by Kate Hubbard
The 6th Duke, known as the Bachelor Duke, had to pay off the considerable debts left by his parents, but became an extravagant spender himself. He transferred quantities of furniture, paintings and tapestries from his other houses to Hardwick, and carried out various improvements, including blocking up the windows at either end of the long gallery, to reduce glare. He adored the house, dining in the High Great Chamber, despite the extreme cold, and sleeping, and eventually dying, in Bess’s corner bedchamber. The Bachelor Duke was succeeded by his second cousin, who built the two-storey service wing, with bedrooms for servants, at the north end of the house.
The 6th and 7th Dukes also left huge debts, but the 8th and 9th Dukes did much to recoup them. Under the 9th Duke, extensive repairs to Hardwick’s structure and stonework (which had been badly damaged by pollution from local coal mines) were carried out, but it was his wife, Duchess Evelyn, a woman of whom Bess would have approved, who took on the task of preserving the house. After she was widowed in 1938, the Dowager Duchess came to live at Hardwick, making Bess’s rooms her own and devoting herself to the repair and restoration of Bess’s tapestries and hangings. Except for the war years, she remained at Hardwick until her death in 1960, three years after Hardwick had been given to the nation in lieu of death duties, and two years after it had been made over to the National Trust.
Acknowledgements
This book has been a long time in the making and there are many to whom I am grateful for their scholarship, help and patience. Anyone interested in Bess of Hardwick has reason to thank Alison Wiggins and her team at Glasgow University, who have collected, and made available online, Bess’s entire correspondence. Similarly, the task of deciphering early modern English has been made immeasurably easier by the work of David Durant, biographer of Bess, whose papers and transcriptions of Bess’s household and building accounts can be read at Nottingham University Library. Philip Riden has also done much painstaking research into and work on Bess’s accounts and papers, correcting a few misconceptions in the process. I’m very grateful to him for supplying articles and patiently answering questions. I feel greatly indebted to Mark Girouard for his invaluable works on Robert Smythson and Elizabethan architecture, and I thank him for conversations about Bess and Hardwick, for reading parts of the book and for correcting architectural errors.
Thanks to Dr Kate Harris, archivist at Longleat House, and to James Towe and Aidan Haley, archivists at Chatsworth. Quotations from the Thynne papers are included by permission of the Marquess of Bath, Longleat House, and from the Chatsworth archives, by kind permission of the Duke of Devonshire and the Chatsworth House trust. Also thanks to the staff at the British Library, Lambeth Palace Library, Nottingham University Library and the London Library. For permission to reproduce drawings and photographs I am grateful to those institutions credited in the list of illustrations, and to Clare Broomfield, Megan Evans, Jonathan Makepeace and Diane Naylor in particular. Many thanks to Tim Wales, for battling with the Earl of Shrewsbury’s handwriting, to John Goodall at Country Life, for talking to me about Hardwick, and to Andrew Barber at the National Trust. At Hardwick, Nigel Wright and Elena Williams kindly showed me around, answered questions and allowed me to wander about after hours. Thank you to the late Alexander Chancellor, for accompanying me on a tour of Elizabethan houses in Northamptonshire. For their hospitality at Doddington Hall, thanks to James and Clare Birch, and to Antony Jarvis, for sharing his immense knowledge of and enthusiasm for the house. For showing me Shireoaks, taking me to Worksop Manor Lodge, and conversation about Smythson, I am extremely grateful to Leo Godlewski.
