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sweet, cleanly bower, the camp within a | abeth should confer on Robin Dudley a little mile of it, and her person as sure designation which had distinguished four as at St. James's." Plantagenets, is another proof of her high regard for him. It is not usual to grant to an ennobled person any English title that has been borne by a prince of the blood-royal. When Sir James Wylde was raised to the chancellorship, he was questioned as to the territorial name he would select for his peerage, and he chose Eltham; but the earldom of Eltham, which had been conferred on Frederick Prince of Wales, was merged in the crown when his son became George III. The chancellor was obliged, therefore, to make a new selection; and, as he could not obtain Eltham, was fain to be content with Truro.

On the 29th of August Leicester again wrote a letter to the queen, which is interesting for various reasons, inasmuch as it affords evidence of his devotionsincere or affected-and his sympathy feigned or honest-with respect to his royal mistress to the last. This letter is one of inquiry after the queen's health, "the chiefest thing in this world he prays for." He had been ill himself, or asserted he had been so, in order to pay this strange homage of flattery, in suffering exactly as his sovereign suffered, to ameliorate which condition Elizabeth had sent him remedies such as she herself had swallowed. He continues still her medicine, he tells her, and, of course, "has been better with that than any other." He "hopes to be perfectly cured at the Bath," and so, "praying for her happy preservation," he "humbly kisses her foot." The letter is dated, " from her old lodging at Rycott," and is addressed "To y Q most excellent M;" the abbreviations in which are not to be taken for short measure of respect. It is not alone the preservation of this letter by the queen which indicates a regard for the writer. The royal esteem is more indisputably manifested by another circumstance. Beneath the superscription Elizabeth herself wrote in large capitals, "HIS LAST LETTER!" These three words, simple as they are, are full of significance: no doubt the queen often looked at them, and to her they were surely full of sad memories of her old servant and of the bygone time-a time now all of smiles and sunshine, and anon of storm and fierce lightnings. It was all at an end; for on Michaelmas day 1588 Leicester died, without legitimate issue, as the heralds and the law averred; but his son by the widow of Lord Sheffield -Sir Robert Dudley-always maintained his legitimacy, asserting in words which bore no contradictory sound, that he was the natural and lawful son of husband's estates in her hands. Robert Earl of Leicester.

This Robert was the eleventh earl who had borne that noble title, one which for nearly a hundred years (in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries) had belonged only to princes of the blood. That Eliz

To say that there is much in the Statepapers which illustrates the domestic life of the Countess of Shrewsbury would not, perhaps, excite great interest on the part of our readers; but when we say that "Bess of Hardwick" is the lady thus referred to, the interest can not fail to be aroused. Elizabeth Hardwick was the sole heiress of a Derbyshire squire, Hardwick of Hardwick, and at the age of fourteen, with all her youth, wealth, wit, and beauty, with every thing but her heart,-was married to another Derbyshire squire named Barley, whose death, following speedily thereon, scarcely dimmed for a moment the lustre of the brilliant young widow's eyes; especially as Barley left her the whole of his estate to be added to her own. To this irresistible widow there came wooing a widower rich in abbey and priory lands, but poor in having no sons by his first wife to keep them with his name. This man was Cavendish, the sequestrator; and Bess of Hardwick loving him heartily, married him willingly, laid her lands to his, bought Chatsworth, added acre to acre, and founded that material greatness which, through her, the Cavendishes still enjoy. In 1557, this beautiful, arrogant, and rather unscrupulous Bess again found herself a widow, with her second

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queen-dowager was ever so well provided for, and the suitors who came to her feet, suitors of every degree, were as numerous as those of Penlope. From among them she selected Sir William St. Loe, a Gloucestershire baronet, whose

