Bess of Hardwick: New perspectives [1 ed.] 1526101297, 9781526101297

Table of contents :
Front matter
Contents
Illustrations
Notes on contributors
Introduction
Bess of Hardwick, a life
Money, marriage and remembrance: telling stories from the Cavendish financial accounts
Bess’s use of language
Upper servants’ letters and loyalties in the Shrewsbury–Stuart domestic politics of the 1580s
Hardwick Hall: building a woman’s house
Elizabeth Hardwick’s material negotiations
Bess of Hardwick’s gynocracy in textiles
A difficult and volatile alliance: the countess of Shrewsbury and the Lady Arbella Stuart
Conclusion
Selected bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Bess of Hardwick

Bess of Hardwick New perspectives

Edited by Lisa Hopkins

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Manchester University Press 2019 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 5261 0129 7 hardback First published 2019 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Contents

List of illustrations Notes on contributors

page vii viii

Introduction 1 Lisa Hopkins 1 Bess of Hardwick, a life Alan Bryson 2 Money, marriage and remembrance: telling stories from the Cavendish financial accounts Alison Wiggins 3 Bess’s use of language Imogen Julia Marcus 4 Upper servants’ letters and loyalties in the Shrewsbury– Stuart domestic politics of the 1580s Felicity Lyn Maxwell 5 Hardwick Hall: building a woman’s house Sara L. French 6 Elizabeth Hardwick’s material negotiations Jessica L. Malay 7 Bess of Hardwick’s gynocracy in textiles Susan Frye 8 A difficult and volatile alliance: the countess of Shrewsbury and the Lady Arbella Stuart Sara Jayne Steen

18 36 78 100 121 142 159 181

vi Contents Conclusion 199 Lisa Hopkins Selected bibliography

201

Index 205

Illustrations

1 Cavendish household financial accounts, 1548–50. Disbursements of Elizabeth Cavendish (known as ‘Bess of Hardwick’) written in her own hand with the page sum added by her husband, Sir William. Folger MS X.d.486, fol 9r. Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 2 Cavendish household financial accounts, 1548–50. Disbursements of Elizabeth Cavendish (known as ‘Bess of Hardwick’); this page features a mixture of entries, both those in her own hand and those in the hand of her husband, Sir William. Folger MS X.d.486, fol 13r. Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 3 Cavendish household financial accounts, 1548–50. Disbursements of Elizabeth Cavendish (known as ‘Bess of Hardwick’) written in her own hand. Folger MS X.d.486, fol 21r. Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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51

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Notes on contributors

Alan Bryson is a Curator of Early Modern Collections at the British Library. He works on the reigns of Henry VIII and his son Edward VI, with a particular interest in relations between the crown and the nobility and gentry. He has written articles and essays on Tudor England and Ireland and co-edited Bess of Hardwick’s Letters (2013), Verse Libel in Renaissance England and Scotland (2016) and a special issue of Huntington Library Quarterly, entitled Early Modern Manuscript Identities (2017). He is writing a monograph on Lordship and the Government of Mid-Tudor England. Sara L. French is Lecturer in Landscape Architecture at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. She holds an MA and PhD in Art and Architectural History from Binghamton University and received her undergraduate degree from Wells College. Her publications include a forthcoming essay, ‘Re-placing gender in Elizabethan gardens’, in Mapping Gendered Routes and Spaces in the Early Modern World; ‘Building gender in(to) the Elizabethan prodigy house’, in Origins of Scientific Learning: Essays on Culture and Knowledge in Early Modern Europe (2007), which she co-edited with biologist Kay Etheridge; and ‘A widow building: Bess of Hardwick at Hardwick Hall’, in Widowhood in Early Modern Europe (2003), edited by Allison Levy. Susan Frye is Professor of English at the University of Wyoming. She is the author of Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation (1999), co-editor with Karen Robertson of Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens,Women’s Alliances in Early Modern England (2010), and author of Pens and Needles: Women’s Textualities in Early Modern England (2010). She is currently at work on a book on the multicultural agency of Mary, Queen of Scots.



Notes on contributors

ix

Lisa Hopkins is Professor of English and Head of Graduate School at Sheffield Hallam University and co-editor of Shakespeare, the journal of the British Shakespeare Society. Her recent publications include Renaissance Drama on the Edge (2014), Drama and the Succession to the Crown, 1561–1633 (2011), Essex: The Cultural Impact of an Elizabethan Courtier, co-edited with Annaliese Connolly (2013) and Goddesses and Queens: The Iconography of Elizabeth I, co-edited with Annaliese Connolly (2007). She is co-editing (with Tom Rutter) a companion to the literary cultures of the Cavendish family. Jessica L. Malay is Professor of Renaissance Literature at the University of Huddersfield. She is editor of Anne Clifford’s Autobiographical Writing (2018) and Anne Clifford’s Great Books of Record (2015), a Leverhulme-funded project. She has also published The Case of Mistress Mary Hampson (2014), an early modern domestic abuse narrative. She has written a number of journal articles on early modern women and culture. Imogen Julia Marcus is Senior Lecturer in English Language at Edge Hill University. She studied English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford before completing an MLitt in English Language at the University of Glasgow. From 2008 to 2012 she was the AHRC-funded PhD student on the Letters of Bess of Hardwick project, based at the University of Glasgow. Her doctoral thesis contributes to the field of historical pragmatics and investigates the discourse marking functions of the lexical features and, so, for and but in a corpus of Bess’s early modern English letters. Felicity Lyn Maxwell is a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow at the National University of Ireland, Galway, where she is writing a monograph on the intellectual correspondence of Dorothy Moore (c. 1612–64). Felicity was previously a postdoctoral researcher on the collaborative project RECIRC: The Reception and Circulation of Early Modern Women’s Writing, 1550–1700, directed by Marie-Louise Coolahan at NUI Galway, and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada-funded doctoral researcher on Alison Wiggins’s Letters of Bess of Hardwick project at the University of Glasgow. Felicity has published articles in Lives & Letters and Literature Compass.. Sara Jayne Steen is President Emerita of Plymouth State University in Plymouth, New Hampshire. She is the author or editor of five books, including The Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart (1994), has served as guest editor of journals such as Shakespeare Quarterly, and has written numerous articles and book chapters on early modern theatre and letters.

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Notes on contributors

Alison Wiggins is Reader in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Glasgow. She currently holds an AHRC Leadership Fellowship for the project Archives and Writing Lives and she was previously Principal Investigator of the AHRC Letters of Bess of Hardwick project. Her monograph Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Language, Materiality and Early Modern Epistolary Culture was published as part of the Material Readings in Early Modern Cultures series (2017) and she has published on editing, digital humanities, Chaucer’s readers and medieval romance.

Introduction Lisa Hopkins

In the mid-seventeenth century Lady Jane Cavendish, daughter of the earl of Newcastle, wrote a poem entitled ‘On my honourable Grandmother Elizabeth Countess of Shrewsbury’.1 It ran as follows: Madam You weare the very Magazine of rich With spirit such & wisdome which did reach All that oppos’d you, for your wealth did teach Our Englands law, soe Lawyers durst not preach Soe was your golden actions, this is true As ever will you live in perfect veiw Your beauty great, & you the very life And onely patterne of a wise, good wife; But this your wisdome, was too short to see Of your three sonns to tell who great should bee Your eldest sonn your riches had for life ’Caus Henry wenches loved more then his wife Your second children had, soe you did thinke On him your great ambition fast to linke Soe William you did make before your Charles to goe Yet Charles his actions hath beene soe Before your Williams sonn doth goe before Thus your great howse is now become the lower And I doe hope, the world shall ever see The howse of Charles before your Williams bee For Charles his William has it thus soe chang’d As William Conquerer hee may well bee named And it is true his sword hath made him great Thus his wise acts will ever him full speak.

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Bess of Hardwick: new perspectives

In both its accuracies and its inaccuracies, this poem offers a neat summation of what was known and thought about Bess of Hardwick during her own lifetime and in the generation or so after her death. In the first place, the title is incorrect: Bess was not Jane’s grandmother but her great-grandmother, since Bess’s son Charles was the father of Jane’s father William (the ‘William Conqueror’ of the last few lines of the poem). For Jane, though, Bess looms larger and more immediate than that: she feels close, and she feels important. The reasons for this importance are soon made apparent: Bess was wealthy, had spirit, and knew how to use the law courts. Not until line 7 of the poem do we hear mention of her appearance, so often the first thing one learns about in the case of an early modern woman, and even when it is mentioned, this is no blazon; the poem moves straight on to Bess’s safe, solid identity as a wife. That does not last long, though, because we pass on almost immediately to Bess’s vast wealth and the question of who should have inherited it, and at this point Jane becomes almost recriminatory as she accuses Bess of lack of discrimination in favouring her middle son William rather than her youngest son Charles, Jane’s grandfather. Jane Cavendish’s pen-portrait of her great-grandmother homes in on all the crucial aspects of Bess’s image during and immediately after her lifetime. If Bess looms large for Jane, that is not surprising, for she undoubtedly was a formidable personality. This was clear throughout her long life (just how long it was is uncertain: Philip Riden provides reasons for thinking that she was born between 1521 and 1524,2 but see Alan Bryson’s chapter in this volume; however, she was definitely an old lady, especially for the times, when she died in 1608). In 1790 Edmund Lodge castigated her as: A woman of masculine understanding and conduct, proud, furious, selfish and unfeeling. She was a builder, a buyer and seller of estates, a moneylender, a farmer and a merchant of lead, coals and timber; when disengaged from those employments, she intrigued alternately with Elizabeth and Mary, always to the prejudice and terror of her husband.3

In 1813 Jane Austen, who sided with Mary, Queen of Scots, seems to have drawn on Bess for the portrait of Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Pride and Prejudice,4 and in our own century the fantasy writer Susanna Clarke presents her as a potential witch: the story called ‘Antickes and frets’ in Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu has Mary, Queen of Scots, held captive at Tutbury Castle, discovering that Bess’s first husband mysteriously died after Bess embroidered him a coat of black and white squares.5 The most vivid indictment of her comes in the many and bitter complaints made against her by her fourth husband,

Introduction 3 George Talbot, sixth earl of Shrewsbury, after the breakdown of their marriage, a process which can probably be traced back to 1568, when Mary, Queen of Scots, was given into the Shrewsburys’ custody and stayed for sixteen years, becoming by the end the houseguest from hell. By 1577 Shrewsbury’s son was commenting that he had often had to keep peace between the couple; by 1582 there was open war, and in 1583 Bess effectively left him. In 1584 Shrewsbury and some of his men attacked Bess’s house at Chatsworth, and at one point he complained to the queen, ‘It were no reason my wife and her servants should rule me and make me the wife and her the husband.’6 In fact, though, the husband is in many respects exactly what Bess was, in both symbolic and practical terms. Olive Cook notes of Hardwick New Hall that ‘Three arms of each of the Greek crosses take the form of immense square towers, at once investing the building with a castle atmosphere,’7 something that one might expect of a male builder rather than a female one. When her brother got into financial difficulties, ‘Bess leased his coal and ore mines’, again something one would more readily expect from a sixteenthcentury man than a sixteenth-century woman, and one of the things she and Shrewsbury fell out over was who should give orders to the household’s servants.8 Bess bought property independently of Shrewsbury, and though Mary Lovell argues that ‘It is clear that what Shrewsbury actually wanted, and believed himself entitled to, was to be rid of Bess, whom he had come to hate, but to keep all the lands and possessions she had brought into the marriage,’ Bess herself implicitly rejected his apparent views when she claimed Shrewsbury owed her money,9 in itself a dramatic and revolutionary statement since not many members of her society would have been capable of thinking that a husband could owe money to a wife. She herself could add up better than some of those who served her and seems to have used a sophisticated form of accounting based on cost centres,10 and she was also actively and purposefully interested in public affairs. James Daybell observes: With the countess of Shrewsbury … one detects a very utilitarian attitude towards news. While news reached her in a continuous stream, it was gathered with particular assiduity at key periods, to serve very specific and practical ends. In this way, her activities in acquiring information and in cultivating useful correspondents more closely resemble those of a government official at the heart of an intelligence network than those of a country gentleman distracted by affairs in the capital.

For Daybell, ‘The correspondence of the countess of Shrewsbury illustrates women’s interest in areas of news traditionally viewed as “male”: parliamentary

4

Bess of Hardwick: new perspectives

business, war, armed rebellions and naval preparations.’11 (Alison Wiggins notes that ‘Bess of Hardwick’s 242 existing letters constitute the largest and most wide-ranging correspondence for a non-royal woman from Tudor England.’)12 If Elizabeth was a female king, Bess was in many ways a female earl. Indeed a posthumous image of Bess openly figures her as male rather than female: Thomas Rogers’s poem Leicester’s Ghost has the dead earl of Leicester (who had been a friend of Bess’s) declare: First I assaid Queene Elsabeth to wedd, Whome diuers princes courted but in vaine, When in this course vnluckely I sped, I sought the Scotts Queens marriage to obteyne, But when I reapt noe profitt of my payne, I sought to match Denbigh my tender child To Dame Arbella, but I was beguild. Euen as Octauius with Mark Anthonie And Lepidus the Roman Empire shard, That of the World then held the Souueraigntie, Soe I a newe Triumvirate prepard, If Death a while yonge Denbies life had spard, The Grandame, Vncle, and the Father in lawe, Might thus haue brought all England vnder awe.13

‘Dame Arbella’ is Bess’s granddaughter, Arbella Stuart, so the ‘Uncle’ is Gilbert Talbot, and the ‘Grandame’ Bess herself, who is thus imagined as either Lepidus, Octavius or Mark Antony, meeting after the assassination of Caesar to seize power for themselves and decide which of their opponents should die. Bess also did business as a man might, particularly after the death of her third husband Sir William St Loe. Mary Lovell, who has done much to shed light on the hitherto rather shadowy figure of St Loe, comments that ‘In the normal course of events a man left everything to the nearest male relative, but Sir William left everything he owned to Bess, and, furthermore, following her death, “to her heirs forever”.’14 Though the will was later contested, the attempt to overturn it was unsuccessful. The affair also underlined the clear fact that one of Bess’s most advantageous roles was as a widow, and indeed the trouble in her fourth marriage began because in many ways she continued to act as if she were still a widow. Jane Cavendish is particularly astute to home in on Bess’s use of the law. She first went to court in her teens to secure her dower from her first marriage

Introduction 5 to Robert Barlow (sometimes spelled Barley),15 and she did so again after the death of William Cavendish even though, as Mary Lovell notes: Few non-royal women of her era – if any – are known to have fought Parliament. And for a recent widow to be in contact with men outside her family for any reason, let alone on business matters, would have been considered unfeminine and immodest. Bess was aware of it, but did not allow it to hinder her decision to keep her husband’s estates intact.16

Throughout her long career Bess demonstrated repeatedly that she knew how to use the legal system and understood how important it was to be able to do so. Above all, Jane is right to stress Bess’s status as a wife. A verse attributed to Horace Walpole runs, Four times the nuptial bed she warm’d, And ev’ry time so well perform’d, That when death spoiled each husband’s billing, He left the widow every shilling.17

It was her career of marriage that made her ‘the very magazine of rich’, not least after the death of her third husband, Sir William St Loe. David Durant estimates her income by 1600 as £20,000 per annum,18 an enormous sum by contemporary standards, and in addition her four marriages took her steadily up the social scale. Her first marriage, to Robert Barlow, ended with the death of her husband on 24 December 1544; it is notable principally for the fact that, as Terry Kilburn has shown, the young bridegroom’s status as a ward made him quite powerless in the matter of his own marriage (and thus helps us to understand that Bess’s ‘bad son’ Henry may have felt similarly manipulated when Bess unceremoniously married him off to Shrewsbury’s daughter Grace, in whom he appears to have had no interest whatsoever).19 In 1547 she married again. This time her husband was the much older Sir William Cavendish, who was the father of all eight of Bess’s children, and Alison Wiggins’s essay here on the account book Bess used during her marriage to him suggests a close and companionate relationship. Cavendish died in 1557, and contrary to Walpole’s verse his death left Bess in a very precarious position financially, because he had been accused of embezzling funds from his government employment. Her third husband was Sir William St Loe, whom she married in 1559 and who died in 1565. He was probably closer in age to Bess and seems to have been in love with her: Alison Wiggins notes that he sent her presents including ‘lemons, olives, cucumbers, frankincense, virginal wire, canvas and the latest fashion in ladies’ headwear, a bongrace’, and he

6

Bess of Hardwick: new perspectives

is the only one of her correspondents to address her as ‘thou’.20 Sir William had been a servant of the young Princess Elizabeth and had kept silent when interrogated by supporters of Queen Mary about her irksome half-sister; this secured him the lasting favour of Elizabeth when she came to the throne in ways which meant that he may well have been Bess’s most useful husband. As Lady St Loe, Bess waited on the queen,21 and Philip Riden argues that: Bess made a great leap in social status in 1547 when, as the daughter of a minor Derbyshire squire and the widow of the son of another, she attracted the attention of a rising civil servant. Twelve years later … she took another step up by marrying into a long-established Somerset landowning family with good connections at court.22

However, St Loe died suddenly in 1565 (Mary Lovell suggests that he was poisoned by his brother Edward), leaving Bess a widow for the third time. Finally in 1567 she married George Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, a marriage which nominally endured until his death in 1590 but in practice came to an end some years before that. The marriage promised well, and a letter written to Bess by her half-sister Elizabeth Wingfield on 21 October 1567 reports the queen as saying, ‘I haue bene glade to se me lady sayntloa but now more dyssirous to se my lady shrewsbury I hope sayd she my lady hath knowne my good opennon of her and thus much I assure there ys no lady y[n] thys land that I beter loue and lyke’.23 However, the relationship ultimately broke down in bitter acrimony, and after this final foray into matrimony Bess remained a widow until her death in 1608. She also remained a countess, a title which seems to have been of considerable importance to her. In Lording Barry’s Ram Alley,William Smallthanks reproaches Taffata, ‘to be a Countesse, / Thou wouldst marry a hedgehog’,24 and in George Chapman’s May-Day, Lodovico’s idea of a good parti is ‘a young gallant in prime of his choicenesse; one that for birth, person and good parts might meritoriously marry a Countesse’.25 The title of countess was clearly one that was highly valued in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England: Lady Anne Clifford achieved the state of countess for both her daughters and was careful to stress this by giving both her sons-in-law their full titles in her diaries, noting of her elder daughter’s marriage, ‘This John Lord Tufton came to bee earle of Thanett about two yeares and two monthes and some fowrtene daies after his marriage with my daughter, by the death of his father Nicholas, Earle of Thanett’, and of her younger’s, ‘in 1647, this youngest daughter of myne was marryed to James Compton Earl of Northampton’.26 Bess achieved

Introduction 7 it with her fourth marriage, and in fact when she married George Talbot, sixth earl of Shrewsbury in 1567 she became not just a countess but the premier countess in England, since Shrewsbury was the premier earl, by virtue of the fact that the earldom of Shrewsbury is the oldest surviving independent creation, dating back to 1442 (that of Chester, which predates it, being granted always in conjunction with the title of prince of Wales, and that of Arundel being held by the dukes of Norfolk).27 In the same year that Bess married Shrewsbury, the third wife of the duke of Norfolk died and he did not take another, though rumours that he might marry Mary, Queen of Scots, were repeatedly commented on in Bess’s correspondence. This left only one surviving duchess in England, the duchess of Suffolk, who lived until 1580; however, she was a friend of Bess’s so her rank is unlikely to have irked, and she had in any case sunk in prestige since her second marriage to a man much lower in rank. Since England’s only surviving marquess, William Paulet, first marquess of Winchester, was a widower, this left Bess, along with Helena Snakenborg, dowager marchioness of Northampton, as effectively second only to the queen in the ranks of the female nobility of England (Lady Northampton took the role of chief female mourner at the funeral of Elizabeth after Bess’s granddaughter Arbella refused it). Moreover, it was a concomitant of the Shrewsbury marriage that Bess’s daughter eventually succeeded her in the title, for as part of the alliance Mary Cavendish, Bess’s daughter by her second husband, married Gilbert Talbot, Shrewsbury’s second son. One of the primary tasks of a countess was to secure the succession to the earldom, and Bess would in fact have thought that she had done that when the death of his elder brother in 1582 left Gilbert as the heir; she was not to know that neither this marriage nor that of her son Henry to Shrewsbury’s daughter Grace would produce surviving male offspring, because ‘Henry wenches loved more then his wife’. Countess was also the title the new Lady Shrewsbury was specifically concerned to secure for her granddaughter Arbella Stuart, who lived with Bess after the death of her mother, Bess’s middle daughter Elizabeth Cavendish, and whose descent from Henry VII (through his elder daughter Margaret, whose daughter Margaret, countess of Lennox, was Arbella’s other grandmother) made her a potential heiress to the throne after the death of Elizabeth. Although Philip II of Spain suggested that Arbella should marry the duke of Parma’s son and Henri IV of France declared that he was willing to marry her himself if she was named heiress presumptive,28 all the efforts made by Bess were aimed solely at achieving the estate of countess for her granddaughter. When

8

Bess of Hardwick: new perspectives

Arbella was still only an infant, her other grandmother Margaret Lennox had tried to secure the earldom of Lennox for her after the death of her father, Margaret’s son, but ‘the Scottish Regent disagreed, responding that the Lennox estates had descended directly to Lord Darnley’s son James [Darnley being the brother of Arbella’s father], and as a consequence were now the property of the Crown of Scotland’. The battle seemed to have been definitively lost when, ‘In May 1578, a few weeks after the funeral of the Dowager Countess, the Lennox title was formally conferred on a brother of the 4th Earl of Lennox, the ageing and childless Bishop of Caithness’, but Bess nevertheless commissioned a miniature of Arbella which shows her ‘wearing a gold chain and shield containing the motto of the old Countess of Lennox – “I endure in order to succeed” ’ and which describes her as ‘Arbella, Countess of Lennox’.29 Arbella herself referred to her Lennox inheritance as ‘an earldom’,30 but countess, it seemed, was the title that mattered to Bess. The titles of both earl and countess were historically important and also carried practical significance. Sarah Gristwood notes, ‘The nobility still attracted to themselves not only troops of lesser men (an earl of Shrewsbury earlier in the century had been able to raise four and a half thousand of his own men), but a satellite horde of client gentry. Many a knight was glad to wear an earl’s livery.’31 If earls were associated with military service, though, countesses had different spheres of influence. Some – most notably Mary Sidney, countess of Pembroke, but also her daughter-in-law Susan Vere, countess of Montgomery – were literary patrons. Some were famous for the way in which they maintained great estates – the countess of Pembroke again, at Wilton, and Barbara Gamage, countess of Leicester, at Penshurst, as fêted in Jonson’s poem ‘To Penshurst’. In Bess’s case, her sphere of interest was houses, and she used them to stress her status. In one of the chambers at Hardwick New Hall ‘two elaborate fireplaces … celebrate the two daughters who achieved places amongst the peerage, Mary, Countess of Shrewsbury, and Elizabeth, Countess of Lennox. It is clear that Bess put enormous value on the acquisition of a coronet and the social power that goes with it’. Similarly in the heraldic plasterwork of the ‘Shipp bed chamber’, ‘precedence on the top line is given to the three members of the family who achieved countesses’ coronets, Bess herself, represented by the Hardwick arms alone, and Mary and Elizabeth represented by their married arms’, even though, as Gillian White points out, neither of these women was heiress of Hardwick;32 indeed Elizabeth had been dead since 1582, but Bess had worked hard for her title – she had rather riskily connived at Elizabeth becoming countess of Lennox by throwing her

Introduction 9 into the company of the young earl and his manipulative mother – and clearly did not intend it to be forgotten. The status of countess also brought with it privileges both tangible and intangible. Sumptuary laws allowed duchesses, marchionesses and countesses to wear cloth of gold, tissue, and sable fur, and there were also special regulations for gentlewomen attendant upon duchesses, marchionesses and countesses. While it would obviously be absurd to say that Bess could not have achieved what she did without the rank of countess – for one thing, she would never have risen to be a countess in the first place if she had been wholly dependent on title – the attainment of the position was nevertheless of service to her, and she clung to its trappings even in death. Mark Girouard notes that the 1587 directions for the funeral of an earl require the coffin to be shrouded in black velvet;33 Bess’s coffin was draped in black velvet and she lay in state for over two months.34 The effigy on her tomb has a coronet, as too do her initials, ‘ES’ for Elizabeth Shrewsbury, proudly displayed above Hardwick. (Another result of Bess’s many marriages was many names: she went from Elizabeth Hardwick to Elizabeth Barlow to Elizabeth Cavendish to Elizabeth St Loe to Elizabeth Talbot, countess of Shrewsbury, though the essays in this collection refer to her most often as Bess of Hardwick or simply Bess.) A countess could also expect to be painted, not least in recognition of her dynastic importance. Barbara Gamage, countess of Leicester, stands among her six children; her aunt by marriage Lettice Knollys, countess first of Essex and then of Leicester, flaunts her family resemblance to Elizabeth I. Bess of Hardwick is no exception, and in her case what is prominent in pictures painted after her marriage to Shrewsbury is the (expensive) black cloth and the way it acts as backdrop for either a long and magnificent string of pearls or a gold chain which accentuates the countess’s coronet on her head. This is a marked change from the iconography of her earlier portraiture, where the jewellery is far less noteworthy. Other elements of the iconography connected with Bess, in the shape of the interior decoration of Hardwick New Hall, also stressed her rank. Gillian White points out: Shrewsbury seems to have been banished from Bess’s sense of identity except for one vital detail: Bess’s Hardwick arms are topped by a countess’s coronet. In strict terms this makes a nonsense of the rules of heraldry since it is not the Hardwick name which makes Bess a countess and she is not a peeress in her own right, but as a message to the world it is clear and unambiguous. Bess is proud to be a Hardwick and proud to be a countess. Her choice of arms, however, also carries a third message. By choosing to emphasise her paternal arms, Bess makes no mention of her children and those who will succeed her.35

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Bess of Hardwick: new perspectives

It is sometimes suggested that Hardwick New Hall might have been conceived as a palace for Bess’s granddaughter Arbella and a showcasing of her royal pretensions, but in Arbella’s own room, though the arms of Talbot and Hardwick are displayed under one coronet and those of her parents under another, there is no symbol personal to Arbella herself.36 As Sara French points out in her chapter in this volume, though, there are Cavendish stags on prominent display throughout the house, and these do remind the viewer of Bess’s posterity. Of Bess’s four marriages, only the second, to Sir William Cavendish, produced children, eight in total, though only six survived. Her eldest daughter Frances, born in 1548, married Sir Henry Pierrepont; their descendants became dukes of Kingston-upon-Hull. Frances was probably named after Bess’s friend and patron Lady Frances Grey, mother of the Ladies Jane, Catherine and Mary Grey, in whose household Bess had served (she kept a picture of Lady Jane in her bedroom throughout her life, and Arbella noted in passing that they also had samples of Lady Jane’s handwriting at Hardwick New Hall, presumably in the form of letters). Bess’s second child, Temperance, lived only a year; Mary Lovell suggests that her name might have been inspired by Edward VI’s nickname for his sister Elizabeth,37 but Susan Frye points out that Temperance was Bess’s favourite virtue, and Alison Wiggins observes the fittingness of the name to Bess’s financial circumstances at the time. Her third child, Henry (born in 1550), probably named after Frances Grey’s husband, lived to become ‘my bad son Henry’, while the fourth, William (born in 1552), was Bess’s favourite child, who inherited Hardwick and ultimately Chatsworth and became earl of Devonshire. The next, Charles (born 1553), Jane Cavendish’s grandfather, built Bolsover Little Castle after buying the lease from his brother-in-law (and best friend) Gilbert Talbot and laid the foundations for his son William to become earl and later duke of Newcastle. Elizabeth, who followed in 1555, was the mother of Lady Arbella Stuart. The last surviving child, Mary, born in 1556, married Shrewsbury’s son Gilbert Talbot and eventually succeeded her mother as countess of Shrewsbury. Another daughter, Lucrece, Bess’s last child, did not survive, but her name, like that of Temperance, is an interesting indication of the interest in symbols and iconography which was increasingly emerging in Bess’s needlework projects. Bess did what she could to found fortunes for all these children. For her daughters she sought titles; to her sons she allotted houses. Jane’s poem uses the idea of the house metaphorically, to refer to the founding of a family rather than the construction of an edifice, but building

Introduction 11 was of course the final, hugely important part of Bess’s public persona. She always knew the value of land. David Durant notes of the Lennox earldom, ‘the title became a prize to be fought for by Bess on her daughter’s behalf, not for the sake of the title itself but for the lands that went with it’ and that ‘By 1584 she was said to have bought lands for William at a cost of £15,900, whilst Charles was apportioned only £8,800-worth: a total of £24,700 invested in land over a period of twelve years, bringing in an income of £1500.’38 Above all, though, she wanted land for building. Sarah Gristwood notes that Bess had supposedly ‘been told in a prophecy that she would never die while she continued her life’s great work of building’, which was proved true when in the winter before her death the mortar froze at her final project of Oldcotes.39 She was responsible for reshaping the sixteenth-century version of Chatsworth (unrecognisable now after substantial remodelling in the seventeenth century but still commemorated in a painting in the house), and was so closely associated with it that Sir William St Loe addressed her as ‘my sweet Chatsworth’. She rebuilt Hardwick Old Hall, where she had been born, and a newer house at Oldcotes. Above all, she built Hardwick New Hall, the great surviving jewel of the late Elizabethan period. Jane is also right to identify acrimony as a part of Bess’s legacy. Towards the end of her life, her relationship with her granddaughter Arbella Stuart broke down completely; in her instructions to her servant John Doddridge on making contact with the earl of Hertford, whose grandson she hoped to marry, Arbella wrote bitterly that ‘my Grandmother [will] be the first shall advertise and complaine to the Queene’.40 Bess also quarrelled so badly with her eldest son Henry Cavendish that he became for her simply ‘my bad son Henry’. Even before that, life in the Shrewsbury household was by no means trouble-free. As long ago as 1937 it was suggested that the playwright Christopher Marlowe was the person meant in Bess’s letter to Lord Burghley on 21 September 1592 describing how: On Morley who hath attended on Arbell & red to hyr for the space of thre yere & a half shoed to be much discontented since my retorn into ye cuntry, in saying he had lyued in hope, to haue som annuitie graunted him by Arbell out of hyr land during hys lyfe, or some lease of grounds to ye value of forty pound a yere, alledging yat he was so much damnified by leuing of ye vniuersitie. & now saw yat if she were wyllinge yet not of abylitye to make him any such assurance. I vnderstanding by dyuers yat Morley was so much discontented, & withall of late hauing some cause to be dobtfull of his forwardnes in religion (though I can not charge him with papistry) toke occasion to parte with him after he was gone from my howse and all hys stuff caried from hence, the next

12

Bess of Hardwick: new perspectives

day he retorned ageyn, very importunate to serue, without standinge vppon any recompence, which made me more suspicious & ye wyllinger to parte with hym.41

Various objections have been made to the proposed identification on the grounds that Christopher Marlowe is known to have been elsewhere for some of the relevant period, but Sarah Gristwood has pointed out that so too were some known members of Bess’s household: she observes, ‘There are, in fact, no certain records of Marlowe being in the south when Bess and her family weren’t in town,’ though she concludes that ‘The identification is a possibility; no more than that,’42 as too does Charles Nicholl: ‘On internal evidence it is possible – not convincingly probable, but possible – that Arbella Stuart’s tutor, who attended on her and read to her, and whose “stuff ” was carted away in September 1592, was Christopher Marlowe.’43 Much attention has been paid to what the possible implications of this might be from the point of view of those interested in Marlowe, but rather less from the point of view of those interested in Bess. What it shows us, though, is that Bess was spied on, and knew it. Shrewsbury, refusing to employ some of the former servants of Bess’s late daughter Elizabeth Lennox, complained that ‘I have too many spies in my house already,’44 and one of Arbella’s letters to her uncle Gilbert Talbot informs him that ‘My olde good spy mr. James Mourray desireth his service may be remembred to your Lordship and my Aunt’.45 There were spies in the household for two reasons: because Arbella had a potential claim to the throne, and because Shrewsbury was for many years the custodian of the queen’s cousin, rival and political prisoner Mary, Queen of Scots, who grew to hate Bess and did whatever she could to foment trouble in the Shrewsbury marriage. Bess and her family were under constant observation, and knew that they were, and there were also times when Bess’s magnificent houses functioned as prisons as much as homes, with Mary, Queen of Scots, kept under close guard in Sheffield, Chatsworth and Tutbury, and Arbella physically prevented from leaving Hardwick. Spies were not the only dangers and inconveniences against which Bess had to contend. Indeed the very title of countess was potentially troubling. The Insatiate Countess, a play often attributed to John Marston but in which various playwrights seem in fact to have been involved, hints at a sly pun on ‘count’/‘cunt’, echoing the logic of Ralegh’s ‘Guiana is a Countrey that hath yet her Maydenhead’46 and of Hamlet’s ‘Did you think I meant country matters?’.47 The opening lines of the play are ‘What should we do in this Countess’s dark hole? … what should we unruly members make here?’.48 The lurking potential pun might well lend an edge to the fact that arguably

Introduction 13 Bess’s greatest achievement, the construction of Hardwick Hall, both celebrates and sanitises the feminine. Quite apart from the prominence of Bess’s initials, both the long gallery and the flat roof were expressly designed for the convenience of women, who could take exercise without leaving the house. There is also, though, a conspicuous emphasis on the upper bodily stratum: the windows grow larger on each successive storey, forcing the eye upwards, almost as if we were literally being forced to dwell on higher matters in the hope that we might do so metaphorically too. No woman could be too careful of her reputation, and Bess was no exception. In her case, she might have been potentially tainted by association by the fact that her sister Alice was unfaithful to her husband; it was in fact the marital breakdown precipitated by this which eventually led to the sale of Chatsworth to Bess and her second husband Sir William Cavendish. In addition, Henry Jackson, a former tutor of her sons, slandered Bess in some way, perhaps sexually; later, Shrewsbury alleged that when he married her, her name was a ‘byword’.49 Bess herself probably sexually slandered Mary, Queen of Scots, who in turn alleged that Bess had sexually slandered Elizabeth, though when Bess’s fourth marriage broke down the bishop of Coventry and Lichfield reminded Shrewsbury that she had never been suspected of adultery.50 Bess’s main defence of her own image lay in iconography. It is suggestive that Bess called her youngest daughter Lucrece, after the famously chaste Roman heroine Lucrecia, and notable too that ‘there is a distinct facial resemblance in the faces of Zenobia and Penelope to a portrait of Bess made soon after she became Countess of Shrewsbury’.51 Penelope would become particularly useful in the context of the Shrewsbury marriage in that she ruled a household and managed for twenty years without a husband. Alison Wiggins, noting that in all her letters to Shrewsbury ‘Bess presented herself through the trope of the ideal Renaissance wife: patient, obedient, dutiful and unfailingly loyal to her husband,’ cites in this context Bess’s ‘precise and sustained identification’ with Penelope. The association with Penelope could be a double-edged sword, though: in 1584 Shrewsbury turned the mythological tables on his irksome wife by declaring, ‘Your letter … carrying so faire and vnaccustomed shewe of dutifulness & humilyte of spirit commeth now so late and so out of season that makes me suspect it to be a Sirens songe set for some other purpose then it pretendeth’.52 There are some things Jane Cavendish does not understand about her great-grandmother. At the emotional heart of Jane’s poem lies continuing bitterness about who got what of Bess’s Derbyshire estates, but Bess was a woman of much wider connections and interests than just Derbyshire ones. Her second and third husbands both spent time in Ireland; her houseguest

14

Bess of Hardwick: new perspectives

Mary had lived in France and Scotland; and her ‘bad son’ Henry travelled to Constantinople. Susan Frye evocatively suggests in her chapter here that ‘in the staged space of her hanging … the interior of Elizabethan Chatsworth overlapped the borders of ancient Syria, Arabia, and Egypt’, and Durant notes: ‘The 1601 inventory of Hardwick … shows a number of Turkish carpets which may have been brought back by Henry and his party, and two carpets still in the Long Gallery today date from the sixteenth century: one, a Persian woven for Shah Abbas, was commonly placed beside his throne and on it a black cheetah’.53 Bess is often criticised for having built no library at Hardwick, but nevertheless she was a woman of the Renaissance, and she knew that she was. As Sara Jayne Steen observes, (and as Susan Frye discusses here) one of the Hardwick panels depicted Faith with Mahomet at her feet,54 showing a far from parochial understanding of the world. Jerry Brotton notes: By 1601 … Bess … had amassed a collection of oriental embroidery, tapestry and needlework of a quality and size to rival those of Leicester and Lumley … It included forty-six ‘Turkey carpets’, as well as a remarkable set of three large embroidered wall hangings depicting personifications of the cardinal virtues and their opposites, dating from the 1580s. The first showed Hope triumphing over Judas, the second Temperance prevailing over Sardanapalus (to whom [John de] Cardenas compared al-Mansur), while the final hanging shows Faith subduing her contrary, the ‘unfaithful’ Mahomet.

Brotton observes that Bess ‘wanted to display her wealth by acquiring expensive and elaborately crafted Turkish rugs and carpets, but she also wanted to show off her Christian piety’.55 Bess’s most exotic connection was of course Mary, Queen of Scots, who had been queen of France as well as of Scotland, and who was Shrewsbury’s prisoner from 1569 to 1584, with only short breaks in between. Relations between Mary and Bess were initially friendly, helped by a shared interest in needlework, but soured dramatically, with Bess accusing Mary of an affair with Shrewsbury and Mary accusing Bess of making malicious remarks about the queen (a serious charge). Mary seems to have been particularly affronted by Bess’s plans for Arbella. Charles Stuart, earl of Lennox, Elizabeth Cavendish’s husband, was the brother of Mary’s second husband Darnley, so that Bess’s daughter shared a mother-in-law with the Scots queen, and the little Arbella posed an even greater threat to the previously unique status of Mary and her son, since the royal blood of England flowed in her veins too. Although fond of the child, Mary was always anxious to insist on her own royal status and presumably had no wish for a rival, and in some ways Arbella was to her

Introduction 15 what she herself was to Elizabeth – a younger, still marriageable alternative. Perhaps it was at least partly as a result of this that the relationship between Bess and Mary ended in hatred and recrimination. Nevertheless, the long years of Mary’s captivity connected Bess to the wider world in multiple ways and made Chatsworth, Sheffield Castle and other Shrewsbury properties (though never Hardwick New Hall because building did not commence until after Mary’s death) political centres and potentially quasi-courts as well as family homes. Bess was not just Jane Cavendish’s great-grandmother and the founder of the Cavendish dynasty; she was also a political figure and a pioneer of female self-fashioning. The essays in this collection illuminate those aspects of Bess’s personality and achievements of which Jane was aware, and also those which she omitted. Alan Bryson’s account of Bess’s life reveals both some ways in which she is normative for Tudor aristocratic women and others in which she was exceptional. Alison Wiggins describes her essay as ‘an exercise in pragmaphilology’ and traces Bess’s importance as ‘matriarchivist’; she examines what account books can tell us, while Imogen Marcus sheds light on Bess’s character through analysis of her letters, illuminating broader aspects of female literacy in the process, and Felicity Maxwell looks at the loyalties of Bess’s and Shrewsbury’s servants. Jessica Malay, Sara French and Susan Frye all consider various aspects of Bess’s crowning achievement, Hardwick New Hall, and finally Sara Jayne Steen writes about Arbella, the granddaughter around whom so many of Bess’s hopes revolved. Collectively, these essays reveal Bess as both extraordinary in her own right and as central to the founding of an extraordinary family. Notes 1 Jane Cavendish, ‘On my honourable Grandmother Elizabeth Countess of Shrewsbury’, in Early Modern Women’s Manuscript Poetry, edited by Jill Seal Millman and Gillian Wright (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), p. 92. 2 Mary Lovell argues that Bess probably moved into Hardwick on 4 October 1597 because that was her seventieth birthday, giving a birthdate of 1527 (Bess of Hardwick: First Lady of Chatsworth (London: Abacus, 2006), p. 427). However, see Philip Riden, ‘Bess of Hardwick and the St Loe inheritance’, in Essays in Derbyshire History Presented to Gladwyn Turbutt, edited by Philip Riden and David G. Edwards (Chesterfield: Derbyshire Record Society, 2006), pp. 80–106, at p. 97, n. 3. 3 Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History (1790), cited in Mark Girouard, Hardwick Hall (London: National Trust, 1989), p. 1. 4 See Lisa Hopkins, ‘Jane Austen and Bess of Hardwick’, Notes and Queries, 249 (June 2004), p. 134.

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Bess of Hardwick: new perspectives

5 Susanna Clarke, The Ladies of Grace Adieu (London: Bloomsbury, 2006). As I write there is also news of a forthcoming film about Mary, Queen of Scots, in which Gemma Chan will play Bess, and Kevin Fegan’s play Bess: the Commoner Queen is about to open in Derby. 6 Sarah Gristwood, Arbella: England’s Lost Queen (London: Bantam, 2003), p. 63. 7 Olive Cook, The English Country House (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974), p. 85. 8 Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 231 and 271. 9 Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 304, 308 and 332. 10 Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 391 and 371. 11 James Daybell, ‘ “Suche newes as on the Quenes hye wayes we have mett”: the news and intelligence networks of Elizabeth Talbot, countess of Shrewsbury (c. 1527–1608)’, in Women and Politics in Early Modern England, 1450–1700, edited by James Daybell (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 114–31, at pp. 122 and 127. 12 Alison Wiggins, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Language, Materiality and Early Modern Epistolary Culture (London: Routledge, 2017), p. 2. 13 Thomas Rogers, Leicester’s Ghost, edited by Franklin B. Williams, Jr (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), p. 45. 14 Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, p. 168. 15 Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 26–7. 16 Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, p. 110. 17 Cited in Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, p. xiv. 18 David N. Durant, Bess of Hardwick: Portrait of an Elizabethan Dynast (London and Chester Springs: Peter Owen, 1977), p. 182. 19 Terry Kilburn, ‘The wardship and marriage of Robert Barley, first husband of “Bess of Hardwick” ’, Derbyshire Archaeological Journal, 134 (2014); addendum 136 (2016). 20 Wiggins, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Language, Materiality, p. 15. 21 Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 132–3 and 148–9. 22 Riden, ‘Bess of Hardwick and the St Loe inheritance’, p. 105. 23 Elizabeth Wingfield to Bess of Hardwick, 21 October [1567], online at www.bessofhardwick.org/letter.jsp?letter=96 (accessed 12 June 2018). 24 Lording Barry, Ram-Alley (London: G. Eld for Robert Wilson, 1611), sig. F4r. 25 George Chapman, May-Day (London: William Stansby for George Browne, 1611), sig. C2r. 26 D. J. H. Clifford, ed., The Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1990), pp. 88 and 96. Martin Holmes notes that Lady Anne would not marry her younger daughter to Pembroke’s younger son and that her Great Picture shows both her mother’s two sisters and her father’s two sisters, all four of them countesses (Martin Holmes, Proud Northern Lady (Chichester: Phillimore & Co., 1975), pp. 132–3). 27 The earldom of Arundel was briefly separated from the dukedom of Norfolk after the execution of the fourth duke for intriguing with Mary, Queen of Scots.

Introduction 17

28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

49 50 51 52 53 54 55

Bess’s granddaughter Alathea Talbot, daughter of Bess’s youngest daughter Mary, married Norfolk’s grandson and became the countess of Arundel. Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 352 and 405. Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 260, 276 and 278. Gristwood, Arbella, p. 210. Gristwood, Arbella, p. 47. Gillian White, ‘ “that which is needful and necessary”: the nature and purpose of the original furnishings and decoration of Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Warwick, 2005, pp. 195 and 196. Mark Girouard, Life in the English Country House (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980), p. 90. Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, p. 471. White, ‘ “that which is needful and necessary” ’, pp. 188–9. White, ‘ “that which is needful and necessary” ’, p. 194. Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, p. 64. Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 89 and 113. Gristwood, Arbella, p. 313. Sara Jayne Steen (ed.), The Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 120. Bess of Hardwick to Lord Burghley, 21 September 1592, online at www.bessofhardwick.org/letter.jsp?letter=163 (accessed 12 June 2018). Gristwood, Arbella, pp. 459 and 461. Charles Nicholl, The Reckoning:The Murder of Christopher Marlowe (London: Jonathan Cape, 1992), p. 341. Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, p. 299. Steen, Letters, pp. 208–9. Walter Ralegh, The Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana, edited by Neil L. Whitehead (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), p. 196. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, edited by Harold Jenkins (London: Methuen, 1982), III.ii.115. William Barksted and Lewis Machin, The Insatiate Countess, in Four Jacobean Sex Tragedies, edited by Martin Wiggins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), I.i.1–4. See Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 67 and 197–8. Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 303, 314 and 362. Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, p. 221. Wiggins, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Language, Materiality, pp. 74 and 77. Durant, Bess of Hardwick, p. 154. Steen, Letters, p. 26. Jerry Brotton, This Orient Isle [2016] (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2017), pp. 211 and 212.

1

Bess of Hardwick, a life Alan Bryson

Elizabeth hardwick was probably born no earlier than spring 1527 at Hardwick Hall in the parish of Ault Hucknall in Derbyshire.1 She was one of six surviving children of John Hardwick (1495/6–1528) and his wife, Elizabeth (1499/1500–70x73), who was from nearby Hasland. Both parents were gentry, and the Hardwick family had held land in eastern Derbyshire since the thirteenth century. At the end of his life John owned over 500 acres worth £20 14s 4d a year, most of it around Hardwick itself, with about 100 acres at Morton in Lincolnshire. This was a modest increase on what his father and namesake left him in 1507, but included a jointure to his mother Amy (d. after 1527), who was remarried.2 It was enough to ensure the family’s social position within the parish but not John’s own appointment as justice of the peace (JP), with the wider recognition of gentle status that this guaranteed. It was also enough to let him make minor renovations to the Hall in the early 1520s.3 When he died in late January 1528, even though he had employed feoffees to use in an effort to avoid it, all his land held by knight’s service came under the control of the office of wards because his son and heir James Hardwick (1525–80/1) was a minor. James thus became a ward of the crown until he came of age in 1546.4 Despite this, his mother Elizabeth secured just over half of the Hardwick property, while half of the remainder was leased to the clerk of the court of chancery who had administered the case.5 Though now in more straitened circumstances, the family was not impoverished, and such situations were expected and prepared for by crown tenants-in-chief. John also left enough money for his daughters – they were Dorothy, Mary, Jane, Alice and Elizabeth – to marry well, while his widow herself remarried once her mourning was over, to Ralph Leche (d. 1549) of Chatsworth, thirteen miles away in central Derbyshire. The couple had three



Bess of Hardwick, a life

19

daughters: another Elizabeth, Jane and Margaret Leche, who all married surprisingly well.6 Although Leche’s own income from leases and rents made good the losses caused by John’s death, he ran into financial difficulties towards the end of the 1530s and began pledging manors as security in return for loans from men such as Sir Ralph Dodmere of London – loans he was then unable to repay. It was alleged that, to try to get himself out of this situation, he had forged leases to several tenements in the Derbyshire and Staffordshire manors of Ashbourne, Handsacre and Wirksworth, and fraudulently conveyed the Derbyshire manor of Calver and land in Bakewell to himself instead of to his ward, William Leigh of Eckington. Leche spent time in the Fleet prison in London before settling his debts by selling some of his leases and lands in about 1545.7 His predicament put a strain on his marriage and Elizabeth Leche sued him in chancery for desertion, claiming she had been left dependent on the charity of friends as a result.8 The first surviving reference to Elizabeth Hardwick as Bess appears to date to 1549–50, written in her own hand in her account book; and at about Easter 1550 her second husband, Sir William Cavendish, called her his ‘Good Besse’ in a letter to her.9 Her mother-in-law Lady Margaret St Loe probably had her in mind too, when around summer 1560 she mentioned a ‘leter or token from Besse Sayntloo’.10 It is how we remember her today: Bess of Hardwick. The earliest surviving likeness of her, a panel painting dating to about 1560, depicts her as having an aquiline face, curly red hair and blue eyes. Bess was charismatic, confident and energetic, with a winning personality. But she was also insinuating, assertive, grasping and ultimately manipulative and controlling. Bess married before 28 May 1543. Her parents had been struggling with substantial debts for several years, and she described how her mother was ‘very poor and not able to relieve herself[,] much less’ Bess, at this time.11 Her husband was Robert Barlow (1530–44), the son and heir of Arthur Barlow (1506/7–43). It was a very good match because, although kin with land nearby, the Barlow family was substantially wealthier and more important in Derbyshire society than her own.12 The couple perhaps married for love, albeit Arthur Barlow probably wanted to avoid the full weight of wardship falling on his heir after he died, something that could be prevented if Robert was married at the time. Bess herself recounted how their wedding took place when she was ‘but of tender [yeres]’, and one of her earliest biographers (Jane Cavendish’s stepmother) said that Robert Barlow ‘died before they were bedded together, they being both very young’.13 This was probably true because he was only fourteen at his death on 24 December 1544. Bess then had to

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Bess of Hardwick: new perspectives

fight in chancery before obtaining her portion of the widow’s third (having sued unsuccessfully for more) out of the Derbyshire manors and lands of Barlow, Barlow Lees, Dunston, Dronfield and Holmesfield.14 Bess was now a widow of independent means, with control over an annual income of roughly £24 (although she had to wait until 1553 before all the lawsuits were settled in her favour). At 2 a.m. on 20 August 1547 she married Sir William Cavendish (1508–57) at Bradgate in Leicestershire. He himself recorded the event in his commonplace book: ‘m[emoran]d[um] that I was maried to Elizabeth Hardwick my third wyfe’.15 If Bess’s first marriage was out of the ordinary, her second was remarkable. The youngest son of Sir Thomas Cavendish (d. 1524) of Cavendish in Suffolk and his first wife Alice (d. 1515), William had made his own way in the world, beginning when he entered the service of Thomas Cromwell in the early 1530s. In 1536 he was appointed auditor of the newly created court of augmentations, surveying the monasteries and nunneries for the crown in preparation for their dissolution. He spent two years in Ireland from 1540 to 1542 as a commissioner to take the accounts of the vice-treasurer and receiver.16 He was highly praised for this service, with the lord deputy of Ireland writing to Henry VIII in May 1542 petitioning to have him sent back again in order to finish surveying the ex-monastic land. Cavendish had: t[aken] grete paynes at his being here[,] awell w[i]th contynewall paynes aboute the saide ac[c]ompt[e]s and Surveis[,] as in taking very paynfull Iorneys aboute the same as to Lymerike and those p[a]rties where I thinke none of your highnes inglisshe Co[m]mission[e]rs cam this meny yeris and in suche wether of Snowe and froste that I neu[e]r roode in the like to my remembrance. And I note him to be suche a man as letill ferythe the displeasure of any man in yo[u]r highnes sarvice[,] wherfore I accompte him the meter man.17

He was appointed treasurer of the chamber in early 1546, bringing him into the court, returned as the senior MP for Thirsk in the North Riding of Yorkshire in the 1547 parliament, and became wealthy through his crown service, buying the manor of Northaw in Hertfordshire in 1540, for example. Cavendish was convivial and generous, able and resourceful, but greedy and corrupt. By the time of his marriage to Bess, Cavendish was well connected at court and with some of the most powerful men and women in the realm. In fact, their wedding took place in the home of two such individuals, Henry Grey, third marquess of Dorset, and his wife Frances. Dorset was third among the lay peerage in the order of precedence and one of the richest men in England,



Bess of Hardwick, a life

21

while Frances and their children were of even higher status, being of the blood royal. Cavendish himself was one of the senior gentry of Hertfordshire. We do not know how Bess was connected with any of them, but she was close enough to the marchioness to receive signs of favour, including the gift of an agate ring.18 At least one biographer has speculated that she was in service to the Grey family but there is no evidence for this and it seems unlikely, considering their difference in rank.19 However it came about, her union with Cavendish was a happy one, with eight children born between 1548 and 1557. Six of them survived childhood: Frances (b. 1548, d. after 1629), Henry (1550–1616), William (1551–1626), Charles (1553–1617), Elizabeth (1555–82) and Mary (1556–1632).20 One reason for the continuing close association between the Grey and Cavendish families was religion: William and Bess, like the marquess and marchioness, were evangelicals.This might also explain both of Bess’s marriages, if Barlow was evangelical too, especially as co-religionists would have been thin on the ground in 1540s Derbyshire.21 Signal evidence of how far she had risen in society comes from the choice of godparents for the baptisms of her children: these included the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, John Dudley, duke of Northumberland, Katherine Brandon, duchess of Suffolk, the marquess and marchioness of Dorset and their daughter Lady Jane Grey, and William Herbert, first earl of Pembroke. On 10 June 1549 Francis Talbot, fifth earl of Shrewsbury and Waterford, stood godfather to Bess’s second child Temperance (1549–50).22 One wonders, was his heir George, Lord Talbot, present on this occasion? Cavendish and Bess lived mainly in London and at Northaw in Hertfordshire. They worked closely together, as when he wrote to her, asking that she pay for oats he had bought from one Otwell Alan: ‘yow knowe my Store [of money] and therefore I haue appoyntyd hym to haue it at yo[u]r hand[e]s’.23 They lived well, but within their means at first, and spent their money on gold and silver plate, jewellery, silk, satin, velvet, lace and linen, and on entertaining their friends and relatives, as well as the great and the good, while enjoying gambling, hunting and hawking. Bess embroidered.24 She could also be generous to servants and to the poor and needy, as when she gave her stepdaughter Katherine Cavendish’s nurse five shillings ‘to by har chylde a cote’ or paid four pence during a visit to Bradgate to ‘a pore man that … wrought yn the gardyn’.25 Cavendish appears to have drunk heavily.26 On 31 December 1549 Cavendish and Bess bought the manors of Chatsworth and Cromford and other land in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire for only £600, which was one of the best bargains they ever struck.27 In spring 1552

