CHAPTER XV

RUTH AND JOYUSITIE

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 for the prisoner. It was not a pleasant time for the Talbots. Life at Sheffield could be varied only by letters from Gilbert, though his parents must to some extent have been cheered by the prospect of his speedily having another heir. His wife was attended by no less a person than the famous physician of my Lord of Leicester, a certain Mr. Julio, who seems, on all accounts, to have known a great deal too much about the unholy drugs which the Medici found so useful, though his skill as a physician could not be gainsaid. Gilbert Talbot at least seems flourishing. He is free to come and go; he is quite a “citizen of the world.” He executes commissions for his family, his purchases are practical, and he is thoughtful for his stepmother’s needs. “There are two Friesland horses,” he writes, “of a reasonable price for their goodness; I have promised the fellow for them £33; I think them especial good for my Ladyship’s coach; I will send them down.” He despatches constant reports of his wife’s health, and of the repairs and decorations which he is superintending in “Shrewsbury House,” otherwise the Earl’s house in “Broad Street” from which Gilbert writes. A special ceiling was being designed for this, the building was to be newly glazed, and the family coat-of-arms inserted in the windows in stained glass. In a postscript he heralds a private letter from the Queen to Lady Shrewsbury, which is not forthcoming. “My Lord, my brother[59] tarrieth only for her Majesty’s letter to my Lady, which, she saith, she will write in her own hand, so as nobody shall be acquainted with a word therein till my Lady receive it. I have not seen her look better a great while, neither better disposed; the living God continue it.”

The composition of this young gentleman is always rather vague and his punctuation hazy. He means, of course, that it is the Queen who is in such good health and humour. She was very busy puzzling everyone over her projected marriage, and sketching Court entertainments in connection with it. Even while she felt the gravity of such a step she would dally with it, thrust away apparently all but the lighter side of things. She kept her Privy Council sitting “from eight o’clock in the morning until dinner-time; and presently after dinner, and an hour’s conference with her Majesty’s Council again, and so till supper-time.” All this strain was induced, Gilbert assures the household at Sheffield, by “the matter of Monsigneur coming here, his entertainment here, and what demands are to be made unto him in the treaty of marriage ...; and I can assure your Lordship it is verily thought this marriage will come to pass of a great sort of wise men; yet nevertheless there are divers others like Sr. Thomas of Jude who would not believe till he had both seen and felt. It is said that Monseigneur will certainly be here in May next.... It is said that he will be accompanied with three dukes, ten earls, and a hundred other gentlemen.”

The suitor came—but more or less secretly—and departed. It was not till nearly a year later that the cat-and-mouse game which Elizabeth played with him approached a crisis in the shape of a splendid pageant at Whitehall, which she organised to dazzle the French Ambassador, and to give the impression that this affair was really to be accomplished. Gay times those—with Sir Philip Sidney’s art and grace to lead the pomps and ceremonies! Everyone of importance was invited. “Her talk,”[60] says a contemporary of Elizabeth, “was of tournaments and balls; her one desire was that the fairest ladies in England should grace her Court. The Lords were bidden to bring their families to London that there might be the bustle of constant gaiety. The merchants were ordered to sell their silks, velvets, and cloth of gold at a reduction of a quarter of the ordinary price that more should be induced to buy, and so enhance the general splendour.”

Alack for the Shrewsburys! No gay invitation appears to have summoned them from the wilds of their county to witness the famous pageant and the battle of flowers and perfumes waged this year in the tiltyard at Whitehall, or applaud the splendid chariot of “my Lady Desire” and her four gallant sons, of whom Sir Philip Sidney personated one.

