Читать книгу Bess of Hardwick and Her Circle - Maud Stepney Rawson - Страница 8
ОглавлениеPhoto by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby, from the picture at Hardwick Hall By permission of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire SIR WILLIAM ST. LOE
“She hath found great fault with my long absence, saying she would talk with me farther and that she would well chide me. Whereunto I answered, that when her highness understood the truth and the cause she would not be offended. Whereunto she says, ‘Very well, very well’; howbeit, hand of hers I did not kisse.”
A portrait which hangs in the great gallery at Hardwick shows the writer of the following letters (quoted in Hunter’s Hallamshire) in his habit as he lived—a kindly fellow, but at this period not a man of power.
Sir William Saint-Loe to Lady Saint-Loe.
“My own, more dearer to me than I am to myself, thou shalt understand that it is no small fear nor grief unto me of thy well doing that I should presently see what I do, not only for that my continual nightly dreams beside my absence hath troubled me, but also chiefly for that Hugh Alsope cannot satisfy me in what estate thou nor thine is, whom I regard more than I do William Seyntlo. Therefore I pray thee, as thou dost love me, let me shortly hear from thee, for the quieting of my unquieted mind, how thine own sweet self with all thine doeth; trusting shortly to be amongst you. All thy friends here saluteth thee. Harry Skipwith desired me to make thee and no other privy that he is sure of mistress Nell, with whom he is by this time. He hath sent ten thousand thanks unto thyself for the same: she hath opened all things unto him. To-morrow Sir Richard Sackville and I ride to London together; on Saturday next we return hither again. The queen yesterday, her own self riding upon the way, craved my horse; unto whom I gave him, receiving openly for the same many goodly words. Thus wishing myself with thyself, I bid thee, my own good servant and chief overseer of my works, most heartily farewell: by thine who is wholly and only thine, yea and for all thine while life lasteth. From Windsor the fourth of September by thy right worshipful master and most honest husband master Sir
“William Seyntlo, esquire.
“Commend me to my mother and to all my brothers and sisters, not forgetting Frank with the rest of my children and thine. The Amnar[4] saluteth thee and sayeth no gentleman’s children in England shall be better welcome nor better looked unto than our boys. Once again, farewell good honest sweet.
“Myself or Greyves shall be the next messenger.
“To my own dear wife at
Chatsworth deliver this.”
Sir William Saint-Loe to Lady Saint-Loe.
“My hap is evil, my time worse spent; for that my reward as yet is nothing more than fair words with the like promises. Take all in good part; and if I should understand the contrary, it would trouble me more than my pen shall express. I have leave to come and wait upon thee, I and my brother Clement, with two or three good fellows more: [we] had been with thee by this day if it had not been for our —— matter, the which I will not leave over rawly. I will forbear the answering of all particularities in thy last letter written unto me, for that God willing I will this next week be the messenger myself. Master Man came home the night before the date hereof. He putteth me in great hope of the matter you know of. Thus trusting that God provideth for us all things for the best, I end; committing thee and all thine which are mine unto his blessed will and ordinance. Farewell, my own sweet Bess. From Master Man’s house in Redcross Street, the 12th of October, by him who dareth not so near his coming home to term thee as thou art: yet thine
“William Seyntlo.
“My cousin Clarke saluteth thee, who was by me at the writing hereof.
“To my own good wife at
Chatsworth deliver this.
In this letter he complains of the heavy charge for his hired Court apparel.
Sir William Saint-Loe to Lady Saint-Loe.
“My honest sweet Chatsworth: I like the weekly price of my hired court stuff so evil that upon Thursday next I will send it home again, at which day the week endeth. I pray you cause such stuff as Mowsall left packed in a sheet to be brought hither by the next carrier: there be hand towels and other things therein that I must occupy when I shall lie at Whitehall. My men hath neither shirt nor any other thing to shift them until that come. Trust none of your men to ride any [of] your housed horses, but only James Cromp or William Marchington; but neither of them without good cause serve speedily to be done. For nags there be enough about the house to serve other purposes. One handful of oats to every one of the geldings at a watering will be sufficient so they be not laboured. You must cause some[one] to oversee the horsekeeper for that he is very well learned in loitering.
“The Queen hath found great fault with my long absence saying that she would talk with me farther, and that she would well chide me. Whereunto I answered that when her highness understood the truth and the cause she would not be offended. Whereunto she said ‘Very well, very well.’ Howbeit hand of hers I did not kisse.