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Bess of Hardwick: new perspectives

they started building a large courtyard house there, influenced by the new classical style of Somerset Place in Westminster in Middlesex, with its symmetrical and well-proportioned main façade. It took thirty years to complete Chatsworth to Bess’s satisfaction, and she lived on site for long periods overseeing the work and moving into the house itself as soon as possible.28 The couple added further to their estate during the 1550s, buying large amounts of land in Derbyshire at Ashford, Baslow, Chatsworth, Edensor and elsewhere.29 The Cavendish family was now the wealthiest in Edensor parish and among the senior gentry of Derbyshire, and William Cavendish’s status or ‘worship’ was acknowledged by his appointment as JP for the county in 1554. To pay for it all, in June 1552 Cavendish exchanged most of his other property with Edward VI in return for the Derbyshire manors of Meadow Place, Blackwell, Pentrich and Oakerthorpe, Butterley, Blackwall and Doveridge, Tutbury Priory and its Staffordshire and Derbyshire lands, as well as pockets of land scattered elsewhere over much of England, and settled his estate jointly on Bess and himself as a precaution against wardship, in case he should die before his heir Harry came of age.30 Yet, his income of £773 6s 8d was no longer enough to maintain their lifestyle or building work, so he embezzled from the crown. This caught up with him when his accounts were audited in summer and autumn 1557 and found to be at least £5,237 5s in deficit, for which he was liable. By then he was too ill to attend the court of star chamber to explain himself in person, pleaded poverty (‘as for goods or redy monye [he had] very lytle’), blamed a colleague and begged for clemency.31 Luckily, he was permitted to repay the debt rather than suffer confiscation or imprisonment, leaving his lands in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire to be inherited by his heir Harry.32 Cavendish died on 25 October 1557, at which point his widow wrote the last entry in his commonplace book, recording his death and reflecting, ‘I most humbly becech the lord to haue mercy and to rydd me and his pore chyldren out of our great mysery’.33 The following February she turned to his friend Sir John Thynne of Longleat in Wiltshire, petitioning him to use his influence in parliament to prevent a bill from being passed against Mary I’s debtors, which she felt targeted her in particular: ‘and yt passe yt wyll not only ondo me and my poore Chylderyn but agreat nomber of hotheres’, she said. Thynne turned to his friends and allies in government and parliament on Bess’s behalf, among them the privy councillor Sir John Mason, who reassured him that, ‘if the act passe towchinge my Lady Cauendisshe itt shall be agay[n]st my will’.34 Despite this, she was pursued for the money by the exchequer until her third husband Sir William St Loe compounded with the



Bess of Hardwick, a life

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crown in August 1563 for £1,000 and had a release and pardon for the remainder. He seems to have paid for both the composition and for the release and pardon out of his own pocket.35 On 27 August 1559 Bess married Sir William St Loe (d. 1565), heir to Sir John St Loe (1500/1–59) of Sutton Court in Somerset and his wife, Margaret (d. after 1566). She perhaps knew him through Thynne, who was a friend and fellow evangelical. St Loe came from the senior gentry of Somerset, was a wealthy and successful soldier, and one of Elizabeth I’s most trusted servants and captain of the guard. About forty at the time, he was well educated, intelligent, charming, active and generous.36 ‘A man of grett hope: whose hardy, painfull, discrett, chargeable, and co[n]tynuall, good service’ was commended by the lord deputy of Ireland, St Loe could be ruthless, as when he defeated Gaelic Irish rebels in late summer 1548, having ‘sought there fast plac[e]s, whear he fownde such praye as they had & killid vere many of theyr folowers, and slavis wiche caried theyr vitayles, and vsid them with suche like, as they had begon wyth vs before’.37 He seems to have been haunted by what he had seen and done in Ireland, finding great comfort in his new wife.38 The marriage brought Bess into court for the first time. In 1560 she was named a supernumerary gentlewoman of the privy chamber.39 This small group of noble and gentlewomen were Elizabeth I’s closest servants and companions. Among other duties, they carried out body service within the privy and bed chambers, their intimacy and physical contact with Elizabeth transferring some of her numen or ‘semi-sacred authority’ to them, thus consolidating the religious and social relationship between the monarchy and its subjects and making these servants representatives of the queen.40 Such status and access gave the gentlewomen of the privy chamber power, and they were not therefore politically neutral as a number of historians once thought.41 During the 1560s Bess lived mainly at Chatsworth, which was nearing completion, serving only occasionally at court as gentlewoman of the privy chamber, as in about autumn 1565 and again in autumn 1567.42 She debated whether, for example, ‘the batylment for the teryte [turret] [at Chatsworth] wolde deface the wolle pourche[,] for yett ^ys^ nether of one begenes moldynge nor of one stone. yett of bothe do I lyke batter the creste beynge of the same stone’.43 Like Cavendish before him, St Loe settled his estate jointly on Bess and himself as a precaution against wardship, should they have any sons, and because his younger brother Edward St Loe (d. 1578) had ‘lekyd no thyng [his] maryege’, using ‘moche unaturalnes & unseamely speaches’ against Bess and him and claiming that their father had left his own wife Margaret St Loe

24

Bess of Hardwick: new perspectives

a life interest in Sutton Court. Remarkably, their mother Lady Margaret St Loe alleged that Edward tried to poison St Loe and Bess on a trip to London early in 1561. At about the same time Henry Draper, Francis Cox, and Ralph Davis were committed to the Tower of London on charges of conjuring or using sorcery against St Loe and Bess on Edward’s behalf.44 Even though they were often apart, Bess’s marriage was a happy one: St Loe once called her ‘my owne, more dearar to me then I am to my seylff’.45 They carried out building work together at Sutton Court and he involved himself closely in the education and upbringing of her children.46 Like Cavendish before him, St Loe sought worship in Derbyshire, becoming JP in 1561 and knight of the shire (the senior MP) in the 1563 parliament. He died suddenly in London in February 1565, having initially left everything to Bess, until adding a codicil to his will remembering his surviving daughter Margaret Norton (d. after 1564).47 Still, Bess was the chief beneficiary, once she had fought a successful legal action against Edward St Loe, although his wife secured the life interest in Sutton Court.48 At some point before 27 August 1567 Bess married George Talbot, sixth earl of Shrewsbury and Waterford (1521/2–90), at Sheffield Castle in the West Riding.49 He was the only surviving son and heir of Francis Talbot, fifth earl of Shrewsbury and Waterford (1500–60), and his first wife, Mary (d. 1538), eighth among the lay peerage in the order of precedence, and a knight of the Garter. Shrewsbury was also one of the three richest peers in England, whose land lay principally in the Midlands and the West Riding.50 A partial valuation of his estate came to £10,070 a year in 1586, at a time when a labourer earned eight pence a day when he could find work. This estate included Pontefract and Sheffield castles and Handsworth and Sheffield lodges in the West Riding, Rufford Abbey and Worksop in Nottinghamshire, Wingfield in Derbyshire, Tutbury Castle and Priory in Staffordshire, Goodrich Castle in Herefordshire, and Coldharbour in London. Shrewsbury probably held more land in Derbyshire, Shropshire and the West Riding than anybody else except the crown.51 The Hardwick family had a service connection with his own, while Bess and he moved in some of the same circles during the 1550s and 1560s.52 Religion bound them together also, as both were godly. Shrewsbury was smitten by her, calling Bess ‘my dere none [one]’.53 ‘To thynke that I posses so fethefull[e] & one that I know loves me so derely is all[e] & the gretest comforte that this yrthe can gyve’, he told her.54 She used her position as a wealthy widow to drive a hard bargain with her new husband, though, retaining control over Chatsworth House and obtaining Bolsover, Shirland and Wingfield in Derbyshire, Alveton in Staffordshire and Over Ewden



Bess of Hardwick, a life

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in the West Riding from him as part of her jointure, while negotiating the marriage of his second son Gilbert Talbot (1552–1616) to her daughter Mary, and of her son Harry to his youngest daughter Lady Grace Talbot (b. 1559/60, d. after 1617), which both took place at Sheffield Castle on 9 February 1568.55 Bess had reached the top of Derbyshire society. The arrival of Mary, Queen of Scots, in England in May 1568, having fled imprisonment and enforced abdication at home, reshaped the Elizabethan polity, intensifying debate about the English succession and creating a focus for Catholic conspiracy against the crown. By early December the government had decided that Shrewsbury would be her custodian because Elizabeth ‘dyd so truste [him] as che dyd few’, and Bess prepared ‘thre or fowre lodgyngs to be furnyshed wyth hangyngs and other necesaryes’ at Tutbury Castle to receive her.56 On 12 December 1571, in recognition of his loyal service and rank, Shrewsbury was sworn of the privy council and on 2 January 1573 named earl marshal, placing him in charge of the College of Arms and the court of chivalry. By then he had risen to fourth in the order of precedence. Bess and he worked together closely during these years, managing their households and estates well, and Mary, Queen of Scots, was treated as their guest, residing mainly at Sheffield Castle and Lodge between 1570 and 1584. Bess and she spent hours embroidering, the Scottish queen influencing the choice of subject matter (some of it seditious towards Elizabeth), discussing the latest fashions and gossiping.57 They got on so much so, in fact, that Shrewsbury felt compelled to write to the principal secretary Sir William Cecil in order to refute ‘suspycion … offe ovar myche good wyll boron by my wyfe to this quene’.58 In October 1574 Margaret Stewart, countess of Lennox, and Bess arranged the marriage between their children Charles Stewart, earl of Lennox (1555/6–76), and Elizabeth Cavendish, while they were all staying at Rufford. Bess was interfering in arcana imperii or ‘mysteries of state’ – not to be participated in by Elizabeth I’s subjects – because the earl, the brother-in-law of Mary, Queen of Scots, was of the blood royal and in line to the English throne.59 Elizabeth was furious when she found out and sent the dowager countess of Lennox to the Tower, put the newlyweds under house arrest and ordered Bess to court for questioning. Shrewsbury was able to smooth things over, however, assuring the privy council and the queen that the marriage was not motivated by ‘lykeng, orre insynuashon wt this Quene [Mary]’. The earl and countess of Lennox had one child, a daughter Lady Arbella Stuart (1575–1615), who was raised by her grandparents Shrewsbury and Bess when she was orphaned.60

26

Bess of Hardwick: new perspectives

The cost and responsibility of guarding Mary worsened Shrewsbury’s long-standing tendency towards depression and from the mid-1570s took their toll on his marriage. Initially he was a loving, good-humoured and supportive husband, and Bess a caring, if pushy and grasping, wife. Arthritis and gout caused a significant deterioration in his health, though, and he grew bad-tempered and emotional.61 ‘Her love hathe bene great to me/ and myne hathe bene & is as great to her, for what can a man doe more for his wyfe then I have done’, he told his son Gilbert, who tried to mediate between them, in summer 1577.62 Things got worse from spring 1579, and the earl and countess lived more and more apart and argued often when they were together, usually over her attitude towards him and spending. She accused him of infidelity and was said in autumn 1582 to have made the very serious (and unfounded) charge that he had had inappropriate relations with Mary: Mary and Shrewsbury blamed William and Charles Cavendish for circulating this rumour the following year.63 In summer 1584 Shrewsbury wrote to Bess, speaking of her ‘sirens songe set for some other purpose then it p[re]tendeth’, and described ‘Chatsworth house [as] that devowringe gulf of myne and other yo[u]r husband[e]s good[e]s’.64 A few weeks later Bess replied, seeking a reconciliation: My Lord the innocency of my owne harte ys such and my desyar so infenyt to procuer your good conceat as I wyll Leaue noe ways vnsought to attayne your fauor, which Longe you haue restrayned from me./ and in all dutys of a wyffe I beceach you not to rune with a setteled condemnatyone of me for my harte can not accuse yt, sh[torn] a gaynst you, nether ys ther any thynge alleged agaynst me that dyssarueth seperatyone./ my Lord how I haue rendred your happynes euery ways weare superfluvs to wryte, for I take god to wettnys my Lyffe should evar haue ben adventured for you, and my harte notwithstanding what I haue suffered thyrstes after your prosperety, and desyers nothynge so much as to haue your Loue.65

Despite efforts by Elizabeth, Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, and others to keep them together, the couple separated in 1583 and Bess moved to Chatsworth House. Harry Cavendish, now thirty-three, sided with his stepfather against his mother, partly because she still clung to Chatsworth, partly because he felt that she had always bullied and controlled him.66 Bess’s brother James Hardwick died bankrupt in the Fleet prison before April 1581, having borrowed heavily in order to substantially increase his estate, in particular at Hardwick itself. She had retained some family loyalty (continuing, for example, to use the Hardwick seal on her letters during her marriage to Cavendish), helped her brother out financially over the years,



Bess of Hardwick, a life

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and was one of his major creditors. This might explain why she bought her childhood home through her son William in June 1583 for £9,500, settling it on him after her death. Philip Riden has even gone as far as to suggest that the purchase of Hardwick was the last straw for Shrewsbury, who believed it had been done using his money.67 In late summer 1584 he tried to claim Chatsworth by forcible entry; he took away many of its moveable goods but did not actually occupy the house. Bess had fled to Hardwick by then. Their separation became so acrimonious that the privy council intervened to settle the land and income. At the time Bess’s estate was valued by the crown at £2,540 a year. She was awarded almost all of it; Shrewsbury was to receive a £500 annual allowance in return and to repay her sons £2,000 in withheld rent. He disputed the decision, however, because it did not take into account property given by him to her children. Shrewsbury simply refused to pay up and continued to keep lands from Bess and her sons. He only capitulated when in 1586–7 an exasperated government bound him in a recognisance for the sum of £40,000 to abide by its decision.68 Bess used her restored estate to renovate Hardwick Hall between 1587 and 1592 as a large four-storey house, the top floor of each wing dominated by a great chamber. Although a ruin today, something of its rich interiors can be made out from the intact marble fireplaces, decorative plasterwork and so on.69 Shrewsbury died on 18 November 1590 and Bess was appointed his executor, only to be subsequently barred from the role by his heir Gilbert.70 She received her remaining land that had still been in her late husband’s hands and her jointure (which averaged £3,050 a year and appears to have been less than the widow’s third). Once she had forced the new earl, her stepson Gilbert, to pay the jointure, Bess contested nothing further. She enjoyed an income of about £8,300 a year during the 1590s, making her one of Elizabeth’s wealthiest subjects. Even before Shrewsbury’s death, Bess had employed the architect of his new house and lodge at Worksop, Robert Smythson, to draw up plans for a second hall at Hardwick, and the foundations were begun in November 1590. Hardwick New Hall is close in design to Worksop, except that it is three rather than four storeys and has no projecting corner towers. Both buildings are related to another Smythson house in the region, Wollaton in Nottinghamshire, all three originating in the architectural style begun at Somerset Place and developed later by him at Longleat. John Summerson describes the detail at Hardwick as ‘less brilliant’ than Wollaton, while Mark Girouard takes the opposite view, preferring its classical restraint and calling it Smythson’s masterpiece. Both share similar plans: they are outward-facing,

28

Bess of Hardwick: new perspectives

symmetrical, light and emphasise height (achieved through many large bay windows) over breadth. But Hardwick makes some striking innovations. The most important of these is its hall, which is placed at an axis to the main entrance (rather than off it as was usual), an idea that might have been first worked out at Hardwick Old Hall. Both entrance façades are dominated by loggias but there is no internal courtyard, which, with the cross-hall plan, makes Hardwick the earliest surviving example in Britain of a building influenced directly by Andrea Palladio. The long gallery and high great chamber (modelled on the one at Whitehall Palace) are placed on the second rather than the first storey to maximise the impact for visitors, and the interiors are richly decorated and furnished. Bess did not forget to stress her own status either, having her initials ‘ES’ surmounted by a comital coronet carved and placed on top of each of the six towers and festooning the building with the heraldry of the Talbot, Cavendish and Hardwick families, including a rather truncated insignia of the garter over one of the doors.71 She moved in on 4 October 1597 and Hardwick was essentially finished two years later at a total cost (with the Old Hall) of about £5,000.72 The Old Hall was not abandoned at this point; instead, it was used as a guest and service block for the main house. Bess was not finished with building either. Early in 1593 she bought Oldcotes and other land in Derbyshire for £3,416 and had Smythson design her a new house there, with construction beginning under the supervision of William Cavendish in March. Oldcotes took about seven years to complete and was smaller and less elaborate than Hardwick, but similar.73 It no longer survives. Bess was a kind and thoughtful friend, but her family relations were troubled and, later in life, increasingly poisonous. This was most obviously so with her ‘bad sonne’ Harry – adventurous, passionate, short-tempered and as grasping as she was, yet unreliable and impecunious.74 Shrewsbury had settled land on him when he married Grace Talbot and at twenty-one Harry inherited his father’s estate, worth £550 a year. He was JP for Derbyshire from about 1573, returned as knight of the shire five times, and sheriff twice.75 However, ‘the common bull of Derbyshire and Staffordshire’ resented his mother for withholding part of his inheritance and for what he regarded as interference in the way he lived his life. He was unhappily married to Grace and could not or would not provide a legitimate male heir, preferring to carry on a series of extramarital affairs instead.76 Bess turned to her other sons, hoping that they would fulfil her expectations. They sought worship in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire: William was named JP and of the quorum for Derbyshire from about 1583; Charles was knighted in 1582, JP for Nottinghamshire



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from about 1593, and knight of the shire that year and in 1601.77 In spring 1572 Bess settled the remainder of her estate on them, retaining a life interest, but she disowned Charles for siding with his best friend Gilbert Talbot, now seventh earl of Shrewsbury, against her in the 1590s.78 Her relations with her daughters were better – albeit they could be wary of her – yet she was estranged from Mary during the feud with Gilbert.79 It was with her ‘swete Iuell Arbella’ that Bess fell out most spectacularly.80 Having been suffocated with love and overindulged, then raised too strictly, Arbella was a headstrong and emotional fantasist who became desperate to escape her controlling grandmother. (Bess described how the young woman ‘goeth not to any bodyes howse atall, I se hyr almost euery howre in the day, she lyeth in my bed chambre’.)81 In December 1602 Arbella tried to free herself from this situation by sending a message to Edward Seymour, first earl of Hertford, accepting a proposal of marriage from his grandson Lord Edward Seymour that the young man appears, in fact, never to have made. Hertford denied any knowledge of the engagement and Sir Henry Brouncker was sent by the privy council to question Arbella on the subject early in the new year. Brouncker concluded that her actions were a cry for help. However, Arbella then claimed to have been offered ‘the loue of this worthy Gentleman’, although she refused at first to name him, before revealing that he in fact was her cousin, James VI of Scotland.82 This was fantasy. Bess was desperate not to be implicated in succession politics once more and disowned her, despite Arbella’s nervous breakdown. Bess wrote to the queen, ‘I am desirus & most humbly besech your Ma[ies]tie y[a]t [Arbella] may be placed elswhere, to lerne to be more considerate’, ‘for I cannot now assure my self of hir, as I haue donn[e]’.83 Her request was turned down, and Arbella and she continued to live together under one roof. This state of affairs lasted until James VI, who had succeeded Elizabeth as James I, commanded in spring 1603 that Arbella be free to leave ‘that vnpleasant life w[hi]ch she hath ledd in the howse of her granmother w[i]th whose serverity and age she beeinge a younge lady coud hardly agree’.84 James perhaps felt some animosity towards the gaoler of his mother also. Bess was increasingly frail in her final years, suffering from arthritis and walking with the aid of a stick. One has the sense from some of her letters of growing loneliness: ‘I shall be moste hartely glade to see you; you can not goe to any wher you shalbe more welcome’, she wrote to Gilbert and Mary in January 1607, with whom she had become partly reconciled.85 Bess made her last will and testament on 27 April 1601, and (typically) it is one of the longest and most detailed of the period. She bequeathed the contents of

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Chatsworth House to Harry, and Hardwick and Oldcotes to her sole executor William, leaving nothing to Charles or Gilbert and Mary, for their ‘vnkyndnes offred me’.86 On 20 March 1603 she added a codicil disinheriting Harry and Arbella, and a nuncupative codicil remembering yet more people (including Charles this time) in January 1608. Bess died aged about eighty or eighty-one at Hardwick on 13 February 1608 and her funeral took place on 4 May in Allhallows in the county town of Derby (rather than the local parish church, St John the Baptist at Ault Hucknall). She was buried there under a large and fine tomb built for her by Smythson, which described her as ‘aedificatrix’ of Chatsworth, Hardwick and Oldcotes. Bess’s life was dominated by her need for status, wealth and possessions, and by her family. During the sixteenth century fortunes were inherited, married into or made by men through service or trade. It was unusual for a married woman to accumulate and hold on to one in her own right, having so much control over it and over how it passed to her heirs. This is what marks Bess out, and the fact that we know more about her, and have a better sense of her tastes and personality, than almost any other woman of her time, despite her modest background. Her marriages, her children’s marriages, her buildings, her possessions, her letter-writing are all typical of a Tudor noblewoman, just carried out on a more impressive scale than her peers and with an obsession that something great, something monumental endure. Acknowledgements I am grateful to Jane Lawson, Steve May, Henry Summerson, James Towe and to the collections manager and assistant curator of a private collection for their helpful advice. Notes 1 The National Archives, London (hereafter TNA), C 1/1101/17; C 142/47/25; C 142/50/102; E 150/743/8; Mary S. Lovell, Bess of Hardwick (London and New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), pp. 481–2. Bess may have been born earlier, between February 1521 and February 1522, according to Philip Riden, although her comment that she married her first husband Robert Barlow when ‘but of tender [yeres]’ would then make little sense, especially as he died in 1544 aged fourteen: Philip Riden, ‘The Hardwicks of Hardwick Hall in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’, Derbyshire Archaeological Journal, 130 (2010), pp. 142–75, at pp. 147–51. Her son-in-law, Gilbert Talbot, seventh earl of Shrewsbury, described



Bess of Hardwick, a life

2

3 4

5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12

13

14 15 16

17 18 19 20

31

her as ‘aboute’ eighty-four in November 1604, meaning she would have been born in 1519/20: Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, Cecil Papers, 107/136. TNA, C 142/47/25; C 142/50/102; E 150/743/8; WARD 9/149; Frederick Brodhurst, ‘Elizabeth Hardwycke, countess of Shrewsbury’, Derbyshire Archaeological Journal, 30 (1908), pp. 231–60, at p. 231; David Crook, ‘Hardwick before Bess – the origins and early history of the Hardwick family’, Derbyshire Archaeological Journal, 107 (1987), pp. 41–54. Crook, ‘Hardwick family’. TNA, C 142/47/25; C 142/50/102; E 150/743/8; STAC 2/7, fols 15r–16r; WARD 9/129; WARD 9/149; WARD 9/150; David N. Durant, Bess of Hardwick (London: Peter Owen, 1999), pp. 3–6. Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 5–6. TNA, E 150/743/8; WARD 9/129; Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 7–8. TNA, C1/29; C 1/930/55–6; C 1/1022/28–9; C 1/1022/32; C 1/1064/5–12; C 1/1140/14–19; C 1/1243/26–7; Riden, ‘Hardwicks’, pp. 153–5. TNA, C 1/845/34. They seem to have reconciled by 1543, after a period of separation: TNA, C 1/1141/38; C 1/845/34; C 142/90/31; E 150/758/4. Folger Shakespeare Library,Washington, DC (hereafter Folger), X.d.486, fols 7r and 18r; Letter 13, in Bess of Hardwick’s Letters:The Complete Correspondence, c. 1550–1608, edited by Alan Bryson, Daniel Starza Smith, Anke Timmermann, Alison Wiggins, and Graham Williams (Sheffield: HRI Online, 2013), www.bessofhardwick.org (accessed 17 June 2018). Unless otherwise stated, all letters are cited from this edition. Folger, Cavendish-Talbot Correspondence, X.d.428 (74); Letter 58. TNA, C 1/1101/17; WARD 9/152. Riden, ‘Hardwicks’, pp. 151–2; Terry Kilburn, ‘The wardship and marriage of Robert Barley, first husband of “Bess of Hardwick” ’, Derbyshire Archaeological Journal, 134 (2014), pp. 197–203. TNA, C 1/1101/17; Margaret Cavendish, duchess of Newcastle, The Life of the Thrice Noble, High and Puissant Prince William Cavendishe, Duke, Marquess, and Earl of Newcastle (WING N853: London, 1667), p. 153. TNA, C 1/1101/17; C 1/1120/44; C 1/1291/17; Riden, ‘Hardwicks’, p. 152. This commonplace book is now lost, but a late sixteenth- or seventeenth-century copy survives in a private collection. The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1509–1558, edited by Stanley T. Bindoff, 3 vols (London: Secker and Warburg, 1982), vol. 1, pp. 597–9; Philip Riden, ‘Sir William Cavendish: Tudor civil servant and founder of a dynasty’, Derbyshire Archaeological Journal, 129 (2009), pp. 238–57. TNA, SP 60/10/57, M[icrofilm]. fols 207r–208v. Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, p. 31. Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 28–32. Private collection.

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21 For the arguments in favour of the term evangelical over protestant, see Diarmaid MacCulloch, Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation (London: Allen Lane, 1999), pp. 2–3; Alec Ryrie, The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), xv–xvi. 22 Private collection. 23 Folger, X.d.428 (13); Letter 13. 24 Folger, X.d.486, fols 8v, 9v, 11r, 12v–16r, 17r, 18r–20v and 24r; Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 16–17 and 20–3; Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 73–4. 25 Folger, X.d.486, fol. 28r. 26 Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 22 and 30. 27 Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, H/240/1;TNA, C 1/1208/23. In 1584 Chatsworth and Cromford were worth £210 yearly or about £4,200 outright: British Library, London (hereafter BL), Lansdowne MS 40, fol. 90r. 28 Longleat House, Wiltshire, Thynne MS II, fols 227r–228v; Thynne MS II, fols 250r–251v; Letter 113; Mark Girouard, ‘The ghost of Elizabethan Chatsworth’, in his Town and Country (London:Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 211–20; Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 26–7 and 46–8. 29 Chatsworth, HM/87, fols 296r–297r and 313v–314r; TNA, C 142/111/22; Calendar of the Patent Rolls, Edward VI, edited by Henry C. Maxwell Lyte, 6 vols (London: HMSO, 1924–9), vol. 2, p. 387. 30 Calendar of the Patent Rolls, Edward VI, vol. 3, pp. 174–5; vol. 4, pp. 288–93; Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 22–3; Riden, ‘Cavendish’, pp. 245–7. 31 TNA, E 101/424/10; Acts of the Privy Council of England, edited by John R. Dasent, 46 vols (London: HMSO, 1890–1964), vol. 6, pp. 181–2; Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 28–30. 32 TNA, E 150/765/3; E 150/765/16. 33 Private collection. 34 Longleat, Thynne MS III, fol. 9r; Thynne MS III, fols 14r–15v; Letters 111, 112. 35 Calendar of the Patent Rolls: Elizabeth I, 9 vols (London: HMSO, 1939), vol. 2, pp. 495–6. 36 Longleat, Thynne MS III, fols 27r–27v; Folger, X.d.428 (133); History of Parliament 1509–58, ed. Bindoff, vol. 3, pp. 259–60; The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1558–1603, edited by Patrick W. Hasler, 3 vols (London: HMSO, 1981), vol. 3, pp. 330–1; Philip Riden, ‘Bess of Hardwick and the St Loe inheritance’, in Essays in Derbyshire History: Presented to Gladwyn Turbutt, edited by Philip Riden and David G. Edwards (Chesterfield: Derbyshire Record Society, 2006), pp. 80–106. 37 TNA, SP 61/1/85, M. fols 156r and 157r–157v. 38 Letter 59. 39 Bess is not to be confused with her sister-in-law, Elizabeth St Loe, who was also a gentlewoman of the privy chamber, who attended the queen’s coronation and



40

41

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

51

52

53 54 55 56

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knew of the illicit marriage in December 1560 between Lady Katherine Grey and Edward Seymour, first earl of Hertford, for which she was imprisoned in the Tower of London and interrogated once word got out: Jane A. Lawson, ‘Bess of Hardwick and Elizabeth St Loe’, Notes and Queries, 61:2 (2014), pp. 206–11. David Starkey, ‘Representation through intimacy: a study of the symbolism of monarchy and court office in early modern England’, in The Tudor Monarchy, edited by John Guy (London: Arnold, 1997), pp. 42–78, at p. 51. Pam Wright, ‘A change in direction: the ramifications of a female household, 1558–1603’, in The English Court: from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War, edited by David Starkey et al. (London and New York: Longman, 1987), pp. 147–72. TNA, SP 15/13/103, M. fols 203r–203v; Letter 17. Folger, X.d.428 (84); Letter 101. Letter 58; Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 37–9. Letter 59. Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 35–7. TNA, PCC, PROB 11/48, sig. 24. TNA, C 3/159/9; C 3/170/13. Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 54–6. George E. Cokayne, The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, and Ireland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom, edited by Vicary Gibbs et al., 2nd edn, 13 vols (London: St Catherine Press, 1910–59), vol. 11, pp. 711–14; George W. Bernard, The Power of the Early Tudor Nobility: A Study of the Fourth and Fifth Earls of Shrewsbury (Brighton: Harvester, 1985), pp. 139–70. Lambeth Palace Library, London (hereafter LPL), MS 3198, fols 335r–336v. This figure excludes Shrewsbury’s land in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, and in and around London, property that he had already made over to his children and stepchildren by that date, and probably also the lordships of Sheffield and Handsworth. Sheffield alone amounted to about a third of his estate. TNA, E 150/743/8; SP 1/106, M. fols 283r–284v; Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of HenryVIII, 1509–1547, eds John S. Brewer, James Gairdner and R. H. Brodie, 23 vols in 38 (London: HMSO, 1862–1932), vol. 11, p. 562. The Hardwick family held the Derbyshire manor of Glapwell of the earls of Shrewsbury: Riden, ‘Hardwicks’, pp. 148–50. Letter 64. Folger, X.d.428 (89); Letter 68. Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 56–7 and 152. Letters 65, 66 and 107; Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 58–61; Stephen Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity:William Cecil and the British Succession Crisis, 1558–1569 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 158–81; John Guy, ‘My Heart is My Own’: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots (London: HarperCollins, 2004), pp. 369–70, 387–8, and 440–2.

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57 Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 63–71; Guy, Mary Queen of Scots, pp. 441–2 and 448–50. 58 TNA, SP 53/4/48. 59 Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 82–4; John Guy, ‘Tudor monarchy and its critiques’, in his The Tudor Monarchy (London: Arnold, 1997), pp. 78–109. 60 BL, Cotton MS Caligula C. iv, fols 303r–303v; LPL, MS 3197, pp. 103–4, 104 and 105–6; Illustrations of British History, edited by Edmund Lodge, 3 vols (London: G. Nicol, 1791), vol. 2, pp. 126–7; Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 84–91, 93–5 and 110–12; Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 247 and 249–50. 61 Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 73, 96–7, 99, 105–10, 112 and 114. 62 Letter 84. 63 Folger, X.d.428 (95); LPL, MS 3197, pp. 331–4; MS 3198, fols 124r–125v; Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 112–13, 117–18 and 123–4; Guy, Mary Queen of Scots, pp. 454–5. 64 LPL, MS 3152, fol. 58r; Letter 119. 65 Longleat, Talbot MS 2, fol. 267r; Letter 116. 66 Letter 151; Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 117–19 and 122–3. 67 Riden, ‘Hardwicks’, pp. 156–66. For an example of Bess using the Hardwick seal, see Longleat, Thynne MS III, fol. 13r. 68 TNA, SP 12/207/32, M. fols 46r–47v; SP 12/207/34, M. fols 50r–51v; SP 12/207/60, M. fols 96r–97v; Sheffield Archives, Bacon-Frank MS 2/64; Longleat, Talbot MS 1, fols 7r–8v, 11r–12v, 230r–231v; BL, Lansdowne MS 40, fols 90r–91v, 92r–93v; Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 119–22 and 136–44. 69 David N. Durant, ‘Old Hardwick Hall’, English Heritage Historical Review, 8:1 (2013), pp. 4–17; Mark Girouard, Elizabethan Architecture: Its Rise and Fall, 1540–1640 (London: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 225–6 and 356–7. 70 TNA, PCC, PROB 11/76, sig. 86; Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 151–2, 181–2 and 228–9. 71 John Summerson, Architecture in Britain, 1530–1830, 9th edn (London: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 52–3, 63–7, 88–9 and 530; Girouard, Elizabethan Architecture, xiv–xv, xvii, xix–xx, pp. 70–2, 87–8, 91, 95, 101–5, 111–12, 114–16, 191, 216, 218, 225, 229–30, 258, 269–70, 272–4, 294–5, 310, 332, 344–5, 354, 356–7, 361–3, 366–7, 378 and 381–8. 72 Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 192–3. 73 Durant, Bess of Hardwick, p. 178; Girouard, Elizabethan Architecture, pp. 54 and 378. 74 Letter 135. 75 History of Parliament, 1558–1603, ed. Hasler, vol. 1, pp. 566–7; Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 78–9. 76 ‘Mr. Harrie Cavendish his journey to and from Constantinople 1589’, edited by Alfred C. Wood, Camden Miscellany, 17, 3rd ser., 64 (1940), iv. 77 History of Parliament, 1558–1603, ed. Hasler, vol. 1, pp. 565–6 and 568–9.



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78 Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 77–9, 182, 185–6 and 220–1. 79 Letter 42; LPL, 3203, fols 140r–141v; Durant, Bess of Hardwick, p. 222; Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 413, 417 and 454. 80 Letter 162. 81 Letter 163; Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 159–62, 164–5, 169–71 and 196–7. 82 Letter 141; Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 201–13 and 215–16. 83 Hatfield House, Cecil Papers, 135/112; Letter 128. 84 Hatfield House, Cecil Papers, 135/177. 85 Letters 89, 90, 180; Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 220–2. 86 TNA, PCC, PROB 11/111, sig. 23.

2

Money, marriage and remembrance: telling stories from the Cavendish financial accounts Alison Wiggins

‘Account books form a narrative as engaging as any tale of sea monsters or cannibals,’ so Sir Thomas Cromwell tells himself in Hilary Mantel’s fictionalised depiction.1 Mantel compellingly dramatises for us how Tudor financial accounts were sources of hidden stories, and we regularly find Mantel’s Cromwell turning to them to access alternative versions of events. This chapter performs, as it were, the inverse process to Mantel: it begins with a book of financial accounts from the mid-sixteenth century and looks outwards from the static lists of payments to the surrounding lively and animate web of social and interpersonal relations. This chapter asks what might be revealed to us about the objects and persons named in its monetarised lists and what gendered power dynamics might arise. Early modern financial accounts have often been underestimated as sources – mined as quarries of facts within the biographical tradition – but this chapter is concerned with the ways in which they can reward analyses of their language, materiality and archival afterlife.2 It is concerned with how these conventional texts could be customised to serve the agendas of individuals or to accommodate the requirements of particular communities. It is concerned with how and why a person might draw up a set of financial accounts, but also with the implications of choices made over scribes, handwriting, presentation, personal spelling system and linguistic scripts. It is concerned with financial accounts as texts that had communicative functions related to their moment of production, but which could also carry meanings across time and between generations. It is concerned with scribal, documentary and archival cultures within the household, their gendered and material forms and their intersection with structures of authority. It is concerned with the cultural



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pressures brought to bear upon how financial accounts textualised relationships, social hierarchies and family narratives. To investigate these themes and concerns, this chapter takes as its focus the slim twenty-eight-folio paper book that recorded money coming into and going out of the Cavendish household between September 1548 and May 1550 (now Folger Shakespeare Library MS X.d.486). This book of financial accounts was written mostly in the hand of Elizabeth Cavendish – the woman known to posterity as ‘Bess of Hardwick’ – but included entries written in the hands of her husband Sir William and of their steward Francis Whitfield. The book does not conform to our modern expectations of a set of financial accounts: there was no attempt to ‘balance’ the numbers, sum totals were not always provided and, where they were, by Sir William, they did not always add up accurately.3 We should not be surprised at such inconsistencies in a book of Tudor accounts, which did not seek the same version of objectivity we might expect of modern financial accounts or of double-entry style bookkeeping, which came later.4 However, the arithmetical inconsistencies do prompt questions about the book’s function and, therefore, this chapter seeks to comprehend the purpose of this book for its first audiences. It argues that the book’s meanings and communicative functions were tied to its cultural context and historical moment. Its pages of itemised records were reference points but the book, at the same time, served to capture and commemorate a particular representation of the Cavendish household. Ultimately, this analysis offers us a fresh viewpoint from which to survey the household and marriage of Sir William and Bess Cavendish: filtered through the perspective of the financial accounts. There has been no previous attempt to describe the codicology of this 1548–50 book of financial accounts; as a result, certain misconceptions have arisen over what it was for and who created and used it. Perhaps most glaring has been the repeated tendency to assume this was Sir William’s book of accounts, which it was not – it was primarily Bess’s.5 Therefore, not least for the purpose of clarification, this chapter offers a more accurate description of the book’s materiality, handwriting, language and circumstances of production and reception. The first section, ‘Money and household power dynamics: the codicology of Folger MS X.d.486’, begins with a description of the book’s physical structure in relation to its content and contexts of use. It gives an overview of the number and type of entries written by the different contributors (Bess, Sir William and Francis Whitfield) and observes that the book recorded Bess’s spending but also her involvement in the organisation of the household and

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estate finances. Building on this picture, this section argues that the book was a site where the household’s hierarchy of authority was inscribed and reiterated. Further insights into the processes of financial management are gained by reading the book against two of the letters extant from this period. The second section, ‘Marriage and the negotiation of authority: the language of Folger MS X.d.486’, begins by describing the textual format of the financial accounts and the changes that occurred in the system of accounting around June 1549 when Bess gained more autonomy. It includes an overview of the various kinds of checking, correcting and annotating evident in the book, which give us insights into Sir William’s role as overseer or first reader, as well as into Bess’s training and attitude to her bookkeeping task. This section argues that the book functioned as a site where the Cavendishes mediated and defined the boundaries of their marital partnership. Furthermore, the conventional linguistic scripts, which are the warp and weft of financial accounts, are shown to textualise an intricate and shifting set of interpersonal relationships and to do so relative to Bess as keeper of the book. For Bess, writing in her own hand, the financial accounts were an opportunity to present a version of the household as a harmonious community and to cast herself firmly at its centre. The third section, ‘Remembrance and family narratives: the archival afterlife of Folger MS X.d.486’, describes the book as a node within the extensive web of personal and familial memorialising activities overseen by Bess from the death of Sir William in 1557 until her own death in 1608. By reading this book of financial accounts against bequests made in Bess’s will, consideration is given to the process by which objects that it recorded came to be inscribed with memories and to embody familial relationships. To summarise, this chapter argues that the 1548–50 Cavendish financial account book was much more than a ledger to track money in and out: it was a site where social hierarchy and household authority were reiterated, interpersonal relationships were textualised and memories were inscribed; in brief, it was an archive, for immediate use and for posterity. On the one hand, this chapter’s contribution to scholarship is substantive, because it offers new findings that are especially relevant (given the focus of this volume of essays) to a foundational era of Bess Cavendish’s life. Her ten-year marriage to Sir William included major milestones – the purchase and development of Chatsworth, her introduction to court circles and the birth of all eight of her children – yet it has been one of the periods of her life that biographers have found least accessible.6 This chapter shows how reassessment of the financial accounts allows for some unusually detailed



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glimpses into the ‘black box’ of internal decision-making within their household.7 More specifically, this chapter argues that the financial accounts offer us insights into the nature and quality of Bess’s relationships with her husband, servants and natal and nuptial daughters. Furthermore, it emphasises her competence when it came to the linked activities of textual and household management and updates our understanding of her financial account-keeping within a broader historical context. Several recent studies have shown us the importance of the role of early modern women in managing household and estate finances, and this study adds to their findings and responds to their calls for more thorough examination of the participation of women in this arena. As such, this chapter places Bess’s life within the wider story of the gendered culture of the early modern household, the history of financial accounting, the development of the linked skills of literacy and numeracy and the emerging picture of women’s roles in the development of a capitalist economy. On the other hand, this chapter’s contribution to scholarship is methodological. It proposes a new way to read and analyse financial accounts that could be described as pragmaphilological. It is an approach concerned to situate the text within its material, social and interpersonal settings and in relation to its communities of production and reception, and which is concerned to understand the communicative function of the text’s conventional linguistic scripts.8 It is worth emphasising what is distinctive about this approach by comparison with a number of other recent scholarly studies of historical financial accounts. Studies that apply quantitative methods of analysis have extracted empirical data from financial accounts to track consumption patterns over time and relative to broader social and economic trends.9 By contrast, qualitative techniques of literary and ethnographic description have demonstrated how close readings of financial accounts can add to our understanding of the meanings of material objects in their cultural moment and in the fashioning of identity.10 By contrast again, studies grounded in a literary concern with genre after the ‘archival turn’ have experimented with readings based on the premise that early modern financial accounts were an embryonic species of life writing motivated by autobiographical or memorialising impulses.11 This chapter benefits from each of these approaches. To them, it offers another angle that draws on concepts and theoretical frameworks from philology and historical pragmatics. As an exercise in pragmaphilology, the focus here is upon the book’s codicology, handwriting, linguistic scripts and production and reception settings. The research questions are concerned with what the book communicated, or was designed to communicate, to particular readers

40

Bess of Hardwick: new perspectives

at specified points in time. The aim is not to ‘get to’ the objects or the people mentioned – as if they lie somewhere just beyond our reach – but to consider how this book narrated them and positioned them within its textual matrix. Ultimately, this chapter calls for renewed attention to early modern financial accounts and their linguistic, material and archival forms. The recent surge of scholarly interest has already begun to indicate the value of these documents for a wide range of critical themes and concerns, not least as sources for gender history, as well as the rewards to be gained by a range of interpretative approaches. This chapter builds on this burgeoning interest by offering fresh readings and new methods for unlocking meanings and historical narratives from an often underrated historical source. Money and household power dynamics: the codicology of Folger MS X.d.486 On 20 August 1547, Sir William Cavendish married his third wife, Elizabeth Barlow (or Barley, née Hardwick) in the Grey family chapel, and she became Elizabeth Cavendish, called, by her husband, Bess, or ‘Good Bess’.12 One year later, she wrote the first entries into the volume that is now Folger MS X.d.486. By this point in time, in September 1548, Bess had given birth to her first child, their three-month-old daughter Frances, and she was stepmother to Sir William’s three daughters Catherine, Mary and Ann (aged thirteen, ten and eight) and mistress of her own entourage of around fifteen servants and attendants who came and went between the family’s estate at Northaw, Hertfordshire and their rented house at Newgate Street just north of St Paul’s in London.13 This book of financial accounts comes down to us today in much the same codicological form it had when Bess and Sir William were writing their entries. Still in its original soft cover made of reclaimed vellum, its medieval manuscript binding seems apposite given Sir William’s role as an auditor for Thomas Cromwell during the 1530s Henrician dissolution; it is possible the old vellum book used for waste binding materials was readily on hand at his Northaw estate, itself a reclaimed monastic property.14 The Cavendish family name was written three times, perhaps by Sir William himself, on the back of the vellum binding: ‘Cavendyssh’ on the outside and ‘Cauendyssh … Cauend’ on the inside of the back cover. His wife also wrote her own name and did so, in her own hand, on the first page inside the book: ‘Elyzabeth Cauendyssh’.15 That she wrote her name prominently at the front of the book, in full and on its own page, indicates that her identification with the volume was more than casual or coincidental and that she had a sense of ownership



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of the book. These ownership inscriptions reflect the dual nature of this book: this was a Cavendish family volume that drew up transactions relevant to the whole household; at the same time, it was Bess’s responsibility to curate this volume and she wrote most of its entries, which are largely in her own hand and from her own perspective. The physical codex was constructed from five six-folio booklets stitched together (some folios cut down to stubs), along with loose bills added at the back. Its content was organised around this booklet structure into three sections according to type of payment – receipts, disbursements and extraordinary bills. These three sections are described in more detail next, and they tell us about the remit of Bess’s role as mistress of the household.16 Part 1 of the book (fols 1r–7r, Booklet 1) contained receipts for Michaelmas (29 September) 1548 until Lady Day (25 March) 1550.17 These were mostly rental incomes received from her husband’s lands and properties and for livestock sales. There were various sums of money involved and page totals ranged from over £93 to under five shillings.18 We know that Bess often received the rents herself in person because she wrote, in her own hand, ‘recauyd by me E C’ (that is, ‘E[lizabeth] C[avendish]’, fol. 5r). We also know that Sir William sometimes collected the rents himself, depending upon availability. For example, during the inevitable period of confinement or ‘lying in’ after the birth of their second child, a daughter, Temperance, born on 10 June 1549, Sir William collected the rents and he made most of the entries from Lady Day (25 March) 1549 up until July 1549.19 Nevertheless, even during this period of her lying-in, Bess continued to be involved in overseeing the accounts as she dictated two entries to her husband regarding money she had received from him.20 She was soon collecting rents and recording them in her own hand again, indicated by the entries for Midsummer and Michaelmas that year.21 Part 2 of the book (fols 7r–21v, Booklets 2, 3 and 4; Plates 1, 2 and 3) contained Bess’s disbursements that tracked her spending from September 1548 until March 1550 (that is, covering the same period as the rent receipts in Part 1).22 The majority of these disbursement records were penned by Bess herself in her own hand. To be specific, out of a total of 579 disbursement entries in the book: 519 (89.6 per cent) were in Bess’s own hand and written from her perspective; 4 (0.7 per cent) were in the hand of her steward Francis Whitfield, apparently dictated to him by Bess;23 and 56 (9.7 per cent) were in the hand of Sir William.24 Of Sir William’s entries, 15 appeared among his bills (in Part 3) and almost all of the remaining 41 entries were written around the period of the birth of Temperance, between Bess’s lying-in until

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Bess of Hardwick: new perspectives

her churching, of which several were dictated to him by Bess.25 The disbursements were not only written in Bess’s hand, but also, by and large, recorded her own spending and related to her activities and areas of responsibility. There were payments for rents, wages, child care, medical care and deliveries, and for purchases of sewing material, ready-made clothes and sweets for the children.26 Her most costly individual purchases were for clothing, which was not surprising given it was both a form of stored wealth and an opportunity for social definition: her most expensive individual purchases were for over £15 on velvet ‘to make me a gone’ and almost £8 to ‘the golsmeth for my botones’.27 Nevertheless, most of the space in the book was taken up by numerous smaller payments that give us something of the texture of daily life for an elite Tudor wife with a household and social position to maintain. So, we find Bess spending nine shillings four pence on three knitted waistcoats for her infant daughters Temperance and Frances, seven shillings on a coral for Frances’s teeth when she was teething, twenty pence on hose to send to her aunt, sixteen pence for treacle to send home and two shillings four pence on a pound of sugar candy; and we find her paying for a range of services that included five shillings to mend her watch, two shillings four pence to wash her clothes, eight pence to the carpenter for making a trowel and two shillings to her nurse’s husband for delivering letters from her midwife.28 In addition to these one-off payments for goods and services, the disbursements give us insights into her managerial responsibilities as she was involved with handling documents and organising the distribution of cash. Payments were often in response to a bill, reckoning or account book, such as the ‘Baliff’s book’. Every few days she sent cash to her husband’s administrative and legal staff, such as to his secretary Bestney and once to ‘my hosbandes attorney of the starryd chamber’, as well as to her household manager Aunt Marcella Linacre and steward Francis Whitfield.29 A reminder that she was handling cash is provided by the many nonnormalised sums of money that reflect coinage.30 Furthermore, one entry explicitly stated the coinage used as Bess recorded she ‘delivered to my husbond in grotis whenne he went to london – xls’ (fol. 12v); that is, she dished out forty shillings to him in the form of 120 groat coins (worth four pence each). One suggestion has been that she provided the forty shillings in groat coins to try to ensure her husband did not waste so much money gambling. We do not know for sure if this was the reason, but it would be a plausible explanation given the references to money he ‘lost at play’ in London.31 It also suggests there were areas of the finances that involved discussion and perhaps



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disagreement and contributes to the impression this book gives of financial accounts as a site where the terms of the Cavendish marriage were negotiated and defined.32 This payment ‘in grotis’ was made around June 1549, during the period of her lying-in after the birth of Temperance, a choice of name that seems appropriate for a couple preoccupied by financial realities. Part 3 of the book, fols 22r–28v, gathered together records of extraordinary payments that included loose bills bound into the back of the volume.33 There were a total of four bills or receipts, mostly in the hand of Sir William that, where they were dated, covered the same period as Parts 1 and 2. These four bills recorded substantial one-off payments made by Sir William, three of which referred to purchases or money given to his wife, as follows: (1) a record of £335 Sir William received for the sale of land and his payments taken out of this money of around £109 made to ‘diuerse persons’, which included sixty shillings (£3) to ‘my wyff for expences of my howse’ (fol. 22v); (2) a record dated 10 May 1550 for a gold and bejewelled book that Sir William had commissioned, which cost him £14.6s and which he referred to as ‘my wyffes Booke’ (fol. 24r); and (3) a record of over £50 Sir William received for the sale of livestock and coneys, more than half of which (over £27) he spent on finery he referred to as ‘my wyffes … gere’ (fol. 27r). That is, these three bills altogether recorded, either as cash or in kind as material goods, over £44 allocated by Sir William to Bess – a not insubstantial sum of money that spoke of Sir William’s regard for his wife. There was one further bill held in this part of the book, dated 22 May 1550, for money owed and paid by Sir William to his clerks Thomas Knott and William Eade, which shows us the huge scale of the sums involved in Sir William’s transactions as it recorded the enormous sum of almost £2,415.34 Altogether, along with the receipts and daily disbursements in Parts 1 and 2, these extraordinary payments give us an indication that Bess was cognisant of a range of her husband’s transactions and of the larger picture of the status of the family finances. While the structure and content of the 1548–50 financial accounts indicate something of the scope and scale of the Cavendish finances, they are not the full story. There were other aspects of the finances, parcelled into separate sets of accounts, which ran in parallel with each other in a manner familiar from other early modern households.35 There were the kitchen accounts, which covered routine repeat purchases of basic daily household supplies, such as candles, soap, nails, rushes, faggots for the oven and essential food purchases, such as butter, eggs, flour, oatmeal, salt, meat and fish. Most of these items cost no more than a few pence each and give us a detailed picture of the household’s day-to-day diet and subsistence, which included seasonal

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delicacies such as cherries, apples and plums, and regular purchases of delectables such as honey, currants, mustard, pepper, garlic, herbs, aniseed comfits, cloves and mace. Most importantly (for the purposes of this chapter), they show us that Bess kept a close eye on everyday spending on consumables: the London kitchen accounts from 13 November 1552 were kept by a steward but were totalled and signed by Bess every single day; and those for the period 20 August 1557 to 1 March 1559 were kept by Bess herself in her own hand.36 That these kitchen accounts were kept separately explains why everyday recurring purchases of consumable items did not appear in Bess’s own disbursements.37 In addition to these (that is, to the kitchen accounts and to Bess’s 1548–50 book of receipts, disbursements and extraordinary bills) were Sir William’s disbursements that covered his own spending; an example is extant for the period 1 November 1551 to 23 June 1553 in the hand of one of his stewards.38 That is, husband and wife each maintained his and her own disbursements. There were occasional overlaps, such as where they paid the same servants or purchased items for one another, but their spending was largely distinct. Comparison between Sir William and Bess’s disbursements reveals patterns of spending that fell along fairly predictable gendered lines. For example, there were certain categories of item purchased by Sir William but never by his wife, which included weapons (his ‘woodknyve & … dager’, ‘Crosbowe’ and the ‘bowes and Arrowes’ for his male servants), equipment for sport or cultural pursuits (his ‘gosse hawke’ and his ‘harpe’ in its ‘Case of lether’), house improvements (‘yron worke’ for ‘portalles’ at ‘chattesworth’) and vehicles (the ‘quilting of the lynyng’ for the litter).39 These and other differences in their spending corresponded closely with broader patterns that have been observed for married couples for later periods and that still continue to this day (patterns whereby men’s shopping is concerned with vehicles, sport, leisure, technology and home improvements, and women’s with household provisioning and upkeep).40 As such, Sir William and Bess’s disbursements provide us with one of the earliest examples in Britain of these remarkably persistent gendered shopping habits. We should not be surprised, then, by the overall structure and content of these financial accounts for the Cavendish household, which resemble other contemporary examples. Nor should we be surprised to find Bess actively involved in keeping these records: we know that other early modern women did so, and the involvement of gentry and aristocratic wives in keeping financial accounts at this period was typical or even expected.41 Nevertheless, it is worth making observations as to the nature and level of her involvement,



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which can indicate to us something of Sir William’s evident trust in his wife. In an era when women had minimal legal entitlements, the level of control a wife was accorded when it came to the finances can be a barometer for us to gauge the quality of the marital partnership. Ultimately, a wife’s access to legal documents and money, her level of financial autonomy and her role and influence when it came to financial decision-making defined the authority and agency she had within the household and within the marriage. We know that, like many other married couples at the time, the Cavendishes made provision to ensure that Bess would retain control of their property should Sir William die before her and before their children were of age.42 But the accounts tell us something of her involvement in handling the purse strings day-to-day. They give us information about the workings of documentary culture within the household and allow us to consider questions over where, when, how and on what terms she had access to money. As we have seen so far, Sir William made payments and purchases on his wife’s behalf, as well as giving her sums of money to cover household expenses. To this observation we can add that we know Bess not only collected income from rents and livestock but also had access to the physical stores where documents and sources of money were kept – the coffers, chests, boxes and closets. References to such storage receptacles show us she was involved in their management and maintenance: for example, she paid five shillings for ‘the loke for the closet dore’, three pence to ‘a smethe that shulde haue opened a letyll cofer’ and two shillings for delivery of ‘the capcase’.43 Further confirmation that she had access to the stores of cash appears in the one extant letter we have from Sir William to his wife, from 13 April 1550:44 To Besse Cavendyssh my wyff Good Besse haueinge forgotten to wryght in my letters for that yow shuld pay otewell Alayne . eight poundes for certayne otys that we haue bought of hym. ouer and aboue xls that I haue paid to hym in hand hertely pray yow for that he is desyrus to receyve the rest at londone to pay hym vppon the sight hereof yow knowe my Store and therefore I haue appoyntyd hym to haue it at your handes. And thus, faer yow well ffrom Chattesworth the xiijth of Aprell All yours as most worthy WC

As Sir William stated here, in his letter, ‘yow knowe my Store’. That is to say, Bess, his wife, knew how to access his store (literally, his chest or coffer of money kept at the London house), out of which he instructed her to take the cash sum of £8 to give to Otwell Alan ‘vppon the sight’ of him and ‘at

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your hands’, that is, in person. Here we see the hierarchy of household authority realised through the finances. Sir William delegated Bess to make this payment and in doing so he verbally authorised her to access his store of cash, although the letter implied this was a fairly routine task and that she knew how to access the money store (‘you know my store’, he said, that is, she already knew how to get into his money store and had done so before). While this brief letter may be the only one we have extant from Sir William to Bess, it seems a rather appropriate snapshot of their relationship. The letter gives us an everyday transaction that reflected the quality of the marriage and, while Sir William was head of the household, their partnership evidently involved a high level of trust and cooperation. Further insight into the nature and level of trust between the couple, as well as Bess’s degree of financial control and autonomy, can be found by reading the 1548–50 account book against another extant letter from this period. This letter, written by Bess in London, was sent to her steward Francis Whitfield at Chatsworth, 14 November [1552], and concerned authority over financial matters.45 Bess began by instructing Francis Whitfield to pay the carpenter and oversee the management of Chatsworth in her absence, instructions authorised by both herself and Sir William as she emphasised that she had ‘spoken with’ her husband.46 Next, she strongly rebuked Francis Whitfield for refusing the spending requests of her younger half-sister Jane Kniveton, who had recently given birth. Bess issued a blanket authorisation of any of her half-sister’s spending requests and specified that she (Jane Kniveton) must be granted all ‘thynges that ys nedefoulle for hare to haue’ and ‘any thynge that she hathe a mynde to’.47 Bess then ordered Francis Whitfield to pay Jane Kniveton’s midwife and nurse and specified exactly how these payments must be carried out: ‘make my syster Iane preuye of yet and then paye yet to them fourthwt yf you haue noother money take so meche of the rente at penteryge’. That is, before handing over the money, he (Francis Whitfield) must make her (Jane Kniveton) cognisant of the payment.48 Bess then authorised Francis Whitfield to take the stated sum out of the Pentrich rental income if he found himself short of ready cash.49 Altogether, these instructions uncover for us certain internal processes within the management of the household finances. The letter confirms that Bess not only collected and recorded receipt of rental incomes but was also authorised to use this rental money, to do so under her own initiative and to decide how the money was spent. Furthermore, she was in a position both to authorise the steward to access the rental income money and to overrule his decisions when it came to how it was spent. We see the role of Aunt



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Linacre (and standing in, during Aunt Linacre’s absence, Francis Whitfield) as household manager directly below Bess, responsible for distributing authorised payments and with access to stores of money. We also see that the relative status of Francis Whitfield and Jane Kniveton had become a cause of interpersonal tension in the household and that this dispute was negotiated through the finances. In the absence of Aunt Linacre, Bess clarified that the line of authority ran from herself to Jane Kniveton to Francis Whitfield; that is, Jane Kniveton’s word was to take precedence over that of Francis Whitfield at this time. It is important not to underestimate Jane Kniveton’s status in the household, as Francis Whitfield made the mistake of doing.50 The quarrel, captured here in the letter, gives us a glimpse into the early stages of Jane Kniveton’s successful life-long career within her half-sister’s household and shows us Bess developing the inner circle of her female support network. Both the letters that have been discussed so far functioned as extensions of the financial accounts. Indeed, both were likely to have been preserved as part of the household archive because they functioned as receipts or proofs of authorisation for access to sums of money.51 Certainly, a change in function would plausibly explain why this letter sent and delivered to Francis Whitfield ended up in Bess’s own papers; that is, if it came to function as a receipt for payment and was added by Francis Whitfield (perhaps via Jane Kniveton after paying her nurse and midwife) to Bess’s financial records. It is an example that reminds us that early modern letters, receipts, bills and financial accounts were not hermetically sealed off from one another but existed along a spectrum and their function could change depending upon context, use and archival setting. Francis Whitfield was the only person other than Bess and Sir William to write entries into the 1548–50 book of financial accounts, but Aunt Linacre and Jane Kniveton were also key personnel in the management of the household and we should not entirely exclude the possibility that they were involved in handling bills and receipts.52 The letters and financial accounts give us an example of how the hierarchy of household authority was negotiated through control of spending and structured through documentary culture. When it came to decisions over how money was accessed and used, Sir William passed his authority to his wife Bess, and Bess passed her authority to her senior managerial staff Francis Whitfield, Aunt Linacre and Jane Kniveton. Authority and agency could shift and be allocated according to circumstances: her husband gave his authority in the matter of payment of the carpenter; she gave her authority to Francis Whitfield in the absence of Aunt Linacre to use the Pentrich rental money; she approved Francis Whitfield’s authority to make

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payments on condition that he inform her sister Jane Kniveton; she gave Jane Kniveton’s word authority on spending matters over Francis Whitfield given the circumstances. These chains of authority and authorisation were here approved through the documents – the letters, receipts and financial accounts – and show us the processes by which authority was structured. As mistress of the household, Bess was required to supervise a large number of people while at the same time to be subject to her husband’s authority; to enact a kind of ‘subordinate agency’.53 The financial accounts help us to understand the paradoxes inherent in this position and the processes through which these contradictions might have been navigated and resolved. Marriage and the negotiation of authority: the language of Folger MS X.d.486 On 17 December 1551 Sir William spent 3s 5d to replenish his wife’s ‘wryting deske’ with ink, paper, wax and a penknife to cut her quill, along with the tools she would need for keeping financial accounts, a set of counters and a balance with weights; viz., ‘paid for a cast of countrs ^xijd^ & a penknyve iijd balance & weightes xxd paper iiijd waxe ob & an ynkhorne jd all this was to furnisshe my ladys wryting deske’.54 These purchases were made in London, although we do not know if her ‘wryting deske’ was also kept there or was at Chatsworth (which they owned by this point), or if she had writing desks at both houses or, indeed, if it was the portable sort of desk that had equipment stored inside and was carried with her when she travelled between houses. In any of these cases, the entry indicates to us that Bess had a designated locus and the necessary tools for writing and for keeping financial accounts, which were identifiably her own. She was not reliant upon waiting for a steward or clerk to finish at his desk, which, in itself, was relevant to the opportunities she had for control over how documentary culture was organised in and around the Cavendish household. That this purchase of writing and accounting equipment came out of Sir William’s own disbursements indicates where it was sourced (in London) but also his acquiescence to the purchase. It is a reminder that when we imagine Bess keeping financial accounts we must consider Sir William’s role in the process, as is further indicated by the account book itself. At various points in the book the couple interacted and we see that Sir William was the earliest reader of the 1548–50 financial accounts. One of the ways Sir William appeared in the book was in the role of auditor, although he did not perform this role consistently. To take the



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disbursements (Part 2 of the book): at the start, the disbursements were prepared as a book for audit, whereby entries were added by Bess and then totalled and signed off by Sir William in his own hand, usually at the foot of the page (Figure 1).55 It was a format common in contemporary books of disbursements, whereby, often, a secretary or steward added entries that were subsequently totalled, authorised and approved by the head of the household. Indeed, it was the system used throughout Sir William’s own disbursements kept for him by his secretary or steward. What was different about Bess’s 1548–50 disbursements was that this system broke off after a few pages: after six pages she switched to keeping the remainder of the disbursements as a kind of day book with no sum totals added by Sir William (Figures 2 and 3).56 The same kind of switch (from audit to day book) occurred in the receipts (Part 1 of the book) that, from the same point in time, also lacked Sir William’s sum totals. This change of format (from audit to day book) was accompanied by a marked change in Bess’s handwriting and style of presentation. The earlier (audit book style) pages were written in single sitting, in one colour of ink, in neat handwriting characterised by evenly sized letters, ruled lines, efforts at clerkly Latinate abbreviations and with careful additions of ‘per bill’ in the margin (Figure 1). By contrast, the later (day book style) entries were made ad hoc rather than at a single sitting; there were many changes of ink on each page; the handwriting was looser, larger in size and less controlled; the writing space was unruled; there were no efforts at clerkly features or abbreviations and the use of ‘per bill’ ceased (Figures 2 and 3).57 To be clear: in both Part 1 (the receipts) and Part 2 (the disbursements) of the book, the switch from a fair copy to a more informal style coincided with the cessation of Sir William’s role as auditor. These marked changes, both in the accounting system used (which switched from a book for audit to day book) and the visual presentation (which switched from a fair copy to a more informal appearance) occurred at a particular juncture: both in the receipts and in the disbursements sections these changes happened after around June 1549. As has already been mentioned, this was the month of the birth of Bess and Sir William’s second child together, Temperance, and the period of Bess’s lying-in, when Sir William was making entries into the book. When Bess resumed control of the accounts later in the summer of 1549, she switched to the new format and style. That is to say, by summer 1549, the switch to the day book format had been decided upon and, in addition, it had been accepted there was no need for Bess to prepare a fair copy, nor for Sir William to add sum totals. We do not know why these

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Figure 1.  Cavendish household financial accounts, 1548–50. Disbursements of Elizabeth Cavendish (known as ‘Bess of Hardwick’) written in her own hand with the page sum added by her husband, Sir William. Folger MS X.d.486, fol. 9r. Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library under Creative Commons AttributionShareAlike 4.0 International License.