I would like to thank Mary Miers, for all her help, and Rebecca Nicolson and Aurea Carpenter at Short Books, for whom I first wrote about Bess. For chat and excellent advice on Tudor matters, thanks to Jessie Childs. Also to Victoria Millar, who read an early draft and made many useful suggestions. And to Georgia Garrett, my agent. I feel lucky in my friends and family: thank you to all those who offered advice, support and good cheer along the way, including Lucy Baring, David and Emma Craigie, Miranda Creswell, Phil Eade, Alexa de Ferranti, Catherine Gibbs, Ed and Nicole Hubbard, Max and Lucas Hubbard, Caryl Hubbard, Ben Macintyre, Flora McDonnell, Adam Nicolson, Karen Richards, Ben Rogers, Sweetpea Slight, Simon and Alexa Tiffin, Daryl Weldon and Caddy Wilmot-Sitwell. I have been lucky too in my publishers. My editors – Juliet Brooke at Chatto & Windus and Jennifer Barth at Harper Collins US – waited patiently for this book and pushed me, gently, to make it better. Juliet’s successor, Charlotte Humphery, guided it through its final stages with the greatest efficiency and care. The team at Chatto – Jane Selley (copy-editor), Alison Rae (proofreader), Kris Potter (designer) and Emmy Lopes (map-drawer) did a fine job. My thanks to all of them.
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Unless stated otherwise, the place of publication is London.
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Notes on Sources
All letters to and from Bess can be viewed online: http://www.bessofhardwick.org, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: The Complete Correspondence, c.1550–1608, ed. Alison Wiggins, Alan Bryson, Daniel Starza Smith, Anke Timmermann and Graham Williams, University of Glasgow, web development by Katherine Rogers, University of Sheffield Humanities Research Institute (April 2013).
Transcriptions of Bess’s household and building accounts, made by David Durant, are held at Nottingham University Library (David Durant Papers).
The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, holds the Cavendish-Talbot MSS (X.d. 428), the account book of Sir William and Lady Cavendish, 1548–50, (X.d. 486) and Edward Whalley’s London account book, 9 September 1589–12 July 1592 (V.b. 308).
The Talbot and Shrewsbury MSS are in Lambeth Palace Library.
The Devonshire MSS are at Chatsworth.
The Thynne Papers and the Longleat building accounts are at Longleat. The Thynne Papers are also on microfilm in the British Library.
The Cecil Papers, Hatfield House, are available online in the British Library.
Abbreviations
BHL Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: The Complete Correspondence, c. 1550–1608
BL British Library
CP Cecil Papers
CSP Domestic Calendar of State Papers, Domestic
CSP Scotland Calendar of State Papers relating to Scotland
HMC Historical Manuscripts Commission
L&P Letters and Papers Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII
LPL Lambeth Palace Library
TNA The National Archives
Notes
Introduction
1Furnivall (ed.), Vol. I, p.130.
2‘Of Building’, Bacon, p.111.
3Quoted in Summerson, Architecture in Britain, p.38.
4Quoted in Stone, Family, Sex and Marria
ge, p.198.
5Goodall.
6Howard, Building of Elizabethan and Jacobean England, pp.159–61.
7Strachey, p.10.
8Hunter, p.84
9Lodge, Vol. I, p.xvii.
Prologue: Hardwick Hall, 1590
1Durant and Riden (eds), Building of Hardwick Hall: Part I, p.114.
2Durant, Smythson Circle, p.138.
1. Derbyshire Beginnings
1For a discussion of Bess’s birth date, see Riden, ‘Hardwicks of Hardwick Hall’, p.150.
2TNA E 150/743/8.
3Crook, ‘Hardwick Before Bess’, pp.41–54.
4Hey, p.12.
5Levey and Thornton (eds), p.53.
6For libraries at Hardwick, see Adshead and Taylor (eds), pp.177–86.
7TNA E 150/743/8.
8Riden, ‘Hardwicks of Hardwick Hall’, p.157.
9Ibid., pp.153 and 155.
10Thurley, p.39.
11Furnivall (ed.), Vol. II, p.268.
12Girouard, Elizabethan Architecture, p.25.
13Airs, p.72.
14Riden, ‘Hardwicks of Hardwick Hall’, p.154.
15Johnson, Vol. V, p.259.
16Riden, ‘Hardwicks of Hardwick Hall’, p.152.
17TNA CI/1101/17.