CHAPTER I

THE RED-HAIRED GIRL

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 Hardwick House, and her mother Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Leake of Hasland, in the same county, christened the child Elizabeth, naturally enough after her mother. Like the great Queen of England to whom she was senior, and with whom in after years she had so much traffic of a highly dramatic kind, this Elizabeth has come down to posterity under the shorter name of Bess.

Derbyshire, always a great county, was specially important in her day. Far from London and Court it seemed like a little England within England. Its great families wove its life step by step, its varied landscape, its heights and dales rendered it an important strategical centre in the event of rebellion, and the roughness and slough of pack-road and cart-road made even local expeditions affairs of moment. The little red-haired baby girl inherited from her native soil, from her race, and from the neighbours about her all that sense of county importance, that desire to found, establish and endow a great family with great estates which her life developed to so remarkable a degree. That consciousness of county importance was inevitable in those days when families gave their names not only to their mansions, but to the hamlets or village which clustered round them. Bess of Hardwick was brought up amongst them all—the Hardwicks of Hardwick, the Barleys of Barley (or Barlow), the Pinchbecks of Pinchbeck, the Blackwalls of Blackwall, the Leakes, and the Leches. Not all of them were so very opulent. The Hardwicks, though not rich, were of honourable standing as county gentry, and the Barleys and Leakes were of the same social rank. John Hardwick could not afford to give his daughters large dowries, and consequently when my Lady Zouche, her aunt, took Bess into her household in London the parents were probably glad enough to embrace such a social chance for her. Up to this time she led naturally the life of the ordinary young gentlewoman of tender years, said her prayers, learnt to sew and embroider, and had seen something of the ordering of a household and the disposal of country produce, while she heard and treasured up such scraps of news as filtered through to her family and neighbours by letters and travellers who came to the houses about her, or such rumours as were bruited in the county town. She was but twelve years old when she made her entry at once into my Lady Zouche’s house and into history. We are told that she had reddish hair and small eyes, but no picture of her remains to give any idea of her appearance at this moment when she left her childhood behind her. Physique she must always have had, and with it tenacity and tact in furthering her own prospects. She was of the type in which the art of “getting on” is innate. London and my Lady Zouche’s excellent social position gave her her first chance.

There is almost a touch of Becky Sharp in the way that this young girl, dowerless save for the forty marks of _dot_ allotted by John Hardwick to each of his daughters, settled down in that household. There came to London one of her Derbyshire neighbours—a youth of the Barley or Barlow family, named Robert. Under Lady Zouche’s roof he fell sick and the little niece helped to tend him. Whether he also fell in love, whether Mistress Hardwick the mother was minded to “settle” one at least of her girls early, or whether Lady Zouche was of a strong match-making tendency does not appear. But a marriage between the niece and the guest was arranged and quickly carried through. A strange pitiful affair it must have been—that London wedding between the red-haired child and the sickly young man—a ceremony trailing after it a sorry hope of happiness in the midst of physicking and nostrums, weakness and watching, until the death of the bridegroom before the bride had reached her fourteenth year. His death left no apparent gap in my Lady Zouche’s household and no mark upon history. But it bestowed on the child-wife the dignity of widowhood, and such importance, plus her forty marks, as attached to any property that Robert Barlow left her. The Barlows were not wealthy. Some of them in after years were in sore straits for a living. The State Papers show the existence of piteous letters from a certain Jane Barlow who writes in January, 1583, to her father, Alexander Barlow, “from a foreign land.” She is in extreme want, forced to borrow money to carry on her “business,” and assures him that the meanest servant he has “liveth in far better condition than she.” There is nothing to show that the Barlows applied to their relation “Bess” in after years for help. Such property as there was passed to her, and she travelled out of their ken into richer circles.

In 1547, at the age of twenty-seven, a woman in the height of her powers and the perfection of her womanhood, with considerable knowledge of the world and a tremendous store of physical and mental vitality, she secured a second husband and a man of considerable means—Sir William Cavendish. He was the second son of Thomas Cavendish, and his family, like that of Bess, took its name from its hamlet or manor. Says the pompous Bishop Kennet of those days: “The Cavendishes, like other great Families of greatest Antiquity derived a Name from their Place of Habitation. A younger branch of the Germons, famous in Norfolk and Essex, settled at Cavendish in Suffolk, and from that Seat and Estate were soon distinguished by that Sirname.” Thomas Cavendish, like the father of Bess, was “a well-to-do but undistinguished Squire,” but his sons made names for themselves.

