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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 the Duke of Norfolk. This matter for some time was not entirely a secret. A certain number of influential English nobles agreed with those of Scotland that such a marriage would be an excellent solution of the entire Scottish question. Even Leicester himself, adored of Elizabeth, joined his opinion to theirs. And these gentlemen had drawn up a proposal to Mary of which one clause runs, “Whether, touching her marriage with the Duke of Norfolk which had been moved to her by the Earl of Moray and Lidington, she would wholly refer herself to the Queen’s Majesty and therein do as she would have her and as her Majesty did like thereof—willing that all things should be done for her Majesty’s surety, which might be best advised by the whole Council.”

Her reply to this document, especially to the clause quoted, was clear, dignified, and highly emphatic. She did not doubt the English Queen’s good faith, nor the friendship of her nobles, nor the goodwill and liking of the Duke. She adroitly declared that she never regarded marriage as a mere means to recover power and position, saying, “I assure you that if either men or money to have reduced my rebels to their due obedience could have ticed me I could have been provided of a husband ere now. But I... did never give ear to any such offer.” She fully calculated what she would lose by this marriage in regard to all her “friends beyond the seas.” The Duke of Alva was trying to secure her co-operation in the invasion of England. She was coquetting with the Duke of Anjou. She was writing to Rome. By the document she had signed she laid aside all future schemes, while she could still nourish the secret hope that, once restored to the Scottish throne in place of her baby son, she would, in default of Elizabeth’s marriage, inherit the throne of England. The whole matter was now on such a broad and amicable footing that apparently nothing was wanting but the longed-for “Bless you, my children” from the lips of Elizabeth.

By September this dream was rudely dispelled. Norfolk was summoned to Court, roundly abused—Elizabeth, as one of her courtiers writes of her, could “storme passinglie”—and poor Shrewsbury received a severe snub. The Queen practically declared him a useless gaoler: “I have found no reliance on my Lord Shrewsbury in the hour of my need, for all the fine speeches he made me formerly, yet I can in no wise depend on his promise.” Therefore she added two guards—the Earl of Huntingdon and Viscount Hereford.

More household complications, more goings and comings, more trouble for Earl and Countess! Afflicted with chronic gout and irritated in every direction, Shrewsbury decided to make for Tutbury again. A tactless royal order addressed to Huntingdon (whom Mary also hated) over the head of Shrewsbury bred fresh discomfort and annoyance in the Castle. Things were, however, gradually smoothed over. The jealousy between Mary’s gaolers was allayed on the one hand by the news that the Queen’s apprehensions were justified by the disappearance of the Duke of Norfolk from Court, while the alarm of Mary was increased fourfold by the cross-questioning to which she was subjected and the news of the sudden arrest of her ducal lover.

These were dramatic days which Bess of Shrewsbury witnessed. Letters were intercepted, coffers suddenly searched in the Scots Queen’s apartments, there were incursions of men with “pistolets,” constant dismissals of the Queen’s people, sudden dismissal, even, of the Countess’s own servants. But the gaps at the board were immediately filled by Huntingdon and his retinue, for whom the Shrewsburys were expected to provide without any increase of allowance, on the score that the present numbers of the household did not exceed those at Wingfield and elsewhere. The irony of this, added to the suggestions that the Earl had been too kind to his prisoner, and that his request to be allowed to deal as before with Mary without the assistance of any other officer, sprang from some person or persons “too much affectionated to her,” created havoc in Shrewsbury’s mind. Of course he visited his anger on his colleague Huntingdon in the form of morose hints. In that atmosphere of wholesale suspicion he could not speak out except in a letter to head-quarters. He knew that Elizabeth’s sinister expressions implied suspicions of his Countess. It is difficult to understand exactly what this lady was “after,” in the vulgar phrase, at this moment. For Mary, with whom she had hitherto been on excellent terms, now distrusted her also. She expressed this distrust tout au plat, as she would say, to Walsingham in October, and told him not to attach any credit “to the schemes and accusations of the Countess who is now with you.” Apparently my Lady had left for the Court, and was there making good her case and her husband’s. As likely as not she was furiously jealous of the authority wrested from her husband in favour of Huntingdon, and overwrought, like everyone else, by the acute tension of the situation. Henceforward in the correspondence with Cecil sturdy disclaimers of treason on the part of Earl and lady are always cropping up. The following is from Shrewsbury to Cecil, October, 1569:—