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wife she became, only under the stipula- vivacious countess; but the latter had tion that if the union proved childless, some disquietude of her own on account the broad acres of St. Loe should pass of her sons, the Cavendishes, who got from Sir William's daughters by his first into trouble, as so many gentlemen young marriage, and from his brothers, to her and old did, by making themselves busy own children by Sir William Cavendish. in the affairs of Mary Stuart. The countThe Gloucestershire swain not only ess, in a letter to Walsyngham, dated agreed to rob his family in order to ob- April 6, 1584, tells the secretary that the tain the hand of Cavendish's widow, but unfolding of her strange miseries would died early, and left Barley and Caven- but trouble him. She petitions that her dish's widow the widow too of St. Loe. sons may be permitted to seek their living This triple dowager now cast her magic abroad, and (ever, as she was, with an about the potential George Talbot Earl eye to business) hopes that care will be of Shrewsbury, and by her charms, her taken of their deer while they are absent. wit, her power, and her will, she effected For herself, she expresses a hope "to a triple marriage, of herself with the great find some friend for meat and drink, and earl, of her step-daughter Mary Cavendish so to end her life." In the following Auwith Gilbert the Earl of Shrewsbury's gust she seeks aid from Burghley. Her son, and of her own son Henry Caven- husband, the earl, is charged with "hard dish with the earl's daughter Grace. usage" towards her, and she requests the One other of her daughters, Elizabeth grave statesman to interfere in the doCavendish, she married to Charles Stuart mestic broil, and to bring her husband Earl of Lennox, and younger brother of to a proper sense of his situation, as Darnley, somewhile King of Scots. By "Burghley's letters would do more with this marriage of her daughter with the him now than any other person else livStuart the Cavendishes gained their eleva ing." She charges her ungallant lord tion to the peerage. For of this union was with striving to cheat her out of Chatsborn the Lady Arabella Stuart, who, al- worth, and with inducing her son Harry though never endowed with much influ- Cavendish "to deal most unnaturally ence, possessed enough, and so exercis- with her." Shrewsbury retorts from his ed it as to obtain, in 1604, for her uncle house at Chelsey, in a letter to WalsingWilliam the barony of Cavendish of ham, in which he entreats the secretary Hardwick. to support him against his wife's suit to Bess of Hardwick survived all her hus- the queen, and to procure her banishment bands. Her long life may be said to have from the court. He stigmatizes Bess of been pleasant to her for the one great con- Hardwick as being of a devilish disposisummation-the power and grandeur of tion;" a woman given to defame his the Cavendishes, the one absorbing object honor and name, and to turn the obediof her thoughts, acts, and inspirations. ence of his eldest son Gilbert Talbot into She erected palaces, had a rare know- unnatural rebellion. "I am ashamed," ledge of the value and use of land, of says this last of the lady's four husbands, what was beneath as well as what was "to think of my choice of such a creaupon it; of how money could be turned ture." Cohabit with her again he proto account; and of holding all her hus- tests he will not; for had she not abanbands and their households in submis-doned him of her own free will? although sion and obedience. Lodge assigns to all these qualities a bad sense, for he describes this beautiful and imperious Bess as "a builder, a buyer and seller of estates, a money-lender, a farmer, and merchant of lead, coals, and timber. When disengaged from these employments," he adds, "she intrigued alternately with Elizabeth and Mary, always to the prejudice and terror of her husband."

A very unquiet home had this husband, the Earl of Shrewsbury, with his very

probably at the queen's suggestion she had offered to return home. Shrewsbury firmly declines receiving a wife who mor tally hates him, and who "hath called him knave, fool, and beast to his face, and hath mocked and mowed at him." He also accused her of instigating "her wicked servant Beresford" to slander him. For this matter Mr. Beresford was prosecuted at York, under the statute "De scandal. magnat;" but to what issue does not appear. The subject, however, is

worth noticing here, as scan. mag. is still a punishable offence. Scandal of the magnates, defamation of the aristocrats, is measured by a different metre from that which calculates the injured feelings of the lower ten thousand by the tongues of censurers. There are things that may be uttered of members of the middle and lower classes with perfect impunity; the law does not regard such trivial reproach. But the same thing said of a noble becomes scan. mag.; and though no lord who might be now called an ass would justify the application by appealing to the law, the statute whereby it could be punished is still in force, and will remain in force till the impending motion is carried for the abolition of all statutes now practically obsolete.

In the domestic brawl carried on between two persons whom the queen respected, Elizabeth intervened, in the August of 1586. She commanded the Lord Chancellor Bromley and the Lord Treasurer to act as mediators; and on their favorable report, the queen sent for the apparently-reconciled pair to her palace at Richmond, "and in many good words showed herself very glad thereof; and the earl and countess in good sort departed together very comfortably."

which she hopes her majesty will conclude without loss of time.

We hear of this exalted couple again at the close of 1589, when the earl and countess kept different households; but the latter was willing to sign a treaty of peace, and live with her lord in his own home. The queen good-naturedly writes to bring about this desirable consummation. She addresses the Earl of Shrewsbury as her " very good old man," and begs to hear of his health, "especially at this time of the fall of the leaf" (she writes in December), " and hopes that he may not be touched with the wonted attempts of his accustomed enemy the gout." Finally, the queen urges him to "permit his wife sometimes to have access to him, which she hath now of a long time wanted."

