by Kate Hubbard
Most painful of all was the fact that Shrewsbury felt his honour to be impugned. And honour was paramount, the benchmark by which he defined himself. Having taken on the burden and expense of guarding Mary, he felt personally affronted when Elizabeth begrudged him Mary’s allowance or questioned his treatment of his prisoner. Not only was he inadequately recompensed, but he was regarded with suspicion, constantly required to justify his conduct to Cecil and the Queen.
Mary would never forgo her plotting and intriguing, in the hope of gaining her freedom and restoration to the Scottish throne. And she would never cease reiterating her claim to the English throne and looking not just to English Catholics, but to Spain, France and the papacy, to help her. Shutting off all channels of communication between Mary and her supporters was an impossible task. Letters were found hidden in bags with false bottoms, or under stones, or within the hollow staff of a visitor; they were smuggled out by servants, despite Shrewsbury’s cash bonuses, bringing further criticism on his head. Naturally prone to paranoia, the Earl felt increasingly aggrieved: ‘I could be right well contented to be discharged . . . if I could see how the same might be without any blemish to my honour and estimation.’3
In June 1569, Bess reported to the Queen that her husband, while at Chatsworth, had ‘fallen into extreme sickness’ and had to be carried back to Wingfield on a litter. The Earl, unlike his wife, was not robust and suffered regular bouts of ill health – gout, colic, mysterious agues – probably exacerbated by nervous strain. This time he felt ‘so grievously tormented with the gout and a hot ague’ that he longed for death.4 The Queen, anxious that he wasn’t up to the job, ordered that Mary be bundled off to a neighbour, Sir John Zouch (the same family to whom Bess had been sent as a young woman).
Mary wrote to Bess, her ‘very good friend and cousin’, enquiring after the Earl, relaying ‘such news’ as she had – allusions to obscure plots against her on the part of the Earl of Mar, who had custody of her baby son James, and ‘five or six particular men’, who were ‘bound to all extremity against me and mine’ – and complaining of the ‘double dealing’ of the Earl of Moray, the Scottish regent.* She begged Bess to send ‘word of your well doing both’.5 The tone of the letter is confiding, though Mary failed to mention her most interesting piece of ‘news’ – the fact that she was busy plotting to marry the Duke of Norfolk.
This plan had the backing of many at court, including Leicester, though the Queen, fatally, was kept in the dark. Marriage to Norfolk, England’s premier nobleman, immensely rich and, nominally at least, Protestant, was seen as a way of neutralising Mary – once safely married, she could then be restored to the Scottish throne. Mary seized on the idea with enthusiasm – here was a route to freedom and Scotland. Norfolk, who had buried three wives, could not quite resist the prospect of a Scottish queen as a fourth. The two were soon exchanging love letters. There was of course the small matter of Mary’s marriage to Bothwell (Bothwell had lost his wits and was languishing in a Danish jail), which, to Mary’s frustration, had been voted by the Scots as legal and binding, but she hoped for an annulment.
By July, the Norfolk marriage plan was common knowledge; when it came to the ears of the Queen, she, predictably, flew into a rage. In October, Norfolk, despite a great deal of frantic back-pedalling, found himself in the Tower. And Shrewsbury, who had recovered sufficiently to be able to walk from his bedchamber to his gallery (hardly much of a recovery), came in for blame too. ‘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’, huffed the Queen.6
She ordered Mary back to Tutbury, where her rooms were thoroughly searched, her servants were once again reduced to thirty and the sending and receiving of letters was forbidden. The Earl of Huntingdon and Viscount Hereford were sent to Tutbury as reinforcements, implicitly casting doubt on Shrewsbury’s competence. Huntingdon was soon causing trouble, claiming that the Earl had been overly lenient towards his charge, and there was talk once again of Bess’s partiality and rotten apples amongst the Shrewsbury servants. The Earl wrote to Cecil in October of his ‘grief that suspicion is had of over nice good will born by my wife to this Queen, and of untrue dealings by my men’. Bess, he insisted, had ‘not otherwise dealt with this Queen than I have been privy unto, and that I have had liking of’. Far from urging him to continue in his post, since his ‘sickness’ she had been calling for his ‘discharge’. But, the Earl assured Cecil, ‘I am not to be led by her otherwise than I think well of.’7
In fact, in the honeymoon days of their marriage, Shrewsbury was more than happy to be ‘led’ by Bess. ‘Of all joys I have under god the greatest is yourself’, he wrote soon after the Norfolk fiasco, assuring her that he’d burned her last letter, as she’d wished.8 He had questioned Mary as to whether she had been writing to her ‘friends’, and though she had insisted that ‘of her honour she hath not’, the Earl was taking ‘small account’ of her denial. He had told his son Gilbert how lucky he was ‘to have such a mother’ as Bess. There is no suggestion that Shrewsbury was anything but entirely devoted to his wife, and entirely indifferent to the Queen of Scots. Nevertheless, a third person had been introduced into a marriage that had scarcely had time to find its feet – a woman some twenty years younger than Bess, and an unusually alluring woman at that. Mary, with her love of intrigue and powers of attraction, could not help but be a divisive presence.