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Figure 2.  Cavendish household financial accounts, 1548–50. Disbursements of Elizabeth Cavendish (known as ‘Bess of Hardwick’); this page features a mixture of entries, both those in her own hand and those in the hand of her husband, Sir William. Folger MS X.d.486, fol. 13r. Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Figure 3.  Cavendish household financial accounts, 1548–50. Disbursements of Elizabeth Cavendish (known as ‘Bess of Hardwick’) written in her own hand. Folger MS X.d.486, fol. 21r. Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.



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changes were agreed but the new format would certainly have been more efficient to produce. Payments were written down soon after they were made, according to the required generic conventions but without recourse to clerkly niceties. The result was a financial account that recorded the flow of money in and out of the household, and the frequent marginal annotations show us that the book was used as a reference point as and when required. That these changes occurred around the time of the birth of their second child (the fourth living with them) perhaps, in part, explained the need for greater efficiency as demands on Bess’s time increased and her responsibilities grew. We can also recall that June 1549 was the month the couple purchased Chatsworth; the changes to the finances might be seen in the context of this more fundamental re-structuring of their household. One other change occurred in the book that signalled a reduction in Sir William’s presence as an authorising figure. After the first few pages of disbursements, he not only ceased to audit the page but Bess also stopped recording transactions as being approved by her husband. Up to this point, four payments were specified by Bess as having been made at or by ‘my hosbande commandment’, a phrase which suggests she usually acted independently but that, on some occasions, Sir William would step in and give orders.58 This phrase never appeared again after fol. 10v (that is, it only appeared in the earlier, audited section of the disbursements). It is worth, once again, making comparison with Sir William’s disbursements, kept for him by his secretary and totalled and signed daily himself: by contrast with Bess in her disbursements, Sir William’s secretary never dropped the conventional authorising phrase ‘by my master’s commandment’.59 Bess, it seems, began by keeping the financial accounts in a manner that resembled her husband’s secretary or steward but, subsequently, gained fuller control over spending decisions and a higher level of autonomy.60 Certainly, that is the story presented in her textual record. In at least one instance Bess appeared to have actively avoided the conventional fixed script ‘at my husband’s commandment’. Instead, she devised a circumlocution that framed the payment more as an agreement with her husband than a ‘commandement’ from him: ‘geuen to rober [sic] barley whyc^h^ my hosband promysed hym that I shulde geue hym euery quarter – iijs iiijd’ (fol. 21v). We do not know whether this promised payment involved any discussion or disagreement between the couple, but the entry does indicate an alertness, on Bess’s part, to the form of wording. Specifically, this entry resists use of the usual conventional linguistic script of husbandly ‘commandment’ and, instead, while it records her fulfilment of her wifely duties, favours wording that casts herself more as a cooperative partner.

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After June 1549 Sir William may have stepped back from formally auditing his wife’s financial accounts, but we know that he did not step away altogether as he made certain revisions, additions and annotations in the book. For example, twice Sir William revised a potentially misleading or incomprehensible spelling by Bess: ‘Jone foyesgon ^John ffytzjohn^’ and ‘horrdes ^yerdes^’.61 Bess evidently struggled with the representation of certain words and sounds in writing, and elsewhere we see that she sometimes self-corrected her spelling of proper names, such as ‘fesyon fysycyon’.62 In another instance, Sir William finished a name on her behalf: she started writing the entry, ‘payed to che …’ and he finished the name ‘… slyngbury’.63 This last example indicates a situation whereby Sir William was on hand to finish the entry and implies a collaborative attitude towards the accounts, which is further evidenced by their additions and modifications to each other’s entries.64 The written interactions between the couple in the margins and in their revisions give the impression of a shared concern to produce a comprehensible and meticulous record. Bess’s own self-corrections likewise are suggestive of the efforts she went to in this respect. For example, she made revisions to the conventional linguistic scripts that record whether money had been received, paid, given, lost or delivered. Her revisions betray a level of care and attention to detail that attest to Bess’s seriousness over the task of keeping the accounts and her concern with form and phrasing. The distinctions made, through the choice of linguistic scripts, evidently mattered to Bess as on at least fourteen occasions she revised one convention for another, such as revising paid to given, or given to lost: ‘pa geuen to …’, ‘p delyuered to …’, ‘payed geuen to syluester’ and ‘geuen to n lad loste at plaue’.65 It is important to recall that the conventional phraseology of financial accounts served to capture the social and interpersonal relationships implicit within financial transactions. Money recorded as ‘paid’ was, typically, handed over as part of a formal agreement, such as for wages, rents or in response to production of a bill. Whereas money recorded as ‘given’ was for transactions that were perceived to involve a level of gratuity and were often made spontaneously; these transactions included purchases from pedlars, donations to the poor, clothes for servants or to ‘reward’ those who had helpfully delivered livestock, food, gifts or letters. To distinguish between ‘paid’ and ‘given’, therefore, was to present a detailed record of the everyday enactment of social hierarchy, the performance of a culture of deference and the exercise of status and authority. As Mark Merry and Catherine Richardson have put it, it was through such distinctions that a set of financial accounts became ‘an image of a well functioning community’.66 In the case of the



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Cavendish financial accounts, the book symbolised a well-run household under Bess’s supervision. When we ask the question of why the details of wording mattered to Bess (to the extent that she would go to the trouble of making precise revisions), we must consider the various possible uses of the financial accounts. There were, without doubt, opportunities for Bess to create a resource that gave her advantages in disputes and negotiations and which, read by Sir William, stood as proof of her competence as a textual and a household manager. But we might also consider another possible function for the book within the household, which was to pass on skills in numeracy and literacy, and the concern with form can be seen in that light. It is likely that Bess learned the basics of financial accountancy, like other Tudor girls, as part of her educational upbringing and training and she certainly had these expectations with regard to her own family. During her first recorded shopping trip to London, Bess kitted out her youngest stepdaughter Ann not only with fashionable clothing, which included ‘a uertyngall’ and ‘gordeles wyte rede and yolo’, but also with a set of her own tools for writing and keeping financial accounts: ‘a pener and yenorne aal and conteres – xiiijd’.67 Ann would have been aged eight or nine at this point in time and, evidently, by this age, was gaining skills in literacy and numeracy. That Bess made these purchases herself gives us an indication that her stepdaughter’s education was an area where she took an interest and had a role. Moreover, the purchase of the penner, inkhorn and counters for Ann reminds us that the process of keeping the financial accounts may, in part, have functioned as a teaching exercise for her two stepdaughters, Ann and Catherine, referred to throughout the book.68 More evidence of Bess’s own level of training and experience is evident from her self-corrections and from certain words where Bess displayed a great deal of variation in her spelling, such as would be indicative of hesitancy or unfamiliarity. To take one example, within the first two pages of the receipts, Bess wrote RECEIVED fifteen times, spelled no less than nine different ways; and, across the book, she spelled MICHAELMAS at least four different ways.69 Her range of variants for these words confirms she had not copied these entries from a clerk’s version. Rather, they point to a lack of experience with the written language of rent receipts and quarter days. These words would have been familiar to anyone who regularly prepared administrative documents, which, evidently, as yet, Bess had not. To take another example, Bess displayed uncertainty over how to reproduce certain sounds and lexical forms in writing, evident from the number of times she corrected them and the innovative spellings she tried out. In particular, we find corrections and variations when

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it came to how to reproduce, in writing, velar and fricative consonants such as /k/, /s/, /ks/, /sk/, /∫/ and /t∫/. So, the words SILK, DAMASK, KERCHERS, SHIRTS, SUGAR and SHOES were ones that Bess often selfcorrected or where we find spelling variations: , , ; ; , ; , ; ; , , .70 These kinds of revisions and spelling variations are suggestive of someone who had heard these words spoken but was not sure of the written conventions. Lack of familiarity with written conventions was also reflected in the word division. So, for the measurement of cloth known as an ELL we find uncertainty over the initial sound, reflected in spellings that begin, variously, with , and : , , , , , , .71 Other speech-like features included her use of the group genitive and /h/-dropping or /h/-addition, such as , , , , , and .72 In these ways, Bess’s language gives us an indication of her level of training and administrative experience and shows us forms from her personal spelling system.73 As such, the language helps to confirm these financial accounts were written by Bess herself and, while highly conventional, the language was, at the same time, unique to her. The decision to pen these financial accounts in her own hand was not surprising or unusual, but nor was it a neutral act.74 We know from scholarship on letter-writing that the use of one’s own hand was a decision that had implications and potential advantages; it ensured fuller control over the content of a letter, allowed for a higher level of security or secrecy, it could be an interpersonal marker of intimacy or deference or a way to indicate personal presence.75 All of these potential advantages could also be applied to financial accounts. In addition, to write the financial accounts in her own hand was to frame the text from her own perspective, which is apparent at no fewer than four different narrative levels that are worth outlining here. First, written in Bess’s own hand, the accounts featured, peppered throughout, use of first person pronouns. Unlike the accounts kept by Sir William’s secretary, which are almost entirely cast in the third person, Bess used the first person to specify purchases made in person (such as, the ‘stofe that I boughte of a pedeler’, fol. 11v), or for herself (such as the twelve pence spent on an ounce ‘of lace for my selfe’, fol. 9r) or to indicate personal possession of items made, mended or maintained that included ‘my botones’, ‘my cape’, ‘my smokes’, ‘my damaxke gone’, ‘my carpyt’, ‘my uertyngegale’, ‘my armes’, ‘my sleues’, ‘my roffes’ and ‘my wache’.76 Use of first person



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pronouns in financial document has been interpreted as a marker of pride, pleasure or personal investment in ownership of material item.77 Here the pronouns also functioned to underscore Bess’s presence and, rhetorically speaking, to make the financial accounts more ‘my’-/‘I’-focused. Second, written in her own hand, the financial accounts presented time from her perspective; that is, in the text, time came to revolve around Bess herself. Unlike the financial accounts kept by Sir William’s secretary, Bess’s financial accounts included very few actual dates and, instead, time was recorded relative to her own movements and activities. Bess recorded payments happening ‘at my’ coming to, from or being at London, Northaw or Chatsworth; or she recorded payments in relation to an event, such as ‘when I cyrtenyed har boye’ or ‘when I ayred har’.78 Third, to write the book in her own hand gave Bess control over how to shape and structure descriptions. While such shaping took place within the limits of the genre’s conventions and linguistic scripts, there was still scope for decisions over inclusions, exclusions and level of granularity, which varied between entries. Several of Bess’s disbursements recorded payments for ‘stuff’ or ‘things’ without any further specification, such as: 9s 4d ‘payed to plates for stofe he bought for nan’ 8s ‘payed for stofe that I bought of a pedeler’ 18s 10d to Sandy ‘for thynges that he bought at London’79

These descriptions can be compared to purchases that cost less but were recorded in far more detail, such as: 4s 2d ‘payed for genger lecerres anysedes suger g candy for to make adrege for my hosbande’ 3s 4d for ‘for a querteren of fine thered to soue the lynen that wos made a geneste my ladys waryck comynge’80

From these examples we gain an impression of Bess’s preference for embellishing detail around descriptions of purchases made for family members (in this case her husband) or associated with hospitality for high-status guests, which were all areas of expectation in her role as an elite Tudor wife. There is much more that could be said here, but, for present purposes, these examples are sufficient to illustrate that casting financial accounts herself gave Bess opportunities to indulge a particular bias, appeal to a reader (in this case, her husband) or serve a personal agenda. Fourth and finally, and perhaps most importantly, was the impact on address terms. Written in her own hand, all the address terms were relative to Bess

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as composer of the text and reflected her relationships with those named, their relative social status, proximity, gender and level of intimacy.81 Of course, as scholars of early modern letter-writing have so compellingly shown, address terms did not map out social relations in a transparent or neutral way, but, rather, as a writer perceived them, or chose to represent them, or desired them to be. Like a letter, a book of financial accounts was an opportunity to reflect upon and inscribe relationships within the household community from her own perspective. It is worth giving two more detailed examples here, first, of address terms used for servants, and, second, for her family. On the one hand, the address terms Bess used mapped relations between herself and her servants. As was usual at the time, persons not in her service were referred to by what they did: men by occupational title (‘the shoemaker’, ‘the carpenter’) and women or lower-status men by a description of the task performed (so, the child-carer was ‘the woman that hath my norsys bowe’ and her smock-maker was ‘the woman that mayed my smokes’).82 By contrast, persons in her service were referred to by name and, again, as was usual at the time, naming conventions varied according to gender and status: generally, female servants were referred on a first-name basis (‘nan’, ‘mege’, ‘barbera’, ‘nelle’) whereas male servants were called by their second name (‘plates’ ‘tage’, ‘myntereg’) or full name (‘halle’ was also referred to as ‘tomas halle’).83 It is important to emphasise, again, that these naming patterns and address terms were conventional and are what we would expect to find in this period. More interesting are the few examples that, while still conventional, indicated variations in status or interpersonal proximity. So, Bess referred to her servant Cecily as ‘cecely’ but also as ‘cese’ or ‘cys’, a shortening that functioned as a marker of familiarity or a term of endearment that was also reflected in Bess’s regularly purchases of items of clothing for her.84 Similarly, Bess referred to two of her male servants with address terms that were more familiar than was required by convention: Francis Whitfield was always ‘francys’ and James Crompe was variously ‘James crompe’, ‘crompe’ or just ‘James’.85 Both men had come with Bess when she married Sir William and continued to stay in her service into her next marriage. Bess’s choice of more familiar address terms was evidently a marker of their position and proximity within her inner circle.86 On the other hand, the address terms Bess used in the 1548–50 disbursements mapped out relationships with her family and can give us insights into some of the relationships that biographers and historians have found least accessible. Again, the terms of address themselves were conventional but it was Bess’s selection of forms that was potentially revealing. The formula



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my + kinship relationship was used to refer to unique and close relationships, such as ‘my hosbande’ and ‘my mother’.87 The same formula was used to indicate the person of closest interpersonal proximity from the particular familial category; so when Bess referred to ‘my syster’ and ‘my aunt’ she was always making reference to her half-sister Jane Kniveton and her Aunt Linacre, both of whom lived with her and, as we have seen, were closely involved in the management of the household.88 By contrast, to distinguish someone in the same familial category but where there was greater interpersonal distance the formula my + kinship relationship + name was used; so Bess to referred to her half-sister Elizabeth Wingfield ‘my syster wynfelde’.89 A similar distinction can be observed between Bess’s natal and nuptial daughters. Bess always referred to her natal daughters by their first name only, as ‘temperance’ and ‘francys’, a familiar, relaxed address term that indicated interpersonal closeness.90 By contrast, her nuptial stepdaughters Catherine and Ann were referred to using the formula my + relationship + name as ‘my dougter cateryn’ and ‘my doughter ane’, a relatively more formal and distant term.91 At least, these were the address terms used for her stepdaughters at the start of the disbursements. Later, we find five references to her eldest stepdaughter Catherine as ‘cate’. The shift from ‘my dougter cateryn’ to ‘cate’ was a shift from a more formal, distant term to one that was more familiar, intimate and relaxed. We do not know if this shift in address terms correlated with a development in their actual interpersonal relationship or a blossoming of affection. Although, we can observe that all five payments that referred to ‘cate’ involved generous purchases of high-quality clothing for her stepdaughter that totalled almost £8.92 That is to say, Bess chose to change the way that she textualised her relationship with her stepdaughter, perhaps in response to a change in the emotional quality of their relationship, or perhaps to reflect an aspiration or desired ideal that Bess wished to project in writing. To summarise: the 1548–50 financial accounts tell us that while Bess had been trained in keeping financial accounts, she was not familiar with all of their administrative terms or written lexical forms. We can detect that some effort was involved, on her part, to apply the conventions of the genre, evident in the many small-scale corrections she made as she wrote and revised her text. We might wonder what her reasons were for wanting to go to the trouble to keep these financial accounts so carefully. One answer may be that Bess perceived that a display of her competence would lead to greater autonomy and authority within the household. The fact that Sir William was reading (and sometimes correcting) this, her book of accounts, supports the suggestion, as do the marginal annotations that show the book was an actively updated

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reference point. The fact that we know she continued to be a scrupulous and avid keeper of financial accounts for many more years makes it tempting to suggest that she found the process rewarding and has prompted reflection, here, upon the potential benefits and implications of keeping household financial accounts oneself, in one’s own hand, rather than having a secretary undertake the task. If another person had written these accounts then a different set of pronouns, linguistic scripts and address terms would have been used. Casting the accounts herself gave Bess opportunities to represent her own competences, both as a financial manager and as a ‘good wife’, to textualise interpersonal and power relations and cultures of deference, to articulate shared values and reinforce the expectations that underlined the household community. To sit at her own desk and cast the accounts in her own distinctive handwriting and spelling system was to draw up the household in, as it were, her own voice. It was to textualise the household community in a way that both acknowledged her husband’s authority and, at the same time, projected a picture that positioned herself firmly at the helm of a harmonious well-ordered household. The opportunity to represent the household in textual form can thus be viewed as an opportunity to navigate and make sense of the contradictions inherent in her social role.93 Remembrance and family narratives: the archival afterlife of Folger MS X.d.486 Sir William died suddenly on 13 October 1557 and that same night his wife Bess Cavendish recorded the time and place in the notebook he had used to commemorate family births, christenings and marriages:94 Memorandum, that Sir William Cavendysshe, Knight, my most deare and wellbeloved Husband, departed this present Life of Munday, being the 25th Daie of October, betwixt the Howers of 8 and 9 of the same Daie at Night, in the Yeare of our Lord God, 1557, the domynicall Letter then C. On whose Soule I most humbly beseeche the Lord to have Mercy, and to rid mee and his poore Children of our greate Misserie. Elizabeth Cavendysshe95

Bess’s textual record of her loss and bereavement, whilst conventional in its phrasing, goes beyond what would be required by protocol.96 Furthermore, her decision to continue Sir William’s notebook, which was a repository of family memory, demonstrated a memorialising impulse that was to continue for the rest of Bess’s life. The elaborate and extensive heraldic and iconographic



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schemes she developed at Chatsworth and, later, Hardwick, aggrandised her life as part of a broader family narrative.97 These schemes were developed consciously and purposefully over a period of more than six decades. Representing her life as a process of accretion and expansion, they celebrated all three of her adult marriages and the arms of each of her husbands were presented in combination with her own and along with other kinship connections. Thus the schemes she developed depicted complex family structures in visual form whilst continuing to look back to her past marriages and display her widow’s grief and loss. To walk around Hardwick Hall today is to experience Bess’s remarkable efforts, over many years, to memorialise her family through these visual schemes; to put it another way, it is to encounter Bess as ‘matriarchivist’.98 As matriarchivist her activities were both practical and symbolic; that is, they were concerned both to ensure the legal rights of land and property inheritance to her descendants, and to commemorate personal relationships and family narratives. We might ask how the 1548–50 book of financial accounts came to function within this broader household archival context. One possibility is that the book had affective value and was preserved because it contained specimens of Sir William’s own handwriting; certainly, it is the only document extant today that features together both Bess and Sir William’s handwriting, and we know of other comparable documents kept for affective reasons.99 Another possibility is that the book was preserved for the record it provided of objects mentioned within its pages. For example, one of the objects we know Bess kept throughout her life was the gold and bejewelled book that Sir William had commissioned for her and that he referred to, on 10 May 1550, as ‘my wyffes book’.100 From a practical point of view, this receipt would have served as proof of payment and a record of the original cost, of £14 6s, of the commission. But we know that the gold and bejewelled book possessed more than financial value as it was a gifted object that featured twin portraits of Bess and Sir William and was designed to commemorate their marital union. Moreover, almost sixty years after it was made, it was bequeathed by Bess in her will and, on her death in 1608, passed to their daughter Frances: ‘I giue vnto my daughter ffrauncys … my greate booke of goule sett with stones, with her fathers Picture and my picture drawne in yt’.101 That Bess chose Frances to be the recipient of this heirloom seems entirely appropriate, given that it was commissioned when Frances, their first-born child, was an infant; indeed, when the book was commissioned she was also their only living child together.102 If we read the bequest against the 1548–50 book of financial accounts, the link between Frances and the gold and bejewelled

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book is textualised. That is, the 1548–50 financial accounts not only contained proof of payment for this heirloom, but also situated it socially and familiarly: in one volume, the receipt for the purchase of the gold and bejewelled book sat alongside numerous reference to small everyday purchases for the infant Frances – such as her knitted jackets and the coral for her teeth. We do not know whether Frances ever saw the 1548–50 financial account book, only that Bess archived it. But as the book drew together records related to Frances, her parents and the heirloom that came to be passed down to her, we might suggest that the financial accounts, in their afterlife, became a repository for family memory.103 Another of the objects Bess kept throughout her life was the portrait of herself painted in 1555–7 by an artist from the circle of Hans Eworth (cover image).104 This portrait was inventoried and passed down to her son with the rest of the interiors and still hangs at Hardwick New Hall today.105 For many years it was taken to be a portrait of Mary I, an understandable misattribution given the quality of the finery Bess wore.106 There is no doubt that the portrait was designed not only to depict Bess’s facial features but also her clothing, which glows with lifelike detail. We should not be surprised that the artist gave special attention to Bess’s clothing: we know from other Tudor portraits that the sitter’s identity was often captured through attire that represented a far larger financial outlay than the painting itself.107 Bess wore an expensivelooking black gown lined with fine white fur; her sleeves were decorated with intricate red-patterned embroidery; twenty-seven gold engraved aglets are visible that fastened her gown; she wore a finely engraved gold bracelet on each wrist and four gemstone rings on her fingers; at her neck was a twisted double row of pearls, and over her hair she wore a French hood decorated with gemstones, gold and another double row of pearls. We know from the 1548–50 financial accounts the investment in time and money that went into assembling her wardrobe, evident in the payments to the tailor, goldsmith, skinner, shoemaker, hosier, smock-maker, furrier, pedlars and cloth carriers, as well as wages for her in-house embroiderer, known as Angel. Her own payments included £15 7s for making a velvet gown and £5 8s ‘for perle’.108 Sir William’s payments of more than £27 towards his wife’s ‘gere’ included £11 ‘for my wyffes billymentes’ (that is, billiaments, the ornamented bejewelled parts of a woman’s headwear).109 Given the large outlay involved, these references from the financial accounts may refer to the exact same French hood, with its trimmings and billiaments, that Bess wore for her portrait a few years later. If so, then the portrait captured for posterity a generous gift from her husband and inscribed the memory of their successful



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marital relationship.110 We cannot be absolutely certain whether the items Bess wore for her 1555–7 portrait, including the French hood, were also those that featured in the 1548–50 financial accounts. However, we do know that Bess kept and archived the book that gives us a record of substantial investment in clothing in the period leading up to the time she sat for this portrait. For this reason, we might suggest, again, that the financial accounts, in their afterlife, became a repository of family memories and contributed to the process by which objects came to symbolise relationships and memorialise the family. This chapter has considered how the 1548–50 Cavendish book of household financial accounts was produced and received, both in its early stages and in its afterlife. It was an evolving textual representation of the persons, objects and relationships that constituted the household. It functioned as a site where household authority and the boundaries of the spousal partnership were managed, negotiated and defined. Its purpose was both practical and symbolic: it captured details of financial transactions but also contributed to shaping and representing the household in a particular light, as a harmonious hierarchically-structured community. It presented a selective record of objects purchased, some of which were later incorporated into Bess’s wider memorialising activities and passed down as family heirlooms. The book functioned as an archive of information about the era of the Cavendish marriage, a textual site where Bess had some degree of control and that ultimately became a node within the wider matriarchive she curated over her lifetime. This book of financial accounts reminds us that it is, first and foremost, because of Bess’s own efforts as matriarchivist that we are furnished with so much detail about her life today. It reminds us of the politics of archival inclusions and exclusions, and the potential role of women, subject to the limitations of convention, opportunity and circumstances, to participate in the creation of early modern records and archives. Acknowledgements This chapter was written as part of the project Archives and Writing Lives, funded by an AHRC Leadership Fellowship (2017–19, Principal Investigator, University of Glasgow). I would like to thank staff and archivists at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, and Chatsworth House Archive, Derbyshire, for permission to examine manuscripts in their collections and for their generous support and encouragement. Material from this chapter was presented at the following conferences and I am grateful to the organisers

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for their invitations to present the research in progress and to the delegates for their helpful questions and comments: Gender, Power and Materiality in Early Modern Europe, University of Plymouth, 7–9 April 2016; Early Modern Manuscripts Online: New Directions in Research, Folger Shakespeare Library, 18–19 May 2017; and Material Culture and Writing Practice from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, University of Kent, 25–26 May 2017. Notes 1 Hilary Mantel, Bring up the Bodies (London: HarperCollins, 2012), p. 159. 2 Critiques of the use of historical financial accounts as ‘quarries for facts’ picked over for ‘the same two or three colourful passages’ or as ‘handy repositories of unvarnished facts’ are offered by, for example, Eamon Duffy, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), p. xiv, and Jason Scott-Warren, ‘Early modern bookkeeping and life-writing revisited: accounting for Richard Stonley’, Past and Present, Supplement 11(2016), pp. 151–70, at p. 151. 3 Audit sums do not appear on all pages, as described below. Some of those that do appear do not give an accurate total of the amounts on the page, such as on fol. 2v. 4 A discussion of training in and the challenges of numeracy is provided by Keith Thomas, ‘Numeracy in early modern England: the Prothero Lecture’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 37 (1987), pp. 103–32. The ‘extremely unreliable’ arithmetic and ‘frequent miscalculations’ in Tudor parish financial accounts are discussed by Duffy, The Voices, pp. 20–1. Further discussion is presented by Paul Dingman, ‘Unlocking the early modern account book’, blog post, 3 May 2016, online at http://collation.folger.edu/2016/05/early-modernaccount-book (accessed 13 June 2018). 5 The misunderstandings, described in more detail below (n. 15, 16 and 24) have resulted from the tendency to read the book lineally rather than according to its three-part structure; discount the ownership inscriptions; ignore the dictated entries; overlook the wider system of the household finances; and miscalculate the level of Bess’s contribution. Furthermore, this book is an example where the requirement for library catalogues to have a single main author works against the collaborative nature of many women’s manuscripts, a point discussed by William Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), p. 56. To be specific, the first field in the Folger HAMNET catalogue is ‘Main name’ and the name given for X.d.486 is ‘Cavendish, William, Sir, 1505?–1557, author’, https://hamnet.folger.edu (accessed 13 June 2018). This chapter argues that the book might more appropriately be reassigned to his wife or, at least, joint authorship.



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6 Philip Riden comments upon how little attention the Cavendish marriage has received from biographers: ‘Sir William Cavendish: Tudor civil servant and founder of a dynasty’, Derbyshire Archaeological Journal, 129 (2009), pp. 238–57, n. 1. 7 Jane Whittle and Elizabeth Griffiths describe (quoting J. de Vries) the internal decision-making of historical households as ‘an impenetrable “black box” ’, Consumption and Gender in the Early Seventeenth Century Household: The World of Alice Le Strange (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 26. This example of the Cavendish 1548–50 financial accounts is especially valuable because it can be read alongside a range of letters, wills, inventories and objects that are extant from the same household. 8 Dawn Archer provides a helpful definition of pragmaphilology set in the context of the field of historical pragmatics in Questions and Answers in the English Courtroom (1640–1760): A Sociopragmatic Analysis, Pragmatics and Beyond New Series (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2005), p. 6. Examples of pragmaphilology as an approach – although applied to other categories of texts than financial accounts – are listed by the Pragmatics of the Page project, University of Turku. Bridget Cusack, Everyday English: A Reader (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), pp. 37–88, Duffy, The Voices, and Catherine Richardson, ‘Written texts and the performance of materiality’, in Writing Material Culture History, edited by Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2015), pp. 59–66, all call for more attention to be given to the language of financial accounts. The approach is one that directly benefits from scholarship on early modern letter-writing, in particular, James Daybell, Women Letter-Writers in Tudor England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Lynne Magnusson, Shakespeare and Social Dialogue: Dramatic Language and Elizabethan Letters  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Terttu Nevalainen and Helena RaumolinBrunberg, ‘Constraints on politeness: the pragmatics of address formulae in early English correspondence’, in A. H. Jucker (ed.), Historical Pragmatics (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1995), pp. 541–601; Minna Navala, Address in Early English Correspondence: Its Forms and Socio-Pragmatic Functions (Helsinki: Société Néophilologique, 2004); and Alison Wiggins, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Language, Materiality and Early Modern Epistolary Culture, Material Readings in Early Modern Culture (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017). 9 Especially relevant here are Judith M. Spicksley, The Business and Household Accounts of Joyce Jeffreys Spinster of Hereford 1638–48 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Whittle and Griffiths, Consumption and Gender; and outputs from the project Producing Change: Gender and Work in Early Modern Europe, https://producingchange.gla.ac.uk (accessed 13 June 2018). A summary that compares quantitative and qualitative approaches to materiality, from which this chapter benefits, is provided by Richardson, ‘Written texts’, especially, pp. 43–4.

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10 In particular Mark Merry and Catherine Richardson, The Household Account Book of Sir Thomas Puckering, 1620, Dugdale Society, Vol. 45 (Bristol: Dugdale Society, 2012); and Lena Cowen Orlin, Locating Privacy in Tudor London (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2010). 11 In particular, James Daybell, ‘Gendered archival practices and the future lives of letters’, in Cultures of Correspondence in Early Modern Britain, edited by James Daybell and Andrew Gordon (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), pp. 210–36; Scott-Warren, ‘Early modern bookkeeping’; Sherman, Used Books; Adam Smyth, Autobiography in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) and ‘Money, accounting, and life-writing, 1600–1700: balancing a life’ in A History of English Autobiography, edited by Adam Smyth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 86–100. Also relevant here and beneficial to this chapter has been Duffy, The Voices. Influential throughout is Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987), in particular on books as ‘carriers of relationships’, p. 192. 12 Sir William refers to his wife as ‘Bess’ and ‘Good Bess’ in the one letter extant between the couple, Folger, X.d.428 (13). On the use of the name ‘Bess’ within her own lifetime see Wiggins, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Language, Materiality, p. xv and p. 14. Overviews of the Cavendish marriage are provided by David N. Durant, Bess of Hardwick: Portrait of an Elizabethan Dynast (London and Chester Springs: Peter Owen, 1977) pp. 12–17, and Mary S. Lovell, Bess of Hardwick: First Lady of Chatsworth (London: Little, Brown, 2005), pp. 34–108. 13 Durant, Bess of Hardwick, p. 16; Arthur C. Collins, Historical Collections, of the Noble Families of Cavendish,Vere, Harley, and Ogle (London: n.p., 1752), pp. 10–11. 14 Folger, X.d.486 measures 21.5 × 30.5 × 1 cm. The cover is made from vellum from a monastic manuscript recorded in the Folger catalogue as a late thirteenthcentury English(?) copy of the Decretals of Pope Gregory IX, book V. It is common to find medieval manuscripts used as binding material in the postReformation period and used for other books of Cavendish accounts. For example, Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, Devonshire Collection, Hardwick MS 1, ‘Account book of Sir William and Lady Cavendish, 1 November 1551 – 23 June 1553’ (subsequently referred to as HM/1) was bound in vellum from a medieval liturgical manuscript with musical notation and sixteenth-century pen trials. 15 Fol. 1r. A discussion of the tendency for women to be less visible in margins and less assertive in their ownership inscriptions is provided by Heidi Brayman Hackel, ‘ “Boasting of silence”: women readers in a patriarchal state’, in Reading, Society and Politics, edited by Kevin Sharp and Steven N. Zwicker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) pp. 101–21. 16 Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, p. 69, reading the book lineally, comes to the conclusion that Bess broke off from writing the financial accounts on fol. 21v for emotional reasons following the death of her infant child Temperance. However, fol. 21v was the end of a booklet as well as the juncture between Parts 2 and 3; that is,



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the break reflects the physical structure of the codex rather than Bess’s state of mind. We do not know how Bess reacted to the loss of her daughter; she may well have been distraught but her response is not mentioned in the financial accounts. Booklet 1 consisted of fols 1r–6v. Fol. 1 was left blank except for ‘Elyzabeth Cauendyssh’ written at the top of the recto side, that is, this folio functioned as a flyleaf and contained only this ownership declaration. Fol. 7r was the beginning of Booklet 2, which means we know Parts 1 and 2 were kept together because this folio was used by Sir William as a continuation of the rental receipts. We know of other examples of Cavendish accounts such as HM/1 that were, similarly, kept as booklets and bound together in a cover of reclaimed vellum. The sum totals made by Sir William were for £93 10s, £45 14s 3d, £61 16s 4d and 4s 10d (fols 2r, 3v, 3v and 5r). These sums were not the entirety of the rental income, which Durant estimates in 1549 was around £250, added to which was Sir William’s annuities of around £400, against their known total expenditure of around £350 (Durant, Bess of Hardwick, p. 17). His entries on fols 2v, 3v, 4r and 5v relate to this period. These included her entries, dictated to Sir William, for £29 17s ‘Receyved of my husbond before Easter – xxixli xvijs’ (fol. 3v); and £45.10s ‘recyvyd more of my husbond – xlvs xd’ (fol. 4r). For example, on 24 June 1524 from ‘mother pryer for har quarters rente dewe at medsomer – ijs vjd’ (fol. 12v). Booklet 2 is fols 7r–12v, Booklet 3 is fols 13r–18v and Booklet 4 is fols 19r–21v plus three stubs. That is, the disbursements section comprised three six-folio booklets, the final three pages of the third booklet having been sliced away, so that the disbursements now comprise fifteen folios (thirty pages) and three stubs. Francis Whitfield penned entries in which he referred to himself in the third person, therefore indicating they were dictated to him, such as: ‘delyuerde to fransis for the howse a pone a Reknynge’ and ‘delyuered to fraunces a pone a rekenynge ‘ (fols 17r and 18v). All three hands in this book can be identified by comparison with the letters. It is important to give these figures, not least because of the tendency in the biographical tradition to underplay Bess’s contribution to the book and role in the financial management. For example, according to Durant, Bess added ‘occasional’ disbursements that increased over time, whereas, in fact, she wrote the vast majority of the disbursements. The figures in this chapter were generated from a digital edition prepared with search and calculation functionalities. Disbursement entries dictated by Bess included those in which Sir William, writing in his own hand, referred to himself in the third person as ‘my husband’: ‘delivered to my husband when he went to London in Cestons – Cvijs’. The references to Bess’s lying-in and churching were: ‘to by thynges a geneste my

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Bess of Hardwick: new perspectives lyenge yn’ (Bess’s hand, fol. 12v) and ‘whenne my wyff and I whent to london after her Churching’ (Sir William’s hand, fol. 13r, Figure 2). To give some sense of the proportions: around one third of disbursement items were either for clothing or for sewing materials (such as thread, textiles, pins, thimbles and shears); payments for wages constituted about 8 per cent of entries; and payments for luxury or medicinal food items around another 8 per cent. Gloss: gown, buttons. The amounts are £10 7s over and above £5 ‘geuen me’ for the velvet gown (fol. 19v) and £7 17s 6d for her gold buttons (fol. 8r). Whittle and Griffiths provide a discussion of food and textiles as the dominant categories of domestic expenditure; both were necessities and also a means to display status that were managed by the mistress of the household (Consumption and Gender, p. 85). Fols 14r, 9r, 9r, 14r, 13v, 14v, 19v, 27r, 28r and 13r. Sums delivered to Bestney included £4 (‘iiijl’) ‘at my hosbande goyng to london’ (fol. 8v) and one hundred shillings (‘Cs’ or £5) ‘at my comynge frome london to paye the mene ther borde wages’ (fol. 8v). Her payment to Sir William’s star chamber attorney was for 13s 4d (‘xiijs iiijd’, fol. 9v). Sums delivered to Aunt Linacre included 10s ‘upon a reckoning’ (fol. 8v), £4 ‘for stoufe that she boughte at london’ (fol. 8v) and repeated amounts of twenty shillings ‘a pon a recynyng’ or ‘by a byll’ (fols 11r, 13r). Sums of ten shillings or twenty shillings were delivered to Francis Whitfield ‘to leye out for thynges that mouste be bought for the howse’ or ‘a pone a reconyng’ and appear on almost every page of the disbursements. An indication of the regularity with which sums of cash were delivered by Bess can further be seen in Robert Harryson’s record of money ‘resaued off my lady’ once or twice weekly from November 1552; his record was kept on a bifolium sheet bound into HM/1. To take one example, Bess always wrote ‘xijd’ (twelve pence); she never wrote ‘is’ (one shilling) for this amount even though they were equivalent. Presumably this does not mean she was always handing over twelve pennies but, rather, we should imagine that she used the shilling coin, or penny and groat coins in combination, but that it was simply the convention to say or write ‘twelve pence’. The same goes for ‘eight pence’ and ‘four pence’ that she always wrote ‘viiijd’ and ‘iiijd’ but may have been paid with groats. The suggestion is from Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, p. x. On the next page are three entries for sums ‘loste at playe by my hosbande’ of six pence, five shillings and two shillings (fol. 13r, Plate 2). On the previous page is a record for the higher sum of forty shillings ‘delyuered to my hosbande that he loste at playe wt my cosen clarke and otheres – xls’ (fol. 12r). That the later losses were of lower sums perhaps suggest the strategy – of gambling in groats to reduce losses – was effective. Comparison can be made with the 1620 financial accounts of Sir Thomas and Lady Puckering that contain areas of both ‘implicit understanding and explicit discussions’ (Merry and Richardson, The Household Account Book, pp. 65–6).



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33 Booklet 5 is comprised of fols 22–24; it was a six-folio booklet but the first three folios were cut down to stubs. This booklet is followed in the volume by two singles (fol. 25 and fol. 26) and a bifolium leaf (fols 27–28). Booklets 1–5 of the codex were pre-stitched six-page booklets on paper that has the same watermark throughout (a gloved hand with a five-pointed flower). The same watermark also appears on the single fol. 26. By contrast, the final bifolium (fols 27–28) has a different watermark (a pot), which further confirms it was a sheet that circulated independently and was bound into this volume later. 34 The debts of over £5,000 that Sir William left at the end of his life and the discrepancies in his finances are discussed by Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 28–30, and Sibyl M. Jack, ‘Cavendish, Sir William (1508–1557)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 35 This method of organisation of the household and estate financial accounts is familiar from later examples, such as Lady Alice Le Strange of Norfolk from 1610 to 1654 (Whittle and Griffiths, Consumption and Gender, especially Chapter 2). Calls for further research into practices and structures of historical financial management include that by Merry and Richardson, The Household Account Book, p. 85. 36 These are, respectively, HM/1 (third section) and Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, Devonshire Collection, Hardwick MS 3 (subsequently referred to as HM/3). 37 A very small number of payments for kitchen consumables did appear at the start of the disbursements, for ‘a bosel of solte’, ‘a bosell of otmele’, ‘egges’, ‘vij chekenes’ (costing 10d, 6d, 6d and 15d respectively, fol. 8r) and for ‘boter’ (12d, fol. 10r). The only other example was the 6d for ‘geges [eggs] to make cakes’ (fol. 15r) and the extra information (‘to make cakes’) seems to be a justification to explain inclusion of an item that should not normally appear in these disbursements. 38 The ‘booke of generall paymentes for my masters offaysis’ kept by his steward for 1 November 1551–23 June 1553 (now the first section of HM/1). 39 The reference to bows and arrows was added by Sir William to the 1548–50 disbursements, fol. 12r. The other references are in Sir William’s own disbursements (HM/1) at, respectively, fols 3r, 12r, 4v, 5r and 5v (twice). 40 According to these patterns, ‘Men bought their own clothes, weapons, books, horses and coaches, and scientific instruments; women bought clothes for themselves and their children, textiles for the home and food,’ as discussed by Whittle and Griffiths, Gender and Consumption, p. 84. Continuities in ‘male consumption concerns of vehicles, sport, technology and house improvement’ associated with pleasure and leisure, which contrast with female consumption concerns focused around ‘provisioning and maintenance of the household’ are discussed further at p. 209 and p. 242 (and see the further references there). The persistence of these gendered shopping patterns in Britain has been observed, for example, for the seventeenth century (by Whittle and Griffiths), for the eighteenth century (by A. Vickery, ‘His and hers: gender, consumption and

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Bess of Hardwick: new perspectives household accounting in eighteenth-century England’, Past and Present, supplement 1 (2006), pp. 12–38) and for the 1980s (by J. Pahl, Money and Marriage (New York: Palgrave, 1989)). A wide base of evidence has been used to establish that knights and noblemen regularly relied upon their wives when it came to running household and estate: Barbara J. Harris, English Aristocratic Women 1450–1550: Marriage and Family, Property and Careers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 7; Whittle and Griffiths, Consumption, Chapter 2, especially p. 27. Durant (writing in 1977) was surprised to find Bess managing the finances, which he assumed was ‘unusual’ for a woman (Bess of Hardwick, p. 19); however, his view is now out of date as we know that early modern financial accounts kept by women ‘were relatively common’ (Whittle and Griffiths, Consumption, p. 31). As Harris, English AristocraticWomen, p. 8, observes, the high proportion (69 per cent) of knights and noblemen who predeceased their spouses was an incentive for them to ‘enable their wives to act as their substitutes’. Fols 16r, 17r and 27v; a capcase was a receptacle such as a box, chest, casket, travelling case or small trunk, which were known, in particular to have been used for holding documents such as letters (Daybell, ‘Gendered archival practices’, p. 211). Sir William Cavendish writes from Chatsworth to his wife Elizabeth Cavendish in London, 13 April [c. 1550], Folger, X.d.428 (13). Images and annotated transcripts of the letters to and from Bess are available at www.bessofhardwick.org, the project web resource for Bess of Hardwick’s Letters:The Complete Correspondence, c.1550–1608, Alison Wiggins (AHRC Project PI), Alan Bryson, Daniel Starza Smith, Anke Timmermann and Graham Williams (AHRC Project PDRAs), University of Glasgow, web development by Katherine Rogers, University of Sheffield Humanities Research Institute (University of Glasgow, 2013). Further detailed discussions that include transcriptions of this letter are provided by James Daybell, ‘Lady Elizabeth Cavendish (Bess of Hardwick) to Frances Whitfield (14 November 1552)’, in Reading Early Modern Women: An Anthology of Texts in Manuscript and Print, 1550–1700, edited by Helen Ostovich and Elizabeth Sauer (New York: Routledge, 2004) pp. 167–71; Felicity Maxwell, ‘Enacting mistress and steward roles in a letter of household management: Bess of Hardwick to Francis Whitfield, 14 November 1552’,  Lives & Letters: A Journal for Early Modern Archival Research, 4:1 (Autumn 2012), online at http://journal.xmera.org/ journalarchive/4_1autumn2012.htm (accessed 13 June 2018); and Wiggins, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Language, Materiality, pp. 32–9. Bess opened her letter stating ‘I haue spoken with your mayst[er]’ to gain an authorisation from her husband, and went on to tell Francis Whitfield to ‘loke well to all thynges at chattysworthe tyll my auntes comynge whome’ (until, home). Gloss: everything she needs and anything she wants.



