by Kate Hubbard
Bess lost no time in starting a family, giving birth to a daughter, Frances, in 1548, and efficiently producing a baby a year, more or less, for the next eight years. ‘Frances my 9 Child and the first by the said Woman’, read Sir William’s memo, ‘was born on Monday between the Hours of 3 and 4 at Afternoon, Viz the 18 of June. Anno 2 RE 6. The dominical Letter then G.’2 Frances was named after Frances Grey, who was a godparent, along with Katherine Brandon, Lady Suffolk, Frances Grey’s very youthful stepmother (Charles Brandon’s second wife, previously betrothed to his son), and Lord Suffolk, Charles Brandon’s eldest son by Katherine, aged eleven. The Cavendishes could not have made a clearer statement of their loyalty to the Grey/Brandon family, and they continued to visit Bradgate – a payment to a ‘poor man that wrought in the garden at Bradgate’ is recorded in the household accounts.
These accounts were itemised daily by Bess herself (in later years, a clerk took over, though entries would always be checked and signed by his mistress, who made a point of keeping a close eye upon her affairs), while Sir William recorded other expenses and income from rents and fees. Probably for the first time, Bess had her own household to manage, and her accounts reveal something of the Cavendishes’ domestic life. There are payments for quires of paper, straw for horses, a burden of rushes (for scattering on floors), faggots to light the oven, for mending a frying pan, sacks of coal, grinding kitchen knives, corn for the capons, hogsheads of claret, Rhenish (high-quality) wine, Malmsey (a sweet wine from Crete) and Muscadel, jelly bags, firkins of soap, loaves of sugar and candles. Quantities of linen were bought to make sheets and pillowcases and ‘fine diaper’ (expensive linen damask) for tablecloths and napkins. A woman was paid for scouring pans (using a mix of oil, chalk and sand), and a Mrs Pulforth for doing the weekly clothes wash. Baby Frances had a coral for her teeth, waistcoats, a red mantle, hose and ‘neat caps’. A penknife, scales, weights, paper, wax and an inkhorn were bought for Bess’s writing desk, and ginger, aniseed, liquorice and sugar to make a ‘dredge’ (comfit) for Sir William. Shopping was carted back to Newgate Street by a ‘carryer’.
A grocer’s bill, from a Robert Harrison, in December 1552, headed evocatively but presumably fancifully ‘for all things from the beginning of the world to this day’, comes to a hefty £6 11s. 10d. It gives some idea of the astonishing variety of foodstuffs to be found in London: the usual meats (mutton, beef, pork, rabbit, capons, veal), but many small birds too (woodcock, larks, blackbirds, sparrows) and quantities of fish (herring, whiting, eels, shrimps, oysters, lampreys, sole, plaice, cockles, mussels, crab, dabs). There was suet, oatmeal, flour, eggs, ‘sweet’ and salt butter, fruit according to the season – strawberries, apples, pears, figs – verjuice (crab apple juice, used for preserving) and comfits, to be served at the end of the meal. Yeast went into the ‘potech’ (pottage) – all Tudor kitchens featured a simmering pot of stock, or broth. Manchet, high-quality white bread, made from wheat flour, was bought expensively from a baker. A flourishing trade with North Africa and the East meant currants, sugar, dates, ‘rasings off the sonne’ (dried raisins), cinnamon, mace, ginger, almonds, oranges, lemons and ‘bay salte’ (from the Bay of Biscay, coarse-grained and good for preserving) were all available. Eggs and sack (a sweet white wine from the Iberian peninsula) were bought to make a posset, milk for Frances, with saffron (expensive, but produced in England in the sixteenth century), or sometimes garlic, to flavour it, and ale for Bess’s mother and Sir John Berends, the family priest, who often visited Newgate Street.