November 1569 saw one of Elizabeth’s worst fears realised – a Catholic rebellion in support of the Scots Queen. The northern rising was led by the Catholic Earls of Westmorland and Northumberland, both supporters of the Duke of Norfolk (Norfolk’s sister was married to Westmorland). Shrewsbury and Huntingdon, having heard that a rebel army six thousand strong had set out from Durham Cathedral and was marching south towards Tutbury, hastily moved Mary to Coventry. In fact the rebellion was a damp squib, crushed within six weeks, but the reprisals were brutal – over eight hundred went to the gallows – and the Queen was shaken. The northern rebellion marked a shift in religious policy. For a decade, Elizabeth had favoured toleration, but now attitudes to Catholics hardened, especially when, a year later, the Queen was excommunicated by the Pope, who called on Catholics to withdraw their allegiance to her. No longer could one claim loyalty to both Queen and Pope (though many, like the recusant Sir Thomas Tresham, continued to do so). To be a Catholic was to be a ‘papist’ and a traitor.
The new year found the Scots Queen back once more at the hated Tutbury. Bess had no more love for Tutbury than Mary, and by the spring of 1570 she had taken herself off to Chatsworth, still the house closest to her heart, and certainly preferred to any Shrewsbury property. Of her children, only Elizabeth and Mary – the latter, though married, did not yet live with Gilbert Talbot as his wife – remained at home. William and Charles were studying at Cambridge. Henry was already attracting trouble – one of his servants, a certain Swinnerton (a ‘vain, lewd fellow’ according to Bess), had killed a man in a sword fight. Perhaps to remove him from undesirable influences, Henry, together with Gilbert Talbot, had been packed off on a kind of grand tour of France and Italy.
Hugh Fitzwilliam kept Bess informed about events in London and abroad with regular bulletins. In July, he described how the French King, Charles IX, had told Elizabeth that he hoped the Queen of Scots (his former sister-in-law) ‘might enjoy her own realm and to govern it and to see the bringing up of her own child’ (with the implication that it was Elizabeth’s duty to facilitate this). The Queen’s reply was tart: ‘she marvelled the King would trouble himself in matters so far from him, having so much to do at home’. As regarded herself and Mary, ‘they could agree well enough’. The Duke of Norfolk, said Fitzwilliam, had ‘utterly renounced the marriage with the Scottish Queen’.9 The following month, he reported on the treason trials, in the wake of the northern rising, at Norwich. Several rebels were to be hanged, drawn and quartered; others faced life imprisonment and the los
s of their goods and lands. He had also heard that the Earl of Leicester was employing a great many workmen to make Kenilworth Castle ‘strong’, furnishing it with ‘armour, munitions and all necessaries for defence’.10
In 1563, Leicester had been given Kenilworth, in Warwickshire, and in 1570 he embarked on an ambitious remodelling of the existing medieval buildings, supervised by William Spicer, formerly of Longleat, including a gatehouse, a new wing and a huge lodging tower. Why he would have concerned himself with fortifying Kenilworth is unclear – it may have been thought to be vulnerable after the northern rising, but that aside, Leicester had military aspirations and liked to see himself not merely as a great patron, but a great soldier, who would lead his forces into battle in defence of his Queen. In fact, Kenilworth became known not for its fortifications, but for its dazzling expanses of glass, a ‘lantern house’. Windows, during the 1570s, were growing ever larger.