“The Lord Keeper hath promised me faithfully to be at both days’ hearing; and that if either law or conscience be on my side I shall have it to my contentment. Vaughan is come unto town, but not yet Bagott. Stevens and we shall go through on Friday night next, at which time his brother will be here, who hath disbursed seven hundred of the twelve hundred pounds. I have an extreme pain in my teeth since Sunday dinner. Thus with aching teeth I end, praying the living [God] to preserve thee and all thine. Written at London, against my will where I am if other ways our matters might well be ended, this 24th of October:
“Your loving husband with aching heart until we meet,
“William Seyntlo.
“If you think good, lease your fishing in Dove unto Agard. We are the losers of suffering it as we have done.
“To my loving wife at Chatsworth
give this with speed.”
This next letter is from Sir George Pierrepoint in gratitude of her kindly offices. His family was afterwards closely connected with that of Bess of Hardwick, for her eldest daughter married Sir Henry Pierrepoint.
Sir George Pierrepoint to Lady Saint-Loe.
“Right worshipful and very good Lady: after my heartiest manner I commend me to your Ladyship: even so pray you I may be to good Mr. Seyntloe: most heartily thanking you both for your great pains taken with me at Holme, accepting everything (though it were never so rudely handled) in such gentle way as you did; which doth and will cause me to love you the better while I live if I were able to do you other pleasure or service; and the rather because I understand your Ladyship hath not forgotten my suit to you at your going away as specially to make Mr. Sackville and Mr. Attorney my friends in the matter between Mr. Whalley and me, wherein he doeth me plain wrong (as I take it is my conscience) only to reap trouble and unquiet me. But I trust so much in God’s help, and partly by your Ladyship’s good means, and continuance of your goodness towards me, that he shall not overthrow me in my righteous cause. And touching such communication as was between us as at Holme, if your Ladyship and the gentlewoman your daughter like or be upon sight as well as I and my wife like the young gentlewoman, I will not shrink from it I said or promised; by the grace of God who preserve your Ladyship and my Master your husband long together in wealth, health and prosperity to his pleasure, and your gentle heart’s desire. From my poor house at Woodhouse the 4th of November 1561, by the rude lusty hands of your good Ladyship’s assuredly always to command.
“George Pierrepoint.
“To the right worshipful and my
singular good Lady, my Lady
Sentloo at London this be delivered.”
This other letter is highly typical for the good lady’s literary style and her attitude towards her employees. It is to James Crompe, her man of affairs.
“Crompe, I do understand by your letters that Wortly saith he will depart at our Ladyday next. I will that you shall have him bound in an obligation to avoid[5] at the same day, for sure I will trust no more to his promise. And when he doth tell you that he is any penny behind for work done to Mr. Cavendish or me, he doth lie like a false knave: for I am most sure he did never make anything for me but two vanes to stand upon the house. I do very well like your sending sawyers to Pentrege and Medoplecke, for that will further my works: and so I pray you in any other thing that will be a help to my building, let it be done. And for Thomas Mason, if you can hear where he is, I would very gladly he were at Chatsworth. I will let you know by my next letter what work Thomas Mason shall begin at first, when he doth come. And as for the other mason which Sir James told you of, if he will not apply his work, you know that he is not the man for me; and the mason’s work which I have to do is not much, and Thomas Mason will very well oversee that work. I perceive Sir James is much misliked for his religion; but I think his wisdom is such that he will make small account of that matter. I would have you tell my aunt Lenecker that I would have the little garden which is by the new house made a garden this year. I care not whether she bestow any great cost thereof; but to sow it with all kinds of herbs and flowers and some pieces of it with mallows. I have sent you by this carrier three bundles of garden seeds all written with William Marchington’s hand; and by the next you shall know how to use them in every point.
“From the Court the 8th of March,
“Your mistress,
“E. Seyntlo.”
The “Aunt Lenecker” (more correctly known as Lynacre) was a Leake and sister of Lady St. Loe’s mother. She seems to have lived for some years with her niece, possibly since her first widowhood.
Nothing very exciting happened to the St. Loe couple in their short married life. When not at Court they paid visits, were entertained, or entertained their own visitors, as scraps of correspondence show. They must have had traffic already with the great family of Talbot—which, besides Sheffield Castle, owned so many large seats in Derby and Nottingham—and both of them naturally held intercourse with “Mr. Secretary Walsingham” and “Mr. Treasurer Cecil.”
When Sir William St. Loe died—tolerably soon, alas!—Bess Hardwick had gone far with her building, social and actual. Her third widowhood found her richer, bolder, better known at Court, and able to play her part in an ever-widening circle of the powerful and prosperous.