Such happiness and all that which Mary of Scotland, in a letter, termed “joyusitie” was a thing apart from existence at Sheffield, and she, who loved all such fantastical gaieties, who knew as much as any of them of love practices and flowery games, who could play even with peasant folk like a child, looked wistfully forth upon the world from the leads of her castle-prison or from the meadows close to the Lodge, its neighbour. From 1579 to 1581 her affairs and those of the Talbots are full of small events, things which kept them alert, yet brought but little result. The Earl was watched closely by Elizabeth. He could not even leave home for two days without sharp reprimand, although he never absented himself for an hour without knowing that his prisoner was absolutely secure, while his servants kept him carefully informed of her condition. One of them, for example, by name George Skargelle, a constant eye-witness of the Shrewsbury tragi-comedy, not only reports upon the prisoner, but scours the immediate neighbourhood to see what is going on: “May yt plese your honner to understand that your L’ house is quyet and well, God be pressed; and the Quene is sarvet wth. her vetteles and wille plesed for thes II dayes.” He goes to the Castle gardens “to see what stir there was of your Lordship’s follkes” and found certain fellows playing at dice, while in the town of Sheffield he discovered other gamblers at cards. After this he breaks a lance in speech with his master’s truculent “bad tenants of Glossopdale,” whom he so mistrusted that he gave information of their presence to the men at the bridges and the watches, and to the owners of the houses where the travellers lodged. The Queen heard of the Earl’s absence (for there were always people ready to report the least movement of so notable a county resident), and belaboured him in a letter. He begged her to allow him to come to Court and justify himself. For many reasons he longed to do this. He was weary of writing endless letters to her and to the Treasury. His personal debts weighed on his conscience, and his enemies were always trying to make out that he could not be in any need of supplies because of his large estates. Big houses are big thieves, and what with his large double family and the costs entailed by his position, even his trade projects—he was among other things an owner of lead and exporter of it—did not keep him in sufficient ready money to maintain all his houses and fulfil his landlord’s liabilities as he would have wished. He was not personally an extravagant man, and displays none of the magnificent tastes of his wife in regard to his house and person. He declared that his creditors should be satisfied rather than he should use expensive household articles. “I would have you buy me glasses to drink in,” he wrote in 1580 to his servant Baldwin. “Send me word what old plate yields the ounce, for I will not leave me a cup to drink in, but I will see the next term my creditors paid.” He may have made a special point of this in order that Baldwin should use the statement as a pathetic plea when making application to the Treasury for payments due to his master, the main reason the Earl had for keeping his representative in London. He had felt deeply the false reports of his income spread about by local detractors, who were probably also responsible for the statement that he was now keeping his prisoner on short commons. His sensations and those of the Countess on hearing of this from Lord Leicester can well be imagined. The statement had been handed on to him by the French Ambassador in London, and Leicester told him it would “much mislike her Majesty.”

The accusation runs: “That your Lordship doth of late keep the Scotch Queen very barely of her diet, insomuch as on Easter day last she had both so few dishes and so bad meat in them as it was too bad to see it; and that she finding fault thereat your Lordship should answer that you were cut off your allowance, and therefore could yield her no better.”

And yet Shrewsbury could forgive the Queen’s suspicions and, tolerably happy in the birth of a granddaughter, despite the fact that a male heir to Gilbert would have rejoiced him far more, instructed his son Francis to present for him a New Year’s present to Elizabeth.

Simultaneously no time was lost, no trouble grudged in worrying Burghley, “her Majesty’s housewife” as the Earl rather ironically terms him in one letter, with regard to a settlement of the everlasting claim for “this Queen’s diet.” Indeed, one can only imagine that this word “diet,” by which the cost of the board of the Scottish Mary is always signified in succeeding correspondence, must have held in the Earl’s mind and heart the same place as the name of Calais in the mind of Mary of England. Robert Beale, a clerk of the Privy Council and personal friend of the Shrewsburys, did his best for them, but despite his kindly despatches—one of which has a pretty allusion to “my little Lady Favour,” evidently Lady Arabella Stuart—payment was tardy. Even the scanty allowance originally decided upon had been deliberately reduced by royal order. For the hundredth time he tackled anew the official “housewife” with the words: “I have made suit to her Highness for some recompense, in which I do find so cold comfort that I am near driven to despair to obtain anything.” Elsewhere he speaks pathetically of “the cark and care” which is his portion. “My riches they talk of are in other men’s purses,” he complains bitterly; “God knows I make many shifts to keep me out of debt and to help my children, which are heavy burdens though comfortable, so long as they do well. I can say no more, but I have spies near about me and know them well.”