If Shrewsbury’s letters to Bess in the early years of their marriage are scattered with professions of love and gratitude, hers to him, though not unaffectionate, are more notable for their demands, and their note of impatience. ‘You forget your none’, she wrote from Chatsworth, ‘send the plumber with speed I pray you.’ Hanks, her brewer, was unable to brew beer and ale for lack of malt and hops – ‘either there must be better provision made or else I shall think my none means not to come here this summer’. As a sweetener, she sent him lettuces and butter.11 The Earl was not of course free to come to Chatsworth to please Bess, but in May 1570 he was granted permission to move Mary there.
Chatsworth, being remote from any town, was considered particularly secure. Bess was planning a major new phase of building work, but even in its present state the large and comfortable house, with its river and gardens, was a very great improvement on Tutbury, and for the first time, the conditions of Mary’s confinement were somewhat relaxed. The Queen agreed that she could ‘take the air for her health’, ride on the moors, hawk, send and receive letters and have a few visitors.12 It even appeared that she might be considering Mary’s restoration to the Scottish throne.
In September, Cecil and his wife Mildred came to Chatsworth, along with Sir Walter Mildmay, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and John Lesley, Bishop of Ross, a Catholic and former lawyer, who acted as Mary’s representative. They were there to discuss the possibility of Mary giving up her claim to the English throne and returning to Scotland as Queen, leaving her son James in England as a hostage to good behaviour, a plan that came to nothing since it was rejected by the Scots, who had no desire to have Mary back. What did Cecil and Mary make of each other, these two so implacably opposed? For Mary, Cecil was the agent of her destruction; for Cecil, Mary was a threat to the English throne and the Protestant faith, and thus needed to be removed, ideally by death. Of their interview, which ended with Mary in tears, neither left any record. Cecil did write a ‘leaving letter’ to Shrewsbury, assuring him that Elizabeth had perfect confidence in both Shrewsburys as custodians of the Queen of Scots. Bess had showered Lady Cecil with gifts and Cecil could only regret ‘that my Lady should have bestowed such things as my wife cannot recompense as she would, but with her hearty goodwill and service’.13
Plots and intrigues rumbled on. That summer, at Chatsworth, a half-baked attempt was made to free Mary, led by a local Catholic squire, Sir Thomas Gerard. Initially the plan was to kidnap her while she was out riding, but when this was vetoed by John Beaton, her master of the household, as too risky, it was decided that she would be lowered from a window. The plot was discovered by the Shrewsburys, but had never had Mary’s backing in the first place. One of the plotters was a former disaffected servant of the Earl, John Hall, who claimed he had left Shrewsbury’s service because he ‘did mislike my lord’s marriage with his wife, as divers of his friends did’, a hint that Bess was not universally popular within the household.14
The Shrewsburys were plagued by disloyal servants, who seemed only too willing to be conscripted into Mary’s service, a measure of her capacity to win sympathy. In October 1571, Bess received a letter from William Cecil, now Lord Burghley,* about a certain Hersey Lassels, a former servant. Lassels, said Burghley, had confessed that he’d been ‘dealing’ with the Queen of Scots, having been approached by her and John Beaton. He had smuggled letters between her and the Duke of Norfolk, and had done so with Bess’s knowledge. ‘I have thought good to advertise your Ladyship thereof’, continued Burghley smoothly, ‘and withal to pray you to let me understand the truth of such matter as your ladyship doth know of the said Hersey Lassels dealings.’15
This letter must have struck a chill into Bess’s heart – she was, after all, being accused of ‘dealings’ herself, of using Lassels to spy on Mary’s ‘doings and devices’, and such dealings were potentially treasonable. But she defended herself robustly: it was true that the moment she had heard that Lassels had ‘some familiar talk’ with Mary, she had asked him to report to her. When Lassels told her that Mary had showed him ‘great good will’ and promised to make him a lord, Bess disabused him – Mary actually hated him and he should beware of her. He was then dismissed by the Earl, for being ‘both vain and glorious’. However, she flatly denied that she had ever known of any ‘dealing between her [Mary] and the Duke of Norfolk by the said Lassels or any other’.16
