Bess of Hardwick and Her Circle

It is universally conceded by our nation that the French have a sense of the theatre which we shall never possess. The only set-off we can produce is a pre-eminent “sense of the...

There is no other title possible for the condition of things with which this chapter deals. That public vindication of the Earl, it will be remembered, was in 1584, coupled with...

The move to Sheffield was now abandoned because of the desperate excitement aroused in Elizabeth’s mind by the disclosure of the love affair which was brewing between Mary and t...

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...

The following letters carry on the story of the Shrewsburys in domestic and official detail for the next year. The second stepson of Bess was by this time not only a married man...

Seeing that my Lady of Shrewsbury had triumphantly surmounted one of the greatest dangers she had ever drawn upon herself and hers, one can safely assume that after the foregoin...

The fourth husband of “Building Bess” was no less a person than George Talbot, sixth Earl of Shrewsbury. Though the name does not appear in the great roll of the prominent soldi...

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...

His own household and many of his tenants were faithful to the Earl Marshal. Fortunately he had not at the moment much leisure for private broodings. The Babington conspiracy ha...

There was, as the two mothers agreed, but one way out of it all—a speedy marriage. No time to invite the blessing of the bride’s stepfather, no time for signing of deeds, or for...

That last plaint of George Talbot was in 1582. Previous to this the curious letters quoted from Gilbert Talbot give a pretty graphic notion of the acute irritation between his p...

The death of her daughter Elizabeth Lennox proved a heavy blow to Bess Shrewsbury. At first she did not realise the full force of it. Everything possible had been done to secure...

The Shrewsbury pair started the year 1575 in different fashion. She was in the Tower and not at all in a happy mood. He also in a fortress—Sheffield—but as warder and not prison...

It was now the autumn of the year 1574. The Shrewsburys had for the time being come triumphantly out of official complications, and despite their grave responsibilities lived as...

The dashing suitor of Mary of Scotland, Don John of Austria, was dead. Her rival was on the edge of a marriage with a son of Mary’s stoutest champion—France. It was a bad moment...

His honour was undermined by his own family, his fortunes impaired by his Queen’s penuriousness, his prime was past, his best given in return for apparently naught. Even the gra...

All the mighty fuss and preparation aforesaid sufficed only to make Tutbury barely habitable. The airy, pleasant impressions of the French Ambassador were literally castles in t...

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....

The death of Mary Queen of Scots was the signal for the Countess to insure that Arabella should be as near the Court as possible. She was kept hard at her lessons, but, though t...

In a letter quoted in the previous chapter Lord Burghley had told Lord Shrewsbury that the Queen herself would write to him on the subject of the new-old rumours about Mary’s es...

Among the hills and dales of Derbyshire, that great county of august estates, there came into the world in the year 1520 a certain baby girl. Her father, John Hardwick of Hardwi...

_Elizabeth_ [_moving to the window_]. No, no, my Lord, she says it was Mrs. Gl.... [_The Countess springs up, catches her sharply by the wrist, and gives her a little rap with h...

_Scene_: The presence chamber of Tutbury Castle on a raw day of February, 1569. A casement flapping in the wind. Crimson velvet drapery lies on the floor, and two women squat th...