Such a lady would naturally make enemies. In 1567 she was slandered by Henry Jackson, an ex-scholar of Merton College, Oxford, the tutor of her children. Instantly the matter went to the Council, and the Council wrote in September to the Archbishop of Canterbury. “Lady St. Loo, widow, having retained as schoolmaster Henry Jackson... is disturbed by scandalous reports raised against her family by him; you are to examine the matter thoroughly and speedily with the assistance of the Solicitor-General Mr. Oseley and Mr. Peter Osborne or other Ecclesiastical Commissioners, that the lady’s good name may be preserved; if he has unjustly defamed her he is to be severely punished,” runs the digest of the draft in the State MS. And immediately upon the conclusion of the examination the Queen herself intervenes on behalf of the lady “who has long served with credit in our Court,” and forthwith she commands the punishment of the wicked clerk: “extreme punishment, corporal or otherwise, openly or private, and that speedily.”
Besides the danger of slander there was the trap of intrigue. Up to the present Bess Hardwick had kept clear of mischief, but, native curiosity apart, she could not, as Lady of the Bedchamber, help being often the recipient of the secrets of her friends. The romantic love story of Lady Catherine Grey, who held a similar Court post to herself, brought her into a tight place. For the benefit of those who do not recall the tale it shall be set forth again here.
The Lady Catherine was the sister of Lady Jane Grey. By a curious combination of circumstances—the exclusion given by the will of Henry VIII to the posterity of Margaret of Scotland, the publication of the will of Edward VI, and the non-repeal of certain Acts of Parliament—it was judged that the right to the crown rested with the House of Suffolk. To this great house Lady Catherine was the heir. She was formally contracted in extreme youth to Lord Herbert, the son of the Earl of Pembroke. But the wise Earl, in dread of the acute complications which such a marriage might entail, arranged for a divorce. This probably affected the lady but little. She was young, she was attractive and romantic, she could meet cavaliers enough and to spare in the immediate circle of the Queen. But, as all the world knows, her Majesty, while she kept a dozen men languishing about her, was very loth to have any of her ladies wed. Love affairs must be very secret, lest the parties incurred her disfavour and the loss of benefits. As for Lady Catherine, her birth, as has been shown, rendered her a mark for all manner of suspicion. At Court she was the close companion of Lady Jane Seymour, daughter of the Duke of Somerset. This Lady Jane had a brother, no less than the Earl of Hertford. What more inevitable than a love affair between him and Catherine? There were sorrows enough in the background of her history, slavery enough—despite pageant and hunting and the comings and goings of great persons from foreign courts—to endure at the hands of the energetic, alert, excitable, witty, jealous royal mistress. Little by little the love story wove itself in the manner of every love tale. A community of interest, a series of assemblies which passed in array her Majesty’s ladies before the eyes of her gentlemen, little incidents which brought out the personalities of the two, mere propinquity, a look here and a word there, did their work. The two were soon secretly plighted, with the Lady Jane to share and shield their dear secret. Many anxious moments must have gone to their councils. To declare their troth would only be a signal for their instant separation. The same result would arise if they humbly asked the royal permission to be betrothed. To marry and fly would only savour of deep State conspiracy. To marry and bide quietly and then face the astonished and scandalous world with an air of “Indeed, and it is true. So part us you shall not. And, moreover, ’tis our affair. Wherefore, fling your mud elsewhere!” seemed the wisest way in the end, and also followed the line of least resistance.
One morning—surely as crisp and heartening a day as could be desired for such a purpose—the Queen’s Majesty went to Eltham in Kent to hunt. My Lady Jane and my Lady Catherine stayed behind. When all was quiet they left the Palace (Westminster) “by the stairs at the orchard” and strolled quietly “along the sands.” Those sands led to the Earl of Hertford’s house in “Chanon Row.” He was waiting for his lady; he did not even leave her to call the priest. That was the Lady Jane’s errand. There is something very delightful about this incident, and the steady chaperon’s part undertaken by the Earl’s sister. The priest came, the wedding took place. After the brief ceremony there could not be much dalliance or entertainment. It was not yet the time to give the secret to the world. The ladies must reach the Palace again before hue and cry could be raised. They did not go back by “the sands,” probably because the tide had risen. They went back by boat. The Earl did not accompany them. But he led his bride and his sister to the boat which waited for them at the foot of the water-stairs of his house. He assisted them in—it must have been very hard to let go the hand of the woman so newly pledged to him—and the shallop went quietly on its way and delivered its fair passengers at the Palace stairs without exciting comment. A little later the two ladies were demurely seated at dinner “in Master Comptroller’s chamber.” Probably neither of them played that evening much of a table part.