The Cavendishes, as a rising young couple, eager to know and be known, were busy, social and hospitable. Besides new Protestant reformer friends, Bess kept up with old Derbyshire friends and neighbours. Godfrey Boswell, who had married her sister Jane Hardwick, visited, as did Thomas Babington and Sir James Foljambe, who came with Bess’s brother James, and Sir John and Lady Port (Lady Port was from a Derbyshire family and Sir John became sheriff of Derbyshire in 1553). When guests came to dine at Newgate Street – dinner was eaten early, at dusk – the parlour was decorated with ‘bowes and flowers and garlands’ and sweetened with herbs, and diners were serenaded by a harpist and two minstrels. Not much seems to have been eaten in the way of vegetables, save ‘coleworts’ (a kind of cabbage) and ‘hartechokes’, but there were plenty of ‘sallats’, made with cooked vegetables as well as raw and dressed with herbs, oil and vinegar. Salmon was boiled in ale, eels were soused in brine and apples were roasted or turned into fritters. Shops were open every day until late, so in the event of short rations a servant could be sent out ‘at nyghtt’ for emergency supplies of cakes or cracknels (hard biscuits).
It was a household of free-spending and largesse. The Cavendishes’ annual expenditure, in London between 1552 and 1553, was about £500, while their income, from rents and fees, stood at around £1,000.3 They could afford to be extravagant. Both Bess and Sir William liked to gamble, and large sums of money – as much as £2 in an evening – were ‘lost at play’ (to put this in perspective, the rent of the house in Newgate Street, leased from the Marquess of Northampton, was £3 16s. 8d a year). Presents were regularly made: ‘my sister Wingfield’ (probably Bess’s half-sister Elizabeth to whom she was close, or possibly her full sister Mary, who also married into the Wingfield family) had 26s. and 8d ‘to buy her a carpet’; Cecily, Bess’s gentlewoman, was given, variously, a petticoat, an apron and a pair of shoes; Nan, a maidservant, had 5s. to buy herself a petticoat; Bess bought a ‘stele glas’, ‘bone combe’ and brush for her stepdaughter Anne, and in December 1551 (a New Year’s gift, perhaps) a needle case, silver thimble and two pairs of gloves for Catherine. In 1550, Sir William presented Bess with a magnificent book ‘of gold . . . set with stones’, including ten rubies and a diamond, containing portraits of the pair of them, a token of esteem and affection, but also of wealth – it cost £14 6s. – cherished by Bess all her life and left to her daughter Frances.
Since Bess and Sir William were mixing in court circles, they had to look the part – sumptuous clothes figure prominently in the household accounts. Cloth was bought to make shirts for Sir William; ‘the skinner’ (probably of rabbits) was paid ‘for furring’ his gowns and jerkins; there was bone-work for his shirts and Bess’s smocks, lace for her sleeves and collars, and silver and gold metal thread for edging her purse and sleeves, with silk thread to couch (hold down) the metal thread. Metal thread embroidery was highly skilled, the province of professional male embroiderers – ‘Angell’, in the Cavendish household, later replaced by ‘Barnet’. A goldsmith supplied buttons and ‘work’ for Bess’s cape, while 12s. and 4d went to a furrier ‘for furring’ her ‘gown of mole taffeta’, and another 12s. for two ounces of gold ‘to make lace for handkerchiefs’.
In the summer of 1548, Catherine Parr died in childbirth. Thomas Seymour, just as Catherine had feared, promptly set about plotting to marry Princess Elizabeth and to overthrow his brother, the Duke of Somerset, which led to Seymour’s execution in March 1549. There was dissatisfaction with Somerset, too. That summer, Archbishop Cranmer authorised a new Book of Common Prayer, written in English and laying down a religious service along reformist lines (the revised 1552 edition would be more evangelical still). This provoked furious protests and calls for the return of the Mass, which Princess Mary stubbornly continued to celebrate. An uprising began in the West Country, spreading east, and was only suppressed with great brutality and loss of life, for which Somerset was blamed. His fellow members of the Privy Council seized their chance to remove him. Somerset was sent to the Tower and replaced by John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, who now headed the Council and was given the title of Lord President a few months later.
In November, Henry Grey, Marquess of Dorset, the Cavendishes’ old friend, was appointed to the Privy Council, probably on account of his reputation as a reformer rather than his political acumen. Grey, along with Dudley and William Parr, Marquess of Northampton, pushed forward with reform: clergy were given permission to marry, stone altars were
destroyed, organs ripped out, books burned. Somerset, however, was by no means vanquished. After his release from the Tower in February 1550, he set about trying to oust Dudley, while Dudley took counter-action, persuading King Edward, now twelve, to strengthen his own position, and that of his supporters. In October 1551, Dudley became Duke of Northumberland, while Henry Grey became Duke of Suffolk (the title had become available after the young Brandon brothers had died from the sweating sickness*) and William Parr’s brother-in-law, William Herbert, was made Earl of Pembroke (Parr himself, as Marquess of Northampton, hardly needed further elevation). Somerset found himself back in the Tower; his execution in the new year was supervised by Henry Grey.