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48 Gloss: make my sister Jane privy to it. Jane Kniveton’s midwife received ten shillings and the nurse five shillings; other sums paid to the nurses and midwives in Bess’s service, recorded in the 1548–50 financial accounts, are discussed below at n. 82. 49 Gloss: if you have no other money take the said amount of out of the Pentrich rental income. 50 Among Bess’s waged servants, the highest paid at this point in time were her steward Francis Whitfield, her nurse and Aunt Linacre, who each received twenty shillings (£1) a quarter; next highest paid was Jane Kniveton, who received fifteen shillings a quarter. 51 Indeed, the letter to Francis Whitfield features a list of jottings in his hand related to payments. The letter is now part of the Cavendish Talbot Papers: Folger Shakespeare Library Finding Aid: Guide to the Papers of the Cavendish-Talbot Family, Folger MS X.d.428 (1–203), online at http://findingaids.folger.edu/ dfocavendish.xml (accessed 13 June 2018). 52 Five disbursement entries record money paid to Aunt Linacre on production of a bill or reckoning (‘per byll’ or ‘a pone a reconyng’), on fols 8v (twice), 11r, 12r (twice) and 13v. Jane Kniveton’s role is discussed by Maxwell, ‘Enacting’, and by Wiggins, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Language, Materiality, pp. 36–7, 130–1 and 171–2. 53 An early modern wife found herself required to exercise a kind of ‘subordinate agency’ whereby she was expected to be ‘subject and obedient to her husband and at the same time to be capable and competent’; Harris, English Aristocratic Women, p. 28. Further discussion of the paradoxes involved in this double subjectivity is provided by Linda Pollock, ‘ “Teach her how to live under obedience”: the making of women in the upper ranks of early modern England’, Continuity and Change, 4 (1989), pp. 231–58; Whittle and Griffiths, Consumption and Gender, p. 36. 54 HM/1, fol. 8r (December 1551); further discussion of other references to purchases of writing materials appears in Wiggins, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Language, Materiality, p. 98. 55 To be specific, there are thirty pages (15 folios) of disbursements, of which only eight are audited: fols 8r, 8v, 9r (Figure 1), 9v, 10r, 10v and 11v, all with totals at the foot of the page, and a final sum, which appears mid-page on fol. 12r; the last nineteen pages are not audited, which means no sum totals appear on fols 12v–21v (nor on fols 7r, 7v or 11r). 56 There were two basic conventional types of sixteenth-century household financial accounts: the day book and the version presented for auditing. Although, in practice, different variations and combinations existed and many books of financial accounts fell somewhere in between these two. Discussions that give definitions of these two types along with examples of variations in form are provided by Simon Adams (ed.), Household Accounts and Disbursement Books of Robert Dudley,

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Bess of Hardwick: new perspectives Earl of Leicester, 1558–1561, 1584–1586, Royal Historical Society Camden, 5th ser., 6 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 8–9; Merry and Richardson, The Household Account Book, pp. 85–90; and K. Mertes, The English Noble Household 1250–1600: Good Governance and Politic Rule (NewYork: Blackwell, 1988), pp. 79–86. Marginal notes to indicate that a payment was ‘per bill’ end after fol. 15v. The entries all involve money given to servants or family: ‘geuen to my dougter cateryn at my hosbande commaundement – xxs’ (fol. 8r), ‘geuen to nan at my hosbande commandement to by har a petycote – vs’ (fol. 8v), ‘geuen to my syster wynfelde at my hosbande comaunnente – xs’ (fol. 9v), ‘geuen to hary sone at my hosbande conendement – ijs’ (fol. 10r). As stated by the steward at the start of HM/1 on 1 November 1551: ‘My booke of generall paymentes for my master offaysis and dailie signed wt his owne hand’. It is a shift comparable with other contemporary couples. Most wives were their husband’s ‘junior partner’ in managing the family assets and when wives ‘had proved their competence, the majority of men delegated considerable power and control over their resources to them’ (Whittle and Griffiths, Consumption and Gender, p. 35, summarising Harris). Another example of a wife using the conventional phrase ‘by my lord’s commandment’ at points in her financial accounts is provided by Harris, English Aristocratic Women, p. 70. Fols 3r and 27v. That is, physician (fol. 8v). Other names that Bess self-corrected included: ‘gorge dewed dewes’ (fol. 10v); ‘maystres dupot duporte’ (fol. 16v); and ‘mayster ferres fares’ (fol. 15r). Fol. 17v. For example, twice Sir William added ‘over and above’ to entries by Bess and once she added ‘as a peryth by a byll’ to his; twice he added a marginal note to flag the person in the entry, such as, ‘Sandy’, the name of his servant, and ‘to my Aunt’, which Bess subsequently crossed out and replaced with ‘per byll’. These revisions that concern phrasing occur on fols 10r, 11r, 15v, 16v, 17r, 20r and 27v. Paraphrasing and quoting Merry and Richardson here, The Household Account Book, pp. 57–9. That is, a farthingale, girdles white, red and yellow, a penner, an inkhorn and counters, fourteen pence, fol. 9r (Figure 1). The items for Ann are listed below the title ‘For my dougther [sic] ane’. The list of purchases, on the same page, for thirteenyear-old Catherine do not include these or equivalent items. There were thirteen purchases for Catherine and eleven for Ann in Bess’s 1548–50 disbursements, all (apart from these items for writing and counters) for clothes, textiles or sewing materials.When their father Sir William died in 1557, Catherine was married but Ann was not. However, by 1561, aged twenty-one, Ann was married with a generous dowry provided by Bess’s third husband Sir William



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70 71

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74 75 76 77 78

79 80 81

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St Loe – an indication that Bess took her responsibilities towards her stepdaughters seriously even after she had remarried; Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 45–6. We know of contemporary examples where stepchildren were treated as interlopers and other examples where they were treated the same as natal children (Harris, English Aristocratic Women, pp. 118–21); evidently Bess’s children fell into the latter category. The importance of keeping financial accounts as part of a gentlewoman’s education is discussed by Spicksley, The Business and Household Accounts, pp. 32–3. RECEIVED (fols 2r and 2v): . Compare to Sir William’s (that is, ‘rec’ with hooked c indicating abbreviation, such as on fol. 2v), and (fol. 4r) MICHAELMAS: (fols 8v, 14r, 15v and 20v). For example, at fols 8r, 11r, 15v, 16r, 17v, 18v, 20r and 20v. For example, at fols 9r, 10v, 11v, 14v and 15r . Word division that reflected spoken patterns of pronunciation is found in many entries, such as ST ALBANS . Gloss: ounce, edge, archdeacon, handkerchieves, horse, whole, hired (fols 16r, 19r, 16r, 20r, 20r, 13r and 27v). Examples of the group genitive include: ‘payed to dyueres my saruantes there wages’ (fol. 8). Bess’s personal spelling system was stable when it came to words she used regularly, as seen in her letters. Furthermore, there was not a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ or a ‘better’ or ‘worse’ way to spell any of these words but high levels of variation or repeated self-correction could indicate uncertainty or lack of confidence about reproducing the word in written form. Further discussions of Bess’s language are provided in Chapter 4 of this volume by Imogen Marcus; and in Wiggins, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Language, Materiality, pp. 106–20. For example, Duffy, The Voices, pp. 32–9. An overview is provided by Daybell, Women Letter-Writers, Chapter 4. Gloss: buttons, smocks, damask, carpet, farthingale, sleeves, ruffs, watch. Richardson, ‘Written texts’, pp. 51–3. For example, ‘at my comynge frome northwu’ (fol. 8v), ‘at my comynge to london’ (fols 8v and 10v), ‘at my comynge from london’ (fols 8v and 10v), ‘at my beuyng at london’ (fol. 19r). The payments made when I cristened her boy and when I hired her are at fols 19r and 27v. Gloss: Plates, stuff, Nan (fols 8v, 11v and 12v). Gloss: ginger, licorice, aniseed, a drench, quartern, thread, to sew (fols 8r and 13r). There are several studies of early modern address terms from the field of historical pragmatics, in particular Navala, Address, and Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, ‘Constraints’. The term of address used would depend upon the person writing, so the terms we find here, in this book of financial accounts, revolve around Bess and only in a book written in her hand would we find this particular

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86 87 88 89 90 91 92

Bess of Hardwick: new perspectives combination of persons and address terms. These are only a small sample of persons referred to in the book, yet they give a sense of the highly patterned nature of contemporary naming conventions according to gender, status, social role and interpersonal relationship. Fols 10r and 21r. A notable exception were nurses and midwives, referred to as ‘my nurse’ and ‘my midwife’. Bess’s use of these occupational titles (which were among the few available to Tudor women) acknowledged their level of status and was likewise reflected in the high payments they received. The wage payments to ‘my norse’ of 20s, 16s 4d, 15s and 13s 4d (fols 11r, 8r, 21r and 20v) were equal or close to the quarter wages received by those highest on Bess’s payroll, Francis Whitfield, Aunt Linacre and Jane Kniveton. Bess’s midwife received the highest payment of all, a one-off sum of fifty shillings: ‘geuen to my mydwyffe – ls’ (fol. 13r, Figure 2). Use of the term ‘nurse’ for a wet-nurse is discussed by Harris, English Aristocratic Women, p. 30. For example, ‘nan’ (fols 8v and 16v); ‘mege’ (fols 8v and 14r), ‘barbera’ (fol. 10r), ‘nelle’ (fol. 20r). The two servants both called Margaret were distinguished from each other as ‘great Margett’ and ‘lytell Margett’ (fol. 11v, Sir William’s hand) and ‘great mege’ (fol. 16v, Bess’s hand). The other references are ‘halle’ (fol. 9v), ‘tomas halle’ (fol. 10r), ‘plates’ (fols 9v and 10r), ‘tage’ or ‘tagge’ (fols 16v and 19v) and ‘myntereg’ (fols 14v, 15v, 16v, 17v, 18v, 19v, 20v and 21r). That is, ‘cecely’ (fols 13r and 15r; also spelled ‘cecyly’ fol. 11v and ‘cecele’ fol. 12v), ‘cese’ (fol. 20r), ‘cys’ (fol. 19v). That is, ‘francys’ (fols 13v, 14r, 14v, 15r, 15v, 16r, 16v, 17r, 17v, 18r, 19r and 19v; by contrast, her husband referred to him as ‘ffraunces Whytefeld’, fols 11v and 12v) and ‘James crompe’ (fols 8v, 9r, 11r, 16v, 18v, 19r, 19v and 20r), ‘James’ (fol. 28r) and ‘crompe’ (fols 12v and 16v). Maxwell, ‘Enacting’, offers a detailed discussion of Bess’s relationship with her stewards. For example, ‘my hosbande’ (fols 2v, 8r and throughout) and ‘my mother’ (fol. 2r). For example, ‘my syster’ ( fols 11r, 11v and throughout) and ‘my aunte’ (fols 9v, 11r and throughout). Fol. 9v. For example, ‘temperance’ (fols 14r and 20v) and ‘francys’ (fols 9r, 9v, 12v, 13v and 17v). The references are, ‘my dougter cateryn’ (fols 8r, 9r and 28r) and ‘my doughter ane’ (fols 9r, 27v and 28r). The payments for clothing for ‘cate’, which total £7 11s 3d, are: ‘payed for a belyment for cate – xxviijs’ (fol. 14v), ‘geuen my ladys talear to by cate a gone of clothe – xxs’ (fol. 15v), ‘payed to maystres alys belynton that she lade out for cate as a peryth by a byll – xxxijs iiijd’ (fol. 15v), ‘payed for forrynge of a ueluet gone and a gone of clothe, and a cloth gone for cate – xviijs viijd’ (fol.



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16r), ‘paye [sic] for vl yerdes ^and a halfe^ of satyn for a gone for cate – lijs iijd’ (fol. 17r). Her middle stepdaughter, Mary, who was boarded away, died before adulthood and is presumed to have been a child with a disability (Durant, Bess of Hardwick, p. 17; Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, p. 60); she was always referred to by her first name as ‘mary’ (fols 9v, 14r, 15r, 16r and 27v). These contradictions and Tudor women’s ‘double subjectivity’ are discussed above with reference to Harris, Pollock and Whittle, at n. 53. This notebook of family posterity has now been lost but transcriptions – of extracts of the family records made by Sir William and then Bess – were published by Collins, Historical Collections, pp. 10–12. Sir William may have died of flu or another illness; Jack, ‘Cavendish, Sir William’; Riden, ‘Sir William Cavendish’. Collins, Historical Collections, p. 10. The transcription given here is from Collins because the original manuscript notebook has been lost (see the previous note). The entry refers to ‘my husband’ so it was certainly by Bess, although, as the spelling and punctuation are not consistent with her autograph writing, she perhaps dictated to a scribe or, alternatively, Collins ‘updated’ her language. Tudor expressions from recent widows about their deceased husbands are rare but Bess’s fairly lengthy statement can be compared to those cited by Harris, English Aristocratic Women, p. 75. Detailed descriptions and analyses of the visual schemes are presented by Santina M. Levey, The Embroideries at Hardwick Hall: A Catalogue (London: National Trust, 2007), and Gillian White, ‘ “That whyche ys nedefoulle and nesesary”: the nature and purpose of the original furnishing and decoration of Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire’, PhD thesis, 2 vols, University of Warwick, 2005. Derrida coined the term ‘matriarchive’ (Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 34), which is very fruitfully discussed by Sherman (Used Books, Chapter 3, especially pp. 54 and 61) and Daybell (‘Gendered archival practices’, especially pp. 210–11). They each call for further consideration of the role of women as ‘matriarchivists’ organising information in early modern households and Daybell is preparing a large-scale study of this type of family history (p. 292, n. 15). Comparison with letters is appropriate here, which we know were often kept within household archives, especially where they preserved the handwriting of a family member or person of esteem. There are several well-known examples among Bess’s contemporaries that indicate the particular value placed upon handwriting as the preserved trace of a beloved or admired person’s presence. Anne Clifford archived her mother’s handwritten letters for affective purposes (Daybell, ‘Gendered archival practices’, pp. 224–33). Bess’s fourth husband the earl of Shrewsbury treasured a letter (to himself and his wife) from Elizabeth I written in her majesty’s own hand, which his annotations stated was ‘to be kept as the dereste Iuell’ (dearest jewel, Lambeth Palace Library, Talbot Papers, MS 3206, pp. 819–22). Bess’s granddaughter Arbella Stuart stated that she

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Bess of Hardwick: new perspectives would be able to recognise the handwriting of Lady Jane Grey, so must have seen some of her letters, or other handwritten documents by her, passed down through the family, when she was growing up in her grandmother Bess’s household (Sara Jayne Steen, The Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 121). Fol. 24r, discussed above. The National Archives: Public Record Office, Kew, London, PROB 11/111, Will of Elizabeth, dowager countess of Shrewsbury, fols 188–93, at fol. 188v. The book is again identifiable as the ‘booke of gold with .x. Rubies and iij sasers and one dyamond with ij pyctures in the same’ listed in the jewel inventory of 1567 (Sheffield Archives, MD 6311/1 and MD 6311/3). Bess had had given birth to two daughters by May 1550: Frances, born on 18 June 1548, and Temperance, born on 10 June 1549 (Collins, Historical Collections, p. 11), but Temperance had died when she was less than a year old. A discussion of the role of bequeathed objects in symbolising and embodying affective relationships is provided by Richardson, ‘Written texts’, pp. 52–3 (and further references given there), and throughout Tara Hamling and Catherine Richardson (eds), Everyday Objects: Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture and its Meanings (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010). Other reproductions, along with discussions of the sitter attribution, artist and date of this portrait can be found in Jane Ashelford, The Art of Dress: Clothes and Society, 1500–1914 (London: National Trust, 1996), pp. 24–6; Tarnya Cooper, Elizabeth I and Her People (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2014), pp. 102–3; and Levey, The Embroideries, pp. 12–13. The dating 1555–7 follows Levey, p. 13 (Ashelford and Cooper place it slightly later at, respectively, c. 1558 and c. 1560). Along with the other furniture, ‘the which I greatlie desire should be well preserved and contynewe at my sayed houses for the better furnishing thereof into whose possession soeuer of my blourd the sayed houses shall come’, PROB 11/111, fol. 189r. One picture of Bess was listed in the 1560s Chatsworth inventory (Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, Devonshire Collection, Hardwick Drawers H/143/6), hung in ‘my lads chambre’ (that is, my lady’s chamber, fol. 3v); by the time of the 1602 inventory there were three pictures called ‘my Ladies picture’ located in the ‘Gallerie’, the ‘lowe great Chamber’ and in ‘my Ladies with drawing Chamber’; Santina M. Levey and Peter K. Thornton (eds), Of houshold stuff:The 1601 Inventories of Bess of Hardwick (London: National Trust, 2001). As Levey states, the painting ‘was later incorrectly inscribed “Mary Tudor” ’ (The Embroideries, p. 13). Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory, Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 11–12.



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108 Fols 19v, 16v and 15v. 109 His payments of at least £27 6s 2d towards her ‘gere’ are listed on fol. 27r. They also included 113s 4d ‘for perle’ (that is, £5 13s 4d), fourteen shillings for ‘my wyffes hood’ (that is, her French hood or ornamental headgear), ten shillings for ‘two Crepyns’ (that is, nets or cauls for a woman’s hair), twenty-one shillings to ‘the gooldsmyth’ and 26s 8d to ‘my wyffes taylor’. 110 Jones and Stallybrass discuss portraits that inscribed not only status but other forms of memory: ‘memory of the dead … family memories … memory of the beloved … religious memory’ (Renaissance Clothing, pp. 11–12 and Chapter 2).

3

Bess’s use of language Imogen Julia Marcus

This chapter will discuss the language use of Elizabeth Talbot, countess of Shrewsbury, commonly referred to as Bess of Hardwick (c. 1527–1608). It is based on seventy-eight letters, both scribal and holograph, that Bess wrote to various correspondents throughout her life. With a particular focus upon her spelling and grammar, it will place Bess’s use of English within the context of what we already know about how women were using the language in Tudor and Stuart England, and the changes taking place in the language over the early modern period, defined here as 1500–1750. In relation to the language use of women during the early modern period, James Daybell notes that early modern women’s letters ‘demonstrate relatively high number of non-standard forms, colloquialisms, vernacular and regional features’;1 i.e. aspects of language that are often more associated with the oral than the written mode. Furthermore, many modern sociolinguistic studies, such as those by William Labov and Janet Holmes,2 as well as historical sociolinguistic studies such as those by Terttu Nevalainen and Helena RaumolinBrunberg, have found women to be more linguistically sensitive and innovative than men, especially in relation to language ‘changes from below’.3 Ronald Wardhaugh and Janet M. Fuller define these kinds of changes as coming from ‘below conscious awareness’. They are ‘systematic, unconscious’ changes, as opposed to changes from above, which are conscious changes that ‘involve issues of prestige’.4 Indeed, it has been suggested by Truelove that ‘women have been the innovators in linguistic changes throughout the history of the English language, adopting more quickly than men new forms that spread throughout colloquial spoken interaction’.5 This chapter will investigate whether these observations are relevant to Bess’s use of language in her letters. It will ask: what kind of language user was Bess? Does she use regional forms – for example regional spelling forms?



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Does she use vernacular grammatical features? Is she an innovative user of newer, incoming grammatical features? How aware was she of certain grammatical features becoming stigmatised? After discussing the nature of personal correspondence as a data source and what we already know about Bess’s education and literacy, the chapter will present some observations about her spelling and grammar. After a brief discussion of spelling, the grammar section of the chapter focuses on two features of vernacular language use – negative concord and subject–verb non-concord – before investigating several key morpho-syntactic features of Bess’s language that were undergoing change during the early modern period. Specifically, it looks at the sociolinguistic variable of gender as an external factor contributing to these changes. Following Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, they are split into three groups: changes in which women have been found to promote the change, e.g. ‘my’ and ‘thy’ replacing ‘mine’ and ‘thine’; changes that appear to switch from male to female advantage, e.g. the use of ‘do’ in positive and negative statements; and changes which appear to be led by men, e.g. the loss of multiple negation. It is therefore possible to see how Bess’s usage of these features fits into these larger patterns identified by studying data drawn from the Corpus of Early English Correspondence.6 The chapter will end with some discussion and concluding remarks. Letters as data sources Letters played a crucial role in Bess of Hardwick’s life. They were practical documents in which Bess was often attempting to achieve a variety of communicative goals. Bess used letters to navigate her social as well as private affairs, legal entanglements, marriage arrangements and managing of her estates. Although as a woman she did not have a conventional profession in the way that we understand this word today, it could be argued that the general management of her affairs, often conducted through letters, constituted a kind of profession. Understanding the language of her letters is therefore a way into a greater understanding of how she lived her life. Collectively, they also represent an excellent data source to be used in order to understand her language use and what it might tell us about larger language changes taking place. Historical linguists are often keen to get as close as possible to the spoken language of the past, because language change tends to happen in the spoken mode before it filters through to the written mode. However, due to the fact that audio recordings only go back to the nineteenth century, historical linguists have to work with written data. Traditionally,

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scholarship related to the history of English has largely been based on formal or literary texts, most of which were written by men. However, personal correspondence gives us a window into how people may have used language in their daily lives.7 Correspondence written by women is potentially even more illuminating, because, as Henry Wyld noted in the 1930s, women’s letters are not ‘spelt as carefully as a rule’ as those of men.8 Therefore, they may tell us more about how these women may have spoken. It should be noted that this chapter takes account of Bess’s language as represented in both the holograph and scribal letters from her (i.e. signed by her or signed for her by a scribe). As mentioned above, it is based on the seventy-eight letters, both scribal (i.e. written by one or more scribe) and holograph (i.e. written in Bess’s own italic handwriting, with the address, body, subscription, signature and postscript, if there is one, in her hand), that Bess wrote to various correspondents throughout her life. There are seventeen holograph letters in the sample; the remaining letters from Bess are scribal. Individual letters are referred to in the chapter by the identification numbers assigned to them in Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: The Complete Correspondence, c.1550–1608.9 For example, the letter that was assigned the identification number 179 is referred to in this chapter as ‘ID 179’.10 It should be made clear that although the chapter does take both holograph and scribal textual material into account, it will not be considering linguistic variation according to scribe in any great detail. Bess’s education and literacy Most of the early modern English women’s letters that survive to the present day were written by women born into the nobility, such as Elizabeth I (1553–1603) and Mildred Cecil (1526–89). It is likely that these high-status women would have received the kind of classical, humanist educations normally reserved for their male counterparts. This sort of education would have been focused around achieving a relatively advanced level of literacy and a competence at reading classical languages such as Latin and Greek. However, Bess, born around 1527 into the Hardwicks, a moderately prosperous lower gentry family from Derbyshire, would probably have received the more practical kind of education given to women born into the English gentry during the sixteenth century. Indeed, as David Cressy points out, the majority of women did not receive the same kind of formal education as men during the early modern period.11 They may have been taught how to read but were often only taught basic writing skills. There was often also a focus on account-keeping and needlework.



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Furthermore, Caroline Bowden argues that because most female education took place outside formal educational spaces in early modern England, many early modern women were self-taught.12 It is not possible to say from the surviving biographical evidence whether Bess was self-taught. However, it is possible to say that Bess’s education, and her consequent language use, are potentially more representative of the daily language use of the majority of Elizabethan gentry, mercantile and even aristocratic women living in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries than the language use of women such as Elizabeth I or Cecil, whose educations were exceptional, even for noblewomen. If one conceives of being able to write as fluency in handwriting, spelling, grammar and punctuation, the seventeen holograph letters that survive, penned in her confident italic hand, make it clear that Bess was a competent writer and a relatively literate woman. Indeed, writing in her own hand appears to have been an everyday activity for her, at least during the early part of her life until around 1575, when more scribal letters from her start appearing. This makes her part of a trend; Daybell studied 650 female letter-writers composing during the 1540–1603 period and found that the majority of them wrote both holograph and scribal letters. Only 23 per cent of them communicated using exclusively scribal letters. As Daybell notes, it is hard to gauge the proportion of these women who ‘were constrained to use an amanuensis because they were insufficiently skilled at writing personally to conduct correspondence’.13 Indeed, not writing a letter yourself did not usually mean that you could not write. On the contrary, as argued by Veronica O’Mara, it often meant that you were choosing to use a scribe for a particular reason (social or otherwise).14 Not only was writing an everyday activity for Bess; it was a necessary one. She had a number of familial, and later in life, estate responsibilities that required her to communicate with a variety of people, both orally and on paper. It is therefore useful to see her literacy as a kind of ‘functional literacy’, a concept which Bowden defines as ‘the learning of skills that can immediately be used for a purpose identified as important by the learner’.15 The majority of women in early modern England, including Bess, achieved the level of literacy that they needed in order for their daily lives to function effectively. Previous studies Previous studies on the middle English and early modern English periods and suggest that although the evidence is relatively fragmentary, differences in the way that women and men use language can be traced back to pre-Standard

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English. Specifically, the evidence suggests that women may have favoured and even promoted vernacular forms.16 Terttu Nevalainen looks at women’s writing as evidence of linguistic continuity and change during the early modern period. She focuses on ten language changes taking place, including three changes that are discussed in this chapter, namely the replacement of possessive pronouns ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ by ‘my’ and ‘thy’, the replacement of third person singular present tense verb ending ‘-(e)th’ with ‘-(e)s’ and the replacement of relative pronoun ‘the which’ with ‘which’. She finds that ‘consistent gender differences’ can be detected in these processes of language change and concludes that women were ‘systematically ahead of men in most of the processes examined’.17 Meanwhile, Nevalainen and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg investigate gender as a factor in several key real-time linguistic changes taking place during the early modern period, using the Corpus of Early English Correspondence as their source of data.18 Their findings will be discussed in more depth in the section on Bess’s grammar below. Counter-examples of this pattern of women favouring and promoting vernacular forms also exist. Rydén focuses on the ‘be/have’ variation with intransitives, although such studies appear to be in the minority.19 In relation to male usage, lexical borrowing and the regularisation of spelling, there are two areas of language change which do appear to have been led by men in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.20 These aspects of language, like some of the grammatical features discussed in the grammar section of the chapter, are both connected to the world of learning and professional life. Lexical borrowing in English was in large part from Latin and French, whilst spelling regularisation was largely the result of classroom teaching and the development and adoption of the printing press in England. Bess’s spelling This section only focuses on the seventeen holograph letters from Bess. Bess’s spelling is variable, although it is relatively stable; there are generally a maximum of two forms of a particular orthographic item in her hand. There are several diagnostic features of Bess’s spelling practice. One is the use of for , in spellings such as for item . According to the online Oxford English Dictionary’s (hence forth OED) entry for the lemma , the Middle English spelling , an orthographic form very close to Bess’s form , is a northern spelling form of (the modern spelling form of ‘daughter’ surfaced in the sixteenth century and is thought



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to have been brought to London from eastern dialects of Middle English)21. Bess was originally from Derbyshire, a northern county of England, where she to continued to live for most of her life (apart from brief spells in London). It is therefore possible to suggest tentatively that Bess’s spelling practice had a phonetic and therefore regional aspect to it, as well as being variable, although a larger orthographic study would need to be carried out in order to verify this point. Another for spelling is for item . With , Bess omits both the and the silent . The word was often spelled without the silent in both Middle French and Middle English, so it could be that Bess was simply using the older form. However, seeing as the silent is present in the modern spelling due to the influence of Latin, it may be that Bess preferred the spelling because, due to the nature of her education, she did not know Latin, and by extension did not tend to use Latinate spellings of words. Other characteristic orthographic features of Bess’s hand include for (see for example for item and for item ), for (see for example for item ) and for (see for and for ). Double for single , such as in the form of item and the form of item , and for (as in for item and for ) are also diagnostic features of Bess’s spelling. There are several relatively distinctive spelling variants in her hand, including: for item , for item , for item , forms , , and for item , for item , for item , for item , for item , for item , for item and for item . Overall, it is possible to say that Bess’s spelling practice is variable, regional (to a certain extent), distinctive and also reflective of the nature of her education. Bess’s use of grammar Bess’s use of two ‘vernacular universals’ Negative concord Negative concord is where there is more than one negative constituent used to express a single negation. Rather than cancel each other out, they reinforce

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one another. This was common in earlier stages of English as well as early modern English.22 Examples of negative concord have been described by J. K. Chambers as ‘vernacular universals’, i.e. they ‘appear to be primitives of vernacular dialects in the sense that they recur ubiquitously all over the world’.23 Nevalainen looks at negative concord in the history of English. She finds that although what she calls ‘negative polarity concord’ does influence the language user’s choice of indefinites, negative versus non-assertive, it does not alter ‘the basic typology of English verbal negation with indefinites’.24 There are several examples of negative concord across Bess’s holograph and scribal letters. Seventeen examples of negative concord were noted in total. In several of them, two negative particles are used that complement each other. The ‘neither/nor’ combination is used on four occasions: ‘& neyther Arbell nor any other lyuinge, nor shalbe.’ (ID 163), ‘I assure my self ther is not any due vnto you, neyther during my tyme hath there euer bene any payd, nor before, yt euer I hard of’ (ID 160), ‘neither the mother duringe her Lyffe nor I can ever forget’ (ID 162), ‘haue nether wronge att all nor are preuyudysed by me’ (ID 189). Occasionally, ‘never/neuer’ is used instead of ‘neither’: ‘a hosbande whome she neuer saye nor knowyethe not hys lykenge of har’ (ID 109). There are two examples of a negated verb phrase being used in conjunction with another negative: ‘I trouste you wyll so for se for me that yet shall not be be hurtefoull to me nor myne’ (ID 200) and ‘he wold not do any thinge vnadvisedly’ (ID 105). In the second example, the verb phrase is working alongside the morphologically negated word ‘vnadvisedly’. The following six examples are less easy to classify because they have less grammatical symmetry than the ‘neither/nor’ pairings, for example. They are therefore the strongest examples of negative concord purely for the purposes of emphasis and reinforcement: ‘but yf my harte had not ben parfyete as becomes me thys trauell had not nead I could haue made my owne peace’ (ID 149), ‘nor I do not knowe any reason to Leade me’ (ID 039), ‘yt is not vnknown’ (ID 105), ‘and I Leue not w[i]thout feare of my Lyffe’ (ID 150), ‘he stayed not ovar aday at a tyme at his being heare not vnquiat nether well pleased’ (ID 156), ‘and if not the wholl could not be satesdied in short ^your^ time’ (ID 177). The finding that there are a relatively large number of negative concord examples in the corpus provides support for the suggestion that women’s letters from the period contain a relatively high number of vernacular language features. It is also interesting to note that this vernacular feature is present in both holograph and scribal letters signed by Bess, in a range of letters addressed to a variety of recipients, serving a number of different purposes.



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Default singulars Default singulars, defined as the use of ‘was’ with plural subjects, are also classified as a vernacular universal by Chambers. Default singulars, also known as examples of subject–verb non-concord, occur when the verb does not agree with its subject in terms of number and/or person. Seventeen examples of this vernacular feature are present in the corpus. A selection of examples include: ‘Thies are even so to desire you’ (ID 113), ‘more he could not do yf yt were hys owne care’ (ID 112), ‘and yt passe yt wyll not only ondo me’ (ID 111), ‘for my horcus wos not well habyll to passe thoro the touffe myre waye’ (ID 200), ‘I wolde I coulde parswade you that your neryste waye to london. were to come by Chattysworth’ (ID 198), ‘and albeyt he were not of such Leueing as myght merryt so good a maryage’ (ID 148), ‘for many eyes behoulds me’ (ID 149), ‘of such wronges as ys done to vs’ (ID 152). As with negative concord, the examples of this notably vernacular grammatical feature occur across both holograph and scribal material. Furthermore, its use does not appear to be affected by whom the letter is addressed to, or what it concerns. Bess’s use of grammatical features undergoing change during the early modern English period The first four grammatical changes discussed below are: replacement of subject ‘ye’ by ‘you’, replacement of ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ by ‘my’ and ‘thy’, development of third person neuter ‘its’ and third person singular present tense verb endings ‘-eth’ versus ‘-es’. These changes have all been found to have been promoted by women in the early modern period.25 They are also all ‘changes from below’.26 Given that the focus of this section of the chapter is on women’s role in particular language changes, they are labelled as ‘female advantage’ below. Female advantage Second person pronouns: replacement of subject ‘ye’ by ‘you’ Early modern English offered the language user various different options for signalling the second person singular pronoun. There was ‘a complex system of choice between th-forms and y-forms in the singular’,27 such as ‘thou’ and ‘you’.28 In relation to the y-forms, a number of scholars have noted that the subject pronoun ‘ye’ was replaced by the object form ‘you’ over the course of the early modern period.29 So in a Paston letter dated from 1465, John Paston

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I only uses the subject ‘ye’ form, writing: ‘whan ye come set it in such rewle as ye seme best’.30 However, by the sixteenth century, the two forms were interchangeable, although ‘you’ tended to be used more frequently, and ‘ye’ could be used as what Roger Lass calls ‘a reduction form’.31 Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg note that the whole replacement process took about eighty years, from around 1520 to 1600, which fits perfectly with when Bess was writing, between the 1550s and early 1600s.32 They also note that the replacement of subject form ‘ye’ by ‘you’ is a change that is clearly led by women, from the early 1500s. Bess does not employ any of the second person th-forms then available in any of her letters. You was beginning to supplant thou during this period, but the total lack of thou is remarkable. Bess, who later in life achieved a high degree of authority, never uses thou to address those in subordinate roles, despite the fact that thou was often used to address people of lower social rank during the period. There is also a notable lack of variation among the y-forms in Bess’s letters. You is used consistently in both her holograph and scribal letters, whereas ‘ye’ is not used at all. See, for example, the start of holograph letter ID 123, addressed to Sir Francis Walsingham and dating from 1578: ‘the openyone you haue of my fydelyte and lyall sarues to har magystye and frendly affeccyone you bare me for that cause shall I dowte not’ (ID 123, lines 3–5). So even though ‘ye’ could still be used in the nominative position at this time, Bess only uses the incoming ‘you’ variant. This usage, coupled with the fact that she does not use the outgoing ‘thou’ form, suggests that Bess is relatively innovative in her use of second person pronoun forms, a finding which is in agreement with Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg’s 2003 analysis of women’s use of these forms in the Corpus of Early English Correspondence.33 They find that this change ‘is consistently promoted by women from the early sixteenth century onwards’.34 Possessive pronouns: replacement of ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ by ‘my’ and ‘thy’ Over the course of the early modern English period, ‘mine’ and ‘thine’, the first and second person singular possessive pronouns -n/e inflection, started to be phonologically restricted to pre-vocalic positions and before pauses.35 Eventually, they lost this inflection completely and were replaced by ‘my’ and ‘thy’. Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg note that this was a change led by women, at least in relation to Corpus of Early English Correspondence data. They state that ‘upper ranking women spread the incoming forms throughout the sixteenth century’.36



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Bess is an innovative user of the new, incoming variant ‘my’. It is used instead of ‘mine’ as a possessive pronoun in the majority of cases. There are 598 instances of ‘my’, such as: ‘tyll my syster Iane that I wyll geue my dowter somethyne at my comyng whome’ (ID 099). By contrast, there are just twenty-five instances of ‘mine’ in her letters, which is usually spelled . The predominant linguistic context in which ‘mine’ appears is a set noun phrase with a first person singular pronoun, followed by a conjunction. The most frequent version of this is ‘me and mine’, as in ‘your wontyed care to do good styll to me and mine’ (ID 109). Bess also uses ‘I or myne’ (ID 116), ‘I and myne’ (ID 152), ‘me nor myne’ (ID 200) or with first person reflexive pronoun ‘myself’ in ‘myself and all mine’ (ID 144). In ‘ou[s]bende mine’ (ID 184) Bess is putting the first person singular pronoun after rather than before the noun, even though it is acting as a possessive pronoun here. It occurs five times in the context of the prepositional phrase ‘of mine’ (ID 132, 130, 160, 105 and 194) and is often qualified by a quantifying determiner such as some, or all: ‘all myne’ (ID 144), ‘some of myne’ (ID 160 and 130). ‘Mine’ does not feature especially in any one kind of letter, so it is not possible to say that its use correlates with the function or purpose of the particular letter in which it is being used. It is used across the spectrum; in letters of thanks, letters regarding private family business, letters of petition, letters about land disputes, friendly letters concerning nothing of importance and letters of self-defence. ‘Thy’ and ‘thine’ are not used at all by Bess. Instead of ‘thy’ or the more archaic ‘thine’, Bess uses ‘your’, the modern form that we use today. She only seems to use it to represent possession, however; there are no example of what is known as generic ‘your’, which is used in non-possessive ways. Despite this, it is possible to say that she is an innovative user of the incoming first and second person singular possessive pronominal forms. Third person neuter ‘its’ ‘Its’ replaced ‘his’ as the main third person neuter possessive pronoun in English, first appearing in the later sixteenth century.37 However, it did not start being used frequently until the seventeenth century. Nevalainen and Brunberg point out that although there is not much of a difference between how men and women letter-writers are using this feature in the early years of its adoption, there is a noticeably higher rate of uptake by women writers in the twenty-year period between 1660 and 1680.38 Bess and her scribes do not use the incoming neuter form ‘its’ in her letters, or the older form ‘his’. Rather than ITS, Bess uses ‘of it’ and ‘thereof’,

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although there are not many examples of each: two of the first and five of the second. There are fifty-four examples of ‘it’, the nominative and accusative form of the neuter third person singular, across the letters from Bess. Some of these are used without a specific antecedent or referent, both in subject and object positions. For example, in the phrase ‘It is good reason his hollye will should be obeyed’ (ID 162), ‘it’ is in the subject position, whilst in the phrase ‘Wherin I shall thinke myselfe greatly behoulden, and wishe it in me to requite suche yo[u]r L[ordships] favour’ (ID 102), it is in the object position. When the neuter pronoun is used in this way it is known as indefinite ‘it’. There are, though, no examples of ‘it’ acting emphatically, before relative clauses or in ‘positions of stress and emphasis’.39 Nor is there any evidence of ‘it’ performing its older, uninflected genitive function, as in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale: ‘The innocent milke in it most innocent mouth’.40 Overall, it is not possible to say that Bess or her scribes are innovative in their use of the neuter possessive pronoun ‘its’. However, it did not gain ground until the early seventeenth century, which makes it a relatively rare feature at the time that Bess was writing. Third person singular present tense verb ending ‘-eth’ versus ‘-es’ There were two alternative inflections for third person singular verbs in early modern English: ‘-es’ and ‘-eth’. The verbs ‘do’, ‘have’ and ‘say’ have syncoped versions of the ‘-eth’ inflection, so they are written ‘doth’, ‘hath’ and ‘saith’. There was originally a regional distinction between the two variants. ‘-es’ was a feature of Northern English, whilst ‘-eth’ was a Southern English feature. However, ‘-es’ gradually spread at the expense of ‘-eth’.41 In the early Tudor period, as Charles Barber points out, more formal written registers would use ‘-eth’, whilst less formal registers and mediums, such as journalistic prose, would employ ‘-es’.42 By the end of the early modern period, ‘-eth’ had fallen out of mainstream use, although it was retained in very formal, ornate registers such as the religious language of the Bible. The frequency and distribution of these two variants were investigated and it was found that there are thirty-two examples of third person singular verbs ending in ‘-eth’, compared to twenty-four examples ending in ‘-es’ in the letters. The key thing to note is that although there are more examples of the older feature ‘-eth’ overall, there are more examples of the ‘-es’ inflection in the holograph letters than in the scribal letters. Specifically, there are nineteen examples in the former, and only five examples in the latter. This is a notable difference, especially given the higher numbers of scribal letters from Bess in the corpus under investigation. Examples of verbs taking the



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‘-es’ ending include: ‘yt bereves me of all comforte of lyffe’ (ID 176), ‘that she holdes me the greatest enemie she hath’ (ID 129), ‘as she makes showe’ (ID 130), ‘yet sauores so of the uessell’ (ID 184). There does seem to be a particular linguistic context in which ‘-es’ inflected third person singular verbs are often used in the corpus. They are frequently found either preceding or following first person or third person singular pronouns. There are seven examples of them before or after first person ‘me’, and another seven are referring to third person ‘he’ or ‘she’. However, there is no particular type of letter in which this variant is more frequent. By comparison, the most significant aspect of the distribution of the ‘-eth’ inflected present tense verbs across the letters is that they are more frequent in the scribal letters than in the holograph letters. It is not a huge difference; there are thirteen examples in autograph letters, compared to nineteen in the scribal letters, but it still adds to the picture of Bess preferring the incoming variant whilst her (most likely) male scribes preferred the older one. Some ‘-eth’ examples include: ‘She goeth not to any bodyes howse Atall, I se hyr almost euery howre in the day, she lyeth in my bed chambre’ (ID 163), ‘I am assured of that for the grounde M[aste]r winter pretendeth tytell tow’ (ID 187), ‘as the equitie of the Cause requireth’ (ID 104). There are examples of this inflection from the earliest letters to the latest; there are two from the 1550s, one from the 1560s, ten from the1580s, five from the 1590s and ten from the 1600s. Seeing as most of the letters under investigation date from the 1580s or later, this distribution is not particularly worthy of comment, although it is notable that they span such a long period. ‘-es’ does not have such range; the earliest examples date from the late 1570s. ‘-eth’ was therefore being used two decades before ‘-es’ in the letters. The ‘-eth’ inflection does not appear to have been used in any particular phrases or linguistic contexts in the letters. However, this linguistic change can be seen within the context of morphophonemic drift. Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg discuss ‘vowel deletion in the suffix’. They go on to state that ‘this syncope appears to be part of a long-lasting morphophonemic drift by which English lost the unstressed preconsonantal vowel /e/ in inflectional endings’.43 In terms of the type of letter in which the ‘-eth’ inflection appears, it is possible to say that it is particularly prevalent in Bess’s more formal letters. Most of the verbs with this variant ending are contained within letters of petition to Lord Burghley, Thomas Paget and Sir Francis Walsingham, or letters about business matters: land settlements, for example. Several of them are found in the later letters to the queen, Sir Henry Brouncker and Sir Robert Cecil regarding Arbella’s disruptive behaviour. Furthermore, there

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are two, ID 156 and ID 159, dating from the late 1580s and early 1590s, in which she complains of her husband George Talbot’s behaviour to Burghley. There are one or two letters to family members and servants that contain singular verbs ending in ‘-eth’, but they are a small minority. Overall, this finding about the higher frequency of the ‘-es’ in the holograph letters prompts a tentative suggestion that Bess may have preferred ‘-es’ over ‘-eth’ in her writing as well as her speech and was therefore an innovative user of the incoming variant. Furthermore, as it is likely that Bess’s scribes would have been men, it fits in with the finding of Nevalainen and RaumolinBrunberg that women promoted the second wave of the incoming third person present tense suffix ‘-es’ in the sixteenth century.44 It has been found that women are particularly influential when it comes to promoting what sociolinguists call ‘changes from below’, i.e. features found in everyday spoken usage that then come to be generalised. The change from ‘-eth’ to ‘-es’ is one such change. Switches from male to female advantage The next change discussed, the rise of periphrastic ‘do’ in affirmative and negative statements, started out being promoted by men, before being led to completion by women.45 Periphrastic ‘do’ In grammar, the word ‘periphrastic’ refers to a case or tense ‘formed by a combination of words rather than by inflection (such as did go and of the people rather than went and the people’s)’46. In present-day English, if ‘do’ is functioning as an auxiliary, it always has a grammatically supportive rather than essential semantic role. It has been termed by Randolph Quirk et al. as ‘an ‘empty’ or ‘dummy’ operator’.47 The auxiliary function of ‘do’ was still developing in early modern English. From the early modern period onwards, ‘do’ could be used as an auxiliary in positive and negative statements, as well as questions.48 It could also, as argued by Arja Nurmi, take on a discoursal and stylistic role in early modern English.49 Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg note that women used periphrastic ‘do’ in both affirmative and negative statements in early modern English. The first few decades of the seventeenth century saw a steep rise in women’s use of this feature in affirmative statements, particularly between 1600 and 1640.50 They suggest that this peak in usage was ‘an attempt to extend the systematic use of “do” to affirmative statements’.51 Bess’s letters fall slightly outside this 1600–40 bracket as the majority were composed before 1600 (the latest



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being dated to 1607). Therefore it is not that surprising that the present tense form ‘does’ is absent in the corpus of letters from Bess, and that only eighteen of the seventy-seven examples of ‘do/doe’ have an auxiliary function (see, for instance, ‘I do vndearstande by your Leters’ (ID 100)). Thirteen of these eighteen examples of ‘do/doe’ are used with affirmative statements. ‘do’ is used nine times, e.g. ‘And thus leaving eny furth[e]r to troble yo[u]r L[ordship]/ do take my leave’. The orthographic variant ‘doe’ is used four times. There are also six instances of affirmative did and two of its orthographic variant dyd. For example in ID 176, Bess writes ‘as espetially ye laste tyme I did wayte on yo[u]r L[ordshi]p’, and in ID 135: ‘and so went to the gates and would have gone out but was not suffred, yet she did speak to Stapleton’. Finally, the present tense form ‘doth’ occurs eight times in affirmative declarative sentences. For example: ‘I doubt not but yt will very evidently fall out that my sonne hath and yet doth indure many great wrong[e]s’ (ID 139). Like the use of periphrastic ‘do’ in affirmative statements, the use of ‘do’ in negative statements is first promoted by men in the late sixteenth century, before being picked up again by women between 1620 and 1640.52 As with its use in relation to affirmative statements, this is just after the period during which Bess was composing her correspondence. Only five of the eighteen examples of auxiliary ‘do’ are used in negative declarative sentences in the corpus, even though ‘do’ formations were gradually replacing inverted ‘do’-less formations such as ‘they Came not to me vntill w[i]thin this weeke’ (ID 161) in English. ‘Do not’ is used twice: ‘your land I do not desyre’ (ID 102), and ‘I do not lyke she should be now here as she was with her Mother in her lyfe tyme’ (ID 146). Did not is also used twice: ‘Wheras you cast the fault vpon Barnesley that my sonne Harry Talbott did not subscrybe the wryting as was my L[ordships] plesure’ (ID 190), ‘I sent to hir that I did not think it good she should speake w[i]th Stapleton’ (ID 135)’, and dyd not is used once: ‘I assure you my lord I dyd not’ (ID 202). However, there are 201 examples of not, which suggests that the majority of Bess’s negative declarative sentences are ‘do’-less constructions. In relation to the use of ‘do’ in questions, Bess’s letter-writing is mostly devoid of questions, even when she is asking for a favour. She will write ‘And therefore I most earnestly beseech you bothe to be a mean to hir gratious Ma[ies]tie for hir speedie remove’ (ID 134), rather than say, ‘Could you be a mean to hir gratious Ma[ies]tie for hir speedie remove?’. The verb ‘beseech’ is frequently used in this context. In effect Bess is hedging her questions with ‘I ask you’, rather than structuring them as questions with question marks at the end of them, as one might do in present-day English. ‘Do’ is used in

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addition to the verb ‘beseech’ in letter ID 120: ‘and I do beseche your magystye that I may commette wolly vnto your moust Gracyous consedera^cyon^’. However, one example was found in which Bess both asks a question and uses ‘doth to formulate it: ‘wherin doth yt sarue you to lett me lyue thus ad[sent from] you, yf you wyll saye because now you loue me not I know’ (ID 116). It could be that the reason she has written something which looks more like a conventional question than anything else in the letters is related to the content of the letter in which it is found. Letter ID 116 is an emotional letter to her husband George Talbot regarding what she considers to be his inappropriate behaviour. She is writing to a family member and clearly feels very strongly about what she is writing, so the politeness formula of hedging a question with ‘I beseech you’ is forgone in favour of a more direct question. This directness could be an indication of how much she wants the question answered. Male advantage The last two changes discussed, the loss of multiple negation and the rise of relative pronoun ‘which at the expense of ‘the which’, have been found to have been promoted by men in the early modern period.53 They are also changes that stemmed from the scholarly and professional spheres, and can therefore be classed as ‘changes from above’, to use the sociolinguistic terminology used by Labov among others. In other words, they were above the level of consciousness. People knew where they came from (in the case of these two features, legal texts such as statutes and official correspondence) and used them with that in mind. Loss of multiple negation Multiple negation is where two forms of negation are used in the same sentence or utterance and in this sense it is very similar to negative concord. However, unlike in negative concord, where the two negators reinforce one another, in multiple negation the two forms serve to cancel each other out. Multiple negation was common in late Middle English, as can be seen from this example from the Stonor letters: ‘and that sawe y never in no place but ther’,54 and continued to be used in early modern English for a period of time. Shakespeare occasionally uses it, for example in Henry IV Part 2: ‘there’s never none of these demure boys come to any proof’.55 It was also used in vernacular spoken English and in certain regional varieties of the language, as it is in present-day English. However, it gradually falls out of use during the early modern period, due to the rise of non-assertive indefinites such as



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‘any’ and ‘either’, which were accompanied by single negation.56 Previous studies have shown that this change is promoted by upwardly mobile people and middle-ranking people, such as professional lawyers, whilst people lower down the social class system continued to use multiple negation.57 It has also been found that men promoted this change rather than women.58 There are no examples of multiple negation in Bess’s letters. One might expect to find multiple negation in Bess’s letters, given that she is a woman and the avoidance of this feature was promoted by men. However, as Bess is an upwardly mobile person – born into the lower gentry and becoming a countess by the end of her life – it is possible that she is aware that multiple negation is becoming stigmatised and so avoids it in her correspondence (this will be discussed in more depth below). Relative pronoun ‘which’ There were two competing relative pronouns available at the beginning of the early modern period, ‘the which’ and ‘which’. However, the Northern form, ‘the which’, did not catch on and started to disappear during the first half of the sixteenth century.59 Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg observe that the ultimately successful variant ‘which’ was ‘clearly favoured by upper-rank and professional men between 1460 and 1499, while “the which” was clearly favoured by London merchants’.60 ‘The which’ is also the form preferred by women letter-writers represented in the Corpus of Early English Correspondence, at least until the middle of the sixteenth century. Indeed, Sabine Johnson, the wife of a merchant, uses the form 100 per cent of the time, according to the Corpus of Early English Correspondence data. By comparison, Bess hardly uses the recessive Northern form. There is only one instance of ‘the which’ in the set of letters from Bess, in a scribal letter of petition, dated to 1584 and addressed to Lord Burghley: ‘for the w[hi]ch your L[ordship] was a specyall meane’ (ID 150). The incoming form ‘which’ is much more prevalent in her correspondence. It is commonly abbreviated to ‘wch’ in the letters; there are fifty-one examples of this abbreviated form, compared with eight instances of ‘whyche’ and six of ‘which/e’. Most of these examples are straightforward relative pronouns, either modifying a demonstrative, as in: ‘so lyke wysse wolde I haue hare to haue that whyche ys nedefoulle for and nesesary’ (ID 099) or a noun: ‘yt wylbe the lesse dongorus for the ynfeccyone, whyche might so hapon’ (ID 183), ‘thanke you ^moste^ hartely for your Latter whyche wos a great coumfor[t right edge torn] to me’ (ID 186), ‘for her maintenance duaring her mynorytye, which is but for a few yeares’ (ID 146). ‘Which’ could be used to refer to human

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referents in early modern English. Bess herself does not normally use it in this way, although one example was found in a 1603 scribal letter addressed to Cecil and Sir John Stanhope, a privy councillor at the Elizabethan court: ‘I have auncient gentlewomen in my house w[hi]ch ar much w[i]th hir’ (ID 130). Overall therefore, it is possible to say that Bess is relatively innovative in her use of the incoming ‘which’ relative pronoun, despite the fact that the majority of her letters date to the second half of the sixteenth century, by which time ‘the which’ was becoming more recessive. Discussion and concluding remarks Bess’s use of language supports the suggestion that she would have received a practical education and achieved a kind of functional literacy, suited to the needs of her daily life, such as letter-writing and account-keeping. She is a competent writer, with an assured and fluid italic hand. She uses variable, distinctive and to some extent regional spellings, and is also a user of the ‘vernacular universal’ language featuring negative concord and default singulars in a range of letters. What is more, she uses these colloquial linguistic features across a range of letters, including some addressed to her social superiors, suggesting that there was tolerance of variable and vernacular language use in early modern England. Bess appears to be an early adopter, and therefore an innovative user, of a number of grammatical features that were entering the English language during the early modern period. She favours incoming linguistic features that are the result of changes from below, especially the replacement of second person pronoun ‘ye’ by ‘you’, the replacement of possessive pronouns ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ by ‘my’ and ‘thy’ and the replacement of third person singular present tense verb ending ‘-(e)th’ with ‘-(e)s’. Although further, more rigorous linguistic analysis would be needed to confirm this observation, as well as more consideration of the scribal variation present in her letters, it is a potentially illuminating insight that benefits from being seen in the context of the findings of Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg. These historical sociolinguists, looking at a much larger corpus of early modern English letters, find that Labov’s ‘long-standing cultural pattern’ (i.e. that women tend to favour ‘changes from below’) ‘was already clearly in evidence’ during the early modern period.61 As well as being an innovative user of new, incoming linguistic variants such as the second person pronoun ‘you’ in all grammatical contexts, Bess is avoiding stigmatised variants such as multiple negation. This aspect of her



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language use can be tentatively interpreted not just as a result of her gender, but also as a result of her position in Elizabethan society as a socially mobile individual. Previous sociolinguist studies have shown that socially or upwardly mobile individuals are highly sensitive to prestige and stigma in relation to language use.62 These individuals often adopt the prestige forms and avoid the stigmatised variants. Bess’s letters are practical, everyday documents which she uses throughout her life to achieve familial, social and financial goals. There are times, for example when she writes to Sir John Thynne to assist her in parliament after her husband Sir William Cavendish dies leaving her and their children in debt, when they are absolutely central to ensuring her continued wellbeing. Although she rose through the ranks of Elizabethan society, she was not born into aristocratic circles. She therefore needs to be, and is, incredibly savvy about what kind of language she uses within her letters. Focusing on how Bess writes, and the linguistic choices she makes, allows some insight, not just into her education and level of literacy, but also into how she interacts with a broad range of people in her life and how she gets things done, often in extremely challenging circumstances. Her confident handwriting and innovative, sensitive and astute use of English is reflective of the powerful, successful woman that she was. Notes 1 James Daybell, Women Letter-Writers in Tudor England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 97. 2 William Labov, ‘The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change’, Language Variation and Change, 2 (1990), pp. 205–54, and Principles of Linguistic Change.Volume 2: Social Factors (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001); Janet Holmes, ‘Setting new standards: sound changes and gender in New Zealand English’, English World-Wide, 18:1 (1997), pp. 107–42. 3 Terttu Nevalainen and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics: Language Change in Tudor and Stuart England, 1st edn (London: Longman, 2003); Historical Sociolinguistics: Language Change in Tudor and Stuart England, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2017). 4 Ronald Wardhaugh and Janet M. Fuller, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2014), p. 214. 5 Alison Truelove, ‘Commanding communications: the fifteenth-century letters of the Stonor women’, in Early Modern Women’s Letter Writing, 1450–1700, edited by James Daybell (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), p. 53. 6 Corpus of Early English Correspondence, online at www.helsinki.fi/varieng/ CoRD/corpora/CEEC/index.html (accessed 15 June 2018).

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7 See Anita Auer, Daniel Schreier and Richard J. Watts, Letter Writing and Language Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) for more on the relationship between letter-writing and language change. 8 Henry Wyld, A History of Modern Colloquial English, 3rd edn (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1936), p. 113. 9 Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: The Complete Correspondence, c.1550–1608, edited by Alison Wiggins, Alan Bryson, Daniel Starza Smith, Anke Timmermann and Graham Williams, University of Glasgow, 2013. Web development by Katherine Rogers, University of Sheffield Humanities Research Institute. Online: www.bessofhardwick.org (accessed 13 June 2018). 10 The full archive reference for each letter, which lists archive, letter collection, volume and folio numbers, can be found at: www.bessofhardwick.org. In addition to the full archive reference, the date (if known), place of composition (if known), recipient and content of each letter can be found on the digital edition of her letters. For example, ID 107: Magdalene College, Cambridge, Pepys MS 2503, pp. 203–6. January 1569. Tutbury, Staffordshire. To Dudley. Letter conveying information regarding the arrival of Mary, Queen of Scots. The holograph letters are referred to by the following ID numbers: ID 099, 101, 107, 109, 110, 111, 112, 120, 122, 123, 178, 182, 183, 184, 186, 198 and 200. 11 David Cressy, Literacy and Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 142–74. 12 Bowden 2009: 85–94. 13 Daybell, Women Letter-Writers in Tudor England, p. 93. 14 V. M. O’Mara, ‘Female scribal ability and scribal activity in Late Medieval England: the evidence?’, Leeds Studies in English, 27(1996), pp. 87–130. 15 Caroline Bowden, ‘Women in educational spaces’, in The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing, edited by Laura Lunger Knoppers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 85–94, at p. 86. 16 See for example Suzanne Romaine, Sociolinguistic Variation in Speech Communities (London: Edward Arnold, 1982), pp. 167–70, on women’s basic relativisation strategies; Anneli Meurman-Solin, ‘Change from above or from below? Mapping the loci of linguistic change in the history of Scottish English’, in The Development of Standard English, 1300–1800: Theories, Descriptions, Conflicts, edited by Laura Wright (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 155–70, on phonological change in a set of sixteenth-century Scottish letters; Merja Kytö, ‘Third-person present singular verb inflection in early British and American English’, Language Variation and Change, 5:2 (1992), pp. 113–39, on third person singular present tense indicative -S; and Minna Palander-Collin, Grammaticalization and Social Embedding: I THINK and METHINKS in Middle and Early Modern English, Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique, 55 (Helsinki: Société néophilologique, 1999), p. 246, on first person expressions of epistemic evidentiality such as ‘methinks’.