The bride was left to bear the onus of the affair. After a few stolen meetings the Earl went to France. And presently the world began to point and stare. The report grew, but no one seemed able to credit it. At the close of August, 1561, the Earl’s mother wrote to Cecil mentioning the rumour, denying all knowledge of it, and hoped that the wilfulness of her unruly child, Hertford, would not diminish the Queen’s favour. On the same date Sir Edward Warner, Lieutenant of the Tower, wrote to the Queen stating that he had questioned Lady Catherine as to her “love practices,” but she would confess nothing. It is said that Lady St. Loe burst into tears when Lady Catherine made confession to her. Probably the older woman knew what was in store for them both. The royal warrant to Sir Edward Warner not only required him to “examine the Lady Catherine very straightly how many hath been privy to love between her and the Lord of Hertford from the beginning,” but continues: “Ye shall also send to Alderman Lodge, secretly, for St. Low and shall put her in awe of divers matters confessed by the Lady Catherine; and so also deal with her that she may confess to you all her knowledge in the same matters. It is certain that there hath been great practices and purposes; and since the death of the Lady Jane[6] she hath been most privy. And as ye shall see occasion, so ye may keep St. Low two or three nights, more or less, and let her be returned to Lodge’s or kept still with you, as ye shall think meet.”
After poor Lady Catherine took Lady Loe into her confidence, she made frantic application for help to Lord Robert Dudley—not yet Earl of Leicester—so high in the Queen’s good graces. In this there is sheer drama as well as pathos—this confession and piteous appeal from the young and comely lady of quality, whose only fault was that she had married for love, to the handsome, pampered, arrogant cavalier, the Queen’s darling. Lady Hertford went to his very chamber in Court to implore him to stand between her parlous state as prospective mother and the Queen’s anger. Yet nothing in such contingencies could divert Elizabeth’s fury, or make her act in a humane fashion. Lord Hertford was summoned to England to undergo trial with his wife, and very soon both were committed separately to the Tower. But before this could be done the farce of a public enquiry had to be played. A commission was ordained, pompously headed by no less a person than Archbishop Parker. The accused were requested to produce, within a given time, witnesses of their marriage. That they failed to do this is extraordinary. The priest seems to have disappeared, and Lady Jane Seymour appeared unable to find him or to assist in furnishing the required evidence. But as this couple could not satisfy the Commission in time they were sentenced to be imprisoned during the Queen’s pleasure. “Displeasure” would be the correct word. For Elizabeth knew little but vanity and vexation of spirit at this period. The very word marriage must have been a red rag to her. With the strong vitality and virility of her father warring within her against the heritage of the feminine instincts of her mother, Anne Boleyn, with countless suitors and innumerable flatterers to encourage and keep at bay alternately, with one eye fixed on Mary of Scotland and another on the “devildoms of Spain,” her life just now was a constant turmoil. Her whole entourage was forced to share in it. She would not decide upon a consort to help her; she belittled the estate of marriage one day and dallied with it the next. No wonder that poor Mr. Treasurer Cecil wrote as he did on the eve of the New Year of 1564. Schemes matrimonial whirled round him like the winter snow. Elizabeth was being wooed by a French monarch and an Austrian Emperor at the same moment; the Lennox family and Mary of Scotland were working to achieve the marriage of the latter with Darnley, and the Lady Mary Grey, fired no doubt by her sister’s intrigue and sick of loneliness, had actually surreptitiously married John Keys, the Serjeant Porter to the Queen. Meanwhile the Earl and Countess of Hertford were in the Tower. In addition, the Queen was putting up her beloved Dudley, now Earl of Leicester, to oppose Darnley as a possible consort for Scottish Mary. Shrewd old Cecil shows, however, that she is only half-hearted about it: “I see the qn Mty very desyroos to have my L. of Lecester placed in this high degree to be the Scottish Queen’s husband, but whan it commeth to the conditions which are demanded I see her then remiss of her earnestness.”[7]
He concludes wearily enough:—
“This also I see in the Qn Maty, a sufficient contentation to be moved to marry abrood, and if it is so may [it] plese Almighty God, to leade by the hand some mete person to come and lay hand on her to her contentation, I cold than wish my self more helth to endure my yeres somewhat longar to enjoye such a world here as I trust wold follow: otherwise I assure yow, as now thyngs hang in desperation, I have no comfort to lyve.”