In the shifting sands of the Tudor court, fortunes rose and fell with terrifying speed. Such fluctuations can be charted in the Cavendishes’ choice of godparents for their growing family, as they endeavoured to square loyalty to old friends with strategic currying of favour with the new men. A second daughter, Temperance, was born in June 1549, at Northaw, with Bess’s aunt Marcella Linnacre in attendance and presents of nourishing brawn and capons sent by her mother from Derbyshire. Lady Warwick, wife of the on-the-rise John Dudley, was made a godmother, together with Jane Grey, while the Earl of Shrewsbury – a friend of Sir William and father of George, who would become Bess’s fourth husband – stood as godfather.
Temperance died within the year, while in December 1550 Bess gave birth to her first son, Henry – ‘my bad son Henry’ as he was destined to become, the source of much trouble and disappointment. This time the Cavendishes set their sights a little higher in the godparent stakes, choosing Princess Elizabeth (the beginning of a long if occasionally strained association between Bess and the future Queen), the Earl of Warwick, now Lord President and the most powerful man at court, and their old friend Henry Grey. William, born in 1551, got Elizabeth Brooke (Elizabeth’s brother married Cavendish’s daughter Catherine), the second wife of William Parr, Marquess of Northampton, as a godmother, and William Herbert, the newly ennobled Earl of Pembroke. The Cavendishes could hardly have allied themselves more closely with the Protestant regime.
In Bess, William Cavendish found a highly competent manager of his family and household as it moved between Northaw and Newgate Street. Indeed, the gift for managing, both husbands and households, would stand Bess in good stead, and would contribute greatly to her desirability as a wife. In 1549, she succeeded in ‘managing’, or persuading, Sir William into acquiring a further house and household: the manor of Chatsworth, in Derbyshire, together with that of Cromford, and some surrounding land, bought for £600. Although materially, socially and culturally, Bess had left Derbyshire far behind her, it was by no means forgotten.
Chatsworth manor and estate had belonged for several generations to the Leche family, who were well known to Bess, not only because Ralph Leche had been her stepfather, but also because his nephew, Francis, married her younger sister Alice. In 1547, Francis discovered that Alice had been unfaithful to him. Enraged by her ‘lewdness’, he sold the manor and estate to a Thomas Agard, ‘rather than let bastards be his heirs’. Once he’d cooled down, Francis realised he’d been foolish and tried to back out of the sale. Agard insisted that he’d made a legal ‘bargain’ and the case went to the Duke of Somerset, who ruled in favour of Leche, despite the fact that the sale stood.4 When Thomas Agard died, his son Francis Agard, rather than holding on to a property that would always be subject to dispute, and to silence the claims of the Leches, sold Chatsworth to the Cavendishes.5
Over the next few years, they pursued a determined programme of land-buying, consolidating and expanding on their new purchase. In 1550, the manor of Ashford, a few miles north of Chatsworth, which would later provide Bess with blackstone for Hardwick, was bought from the Earl of Westmorland, and the rectory at Edensor, adjoining Chatsworth, from William Place and Nicholas Spakeman. Further blocks of land were added later, acquisitions that were funded in part by the sale of property in Hertfordshire.6 Rents, from land and property, would provide a steady stream of revenue.
In 1551, Sir William seemingly decided to move his power base entirely to Derbyshire. That December, Crown commissioners arrived at Northaw to assess its value. The Cavendishes, as a sweetener, sent gifts of capons, conies (rabbits) and woodcocks to Northaw, together with a lavish consignment of fish: one ‘great ling’, whiting, forty herrings, flounders and a pike. In June 1552, Sir William made what proved to be an extremely profitable deal. Northaw and other Hertfordshire property, together with estates in Wales and Lincolnshire, were sold to the Crown, and in return he received extensive estates in Derbyshire – most of them formerly monastic property – as well as land and property in Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Dorset, Devon, Cornwall, Northumberland, Kent and Herefordshire.7 The core of the estate, however, lay in Derbyshire.