At last, in the August of 1582, in sheer despair of obtaining satisfaction, and sick of employing intermediaries, he wrote to the Queen:—

“May it please your most excellent Majesty,

“Having then ten years been secluded from your most gracious sight and happy presence, which more grieveth me than any travel or discommodity that I have suffered in this charge that it hath pleased your Majesty to put me in trust withal, I have taken the boldness most humbly to beseech your Majesty that it may please the same to license me for a fortnight’s journey towards your Majesty’s royal person; to the end you may by myself receive a true account of my said charge, and thereby know what my deservings are. Wherein, if I may (as I desire most earnestly) satisfy your Majesty, it shall be unto me a great encouragement to continue the most faithful duty and careful service that I owe unto your Majesty, and shall yield to my life’s end.”

This permission was in a fair way to be granted as far as letters could show, and the good, timid, dogged Earl made all arrangements, settled the stages of his journey, ordered bedding and lodging, and planned his retinue: “I think my company will be twenty gentlemen and twenty yeomen, besides their men and my horsekeepers.” He only waited for his journey till Chesterfield Fair was over and the crowds of suspicious loafers dispersed. But he waited far too long. The plague had seized London and had increased apace; he dreaded the cold journey south in the autumn storms; he dreaded an aggravated attack from “the enemy”—gout.

Simultaneously with this disappointment came sharper sorrow—the death of Francis Talbot. The event presented itself to Lord Leicester as worthy of one of those flowery, humbugging, sententious, idiotic letters of which he wrote so many in his crowded life. This unscrupulous idler, living on the fat of the land and overheaped with gifts and favours, presents a very odd picture as he conjures an afflicted, upright, and overburdened contemporary to count up his blessings: “The Lord hath blessed you many ways in this world, and not least with the blessing of children for your posterity.” This from a fellow who could disown his legitimate son by denying a lawful marriage with the mother! And again: “He that hath sent you many might have given you fewer, and He that took away this might also take away the rest. Be thankful to Him for all His doings, my good Lord, and take all in that good part which you ought; be you wholly His, and seek His kingdom, for it far surpasses all worldly kingdoms.” This from the shrewd sycophant who was waiting day after day to be announced as consort of the Queen of England!

To return on our paces a little. The health of Queen Mary was extremely unsatisfactory. From 1579 right on through the eighties she addressed letter after letter of piteous entreaties for freedom to Elizabeth, and to the ambassador Mauvissière. Sometimes, for weeks at a time, she could not leave her bed owing to the pain in her side. Sometimes the hardly won permission to go to Buxton would revive her spirits. On one occasion she fell backwards from her horse just as she was mounting, and injured herself severely. Sometimes she was kept closely guarded at Buxton, and on others she would be allowed to see something of the country close to it. In 1577 she was so ailing that she made her will. But she would revive to write endless spirited letters, to plead incessantly and indignantly against the way in which her French dowry, the only income she now had, was being dissipated and misappropriated in France, and to make eager preparations for hunting expeditions, to few of which, as she confessed, she expected Lord Shrewsbury would give his consent. At the end of 1581 she was so worn out by secret suspense in regard to her fate, by constraint, and by lack of air and exercise—the simple remedies which in years past had helped her to conquer all bodily ills—that for once her courage left her. She begged for special doctors other than those who ordinarily attended her. She worked herself into an agony over the position of her son, and finally begged that the Queen would send assistance to her “as that she might not be cast away for want of such help of physicians and things as she needed.”

Robert Beale, already mentioned in his connection with the Privy Council, who was really sent down at this juncture to Sheffield to investigate the political relationship between Mary and her son, found the household in a depressing condition. Lord Shrewsbury had a bad attack of gout, and though the Countess was not described as ill, her frame of mind cannot have been very cheerful. Everyone seems to have poured out his woes in Beale’s ears, while he stuck to his purpose, and tried to secure a definite answer as to whether or no Mary would formally yield the Scottish crown to her son. A clear answer from her he never had. She was ill, hysterical, and, to his thinking and that of the Earl, full of trickery. They believed that she asked for a special physician from London because it might give her a chance of carrying out some scheme to her advantage in connection with the Duke of Alençon, who was expected in England. One night when she sent specially for Beale he arrived to find the room in sudden darkness, and Mary in bed, with the dim shadowy figures of her chamberwomen hovering about her. Among those shadowy ladies in the bedchamber was still the devoted Mary Seton, to whom had come some years previously ruth which her mistress also shared. Not only had the loyal prægustator, John Beton, died in the earlier days of the long imprisonment, but his brother and successor in the post, Andrew, had passed away. With Andrew, who courted her passionately, the Seton had at last fallen in love. The only barrier to their union was a most inexplicable vow of celibacy which the girl had taken. With the approval of his brother, Archbishop Beton, and the encouragement of his royal mistress, the gallant Andrew overcame his lady’s dread of the married estate, and undertook to secure papal dispensation from her vow. It was on his journey back from Rome to Sheffield that he died.