In 1539 his son William was appointed one of the auditors of the Court of Augmentation. This Court, of which one at least of the members had been employed as a commissioner for the surrender of religious houses, was ostensibly founded to ensure the increase of the royal exchequer to such a point as would enable the sovereign duly to establish and strengthen the defences of the realm. Within a year Mr. Cavendish had so well played his cards and acquitted himself that he received from Henry VIII a grant of Church property—the lordships and manors of Northawe, Cuffley, and Childewicke in Hertfordshire. In 1548, the year after his marriage, he was further rewarded not only by the post of “Treasurer of the Chamber to the King” which, we are assured, was “a place of great trust and honour,” but the knighthood which brought his third wife the title that raised her above the majority of her fellow-gentlewomen. He did not bring her a virgin heart, for he had been twice married and twice a widower without male heir. But he conferred on her important social position, a great deal of land—additional prizes fell to his share in the way of lesser glebe properties, abbeys, and rectories, because his appointment in the royal exchequer kept him _au courant_ of the places which were being given or going cheap in the market—and she in her turn brought him the sons he doubtless so greatly desired.

Never surely did a couple settle down so whole-heartedly or so harmoniously to the founding of a family, to the increase and consolidation of their patrimony. As to the first—their offspring—Sir William made a proud and careful list in writing, being, as Collins[1] says, “A learned and exact Person.” He had in all sixteen children, eight of whom were borne to him by “this beautiful and discreet Lady,” as Collins describes Bess Cavendish.

The fact that his second wife’s name was also Elizabeth has at times given rise to misstatements with regard to the place and date of his third marriage, but he was careful to record this: “I was married to Elizabeth Hardwick, my third wife, in Leicestershire, at Brodgate, my Lord Marquess’s[2] House, the 20th of August, in the first yeare of King Ed. the 6, at 2 of the Clock after midnight.”

Of the eight children of this marriage six survived. The others were Temperance, “my 10 childe and the second by the same woman,” and Lucrece the youngest. The surviving daughters were Frances Cavendish, the eldest, married to Sir Henry Pierrepoint, of Holme Pierrepoint, Notts; Elizabeth Cavendish, who espoused Charles Stuart, Earl of Lennox; and Mary, the youngest girl, who became the wife of Gilbert Talbot. Of the three sons, the eldest, Henry Cavendish, who settled later at Tutbury Castle, married Lady Grace Talbot; William Cavendish, who wedded successively Anne, daughter of Henry Kighley, of Kighley, and Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Edward Boughton, and to whom his adoring mother left Chatsworth; and Charles. Frances Cavendish by her marriage became the ancestress of the Earls and Dukes of Kingston, and (through a female heiress) of the Earls Manvers, inheritors of the Pierrepoint property. Her brother Henry, though he died young, was the ancestor of the Barons Waterpark; while William, duly knighted in time, was the first Earl of Devonshire and progenitor of that great ducal house. Mary, though her husband was but a younger son of the Talbot race, became eventually Countess of Shrewsbury on his unexpected accession to the title; while Charles, besides a knighthood, secured as bride one of the twin heiresses of the Barony of Ogle, by which means the possessions of Welbeck Abbey and other great estates were insured to the Cavendishes. All these matters, however, belong to the future. The present was all-important to the welfare of Sir William and his lady. A fast growing family must be provided for, and scattered estates meant waste of cost and labour. The clear, keen eyes of the newly-wedded Bess looked far into the future. She did not care for the notion of separation from her own lands and the unwieldy business of dealing with her husband’s estates in different parts of the South of England. At the time of their marriage he had sold the aforesaid manors in Hertfordshire, Lincolnshire, Cardigan, and Cornwall, in favour of others in Derbyshire, Nottingham, and Stafford. The county instinct of his wife asserted itself. Her heart was in Derbyshire where her own dowry was concentrated. She desired the transfer of her bridegroom’s interests and property thither. Her resolution and her vitality naturally carried the day, and Sir William sold all the rest of his southern estates and settled with her in a manor which had originally been built by her old county friends the Leeches (or Leches) of Leech—Chatsworth.