What prompted this move? Was Sir William so enamoured of his wife that he simply fell in with her plans, giving up his Hertfordshire home, which, on the Great North Road, was so conveniently close to London and court, and relocating to a remote corner of the Midlands? Or were there considerations of security, rather than sentiment, at work? Northaw’s proximity to London also made it vulnerable in the event of unrest or civil war, and with a Protestant boy king on the throne and the fervently Catholic Princess Mary as the next in line, that was a real possibility. There were fears, too, that should Edward die, Mary might hand back confiscated Church property, out of which Sir William had done so well. Still, the possibility of Church land being returned did not stop him from acquiring more, and it seems more likely that he simply saw a good deal and took advantage of it, urged on by Bess. Sir William, shrewd speculator that he was, would never have embarked on a property-buying spree in Derbyshire if it hadn’t made sound business sense. But the impetus surely came from his wife, who had probably been tipped off about the Chatsworth sale by her mother or sister. All these new estates were cannily bought in the names of both Sir William and Bess, thus ensuring that in the event of Sir William dying and his heir being underage, they would come under the control not of the Court of Wards, but of his wife. This was unusual, and though we don’t know for sure, it’s tempting to see Bess’s hand at work again – she was not going to fall into the clutches of the Court of Wards for a second time. She also, with Chatsworth, now had a foothold in Derbyshire, and her first building project.
‘Every man almost is a builder’, wrote William Harrison, ‘and he that hath bought any small parcel of ground, be it never so little, will not be quiet till he have pulled down the old house (if any were there standing) and set up a new after his own devise.’8 So it was with the Cavendishes.
Today’s Chatsworth, freshly gilded, sitting massively in its parkland, retains almost nothing of Bess’s house. This was demolished in the seventeenth century by her great-great-grandson, William Cavendish, the 4th Earl and 1st Duke of Devonshire, who in its place, on the same foundations, built the present house (later enlarged by the 6th Duke). Of the Elizabethan original mere traces remain: the hunting tower, known as ‘The Stand’ (from which to watch the hunt, also used as an occasional banqueting house); a moated structure in the park called ‘Queen Mary’s Bower’; and some cellars. However, within the solid ducal splendour lurks ‘the ghost of the Elizabethan house’, detected in Chatsworth’s unusual height and the configuration of the interior, especially the positioning of the state rooms on the top floor.9
‘He that builds a fair house upon an ill seat commiteth himself to prison.’ So wrote Francis Bacon.10 Site mattered to Elizabethan builders, and that of Chatsworth, in the valley of the Derwent, with the river below and the drama of the moors as a craggy backdrop, could hardly be bettered.* It was decided that the existing crumbling manor would be demolished and a new house built on an altogether grander scale, a house that would proclaim the Cavendishes’ wealth and status, a house that would announce their arrival in Derbyshire in no uncertain terms.
In the meantime, however, they simply patched
up the old manor as best they could. In November 1551, ironwork for two ‘portalls’ (doors) was sent up from London, with ‘old Alsope the caryer’, along with thirty dozen candles, wrapped in blankets, and quantities of oranges and lemons.11 The following month, a carpenter carried out repairs, and on 26 December Roger Worde (or Worthe), a mason, was paid 20s. for drawing a ‘platt’ (plan) of the new house.12 Worde was clearly no ordinary mason: like Robert Smythson, he could draw. Five years later, now ‘Mason to Sir W. Cecil’, he was writing to his patron asking for clarification as to the design of the windows at Cecil’s house, Burghley: ‘I shall desire you to draw your meaning . . . both the width of the light and the height, with the fashion of all the molds . . . I would be very glad to know your pleasure for your steps forth of your base court up to the terrace, the proportion of them and for the gate at the end of the terrace.’13
The worldly, wily Cecil, who would become a loyal friend to and supporter of Bess, had risen, like Cavendish, from the ranks of the gentry (in Cecil’s case, minor and Welsh). His father and grandfather had served in the households of Henry VII and Henry VIII and used their fortunes to buy estates in the Midlands. Cecil, again like Cavendish, negotiated the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I, and would make himself indispensable to Elizabeth I, whose coolness and caution matched his own. But he lacked a country seat. In 1553, he began remodelling an existing manor at Burghley, Lincolnshire, which would be improved upon and expanded over more than thirty years.14