The good will of the queen failed to accomplish her benevolent purpose. The earl departed this life in the autumn of 1590; but not altogether without discharging a Parthian dart in order to annoy his widow. This attack was made in the form of certain speeches a short time before he died, "wherein he feared that the Lady Arabell would bring much trouble to his house, by his wife and her daughter's devices. They think," said But this celebrated couple did not long the old earl-marshal, "I am a great block remain in comfortable condition. Queen in their way;" and he notices a Dr. Elizabeth set down certain rules by which Browne "as a worker in their causes ;" their lives were to be regulated, but which and his own son and successor Gilbert had special reference to the curbing of Talbot, as one "who will be much ruled the countess. Elizabeth determined that by them." With this mischievous sugthe earl should try his wife, "take pro- gestion died the old gaoler of Mary Stuart bation for her obedience," for one year. -a poor, if guilty, woman, of whom he "If she proved forgetful of her duty," could say nothing worse than that " she said the queen, "place her in her house did not keep her chamber cleanly ;" and, at Chatsworth." There had been actions leaving the suggestion to do its work, pending between them respecting dis- the body of the earl was carried to that puted ownership of plate, jewels, and tomb at Sheffield which the earl had prehangings; but these were to be stayed du- viously built and magniloquently inscribring the probationary time. The count-ed, and beneath which all that was mortal ess would not accept the terms without of him still reposes. some stipulations, one of which was that the queen "would appoint some one to be an eye-witness between the earl and me;" and the lady further required that if her probation failed in its chief point of obedience, she should not be restricted to residence at Chatsworth only. Bess of Hardwick could flatter when flattery was needful; and she calls the intervention of Queen Elizabeth a "godly work,"

Who was the "Lady Arabell" here spoken of; and why was she likely to bring so much trouble to herself and others? She was a very important little lady at this time, and remained so during a great portion of her life. She was the great-granddaughter of Margaret, daughter of Henry VII., through her second marriage with Douglas Earl of Angus. Our James I. was the great-grandson

of the same Margaret, through her first marriage with James IV. of Scotland. Arabella's father, Charles Earl of Lennox, was the brother of James's father, Henry Darnley; and, this kinship being considered, it is not wonderful that Queen Elizabeth, when she looked at the little Arabella as she frolicked about the rooms of the palace, where she was a guest-it is not wonderful, we say, that Elizabeth would occasionally suggest that the thoughtless girl might one day become an important personage. We know that she became so in James's days; but the passage printed above shows that she was already a cause of intrigue in the reign of Elizabeth. But to this queen she was no great source of disquiet. Elizabeth al lowed her two hundred a-year; her mother, the Countess of Lennox (a Cavendish by birth, and daughter of Bess of Hardwick's second husband, Sir William Cavendish) twice that sum. It was this connection that brought Arabella into the household of the Earl and the Countess of Shrewsbury. In King James's reign the Lady Arabella was of importance enough to be a permanent disquiet to the king. He had a constant suspicion that his enemies, domestic or foreign, might attempt to raise her to the throne. He was not illiberal to her; that is to say, he endowed her out of the public money. But he watched her closely, lest she should marry (which she was desirous to do), and perhaps bring claimants to the throne, which he hoped his son would inherit and hold without dispute. Watch as closely as he would, young Seymour contrived to woo her, furtively, but to good purpose, at Whitehall, and the young couple were privately married. On the discovery of their secret, Seymour was sent to the Tower, and Arabella was confined at her own house, and subsequently she was sent to the ward of the muchperplexed Bishop of Durham. Thence she escaped in male attire; while her husband succeeded in breaking his prison in the Tower. They were to meet at an appointed spot, but they missed each other, and Arabella was recaptured in Calais Roads; but her husband escaped to Flanders, and the archduke refused to surrender him. The lady, who must have been considerably over thirty years of age, died of a four-years rigorous con

finement; after which Seymour was restored to favor, and promoted to the rank of Marquis of Hertford and Duke of Somerset. Such was the Lady Arabella, who even in her girlhood helped to disturb the household of Lord and Lady Shrewsbury.

The Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury were not the only married couples who had disquiet in their households. In January 1585, Henry Lord Clynton announces to Burghley the death of his father the Earl of Lincoln, and he avails himself of the opportunity to add a bitter complaint of "the hard dealing of his mother-inlaw," or rather step-mother, "who, when he called to see his dying father, refused to him admittance." Therewith, says this much-vexed nobleman, "she joineth with mine own wife, and maketh Lady Stafford and Sir Thomas Heneage her instruments to blow innumerable slanders into the queen's ears against him."