“Sir,—I have received your letter, thinking myself beholden unto you for your friendly care over me. I hear to my grief that suspicion is had of over much goodwill borne by my wife to this Queen and of untrue dealing by my men. For my wife thus must I say, she hath not otherwise dealt with that Queen than I have been privy unto and that I have had liking of, and by my appointment hath so dealt that I have been the more able to discharge the trust committed unto me. And if she for her dutiful dealing to her Majesty and true meaning to me should be suspected that I am sure hath so well deserved, she and I might think ourselves fortunate. And where I perceive her Majesty is let to understand that by my wife’s persuasion I am the more desirous to continue this charge, I speak it afore God she hath been in hand with me as far as she durst and more than I thought well of since my sickness to procure my discharge. I am not to...^[16] by her otherwise than I think well of.”

From the close of this year till the execution of the Duke of Norfolk in 1572 the history of George Talbot and Bess Hardwick is bound up with the story of the tissue of conspiracies which wound itself about Mary. The Norfolk plot, with which Mary was to be drawn out of prison, was a stout rope woven of many strands; the net which Cecil constructed for his prey was close-meshed and wide-spreading. There were constant alarums and excursions for the Earl and his people. He succeeded in getting rid of Huntingdon, but he was incessantly in fear of a rising of the northern nobles to whom Norfolk had appealed for their armed support; and when this fear was realised and the armed Earls arrived within fifty odd miles of Tutbury a hasty removal was necessary. Coventry was the only place which suggested itself until the hostile demonstration fizzled out and Tutbury could be regained.

The new year found the household re-established there. While Mary, in poor health, acted as though she had no inkling of conspiracy, while the Duke of Norfolk and the Bishop of Ross, her adviser, were in the Tower, miniature plots again disturbed the tenor of existence, and for once the Earl was permitted to choose his own road, and to remove his captive with bag and baggage to Chatsworth.

This was a pleasanter place than Tutbury for the inditing of love letters, as Mary found. But her Duke was a broken reed. He wanted to leave the Tower, and to Elizabeth he vowed he would not marry her rival. The summer passed on and the conditions of imprisonment at Chatsworth fluctuated from “straitness” to indulgence according to the suspicions of Elizabeth and the reports of those who were jealous spies of the Earl’s slightest actions. Things assumed a more hopeful aspect in spite of the discovery of another minor plot to free Mary by letting her down from one of the windows of the Countess’s spacious and elegant house—still unfinished. Elizabeth about this time actually contemplated Mary’s freedom and her re-establishment as a sovereign; whereupon a treaty to this end was carefully discussed!

Negotiations came to such a pass that Mr. Treasurer himself was empowered to travel to Chatsworth and confer with the prisoner. He took his wife with him, and between business and pleasure the visit passed off well. Cecil wrote a long and complimentary “leaving letter” on behalf of himself and his wife, chiefly interesting in this connection because it indicates how Lady Shrewsbury played her part as hostess.

“We have fully satisfied her Majesty with the painful and trusty behaviour of my Lady your wife in giving good regard to the surety of the said Queen; wherein her Majesty surely seemed to us to be very glad, and used many good words, both of your Lordship’s fidelity towards herself, and of the love that she thought my Lady did bear to her.... And thus I humbly take my leave of your Lordship and my Lady, to whom my wife hath written to give her thanks for certain tokens whereof I understood nothing afore she told me of them; and sorry I am my Lady should have bestowed such things as my wife cannot recompense as she would, but with her hearty goodwill and service, which shall always be ready to her favour and mine also: assuring yourself that to my uttermost I will be to your Lordship and to my Lady as sure in good will as any poor friend you have.”