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17 Terttu Nevalainen, ‘Women’s writing as evidence for linguistic continuity and change in early modern English’, in Alternative Histories of English, edited by Peter Trudgill and R. J. Watts (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 191–209. Terttu Nevalainen, ‘Gender differences in the evolution of standard English: evidence from the Corpus of Early English Correspondence’, in Corpus Linguistics.Volume 1: Lexical Studies, edited by Douglas Biber and Randi Reppen (London: Sage, 2012), pp. 219–38, on gender differences in the evolution of Standard English is also relevant here. 18 Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics, 2nd edn, Chapter 6. 19 Mats Rydén, ‘Relative constructions in early sixteenth century English: with special reference to Sir Thomas Elyot’, doctoral thesis, Uppsala University, 1966. 20 See for instance Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics, 1st edn, p. 117. 21 ‘Daughter, n.’, OED Online (Oxford: Oxford University Press, March 2017). 22 See, for instance, Charles Barber, Early Modern English (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), p. 199. 23 J. K. Chambers, Sociolinguistic Theory: Linguistic Variation and Its Social Significance, 2nd edn (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2003), p. 242. 24 Terttu Nevalainen, ‘Negative concord as an English “vernacular universal” social history and linguistic typology’, Journal of English Linguistics, 34:3 (2006), pp. 257–78, at p. 257. 25 See, for instance, Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics, 2nd edn, chapter 6. 26 See, for instance, Labov, Principles of Linguistic Change, and Wardhaugh and Fuller, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, p. 214. 27 Jonathan Hope, Shakespeare’s Grammar (London: Bloomsbury, 2003), p. 73. 28 For an overview and further discussion of the situation see Manfred Gorlach, Introduction to Early Modern English (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 84–6; Norman Blake, A Grammar of Shakespeare’s Language (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 272–83); Barber, Early Modern English, pp. 149 and 152–7; Nevalainen, ‘Negative concord’, pp. 79–80; and Hope, Shakespeare’s Grammar, pp. 72–82. 29 See, for instance, Gorlach, Introduction to Early Modern English, p. 84; Roger Lass (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language.Volume 3: 1476–1776 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 148–55; and Nevalainen and RaumolinBrunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics, 1st edn, pp. 60–1. 30 Norman Davis, Richard Beadle and Colin Richmond, eds, Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, Part I, Early English Text Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 135. 31 Lass, Cambridge History of the English Language.Vol. 3: 1476–1776, p. 154.

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32 Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics, 1st edn, p. 118. 33 Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics, 1st edn, p. 119, and 2nd edn, Chapter 6. 34 Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics, 1st edn, p. 118. 35 See, for instance, Gorlach, Introduction to Early Modern English, pp. 85–6. 36 Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics, 1st edn, p. 118. 37 See, for instance, Lass, Cambridge History of the English Language.Vol. 3: 1476–1776, p. 148. 38 Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics, 1st edn, p. 120. 39 Hope, Shakespeare’s Grammar, p. 88. 40 TheWinter’s Tale, III.ii.99, in The Arden Shakespeare CompleteWorks, edited by Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson, and David Scott Kastan (London: Thomson Learning, 2001), p. 1292. 41 For dialectal usage in the pre-early modern English period, see Margaret Laing, The Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English, 1150–1325, online at www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ ihd/laeme2/laeme2.html (accessed 15 June 2018). 42 Barber, Early Modern English, p. 166. 43 Terttu Nevalainen and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, ‘The third-person singular –E(S) and –E(TH) revisited: the morphophonemic hypothesis’, inWords: Structure, Meaning, Function: A Festschrift for Dieter Kastovsky, edited by Christiane Dalton-Puffer and Nikolaus Ritt (Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2000), pp. 235–48. 44 Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics, 1st edn, pp. 122–4. 45 See, for instance, Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics, 2nd edn, Chapter 6. 46 This definition of ‘periphrastic’ has been taken from English: Oxford Living Dictionaries, online at https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/periphrastic/ (accessed 15 June 2018). 47 Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (London: Longman, 1985), p. 133. 48 See, for instance, Tieken-Boon van Ostade, The Auxiliary Do in Eighteenth-Century English: A Sociohistorical-Linguistic Approach, Vol. 6 (Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1987; Dieter Stein, The Semantics of syntactic Change: Aspects of the Evolution of ‘Do’ in English,Vol. 47 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1990); Matti Rissanen, ‘Syntax’, in The Cambridge History of the English Language. Volume 3: 1476–1776, edited by Roger Lass (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and Alexander Bergs and Laurel J. Brinton, English Historical Linguistics: An International Handbook, Vol. 1 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), Chapter 47. 49 Arja Nurmi, A Social History of Periphrastic DO, Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique, 56 (Helsinki: Société Néophilologique, 1999), pp. 22–7. 50 Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics, 1st edn, pp. 126 and 125, fig. 6.9. 51 Nevalainen, ‘Women’s writing’, p. 126.



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52 See, for instance, Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics, 1st edn, p. 126. 53 See, for instance, Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics, 2nd edn, Chapter 6. 54 Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, Kingsford’s Stonor Letters and Papers 1290-1483 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 78. 55 Henry IV, Part 2, IV.iii.89–90, in The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works, edited by Proudfoot et al., p. 417, my emphasis. 56 See, for instance, Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics, 1st edn, p. 71. 57 Terttu Nevalainen, ‘Social mobility and the decline of multiple negation in early modern English’, in Advances in English Historical Linguistics, edited by Jacek Fisiak and Marcin Krygier (Berlin and NewYork: Mouton de Gruyter, 1998), pp. 263–91; Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics, 1st edn, pp. 145–6. 58 Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics, 1st edn, pp. 128–9. 59 See, for instance, Ole Reuter, ‘Some notes on the origin of the relative continuation “the which” ’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 38 (1937), pp. 146–88; Rydén, Relative Constructions; Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics, 1st edn, pp. 73–5. 60 Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics, 1st edn, p. 129. 61 Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics, 1st edn, p. 131. 62 See, for instance, Chambers, Sociolinguistic Theory: Linguistic Variation and Its Social Significance, 1st edn (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1995), pp. 52–7; Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics, 2nd edn, Chapter 7.

4

Upper servants’ letters and loyalties in the Shrewsbury–Stuart domestic politics of the 1580s Felicity Lyn Maxwell

The breakdown of the earl and countess of Shrewsbury’s marriage in the early 1580s was a public affair with far-reaching implications. Because of the couple’s high-profile responsibilities as landed aristocrats and especially as guardians of Mary Stuart, exiled Queen of Scots, Elizabeth I and her privy council kept a watchful eye on their affairs, while at the household and regional levels, the earl and countess’s disputes affected the daily lives of their many dependants. As Alan Bryson’s chapter in this volume and previous biographies of Bess of Hardwick have indicated, the fifteen-year custody of Mary Stuart put a severe strain on the couple’s resources and contributed to deepening distrust between husband and wife. Mary’s presence in Shrewsbury’s household from 1569 until 1584 politicised and considerably complicated domestic dynamics, as she was mistress and queen over her own servants and lived in semi-regal style, mainly at Shrewsbury’s expense, without being either the mistress of the house or the sovereign of her captor hosts. The combined household was characterised by competing allegiances, conspicuous consumption of limited resources, depleting wealth and, unsurprisingly, tense interpersonal relations. Whereas Shrewsbury and Mary were forced to cohabit, Bess was increasingly alienated from her husband. Mary was not the only point of contention, however. From the summer of 1583 onwards, the earl and countess of Shrewsbury mainly lived apart, heading separate households and locked in rivalry for local dominance and wider reputation. Their respective servants were enlisted to provide many forms of practical and moral support in the ongoing conflict, and the couple’s land disputes spread outwards to affect large numbers of tenants in the Derbyshire countryside and further afield. The domestic, far from private, encompassed the whole social, financial and political economy in which lands held by the earl or



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countess and worked by their tenants supported their households and reinforced their joint or individual lordship. This system was not self-contained but operated in relation to the royal court and the courts of law. Upper servants acted as co-managers and political agents in each of these contexts and through their correspondence. In the courtly contexts, Alison Wiggins has analysed how Shrewsbury and Bess crafted the letters of ‘character assassination’, ‘defence and conciliation’ they exchanged in the mid-1580s; she argues that they were ‘written with the advice of legal counsellors’ and ‘designed as much for the eyes of Burghley (and therefore the queen and Court)’ as for each other.1 In the local context, Stephen E. Kershaw’s research on Shrewsbury’s dispute with his Glossopdale tenants and Andy Wood’s discussion of Shrewsbury’s opposition to miners in the High Peak, some of whom were also tenants, are especially relevant.2 Servants’ perspectives do not feature in these studies.3 But, like puzzle pieces that connect disparate parts of a bigger picture, letters composed by household and estate servants show their writers to have been positioned between lord and lady, landlords and tenants, and to have actively contributed to the complex conflicts between these parties. This chapter examines representations of the micropolitics of the earl and countess of Shrewsbury’s domestic disputes, written from the perspectives of seven literate upper servants whose surviving letters record their own involvement in many episodes in the conflict from 1579 to 1589. While confirming that the charge of Mary Stuart and ongoing power struggles over extensive land-holdings were two main strands of contention, these letters offer highly detailed accounts of the day-to-day management of the conflict by the earl and countess’s respective supporters. Reading these letters together, chronologically, with attention to rhetorical positioning as well as historical content, allows us to see how servants exercised active and verbal agency on their employers’ and their own behalf in times of domestic discord. Despite their diversity of authorship and dichotomy of allegiance, these letters demonstrate shared preoccupations and similar social positioning and epistolary strategies. In the early modern period, correspondence was a goal-orientated form of writing which attempted to get things done through skilful management of language and interpersonal relations. The letters studied here thus feature detailed updates and evidence of faithfulness, dedication and competence. Through narrative reports, often with vivid characterisation and critical commentary; direct address, including practical advice and expressions of loyalty and goodwill; and use of politically, ethically, or emotionally heightened language, servants’ letters verbally perform allegiance to master

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or mistress, representing people and events in the light of the core employer– servant relationship that directed not only the correspondents’ daily activities but also the construction of their social identities.4 Taken together, these letters testify to strong bonds of interdependency between employers and literate servants and to the indispensable supporting roles that estate officers and gentle-born attendants could play in politically charged domestic dramas in which they had a vested interest. Furthermore, these letters demonstrate that how the aristocratic couple managed their households and estates was closely tied to their public personae. Through partisan depictions of good and bad lordship, miscarriage of justice and political manoeuvring, these letters contribute to the ongoing debate about Bess and Shrewsbury’s respective reputations. Loyal service and good lordship functioned as rhetorically powerful social values when invoked by literate servants in the performance of their epistolary duties. It was not enough for servants to give progress reports on their obedient deeds; they must also express conviction – in public and private – that their employer’s cause, in which they act, is just. Written by first-hand observers and participants, these letters not only reinscribe loyalty to Bess or her husband but also seek to influence the course of events. Furthermore, the letters written by servants who had direct dealings with tenants offer rare glimpses into the attitudes and activities of these likewise contested dependants, revealing that many tenants had agendas of their own that did not always align with those of their lord or lady but could sometimes be manipulated to advantage. John Kniveton’s letter to Bess, 23 December 1579, predates the most serious trouble between the earl and countess of Shrewsbury and represents them as a single political unit.5 This letter reveals that the treatment of their Derbyshire tenants affected their reputation in London; subsequent letters show that as the conflict between them escalated, Bess and Shrewsbury both attempted to gain the upper hand through their dealings with tenants, particularly in north-west Derbyshire. Kniveton reports that he has delivered gifts of venison pies to several legal officials in London and relates an important conversation he had with one of them: ‘mr Sackeford telled me that he wished yat my Lord and your Ladyship wold see that the inhabitantes abowt the fforrest were well vsed’.6 Unconvinced by Kniveton’s assurance that the tenants would ultimately be better off than if the land had been left ‘open to be vsed by them as thei desyred’, Sackeford ‘said he wold speake to me more then to others. and telled me that he hard very evill speaches of my Lord in the courte … that he had put owte a greate nomber of tenantes lately to their vtter decaye, and demanded of me whether I knewe



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any suche matter’. Although Kniveton denied this rumour, Sackeford ended the conversation by advising the earl and countess, through their servant, to ‘refreyn to do any thinge that might be grevous to a multitude aswell for honor and conscience as to avoyde obloquie & clamorous complayntes./ with muche talke howe hatefull a thinge yt was bothe before god & men to distresse the poore’. Kniveton’s letter to Bess functions as a warning that she and her husband take greater care of their tenants and of their own reputation. The issues were Shrewsbury’s attempts to raise rents dramatically in Glossopdale to offset the costs of maintaining his family and exceptionally large and expensive conglomerate household; to evict troublesome tenants and those who could not or would not pay the higher rents, replacing them with trusted servants as tenants;7 and to enclose land in the Peak Forest. Kershaw calculates that delegations of Glossopdale tenants brought their case before the privy council no fewer than fourteen times between April 1579 and 1582; Wood adds that the Peak Forest tenants had gone straight to the queen and also to the court of the Duchy of Lancaster for redress in 1576.8 In Kniveton’s letter, Sackeford’s wording repeats the tenants’ own. Whatever their economic and tenurial status in December 1579, these tenants were ‘organised, articulate and assertive’, well versed in the rhetoric of poverty and victimisation that was most likely to win their case and shame their lord.9 Kniveton wisely avoids laying blame in his own words, but records Sackeford’s pointed speeches along with his own attempts to deny the court gossip triggered by the tenants’ repeated appearances. This narrative strategy allows Kniveton to warn his employers in a forceful yet tactful way, while demonstrating his own loyalty and discretion as their servant and public representative. Since he was related to Thomas Kniveton, the husband of Bess’s half-sister Jane Leche, familial solidarity as well as dependence probably motivated John Kniveton to try to preserve Bess and her husband’s good name. By the time Nicholas Booth wrote his earliest extant letter to his master, some tenants were not only opposing Shrewsbury but siding with Bess.10 This letter is dated only 9 January but seems to relate to a subsequent stage of tenant protest. Booth reports that certain ‘of my ladie & willm Cavendishes people’ have joined with ‘the tenantes handes which your lordshipe put forthe in glossopdale, And bamforde, And all the tenantes that are nowe occupiers in the peake forest And as maynie more of theire frendes as the[y] could get’ to ‘goe aboute to procure, A supplication to the quens maiestie or … to the counsell’. Some of the tenants intend to ‘come vp with it to exclame’ against Shrewsbury at the royal court, ‘but’, Booth reassures him, ‘I trust to god I

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hearinge of it haue prevented theire wicked practise’. It seems that Bess not only supported these tenants as they sought redress but also strategically provided new housing for them: ‘The[y] doe saye that hir ladiship would not haue bulden so manie howses in the peake forest but to haue reliued those which your lordship put forth’. Acting as their benefactress and champion (temporarily) won for Bess a better reputation at the royal court and a posse of tenants in her native county who were willing to defend her and her sons’ claims in return. One of these men, Raphe Blakwall, was particularly zealous and well informed. Booth reports that ‘blakwall perswaded with manie not to paye your lordship anye Rent’, on the grounds that ‘he hath seyne your hand & seale to the contrarie as he sayth, your lordshippe hath geuen it vnto Sir charles Cauendish & willm Cavendish & ther vpon … would not paye, And sayd who dorst be bould to strayne him’. Blakwall argued that since Shrewsbury had signed and sealed a document making over the lands in question to his stepsons William and Sir Charles Cavendish and granting Bess a life interest, he could not lawfully continue to collect rent on these lands.11 Blakwall had seen (i.e. been shown) this document, so he was well equipped to speak up. But Booth and his men took up Blakwall’s verbal challenge and seized his straw since he refused to pay cash. By contrast, another of Bess’s tenants settled up and moved away as soon as possible. Nevertheless, the bailiff’s summary of his rent collecting sounds more optimistic than accurate: ‘& of others we get some, And some we take band [bond] for to paye it at A reasonable daye, And by A little & A litle we shall wyne them, And deale not hardly with any but of hir crewe’. Throughout this letter, Booth first describes a problem then summarises what action he has taken or will take to solve it – thus fulfilling his duties to keep his master well informed and to act diligently in his service. Booth’s writing displays his intimate knowledge of Shrewsbury’s affairs. Whereas John Kniveton had publicly disavowed knowledge of any evictions, Booth’s letter to Shrewsbury not only confirms that they had taken place but also details the ongoing consequences and reports that the enclosure at Ashford is also breeding discontent.12 Rather than using his correspondence to suggest a more moderate course of action that might preserve his master’s good name and avoid social unrest, Booth records his dedicated efforts to maximise the earl’s authority over and income from the region. He implicitly justifies his master’s actions by characterising the tenants’ planned complaint to the queen as ‘wicked’ and Blakwall and others as belligerent trouble-makers. By contrast, he describes his own aggressive rent collecting practices as ‘reasonable’, just,



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and gently coaxing; he and his men will use coercion only on Bess’s ‘crewe’, who deserve it. While Booth has little good news to relate to the earl, he presents bad news in ways that emphasise his personal dedication to his master’s cause in thought and deed, for better or worse, and expresses the hope that they will prevail in the end. It seems that Booth was not above resorting to physical violence. An undated list of grievances compiled by Sir Charles and William Cavendish claims that ‘The saide Bowthe … rideth upp and down the countrey … accompanied with a nomber of the Erle of Shrewesburies servauntes … apointed in warlike sorte’ and that Booth and his men were involved in three out of ten alleged instances of assault on Bess’s servants and tenants and even on Sir Charles himself.13 In the meantime, other servants were writing letters to try to resolve – or escape from – problems within the Shrewsbury–Stuart household. In October 1581, William Marmyon, one of Bess’s waiting gentlemen, wrote to his former master, Sir Francis Willoughby, offering to return to his service because ‘cyvill warres will entertaigne Sheffield howse and that Skottys regiment vnlesse Marmyon be removed’.14 He claims that Shrewsbury persists in persecuting Bess and that ‘alwayes … my Lord hathe made me playe a parte/ so I thinke the tragedy would not hould if I be lefte out.’ Specifically, ‘his Lordship chargethe her and me to be devysors for the disablyng of his sarvice to her maiestie./ that we are advertysers against him/ and weere the onely cawse that abatement was made of his allowance for the Lady of Skottlandes dyat.’ While Shrewsbury was evidently aware that news of his domestic strife would call into question his suitability as Mary’s guardian and that Elizabeth believed him to be wealthy enough to require minimal subsidisation,15 Marmyon’s letter characterises the earl as paranoid, controlling and vindictive. Prone to ‘frantick speches’, he has accused Bess of ‘mak[ing] me her right hande as it weere/ whome he cannot abide: and knowing that I hate him’. In this most recent ‘broyle … betwixt my Lord and Lady’, the earl issued an ultimatum, which Marmyon refers to sarcastically as ‘surely a very honorable conclusion’: ‘that if she would not remove me/ he could never be brought to thinke that she loved him/ neyther would he ever take her for his wyfe/ but he would remove me/ and shutt her Ladyship vp/ without suffring eny sarvantes about her than of his owne placing.’ Although such a threat was hardly likely to inspire love, Bess did decide to dismiss Marmyon rather than risk further deprivations. However, Marmyon informs Willoughby that she promised him an annuity of £40, to be paid by William Cavendish so as not to require Shrewsbury’s consent, remarking, ‘I may as well seeke to remove the towar of London as compas eny suche goodnes’ from the earl.

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Marmyon states not only aversion for the earl but also affection for both Bess and Willoughby, the consecutive objects of his allegiance. He writes, ‘I am sorie with all my harte to see my Lady in suche daunger … that howse is a hell’. Marmyon anticipates with glee his departure from Sheffield and return to Wollaton, ‘which soyle and the soyles master I have alwaies vnfaynedly loved’. Imagining a dramatic exit, he reports, ‘my Lord makes men beleve that he will feight with me in his owne parson’ and comments snidely that ‘use/ makes his feight/ terrible parfecte.’ Despite such blatant disrespect for his then master, Marmyon was readmitted to Willoughby’s service, where he became embroiled in that family’s internal disputes as well.16 Bess’s waiting gentlewoman Frances Battell also claims to have been targeted by Shrewsbury because of her solidarity with his wife.17 Writing to their mutual friend Lady Elizabeth Paulet on 23 March 1584, Battell identifies closely with her mistress and criticises the earl for his harsh treatment of the two of them compared with his tolerance for the Queen of Scots. Battell asserts, ‘my lord geues out harde spech of me to my great discredeth if it showlde beleued of my frends’, among whom she considers Paulet ‘one of my good frends that I make most Acount of’. The first purpose of Battell’s letter, then, is to clear herself of any false accusations that Paulet may have heard about her and to reinscribe mutual respect and affection between the women. This bond of goodwill is contrasted with the dangerous hatred that, Battell suggests, unites Shrewsbury and Mary: ‘the cas of my lords harde dealleng with me is that the Scotyhes queene can not Abyde me for how can she Abyde me, when she is with all hatred bent A ganst my good lady and mistress’. Battell’s letter articulates sympathy with Bess, as she states, ‘I ded pitte my honorable lady’ and reports that mistress and maid were further conflated in their enemies’ eyes. Whereas in John Kniveton’s 1579 letter husband and wife present a united front, over the next few years the couple were sufficiently estranged from one another that their attendants could discuss their ‘broyles’ and ‘hatred’ openly with outsiders and could suggest that their affective domestic alliances were with other household members – trusted attendants or, potentially, the captive queen – but certainly not each other. The dynamics described by Battell had serious political implications. Her letter strategically ranges Shrewsbury, his servants and Mary Stuart against Bess, Battell and Elizabeth Tudor. The waiting gentlewoman recounts a scene from several months earlier in which she had loyally spoken out against Mary’s servants, while Shrewsbury’s servants remained silent: ‘the words that the Scotyshe queene seruants sayde to me and to othars of my lords seruants whar thvs but none made anser but I/ this sayd thay that the Scotyshe …



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queene showld be queene of england whar to I made this ancer that it whar better that the scotyshe queene were hanged befor that tyme shoulde com to pas, and all that so thought’. Battell comments, ‘I coulde not but make this ancer rachly it ded so much greue me to hear thes words/ and I am bound in duty and conshanc so to ancer/ and sincs that tyme my lord doth hardly deal with me’. Although Battell’s outspoken loyalty was far from diplomatic, the composition and subsequent recirculation of her letter demonstrate that she and her contacts in London were well aware of how to play the political game. The letter strategically represents Shrewsbury as unjust, lacking sound judgement and complicit in the subversion of Elizabeth’s authority over the household in his charge. His reported hatred and then banishment of his wife and her loyal servants from Sheffield while he was still cohabiting with a foreign queen with a reputation for beauty, charm and political intrigue did not bode well. Writing from Chatsworth, Battell highlights the dangers inherent in the earl’s domestic affairs in an attempt to elicit the government’s intervention. Her letter implies that the best way to re-establish domestic and political order in the Shrewsbury–Stuart household is to re-establish the mistress in her rightful place. The endorsements on Battell’s letter reveal that it was strategically recirculated by several other gentlewomen and (male) servants, to bring it to the attention of the government. The letter is clearly designed to stir up sympathy and support, and Paulet duly passed it on to Elizabeth Wingfield, Bess’s courtier half-sister. As Wingfield’s own surviving correspondence makes clear, she helped maintain Bess’s good standing with the queen on an ongoing basis.18 Wingfield in turn sent one of her men to deliver the letter to its third recipient, likely one of Burghley’s secretaries, who endorsed it and gave it to Burghley himself straight away. Finally, Burghley’s holograph endorsement notes sender, addressee and date of receipt (11 April). Battell’s letter was both composed and circulated for maximum impact, in the knowledge that the Shrewsbury–Stuart household’s instability would be of grave concern to the privy council as well as to her own friends and Bess’s. Indeed, Burghley seems to have been most interested in the information about Mary. The letter was regarded as a piece of political intelligence: the passages of greatest political significance were underlined, either by Burghley or for his benefit, and he kept the letter on file amongst the state papers, where it remains. Battell’s argument that Shrewsbury and Mary had formed an alliance of sorts against Bess may have contributed to the decision later in 1584 that governmental intervention was required.19 Thomas Stringer’s letter to Shrewsbury, dated 15 November 1584, is concerned with many of the practical

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details involved in the halting process of releasing the earl from the considerable responsibility and expense of his royal ‘charge’.20 Although Sir Ralph Sadler, chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, had been appointed one of her new custodians in August, Mary was still living in Shrewsbury’s houses and at his expense.21 While Shrewsbury was away attending privy council meetings in London, Sadler and his servants had initially joined Mary at Sheffield Castle, then obeyed orders to move Mary and her retinue to one of Shrewsbury’s lesser manors, Wingfield, while arrangements were being made for them to continue south to Tutbury Castle.22 In the meantime, Stringer reports from Wingfield that supplies are low, security is lax, Shrewsbury’s servants are doing all the work, and Walsingham is only now asking what the upkeep of Mary’s retinue actually costs. Stringer’s letter demonstrates his firm grasp of practical details and his dedication to Shrewsbury’s best interests. He expresses loyalty through judgemental comments on others and emphatic advice by which he attempts to protect his master from further impositions. The prevailing theme of Stringer’s letter is that the sooner they can get rid of Mary (and Sadler), the better off they will be. With first-hand experience of the difficulties and expense of providing for Mary’s semi-regal maintenance and secure house arrest, Stringer opines, ‘I Judge the quenes mayJeste & consell dothe se to furnyshe such a howsse as tutbury … wyll [a]monte to a huege some of monnay besyde the charg of her [day]lye dyet wyne spyes & othar thynges that thay ar werry to loke to yt’. Citing Shrewsbury’s employment of 150 soldiers as a further expense, Stringer loyally concludes, ‘thow some that wear your holloo frendes dyd thynk [your] charge not gret now thaye may se the contrary to thayre sham[e]’. Suspicious that ‘the quenes mayJestee wylbe in hand with yow to contenow’ to provide for Mary in the long term, Stringer advises his master, ‘y[t] behovyth your lordshyp seyng yow have spend a good pees of your awne lyvyng in keppyng of her for the dewty yow bore onto the quenes [may]Jestes now to seak to be delyverred’. Aware that Shrewsbury took great pride in being trusted with his royal burden, Stringer repeats this advice several times, arguing that only Shrewsbury’s enemies would wish Mary upon him. Both to defeat them and to ‘Repe quyetnes in your lattar dayes’, Stringer urges, ‘your lordshyp most be earnest for your delyvarrance’. By the time that Booth wrote his second surviving letter to Shrewsbury, on 8 May 1585, the earl had been fully ‘delivered’ from the Queen of Scots.23 Mary was at Tutbury and under the strict supervision of Sir Amias Paulet, who had succeeded Sadler in April.24 However, Booth’s letter indicates that



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the earl’s trouble with the Cavendishes continued. His dutiful hope that the end of ‘the Controversies betwene your honor & my Lady your wief … be to the content of your Lordship . & the Comodytie of the Contrey’ is immediately undercut by the news, ‘I vnderstand mr Cavendyshe have wrytten to ther men to enter into all the Landes & Leases which they ordaynd & to vse them to ther best Comodytie, & vtterlye to expelle vs from the doinges therof’. Booth assures Shrewsbury that he will continue to protect his prerogatives until he receives written orders to the contrary from the earl himself. As previously, the bailiff asserts that the Cavendishes are in the wrong. He now claims that they were responsible for the Peak Forest enclosure and that the victimised tenants ‘wyll repayre to your honor for Reformacion of ther wronge in the peake. fforest this terme … for the layinge Open of the same’. Booth also advises Shrewsbury that if he agrees to revert some lands to Bess and her sons, he should keep Ashford, Birchills and the Peak Forest and take measures to strengthen ‘the good wylles of the Inhabytantes & Tenantes therof’, with whom he had settled in the courts.25 In effect, Booth was urging Shrewsbury to consolidate his lordship over the disputed lands by cooperating with the tenants against Bess – contrary to the queen and council’s order of 24 April to release these lands to Bess and be reconciled.26 Shrewsbury needed no encouragement to continue hostilities towards his wife and her supporters. Despite having been ordered by Elizabeth to cease legal proceedings, he twice brought to trial one of Bess’s Gloucestershire servants and tenants, Henry Beresford, on a charge of scandalis magnatum. In origin, this was a political crime that involved not only defamation but also sowing discord between nobles and monarch by accusing nobles of treason.27 However, the underlying issue was another contest over lands, rents and tenants. As in a separate case of disputed land rights in the High Peak in the 1570s, examined by Heather Falvey, ‘local relations had become so acrimonious’ that ‘treasonous activities’ were alleged as a powerful rhetorical ploy.28 Shrewsbury may have been aware of this case involving his neighbours and imitated their tactics in his charges against Beresford. Hercules Claye’s letter to Bess, 19 March 1586, consists of a detailed report of Beresford’s trial at the York Assizes the day before, in which Claye had served as a witness for the defence.29 This letter has a strong narrative drive and, written by one of Bess’s servants, tells a different story from the depositions of Shrewsbury’s witnesses.30 In Claye’s interpretation, ‘att yorcke assises all thinges haue proceded agaynst mr Basford with greate percialitie [partiality]’. Claye argues that the trial was rigged from start to finish: ‘we could retayne no Sergante[-at-law, i.e. barrister] agaynst my lorde’; the objection

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put forward by Beresford’s counsel that there was ‘kinred betwne my lorde and the Shreffe’ was disallowed, despite the evidence of an official pedigree and the sheriff’s own confession; likewise, their ‘Lawfull challenge to diueres of the Jury beinge my lordes one [own] men’ was disallowed. Finally, Claye relates, a document attacking the credibility of Shrewsbury’s witnesses would not be admitted as evidence, whereas good character references were admitted. In these testimonies, financial credit or otherwise is considered evidence of the degree of credibility of Shrewsbury’s witnesses. However, Claye comments with evident frustration, ‘as your Ladishipe knoweth the[y] be thre yeare behinde’ in rent ‘to Sir Charles and Willm Cavendishe … and promised a discharge from my lorde: This was opened, but nothinge that we sayde stoode for reason’. While it is unclear what Beresford had actually said about Shrewsbury, what does emerge from the conflicting trial records is that in the ongoing disputes over the control of the lands that Bess had brought into the marriage, tenants could choose whose side to take and be compensated and vilified accordingly. Furthermore, although Shrewsbury had not committed treason, Claye’s letter stains his reputation afresh by arguing that he perverted justice to such a degree as to attract the dismay of onlookers. Claye’s narrative is punctuated by expressions of the crowd’s horrified response to the proceedings: ‘the tryers beinge without doubte detirmined before to fynd for my lorde. founde for his Lordshippe, contrary to the pedegre, and the Shreffes vpon [open] Confession, whereatt the audience dide greatly wonder and some sayde that the tryers cane in noe wyse cleare them selues of wilfull periury’. Similarly, ‘after in the towne there was such speches of the manner of procedinge, as I will warrant in this part great men maye doe what the[y] Lyste for meane men will not adverties nay the[y] see thinges be proved that never was spoken’. By recording these overheard criticisms of Shrewsbury, Claye not only characterises Bess’s antagonistic husband as an abuser of power but also rallies public opinion to her cause while vividly expressing his own loyalty as her servant. Claye’s role in the trial was to testify that the pedigree showing Shrewsbury’s kinship to the sheriff was an official and verifiable manuscript copy made by a professional herald. This evidence would have been particularly damaging to Shrewsbury’s reputation since, as earl marshal, he was head of the College of Arms, the professional association of heralds and repository of official pedigrees. As both a witness in the trial and a witness of the trial, Claye testifies against the earl to his fellow servant Beresford’s innocence and by doing so demonstrates solidarity with their mistress, the countess.



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In contrast with the preceding letters, in which the earl and countess’s respective servants and supporters depict each other as enemies, Booth’s last extant letter demonstrates a willingness to work closely, even covertly, with one of Bess’s potentially most trusted servants.31 Written on 4 April 1586, this letter is addressed not to Shrewsbury but to Thomas Kniveton of Mercaston, who had been drawn into Bess’s affinity and service through his marriage to her half-sister Jane.32 Unlike when writing to Shrewsbury to express uncritical support, in this letter Booth must undertake more complex social and rhetorical negotiations. The letter is directed ‘To the righte worshepfull and my very good frend mr Thomas Kneuiton esquire’, and the salutation strikes a similar note: ‘Right worshepfull my d[uti]e remembured’. While ‘right worshipful’ and ‘my duty remembered’ were highly conventional phrases with which to open a letter to a member of the gentry or social superior, what is significant here is that the duty Booth invokes towards this particular ‘very good frend’ would contradict in some measure his duty to his master while Shrewsbury and Bess maintained opposing interests. Booth did not initiate this correspondence. It seems that Kniveton wished to meet with Shrewsbury and enlisted Booth’s help to bring this about since, as Bess’s brother-in-law, he was unlikely to be welcome in Shrewsbury’s house. Booth replies, ‘I haue not as yet moued his Lordship for your coming thether because I dyd not speake with my Lord since I dyd know your mynde therin but I would wishe you should accompeny mr manars thether or else his Lordship wyll hardly speake to you’. Booth further advises, ‘yf yt might be possible I would gladly specke with you affore you goe to my Lord’, presumably to devise a strategy for the meeting. Whatever Kniveton’s business with Shrewsbury may have been, to receive an audience required the assistance of two men whom the earl trusted: Booth and John Manners of Haddon Hall, a Derbyshire neighbour and Shrewsbury’s former brother-in-law, who was frequently called upon to mediate between Shrewsbury and Bess. Booth also informs Kniveton, ‘I haue [been?] at Sheffeld with my Lord and ther haue had very greate speche [wit]h his Lordship as touching my Lady, and I can not as yet gett any [word torn away] answer of his Lordship’. Before Shrewsbury will agree terms with Bess, he is consulting with ‘mrs brettyns’ solicitor brother-in-law and some of the privy councillors; furthermore, he has written to the councillors and the queen ‘touching some harde and vnderect dealing, by my Lady and mr harry Cavendish … as he sayth and a breach of her maiestys order, and somethinge consarning my Lord Talbott’.33 In these circumstances, Booth’s main concerns seem to be to reconcile Shrewsbury with his heir, Gilbert Talbot, and to prevent Eleanor Britton, an attendant of

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the earl’s at Handsworth Manor in Sheffield Park and probably his mistress, from claiming any property or influence.34 This would explain why he advises Kniveton, ‘yt weare good my Lady sente vp sir Charles Cavendish or some other whom she mighte truste to incounter mr hearn’, Britton’s brother-in-law, ‘in the courte’ and gives advance warning that ‘my Lord meaneth to enter of the peake forryste, and as yet I can not parseue that his Lordship wylbe by any parswagions reconsiled with her Ladyship’. Since Booth had previously urged Shrewsbury to retain control over the Peak Forest, it would be surprising to find him expressing genuine concern for Bess’s interests. Booth’s sudden show of willingness to assist with a rapprochement may have been put on for Kniveton’s benefit because he needed his cooperation in turn. Booth’s next statement reveals his objective: ‘therfore I beseeche you take care for my Lord Talbott, that he may come to his Lordship affore he come to my Lady, and that yt may be don without any offence to her Ladyship and so by that meanes I doubte not yf his Lordship Take mr manars with him … the[y] wyll worke in such manar as he shall haue his honors fauor’. Evidently, Booth needed Kniveton to manage Bess’s affairs so as to allow Gilbert to be reconciled with his father and to ensure Sir Charles would take legal action to prevent Mrs Britton from encroaching on the disputed Talbot/Cavendish lands. Booth recognised that in this instance, going behind Shrewsbury’s back and collaborating with the countess’s faction to suppress a common threat was the best way to protect the earldom into the next generation, just as Kniveton had recognised that he needed Booth to pave the way for his audience with Shrewsbury. Booth and Kniveton may well have built up a cordial working relationship during the 1570s, on which both could draw at need in the course of their often but not always conflicting duties in the following decade. Even so, it appears from this letter that any cooperation needed to be covert. Kniveton had sent his servingman to Booth’s own house and instructed him to wait there, rather than to seek Booth at Sheffield, where Shrewsbury was in residence. Booth’s letter in reply to the oral or written message from Kniveton was likewise delivered by Kniveton’s servant, to avoid the suspicion that a bearer in Shrewsbury’s service might raise in Bess’s household. Indeed, the two final letters under consideration vividly illustrate the ongoing domestic espionage in which several of Shrewsbury and Bess’s servants were engaged in the late 1580s. Both letters were written to Bess by Nicholas Kynnersley, her steward at Wingfield Manor, and express his overarching concern with security: of the property and inhabitants in his care, of his correspondence with Bess, and of Bess’s good name. By this time, the earl and countess’s affairs had been thoroughly and repeatedly examined by a team



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of privy councillors, legal experts and gentry neighbours charged with the task of bringing about the reconciliation and cohabitation of husband and wife.35 Terms agreed during this process brought Bess’s household to Wingfield Manor. Details differ across the three documents that focus on Bess and Shrewsbury’s places of residence; although presented as a series of definitive statements – the queen’s orders – they are highly intertextual and capture particular moments in what was obviously an ongoing process of negotiation.36 What they have in common is designating Wingfield as the place where Bess was to live for an extended period, during which time Shrewsbury was to visit her regularly. Although Bess was not required to remain at Wingfield at all times, this manor is most closely associated with marital reconciliation in the documentation, so living there may have come to symbolise Bess’s willing availability to cohabit with Shrewsbury in compliance with the queen’s explicit wishes.37 There are no signs of harmonious cohabitation in Kynnersley’s letters. Neither Bess nor Shrewsbury is at Wingfield; instead, his servants are spying on hers during her absence. Kynnersley’s letter of 5 November 1588 opens, ‘Thes nyght … ezabell told me yat gylberd dyckensson came to hur in ye bachowsse & axed yff your honor were here & she answared no & he axed when you went aweay & sed yesterday he axed when you well com agyne she answared shortly as she thowght. & lett at nyght there came a boye from sheffeld in a grene cote & talked with them in ye stable & sed he moste goo very yerly in ye mornyng to sheffeld agyn’.38 It seems that neither of the earl’s servants presented themselves in the house; instead, they furtively engaged Bess’s lower servants in conversation in the bakehouse and stables. However, the fact that ‘ezabell’ and the stablehands answered discreetly and quickly informed the steward of their conversations indicates that they were alert to danger. Kynnersley interprets the purpose of Dickenson and the boy’s brief visits to be ‘to bryng me lord worde off your absence here & so yat he myght com vppon ye soden & fynd you a weay’. The underlying logic seems to be that if Shrewsbury were suddenly to appear at Wingfield in Bess’s absence, either he could claim that he had tried to visit her and the fault was hers for not being there or he could turn out her servants and appropriate any of Bess’s assets left behind. With such possibilities before him, Kynnersley immediately, deferentially yet firmly advises Bess to return: ‘so I leve yt to your honores wysdom to conseder off yt as you thynke beste bot I thynke good you were here.’ Another cause for concern was that Bess’s granddaughter Arbella Stuart was having digestive problems; Kynnersley comments, ‘I wold be glad off your ladyshipes comyng yff there were no oyer [other] matter bot

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yat’. Not waiting until the next morning, Kynnersley wrote this letter to Bess at night and must have sent another servant out in the dark to deliver it. The superscription too urges haste: ‘To ye Ryght honorable me syngular good lady & mistres ye countes off Sallop gyff the[s] with speed’. By contrast, Kynnersley’s only other surviving letter, written to Bess from Wingfield on 22 April 1589, mainly consists of a sequence of cheerful congratulations and best wishes.39 Written as a covering note to be sent with ‘part off your pryncypall Iuelles’, this short letter imagines the ‘comford & plessure’ she will receive from them. As Bess occasionally referred to Arbella as her ‘Iuell’, the jewels that Kynnersley is sending her are probably her thirteen-year-old granddaughter and other young relatives.40 Through such phrases, the officer demonstrates that he knows how Bess values her family and also builds solidarity by entering into their joy on being reunited. Regarding Wingfield, Kynnersley assures Bess in a postscript that ‘your honor shall nede to take no thowght botte be merye for you shall fynd all thynges here I truste in as good order as you leafte them’. However, the steps that he has taken to ensure that all remains well reveal that Kynnersley still perceived a need for high security at Wingfield Manor: ‘wee nether wyll yeld to comandment nor forsse except your honores hand & yett wee wyll lett your honor vnderstond & haue a second comandment by on off your owen men vnder your hand leaste ye fruste be counterfott’. Bess’s steward evidently feared not only being spied on by Shrewsbury’s servants as in his earlier letter, but also being attacked and being sent false orders that were contrary to Bess’s real wishes. Regarding the latter, Kynnersley proposes a multi-stage process of authentication that would be somewhat onerous, feasible only if Bess were nearby, her orders were not urgent, she were healthy enough to pen her own letters, and she had a trusted and recognisable bearer available to deliver them. Kynnersley makes no apology for the inconvenience, clearly believing it to be necessary. The scheme demonstrates his initiative, attention to detail and determination to maintain the highest standards of security and obedience during Bess’s absence and in the face of a foe who, he implies, uses both force and guile. This is the last extant letter written by a servant of Bess or Shrewsbury in such circumstances; the earl’s death on 18 November 1590 brought an end to the immediate conflict, if not to its diverse effects on all who had been involved. In conclusion, the letters composed and sent by the earl and countess of Shrewsbury’s literate upper servants in the course of the couple’s decade-long competition over household authority, lands, lordship and reputation constitute an extremely rich and multilayered source for the study of early modern



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social relations as enacted or reported in writing. They depict not only employer–servant relations but also how servants and tenants interacted with each other, the royal court and the law. First, these letters help us re-evaluate Bess of Hardwick’s significance as an employer and landlord by allowing us to compare her tactics with those of her husband, as represented by their respective servants. Bess is seen to provide for Marmyon after he left her service; to retain Battell despite Shrewsbury’s objections; to seek to protect Beresford from being made a scapegoat; to build cottages for tenants evicted by Shrewsbury; and to convince other tenants that they could legally refuse to pay rent to his bailiff. By all accounts, Bess took good care of her trusted household and estate servants – and of her tenants, when doing so would be advantageous. On other occasions, she and her sons may have exerted their perceived rights as landlords too forcefully, as alleged by Stringer and Booth. The latter freely admits that he used force to subdue Bess’s supporters and that Shrewsbury evicted tenants, causing unrest in the process. Booth and Stringer’s inconsistent claims, first about who was responsible for the enclosure in the Peak Forest and second that both Bess and Shrewsbury had sought to relieve tenants allegedly oppressed by the other party, may suggest that Shrewsbury’s officers struggled to keep their story straight. Yet another possibility is that Bess and Shrewsbury alternated between oppressing and assisting tenants, depending on the potential benefits to themselves in a given scenario. Briony McDonagh found this to be the case in her study of an enclosure dispute in Yorkshire fifty years earlier, in which a major landlord briefly supported some of his poorer tenants against the incursions of a neighbouring landlord but himself made a depopulating enclosure elsewhere.41 Second, Booth and Stringer’s letters, Claye’s account of Beresford’s trial, and the depositions against Beresford all demonstrate that the tenants living precariously on contested ground were not all passive victims. Some organised collective action – legal and illegal – to protest against enclosures, rent rises and evictions. Some refused to leave, while others took the opportunity. Some refused to pay rent, or negotiated to give evidence in lieu of rent. Many seem to have chosen to support either Bess and her sons or Shrewsbury, or to play them off each other. Aware of tenants’ abilities to offer resistance or support and to damage or enhance their reputations as landed nobility, from John Kniveton’s warning in 1579 onwards, the countess and earl of Shrewsbury sought with some success to activate tenants and upper servants (with whom they had closer bonds) to uphold their land claims, authority and good name, both locally and in the centres of power, including the royal court and courts of law. While

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estate officers could enforce their employer’s lordship over particular landholdings, attendants like Marmyon and Battell could rally support from their gentry contacts nearby and at the royal court. Similarly, tenants could cause trouble on the spot, in manorial or equity courts, or before the queen and privy council. By bringing servants’ and tenants’ diverse engagements in the earl and countess’s long conflict to light, this chapter both supports McDonagh’s argument that ‘It is only through microhistorical studies … that we can begin to reveal the dense social networks and complex local circumstances in which enclosure took place’ and answers Falvey’s call for ‘close contextual reading’ and a nuanced understanding of the rhetorical strategies used by opposing parties, so as to avoid oversimplifying historical social relations.42 Paying attention to how individuals and events are represented within specific socio-historical contexts is thus integral to the process of interpretation – particularly in a case as complex as this one, where ever-changing landlord– tenant relations, fraught husband–wife relations and the husband’s alleged consecutive attachments to a foreign queen and a female servant are all navigated and reported by upper servants whose loyalties motivate their writing and shape their discourse. Third, then, as socially orientated and highly practical texts, the letters of Bess and Shrewsbury’s respective servants not only record their dutiful execution of their employer’s business but also seek to direct the course of events through providing necessary information, anticipating or solving problems, offering advice, venting frustrations, angling for intervention and consolidating in mutually beneficial ways the employer–servant relationship that largely defined the lived experiences and social identities of these correspondents. The letters express personal and political allegiance and the justice of either the master or mistress’s cause. The consistency with which such sentiments are repeated across all ten letters studied here (and others written by servants under less trying circumstances) strongly suggests that verbalised moral support was expected of upper servants as one of their duties. For literate servants writing when the breakdown of trust between master and mistress forced them to take sides and shore up their employer’s contested rights and reputation, expressions of loyalty were a particularly important means of consolidating favour and of reinstating the stability of good lordship within a particular employer–servant relationship. While revealing how several of Bess and Shrewsbury’s respective upper servants represented them – in person and on paper – this chapter has emphasised the active roles of these letter-writing servants of both sexes, and of tenants, in executing their lord’s or lady’s and their own manoeuvres in the decade-long ‘cyvill warres’ in which so many of the couple’s dependants



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were enlisted. These conflicts had far-reaching social, economic and political consequences but centred in a household eroded by the demands of keeping Mary, Queen of Scots and irreparably divided by the earl and countess of Shrewsbury’s broken marriage. Acknowledgement Initial research for this chapter was funded by a Doctoral Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Notes 1 Alison Wiggins, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Language, Materiality and Early Modern Epistolary Culture (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), pp. 68–80, at pp. 70 and 71. 2 Stephen E. Kershaw, ‘Power and duty in the Elizabethan aristocracy: George, earl of Shrewsbury, the Glossopdale dispute and the council’, in The Tudor Nobility, edited by G. W. Bernard (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), pp. 266–95; Andy Wood, The Politics of Social Conflict: The Peak Country, 1520–1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 209–17. 3 Wiggins discusses Bess’s letters to two servants, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Language, Materiality, pp. 32–9. Felicity Maxwell, ‘Household words: textualising social relations in the correspondence of Bess of Hardwick’s servants, c. 1550–1590’ PhD dissertation, University of Glasgow, 2014, is the only full-length analysis of early modern English servants’ correspondence as such. 4 Lynne Magnusson argues that employer–servant correspondence contributed to the formation of social identities, in ‘ “Power to hurt”: language and service in Sidney household letters and Shakespeare’s sonnets’, in her Shakespeare and Social Dialogue: Dramatic Language and Elizabethan Letters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 35–57. 5 John Kniveton at Shrewsbury Place, London to Bess of Hardwick, countess of Shrewsbury, 23 December 1579 (Folger Shakespeare Library, Cavendish-Talbot MSS, X.d.428 (39)). Apparently holograph. ID 033 in Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: The Complete Correspondence, c.1550–1608, edited by 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), www.bessofhardwick.org. Quotations are my own transcriptions from manuscripts or images. 6 ‘Mr Sackeford’ may be the lawyer and administrator Thomas Seckford. See J. H. Baker, ‘Seckford, Thomas (1515/16–1587)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) (hereafter ODNB), www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/25000 (accessed 15 June 2018).

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7 Kershaw, ‘Power and duty’, pp. 267–9 and 271–5. 8 Kershaw, ‘Power and duty’, p. 276; Wood, Social Conflict, p. 211. Cf. David N. Durant, Bess of Hardwick: Portrait of an Elizabethan Dynast, rev. edn (London: Peter Owen, 2008), p. 108. Shrewsbury held the lands in question from the Duchy of Lancaster and was subject to its jurisdiction. The fact that they were crown lands also explains the tenants’ direct appeals to the queen and council. 9 Wood, Social Conflict, p. 210. 10 Nicholas Booth to George Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, 9 January [1579/80 at the earliest] (Lambeth Palace Library, Talbot Papers, MS 3206, fol. 957). Probably holograph. 11 This deed of gift is discussed by Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 77–9, 119–21 and 137–8; Mary S. Lovell, Bess of Hardwick: First Lady of Chatsworth (London: Abacus, 2006), pp. 234–5, 308 and 322–4; and Maxwell, ‘Household words’, pp. 232–4. 12 While Bess brought the manor of Ashford into the marriage, it is not clear whether she or Shrewsbury was responsible for the enclosure. See the conflicting interpretations by Durant, Bess of Hardwick, p. 46; Kershaw, ‘Power and duty’, pp. 280 and 285; and Wood, Social Conflict, p. 210. 13 The National Archives, State Papers Domestic (Elizabeth) (hereafter TNA, SP), 12/207, item 44, fol. 65; image accessed through State Papers Online (Gale, Cengage Learning, 2016; Gale Document Number: MC4304284445) at http:// gale.cengage.co.uk/state-papers-online-15091714.aspx (accessed 15 June 2018). 14 [William] Marmyon at Chatsworth House then Sheffield [Castle or Manor] to Sir Francis Willoughby at Wollaton Hall, 24 and 28 October [1581?] (Nottingham University Library, Middleton MSS, Mi C 15). Apparently holograph. The following discussions of Marmyon, Battell and Kynnersley’s letters draw on the fuller analysis in Maxwell, ‘Household words’, pp. 182–249. 15 See also Wiggins, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Language, Materiality, p. 70; Kershaw, ‘Power and duty’, p. 280. 16 Maxwell, ‘Household words’, pp. 191–201 reconstructs Marmyon’s controversial career. 17 Frances Battell at Chatsworth House to Lady Elizabeth Paulet in Clerkenwell, 23 March [1583/]1584 (TNA, State Papers Scotland (Mary, Queen of Scots), 53/13, item 46, fols 14–15). Apparently holograph. 18 Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, IDs 96, 97 and 98. 19 Bess also wrote directly to Burghley and Walsingham, complaining of her husband’s treatment of her: Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, IDs 149, 150, 152, 153, 156, 230 and 231. 20 Thomas Stringer at Wingfield Manor to George Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury at his house in Chelsea, 15 November 1584 (Lambeth Palace Library, Talbot Papers, MS 3198, fols 263–4). Apparently holograph. Due to the tight binding, I could not see all words in the gutter; square brackets indicate my reconstructions. Modernised extracts are printed in Alasdair Hawkyard, ‘Guardians of claimants



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to the throne: the Talbots’, in Rivals in Power: Lives and Letters of the Great Tudor Dynasties, edited by David Starkey (London: Macmillan, 1990), pp. 230–49, at p. 244. Gervase Phillips, ‘Sadler, Sir Ralph (1507–1587)’, ODNB, online edn, January 2008, at www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24462 (accessed 15 June 2018). John Guy, My Heart Is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots (London: Harper Perenniel, 2004), pp. 455–6. Nicholas Booth at Ashford to George Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, 8 May 1585 (Lambeth Palace Library, Talbot Papers, MS 3198, fols 280–1). Probably scribal. Michael Hicks, ‘Paulet, Sir Amias (c.1532–1588)’, ODNB, online edn, January 2008, at www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/21612 (accessed 15 June 2018). Wood, Social Conflict, p. 211. See Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 137–8. Van Vechten Veeder, ‘The history and theory of the law of defamation I’, Columbia Law Review, 3:8 (1903), pp. 546–73, at pp. 553–5. Heather Falvey, ‘The politics of enclosure in Elizabethan England: contesting “neighbourship” in Chinley (Derbyshire)’, in Landlords and Tenants in Britain, 1440–1660:Tawney’s Agrarian Problem Revisited, edited by Jane Whittle (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2013), pp. 67–84, at p. 82. Hercules Claye at Rowthorn to Bess of Hardwick, countess of Shrewsbury, 19 March 1585/86 (TNA, SP 12/207, item 5, fol. 8; Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 235). Apparently holograph. Depositions of Peter Bysse and Richard Ridler,York Assizes, 18[?] March 1585/86 (TNA, SP 12/207, item 4, fol. 7); image accessed through State Papers Online (Gale Document Number: MC4304284413), at http://gale.cengage.co.uk/ state-papers-online-15091714.aspx (accessed 15 June 2018). Nicholas Booth to Thomas Kniveton, 4 April [1586] (Folger Shakespeare Library, Cavendish-Talbot MSS, X.d.428 (3)). Scribally copied, including signature, from a lost draft. Some words were torn away when the letter was opened. On Jane Kniveton’s status and service in Bess’s household from the 1550s onwards, see Felicity Maxwell, ‘Enacting mistress and servant roles in a letter of household management: Bess of Hardwick to Francis Whitfield, 14 November 1552’, Lives & Letters: A Journal for Early Modern Archival Research, 4:1 (2012), pp. 75–92, online at http://journal.xmera.org/journalarchive/maxwell.pdf (accessed 15 June 2018), pp. 78 and 84–7, and related discussions in Alison Wiggins and Jessica L. Malay’s chapters in this volume. Henry Cavendish, Bess and Sir William Cavendish’s eldest son, usually sided with Shrewsbury. Gilbert, Lord Talbot, Shrewsbury’s eldest surviving son with his first wife, Gertrude Manners, tried to mediate between his father and Bess. Britton had served Shrewsbury since around 1579; he died in her company on 18 November 1590, and she appropriated many of his portable belongings. See Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 147 and 151; Lovell, Lady of Chatsworth, pp. 358–60,

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35 36 37 38

39

40

41

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362 and 366–7; and British Library, Harley MS 6853, item 53, Gilbert, earl of Shrewsbury against Eleanor Britton. Burghley,Walsingham, Bromley, two chief justices, Leicester, Sir Francis Willoughby, John Manners and Elizabeth herself were all involved. TNA, SP 12/207, items 22, 23 and 60. TNA, SP 12/207, items 22 and 23 record Elizabeth’s exhortations and hopes for the couple alongside rules for their conduct. Nicholas Kynnersley at Wingfield Manor to Bess of Hardwick, countess of Shrewsbury, 5 November 1588 (Folger Shakespeare Library, Cavendish-Talbot MSS, X.d.428 (44); Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 037). Apparently holograph. Gilbert Dickenson was one of Shrewsbury’s servants and the son of his Sheffield bailiff, William Dickenson. Shrewsbury made bequests to both Gilbert and William Dickenson in his will dated 24 May 1590, of which William was a witness (Nottinghamshire Archives, Portland of Welbeck (fourth deposit): Deeds and Estate Papers, 157 DD4P, Talbot DD/4P/46/1). The boy’s green coat may have been livery. Nicholas Kynnersley at Wingfield Manor to Bess of Hardwick, countess of Shrewsbury, 22 April 1589 (Folger Shakespeare Library, Cavendish-Talbot MSS, X.d.428 (45); Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 038). Apparently holograph. For examples of Bess calling Arbella her jewel, see Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, IDs 144 and 162. See also Sara Jayne Steen’s chapter in this volume. Briony McDonagh, ‘Negotiating enclosure in sixteenth-century Yorkshire: the South Cave dispute, 1530–1536’, in Landlords and Tenants in Britain, pp. 52–66, at pp. 65–6. McDonagh, ‘Negotiating enclosure’, p. 66; Falvey, ‘Politics of enclosure’, pp. 83 and 84.

