinced that the kidnap idea would work; the guards were too many and the plotters too few. He favoured Mary escaping at night by being let down on a rope from a window. Mary was still only in her twenties, and, despite her reported illnesses, she was strong. She had certainly endured worse, in her recent colourful career, than being lowered from a window on a rope.
Eventually, Bess got to hear of the plan and told Shrewsbury. The Rolleston brothers were arrested and sent to prison. Beaton died suddenly and was buried in the churchyard in the nearby village of Edensor before Cecil’s men could question him. But it appears that the plan did not have Mary’s approval anyway. When Beaton approached her about it, she turned it down, saying that she still had confidence that Elizabeth would restore her ‘to her former dignity’, following requests from the Kings of France and Spain.30 Not that Mary had given up hope of marrying Norfolk; she still managed to maintain a secret correspondence with him: ‘I pray you, think and hold me in your good grace…daily,’ she wrote. ‘[And I] shall pray God to send you happy and hasty deliverance of all troubles. I shall not have any advancement or rest without you.’31
To the chagrin of the Shrewsburys, two members of their household were found to have been involved in the escape plan. John Hall, gentleman, told the Privy Council that he had been in the Earl’s service for four years but he had left ‘because he misliked the Earl’s marriage, as divers of his other friends did’.32 The other man, Hersey Lassells, said that both Mary and her major-domo Beaton had offered him bribes to perform commissions for the Queen, but he had refused because he had a patent of twenty marks a year from Lord Shrewsbury. He said that he had ‘made Lady Shrewsbury privy’ of the approach by Beaton, and the Countess had instructed him to promise to do what he was asked, but to come to her at once and tell her. But he admitted he had not told Lady Shrewsbury when Mary gave him a gold ring set with an agate as a token to show to the Duke of Norfolk.33
Once again Bess found herself suspected of conspiring with the Scottish Queen. She wrote in her defence that she had been suspicious of Lassells, and had questioned him over a period of some weeks in an attempt to extract information on the Scottish Queen’s ‘doings and devices’. Lassells was young and conceited, she wrote, and believed that Queen Mary liked him. Bess said that Mary had merely ‘pretended a good will unto him’, but the real incentive she offered to Lassells was her promise that if he helped her to escape ‘she would make him a lord’. Having found out all that she could, but believing it to be of little substance, Bess dismissed the man from her service lest he should corrupt other servants. ‘I assure your Lordship, on my faith,’ she wrote to Cecil, ‘that I was never made privy nor knew of any dealings between her and the Duke of Norfolk, done by either the said Lassells or by any other living creature.’34 It was certainly not the last occasion on which Mary’s charm would ‘turn’ Shrewsbury servants.
Despite all these events, Queen Elizabeth’s attitude appears to have softened towards Mary. By midsummer 1570 she was as close as she would ever come to releasing her. She wrote to Shrewsbury that Mary’s supporters had complained to her that Mary was not permitted ‘to take the air abroad. Although we can find no fault with you, for a due regard to her being in your charge, yet we are content, that in your company she may ride and take the air for health…We would be ready to satisfy all requests made for more licence for her liberty there, but that we have frequent advertisements…to convey her away [while she is] riding abroad…As such peril be prevented by your circumspection, we are pleased that she be permitted to have any liberty to take the air, being convenient for her health.’35
Mary was now allowed to ride, hawk and hunt, and send and receive some letters. One, for example, was written by Mary to Margaret, Countess of Lennox, her former mother-in-law, asking her not to believe false reports made against her by her enemies. Mary claimed to be utterly innocent of the death of Darnley, and asked for advice about having her son, the Countess’s grandson, brought into England. And she promised always ‘to love you as my aunt, and respect you as my mother-in-law’.36
Mary’s chambers at Chatsworth were directly above what is now the Painted Hall in the present-day building, overlooking the river and the glorious peakland. It was a brief period of relative pleasure in her long imprisonment, and almost the only time that she was housed in real comfort. A local legend, and one that has been passed down through generations of the Cavendish family, is that Mary’s favourite place to take the air during the period of this newly relaxed regime was what is still known as ‘Queen Mary’s Bower’. The square stone building, with a garden on its roof and the arms of Shrewsbury on a lintel, stands in a dry hollow now, but in Bess’s day it was surrounded by a small moat fed by the River Derwent. It was part of the complex of fishponds whose edges were lined with walks and trees, and its purpose was that of ‘a prospect tower in the pools and…a fishing station’. These ponds or water gardens, one of which was a long canal, were decorative but practical; stocked with carp they ensured constant supplies of fresh fish for the table.
No evidence has been found to support the old belief that Mary Queen of Scots and her ladies used this building to take the air. Indeed, in one history of Chatsworth’s gardens a historian points out that the building was never even referred to as ‘Queen Mary’s Bower’ in any published work until the eighteenth century.37 However, while it might be true to say that no evidence exists to prove that Queen Mary used the structure, it is equally true to say that there is no evidence to prove that she did not use it. It would certainly have been a practical and pleasant place for her to spend a few hours in the open air. And since there was only one entrance to the building, across water, it would have enabled her to be securely guarded from a discreet distance while affording her an unusual degree of privacy.
In September Queen Elizabeth wrote to Shrewsbury that she was pleased with the manner in which he had conducted his trust, but warning that she heard constant rumours of plans for ‘the escape and conveyance away of the said Queen’.38 There was no hint of censure, but she reminded him yet again of the importance of his task. This was not surprising since the Pope had recently described Elizabeth as a heretic and invited Catholics to depose her, almost the equivalent of an Islamic fatwa. This ensured that the regime of religious tolerance that Elizabeth wanted was essentially doomed. Catholics were again regarded as enemies of the State, and Mary was their figurehead.
That winter Mary was moved to Sheffield Castle, then spent the following spring and summer at Tutbury before being returned to Sheffield in August 1571. It was during this year that Bess began to spend periods of time at Chatsworth, away from her husband and away from Mary. Letters to Bess from the Earl speak of ‘longing to hear from you’ and hoping she felt the same as he did. He commiserated when Bess fell ill, and at the same time reported his own episodes of ‘great pain’ from attacks of gout.39 He wrote to the Queen requesting permission to come to Court, but this was not allowed.
Gradually a pattern of living apart was established, and Bess settled into the more pleasurable life of running her great house and managing her household for longer and longer periods. As well as her mother*, her aunt Linnacre, and several sisters or stepsisters, there were a number of young gentlewomen serving in her household. One of these was a young kinswoman introduced by her late husband’s nephew, Richard Cavendish, who had married into the Baynton family (as had Sir William St Loe and Ann Cavendish).† Cavendish had written that his brother, ‘having a daughter of 18 years is very desirous to place her in service with your Ladyship, by reason of such honourable reports as he has received of you’.40 Another, Elizabeth Smyth, wrote after she left Bess’s service to marry, to confide that Bess had ‘always been like a mother’ to her.41