This deceased earl had been one of the most gallant cavaliers of his time. He was a soldier of renown, a tilter of world-wide reputation, a sea-captain of wonderous ability, and a statesman clear in judgment and prompt in action. Perhaps he is most celebrated as Governor of Boulogne during the famous attack made upon it by the French. Under severe pressure on the part of the brave enemy, and such suffering through scarcity of provision that he restricted the allowance for himself and family to a single loaf of bread daily, he maintained his post till that peace of 1550 was agreed upon, by the terms of which Boulogne was finally surrendered to its natural owners, the French. He was munificently rewarded for all his services, and we may perhaps reckon among such guerdon for duty rendered the hand of that fair Mis tress Blount, who was the first of his three wives. She was in every respect a most remarkable woman-one who, in the early flush of her beauty, subdued Henry the Eighth to its influences. Sixty-five years before the letter to which we have to refer was written, she was the very pride of Shropshire; a pride which was not diminished when Shropshire, in common with all England, heard that she was the mother of a son who had the handsome King Harry for a father. This son was Henry Fitzroy, Earl of Nottingham

and Duke of Richmond and Somerset. recently published by the Camden SocieThe death of this handsome and clever ty. The most remarkable passages in boy, in his seventeenth year, was one of them are those which relate to the lovethe great afflictions of Henry's life; and affairs of some of her husband's subjects. the mother, youthful Mistress Blount, These latter are not all nymphs and was the only woman who throughout that swains of high degree; some among them life, led Henry for a brief while astray. are lowly, loving damsels, and corresIn 1523 Mistress Blount was married to pondingly suitable suitors, who implore Sir Gilbert Taillebois, or Talbot, for the queen's good offices in their behalf. some time Captain or Governor of Calais. Such royal service seems to have been She was then a rare beauty, of sprightly heartily rendered. Margaret had a high character, and accomplished in all outward reverence for the honorable estate of margraces and goodly pastimes. At what riage, and from her willing pen flowed time Dame Taillebois became Countess earnest letters to sires reluctant to yield of Lincoln we are unable to say. We consent, to great personages to aid in only know that she left three daughters furthering the objects of the young peowith their sire, and that the latter found ple, and now and then to a coy maiden a successor to his first wife in the sister dallying with "yes," not willing to say of that infamous Charles Lord Stourton, who was very justly hanged in the market-place of Salisbury for the savage and cowardly murder of a neighbor. This lady was the mother of the lord who Certainly, as late as Elizabeth's days, complained to Burghley of the "hard love-affairs were mingled with those of dealing" of his father's third wife, then state. The parties eager, or sometimes his widow. This widow was the daugh-loth, to wed never dreamed that their ter of Gerald Fitzgerald Earl of Kildare, and niece of that preceding earl who, with five of his uncles, was executed in 1535 for high treason. Such a family party had never before stood together on a scaffold to be disposed of by headsman or hangman; and it was a daughter of this turbulent house of Fitzgerald who rendered the succession of her step-son to the inheritance which he derived from his father, the Earl of Lincoln, as unpleasant to him as she could make it.

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From very old times the kings and queens of England have been mediators in, or managers of, the love-affairs of their subjects. The kings were chiefly managers, in the sense that they were guardians of marriageable ladies, and sold permission to wed, at rather costly prices. The queens were of more womanly purpose; there was heart in what they did. This was especially the case with Margaret of Anjou, in her few happy and untroubled days. Very few letters written by Margaret are extant; but for this there is good reason. The York government made the possession of them a capital crime, and thus the queen's letters were destroyed by their timid owners. Some few addressed to, and preserved by, a bolder spirit have been discovered, and

no," and altogether inflicting pleasing pain on her manly wooer, who has-as she is told-her fair person in worship, and divine behests in reverence.

little matters of the heart would become, three centuries later, social illustrations of the times in which those matters pleased or perplexed them. Thus we find Mr. Secretary Walsyngham beset by correspondents touching a love-affair of young Mr. Knollys. That youth wooed Lady Rivett's daughter, and the queen obtained a promise from my lady that the two should be made one. But her majesty reckoned without the maiden, who had a "perverse disposition," and "by no means could be wrought upon to like of a husband, specially of Mr. Knollys." The good mother deemed her promise to the queen cancelled by this disinclination of her daughter, whose disposition did not break the youth's heart; for, as Mr. Secretary Walsyngham is informed, "Mr. Knollys has therefore changed his mind, and desires to marry her elder sister." He would have Marian the lily, if he could not obtain Flora the rose. Walsyngham, Leicester, and the lady's uncle "John Colton," were all solicited to beseech the queen to allow of this transfer of affection from the indifferent lily to the blushing rose. With what effect, we are not informed.

Walsyngham himself was much troubled in his own household by both Cupid

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