Whether or not Bess knew of it, Mary had not given up hopes of Norfolk and was still trying to have her marriage to Bothwell annulled by the Pope. In September 1571, Norfolk was once again imprisoned in the Tower. Bess, desperate to learn more, sent word to Hugh Fitzwilliam, who supplied what information he could: Norfolk, it seemed, had been sending money to Scottish lords, supporters of Mary; letters from Mary, as well as the cipher, had been found hidden ‘in the roof amongst the tile stones’ of Norfolk’s house; Norfolk’s servants were being racked.17
This all led to the uncovering of the Ridolfi Plot. Roberto Ridolfi, who had been involved in the earlier plan to marry Mary to Norfolk, was a Florentine banker and double agent, working for both the Spaniards and Walsingham, the Queen’s spy-master. This time, with the backing of the Spanish, Elizabeth was to be deposed and replaced by Mary, with Norfolk as her husband. So serious a threat was this that Parliament – rarely summoned under Elizabeth – was called to debate the Queen’s safety. Burghley and his supporters lobbied for Mary, like Norfolk, to be tried for treason, but without any absolute proof that she had endorsed the plot, the Queen stalled. For Elizabeth, executing an anointed queen was a step too far. She was not even willing to exclude Mary from the succession. Shrewsbury was merely ordered to confront his prisoner and get her to admit her guilt. Mary, however, was admitting nothing.
She was being held at Sheffield, where conveniently Shrewsbury had two properties – the castle and the manor, just a mile apart, so Mary could easily be shunted from one to the other, allowing for ‘cleansing’. The Earl assured Burghley that she was under the strictest surveillance, only permitted to walk on the ‘leads’ of the castle, or in the dining chamber or courtyard. He had increased her guard, and either he or Bess was always with her.18 When Shrewsbury went to London in January 1572 – as Lord High Steward he had to preside at Norfolk’s trial – Sir Ralph Sadler came to Sheffield to take charge of Mary, who refused to leave her rooms in the castle and would have nothing to do with him. Bess, according to Sadler, hardly left Mary’s side. This may have been Mary insisting on Bess’s company, but it could equally well have been Bess keeping a watchful eye on Mary.
Norfolk was found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death. Shrewsbury, who would take on Norfolk’s title of Earl Marshal, wept as he pronounced the verdict. At Sheffield, Sadler asked Bess to inform Mary of Norfolk’s execution. Mary, who already knew, was found ‘all to be wept and mourning’; when, somewhat callously, Bess asked her what the matter was, she replied with dignity that ‘she was sure my Lady could not be ignorant of the cause’. Sadler had not relished his duties at Sheffield, confessing himself ‘never so weary of any service as I am
of this’. Bess, he thought, could hardly look forward to the Earl’s return ‘more than I do’.19
Shrewsbury’s return to Sheffield, where Mary was now generally held, brought no let-up. He was still regularly called on to defend himself and Bess in the face of ‘doubts’ on the part of the Queen. In December 1572, the Earl wrote to Burghley, aggrieved by accusations of ‘undutiful dealing’ and defending his habit of ‘riding abroad sometimes (not far from my charge) in respect of my health only’. Occasional rides were nothing new, and ‘I trusted none in my absence but those I had tried’.20 Earlier that year, a ‘device’ had been uncovered for ‘the stealing of’ Mary from Sheffield and the Earl had laid on an extra thirty guards and forbidden her to walk outside the castle.21 In 1573, yet another attempt to spirit her out of a castle window was foiled. Gilbert Talbot, when questioned by a member of the Privy Council about his father’s competence, replied that it was quite impossible for Mary to escape ‘unless she could transform herself to a flea or a mouse’.22 The following year, several of the Earl’s servants, including his sons’ tutor Alexander Hamilton, of whom he thought highly, were, yet again, found to be smuggling letters for Mary.23