5

Hardwick Hall: building a woman’s house Sara L. French

Hardwick Hall is one of the best-preserved Elizabethan houses in Britain, a tantalising glimpse into the life of one of the period’s most prolific builders. Bess of Hardwick is legendary for her multiple marriages, political manoeuvrings and association with both Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots. Her construction of Tudor Chatsworth, Oldcotes and Hardwick Hall as well as the renovation of Hardwick Old Hall must be ranked as her greatest achievements. Bess’s influence on the innovative design of Hardwick Hall and the extent of her architectural patronage are unfortunately still dismissed by some historians. Hardwick’s plan is credited to Robert Smythson, the most notable master builder of the late sixteenth century, and its unique reorientation of the great hall still falls to Smythson’s credit. Bess, however, was the driving force behind the construction and design of Hardwick, a force amassed over four decades of architectural patronage. Smythson is associated with many of England’s ‘prodigy houses’ – buildings intended to impress both queen and court – including Longleat, Wollaton Hall, Wardour Castle and Worksop. Worksop was built by Bess’s fourth husband. Wollaton Hall was built by Sir Francis Willoughby, with whom Bess corresponded regularly. Longleat’s patron, Sir John Thynne, was once rumoured to be courting Bess. Smythson drew the plan for Oldcotes, built for Bess’s son William Cavendish, and designed Bess’s tomb at Derby Cathedral. Most tellingly, a plan still exists in the Smythson collection that strongly resembles Hardwick’s plan. Providing the plan for Hardwick did not mean, however, that Smythson oversaw its construction – other men are listed as overseers of works in the Hardwick accounts. Smythson was paid only once, near the end of construction, probably as a gift for providing the plan.1

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Architectural scholars habitually grant the patrons of Longleat, Wollaton and Theobalds a central role in the architectural innovation of their houses, but Bess’s influence is consistently ignored in favour of crediting Smythson as the ‘genius’ behind Hardwick. However, most of Bess’s adult life was involved in building, both on her own and with three of her four husbands. Architecture was a life-long interest, perhaps even a passion.2 Her oversight of the building accounts, her detailed instructions to her agents and her correspondence with John Thynne, Francis Willoughby, Robert Dudley and William Cecil all testify to her profound knowledge of building and must not be overlooked in an analysis of the construction and design of Hardwick Hall. In his survey of Robert Smythson’s career, historian Mark Girouard notes, ‘The plan and appearance of Elizabethan and Jacobean houses are due to the interaction of three forces: the patrons and their friends; foreign craftsmen; and English craftsmen. The influence of the first two cannot be dismissed.’3 In his extensive chapter on Hardwick, however, Girouard discards the patron’s influence in an almost desperate attempt to assign credit for its design and decoration to Smythson. In comparison with the treatment given to other patrons in his book, such as Thynne at Longleat, Girouard eliminates Bess’s contribution. The workers, Smythson, or print sources are given credit for the work. Bess is not considered an agent in the design, despite her ‘lifetime’s experience of building’.4 Whereas in one paragraph Girouard acknowledges Bess’s experience, in the next he dismisses her ability, noting that ‘one only has to compare the old with the new Hardwick to see how Smythson transformed her overbearing and somewhat crude preferences into a work of art’.5 His dismissal of the variety and inventiveness of the decoration at Hardwick Old Hall also discounts the fact that the old hall includes a transverse hall, the new hall’s most distinct and memorable feature. Girouard’s view also reflects assumptions about women’s lack of agency in the early modern period. Applying adjectives such as crude and overbearing to Bess displays yet another assumption about architectural patronage and gender roles in the sixteenth century. Recent scholarship by Anthony Wells-Cole and Paula Henderson describes the decoration and design of both Hardwicks more enthusiastically.6 Wells-Cole, whose work relies heavily on Girouard, states, ‘The decoration of Hardwick must have been the collaborative effort of Bess, her clerk of works, and the band of trusted craftsmen, many of them employed previously at Chatsworth or Wollaton.’7 He gives Bess more credit in the decoration, but does not discuss Hardwick’s plan. To gain a comprehensive picture of



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Bess’s patronage, influence and legacy requires a careful look at Chatsworth, Hardwick Old Hall and Hardwick New Hall. Bess must also have been influenced by long exposure to Mary, Queen of Scots, during the latter’s incarceration by the Earl of Shrewsbury. Bess’s contact with the courts of the last three Tudor monarchs meant she had knowledge of building far beyond the confines of Derbyshire – knowledge that may have spurred competition with courtiers such as Robert Dudley and William Cecil, both of whom built to impress the queen. In order to comprehend Hardwick’s place in English architectural history – both its innovation and its conservatism – the idea of Italianate classicism as ideal must be jettisoned in favour of a more contextual interpretation. Elizabethan architectural history demonstrates more than just perverted or ill-digested Renaissance classicism.8 Alice Friedman’s ground-breaking work in House and Household in Elizabethan England:Wollaton Hall and the Willoughby Family provides a starting point: ‘Elizabethan and Jacobean country houses have traditionally been shunned as uncouth and somewhat demented distant cousins of the villas and palaces of the Italian Renaissance.’9 Such assessments are now replaced by more nuanced analyses of spectatorship, courtiership, gender politics and dynastic ambitions common to Elizabethan prodigy houses. In ‘Architecture, authority and the female gaze: planning and representation in the early modern country house’, Friedman gives an overview of Palladio’s influence on English architecture, where the great hall and its surrounding spaces were of paramount importance. At Hardwick, traditional access to the great hall along a passage and through a tripartite screen is eliminated. The hall is visible from the entrance and accessible both visually and spatially upon entrance. Girouard attributes this change to two factors: Smythson’s innovative design and the influx of alternative, notably Palladian, planning schemes. Sebastiano Serlio’s designs of the 1550s and the handbooks of Jacques Androuet du Cerceau had a distinct influence on Smythson’s work.10 Friedman provides a more complex view by examining the ideological context of the country house. In the Elizabethan period, domestic planning was tied to larger discourses of the family, sexuality and the female body and intimately bound up with sight, spectatorship and display.11 Architecture was not free from the effects of these discourses on early modern society. ‘Architecture literally stages the value system of a culture,’ Friedman writes; further, architecture controls and limits physical movement while creating and framing those who live and move within it.12 At Hardwick, architecture serves as both a representation of social structure and a convention bound by social norms. Thus, the built environment is complicit in the control of the individual, whether male

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or female, as well as in the control of the individual’s vision. What is seen is controlled as much as how it is seen. This is essential for an understanding of Elizabethan society: the country house served as a theatre in which the rituals of social interaction were performed.13 Women, whether as ornaments or as actors, were a key part of the country house milieu, where they were enjoined to be passive and silent, but were often active and vocal.14 Friedman writes, ‘By emphasizing the constructed nature of spectatorship and spectacle in early modern England, I hope to make a more general point about architecture as representation, that is, as a medium in which function and imagery are viewed not as separate, but as overlaid aspects of a system through which meaning is constituted’.15 Friedman’s thesis takes the building as text – culturally constructed and socially conditioned – and as a cultural agent laden with meaning, continually inscribing itself upon the consciousness of the people who live in and view it. Structures in the built environment are conditioned by their predecessors, patron, inhabitants and the social order; those structures in turn condition their occupants, visitors and subsequent buildings. Friedman concludes her essay by analysing Elizabeth I as both the centre of the spectacle in which her courtiers moved and the catalyst for much of the building of her reign.16 The queen also formed the core of much of the debate that surrounded the position, roles and duties of women in the late sixteenth century.17 Male courtiers who had been raised to believe no woman was superior to them had to acquiesce in decisions made by a creature they had been conditioned to believe was morally and intellectually inferior. Friedman’s conclusion, however, shifts her theoretical position: At Hardwick, the hall – whose patriarchal significance Bess surely viewed in a different light than did her male counterparts – became an open room entered directly from the front door, with a waist-high screen and a vestigial, strictly symbolic, screens passage. Only the lower servants ate their meals here; the upper servants, whose number included more women than in other households, retired to dining rooms on the second floor, one for men and one for women, adjacent to Bess’s own. Thus, while the hall and its occupants remained at the center of the house, status shifted to the spaces above. The actual change in architectural effect, though visually striking, was functionally minor – indeed, in daily use its effects could be virtually ignored – but it nonetheless represented a radical break with the demands of both planning convention and representation.18

Friedman argues that Bess was responsible – either directly, through her own ideas, or indirectly, through her approval of Smythson’s innovative plan



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– for the change in planning at Hardwick. However, while Friedman gives Bess the agency and intelligence to recognise that her needs were symbolically different from those of a male-headed household, she also trivialises the change, indicating that it is functionally unimportant, merely ‘visually striking’. Another shift at the end of the above quotation returns us to the innovative, as she assures us that the plan of Hardwick is ‘radical’. How then are we to interpret Hardwick Hall? A logical starting point is Bess’s renovations of her childhood home, Hardwick ‘Old’ Hall. Bess’s building projects were inextricably linked with her dynastic ambitions. When Bess married the earl of Shrewsbury, two of her children married two of his. Her eldest son Henry married the earl’s daughter Grace Talbot. The marriage produced no legitimate children and eventually led Bess to disinherit Henry, who had sided with the earl during their dispute and separation in the early 1580s. While Bess could not legally take Chatsworth away from her eldest son, she did empty it of its contents, making it impossible for him to use.19 Bess’s acquisition of the Hardwick property began when her brother James was forced to sell it. Bess did not live there or make much change until about 1582, at which point she threw herself into the renovation of the old hall. The surviving building accounts demonstrate Bess’s determination to make the small old-fashioned manor house a showplace.20 The end result was asymmetrical, cold and inefficient; surviving drawings, descriptions and ruins demonstrate its haphazard layout. Clearly, though, Bess expended effort and money on its decoration. The surviving remnants of plaster friezes and overmantels indicate her interest in keeping up with other designers and builders. The ‘forest‘ great chamber was painted to rival rooms in William Cecil’s Theobalds.21 Her ‘hill’ great chamber showed inspiration from Dutch prints and the work of Vredeman de Vries. Bess’s decorative plans were linked to most of the popular trends of her day. Most important here is the evidence of a cross hall at the old house. Whether this was an accident of unplanned extensions on both sides of an original medieval hall is unknown. Accessed directly from a small porch on the exterior and certainly novel at the time, it may have become clear to Bess that neither she nor her descendants would need an old-fashioned great hall to enact a ritual of medieval display that had been out of fashion for nearly a century.22 After Shrewsbury’s death, Bess began construction on a new house - gathering the very best designers and craftsmen, many of whom had worked for her

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before – clearly intending it to be a masterpiece. Hardwick Hall’s unique design and decoration are due to a number of factors, including other houses Bess knew or had heard of, the palaces among which the court moved, and architectural sources from the continent. All these were joined with true innovation, one of the hallmarks of Elizabethan architecture.23 Hardwick Hall: design and decoration Hardwick’s main entrance façade demonstrates its inspiration in the Palladian ideal of biaxial symmetry. On the west face, each half is a mirror image of the other. A low porch runs between the two towers at ground level, supported by eight banded columns, rising to the first floor. A stringcourse separates each floor, wrapping around the exterior. Two window bays in the centre of the west façade jut out to emphasise the entrance. Above the porch, the squared corners of the protrusion are bevelled one third of the way from the second stringcourse. The result is that the bevelled corners are filled with a single file of windows to allow extra light into the state withdrawing chamber on the second floor. The roof is surrounded by a balustrade, interrupted in the centre of the west façade by the Hardwick arms flanked by stags. On the east side the house is identical, with an entrance porch that shelters a side entrance rather than a central one. The same treatment is given to the central bay, although it lacks the armorial decoration. The towers on each corner and on the north and south ends are topped by elaborate stone strapwork on three sides. In the centre of each are the initials ‘ES’, for Elizabeth Shrewsbury, surmounted by a countess’s coronet. Each floor is filled with large windows that increase in size on each floor. In outline, Hardwick’s plan reveals that it is a doubled Greek cross, the centre of which is extended slightly with thin outer arms. The great hall occupies the centre of the ground floor, slightly protruding at front and back from the main line of the façade.24 Flanking the entrance end of the hall on the west are the pantry and buttery. At the east end of the hall are two doors that lead to the northern, subsidiary stairs and the southern main staircase. The ground-floor rooms include most of the service areas to the north of the hall while the nursery, housekeeper’s room and audit room lie on the south side.25 Bess’s suite of rooms on the first floor is accessed via a short set of steps off the main staircase. Bess’s withdrawing chamber, bedroom and a maid’s chamber occupy most of the area in the south-west corner. Bess’s granddaughter,



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Arbella Stuart, had a room in the same area, along with the ‘prodigal’ chamber, named for its decorative hangings. The only way to gain access to the north side of the first floor without going back downstairs was by the passage ‘over the hall screen’ that leads from Bess’s withdrawing chamber to the low great chamber. Adjacent to this are the ‘ship’ bedroom and ‘Toby’s’ chamber, also named for their décor. Two doors in the low great chamber lead to the little dining chamber, a small paved room, and to the upper chapel. The north stairs use the upper chapel as a landing and give access to the wooden service stairs in the north tower that lead to the second floor and the roof. ‘Jacob’s chamber’ is a small room between the north and north-east towers. As the main staircase rises from the door of Bess’s withdrawing chamber to the second-floor state rooms, a curious landing, known in Bess’s 1601 inventory as ‘the Great Half Pace’ above ‘My Lady’s Withdrawing Chamber Door’, creates a visual pause as one ascends. Invisible on most plans, poorly lit and rarely mentioned in discussions of Hardwick, this space contained two portable beds, a table and four stools, a standard, a halberd and a ‘great glass lantern’.26 Continuing up the main stairs, the roof opens and a final turn leads to the last steps leading to the high great chamber, which takes up the whole south-west corner. The state withdrawing chamber is positioned exactly in the centre of the second floor, directly over the upper portion of the great hall. On the north side of it is the ‘best bed chamber’, a series of small closets, the pearl bedroom and a small chamber in the north-east turret. The long gallery extends the length of the east side and incorporates space in the north-east and south-east towers. From the passage outside the pearl bedroom, the north turret staircase leads to the roof, slightly pitched, with wooden walkways to access the ‘banqueting houses’ at the top of each turret. Each has a fireplace and the south turret is the most elaborate, with an overmantel depicting a flaming orb and soldier’s head. Bess’s new arrangement of space at Hardwick is clear from the moment one enters the hall on the ground floor. The new placement of the hall is accompanied by a new treatment of service rooms, with the pantry and buttery separated by the ‘screen’ rather than next to each other and adjacent to the kitchen. In medieval houses, the great hall was the symbolic centre of the household, where the lord of the manor received guests, conducted business and presided over meals. The hall was separated from the serving spaces of buttery, pantry and kitchens by the screen passage. A dais and high table were reserved for the lord, his guests and his family; their private rooms were behind, or more rarely above, the ‘high’ end of the hall.27

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At Hardwick, the hall is narrow, with a fireplace in the middle of the south side. Doors on either side of the east end lead to the main and secondary stairs. The ritual of medieval service could be re-enacted with a high table at the east end, but when the lord (or lady) retired from the high table to the great chamber, he would have to climb two flights of stairs, with servants and retinue attending. Hardwick’s central block of pantry, buttery, hall and stairs, reflects the traditional medieval plan, but it has been rotated ninety degrees. The traditional association of spaces for serving and for display is severed in this plan. Traditionally, the great hall was grouped with the parlour and great chamber, separated from the serving spaces by the screens passage. At Haddon Hall, it is adjacent to the parlour and the great chamber is above it. Part of Hardwick’s novelty is that it divorces the hall from the living spaces of the country house and ties them firmly to the serving spaces. This trend marks a radical departure from the way interior space had been conceived in medieval houses. If one created a spectrum of conceptual space in the domestic interior, the medieval version would tie the hall to the living spaces of the house; at Hardwick, the shift has been from living to serving, and the hall has moved farther away – has effectively been cut off – from the living spaces of parlour, withdrawing chamber and great chamber. Considering Hardwick’s elaborate decoration also provides insight into how Bess created her spatial and architectural narrative. The elaborate overmantels in the main rooms at Hardwick, the elaborate plaster frieze in the high great chamber and numerous tapestries which give names to several of the rooms are among the house’s distinctive features and provide further evidence of how Bess told her story. Although we have no first person accounts of visitors’ reactions to visiting Hardwick, its novelty could not have been lost on them. The entrance is within the porch and the massive oak door leads directly into the great hall. The screens passage is simply a chest-high partition with two fluted columns separating the main part of the hall from what could today be called a vestibule. The hall is directly visible upon entrance, which was certainly unusual in houses built for the nobility and gentry of Elizabeth’s court. The main focus is the great overmantel, where stags frame the Hardwick arms topped by a countess’s coronet. Bess combined the arms of her natal family with the symbol of the title she gained from her fourth husband. This combination of heraldic insignia recurs throughout Hardwick Hall. The plaster stags are painted dark brown to match their antlers and wear collars of eglantine. The eglantine reappears beneath the crest, this time in plaster with dark centres that match the stags. These single white



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roses are best known from Nicholas Hilliard’s miniature portrait, Young Man Among Roses, and were used as references to Queen Elizabeth’s purity in works such as Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and Sir Arthur Gorges’ Eglantine of Meryfleur.28 Some of the screen’s decorative elements have been taken directly from Sebastiano Serlio’s Five Books of Architecture. Two columns in the centre of the screen and two on the sides support the gallery. They are fluted, but the first third has channels spaced more closely together than the upper two thirds. They support a frieze of alternating triglyphs, medallions and animal skulls, also seen in Serlio, as well as the egg and dart moulding on the Ionic capitals of the columns.29 While Bess was probably not familiar with Serlio’s works, her workers probably had seen patterns or books. Another possibility is that Bess herself had seen such decorations in other houses or had learned of them from friends such as William Cecil or Robert Dudley. Bess’s first-floor suite of rooms lies in the protected south-west corner. Her withdrawing chamber includes the Hardwick stags above a Latin motto referring to the noble eye, ear, heart and blood of the stag.30 Since Bess never studied Latin, the provenance of this phrase is unclear. Its prominent placement over the mantel where Bess spent the majority of her time probably indicates that she was intending the message to be conveyed to her son William, who lived with her at Hardwick, and to her granddaughter, Arbella Stuart, whose position as an heir to the throne of England was precarious. The heraldic decoration in Bess’s bedroom and other rooms on the first floor, one of which was called ‘Arbella’s chamber’, emphasise the Hardwick arms and Bess’s initials. Bess’s arms and monogram permeate the decoration at Hardwick Hall. In the low great chamber, now called the dining room, an English motto ‘The conclusion of all things is to fear God and keep his commandments’ appears over the fireplace in an elaborate strapwork design.31 Strapwork abounds at Hardwick, its origins in designs from the Dutch designer Vredeman de Vries. Authors occasionally dismiss it as clumsy; however its ubiquitous use in Elizabethan England – at the original Chatsworth, at Wollaton and Longleat – testify to its popularity. The treatment of the lower section of this fireplace comes from Serlio’s fourth book. In that book, a similar pattern to the one found at Hardwick frames a fireplace and is topped with profile heads and a foliate frieze.32 The ‘Ship’ bed chamber to the north of the low great chamber retains its original overmantel – a rich display of Bess’s dynastic hopes. In the centre is Bess’s heraldic crest, combined with Cavendish, St Loe and Talbot, over which

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are the Hardwick arms surmounted by her countess’s coronet. Six smaller crests, one for each of her six children, surround it. The top two belong to her two younger daughters, who both married earls. Elizabeth Cavendish married Charles, earl of Lennox; her crest depicts the three stags’ heads of the Cavendish crest with the fleur de lis of the Stuart crest. Mary Cavendish, Bess’s youngest daughter, married Gilbert Talbot, later earl of Shrewsbury. Cavendish again appears on the right and the Talbot hound on the left. The shield below Mary’s belongs to Henry Cavendish, who married Grace Talbot; it is, logically enough, the mirror image of Mary and Gilbert’s crest. William and Charles share a crest with stags’ heads and a plain red bar across the right field; Bess’s eldest daughter, Frances, married Henry Pierrepont. Her crest has a blank left panel and the Cavendish stags’ heads on the right.33 The Paved room is west of the dining room with Cybele, with a city in her hair,34 moulded in white plaster and painted with gold accents over the fireplace. Its origin is an image of Terra from anonymous engravings after Hendrick Goltzius, published in 1586. Accompanying Cybele are a unicorn, lion and the Hardwick stag with sun and moon, indicating the relationship of earth to both of these celestial bodies. This unusual room, paved in stone, may have been a summer dining room, or simply a separate dining room for men, while Bess’s female servants dined next door. An important visitor to Hardwick Hall would have entered the hall, traversed its length and begun the climb to the state rooms on the top floor, bypassing Bess’s private apartments on the first floor. The stairs draw the visitor to the summit with a spectacular opening of the ceiling just before the final turn to the high great chamber. This is the first in the suite of state rooms designed for the use and entertainment of high-ranking guests completed between 1597 and 1601. The plasterwork was probably done by Abraham Smith, who was responsible for the plasterwork in the rest of the house. The painting was done by John Balechouse, mentioned in the Hardwick account books multiple times. The original wainscoting, about three feet high, is simple, for the main focus of the room was to be the painted frieze and six tapestries depicting the story of Ulysses purchased in 1592 specifically for the room. The fireplace is framed by double columns surmounted by foliate capitals and a frieze with triglyphs.The overmantel consists of carved marble strapwork, four round bosses and one central oval boss of darker marble. Over this, in the same level with the frieze, the royal arms are displayed with the motto Dieu est mon droit. Serlio gives an example of a fireplace with such an oval centre in his fourth book, with the fireplace supported by legless female figures, surmounted by



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a curving marble trapezoid. In the high great chamber, the central medallion is retained, but the rest of the fireplace is more elaborate and includes columns and strapwork. The frieze remains the most important feature of the room. The subject is summarised by Wells-Cole: The room, fittingly positioned at the top of the south staircase, tells two interrelated stories. The Brussels tapestries woven to a design by Michiel Coxie, which were bought by Bess in 1587 and must therefore have to some extent dictated the dimensions of the room, relate the history of Ulysses, the resourceful yet faithful hero of the Odyssey, a story perhaps chosen as a symbol of Bess’s own loyalty to her husband, to her faith and to her Queen. The plaster frieze, on the other hand, glorifies Diana, here personifying Queen Elizabeth under whose just and virtuous rule the country had reaped prosperity for so many years. She is seen with her courtiers in the center of the north wall frieze, and beneath, on a chair under a canopy of estate, Bess (or the Queen herself, had she ever visited Hardwick) would have received her visitors as they entered through the door across the room. This great frieze was devised with almost infinite wit and inventiveness as a forest setting of extraordinary variety, inhabited by figures, Hardwick stags and animals and birds of all kinds, superbly executed by Richard Orton and John Marker … Just as the figures in the reveals either side of the window bay representing spring and summer derive from engravings (by Crispijn de Passe after Maarten de Vos), so do some if not all the figure groups in the main frieze.35

At the time it was created, this room was a stunning example of decorative innovation. The colours were brilliant, the subject matter cause for discussion among visitors – and yet it was but one example of this type of decoration in Elizabethan houses. In an investigation of Bess of Hardwick’s gardens and landscape design, I discussed the Old Hall at Hardwick, where Bess lived after separating from the earl of Shrewsbury and which included extensive painted friezes: The latest guidebook for Hardwick Old Hall shows a modern watercolor reconstruction of the Forest Great Chamber based on historical evidence and remaining fragments. Both humans and animals are located under and between trees that spring from a generally consistent ground plane originally painted green. The tree trunks are brown; the leaves darker green than the lawn. The guidebook notes that the human figures in the plasterwork are nearly life-size. The landscape wends its way around the room, each section showing sloping lawns with trees that recede into distance.36

The decoration at Hardwick Old Hall is related to decoration at Theobalds, completed by 1587 and described in a letter to Bess from her son Charles

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after his visit there.37 Bess probably saw the room when she visited Theobalds in May 1591. Charles’s letter notes that the roof was ‘like the low gallery at Chatsworth’. Cecil visited Chatsworth in 1573. Could he have been inspired by Chatsworth’s now lost decorations? There is no way to know for certain, but for too long, scholars have assumed Bess was an imitator rather than an innovator in Hardwick’s designs – ignoring or discounting her earlier buildings and extensive court contacts. Bess designed the high great chamber at Hardwick as a formal receiving room, with a chair of state and dais, placed opposite the door. Directly above this are Diana and her maidens. That Diana was an homage to the queen is certain – the royal arms above the fireplace reinforce the connection. In the frieze, Diana is seated; her left arm holds a bow resting on her left knee while her right clutches a quiver of arrows. Four female figures on her right each hold a bow. On her left, slightly apart from the rest of the group, are three more female figures. The first holds a staff and wears armour; the second is also in military dress, with a short skirt, holding an arrow; the third is in a long dress but what she held in her left hand is now missing. To the left of the figure group are five stags; to their left are lions and other animals. The figures are placed among trees with an effort to portray the figures and scene in linear perspective. A gazelle hunt on the east wall was inspired by a print published in 1578 by Philips Galle after Johannes Stradanus.38 The print shows elaborate bridges over rushing water, several high outcroppings of rock, rather shaggy trees and more than a dozen hunters with dogs. In the background is a town and castle. In the Hardwick frieze, these elements are simplified. One rocky promontory in the background is shown with a gazelle running over its edge; the hunters are reduced to four and three dogs chase a single gazelle in the centre. The bear hunt on the south wall derives from another engraving from the same book. The Hardwick frieze eliminates large groups of humans and spreads out more fantastic animals in the forest, where a single bear is set upon by three dogs and three hunters with spears. A unicorn watches the scene unfold, while a lion in the middle ground roars at a deer in the background. The withdrawing chamber is the next in the series of state rooms and was furnished in the sixteenth century with hangings of heroines with virtues, purchased for Chatsworth, which Bess brought to Hardwick in 1583. Still in this room is the sea dog table, a Flemish, or possibly French, piece so named for the curiously carved supports in the shape of dogs with lions’ paws, wings,



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breasts and the hindquarters of dragons, with turtles to serve as the feet of the table. Beyond the withdrawing room to the north lies the green velvet room, originally identified in 1601 as the ‘best bed chamber’. Fitted with more elaborate furnishings than the other bedrooms, it also contained a ‘great chair’, obviously intended for the exalted personages who were important enough to stay there. Hangings depicting Faith, Hope and Temperance with their contraries were in this room as well, also brought from Chatsworth. The fireplace and doorframe within the best bed chamber are carved and inlaid Derbyshire alabaster, blackstone and other marbles. The fireplace is flanked by two columns supporting a rounded pediment topped by a statue of Charity. Among the many important aspects of Hardwick’s plan is the design of the state rooms. They mimic the royal suites of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I at palaces like Whitehall and Richmond. Patricia Fumerton cites an account in which Elizabeth showed a miniature of the earl of Leicester to Sir James Melville: On his way to view Elizabeth’s miniatures, for instance, Melville would have passed through the highly public gallery (as well as other antechambers) where the general court gathered, through the more private presence chamber where only select courtiers entered, and through the even more private privy chamber where the chosen few assembled to discuss ‘the most secret transactions’ of state before finally arriving at the inner sanctum of the royal bed chamber.39

This progression of spaces, inherited from the court of Henry VIII through his younger daughter, not only reinforced the publicly private display of intimate secrets and possessions, it also shows how Bess planned for the accommodation of the queen. The high great chamber served as presence chamber, the withdrawing chamber as privy chamber, and the bed chamber was the same. The servants’ chambers to the north, beyond the best bed chamber, were to support, or to serve as even more private ‘closets’, for the visiting dignitary. The mysterious landing below the final flight of stairs to the high great chamber could have served as a guard chamber before approaching the royal presence in the high great chamber.There is no question that Hardwick was built for display and for the proper entertainment of the monarch, should she grace Hardwick with the royal presence. The ‘highly public gallery’ of Elizabeth’s court is similar to Bess’s gallery, which lies to the east, adjacent to all these rooms, used for exercise, the reception of visitors, and the display of pictures.

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The case has been made by Anthony Wells-Cole that the decorative programme at Hardwick follows a theme on each separate storey: What did Bess intend her houses to tell her contemporaries? The distribution of decoration recorded in the 1601 inventory offers a clue. The fact that the windows of the New Hall increase in height towards the top of the house, expressing on the outside the different function of the storeys inside – the ground floor principally domestic, the first floor private, the second floor for state – is well known.What commentators have not (to my knowledge) remarked on before is that the subjects of decoration on these three storeys also differ somewhat in kind.40

Aside from the huge overmantel in the great hall, there were very few other rooms on the ground floor decorated with important tapestries or plasterwork. Wells-Cole notes that on the first floor, Biblical scenes predominate, giving as examples the tapestries in the chapel and the tapestries in Jacob’s chamber and Toby’s chamber. He supposes that the tapestries in Bess’s bed chamber and withdrawing chamber, whose subjects have not been identified, were of mythological scenes. He does not say why. Finally, his evaluation of the second floor is based on the overmantels in the gallery and best bedchamber, and the frieze in the high great chamber. Three figures – Justice and Mercy in the gallery, and Charity in the best bedchamber – form the basis of what Wells-Cole calls an ‘obvious shift of emphasis … exemplifying the qualities that Bess perceived as directing her relations to those with whom she came in contact, and, in Charity, her most fundamental attitude toward human relations’.41 He further supports this statement with the hangings of the Virtues and their contraries located in the best bedchamber. Wells-Cole treats the repeated use of Lucrecia and Penelope as symbolic of the way Bess saw herself: the patient and chaste wife deserted by an errant husband. He further connects the central panel of the overmantel in the hill great chamber at the old hall with the Triumph of Patience engraving by Dirck Coornhert after Martin von Heemskerck. The central figure of the overmantel is a winged figure with winged heels, carrying a bow; he gestures behind him, in the same way that the figure Desiderium (Desire) does in the engraving by Coornhert. This engraving was accompanied by a text in Latin which, translated, refers to a white rose burgeoning among thorns.42 ‘It is surely not being over-sophisticated to suggest that Bess identified herself with Patience seated in triumph in a splendid car, but alluded to this virtue obliquely,



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choosing for the overmantel, Desiderium, who personified mankind’s longing for salvation.’43 Although Bess surely understood such allusions as Diana and the eglantine, having been exposed to them at Elizabeth’s court and in the popular plays of the period, she did not have a classical education and probably did not subscribe to the sophisticated ideas Wells-Cole suggests. Moreover, to emphasise the hill great chamber overmantel at the expense of significant portions of the decorations at the new hall is to ignore Bess’s lifetime’s experience of building and her position as a courtier to Elizabeth I – in competition with other courtiers who built and decorated to impress their queen. Hardwick’s extensive heraldry is crucial: the ties between the old hall and the new provide an interesting avenue for exploration, but they cannot rest solely on a single engraving or overmantel. Wells-Cole gives precedence to the statues of Charity, Justice and Mercy on the second floor and dismisses the frieze in the high great chamber too quickly. Surely, the references to Diana and Callisto and the presence of the royal arms deserve more attention. Without doubt, the overmantel in the great hall was designed to impress the visitor, and to convey a sense of dynastic continuity from Hardwick to Cavendish. It must not be forgotten that the Hardwick estate was originally in the possession of Bess’s father and brother; she did not inherit it, but took up residence there in order to collect on money lent to her brother before another creditor could do so.44 The use of the eglantine from the Hardwick crest attempts, therefore, to provide coherence, given the fact that William Cavendish was the first generation of that name at Hardwick, and his patrimony was derived largely from his mother. But the overmantel was not to be lingered over by the visitor on his or her progress towards the upper regions of the house. The decoration of the great hall was less important, certainly, than the upper floors. Bess’s bedroom, Arbella’s room and Bess’s withdrawing room all contained heraldic symbols of the Hardwick, Cavendish, Talbot and Stuart families. Especially in Bess’s withdrawing chamber, where the stags from the great hall recur, the signs of familial continuity are used to demonstrate the connection between the Hardwick family, whose name the house and estate bear, and the Cavendish son who was to inherit it. But more than just the combined crests of the two families are used in the decoration, for the coronet is used in the great hall, in the withdrawing room and in Arbella’s chamber. These private rooms, not traditionally viewed by guests to the house in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, contrast with the low great chamber, in which the overmantel takes on a didactic purpose.

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‘The conclusion of all things is to fear God and keep his commandments’ is inscribed in gold on a slate plaque flanked by female figures holding ribbons leading to strapwork around the central inscription. Beneath the writing are Bess’s initials. This pious motto in a room which would probably have been open to guests and used almost exclusively for dining may have been intended to show Bess’s piety; there was relatively little else of biblical or religious tone in Bess’s houses aside from the story of Tobias and the prodigal son. If the room was used as a dining room for servants, then the motto was apt – keeping the servants’ minds on their domestic and social duties. If used for Bess’s immediate family, then it fulfilled one of the roles Bess was called upon to fill as a mother – to educate her children. The decoration of the ship bedchamber continues the dynastic theme of the first floor and was probably designed to impress visitors. They could not have been higher in rank than Bess, or else they would have occupied the best bedchamber on the second floor. The crests of all Bess’s children on display there show a concern not simply with the maintenance of an ordered succession from Hardwick to Cavendish, which seems to have been the emphasis of the great hall overmantel, but also of extended family connections. By using these crests, Bess connects her Hardwick heritage to her hopes for a Cavendish dynasty to follow her. The decoration of the second floor must now be considered as connected to the first floor, in a way that is neither a break from, nor a seamless continuation of, the rest of the house.The high great chamber focuses almost exclusively on the royal arms and Queen Elizabeth. The gallery, in which two fireplaces are surmounted by statues of Justice and Mercy, is more akin to the high great chamber and to the best bedchamber, in which the fireplace statue is of Charity. The best bedchamber, in addition, was hung with tapestries of the Virtues and their contraries. Combining these creates a room lauding female virtue and its fight against masculine weakness and excess (embodied by the pagans Mohammed and Sardanapalus and the traitor Judas). Certainly, the public marital difficulties of Bess and Shrewsbury would have been known to anyone who stayed in this room. The decoration of the best bedchamber seems to speak of Bess’s loyalty and triumph over the desertion of her husband. To combine these tapestries, originally at Chatsworth, in a room at the new Hardwick with a statue of Charity shows that Bess was willing to demonstrate her piety to the most distinguished of her guests. In the long gallery, a moulded plaster frieze of alternating rectangular and oval cartouches with swags was painted by John Ballechouse. The decoration in this room, certainly second only to the high great chamber in importance,



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combines the story of Gideon with Justice and Mercy, emphasising the triumph of the righteous over the unholy. Combining these with the virtues of Justice, meted out by Gideon when he finally captured the Midianite kings, and Mercy, which Gideon showed to those who assisted him in his search for the enemy, in the gallery emphasises the need to temper one with the other. It is likely that Bess understood these ideals as embodied in the person of Queen Elizabeth and demonstrated this in her decorative programme. The performance of power The Elizabethan country house contained a spectrum of social and political space in which courtiers enacted a complex performance for the queen’s favour. They sought advancement for themselves and their families through painting, poetry, literature, music, textiles and actual theatrical productions. Bess was no different from her contemporaries in seeking such benefits for her children and grandchildren. The reconstruction of Chatsworth was the first step in her effort to advance her son Henry. Hardwick Hall was the next, when her hopes turned from Henry to William. Hardwick’s plan and decoration tell us clearly that Bess was not building to create a medieval dynasty – or to re-create the past. Hardwick was, for its time, a thoroughly modern building. Rejecting the great hall as the locus of power for the owner, Bess concentrated her efforts on the top floor, where the state rooms dominated the building and views of the surrounding countryside – a countryside owned by the Cavendish family. Honouring the queen specifically in her use of Diana and Callisto, but the monarchy in general through the use of the royal arms, Bess made the high great chamber a statement of loyalty to queen and country. Did Bess hope that her granddaughter Arbella might one day succeed Elizabeth? Perhaps, but Bess did nothing to promote Arbella’s claim when Elizabeth died. Having lived through the death of Edward VI and the brief reign of Jane Grey, Bess certainly understood the futility of such manoeuvres. Bess’s childhood and early adult life were spent in a variety of houses and palaces connected to the Tudor court. She learned early in life that land was the basis for creating a dynasty. Her experience at the fringes of court drew her into contact with many of the most experienced and prolific builders of Elizabethan England. She visited Hampton Court, Whitehall and Greenwich. She knew the builders of Longleat, Wollaton, Kenilworth, Burghley House, Theobalds and Kirby. Her husband was responsible for Worksop Manor. She herself oversaw the reconstruction of Chatsworth and of Hardwick Old Hall

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and the building of Hardwick New Hall, Oldcotes and smaller projects at Buxton, Meadowplecke and Pentrich. Taken together and fully acknowledging the extent to which Bess was a self-educated, savvy and directed political player, understanding her innovation in reorientating the great hall is simple. Her needs were different, therefore her house would look different. In addition, analysing the decorative elements at Hardwick supports this conclusion. We see connections among the different levels at Hardwick, and between it and Hardwick Old Hall. Biblical themes recur more than classical ones. Tobias, Jacob, Gideon, the overmantel in the low great chamber, the hangings of the Virtues at the New Hall, and the overmantel derived from the series of Twelve Patriarchs at the Old Hall largely derive from continental prints. The frieze of the forest great chamber, if originally similar in kind to that in the high great chamber, is the most direct reference to classical themes, with Diana and her court, Callisto and Cupid dominating at the New Hardwick. Lucrecia and Penelope appear at the new Hardwick, and Desiderium is found in the overmantel of the hill great chamber at the Old Hall. Cybele is found in the paved room at the New Hall, but she is one of the few references to a classical figure on the first floor. Heraldry dominates the ground and first floors. Bess herself is the dominating decorative figure in the bottom two floors at the new hall. Here, Bess’s initials, her countess’s coronet, and the unifying fact of her physical body through her marriages and children, abound. In fact, this theme could be spread over the whole house. From the tops of the towers bearing her initials to the initials in the overmantel in the low great chamber and Arbella’s room, from the heraldic tableau of the ship bedchamber to the immense crests of Bess’s withdrawing room and the great hall, it is the physical fact of Bess herself that decorates Hardwick New Hall. She is the reason for the heraldry, for her body coupled with that of Cavendish and Shrewsbury formed the basis for the crests found at Hardwick. Redesigning the spaces in which the display of social, political and dynastic power were enacted was the natural result of exploiting a different route to that power. Hardwick redirects the route to power through its reorientation of the great hall, through its extension of the Elizabethan performance of power to the very top of Hardwick, where Bess’s initials indicate that she remains the source and signatory of that power. Notes 1 John Summerson, Architecture in Britain, 1530–1830 (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 58–71; Mark Girouard, Robert Smythson and the Elizabethan



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2 3 4 5 6

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Country House, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), pp. 144–62, at p. 175; Folger Shakespeare Library Manuscript Collection, X.d.428 (82, 83); Sara L. French, ‘Women, space and power: the building and use of Hardwick Hall in Elizabethan England’, PhD dissertation, Binghamton University 2000, p. 207. French, ‘Women, space and power’, pp. 144–51. Girouard, Robert Smythson, p. 34. Girouard, Robert Smythson, p. 145. Girouard, Robert Smythson, p. 160. Anthony Wells-Cole, Art and Decoration in Elizabethan and Jacobean England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 260, describes the hill great chamber and forest great chamber as ‘almost the equal of any room in the new hall’. See also Paula Henderson, The Tudor House and Garden: Architecture and Landscape in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries (New Haven:Yale University Press, 2005), p. 169. Wells-Cole, Art and Decoration, p. 266. Among many sources in this area, the earliest investigations are Maurice Howard, ‘Classicism and civic architecture in Renaissance England’ and Paula Henderson, ‘The loggia in Tudor and early Stuart England: the adaptation and function of classical form’, in Albion’s Classicism: The Visual Arts in Britain, 1550–1660, edited by Lucy Gent (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). Alice Friedman, House and Household in Elizabethan England: Wollaton Hall and the Willoughby Family (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 5. Girouard, Robert Smythson, p. 288; Alice Friedman, ‘Architecture, authority and the female gaze: planning and representation in the early modern country house’, Assemblage, 18 (August 1992), p. 50. Friedman, House and Household, p. 42. Friedman, House and Household, p. 43. Graham Holderness, Nick Potter and John Turner, Shakespeare Out of Court: Dramatizations of Court Society (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1990), pp. 1–12, provides discussion of the theatrical and courtly maze of Elizabethan society. Barbara Harris, ‘Women and politics in early Tudor England’, Historical Journal, 33:2 (1990), pp. 259–81, discusses women’s roles in public life of Tudor England. Friedman, House and Household, p. 43. Zillah Dovey, An Elizabethan Progress: The Queen’s Journey into East Anglia, 1578 (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996), p. 1; David Burnett, Longleat:The Story of an Elizabethan Country House (London: Collins, 1978), p. 38; Roy Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), passim. Mark Breitenberg, Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 27. Friedman, House and Household, p. 53.

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19 David N. Durant, Bess of Hardwick: Portrait of an Elizabethan Dynast (London: Peter Owen, 1999), p. 121. 20 David Durant and Philip Riden, The Building of Hardwick Hall. Part I:The Old Hall Derbyshire Record Society IV (Chesterfield: Derbyshire Record Society, 1980). 21 French, ‘Women, space and power’, pp. 168–72; Wells-Cole, Art and Decoration, pp. 260–4. 22 French, ‘Women, space and power’, pp. 70–4 and 158–9. 23 Girouard, Robert Smythson, pp. 86–7; Summerson, Architecture in Britain, p. 50; Wells-Cole, Art and Decoration, pp. 247–95; Malcolm Airs, Tudor and Jacobean Country House: A Building History (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1995), pp. 6–7. 24 Details derived from 1601 inventory in National Trust guidebook, Of Household Stuff:The 1601 Inventories of Bess of Hardwick (London: National Trust, 2001), and Lindsay Boynton (ed), ‘The Hardwick Hall inventories of 1601’, Furniture History Society, 7 (1971), pp. 1–40. 25 Durant and Riden, The Building of Hardwick Hall. Part I, p. liv. Between 1792 and 1811 a floor was inserted in the chapel, so that the original gallery level, on the first floor, became the chapel. 26 Boynton, ‘The Hardwick Hall inventories’, p. 32. 27 Michael Thompson, The Medieval Hall 600–1600 (London: Scolar Press, 1995), pp. 165 and 168. 28 See Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth, pp. 68–74, for a more thorough description of the eglantine in Elizabethan literature and imagery. 29 Sebastiano Serlio, On Architecture, translated by Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), Book III, Chapter 4, fol. 66; Book IV, Chapter 6, fols 17 and 18. 30 ‘Sanguine cornu corde oculo pede ceruus et aure nobilis at claro pondere nobilior’: ‘The stag, noble in its eye, ear, heart and blood, yet more noble in its birth’. (Translation assistance provided by Dr Daniel Carpenter, Professor of Classical Studies, University of Rhode Island and Dr Aaron Newman, Lecturer in Classics, Stony Brook University.) 31 Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 180–1, and Friedman, House and Household, p. 53 both discuss the function of the dining room and paved room. 32 Serlio, On Architecture, Book IV, Chapter 9, fol. 61. 33 Although Wells-Cole ignores this piece in his chapter on Hardwick’s decoration, its significance should not be underestimated in the overall decorative scheme. 34 Bulfinch’s Mythology (New York: Crown, 1979), p. 143 notes that Cybele ‘wears a mural crown, that is, a crown whose rim is carved in the form of towers and battlements’. 35 Wells-Cole, Art and Decoration, pp. 269–70. 36 Sara L. French, ‘Replacing gender in Elizabethan gardens’, in Mapping Gendered Routes and Spaces in the Early Modern World, edited by Merry Wiesner-Hanks (Burlington: Ashgate Press, 2015), p. 171.



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37 Henderson, Tudor House and Garden, pp. 86–7 and 206–7. 38 Wells-Cole, Art and Decoration, pp. 270–3. 39 Patricia Fumerton, Cultural Aesthetics: Renaissance Literature and the Practice of Social Ornament (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991), p. 71. 40 Wells-Cole, Art and Decoration, p. 289. 41 Wells-Cole, Art and Decoration, p. 289. 42 Wells-Cole, Art and Decoration, pp. 264–6 and 292. 43 Wells-Cole, Art and Decoration, p. 292. 44 Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 104–5.

6

Elizabeth Hardwick’s material negotiations Jessica L. Malay

Hardwick New Hall, now in the hands of the National Trust, is represented on its web page with a short descriptor: ‘An Elizabethan Masterpiece’. This descriptor sits about two-thirds down the page, underneath a stunning westerly view of the house. To those unfamiliar with the house, its relationship to Elizabeth Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury may not be at first apparent, though the initials ‘ES’ in carved openwork decorating the tops of the six banqueting houses may intrigue and elicit the question – who exactly was ES? The ruins of the adjacent Hardwick Old Hall will provide few answers to the uninitiated. And yet, very quickly during any visit to Hardwick New Hall the presence of the woman now known as ‘Bess of Hardwick’ becomes quickly palpable, and indeed artificially heightened. It was this artificiality that Lindsay Boynton complains of in 1971. She spends some paragraphs in her introduction to Elizabeth Hardwick’s 1601 inventory of Hardwick New Hall trying to dispel the myth that this house is an ‘Elizabethan house of which the interior is virtually intact: the best extant example of its kind’. Here she refers to John Buxton’s comments in his book Elizabethan Taste (1963),1 where he repeats an established tradition regarding the New Hall which Boynton traces back to at least 1817.2 And while accepting Boynton’s suggestion of caution, one cannot deny the many deliberate significations of Elizabeth Hardwick that survive throughout the interior of the house in plasterwork, marble carvings and in the exterior stonework of the Hall. The structural alterations of the past 400 years have done little to change these significations of her presence. The interior furnishings, while much augmented by later acquisitions, also retain at their core a substantial collection of items procured by Elizabeth Hardwick to furnish the house during her lifetime. A number of tapestries, wall hangings, pieces of furniture, portraiture and pictures, and



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an extensive textile collection, can all be associated with the New Hall after its completion in 1598. The inventory of 1601 provides a detailed picture of the material objects that were in situ in the house in that year, and a number of these objects remain (some of them having been returned after spending time in other houses). We visitors entering the house, and those custodians who seek to promote and maintain it, can be forgiven for allowing ourselves to be caught up in these physical remnants of the past. For, as Gaston Bachelard suggests, a house provides us with a body of images through which the ‘imagination augments the values of reality’.3 And if we were wandering through the house and gardens on a fragrant and warm summer’s day we could simply indulge ourselves and walk in the midst of this place created by Elizabeth Hardwick. Drawing upon ample material for our imagination, we might feel that her presence accompanies us to that quiet shaded bench, walks beside us in the long gallery with the fragrance of straw wafting up from the Hardwick matting covering the floor, or looks out of the quarrelled window with us over the Derbyshire countryside. The very fact that we can and so many others do exactly this, hints that something more is at work than simply imagination. Something communicates, something transpires, something engages and something motivates our sense of a space redolent with the persona of Elizabeth Hardwick. This ‘some thing’ is the sum of the collection of ‘things’, the material objects that both individually, and in relation to each other, inform the spaces of Hardwick New Hall. As De Grazia, Quilligan and Stallybrass have observed in relation to the early modern subject, ‘material things – land, clothes, tools [and textiles, paintings, buildings etc.] – might constitute subjects who in turn own, use and transform them’4 and who are also transformed by these objects. Hannah Arendt sees this relationship between objects and subject as fundamental, suggesting that a subject’s relationship to the objects in his/her life is bound up in the subject’s identity, with objects functioning to stabilise human life, allowing the individual to ‘retrieve’ their ‘identity by being related to the same chair or the same table’.5 Bill Brown takes Arendt’s comments forward, considering that ‘visible and tangible objects can form and transform the life of human subjects’, and claims that in the end, ‘identities are mediated materially’.6 The survival of objects or ‘things’ associated with Elizabeth Hardwick both reveals and occludes a narrative of identity and agency. We know, or at least have been encouraged to consume, a constructed identity most often termed ‘Bess of Hardwick’. But this overly constructed trope of both the individual and universal Elizabethan woman challenges us to engage with the material remains associated with her, and through those material remains this narrative can be interrogated in

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ways that reveal (while continuing to conceal) aspects of agency, intentions, illusions and conclusions. The most comprehensive textual representation of the ‘things’ associated with Elizabeth Hardwick is the extensive and detailed 1601 inventory, compiled to accompany her last will and testament completed in the same year. In her seventies she could expect that death, if not imminent, was certainly an event that would occur in the not too distant future. Her will, in the manner of the time, employs standard tropes in preparation for this event. For example, she asserts: Having learned aswell out of the holy Worde of God as by the common experience of the worlde that all fleshe must change this mortall life and that the hower and tyme of Deathe us most uncerteyn and not to be knowen to any mortall creature, and accompting yt not the leaste parte of every christian whilest healthe and memorye … make this my last will … to have my mynde quyett from all wordlie respectes in all comfortable manner.7

Elizabeth Hardwick was not gravely ill when she made her will, but the writing of the will and the commissioning of the inventory anticipated the moment of her death. The will and inventory also textually inhabit this moment of death and thus make visible a crisis that is, after the invocation of the will and inventory, both present and future. As such, the objects recorded in these documents enter momentarily into a state Bill Brown describes as a ‘hyperpresence – within the psychological, social and political dynamics’ of human interaction. That tapestry, that cup, that cushion, that painting, that table, that bed, those hangings, that andiron, those pillowberes, that stool, those chamber pots, that trunk, that carpet ‘of the storie of David and Saule with the golde frenge and trymmed with blewe taffety sarcenet’8 and hundreds of other objects are described, often in great detail, and organised by room. During this period these objects, each in their moment and their turn, were recognised, recorded and entered into the conscious acts of a number of individuals. The 1601 inventory is not simply a utilitarian legal document; it becomes what Latour describes as an actor, that which modifies ‘a state of affairs by making a difference’ within the social which for Latour is constructed by associations.9 The inventory provides a socio/spatial snapshot of a network of associations constructed through the interconnected relationships of objects, social forces, religious expectations, individuals with their desires, expectations and anxieties, and much more. The objects of the inventory (and will) interact with these other entities within the social milieu, engaging in ‘momentary associations’ which both produce and function through a network of these associations.



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In this way, according to Latour, ‘by the very nature of their connections with humans, [objects] quickly shift from being mediators to being intermediaries’.10 The 1601 inventory is a potent example of this shift of the material from unnoticed mediators in the daily life of Hardwick New Hall into that hyperpresence Brown speaks of as they become intermediaries and conduits, through which a particular social moment is navigated, a narrative fixed, and a transformation occurs. As such it is useful to consider the way in which this text reveals and navigates this network of associations. The text invokes and produces a spatiality through its organisation of objects, in the rooms where they were placed at the time of the inventory. And while this was not particularly innovative in inventories of the time, it had a particular purpose because of Elizabeth Hardwick’s injunction in the will that objects were to remain in situ after her death (the implications of this injunction will be discussed below). Thus, the inventory, while providing a snapshot of the objects in each room, also produces a privileged and authorised spatial reading of these rooms. Elizabeth Hardwick signed each inventory, signifying her approval and its accuracy. By reading the inventory a person mentally walks through the house and gazes upon the objects in each room, and in this way inserts his/her virtual presence in the space. For example, in one of the more modest rooms, Mrs Kniveton’s chamber, the room is described as containing: Seaven peeces of darnix hangings, a bedsted, a Canapie of cloth and golde and murry velvet, too buckerom Curtins, a grene Cloth Curtin, a Curtin of red and grene saye, a mattriss, too fetherbedes, a quilt, twoo bolsters, a pillowe, a fustean, too blanketes, a Coverlet, a Cubberd, a Carpet of rowde stuffe of Cruell, a Joyned stoole, a quition [quintain]11 of nedleworke, a quition of turkie worke, a payre of tonges, a Close stoole. In a pallet there: a mattriss, a featherbed, a bolster, a blanket, too Coverletes.12

Here the text reveals a number of associations. The room or chamber was on the ground floor of Hardwick New Hall, in the front of the house on the right-hand side at the base of one of the towers. Mrs Kniveton was Jane Kniveton, half-sister and companion to Elizabeth Hardwick; Jane was married to Thomas Kniveton. Jane Kniveton was an important member of Elizabeth Hardwick’s household for an extended period of time and the richness of the chamber communicates her status within the household. The objects recorded in this entry disclose a network of social and familial relations. They establish household status through the richness of the objects and the placement

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of the room. Items designed to promote Jane Kniveton’s comfort indicate affection and emotional bonds. The items emplace her within the household, and as such play a role in communicating Elizabeth Hardwick’s affective identity. The inventory reveals, lays bare, exposes repeatedly this network of associations. The inventory thus continues to draw the reader into the house – to the rooms inhabited not only by human actors, but by each object and the association of the room with all the other rooms. These rooms are lived spaces, and within those lived spaces social relationships are maintained and social capital flows.13 This can be seen in Mrs Kniveton’s room – labelled as such in the 1601 in a clear acknowledgement of Elizabeth Hardwick’s affective relationship with her half-sister. It is not just a room, it is the room that Elizabeth Hardwick’s sister inhabits. It is the room where Jane Kniveton’s things interact with her person: there is her bed with the hangings and curtains she wakes to each morning and falls to sleep underneath each night. There is the stool where she sits, and the needlework, perhaps worked by her own hand. There is also the pallet where her servant sleeps. The inventory of Mrs Kniveton’s room gives evidence of the internal spatial dynamic that at the moment of recording reveals the local socio/spatial associations present in Hardwick New Hall. Certainly the actors (human and non-human) reach beyond the room and the house in certain aspects, but their most salient ground of active association is in the local. This room serves as just one example of the associative dynamic of objects within the house. This dynamic is most impressively worked out in the high great chamber in Hardwick New Hall. This grand room is situated at the top of the upward-sweeping south staircase and was intended to communicate Elizabeth Hardwick’s status and her close association with Queen Elizabeth. This is most obviously proclaimed in the great plaster Diana frieze. This frieze is a celebration of virtue and good governance. The huntress Diana is placed within a visual world rich in the bounty of nature. Clear allusions in the imagery can be found to both Isaiah and to Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue in their celebration of the new world emperor and the dawning of a golden age. This imagery was widespread in the later years of Elizabeth’s reign and formed a discourse that could be appropriated by individuals.14 It allowed them a means through which they could represent the nature of their relationship with the queen, as Elizabeth Hardwick clearly does here. Her relationship with the queen is reiterated again in the room through the large depiction of the queen’s arms on the overmantel in this room. The 1601 inventory also reveals a number of other objects that participated in these associations with governance and elite standing,



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those ‘institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition’ discussed by Bourdieu.15 These include portraits of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Mary I, Edward VI, and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. There was also a ‘glass payned about with the Arms of England’ in the room.16 The opulent Ulysses tapestries that dress the room are also replete with allusions to loyalty, courage and good governance. The Diana frieze and the Ulysses tapestries also engaged in associations with continental movements in art, and they communicated elite status in a variety of ways. The designs for the Diana frieze came in part from engravings by Philips Galle from the designs of Johannes Stradanus published in 1578, while the Ulysses tapestries were woven in Brussels to a design by Michiel Coxie.17 A number of other objects in the room not fully described in the 1601 inventory, and which have not survived, no doubt also participated in associations with these artistic movements. For example, the ‘Fowre pictures of the fowre parts of the worlde’ create associations with distant geographical spaces, captured and possessed within that room. The inventory does not impose a hierarchy of value among the objects, but instead seems to suggest simply the practice of the surveyor in that particular room at that particular time. And so the ‘nyne stooles of white and grene silk frenge’, ‘the wicker skreyne’ and the ‘payre of brass Andyrons’ share a textual and spatial proximity with the grand tapestries, portraits and long table.18 We can, in this discussion of the great high chamber, consider the relationships between the workmen and artists in the room, men like Thomas Wilson the plasterer; the painter John Balehouse; the designer and architectural artist Robert Smythson, and the others who laid the floor, produced the rush matting, whitewashed the walls and prepared the plaster. The presence of these labourers remains not only as a ghostly supposition imbedded in the objects they touched and at times marked, but also in other objects, including the account manuscripts in which the payments for their services were made. These are the ties Latour refers to that are established ‘between values, domains, institutions, and networks’.19 The 1601 inventory thus builds, one room at a time, a map of a network of associations to be found in Hardwick New Hall. However, it is much more spatially ambitious than this. The inventory also contains a careful identification of things in Hardwick Old Hall (adjacent to Hardwick New Hall) and Chatsworth about twenty miles to the west. The inventory binds these three houses together within the confines of the text. The lists of individuals and objects associated with all three houses form one tightly connected associative network defined spatially and embodied in the person of Elizabeth Hardwick.