Beale, as aforesaid, found himself nonplussed by the gloom of the Queen’s apartments; and as for talking business it was impossible, for she received him with sobs.

Because of “her weeping and her women in the dark I brake off,” he wrote to Walsingham. He went away and reported this uncanny interview to the Earl, who sent his lady to her. Mary was asleep or shamming, and all Lady Shrewsbury could do was to chat vaguely with Mary Seton about “the suddenness of her sickness.” Later on the same careful enquiries were made by the Countess, whose shrewd deduction was, “I have known her worse and recover again.” Her Ladyship was, if not head nurse on these occasions, certainly official inspectress, and Beale reported that whether Mary was dangerously ill or not she was obliged to use medicine and poultices, at which he had himself sniffed inquisitively, and which Lady Shrewsbury had seen applied.

Presently there was a decided improvement in the condition of the invalid, and Elizabeth allowed Mary’s carriage to be sent to her so that she might drive within the limits of the Sheffield manor estate, whose circumference in those days, as Leader assures us, was eight miles, and covered an expanse of 2461 acres. Mary could not yet avail herself of this distraction, so sore and feeble was her weakened body. Yet at all times and seasons she was extraordinarily sensitive to the joys and sorrows of persons in her environment. The birth of Gilbert’s daughter already mentioned was just such an occasion for her goodness and generosity. She stood godmother to the child and sent to France for presents. These family occurrences complicated the Earl’s business considerably, and he took great precautions on this occasion that the event should not come to pass under the same roof as that which held his captive. At the end of the letter, in which he instructs Baldwin to make certain payments to his daughter-in-law’s nurse, he says: “I am removed to the castle, and most quiet when I have the fewest women here, and am best able to discharge the trust reposed in me.”

He had still further occasion for this attitude, for another blow fell upon his family. Young Lady Lennox died. As usual it was the Earl who made the formal announcement of the loss at Court, for his wife was, as on a previous occasion, too distraught to collect her wits.

“My very good Lords,

“It hath pleased God to call to His mercy out of this transitory world my daughter Lennox, this present Sunday, being the 21st of January, about three of the clock in the morning. Both towards God and the world she made a most godly and good end, and was in most perfect memory all the time of her sickness even to the last hour. Sundry times did she make her most earnest and humble prayer to the Almighty for her Majesty’s most happy estate and the long and prosperous continuance thereof, and as one most infinitely bound to her Highness, humbly and lowly beseeched Her Majesty to have pity upon her poor orphan Arabella Stewart, and as at all times heretofore both the mother and poor daughter were most infinitely bound to her Highness, so her assured trust was that Her Majesty would continue the same accustomed goodness and bounty to the poor child she left, and of this her suit and humble petition my said daughter Lennox, by her last will and testament, requireth both your Lordships, to whom she found and acknowledged herself always most bound in her name, most lowly to make this humble petition to Her Majesty and to present with all humility unto Her Majesty a poor remembrance (delivered by my daughter’s own hands) which very shortly will be sent, with my daughter’s most humble prayer for her Highness’ most happy estate, and most lowly beseeching her Highness in such sort to accept thereof as it pleased the Almighty to receive the poor widow’s mite.

“My wife taketh my daughter Lennox’s death so grievously that she neither doth nor can think of anything but of lamenting and weeping. I thought it my part to signify to both your Lordships in what sort God hath called her to his mercy, which I beseech you make known to Her Majesty and thus with my very hearty commendations to both your good Lordships I cease.

“Sheffield Manor this 21st January, 1581–2. “Your Lordships’ assured “G. SHREWSBURY.

“To Lord Burghley and Lord Leicester.”[61]