My Lady St. Loe, as confidante, was forced to weather the storm and endure reprimand. The married lovers, meanwhile, dragged out their days in durance. Their son was born in the Tower. In vain they languished, pined, and implored the intercession of friends. In 1562 the Earl was allowed a little more ease. Husband and wife managed to meet again. Another child was born to them, and my Lord was duly fined fifteen thousand pounds by the Star Chamber, for this event was construed into a new State offence. In 1563 the dreaded plague caused Elizabeth to remove her poor love-birds from the Tower. Lady Catherine went to the house of her uncle, Sir John Grey, in Essex, and he was roused to uttermost compassion and distress by her wretched mental and physical condition. It was in mid-Lent that he wrote to Cecil emphatically and ironically:—
“It is a great while me thinkethe, Cousin Cecile, since I sent unto you, in my neices behalf, albeit I knowe, (opportunitie so servinge) you are not unmindful of her miserable and compfortlesse estate. For who wantinge the Princes favor, maye compt himselfe to live in any Realme? And because this time of all others hathe ben compted a time of mercie and forgevenes I cannot but recommende her woefull liffe unto you. In faithe I wolde I were the Queen’s confessor this Lent, that I might joine her in penaunce to forgive and forget; or otherwise able to steppe into the pulpett to tell her Highness, that God will not forgive her, unleast she frelye forgeve all the worlde.”
This letter is worth quoting because it shows the prevailing attitude of the Elizabethan courtier. No one who lacked the favour of the sovereign could be accounted as one living. Lady Catherine, once under that heavy cloud of disfavour, never emerged, but died broken and miserable within six years of her unhappy marriage. Wherefore Lady St. Loe had chance enough to learn her lesson, and was fortunate in that her share of the affair was visited only by a cross-examination and warning. She was not at all the sort of woman to brook being left out in the cold. She was too wise, of course, ever to have engulfed herself in a marriage of this sort, but in such a case, had she not managed to divert Elizabeth’s anger by some master stroke of wit and diplomacy, she would certainly not have languished of “woofull griefe” nor starved herself to death, like Lady Catherine, for sorrow.
At such a time and in face of the fresh hubbub caused at Court by the marriage of Lady Mary Grey (“an unhappy chance and monstruoos,” comments Cecil, in a letter to the English Ambassador in France), the peace and security of Chatsworth offered themselves as a happy refuge against all complications. There is a grotesque humour in Cecil’s use of that word monstrous, for Lady Mary was almost a dwarf, and Keys, whom Cecil calls “the biggest gentleman in this Court,” had secured his post of Serjeant Porter owing to his magnificent size and height. He was twice Lady Mary’s age, and was a widower with several children. The Queen clapped him in the Fleet, and condemned Lady Mary to confinement in the houses of successive friends. The pair never met after their hasty wedding.
Thus, on all sides, Court was a place of “dispeace,” while in Derbyshire Lady St. Loe had good neighbours, people of quality and substance, and was safe within her parks and palings. She did not share her royal mistress’s distrust of matrimony, for she was free to choose her next lord, and there was no reason why she should remain a widow longer than she could help.
It is not to be suggested for a moment that she had no suitors and that she was not the subject of all kinds of matrimonial gossip. One Fowler (subsequently committed to the Tower in connection with the discovery of suspicious papers) opines in his “notes” that “either Lord Darcy or Sir John Thynne are to marry my Lady St. Loe, and not Harry Cobham.” Doubtless the Cobham match would have pleased her well, and she would have been quite in her element in the place which afforded a seat and a surname to that noble and splendid family upon whom the evil days of Jacobean confiscation and the betrayal of Sir Walter Raleigh had not yet fallen. A sister of Lord Cobham was married to Mr. Secretary Cecil, “and the match would have been advantageous, but possibly my Lady, with her deep insight into character, divined that the gentleman was not of the steady stuff which makes for worldly security.” Moreover the best matches are by no means to be found near the Court, and close at hand, in the same county, lived one greater than the Cobhams, a man whom many a maid and every widow would be proud to espouse. He was a widower, an earl, the owner of seven seats, bearer of a high government post, and he came of a long line of distinguished soldiers. Lady St. Loe went to work wisely. She had the assistance of her dear gossip and contemporary, Lady Cobham. No one could have acted the go-between more discreetly. Before long the fashionable world had something to talk about in the announcement of the fourth marriage of Bess Hardwick.