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Doreen Massey observes that ‘We are always, inevitably, making spaces and places. The temporary cohesions of articulations of relations, the provisional and partial enclosures, the repeated practices which chisel their way into being establish flows, these spatial forms mirror the necessary fixings of communication and identity.’20 And while this making of spaces and places in associative network described in 1601 and illustrative of Elizabeth Hardwick’s identity was spatially constructed, its associations functioned temporally as well. A number of objects in the 1601 inventory appear in other inventories taken during particular periods in Elizabeth Hardwick’s life.21 The earliest of these come from Northaw, Hertfordshire, which her second husband, Sir William Cavendish, first leased (1535) and then purchased (1540) from the crown. The inventory may have been carried out around the time Cavendish sold the manor back to the crown and, while undated, is likely to have been completed in about 1550. In this early inventory some items can be identified as (or likely) items found in the 1601 inventory. For example, a painting of Hell in the Northaw inventory can be identified with ‘the picture of hell’ noted in the gallery at Hardwick in 1601.22 A painting of the annunciation at Northaw is recorded as hanging in the lower chapel at Hardwick in 1601.23 The portraits of Henry VII and VIII likely came from Northaw,24 along with several other paintings. The inventories of Chatsworth in 1553 and 1560 do not list paintings, but Gillian White has made reasonable assumptions concerning a number of beds in Northaw that likely made their way from this house to Chatsworth and then in some instances to Hardwick New Hall.25 Identification of household items such as plate, andirons, tables, stools and other items do not contain enough description to identify them positively as the same object in each of the inventories, though one can reasonably assume that many of these items made their way from the rooms of Northaw in Hertfordshire, via Chatsworth, to Hardwick New Hall in Derbyshire over the intervening fifty years. These objects then participated in a temporal continuity which continued to inform (or as Arendt would suggest bind together) the complex identity of Elizabeth Hardwick. Northaw was the home she shared with her second husband, to whom she bore all her children. Chatsworth was the home they purchased together in a typically Tudor bid to both announce and elevate their status through architectural showmanship. The Chatsworth estate also had other familial connections. Her sister Alice married Francis Leche and made her home at Chatsworth.26 After her death, Chatsworth was sold to Thomas Asgard, and two years later was purchased by Elizabeth Hardwick



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and William Cavendish. Later, Elizabeth Hardwick would purchase her father’s ancestral manor of Hardwick in 1583, which had been the inheritance of her brother James who died bankrupt in 1581.27 Both the Chatsworth and Hardwick estates were thus connected to Elizabeth Hardwick through a web of familial resonances from the past. The objects participated in these resonances, which in turn informed her identity. Bill Brown, drawing on the work of the American pragmatist philosopher William James, explains the way in which ‘the object world comes to contribute to the “consciousness of self ” … an aggregate that includes not only body and mind but also possessions’. Brown goes on to suggest that practices of ‘consumption, possession, and display through which objects mediate our relation to ourselves and to other human subjects, and through which … individuals express their individuality, their personality, their status – through which they mean to form and transform themselves’.28 And certainly the ‘houshold stuff’ and the buildings which housed them loudly proclaimed and participated in the performance of Elizabeth Hardwick’s identity. But, as Massey points out, these ‘aggregates’ are inevitably ‘temporary cohesions of articulations of relations’. These associations of objects, individuals, social structures and practices, and the myriad of other forces present in relation to each other, are by necessity momentary. Elizabeth Hardwick seems to have understood that her identity was in some way bound up with the ‘things’ ( including her houses) which she had carefully built, amassed, stewarded and protected. She also appears to have believed that these ‘things’ were not simply the stage set, the mise-en-scène of her life, but were part of a larger associative network that bound her to the elite workings of political power. In her will composed in 1601 she makes a remarkable statement: And because yt hath pleased God to give me leave to undertake and performe some buildinges at my houses at Chatesworthe Hardwicke and Oldcoates in the Countie of Derby and to obteyne some plate beddinges hangings and other furniture of houshould the which I greatlie desire should be well preserved and contynewe at my sayed houses for the better furnishing therof into whose possession soever of my bloud the sayed houses shall come as I truste and most hartelie praye that with Gods pleasure the same shall so longe contynewe for theire better Service vnto theire Prince and Countrie. [italics added]29

In this statement, Elizabeth Hardwick makes clear her desire that the objects within the houses of Chatsworth, Hardwick (New and Old Halls) and Oldcotes should remain in situ at each of these houses. This means that the 1601 inventory was not simply a list of items that happened to be in each room,

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but a signification of Elizabeth Hardwick’s will that they remain in those rooms, that the houses which she built and furnished should remain as she built and furnished them. And she justifies this request/command of her will by invoking regal authority, insisting that by maintaining the houses as she built and furnished them her progeny would be in a position to provide ‘better Service unto theire Prince and Countrie’. A description of the complex social relations underpinned by visible elite presence in the counties of England is beyond the scope of this essay. Suffice to say that it is generally accepted that country houses were important signifiers communicating political authority to the local community that almost always in some way tied these communities to the monarchy. In the discussion above concerning the great high chamber, Elizabeth Hardwick is clearly asserting a relationship between herself (and all that ‘self’ entails in those networks in which she was embedded). But to insist that that somehow the pair of brass andirons in ‘Mr Manner’s chamber’30 served the crown is difficult to fathom. And one could argue that her meaning as set out in the will should not be taken that far. However, there is evidence within the will itself that this is exactly what she means. She reiterates several times within the will: All my plate Bedding hanginges: and other furniture of houshould stuffe nowe and at the tyme of my Decease remayning or beyng at my house or howses at Hardwicke [as] set downe by waie of Inventory. All the beddings hanginges and other ffurniture of houshold stuffe which at the tyme of my decease I shall have remayning and beyng at my house at Oldcoates in the sayed Countie of Derby for the more better and more suer contynewing of the same at my said house there in like manner as ys before provided for my house or houses at Hardwicke. All my saied plate Bedding hanginges and other ffurniture before bequeathed may the longer contynewe and be reserved at and unto my sayed howses … I especiallie will declare and appoynte that noe pretended will gifte or devise to any other person or persons of the sayed former bequeathed plate Beddinges hanginges.31

Even particular high-value objects she bequeaths she expects will be returned to the house from which they came: [The] Cuppe of Lapis Lazarus with the Cover to yt all garnished with gould ennameled as an heireloome to goe with the house of Hardwicke and to stand entayled after the sayed William the Younger his Deceasse in suche manner and forme as my ffurniture of houshould stuffe at my howse or howses at Hardwicke stand hereafter by theise presents entayled.32



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Elizabeth Hardwick clearly wished or ‘willed’ that the houses remain as she had appointed them. She invoked the authority of the crown to justify this injunction, and she clearly expected her heirs to comply with her request. This provides strong evidence of the importance of ‘things’ in the understanding of self within the period, and most particularly in Elizabeth Hardwick’s understanding of herself. In contemplating her mortality and the end of her living bodily presence upon this earth, she attempted to inhabit or animate a future self that could continue to exert agency and thus a presence of sorts in this world. In this she was only unusual in her ambition, not in her intent. Testators in the early modern period often used their wills ‘to manipulate the future actions of beneficiaries to extend beyond the grave their grip over these persons and their possessions’.33 Or as Mary S. Lovell puts it, Elizabeth Hardwick ‘used her will as a long arm from the grave’.34 And yet, the will itself, with its oft-repeated instructions, betrays an anxiety that undermines its careful instructions. It is not only individuals that threaten the continuity of self inherent in the attempt to impose stasis on the objects of the house, but inanimate threats. Elizabeth Hardwick instructs in the will that the objects of the house must be protected from the natural predators of things: The sayed persons to whome the use and occupacon of the sayed plate Bedding hanginges and other furniture as so nowe generallie bequeathed or appoynted as aforesayed shall haue speciall care and regarde to p[re]serve the same from all manner of wett mothe and other hourte or spoyle therof and to leave them so preserved to contynewe at the sayed severall houses as aforesayed for the better furnishing them therewithall. [italics added]

Those who are to use her objects in the future (notice not own or possess) are to protect them from wet, moths and spoil. She tasks her heirs with the paradoxical request to stop the effects of the ravages of time on her things, something she is unable to do with her body. In the next generation another aristocratic woman, the Lady Anne Clifford, recognised what Elizabeth Hardwick could not. Upon seeing the ‘spoiling’ of a notable memorial set up hundreds of years before, the Hartshorns in Whinfell forest, Clifford wrote, ‘Whereby wee may see thatt time brings to forgettfullnesse many memmorable things in this world be they never soe carefully preserved’.35 Latour would describe this inevitability by recognising that ‘entities’ be these inanimate material objects, social structures, ideas, individuals, groups, and other things that exist, form momentary associations that are continually

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renegotiated.36 He would argue with Anne Clifford’s statement by suggesting that the Hartshorns have not in fact been forgotten, as they continue to have an existence in her text (and perhaps as a rumoured paperweight made out of the wood of the tree), but the meaning and associations in which they exist have formed new associations within very different associative networks from the ones they once informed. And likewise, Elizabeth Hardwick’s living presence and the relationships she engaged in were quietly mediated through both the animate and inanimate entities that formed her particular associated network that was momentary. During her life this network circulated almost invisibly, while at other times – moments of crisis – the objects became as Brown terms it hyper-present, as shown in the inventories and as the physical movement of objects and people make clear. These crises included the death of spouses, marital negotiations, marital estrangement and family betrayal.37 The inventories that survive give some textual evidence of these moments of hyper-presence when objects participate as actors in the complex negotiations and realignment of relationships. There is no stasis, but there is a type of continuity in an albeit reshaped presence. This dynamic is most clearly seen in crisis, and of course the greatest crisis of any individual is his or her death, which by necessity disrupts all associative networks in which a person is embedded. As discussed above, the 1601 will and accompanying inventory anticipated and for a short period of time participated in a future moment of death. The will shows evidence in marginalia, additional codicils and a final nuncupative statement of intention, that this moment was revisited again and again. These revisitations brought the material again into view, into a hyper-presence. Those object actors that generally silently mediated social relations, identities, political structures and the routines of daily life that maintained these became visible. One of the codicils relates to the disinheritance of Arbella Stuart and Henry Cavendish, making present a dynastic as well as a family crisis.38 A later codicil in the fourth year of the reign of James I (1606) affirms the will, but also reveals a key disruption in Elizabeth Hardwick’s associative networks – the death of Elizabeth I, a woman whose presence had profoundly shaped her life. Anne Clifford, writing soon after the death of Elizabeth, noted that in the court of James I there was ‘showed no favour to the elderly Ladies’.39 Elizabeth Hardwick’s close connection to the monarch was severed. However, in her will she retains her bequest to Queen Elizabeth, which after the queen’s death served as a testimony and memorial rather than an actual bequest. There are no bequests to James I. As the moment of the death drew near,



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the last addition to the will was a nuncupative or voiced bequest to her intimate servants and her almshouse. Elizabeth Hardwick died on Saturday 13 February 1608 at the probable age of eighty-one. At the moment of death the testator’s will begins to function. This moment of crisis makes visible the transition of the object from mediator to intermediary most clearly. The objects, which once unobtrusively mediated Elizabeth Hardwick’s performance of identity, were at the moment of her death deployed to ameliorate the effects of death through the construction of a community. Death as discussed above provides objects with a hyper-presence in the social and psychological dynamics between human beings.40 The will brings these objects into a particular relationship imbedded within the social. Death constructs a temporary associable network, bringing together social practice, human relationships and the material. This network, activated by Elizabeth Hardwick’s death, was particularly of the moment and participated in a limited afterlife allowing her bodily effect to continue to exist for a time, prolonging the existence of her identity as constructed within her life. Her intention as evidenced in her will was to prolong this identity into perpetuity.41 In reality it lasted little longer than it took to inter her body. The wills of her son and grandson show little evidence of Elizabeth Hardwick’s injunction that ‘her’ objects remain in situ. The will of her son William Cavendish, first earl of Devonshire, who died on 3 March 1626, shows little textual evidence of his mother’s will. Her identity is nearly completely effaced in this document, with the exception of a bequest to his grandson of the ‘great diamond Ringe that was my Mothers’.42 The will is mainly taken up with concerns regarding the comfort and financial security of his wife, Elizabeth Boughton, whom he made the sole executor of the things he bequeathed to her ‘so far as the lawe will beare it’.43 There is little reference to the three houses of Chatsworth, Hardwick or Hardwick New Hall, all of which were in his possession during his time, and which were entailed on his eldest son. His will reveals that within the space of eighteen years Elizabeth Hardwick’s identity as constructed through the ‘things’ she possessed was significantly disrupted. The extravagant lifestyle of her grandson, William Cavendish, second earl of Devonshire threatened to not only disrupt but to completely efface Elizabeth’s object presence in the houses she built and furnished. He obtained permission from parliament to sell lands entailed upon him for the payment of his debts. His will alludes to this necessity and threatens that the property and moveable

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items of his inheritance were to be sold if his debts were not paid. He justifies this in his will, stating: And being well assured that it was the meaninge of my Ladie Grandmother and of William Earl of Devonshire deceased my late father, and of myne other Auncestors whose heire I am, that I should have such power over my estate in landes late theire Inheritance whereby I might be able out of the same to paie my just debts and accomplish some other neccessarie intencions hereafter mencioned.44

Of course Elizabeth Hardwick’s will contains no indication of such a meaning, quite the opposite. Her objects, her buildings, her lands were emphatically to remain as she bequeathed them, not to be sold to pay for her grandson’s extravagance. In any case, this grandson’s death in June 1628 seems to have averted the wholesale dispersal of the estate Elizabeth Hardwick spent her life constructing. His son, William Cavendish, third earl of Devonshire, shows rather more care in the disposing of the estates that descended to him from his greatgrandmother. He makes arrangements for the preservation of the houses of his inheritance, instructing that ‘my Executors shall disburse or dispose of such summe and summes of money as shall bee requisite for the repairing and keeping in repaire during the life of my sonne William lord Cavendish my houses of Chattesworth and Hardwick in the said County of Derby’. 45 This will reveals a prosperous and careful man who, like his great-grandmother before him, sought to extend his bodily presence through the disposition of the material in relation to the social and familial. In this will it is difficult to trace the material identity of his great-grandmother. And yet, today the visitor to Hardwick New Hall sees this great-grandmother, Bess of Hardwick, everywhere. We find the so called ‘sea dog’ table’46 in the same room where it was recorded as standing in the 1601 inventory. The Ulysses tapestries still hang in the high great chamber, and the Gideon tapestries (recently restored) hang in the long gallery, along with many of the paintings described in the 1601 inventory. John Balehouse’s painted hangings and his Penelope and Ulysses painting are still to be seen in the house, as are the ‘Virtue’ tapestries worked by Elizabeth Hardwick and her embroiderers.47 And, while Elizabeth’s Chatsworth is gone and her Old Hardwick Hall is a ruin, Hardwick New Hall stands gloriously above the landscape with eighteen pairs of ‘ES’s gloriously proclaiming the builder of the house, Elizabeth Hardwick, countess of Shrewsbury. Gaston Bachelard might comment that what we are seeing is not of course the presence or identity of the woman, Elizabeth Hardwick, who composed her will and commissioned her last



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inventory in 1601, but are instead examining the ‘finest specimens of fossilized duration concretized as a result of long sojourn … fixed in space’.48 Latour would recognise this as an opportunity. While acknowledging that objects are ‘associable with one another and with social ties only momentarily’ and that the associative networks that functioned during the life of Elizabeth Hardwick have long ceased, he would insist that the traces of these networks nevertheless exist. At Hardwick New Hall, through an encounter with the what we now see as novel, aspects of Elizabeth Hardwick, rendered ‘clumsy by distance’, remain. In order to recognise and inhabit with these traces Latour suggest that objects ‘have to be made to talk; and this is why very elaborate and, often, artificial situations have to be devised to reveal their actions and performations’ and through this he warns (or encourages) us as human actors that we ourselves form associations, move into relationship with the object actors of the past interfering with and occluding earlier traces of other relationships, but never completely effacing them. A palimpsestic resonance of these relationships may remain and be seen.49 The Hardwick New Hall we experience on weekend daytrips is not Elizabeth Hardwick’s New Hall. The ‘Bess of Hardwick’ we are introduced to on those daytrips is a mediated version of the Elizabethan woman known as Elizabeth Hardwick, countess of Shrewsbury. But this should neither dismay or discourage us. Bill Brown reminds us that object culture always mediates ‘human relations … generating differences of value, significance and permanence … through which objects become meaningful’.50 When we enter Hardwick New Hall we enter into a relationship through our momentary association with the physical objects that were once in association with Elizabeth Hardwick and which continue to act in time and space, integrating objects in relationship with individuals. Hardwick New Hall is more than the sum of Elizabeth Hardwick’s will and intentions and in any case many other objects, social relations, economic practices and individuals have entered into a myriad of other associative networks of which Hardwick New Hall remains a part. Yet these objects do retain traces of Elizabeth Hardwick and her will, and the 1601 will and inventory continue to inform how individuals experience Hardwick New Hall in our time. Notes 1 John Buxton, Elizabethan Taste (London: Macmillan, 1963). 2 Lindsay Boynton, The Hardwick Hall Inventories of 1601 (London: Furniture History Association, 1971), p. 5.

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3 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, translated by Maria Jolas (1958; Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), p. 3. 4 Margreta De Grazia, Maureen Quilligan, Peter Stallybrass, Subject and Object in Renaissance Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Introduction, p. 5. 5 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 137. 6 Bill Brown, ‘The matter of materialism: literary mediations’, Material Powers: Cultural Studies, History and the Material Turn, edited by Tony Bennett and Patrick Joyce (London: Routledge, 2010), p. 60. 7 The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA), PROB 11/11/213,Will of Elizabeth, dowager countess of Shrewsbury, p. 188r. 8 Santina M. Levey, Of Houshold Stuff:The 1601 Inventories of Bess of Hardwick (London: National Trust, 1998), p. 47. 9 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) p. 71. 10 Latour, Reassembling, p. 79. 11 A fine sheer material similar to lawn, originally made in Quintin in Brittany and frequently used as a ground for embroidery. 12 Levey, Houshold Stuff, p. 56. 13 This term is drawn from Pierre Bourdieu, who describes social capital as a network of ‘more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition’ (Pierre Bourdieu and J. D. Loic, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 119). 14 Jessica L. Malay, Prophecy and Sibylline Imagery in the Renaissance (New York: Routledge, 2010) pp. 54–76. 15 Bourdieu and Loic, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, p. 119. 16 Levey, Houshold Stuff, p. 48. 17 Anthony Wells-Cole, Art and Decoration in Elizabethan and Jacobean England: The Influence of Continental Prints, 1558–1625 (New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 1997), p. 270. 18 Levey, Houshold Stuff, p. 48. 19 Bruno Latour, An Inquiry into Modes of Existence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), p. 37. 20 Doreen Massey, For Space (London: Sage, 2005), p. 175. 21 Chatsworth, Devonshire MSS, un-numbered document in box marked ‘Bess and Earls Misc. II’, Inventory of the contents of Northaw, c. 1540–1552; Devonshire MSS, Hardwick Drawers H/143/2, Inventory of Chatsworth and deed of entail, 1553 (1559); Devonshire MSS, Hardwick Drawers H/143/6, Fragmentary inventory of Chatsworth, 1560s. These inventories were brought to my attention by Gillian White and I will use her transcriptions of these from Gillian White, ‘ “That whyche ys nedefoulle and nesesary”: the nature and purpose of the original



22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36 37

38 39 40 41

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furnishing and decoration of Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire’, PhD thesis, 2 vols, University of Warwick, 2005, vol. 2. White, ‘ “That whyche ys nedefoulle and nesesary” ’, p. 336; Levey, Houshold Stuff, p. 50. White, ‘ “That whyche ys nedefoulle and nesesary” ’, p. 337; Levey, Houshold Stuff, pp. 51–2. White, ‘ “That whyche ys nedefoulle and nesesary” ’, p. 325; Levey, Houshold Stuff, p. 49. White, ‘ “That whyche ys nedefoulle and nesesary” ’, pp. 320–412. Her mother had also married a Leche for her second husband – Ralph Leche. David N. Durant, Bess of Hardwick: Portrait of an Elizabethan Dynasty (London: Peter Owen, 1999), p. 104. Bill Brown, Other Things (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), p. 159. Will of Elizabeth, dowager countess of Shrewsbury, p. 189r. Levey, Houshold Stuff, p. 37. TNA, PROB 11/11/213, Will of Elizabeth, dowager countess of Shrewsbury, pp. 189r–v. TNA, PROB 11/11/213, Will of Elizabeth, dowager countess of Shrewsbury, p. 188v. Samuel Cohn Jr., ‘Renaissance attachment to things: material culture in last wills’, Economic History Review, 65.3 (2012), p. 993. Mary S. Lovell, Bess of Hardwick: First Lady of Chatsworth (London: Little, Brown, 2005), p. 472. Anne Clifford, Great Books of Record, edited by Jessica L. Malay (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), p. 839; Anne Clifford, Anne Clifford's Autobiographical Writing: 1590–1676, edited by Jessica L. Malay (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018), p. 148. Latour, Reassembling, pp. 64–5. Elizabeth Hardwick was widowed four times, in 1544, 1557, 1565 and 1590. Her marital troubles with her last husband, George Talbot, in the 1580s are described by Elizabeth Hardwick’s biographer David Durant as ‘a persecution that was no less than a mania’ (Durant, Bess of Hardwick, p. 119). The failed elopement of Arbella Stuart, Elizabeth Hardwick’s granddaughter, has a textual presence in Elizabeth Hardwick’s will in both marginal notes and a codicil that disinherit both Arbella and Elizabeth Hardwick’s son Henry Cavendish for his help in Arbella’s scheme. TNA, PROB 11/11/213, Will of Elizabeth, dowager countess of Shrewsbury, pp. 192r–v. Clifford, Anne Clifford's Autobiographical Writing, p. 20. Brown, ‘The matter of materialism’, p. 62. Susan E. James’s recent work reveals that Elizabeth Hardwick was not unique in this ultimately futile attempt to preserve her identity through a strict ordering

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of her will. Elizabeth Cornwallis, Lady Kytson also stated in her will that the bulk of her household stuff should remain in situ in Hengrave Hall in 1628. Anne Bretton willed that her household stuff should remain ‘as they all stand now … forever to the house’ in 1588. Women's Voices in Tudor Wills, 1485–1603: Authority, Influence and Material Culture (New York: Routledge, 2016), p. 92. TNA, PROB 11/148/631, Will of William 1st Earl of Devonshire, 18 April 1626, p. 429v. TNA, PROB 11/148/631, Will of William 1st Earl of Devonshire, p. 429v. TNA, PROB 11/154/54, Will of William 2nd Earl of Devonshire, 07 July 1628, p. 38r. TNA, PROB 11/379/486, Will of William Cavendish, 3rd Earl of Devonshire, 10 April 1685, p. 334r. Hardwick New Hall, NT 1127744. A marble-inlaid walnut ‘drawing table’, or draw-leaf table from France, c. 1575 in the style of Jacques Androuet du Cerceau. For a full description of these hangings see Santina M. Levey, ‘Set of five hangings’, in The Embroideries at Hardwick Hall: A Catalogue (London: National Trust, 2007), pp. 58–109. Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, p. 9. Latour, Reassembling, pp. 79 and 80. Brown, ‘The matter of materialism’, p. 63.

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Bess of Hardwick’s gynocracy in textiles Susan Frye

Working in the medium of textiles, Bess of Hardwick created the most ambitious known artwork by an English woman in the early modern period. One remarkable element of Bess’s oeuvre is her definition of women’s rule or ‘gynocracy’ as produced within her country house of Chatsworth, and in the hangings with which she and her workshop furnished it. Throughout the house itself, and particularly in her eight opulent, tapestry-sized hangings in the ‘Noble Women of the Ancient World’ and the ‘Virtues and Their Contrary Vices’ series, Bess created a temporal and spatial palimpsest by layering Graeco-Roman narratives and their locations throughout the sixteenth-century English time and space that she inhabited. The ‘Noble Women of the Ancient World’ series is a suite of hangings measuring nine by eleven feet, featuring Arthemesia, Zenobia, Lucrecia, Penelope and Cleopatra created during the 1570s. The ‘Virtues and Their Contrary Vices’ series is a suite of three hangings, also about nine by eleven feet, probably started in the mid-1570s and completed in the 1580s,1 whose personifications of Virtue, as portraits of Bess herself, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I, also depict female rule. While we cannot know the extent to which Bess consciously chose to explore the issue of female rule, in these hangings she made a series of decisions that invite analysis. English sixteenth-century culture presented her with a range of cultural definitions, narratives and locations that demonstrated what it meant to be a ‘woman’, and especially a ‘woman of authority’. At the same time, the instability of these categories provided Bess with the ability to expand their definitions.2 Room-sized tapestries were used throughout Europe to display the politics of their elite owners. Bess possessed the time, resources and personnel to create hangings that expressed her distinctive politics as she had refined them.

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This essay centres on these hangings’ depiction of ‘gynocracy’ as shaped by this larger context and the circumstances of their production. First, I take into account Bess’s ongoing rebuilding and furnishing of her Elizabethan country house, Chatsworth, as a project completed over thirty years, in which her splendid spaces depended for their effect on the collating of past, present and future, a collation that elucidated Bess’s female authority as existing at the crossroads of ‘untimely time’ and ‘uncanny space’. Second, I consider the influence of Mary, Queen of Scots, on these hangings’ production, to the extent that it can be ascertained, since besides Bess herself, she was the only woman ruler under Bess’s roof. And third, I seek to recover what we can know about the material production of these hangings in Bess’s textile workshop at Chatsworth, whose collaborative efforts made visible Bess’s conceptions of female rule, using materials and expertise that were themselves drawn from across time and space. Bess’s engagement with her country house at Chatsworth during her last three marriages began in 1549–51, when she and her second husband William Cavendish began remodelling the existing building into a splendid new country house.3 Chatsworth, which Cavendish had purchased in both their names, was originally built with two storeys and finished with accomplished artisanal work. In the 1560s, during her next marriage to the wealthy Sir William St Loe, Bess built a third storey that doubled her galleries and other state apartments, while adding withdrawing rooms and bed chambers for her husband and aristocratic guests.4 At this upgraded Chatsworth, Bess hosted William Cecil, Lord Burghley and Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, while Mary, Queen of Scots, spent parts of two summers there and visited on several shorter occasions.5 Bess’s Chatsworth was a country house firmly fixed in time by its construction during the 1550s and 1560s. But because she had lived there with three husbands – one of whom, the earl of Shrewsbury, was very much alive – Bess made Chatsworth into a kind of time machine. Acting as a member of both the gentry and the aristocracy, Bess insistently reproduced these three different husbands’ coats of arms in stone, plaster, wood and textiles, often connected with her own cipher composed from her newest initials, ‘ES’, Elizabeth of Shrewsbury. In this way, she used Chatsworth to affirm the polychronicity of her existence, anchoring her present authority in her husbands’ absence. Her accretion of identities through marriage became inseparable from her ability to, as it were, swallow them whole and so preserve them within her living body. Bess’s Chatsworth existed in part to commemorate what I would call an ‘uncanny geography’ of presence-as-absence. As Nicholas Royle points



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out, having ‘a foreign body within oneself’ is one of the experiences associated with the uncanny.6 Bess seems to have embraced the idea of enshrining her husbands within her preferred dwelling. The past was alive and well in Chatsworth’s interiors, layered alongside the present moment when Bess’s dynastic and financial projects thrived as she extended her authority, and infused with the future, because coats of arms also represent the transfer of familial authority forwards, from generation to generation. Bess’s conception of time coincides with that in Shakespeare’s works that Jonathan Gil Harris has described as ‘a distinctively Renaissance attitude to time’. That is, an attitude that is ‘palimpsestic’, because it layers past, present and future. This layering results from ways of thinking about time that, as Harris puts it, ‘can unsettle the models of temporality informing current scholarship on material culture’ and, in so doing, provide ‘an illustrative instance of the past’s untimely power’.7 One of the ways that ‘the past’s untimely power’ makes its way into our present in Shakespeare’s scenes and passages, writes Harris, is the ways in which such texts function as ‘time knots’, moments formed of ‘an untimely aggregation of matter, agents and historical traces’.8 Bess added her layered sense of time to Chatsworth’s walls from 1569 to about 1584 in her woman-centred hangings. In the next generation, when the aristocrat Anne Clifford and her husband, Richard Sackville, third earl of Dorset, were faced with a similar need to fill the empty walls of Knole, Anne recorded in her diary of 1618 that the ‘dressing out’ of the house included having the gallery ‘hung with all my Lords Caparasons which Edwards the upholsterer made up’.9 In other words, the earl resolved the problem of ‘dressing’ their splendid interiors by creating hangings from the luxurious textiles that had once clothed his horses at the equestrian entertainments of James I, an appropriate means to celebrate and preserve his ongoing position as a favourite in the king’s hunting circle. Bess of Hardwick’s celebration and preservation of her subject position took a far more elaborate form, inspired in part by the Tudor vocabulary of magnificence she experienced at the court of Elizabeth I. Bess devised eight room-sized hangings featuring women rulers, with locally available materials, talent and labour, over a period of ten years. Even as Bess was inspired in outfitting Chatsworth by the aesthetic she witnessed at Elizabeth’s court, still another catalyst for Bess’s transformation from expert needleworker to textile artist was the presence of Mary, Queen of Scots. From 1569 to 1584, Elizabeth I charged Bess’s newest husband, George Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, with keeping the Scottish queen under house arrest at the various estates owned by himself and Bess. In 1569, Mary,

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who was being detained primarily because she could be,10 was Queen Elizabeth’s most immediate heir. During Mary’s first years with the Shrewsburys it was entirely possible that she might join Elizabeth at the English court or return to Scotland or to France. As Mary experienced a series of political ups and downs, her gaoler and server, Bess, was in ascendance politically and financially, and at her most ambitious in creating a range of textiles for Chatsworth. Notably, in spite of Bess’s experience in building and dressing Chatsworth from the 1550s, and her lifelong expertise in needlework, her textile production only becomes exceptional after Mary becomes her house guest and prisoner. Mary, as both the Scottish queen and dowager queen of France, brought to Derbyshire the affirmation of women-centred themes that had saturated art and custom during her twelve years at the French court.11 The few physical remnants she retained of those experiences and of her personal rule in Scotland included a travelling version of her library, with engraved books and compilations of images, sources of designs for Bess’s hangings as well as for the hand-held needlework pieces that Mary and Bess were producing together. Mary also brought to Derbyshire her extensive knowledge of textile practice, including the courtly needlework skills taught by Catherine de Medici; the reliance on a portrait artist with the skills in textiles of a tapissier; and a practised knowledge of taillure, the appliqué process by which luxurious textiles were repurposed, which Bess used to create her room-sized hangings. While Bess had long employed artisans in a number of crafts, including embroidery, the artisans who formed part of Mary’s court as portrait artists/ tapissiers would have been able to provide Bess’s workshop with the expert draughtmanship and execution along current continental models visible in many of her hangings. During Mary’s stay, Bess concentrated on dressing Chatsworth by assembling her multi-faceted depiction of gynocracy. I call Bess’s theme in her rebuilding of Chatsworth and in the production of her hangings a ‘gynocracy’ because it is an all-inclusive term for women rulers. The term itself appears about forty years after Bess first staged her collection of female rulers in her hangings for Chatsworth, although in about 1578, as he first drafted Arcadia, Philip Sidney gave his queen the name Gynecia,12 meant to signal her position as female ruler. The first use in English of ‘gynocracy’ in its early modern form, ‘gynaecocracy’, appears in 1612 in John Selden’s commentary on Poly-Olbion.13 Selden’s reference to ‘the rule of women’ casts gynocracy in a positive light because it falls within a legal discussion of overturning France’s Salic Law, in order to allow English kings to inherit their thrones through the female line.



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Selden’s use of ‘gynocracy’ points out the legal precedent that provides one legal means to argue for the authority of female rule. In Bess’s present, the female line was critical for determining the legitimate rule of Queen Elizabeth I, whose grandfather, Henry VII, made his claim to the English throne through the female line. Elizabeth’s own sovereignty was based on her sister’s as it had been legalised in parliament. James, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, had already inherited her throne in Scotland. Moreover, Bess’s granddaughter Arbella Stuart, born in 1575, based her claim to the throne on her descent through Lady Margaret Lennox, and she through Margaret’s mother, Princess Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII. This assembly of women rulers and their definition of female rule that Selden would one day champion, suggests that ‘gynocracy’ was the incipient collective noun organising Bess’s hangings. Although the question of inheriting through the female line seems to have been largely settled in England, the definition of female rule remained so unsettled and unsettling that its representation was necessarily fraught. Bess enjoyed far more latitude in representing herself than the two queens whom she served. Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart found themselves in the middle of national and international disputes about the relations among their female bodies, their sexuality and their ability to govern. They were, however, not alone: queens regnant, consort, dowager and regent continually challenged the masculine definition of authority. The existence of these women’s multiple forms of rule, above and beyond the monarchical dependence on women to produce the next generation, continually exposed the ways in which male sovereignty depended on the female body, that most unstable of signifiers. Queens regnant had to be especially cautious about how they represented themselves as ruling women because they had the most to lose. Elizabeth’s rule as queen of England rested in a parliamentary bill that had defined her sister Mary I as possessing a sovereignty interchangeable with that of the male kings from whom it derived.14 Although her legal status as sovereign was established, Elizabeth knew she must approach representing her physical chastity as queen cautiously. Elizabeth’s self-representation as the virgin queen was lodged in that caution, even as she fought a life-long battle to control the ways in which she and her authority were portrayed. Mary, born with a clear-cut place within Scotland’s ruling dynasty and cemented to French royalty through marriage, created textiles that articulated her identities as queen of Scotland, as dowager queen of France, and as a Guise. At the same time, having produced her own heir in a country whose aristocracy the English had corrupted, Mary found herself the target of a civil war that required her abdication, together with a propaganda war attacking her as a

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whore and murderer. In response, throughout the years of her imprisonment in England, Mary limited her self-representation to versions of François Clouet’s portrait from her first widowhood, as ‘Queen in White Mourning’, adding only signifiers of her Catholicism to that signature look. Unlike Elizabeth and Mary, Bess, who derived from the gentry, possessed only her own diligently produced political connections, lands and wealth, as well as a growing array of offspring. Faced with Western cultural anxieties about defining the female body as authoritative, Bess chose to create an epistemology of women’s rule in the eight central female figures pictured in her room-sized hangings. Bess’s choice of central figures in her hangings could have included female figures located in the more culturally approved biblical landscape, where strong, articulate women’s narratives existed in biblical time and space. Queen Mary I chose Esther, Queen Mary Stuart chose Susannah, and Queen Elizabeth chose Deborah. Bess, who matched her ‘distinctively Renaissance attitude to time’ with a distinctively Renaissance attitude to space, reached towards central female figures from a variety of Graeco-Roman narratives located in Italy, Asia Minor and the Levant, which in early modern England included Egypt and the Mediterranean islands. Chosen in the 1570s, the locations of these narratives were highly suggestive of contemporary activities in these same locations. Bess’s pictured spaces do not just stay in the past, but keep slipping into her present, overlapping with the developing trade routes, and diplomatic and cultural exchanges that England was establishing under Elizabeth in the Islamic world.15 During the last twenty years, Renaissance studies have increasingly turned to studying England’s expanding engagement with Morocco, the Levant and the Ottoman Empire, as well as other global markets.16 Bess and her family were fully aware of England’s business, diplomatic and cultural exchanges with Italy and throughout the Mediterranean. In 1560, William St Loe had bought a copy of the Cosmographie de Levant for his stepson. This was André de Thevet’s illustrated compendium of ancient knowledge about the region combined with his recent travels through Venice, Egypt, Italy, the Mediterranean islands, the Holy Land and Turkey.17 By 1570 and 1571, as Bess began fashioning her hangings for Chatsworth, she was receiving regular correspondence about the Ottoman invasion of Cyprus and Venice, a conquest that opened the way for the re-formation of trade relations throughout the Mediterranean. On 28 July 1570, for example, Bess received a letter from Hugh Fitzwilliam informing her that ‘The Italians be fully occupyd with bothe their particular and their common ennemye the great Turk; and King Philip is occupyd with the Mores; and In Barbry; and to defend against the Turk in Italy; in such



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sorte as the ffrenche King is very lyke to be driven to a great after deale’.18 England’s European rivals were occupied with the Islamic invaders on several fronts. In these letters to Bess, the apparently bad news detailing the Ottoman conflicts with ‘Italy’, Spain, and France was actually good news for the English, who were able to establish new trade routes as the Venetian empire weakened. Elizabeth’s excommunication by Pope Pius V in 1570 further increased the already-existing pressure on England to turn to the Mediterranean for trade and diplomatic ties, with aesthetic and religious exchange following in their wake.19 Bess was grappling with which central female figures to choose for her room-sized panels as she read these letters and received more detailed news during her frequent court visits. While time at Chatsworth ran simultaneously backwards towards Bess’s earlier marriages, and forwards towards her dynastic ambitions, space in these hangings moves from historical venue to the present engagement that Bess and her contemporaries felt with Mediterranean locales. At Chatsworth, Bess’s assembly of eight women rulers embodies both the past’s ‘untimely power’ and ‘uncanny space’ – to use a term I find useful to describe Bess’s project, based on Nicholas Royle’s discussion of the ‘uncanny’ as including the dead encased within the living. Bess’s epistemology of women’s rule exists at the shifting intersection of ‘untimely time’ and ‘uncanny space’. In order to make her large statement, probably one that evolved gradually through a number of individual choices, Bess needed a textile workshop. After all, she had a whole new storey to furnish at Chatsworth. As Santina Levey points out in her foundational catalogue, The Embroideries of Hardwick Hall, ‘The production of furnishings within a household was not uncommon in the sixteenth century and many large houses were equipped for the accommodation of their own and itinerant workmen and women’.20 It seems clear that from 1569 until the 1580s, Bess’s determination to produce her own version of the court tapestry resulted in her developing a Chatsworth textile workshop capable of producing her significant textile panels. Jumping forward a decade to the 1580s, we find an occluded snapshot of the Chatsworth workshop preserved within the marital feud that had developed by then between the earl of Shrewsbury and Bess as his countess. In August of 1586, Queen Elizabeth and Lord Burghley must have asked the earl to produce a kind of inventory to support his aggrieved sense that he had provided far more material support for Mary and the couple’s properties than had Bess. Besides a long list of plate and furnishings, the earl’s list includes ‘rich hangings made by Thomas Lane, Ambrose, William Barlow, and Henry, Mr.

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Henry Cavendish’s man’, and the ‘copes of tissue, cloth of gold, and other things towards the making thereof’. The earl further claims the ‘meat, drink and wages paid to the embroiderers’ ‘during the working of them’. Bess’s retort to the earl’s claim is preserved on the same page as his list. She counters that the priests’ ‘copes’, long coats or capes worn as an outer garment, were in fact ‘bought by Sir Wm. St. Loo at Chatsworth at the time of the deed of gift’ which demarcated Bess’s holdings from the earl’s at the time of their marriage.21 Bess further notes that ‘Most of the hangings made at Chatsworth, and some of the Countess’s grooms, women, and some boys she kept, wrought the mot part of them’. I think it likely that both the earl’s and the countess’s descriptions are accurate: that some of the earl’s people and quite possibly Henry Cavendish’s man were pressed into service to complete the hangings, along with Bess’s own household and Mary’s as well; that the earl boarded them; that Bess paid one embroiderer at a time to draw designs, run the workshop, and train unskilled hands; and that Bess owned the priests’ garments through inheritance from her third husband, William St Loe, and very likely through her second husband, William Cavendish.22 When this inventory was produced in 1586, Mary, Queen of Scots, was in disgrace, so that no one would have mentioned the participation of her or her household in the creation of Bess’s hangings. But back in the 1570s, it is probable that Mary, who like Bess employed artisans and had a large household of ready hands, became involved in their production. While taillure was a technique widespread in England as well as France, as Margaret Swain notes, Mary had used taillure to transform priests’ vestments into bed hangings for two of her husbands, Lord Darnley and the earl of Bothwell. In Scotland during Mary’s personal rule, the Keeper of Holyrood, Servais de Condé, described Mary as actively assembling one such bed in March 1567, in terms that make clear her direct participation. He writes that Mary, having taken ‘for herself a cope, chasuble and four tunicles to make a bed for the King [Darnley]’, then had them ‘All broken and cut in her own presence’.23 In England in the 1570s, Mary’s people were often located within riding distance from Chatsworth and for varying periods at Chatsworth itself. Meanwhile, Bess and Mary were described as sewing smaller, needleworked pieces sideby-side. It would be surprising if Bess had not consulted Mary’s expertise about the material production of these massive textiles as well as their subject matter. Still other evidence of French participation in Bess’s workshop lies in the continental expertise of design frequently visible in the hangings, especially in their extensive use of portraits and the occasional power of a graceful line.



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Zenobia and Penelope in the ‘Noble Women’ series are agreed to be portraits of Bess,24 while Santina Levey conjectures that the three Virtues are portraits of Bess, Mary and Elizabeth. I have discussed the evidence that the figure labelled ‘Chastity’ attending the figure of Lucrecia is a portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots.25 Creating portraits in textiles required a very particular skill, and not one commonly found in England at this time. But Mary knew well the courtly tradition of showcasing portraits within textiles, and her entourage would have included artisans capable of creating the portraits that feature so prominently in Bess’s hangings. Some of Mary’s artisans who might have provided designs and leadership for Bess’s workshop can be traced. Cosmopolitan artists who had served Mary in France and Scotland stayed with her in England for varying periods. Margaret Ellis has found the name Pierre Oudrey in Mary’s accounts from 1560 to 1567. A Pierre Oudry signed the portrait of Mary now at Hardwick New Hall, and so may have continued in Mary’s household during her English exile, or returned to it from time to time. Mary employed one Florens Broshere, an artisan who combined portraiture with performing his duties as tapissier. In May 1571, the accounts note, ‘Jacques de Senlis, groom of the wardrobe’ and the ‘tailor William Blak’, ‘who serves in absence of Forent, the tapissier’.26 Bess’s design team of herself, her (borrowed?) artisan and quite possibly Mary, Queen of Scots, as advisor, would have had much to accomplish before they could physically produce the hangings. They would have had to determine the figures for each hanging and its general layout. Since the central figures derive from conflicting visual and verbal sources, and the attendant figures from a wide range of symbology, it is easy to imagine a lively mix of discussion and drafted designs. Eventually, the workshop’s artisan would draw a cartoon of the entire hanging on paper or cheap fabric.This cartoon would be transferred to the hanging’s rich background cloth by first pricking holes along the lines of its design, and then pouncing chalk through those holes onto the fabric. Only then could the workshop members determine where the priests’ copes and other garments would be tailored and applied. Once the background cloth was set in a large frame steadied by bands of heavy linen at the back, the tailored pieces of priests’ copes could be appliquéd onto the background cloth with embroidery stitches. As each hanging was painstakingly produced in the ‘guarderobe’ at Chatsworth, it brought together materials from across time and space, including the priests’ vestments from England’s recent Catholic past, once part of the rich stores of ancient monasteries at their dissolution. These magnificent

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woven and embroidered vestments were appliquéd in place with embroidery silk that had travelled to southern France via trade routes from the Far East. In 1575, for example, the earl imported an impressive amount of embroidery silk via Rouen, ‘14lbs of fine sleyed [floss] silk for my lady, being of all colours at 32s the lb’. This thread, no doubt destined for use in Bess’s hangings as well as other needlework, cost as much, Santina Levey points out, as ‘the annual salaries of several embroiderers’.27 As Bess envisioned how to organise the production of the eight room-sized hangings, it is possible that the central figures were worked out in a single coherent vision from the start. But given the complexities of representing her gynocracy through an epistemology of time and space, it is easy to see how this monumental work became the intermittent labour of a decade. As Mary was being moved every few weeks because of the need to clean her lodgings, Bess was travelling to court and among the Shrewsburys’ many properties. Many of the household members required to mount and embroider the hangings may have only been available seasonally. One constant, however, remained. As Bess and her collaborators worked through their choices and organised the labour involved in these works of textile art, they faced the enduring problem of representing how female rule depends on male rule for its authority, and yet transcends that need. In the ‘Noble Women’ series, Bess found a way around and through this problem, by choosing queens and aristocrats dependent on male authority, yes, but on male authority that is lost or absent. Bess’s version of Arthemesia, part of the ‘Noble Women’ series, is a figure of a woman empowered by the untimely time and uncanny space of her widowhood. Her narratives are apparently drawn from a combination of Christine de Pizan’s account in the Citie of Ladies and Boccaccio’s in Concerning FamousWomen. As Arthemesia’s studied gestures tell us in Bess’s hanging, with a winecup lifted in her right hand and a sceptre cradled in her left, Arthemesia’s power derived from her dead husband, King Maussolos, whose memory she enshrined and whose kingdom of Caria, bordering on Rhodes, she ruled. As Christine points out, ‘during her widowhood, in addition to governing her lands in a most noteworthy manner, she frequently took up arms’.28 Boccaccio dwells on Arthemesia’s enshrining of Maussolos, first in the tomb that became one of the seven wonders of the world, the first ‘mausoleum’, then through Arthemesia’s choice to entomb Maussolos within her own body, by mixing his ashes in her wine and ‘slowly’ drinking his remains.29 Arthemesia’s creation of her building and body as ‘uncanny space’ achieves the life-in-death and death-in-life oscillation to which Bess returns throughout these hangings.