Gradually her great hobby asserted itself—the desire to build—and this constructive energy, as her story will show, went hand in hand with her master passion, the love of power and possession, to the end of her days. The mansion of the Leeches did not please her. It must be rebuilt for the glory of the Cavendishes. Her knight yielded to the wish. They set about the work quickly, living meanwhile, one supposes, in the original mansion. Hardwick Hall, it will be remembered, was not yet hers. John Hardwick, her father, had passed away in the nineteenth year of Henry VIII. That reign was at an end, and the reign of Edward VI drawing to its close. Hardwick House eventually became the portion of the red-haired daughter, some say through the will of her brother, who apparently died without heir. But for the moment the Cavendishes needed a fine house for domesticity on a large scale and old Chatsworth did not suffice them. Elizabeth Cavendish had plenty to do in founding her family. These were great and busy times for the great lady. Shoulder to shoulder husband and wife worked at their building, at their estate, at the management of their tenants, their parks and palings, their farms and holdings. The red-haired girl was in her element as matron and comptroller and lady bountiful. Fortune smiled on her enterprise, and when the crown of Edward VI descended to Mary of England, Sir William Cavendish still held securely his valuable post in the Exchequer.

It is a fine English picture as one looks upon it, this married life of the Cavendishes—knight and lady amongst their babies, enlarging their county circle, increasing their county honours, holding intercourse with Court and capital, with market and county town.

Here is a letter on domestic matters from Sir William to his lady showing his trust in her management of their joint affairs:—

“To Bess Cavendish, “My Wife.

“Good Bess, having forgotten to write in my letters that you should pay Otewelle Alayne eight pounds for certain oats that we have bought of him over and above twelve that I have paid to him in hand, I heartily pray you for that he is desirous to receive the rest at London to pay him upon the sight hereof. You know my store and therefore I have appointed him to have it at your hands. And thus fare you well. From Chatsworth the XIIIth of April.

W. C.”

And here is a characteristic letter from his good lady during her absence from home in 1552 to her man of affairs, in which she soundly takes him to task for discourtesy to her “sister Jane,” orders beer to be brewed against her own return, and issues commands for building and repairs:—

“Francis, I have spoken with your master for the deals or boards that you wrote to me of; and he is content that you shall take some for your necessity by the appointment of Neusante, so that you take such as will do him no service about his building at Chatsworth. I pray you look well to all things at Chatsworth till my aunt’s coming home, which I hope shall be shortly, and in the meantime cause Broushawe to look to the smithy and all other things at Penteridge. Let the weaver make beer for me forthwith, for my own drinking and your master’s; and see that I have good store of it, for if I lack either good beer or good charcoal or wood I will blame nobody so much as I will do you. Cause the floor in my bedchamber to be made even, either with plaster, clay, or lime: and all the windows where the glass is broken to be mended: and all the chambers to be made as close and warm as you can. I hear that my sister Jane cannot have things that is needful for her to have amongst you: If it be true, you lack a great of honesty as well as discretion to deny her anything that she hath a mind to, being in my house; and then assure yourself I cannot like it to have my sister so used. Like as I would not have any superfluity or waste of anything, so likewise would I have her to have that which is needful and necessary. At my coming home I shall know more, and then I will think as I shall have cause. I would have you give to my midwife from me, and from my boy Willie and to my nurse from me and my boy, as hereafter followeth: first to the midwife from me ten shillings, and from Willie five shillings: to the nurse from me five shillings, and from my boy three shillings and four pence: so that in the whole you must give to them twenty-three shillings and four pence. Make my sister privy to it, and then pay it to them forthwith. If you have no other money, take so much of the rent at Penteridge. Tell my sister Jane that I will give my daughter something at my coming home: and praying you not to fail to see all things done accordingly, I bid you farewell. From London the 14th of November.

“Your Mistress, “ELIZABETH CAVENDISH.

“Tell James Crompe that I have received the five pounds and nine shillings that he sent me by Hugh Alsope.

“to my servant Francis Whitfield, give this at Chatsworth.”