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Bess uses such discrete moments to channel entire narratives composed of untimely time and uncanny space, while providing a narrative that parallels Bess’s creation of Chatsworth as a shrine that embodies her authority. The ways in which Arthemesia represents both her own story and Bess’s presentation of female authority through loss is repeated in the other major figures in the ‘Noted Women’ series. Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, is paired with Arthemesia as a fellow widow, ruler and warrior. Zenobia is represented as a portrait of Bess, crowned and dressed in armour from the waist up,30 with her right hand resting on a knight’s helmet and her left carrying a lance so long and powerful that it breaks upwards through the architectural arch that frames her. Another example of effective female governance as well as military expertise, according to Christine, Zenobia began her military career as a general before her husband’s death, and continued afterwards, reclaiming large portions of Persia ostensibly for the Roman Empire, and eventually invading Egypt, of which her son became king.31 Compared to Arthemesia, who died not long after her husband, Zenobia represents a female ruler authorised by her widowhood to act as both general and governor for many years. Defenders of Protestantism in the seventeenth century – and many people since – have wanted to imagine Elizabeth at Tilbury in a rather similar armoured costume, with cuirass above and skirt below.32 In the 1570s, when Bess and her workshop conjured a queen in armour for which the source is as yet unknown, she could only be imagined in the staged space of her hanging, where the interior of Elizabethan Chatsworth overlapped the borders of ancient Syria, Arabia and Egypt. In addition to this pair of royal widows, Bess chose to pair Lucrecia (after whom she had named a daughter who did not survive) and Cleopatra, two pre-Christian, Roman-era authoritative women who, through suicides in protection of their honour, represent another side of dynastic loyalty and loss. Lucrecia’s rape by Sextus, son of the Roman tyrant Tarquin, is enabled by the absence of her husband, Collatinus. After Lucrecia tells her family of the rape and immediately stabs herself to death, her aristocratic and royal family members overthrow Tarquin, and the Roman Republic is born. Although Lucrecia is the one central figure in Bess’s hangings who is not a ruler, she is nevertheless a towering political figure in Roman history, the woman on whom the definition of male authority rested. Bess, who owned a copy of Chaucer, may well have read its affirmation of Lucrecia’s effect on male rule: ‘Ne never was ther king in Rome toun / Sin thilke day’.33 Bess chose to picture the moment of Lucrecia’s suicide, the moment that, as Maureen Quilligan points out, ‘is her means of making the truth known’.34

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In doing so, Bess rejected the long-standing visual tradition in European art of inviting the male viewer to enjoy Lucrecia’s suicide as a moment to behold her beauty. Bess’s design instead asserts the untimely passing of Lucrecia from life to death as an illustration of female authority, delivered in part by Lucrecia’s sorrowful but determined gaze, even as her head bends slightly and gracefully away from the knife. In Bess’s textile version of Lucrecia’s suicide, her arm, caught in the moment that she is delivering her own deathblow, is heavily muscled in a Mannerist fashion, emphasising that this moment of life-in-death, and death-in-life lies in her own power. Bess’s companion piece to Lucrecia, Cleopatra, is, like her choice of Arthemesia with wine and sceptre, and Zenobia in armour, not a predictable member of a list of ‘virtues’ in the 1570s.35 Boccaccio describes Cleopatra as a debauched and lascivious queen, while Chaucer’s description of her jumping naked into a pit of snakes is hardly respectful, and Plutarch, although granting her a gift with languages that enhanced her rule, described her as having bewitched Antony. Christine declines to include her altogether.36 Yet at least two narratives presenting Cleopatra in a positive light were available by the 1570s. Of the poems sympathetic to Cleopatra inspired by Pope Julius II’s recovery of the Roman ‘Belvedere Cleopatra’ in 1512, those sympathetic to Cleopatra’s suffering – by Baldessare Castiglione, Bernardino Baldi and Agostino Favoriti – were later included in the installation of the sculpture, while still others were written by Fausto Romano and Michaelangelo (c. 1544–6).37 More accessible to Bess and collaborators would have been Robert Garnier’s Antonie, published in France in 1578 and translated by Mary Sidney Herbert in 1592. Although Garnier’s closet drama displays much of Cleopatra’s untrustworthiness, he still pictures her as a sovereign queen as well as wife and mother, skilled in diplomacy and languages, dying from grief at the loss of Antony. Bess’s decision that her figure of Cleopatra be attended by the cardinal virtues, Fortitudo and Justitia, suggests that Bess chose the narrative of Cleopatra as virtuous if despairing widow of Roman Egypt from those available to her. Perhaps because the alternative sources continued to encircle Bess’s Cleopatra, ‘Cleopatra’ is the one hanging of Bess’s ‘Noble Women’ that did not survive the centuries. Levey speculates that it was damaged by light because of its location at Hardwick New Hall, then taken apart to repair the other four hangings.38 Perhaps the Cleopatra hanging also invited neglect because its presence challenged the ability of Bess’s descendants to normalise her idiosyncratic ruling figures as a series of ‘virtues’. Only two ornamental details remain from the Cleopatra hanging itself, which would have supported the platform on which she stood. But from



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these, Levey is able to determine that Cleopatra’s platform was ‘faced with green and yellow voided velvet matching that on the Lucrecia hanging’.39 If we consider that Arthemesia and Zenobia were paired visually and through narrative as widows, thinking about Lucrecia and Cleopatra as politically charged suicides in defence of female authority suggests one way to reconstruct what this missing hanging of Cleopatra looked like. Based on Lucrecia’s death-in-life, life-in-death enactment of her suicide, it seems likely that Bess’s depiction of Cleopatra also showed the moment of her suicide. A print of 1515 by the prolific engraver Agostino Veneziano from a design by Baccio Bandinelli40 is a probable immediate or shared source for Bess’s lost figure and would have paired well with Bess’s Lucrecia. It shows a standing naked woman holding two snakes to her breasts as she leans heavily to her right, against the amphora from which she has taken the snakes. She is standing in the desert, a palace based on European architecture in the distance to her right, with a knotted drape of textile creating a backdrop that thinly separates her from this imagined Egypt. Death is upon her, as her face contorts in pain. The print is labelled ‘Isis’, an alternative name for Cleopatra. If this or a similar print was Bess’s source, it provides a fitting parallel for Lucrecia’s suicide. In keeping with her other ‘Noble Women’, Bess would have had her artisan straighten the bent figure into an upright one, clothe her nakedness in classical garb and compose her features into a calmer determination, with just a hint, as in Lucrecia’s face, of anguish. Like Lucrecia, Bess’s Cleopatra, caught in the moment when the asps are striking, would have stood on several thresholds conveying empowerment: between Roman Egypt and English Chatsworth, as well as between life and death. Bess’s Penelope is the one hanging without a paired figure, suggesting her significance. Moreover, this Penelope once again features a portrait of Bess, this time as a countess complete with her coronet. Penelope employs the grandest authoritative gesture of any of the ‘Noble Women’, with her right hand and forefinger raised, while her left rests on a rolled-up textile held together by a band, the shroud for Laertes with which she managed to hold off her suitors and so preserve her chastity during Ulysses’s absence. Once again, Bess selected a woman ruler – in this case, of the Island of Ithaca, a woman whom Boccaccio describes as being ‘of noble birth’41 – whose authority is once again defined by her husband’s absence, as closely affiliated with her textile production.Within this narrative, Penelope is both strong and vulnerable, ruler of Ithaca for twenty years, although dependent on the return of her husband to stave off the determined suitors, even as his delayed return creates

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the narrative space for the Odyssey. Penelope’s narrative is ideal for the woman who wants to exercise independent authority based on a missing husband. Penelope and Ulysses’s narrative of presence-as-absence was clearly the most compelling for Bess, because it is repeated among her most splendid furnishings. A series of tapestries showing Ulysses’s wanderings and his eventual return were and are now in the great hall at New Hardwick. Moreover, a painting attributed to John Balechouse at Hardwick New Hall shows the return of Ulysses in a series of three asynchronous images: Ulysses arrives on horseback; he interrupts Penelope’s suitors; and, in a distinctly inset picture from the past, Penelope weaves Laertes’s shroud.42 Like the other female figures in the ‘Noble Women’ series, Bess’s Penelope rests on the presentbut-absent layering so prevalent in Bess’s own life, and throughout Chatsworth. The gap between the location of Penelope’s ‘home’ in Ithaca and her husband’s wanderings to some extent tells the story of Bess’s life as estates manager while her last three husbands, William Cavendish, William St Loe and George Talbot, wandered from palace to palace with the Tudor monarchs of England. Although, truth be told, Bess was herself moving with Elizabeth or among her properties at the same time. Without question, however, Bess saw herself as this patient weaver and problem-solver, depending on the presence and absence of her husband as the source of her rule over her own properties, family and finances. The second series of Bess of Hardwick’s wall hangings has been titled by Santina Levey, after the Inventory of 1601, the ‘Set of wall hangings depicting Three Virtues and their Contrary Vices’.43 The prints on which these three hangings are based, first published in 1576 by Hans Collaert after Crispijn van den Broeck,44 may seem to fall within the tidy limits of an oppositional reading – each supposedly presenting a virtue opposed to a vice. However, these hangings, completed after the ‘Noble Women of the Ancient World’ series, revisit the question of women’s rule, and do so quite differently, in part because, as Levey herself suggests, each hanging’s personified virtue was represented as a portrait of a ruling woman: Mary, Queen of Scots; Bess, countess of Shrewsbury; and Queen Elizabeth I of England. Moreover, the ‘Three Virtues’ series features inset pictures, in the style of an artisan employed by Bess, quite possibly the John Balechouse who painted ‘The Return of Ulysses’ using a similar asynchronous inset. These insets create dense ‘time knots’, to return to Jonathan Gil Harris’s phrase, which disturb time and space within each hanging and in doing so disrupt any dualistic reading. As we have seen, the ‘Noble Women’ series defines gynocracy in relation to male absence and loss, with Bess appearing as two of her central figures,



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Zenobia and Penelope, and Mary appearing in a supporting role as Chastity to Lucrecia. The ‘Three Virtues and their Contrary Vices’ series pairs Mary, Bess and Elizabeth, Virtues-as-female-rulers, not with three Vices, but with three male historical figures from the Mediterranean past. The result is that the two hangings that survive invite us not only to oppose the female and male figures within them, but also to examine the extent to which their palimpsestic layering of time and place create them as mutually constitutive, even as female virtue, pictured as female rule, proves invincible in each hanging. Very little remains of the Hope/Judas panel, which Santina Levey surmises included a portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots. We can imagine it somewhat from Collaert’s engraving,45 but here as in the other two ‘Virtues’ hangings, Collaert’s work lacks the design element so strikingly added to the other two hangings in the ‘Three Virtues’ series: the inclusion of inset pictures that Bess’s artisan added to their source. The only additional detail worth commenting on in the piece of the Hope/Judas panel that remains is that once again Bess’s artisan has taken a seated figure from a printed source – Hope – and redrawn her as a standing female figure, and, therefore, as more authoritative than the original. As in all the surviving hangings, the result is a mix of one fairly stiff central figure attended by more graceful and lifelike forms. The missing inset picture suggested by the print source might well have included Judas’s body hanging from a tree, and, continuing the print’s garden theme, perhaps Judas’s kiss in the Garden of Gethsemane, a possible reminder that Judas’s betrayal is part of the larger narrative of Hope rather than its ‘contrary’. The panel ‘Temperance and Sardanapales’, which contains the third portrait of Bess in these panels,46 juxtaposes Temperance, Bess’s favourite Virtue (and again the name of a daughter who died), with the Assyrian king whose story has come down through a series of Greek historians, including, in the first century bce, Diadorus, with a more contemporary mention in Castiglione’s Courtier.47 Sardanapales earned his place in ancient history for the excesses of pleasure he enjoyed, often while dressed as a woman. As the hanging shows, following an uprising among his people, he died by turning his palace into a funeral pyre, while enjoying a final party with his concubines. But Bess’s hanging gives us a more virtuous version of Sardanapales’s banquet. Bess dominates the hanging as an authoritative, standing Temperance, mixing water with wine as an emblem of moderation, although her wineglass is also an echo of Arthemesia’s glass of wine, mixed not with water, but with the ashes of her husband. Instead of a cross-dressed Sardanapales next to Temperance,

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we have Sardanapales as a male figure holding a silk-winder and spindle,48 as a reminder of Omphale’s dressing of Hercules as a woman. The part of ‘Temperance and Sardanapales’ that disturbs a simple opposition between Temperance and Excess is the large inset picture dominating the hanging’s upper-right quadrant. The inset shows two distinct, synchronous scenes. On the left, Sardanapales sets light to his palace, while a much larger scene of courtly feasting around a banquet table dominates the centre. Just to the right stands a woman alone, playing a lute, while two women in the foreground bring additional food. Flames shoot out of the palace windows and roof, apparently unnoticed by the participants below. Bess’s artisan has added much to the original print in this inset, including a single, upright unidentified female nearly at its exact centre. She stands facing outwards, an observer or perhaps judge of the merriment, and therefore a doubled figure of Temperance within the inset, especially since she may well represent another portrait of Bess. Although facing outwards, she participates in the feast insofar as she has a hand on a loaf of bread on the table, but otherwise is disconnected visually and emotionally from the scene. Back at the table behind her, Sardanapales has a woman seated upright on his lap and another woman brings him a cup of wine. But in contrast to the half-clad revellers in the original print, Bess’s inset revellers on the whole form a well-dressed, respectable group of women, with upright, courtly postures, and clothed in French fashions from the 1570s, dated by the style of linen ruff,49 puffed sleeves, and cut of skirt and bodice. This hanging’s inset picture starts to take us to Assyria, but on the way, we finish up at a contemporary English, French or Scottish banquet. The flames, music, wine and food tell us this is Sardanapales’s last hurrah, but the scene is too decorous to create an opposition between it and Temperance. This lack of opposition undercuts the scene’s attempts to depict excess so much that Temperance and Sardanapales come to resemble one another. They might even share a cup of watered wine, even as the flames remind us that the Assyrian is about to die. In this scene, Temperance rules supreme, so dominating the depiction of excess that the hanging’s legendary banquet must have looked familiar, presenting a formal version of countless tapestries of courtly pleasures. The least predictable pairing in the ‘Three Virtues’ series might seem to be that of Faith and Mohamet, with Faith a recognisable portrait of Elizabeth I holding a Bible and chalice. By the time the overall design for this hanging was produced in Bess’s workshop, the juxtaposition of Faith and Mohamet had become less judgemental of Islam than earlier such pairings. One early



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juxtaposition exists in the ‘Fama’ panel of the Los Honores suite of tapestries in 1527, which is a source for Collaert’s engraving of Hope and Judas as well. In the ‘Fama’ tapestry, Faith, surveying the many figures of her landscape, oversees Temperance sitting firmly on top of Mohamet. He lies prone beneath her on his stomach, barely able to lift his head with its stereotyped semitic features.50 Collaert’s print of 1576 temporises this openly negative picture of the founder of Islam by placing a seated, upright Faith next to a slumping Mohamet, her foot stretched out as if to trample the unlabelled book beside him,51 but not touching it. Bess and her workshop go much further than Collaert to include Mohamet, Islam and representatives of Islamic culture in her hanging. Faith’s representation as a portrait of Elizabeth I suggests that her presence in the picture has everything to do with this shift. The panel of Faith and Mohamet is divided visually into two halves, with Faith on the left and Mohamet, together with an inset picture of several Muslims, on the right. Both halves of the hanging are, however, included visually in the same Elizabethan room, constructed through textiles as framed by two Ionic pillars painted in blue and white strapwork, with an embroidered floor. Within this room, rather than a Faith who physically tramples or threatens to trample Mohamet, Elizabeth as Faith extends her arm in Mohamet’s direction, not warmly but in a gesture suggesting inclusion. Moreover Faith’s outer robe, its foremost edge lined with ermine, drapes gracefully into the Islamic half of the hanging to cover part of Mohamet’s sleeve. Mohamet leans on his right hand, wearing a pensive expression instead of the despairing, beaten expression of Collaert’s print. The book that lies before Mohamet, the Islamic counter to Faith’s Bible, is embellished with needlework and labelled with the sixteenth-century term for the Quran, Alchabon.52 The presence of a Quran and its label suggest that there is some knowledge at Chatsworth about Islam, and that the Quran signifies more than ideas that must be trampled. Like the hanging of Temperance and Sardanapales, this depiction of Faith and Mohamet includes an inset picture in the upper-right quadrant that creates a space where the past and present meet. In ‘Faith and Mohamet’, three gracefully designed pictures add everyday detail to the Collaert print. Their background is a mosque constructed using European design elements, with two large Gothic windows, a band of Elizabethan strapwork across the front of the building and a large Gothic door. Two groups of mustachioed ‘Turks’ stand in relaxed postures in the foreground, wearing robes and turbans, closely resembling Albrecht Dürer’s drawing of Turks after Gentile Bellini’s The Procession to St Mark’s. This epic painting, completed in 1496, was

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disseminated in engravings like Erhard Schoen’s Two Turks with a Servant. Other possible sources for these Turks include the picture of two Turks in the Cosmographie de Levant that St Loe had purchased in 1560, or perhaps works like that inventoried in Mary’s library after her death, Ane Turk buik of paintrie, or a Turkish book of ‘paintrie’ or ‘painted pictures or designs’.53 The dress of the Turks in Bess’s hanging derives in any case from the early to mid-sixteenth century. In Bess’s hanging, the men are talking calmly and attentively to one another, the first group with seven turbans showing, although with only five visible faces, and the second group of three men. These groups are overseen by a single, distinguished turbaned male with a long white beard emerging from the large Gothic arch framing the mosque’s door. He holds a thick book, the ermine trim of his robe echoing Elizabeth’s garment. This figure may be a version of Mohamet, while the thoughtful groups of talking men may suggest merchants as much as religious discussion. Adapting European architecture, clothing and contemporary ‘Turkish’ dress to the inset picture in ‘Faith and Mohamet’ multiplies this hanging’s layers of time and place, inhibiting any simple opposition between its two central figures. The Islamic world of the inset that these men inhabit is European in design, while the entire inset appears as a picture on the wall of Faith’s Elizabethan room. Taken as a full picture, with Queen Elizabeth as Faith, this hanging does not so much contrast a Virtue and its ‘Vice’ as present a forceful portrait of the Queen of England who, in the 1570s and 1580s, was continually making the overtures necessary to find additional markets for English goods, as the Tudors had been doing since the 1550s. These overtures were increasingly institutionalised in the 1580s and 1590s, as she authorised the founding of the Venice, Turkey and Barbary Companies. Not only was establishing trade and diplomacy with the Ottoman Empire of strong interest to Elizabeth, but in 1589, Bess’s oldest son Henry Cavendish would join a merchant, Richard Mallory of London, on a trip to Constantinople. Henry, who took the journey as an interested sightseer rather than as a merchant, helps to fill out our picture of how geographically close Turkey had begun to seem to the English. To mark the occasion, Henry’s servant, Alfred Fox, wrote an account of this trip, titled Mr Harrie Cavendish: His Journey to and from Constantinople, whose complete lack of incident – as far from the sensationalist Coryats Crudities (1611) as can be imagined – seems to be the reason for both the journey and its written record.54 As a result, the hanging of Faith-as-Elizabeth with Mohamet and ‘Turkish’ figures was probably less of a surprise at Chatsworth in the 1570s than it is in the twenty-first century, when the representation of Mohamet is sometimes contested. The ‘Faith and Mohamet’ hanging marks its definition



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of female rule through Queen Elizabeth I’s demonstrable connection of the Islamic world to English diplomacy, trade and culture. In this, the eighth of Bess’s room-size hangings, her artistry registers both this shift in global perception and herself as its recorder, a centrepiece of the personal and political relations through which Bess of Hardwick constructed women’s rule at Chatsworth.

Notes 1 Santina M. Levey, The Embroideries at Hardwick Hall: A Catalogue (London: National Trust, 2008), p. 86. 2 Susan Frye, Pens and Needles:Women’s Textualities in Early Modern England (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2010), pp. 10–11 and 225. 3 Mark Girouard, ‘Elizabethan Chatsworth’, Country Life, 22 November 1973, pp. 1668–72. 4 Girouard, ‘Elizabethan Chatsworth’, p. 1669. 5 Mary S. Lovell, Bess of Hardwick: Empire Builder (NewYork:W.W. Norton & Company, 2005), pp. 218, 226–7, 228–9 and 339. 6 Nicholas Royle, The Uncanny (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), p. 2. 7 Jonathan Gil Harris, Untimely Matter in the Time of Shakespeare (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), p. 20. 8 Harris, Untimely Matter, p. 20. 9 Anne Clifford, The Memoir of 1603 and the Diary of 1616–1619, edited by Katherine O. Acheson (London: Broadview Press, 2006), p. 184. Clifford records that ‘my lord’ made the decisions about how to ‘dress’ the house (p. 133). 10 Gordon Donaldson, The First Trial of Mary Queen of Scots (London: New English Library, 1974). 11 Kathleen Wilson-Chevalier, ‘Women on top at Fontainebleau’, Oxford Art Journal, 16:1 (1993), pp. 34–48. 12 H. R.Woudhuysen, ‘Sidney, Sir Philip (1554–1586)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2004. 13 John Selden, ‘Illustration’, a gloss on Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, 1612 edition, STC 7226, xviii, p. 276. Selden was the lover and perhaps the second husband of Bess’s granddaughter Elizabeth Talbot Grey, countess of Kent. 14 1 Mary, st. 3, c. 1: Statutes of the Realm, iv, 222, in Tudor Constitutional Documents A.D. 1485–1602: With an Historical Commentary, edited by J. R. Tanner, ed., 2nd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2013), p. 122; Susan Frye, ‘Specters of female sovereignty in Shakespeare’s plays’, in The Oxford Handbooks of Shakespeare and Embodiment: Gender, Sexuality, and Race, edited by Valerie Traub (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 112–30.

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15 Jerry Brotton, The Sultan and the Queen: The Untold Story of Elizabeth and Islam (New York: Viking, 2016), pp. 1–11. 16 For example, Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton, Global Interests: Renaissance Art Between East and West (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000); Debra Johanyak and Walter S. H. Lim (eds), The English Renaissance, Orientalism, and the Idea of Asia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Jyotsna G. Singh (ed.), A Companion to the Global Renaissance: English Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2009); Richmond Barbour, Before Orientalism: London’s Theatre of the East, 1576–1626 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 2003. 17 Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, p. 151. Frank Lestringant, Mapping the Renaissance World: The Geographic Imagination in the Age of Discovery, translated by David Fausett (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), focuses on André de Thevet (chaplain to Catherine de Medici and later cosmographer to the King of France) and his Cosmographie de Levant (Lyon: Jean de Tourmes and Guillaume Gazeau, 1554, 1556), available at Bibliothèque nationale de France, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ ark:/12148/bpt6k545339 (accessed 10 July 2018). 18 Three extant letters from Hugh Fitzwilliam provided Bess with news of the Turkish invasion along with the most recent news about the Shrewsburys’ captive, Mary, Queen of Scots: Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: The Complete Correspondence, c.1550–1608, edited by 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), www.bessofhardwick.org, letters of 28 July 1570 (ID 025), 31 August 1570 (ID 170) and 15 September 1571 (ID 026). The quotation is from letter 025. 19 Brotton, The Sultan and the Queen, p. 62. 20 Levey, The Embroideries at Hardwick Hall, p. 24. 21 Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, p. 199. 22 Historical Manuscript Commission, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Salisbury (London: His Majesty’s Stationers’ Office, 1883), vol. 3, pp. 158–61. 23 Margaret Swain, Needlework of Mary Queen of Scots (Bedford: Ruth Bean Publishers, 1986), pp. 51 and 80. On appliqué as the means to make tents and other large textiles, see Santina M. Levey, Elizabethan Treasures:The Hardwick Hall Textiles (London: National Trust Enterprises), p. 69. 24 Lovell, Bess of Hardwick, p. 221, concurs with these portraits’ identity. 25 Frye, Pens and Needles, pp. 68–74 and 45–67. 26 Margaret Ellis, ‘The Hardwick wall hangings: an unusual collaboration in English sixteenth-century embroidery’, Renaissance Studies, 10:2 (1996), pp. 280–300, at pp. 281–2. Calendar of State Papers Relating to Scotland and Mary, Queen of Scots, 1547–1605, edited by John Thorpe Markham (Edinburgh: His Majesty’s General Register House, 1889–1969), vol. 2, p. 565; vol. 16, p. 979. Swain, Needlework of Mary Queen of Scots, pp. 72 and 91.



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27 Levey, The Embroideries at Hardwick Hall, p. 54. 28 Besides Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Bess’s sources include her own versions of Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, edited by Walter Skeat (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899); Christine de Pizan’s Citie of Ladies, translated by Earl Jeffrey Richards (New York: Quality Paperback Book, 1992), p. 55; and Giovanni Boccaccio’s Concerning Famous Women, translated by Guido A. Guarino (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1963), pp. 123–7). Maureen Quilligan analyses relations between these three sources in The Allegory of Female Authority: Christine de Pizan’s Cité des Dames (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991). The Citie is a likely source for many of Bess’s hangings because both Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, owned tapestries of The Citie of Ladies. Susan Groag Bell, The Lost Tapestries of the City of Ladies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). 29 Boccaccio, Concerning Famous Women, p. 123. 30 Levey, The Embroideries at Hardwick Hall, p. 68. 31 De Pizan, Citie of Ladies, pp. 52–5. 32 Susan Frye, Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 3–4. 33 Chaucer, Legend of Good Women, pp. 190–1. 34 Quilligan, The Allegory of Female Authority, p. 157. 35 Cleopatra did, however, become popular later: Lady Anne Clifford was painted as Daniel’s Cleopatra, and Bess’s great-granddaughters Lady Jane Cavendish and Lady Elizabeth Brackley mention her as a role model in their play The Concealed Fancies. 36 Chaucer, Legend of Good Women, pp. 42–6; Boccaccio, Concerning Famous Women, pp. 192–7. Baldessare Castiglione mentions Arthemesia, Zenobia and Cleopatra as worthy women rulers, only to have Cleopatra’s sexuality exclude her in The Book of the Courtier (New York: Doubleday, 1959), pp. 239–40. Plutarch, Antony, translated by John Dryden, available at http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/ antony.html (accessed 10 July 2018). 37 Brian Curran, The Egyptian Renaissance:The Afterlife of Ancient Egypt in Early Modern Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), pp. 170–6. The ‘Belvedere Cleopatra’ is currently considered to be the figure of Ariadne (Curran, Egyptian Renaissance, p. 170). 38 Levey, The Embroideries at Hardwick Hall, p. 85. 39 Levey, The Embroideries at Hardwick Hall, p. 85. 40 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Elisha Whittelsey Collection, 49.97.73. www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/342842 (accessed 10 July 2018). 41 Boccaccio, Concerning Famous Women, p. 81. 42 Attributed to John Balechouse, The Return of Ulysses to Penelope, in Karen Hearn, Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England (Peterborough: Tate, 1995), p. 101.

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43 Santina M. Levey and Peter Thornton, Of Household Stuff: The 1601 Inventories of Bess of Hardwick (London: National Trust, 2001), p. 45. 44 Levey, The Embroideries at Hardwick Hall, p. 86. 45 Levey, The Embroideries at Hardwick Hall, pp. 87–9. 46 Levey, The Embroideries at Hardwick Hall, pp. 86 and 93. 47 Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, p. 240. 48 Levey, The Embroideries at Hardwick Hall, p. 92. 49 Levey, The Embroideries at Hardwick Hall, pp. 96–7. 50 ‘Fides’ panel, Guy Delmarcel, Los Honores: Flemish Tapestries for the Emperor Charles V, translated by Alastair Weir (Mechelen: Snoeck-Ducaju & Zoon, 2000), pp. 9–10 and 84–6. 51 Levey, The Embroideries at Hardwick Hall, p. 101. 52 Levey, The Embroideries at Hardwick Hall, p. 100. 53 Erhard Schoen, Two Turks with a Servant, not before 1491–1542, ArtStor 1301.237; after Albrecht Dürer’s copy of Gentile Bellini, Procession to St Mark’s, probably derived from a visit to Bellini’s workshop. Thevet, Cosmographie, engraving including two Turks, p. 187. The Library of Mary Queen of Scots, and of King James the Sixth (Glasgow: Maitland Club, 1834), p. 8. Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/dost/paintrie (accessed 10 July 2018). Later Islamic interpretations proscribe drawing the human figure; see, for example, the sixteenth-century ‘The Prophet Muhammad reveals to Cali secrets revealed to him during the Miscraj’, Tarjuma-I Thawaqib-I manaqib, in Turkish, translation ordered in 1590 by Sultan Murad III from the Persian abridgement of Aflaki. Iraq, Baghdad, MS M. 466, fol. 96r, J. Paul Getty Museum. Several Persian manuscripts depict the life of Mohamet, including scenes when his followers surround him as he speaks. 54 Alfred Fox, Mr. Harry Cavendish: HisVoyage to Constantinople, 1589 (London: Office of the Royal Historical Society, 1940). On Thomas Coryate, see Barbour, Before Orientalism, pp. 115–45.

8

A difficult and volatile alliance: the countess of Shrewsbury and the Lady Arbella Stuart Sara Jayne Steen

Like many early modern women, Elizabeth Talbot, countess of Shrewsbury, and the Lady Arbella Stuart, her granddaughter, have been assessed negatively over the centuries, and often in gendered and oppositional terms: Bess of Hardwick was too ambitious and single-minded for a woman, and Arbella was too romantic and naive for a claimant. With increased access to their letters in recent decades, however, more complex portraits are emerging. Because the two women were politically significant, their letters have survived in sizeable numbers. Bess of Hardwick and Arbella Stuart are among the very few early modern English women for whom over seventy letters are extant,1 and to date over a hundred letters by each have been located. Hundreds more were written to and about them. For these two women, then, there is a substantial body of evidence. In addition, recent scholarship on letters and on the early modern family allows those letters to be read within their context, one that differs in culture and convention from our own.2 The situations that Bess of Hardwick and the Lady Arbella Stuart faced exemplify one aspect of that culture, the interconnection of the state and family among the landed elite. Politics and the household were not separate spheres; the family was a political entity. Advancing their family in land, wealth and political importance was part of both women’s responsibilities, and extant letters demonstrate that Bess and later Arbella took those responsibilities seriously. Bess was forty-eight years old, and her patronage and news networks were already far-reaching when Arbella was born.3 During her marriage to Sir William St Loe, Bess had served as lady-in-waiting to the queen, and her subsequent marriage to the earl of Shrewsbury expanded her wealth and connections.With Arbella’s birth in 1575, Bess was the grandmother of a potential queen. Family concerns could impact the thrones of England

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and Scotland. For both women, that reality and its conceivable rewards and dangers were part of daily life. In 1574, Bess was instrumental in creating that dynastic tension. Although Arbella’s parents’ unlicensed marriage was portrayed to the crown as impetuous young love, Bess and Margaret Douglas, dowager countess of Lennox, understood the hazard when they allowed and likely encouraged Bess’s daughter Elizabeth Cavendish and Margaret’s son Charles Stuart, earl of Lennox, to wed. Charles was a claimant. His older brother, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, had been husband to Mary, Queen of Scots. Marriages of claimants were forbidden without Queen Elizabeth’s approval, but this marriage united Talbot wealth and Stuart blood, advancing both families. With the marriage, Bess’s daughter Elizabeth became countess of Lennox, and Elizabeth’s child, Arbella, born a year later, was a member of the royal family, a descendant of Henry VII, as were her grandmother, father, aunt Mary of Scots, cousin King James VI of Scotland, and Queen Elizabeth. Aged forty-two and childless, Queen Elizabeth could name the child her successor. The marriage occurred only a few miles from where the exiled Mary of Scots, Margaret Douglas’s daughterin-law, was residing in the custody of Bess’s husband, Shrewsbury. Not surprisingly, Queen Elizabeth and her advisors were angry and investigated whether Mary of Scots or her Catholic supporters were involved. Margaret Douglas was briefly imprisoned. That the queen’s response was relatively mild and that she continued to trust the Shrewsburys to guard Mary suggest that she believed that Bess was loyal.4 Arbella initially lived with her parents and grandmother Margaret in Hackney, but soon suffered unhappy losses. In 1576, when Arbella was six months old, her father died of what was called consumption. Arbella should have inherited his title and Scottish estates, but James’s regent seized the lands, and James later revoked the earldom. In 1578, when Arbella was two years old, her grandmother Margaret died, and Queen Elizabeth seized the English Lennox estates for debt. Nearly all of Arbella’s inheritance was gone.5 Bess and her network convinced the queen to allot annual pensions for the young widow and her daughter, £400 for Elizabeth Lennox and £200 for Arbella,6 and mother and child returned to live with the Shrewsburys. In 1582, when Arbella was six, her mother died after a short illness. As Elizabeth Lennox had requested,7 Bess was granted guardianship, the welfare of a potential queen her responsibility. Barbara J. Harris has argued that aristocratic motherhood in early modern England, and by extension grandmotherhood, was ‘a class-specific, historically distinctive form of motherhood’, focused less on the ‘routine physical tasks’



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of care, for which there were servants, and more on promoting the child’s and thus the family’s future. Mothers oversaw their daughters’ educations, advanced them in other households or at court, arranged their marriages and secured their finances. Once the daughters were married, mothers might play another role, with visits at births and on special occasions, as adult relationships evolved.8 Bess’s activities over Arbella’s youth are consistent with that analysis, and Bess was a vigorous advocate. However, Harris’s second stage, of a warm relationship among independent adults, did not occur in natural course. By the queen’s command, Arbella was not matched in marriage, but continued in her grandmother’s charge. Arbella would be twenty-seven years old and Bess seventy-five when the breach between the two women became a matter of state concern. Within days of Elizabeth Lennox’s death, Bess was addressing Arbella’s finances. Bess wrote to William Cecil, Lord Burghley, requesting that Elizabeth’s pension be added to that of ‘my swett Iuell Arbella’, because ‘her better education her servauntes that are to loke to her, her masters that are to trayne her upp in all good Learninge and vertue will require no small charges’.9 She also wrote to Sir Francis Walsingham that day, noting the importance of having Arbella ‘the soner be redye to attende on her Majestie’, a theme to which Bess often referred in promoting her granddaughter.10 In May, she pressed Walsingham, arguing that preparing a child to attend the queen could hardly be done even with the combined pensions. Bess added that Arbella was very bright ‘and I very carefull of her good educatyon as yf she were my owne and only chyld, and a great deale more for the consanguynitye she ys of her majesty’.11 As Alison Wiggins has noted, Bess here ‘emphasised the alignment of her role as a mother to Arbella with her political role in service to the queen and the divine succession’.12 The queen did not increase the pension. Nor was Bess able to restore Arbella’s title or Lennox estates. The portrait of Arbella at twenty-three months that hangs in Hardwick Hall is of an auburnhaired toddler holding a doll. The child wears an embroidered court dress and around her neck a countess’s coronet and shield on a triple chain. The portrait is labelled ‘Arbella Comitessa Leviniae’, countess of Lennox. As years passed, it was becoming clear that neither monarch planned to return Arbella’s inheritance. Yet a second Hardwick portrait of the thirteen-year-old Arbella in white formal dress with her hand on a table near her books bears the label ‘Arbella Stvarta Comitessa Leviniae’. Lisa Hopkins discusses in the Introduction to this volume the great significance Bess attached to the rank of countess, and the portrait identification suggests that Bess held firmly that the title and estates were Arbella’s birthright. Arbella shared that belief. In disgrace in

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1603, she offered Queen Elizabeth as a piece of her penance finally to ‘forgett my long desired land’, estates that the queen had claimed twenty-five years earlier.13 The tenacious Lennox motto – Pour parvenir, j’endure, ‘To achieve, I endure’ – could be applied to both Bess and Arbella. Bess was excellent at financial and land transactions, and she saw that manors and mortgages were bought and payments made to provide Arbella with income,14 but the Lennox inheritance was lost. An appropriate marriage could have transformed Arbella’s future. Bess made one bold attempt. Sometime before 1584, Bess and her friend Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester and the queen’s longtime favourite, discussed a betrothal between Arbella and Leicester’s young son, Lord Denbigh. Bess must have believed a marriage with Leicester’s son could encourage the queen to make Arbella her heir. However, the boy died soon afterwards, and the queen learned of the attempt. Although there is no evidence that Bess was punished, Elizabeth must have been clear that the authority to choose Arbella’s consort was hers.15 Bess repeatedly asked the queen, and asked friends at court to remind the queen, about a match for Arbella. Lady Dorothy Stafford wrote to Bess in January of 1601, when Arbella was twenty-five years old, with the queen’s consistent response: ‘whereas in certaine former letters of your Ladyships your desire was that her Majestie would have that respecte of my Lady Arbella that she mighte be carefullie bestowed to her Majesties good likeing … her Majestie tould mee that she would be carefull of her’.16 For the queen, it was advantageous for Arbella to remain unmarried. She could use Arbella in diplomatic negotiations as she once had used herself, to create alliance by suggesting marriage – and now hinting at the declaration of succession. Names and possibilities, including most of the royalty of Europe, swirled through letters and international dispatches. And Arbella remained unmarried. Bess oversaw Arbella’s education and educated her as befitted someone the queen might choose as heir. Arbella was provided with excellent tutors and a classical education much like the queen’s own. On the draft or copy of a 1582 letter from Bess to Sir Thomas Cornwallis is a note that Bess may have given to the nearly seven-year-old Arbella, encouraging her ‘jewell’ to learn letter-writing by copying her grandmother’s letter: ‘Good Iuyell I pray you take payns to wryt out thes nowe with your owne hand’.17 As Bess said proudly that year, Arbella is ‘of very greate towardnes to Learne anytheng’.18 Arbella made time for study even as an adult and in her letters alluded casually to classical and biblical literature. She wrote in French and Latin and was said to read Spanish, Italian, Greek and Hebrew. She danced, sang and played the



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lute and viol. Like most aristocratic women, she practised embroidery. The needlework cover of her Hebrew/Syriac/Greek Bible is said to be her work,19 and she later presented her needlework, probably embroidered gloves, to Queen Anna Catherine of Denmark and Queen Anna, wife of her cousin James I.20 In his 1602 volume on the succession, Sir John Harington praised her for ‘hir choice education, hir rare skill in languages, hir good judgement and sight in musick, and a mynde to all these, free frome pryde, vanitye, and affectation’,21 to all of which, he said, he had been witness. Much as we might want to know the quality of the personal relationship between grandmother and granddaughter during Arbella’s childhood, there are only glimpses, like Bess’s instruction about Arbella’s practising her handwriting. Bess in letters often referred to Arbella as her jewel, a term of endearment and one she also used of others. During Arbella’s childhood, she was not always residing with her grandmother. Not long after Elizabeth Lennox’s death in 1582, the Shrewsburys separated, in part from the rigours of having guarded Mary of Scots since 1569. Mary was a financial burden, and her presence meant continual stress and intrigue. After the separation, Bess continued to manage her businesses and move among her houses. Arbella sometimes lived with her grandmother and sometimes lived with her Cavendish aunts and uncles, most often Mary and Gilbert Talbot; sometimes Arbella was entrusted to household officers during Bess’s absence.22 Others wrote to Bess, keeping her aware of everything, from Arbella’s possible new green gown to her health and cheer. Arbella’s aunt Mary Talbot, the sister only eleven months younger than Arbella’s mother, is the person to whom extant letters indicate Arbella later was most close and saw as a surrogate mother. After she joined King James’s court, Arbella wrote to Mary and Gilbert with filial care and affection, asking Mary for advice, and teasing Gilbert.23 Attendance at court was an opportunity to advance Arbella and the family. In 1587, five months after her aunt Mary of Scots had been executed for plotting against Queen Elizabeth, eleven-year-old Arbella was presented at court. Because the queen had asked the Shrewsburys to reconcile, Bess was not present.24 Arbella was accompanied by the Talbots and her uncle Charles. Many if not most people considered Arbella’s claim by birth second only to that of her cousin King James VI, and James was foreign born. If he were excluded on that basis, Arbella would be next in the line of succession. Now the queen was discussing a betrothal between Arbella and Rainutio Farnese, son of the Spanish governor of the Netherlands and the Infanta of Portugal.25 Charles wrote to Bess that Arbella dined in the queen’s presence, but disappointingly was not examined on ‘hir booke’. She and Charles dined with

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William Cecil and Walter Ralegh; Cecil commended her skill in languages and music, and the two men whispered, presumably about the happy future.26 The queen, perhaps reminding King James that there was another claimant even after his mother’s death, told the French ambassador to pay attention to Arbella: ‘she will one day be even as I am’.27 The earliest extant letter in Arbella’s handwriting is one which the twelveyear-old Arbella wrote to her grandmother from Pymmes, the Cecil estate in Edmonton where Arbella and the Talbots were staying in the south. It is the only extant letter to Bess from Arbella’s youth, and a grandmother would have been unlikely to write letters to a child. The letter is in Arbella’s formal presentation handwriting, and formally addressed: ‘To the right honorable, my very good Lady, and Grandmother, the Countesse of Shrewsbury’: Good Lady Grandmother, I have sent your Ladyship, the endes of my heare which were cutt the sixt day of the moone, on saterday laste; and with them, a pott of Gelly, which my Servante made; I pray God you finde it good. My Aunte Cavendishe was heere on Monday laste, she certified me, of your Ladyships good health, and dispositione, which I pray God longe to continue. I am in good health, my Cousin Mary hath had three little fittes of an agew, butt now she is well, and mery. Thus with my humble duty unto your Ladyship and humble thanckes for the token, you sent me laste, and craveinge your dayly blessinge, I humbly Cease. Frome Pims, the .viii. of February. 1587 Your Ladyships humble, and obbediente childe Arbella Steward28

The letter adheres to the physical conventions of respect: personally handwritten and appropriately spaced on the page. There is a good sense of audience. Arbella sends tokens, such as the hair trimmings customarily sent to loved ones, mentions her grandmother’s health, shares family news, thanks her grandmother for a gift and closes with obedience. All is brief, demonstrating the format and social interaction expected across generations. It is both personal and the letter of a dutiful child illustrating her careful education.29 Alison Wiggins comments that Arbella’s letter and gifts impressively acknowledge her grandmother ‘in linguistic, corporeal, and culinary form’.30 It is interesting that there are not more extant letters between them from Arbella’s youth and tempting to assume that, had they been as close as were Arbella and Mary Talbot, there would be more. That assumption about the relationship might be true, but archival survival is not predictable, and when Arbella was in her teens and twenties and a more capable correspondent, she more often physically resided with her grandmother and thus would not have written to her. During the Armada summer of 1588, Arbella was returned to Derbyshire. Arbella later said she had been ‘disgraced in the Presence



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and discouraged in the Lobby at Whithall’,31 though defended by Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, the queen’s favourite. Arbella might have been sent away because she took precedence as a claimant, as an ambassador later said, or because Essex was paying too much attention to the young woman who was Elizabeth’s possible successor, or because the queen simply was irritable during that tense summer. By 1589, the queen was asking after Arbella,32 a reassurance to Bess, and in October of 1591, Arbella was summoned to court and treated with great consideration. This time Bess, now a dowager countess after George’s death, came with Arbella. It was a glittering and expensive eight months across the Christmas holidays and into 1592. There were discussions of marriage, and again nothing came of them.33 In 1597, after Gilbert Talbot was honoured by being asked to lead an embassy to France, Mary Talbot, as Sarah Gristwood describes it, pushed ‘too far, too fast’ and asked if her daughters could be appointed maids-in-waiting to Arbella, appointments that would have signalled Arbella was the designated heir. The Talbots were asked to leave court.34 It requires imagination to recreate the uncertainty and fear about the succession during the second phase of Elizabeth’s reign. We know the outcome, that Robert Cecil, the queen’s first minister, would rank Arbella second and secretly negotiate with King James for a peaceful transition at the queen’s death. For those alive then, however, the jubilation after the victory over the Spanish Armada had given way to worry about what Catholics would do next to achieve the English throne. The succession was debated in books and pamphlets and allegorised in literature when even discussion was officially forbidden.35 In 1599, a Mr Muriall reportedly said there would be contention between Lady Arbella and the King of Scots and that the privy council and nobility should just agree and reassure the common people. Questioned, Muriall could not recall having mentioned the Lady Arbella.36 Those like Bess, who had known Lady Jane Grey, Lady Catherine Grey (godmother to Elizabeth Lennox) and Mary of Scots, could not have been sanguine. In September of 1592, a captured priest confessed a plot to kidnap Arbella to Brussels. Bess wrote to thank William Cecil for letting her know of this plan ‘to intrap my pore Arbell and me’, seeing the two of them as allied. In the letter, Bess portrays herself as alert to danger, and as someone who loves equally her grandchild and her queen: I have litle resort to me, my house is furnished with sufficient company, Arbell walks not late, at such tyme as she shall take the ayre, yt shalbe nere the howse, and well attended on; she goeth not to any bodyes howse atall, I se hyr almost every howre in the day, she lyeth in my bed chamber, yf I can be more presise

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then I have bene I wylbe./ I am bound in nature to be carefull for Arbell; I find hir loving and dutyfull to me, yet hire owne good and safety is not derer to me, nor more by me regarded then to accomplysh hyr Majesties pleasure, and that which I think may be for hyr service.37

Bess is vigilant, she says, implying that Cecil need not send Arbella anywhere more secure. She will hold the information confidential and, interestingly, not share his letter with Arbella, who was then almost seventeen years old, and, if Bess’s comments can be trusted, living under trying restrictions without knowing the particulars of a threat. Over the next few years, there were family members nearby, servants38 and daily household ceremonies, touring players and musicians, and the innovative Hardwick New Hall into which Bess and Arbella would move in 1597, with Bess’s seventieth birthday. But however much Bess may have been occupied with her building and businesses, Arbella would later describe being at Hardwick Hall as ‘exile with expectation’.39 By December of 1602, Arbella was twenty-seven years old, a grown woman with her life on hold. According to James Starkey, the chaplain at Hardwick Hall, who sympathised with Arbella, Bess sometimes spoke harshly and treated Arbella as a child. Arbella’s bed was still in the same room as her grandmother’s. He said of Arbella, ‘oftentymes being at her booke she would break forth into teares’.40 For Bess’s part, she repeatedly appealed to the queen to match Arbella in marriage or let her attend the queen, and Elizabeth declined. Division between Bess and Arbella grew, with the queen the absent but important third player. Finally, Arbella took matters into her own hands and defied both grandmother and queen. Marriage was a gateway to independence. On Christmas Day, she sent John Dodderidge, a long-time family retainer, to Edward Seymour, earl of Hertford, to explore whether the earl still were – as she had been told – interested in marriage between her and his older grandson, Edward.41 From Arbella’s perspective, the marriage was a plausible one. For someone of her rank, appropriate English partners were few, and she could not interfere with international diplomacy. Hertford had made an unapproved marriage to the Lady Catherine Grey, a claimant and godmother to Arbella’s mother; and he was purported to have broached the idea. Bess and Arbella’s mother had taken similar risks and been pardoned. The unanswerable question is to what extent Arbella was hoping to strengthen her claim by uniting it with that of another claimant while the succession seemed unsettled and Queen Elizabeth was rumoured to be ill. Although Arbella seems to have been successful in convincing the crown that her primary goal was independence,



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protesting that she was ‘not infected’ with ambition,42 both protest and timing are suspect. Sir Robert Cecil and Sir John Stanhope, to whom reports were sent, understood that if her actions were to become public, people might assume ‘some other idle conceipt, then the marriage’.43 Motives may be mixed; certainly Arbella sought ‘my deare and due liberty’.44 From the beginning, Arbella understood where Bess would ally herself. In handwritten instructions to Dodderidge, Arbella wrote that he should tell the Seymours to come in disguise and pretend they wanted to sell land, because ‘If they comm like themselves they shall be shutt out at the gates, I locked up, my Grandmother [wi]ll be the first shall advertise and complaine to the Queene’.45 Hertford was surprised to be addressed on this matter by someone he did not know and sent Dodderidge to Sir Robert Cecil, who began an investigation. Sir Henry Brounker, Elizabeth’s royal commissioner, eventually made three visits to Hardwick Hall, while the antagonism between the two women escalated, with each engaging in subterfuge against the other. On questioning Arbella, Brounker found her evasive, as he thought from fear of Bess or awareness of her own wrongdoing. Brounker was convinced Bess knew nothing. He reassured Bess that the queen trusted her, and Bess ‘refrained her hands’ – perhaps having started to strike Arbella.46 Bess must have been taken aback: her granddaughter was not dutiful; her intelligence network had failed her; and a valued retainer had unquestioningly obeyed Arbella. In the letters that Arbella and Bess wrote to the queen, they were careful. Arbella hoped the queen would ‘signify your Majesties most gratious remission to me by your Highnesse letter to my Lady my Grandmother whose discomfort I shall be till then’.47 Bess affirmed Arbella’s loyalty to the queen, but requested that Arbella be placed elsewhere, ‘for I cannot now assure my self of hir as I have donne’.48 When pardon was received, Arbella drafted a letter to thank Elizabeth and to ask that her exile from the queen’s presence be ended.49 To both women’s distress, the queen replied that Arbella should remain with Bess. Cecil and Stanhope said Bess should allow Arbella her former liberty and have her discreetly watched, not guard the estate openly or restrict access, for fear of continuing rumours in a countryside already armed and uneasy.Their comments suggest the crown’s concern that Bess might overreact.50 Indeed, Bess tightened security: Arbella would have no visitors, riding, walks or unmonitored conversations. In her letters, Bess positioned herself as a knowledgeable partner, explaining that she could not serve the queen and keep Arbella safe while also allowing access; Hardwick had been closed before, during ‘infection’, so Bess did not think it would be remarked upon.51 Cecil

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and Stanhope reiterated the queen’s wish that Arbella not be seen as a prisoner.52 Arbella tried to contact family and friends. She asked John Hacker, who worked for Mary Talbot and was one of the men that Brounker had reported were gathered near Hardwick Hall, to ask Mary to visit. Arbella’s gentlewoman, Bridget Sherland, also wrote to Hacker and others, presumably because she and Arbella thought Sherland could more easily get letters out, as Arbella was under close surveillance. However, Bess went further than intercepting letters: she also created false replies in which the supposed recipient would say no, he could not come now or yes, he would deliver the letter. Using techniques familiar from guarding Mary of Scots, Bess hoped the fabricated responses would encourage further correspondence from which she could learn more about the marriage attempt. She forwarded her secretary Timothy Pusey’s copies of the letters and replies to court, adding ‘they growe nowe so warie [wary] that I doubt I [shall] hardly meet with any more’, her language indicating firm alliance with the crown.53 Arbella soon realised the situation. Intelligence-gathering might be a routine mechanism of state, but it must have seemed a betrayal when conducted by one’s grandmother. It would have been hard not to recall what happened to Mary of Scots. Arbella decided to turn disadvantage to advantage. If her letters were being forwarded to Cecil and the queen, then she would write something worth their reading – a risky ploy. In a letter ostensibly to her grandmother to explain fully what had occurred, she instead offered information about her beloved, an incredible man and one well known to the queen, whose name she could not reveal. She described their love, the growth of their relationship and, without particulars, their plans. Her revisions indicate that her audience was the queen, as she occasionally modified a phrase like ‘your Majesties’ to ‘your Ladyships’ as she remembered whom she was supposedly addressing.54 Bess was not convinced, but was concerned to be found wanting again; she wrote to the court that there might be ‘another match in working’.55 And because Arbella promised to speak openly to Brounker, he returned. Under his questioning, Arbella first answered ‘the King of Scots’ to every point about her lover and then admitted the lover was a fiction: having no other way to attract the court’s attention to her plight, she said, she had employed the tools she had. She asked to be removed from her grandmother’s custody.56 In late February, Bess had written to Cecil that Arbella was ill with ‘extream payne of hir side’ and a doctor had been with her for a fortnight. Although Bess thought the problem was ‘her minde’,57 it is possible that Arbella had



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an attack of porphyria, as I and others have suggested.58 If so, her pain would have been intense, but not interfered with her higher levels of reasoning; and illness, she discovered, had an effect. She took a vow not to eat or drink at Hardwick or anywhere Bess was present; for a time she was moved to Oldcotes, two miles away. In early March, Arbella wrote to Brounker that she was ‘scarse able to stand what for my side and what for my head’.59 Bess wrote that she herself was weary of her life and beseeched the queen to have compassion.60 In these later letters, both women are more openly emotional and selffocused than is usual in their prose, and both portray themselves as betrayed. Bess said the ‘bad perswasions of some’ had estranged Arbella so that ‘she holdes me the greatest enemie she hath’. Bess complained that servants were helping Arbella, including some of Bess’s own who, having been ‘corrupted’ by her granddaughter, were being dismissed. Bess described the situation as directed personally against her, ‘theyr malice to me was so great’. Those who diverted Arbella’s affection, she said, did not care about Arbella’s ‘undoing’ and thought to ‘bring me to my end with greif, yf not by violence’. Bess’s stance may have reflected her understanding, but also may have been strategic, to minimise Arbella’s culpability and Bess’s lapse by emphasising the guilt of others. Bess would spend her life in the queen’s service, she said, but she wanted ‘quyetnes in my olde dayes’ and the situation would bring about her death.61 Arbella wrote of the ‘trecherous dealing’ she had found in this matter and described to Brounker Bess’s volley of unprovoked ‘injurious words’, shaping their interactions in the terminology of battle, with advances and retreats. More significantly, Arbella hinted of suicide, which may be a political strategy – the death of a claimant and what others might think – but also suggests distress.62 In mid-March, the confrontation changed focus. On 9 March, Ash Wednesday, the second anniversary of the earl of Essex’s execution for treason, Arbella wrote to Brounker an exceedingly long, often angry letter in which she mourned her friend Essex, criticised Cecil and Stanhope, and protested that she was a grown woman without the rights of a woman, even to grant ‘lawful favors’. She knows how he will interpret the letter, she says, but since she is allowed no conversation she likes, she is tiring him with: the idle conceits of my travelling minde till it make you ashamed to see into what a scribbling melancholy (which is a kinde of madnesse and theare are severall kindes of it) you have brought me and leave me, if you leave me till I be my owne woman and then your trouble and mine too will cease.63

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On 10 March, Arbella attempted to leave Hardwick Hall with her uncle Henry Cavendish, the queen’s godson, now aged fifty-two, and Henry Stapleton, a suspected Catholic. The attempt would have been planned before Arbella wrote to Brounker. According to Bess, who described events to Brounker, forty armed men were reportedly hidden within a quarter of a mile of the house. Bess’s servants, however, obeyed her when Arbella went to the gate, and Arbella and Henry could not leave without physical harm to servants for whom they cared. Bess argued that Arbella should be further from the north, where she had friends.64 One can only imagine Bess’s response when the lords of the council instead suggested she should be milder and make Arbella happier at Hardwick Hall.65 Brounker agreed that Arbella should be moved, ‘so settled is her mislike of the old lady’,66 and he thought she might have planned to go to Scotland. He added that Arbella was receiving reports about the decline in the queen’s health, one of which he had intercepted. He treated the situation seriously, not wanting to have underestimated the threat, even though his own position was tenuous, since his commission would end with the queen’s life. Arbella had not been relocated by 24 March when Queen Elizabeth died. On 25 March, Cecil announced James’s new authority. Arbella was invited to serve as the principal mourner at the queen’s funeral; she declined.67 After speaking with Mary and Gilbert Talbot, King James allowed Arbella to choose her residence, ‘to free our cousin the Lady Arbella from that unpleasant life which she hath lead in the home of her grandmother with whose severity and age, being a young lady, [she] could hardly agree’.68 In May, she was welcomed to court and assumed her role as a royal woman who could advance her family. Sir William Stewart wrote to Mary Talbot that autumn that he had spoken with Bess’s secretary, Timothy Pusey, of the ‘hard usage of my Lady Arabella, and what troublous and dangerous estate her Ladyship was in, at his Majesty’s first coming to this Realm’. The Talbots, he knew, agreed. Stewart was hopeful that Bess’s ‘good nature’ would ‘shew itself’.69 Within the year, Arbella was working to reunite the family, believing her grandmother might reconcile with Gilbert, with whom Bess had argued since Gilbert’s assumption of the Shrewsbury earldom. Arbella hoped to be the ‘moderator and peacemaker’ between them and asked for his trust as she remembered Bess’s ‘many unkindenesses and disgraces’ and Gilbert’s ‘kindenesse to me … in my trouble’. She asked Gilbert to invite Henry and Grace Cavendish to London for ‘our families good’.70 By 1605, Bess knew that Arbella had helped to achieve a barony for her uncle William, Bess’s favourite son.



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Bess had removed Arbella and Henry from her will before Queen Elizabeth died. On 13 April, Bess wrote to Cecil, who apparently had cleared Henry of wrongdoing and suggested reconciliation, that she had no interest in doing anything for someone who had sought to hurt her. By 1605, however, Henry wrote to thank his mother for her bounty at the Christmas holiday.71 In 1605, when Bess was ill, Arbella visited, perhaps to help Bess, or to bring good news of the barony, or, as Bess seemingly thought at first, to increase her inheritance. The king had written asking Bess to receive Arbella. By reply, Bess wrote to James Montague, the dean of the royal chapel and one of her correspondents, with annoyance that her granddaughter had brought the letter, ‘as either doubting of her entertainment or desiring to come to her from whom she had desired so earnestly to get away’. She asked Montague to make certain the king read her letter. She had provided enough support, she said, for her granddaughter.72 On 13 February 1608, Bess died. She left Arbella £1,000. When Arbella learned of her grandmother’s death, she went north to pay respects and stayed until late March. She was there when she dictated a letter in Latin to King Christian of Denmark; on the draft is a marginal note about ‘my grandmother, the Countess of Shrewsbury who, having very recently and sadly died, surrendering her wishes for her own property and for me, has lost the opportunity to express her obedience and gratitude for your Majesty’s supreme bounty toward me’.73 The phrase ‘surrendering her wishes for her own property and for me’ is suggestive of Bess’s drive, which ended only with death, and it offers a linguistic parallel between the property and Arbella as claimant, a parallel that Arbella perhaps acknowledged but by her actions rejected. There is also, however, a sense of their former alliance. One wonders whether Arbella imagined that her grandmother, had she been alive, would still have been promoting her. Two years later, Arbella would again defy the crown. She clandestinely married William Seymour, the younger brother of Edward, with whom she had in 1603 attempted to contract marriage. Unlike Queen Elizabeth, who had been relatively mild when Arbella’s parents married, King James was not lenient. Many people encouraged him to let the couple live together, but he said that she had ‘etne [eaten] of the forbidne trie’.74 Arbella escaped custody and fled cross-dressed to France, was captured off the coast, and eventually died in the Tower of London. Various writers have emphasised the differences in personality and character between Bess and Arbella, and the analyses reflect the writers’ values and eras. In the eighteenth century, Edmund Lodge described the countess of

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Shrewsbury as ‘a woman of masculine understanding – proud, furious, selfish and unfeeling’75 – an interesting concept of masculinity, but an opinion of Bess that has been repeated with variations across centuries. The Lady Arbella Stuart has often been characterised at the other extreme, as a romantic heroine or as a naive woman lacking the sense to submit to the political reality of her birth.76 David N. Durant, who in the 1970s wrote biographies of both women, described them as alike in ‘determination’ and ‘equally spirited’, but otherwise ‘utterly dissimilar’.77 In the twenty-first century, Mary S. Lovell has emphasised Bess’s overlooked warmth and vitality.78 And Sarah Gristwood, following on Durant’s characterisation of Arbella as a piece on a chessboard that Queen Elizabeth brought out and put away, has argued that Arbella refused to be a pawn, that, like John Webster’s duchess of Malfi, she fought ‘for her identity’,79 an interpretation with which I concur. Some writers have found Arbella’s refusal to be the principal mourner at Queen Elizabeth’s funeral to be arrogance; I appreciate her rejection of the pretence. Bess and Arbella were allied in the expectation that Arbella might rule. That hope was not fulfilled, although the family they worked to advance now occupies the highest levels of English aristocracy, including the throne. Bess and Arbella differed in much beyond the obvious points of age, education and marital status. And they clashed so intensely in part because of what they shared. Both were bright and articulate, active rather than passive, willing to assert their beliefs and, at various times in their lives and regardless of the opposition, to take political chances in order to achieve their goals. Notes 1 James Daybell, Women Letter-Writers in Tudor England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 40. For Bess’s correspondence, see Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: The Complete Correspondence, c.1550–1608, edited by 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) www.bessofhardwick.org. Even when manuscript sources are cited, for reader convenience I cite this source as well. For Arbella’s correspondence, see The Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, edited by Sara Jayne Steen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). Subsequent references refer by letter number to this edition. 2 On epistolarity in England, see Daybell, Women Letter-Writers; James Daybell (ed.), Early Modern Women’s Letter Writing, 1450–1700 (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2001); and Gary Schneider, The Culture of Epistolarity:Vernacular Letters and Letter Writing



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in Early Modern England, 1500–1700 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005). On the family and women, see Barbara J. Harris, English Aristocratic Women, 1450–1550: Marriage and Family, Property and Career (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); James Daybell (ed.), Women and Politics in Early Modern England, 1450–1700 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004); and Susan Frye and Karen Robertson (eds), Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: Women’s Alliances in Early Modern England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). James Daybell, ‘ “Suche newes as on the Quenes hye wayes we have mett”: the news and intelligence networks of Elizabeth Talbot, countess of Shrewsbury (c. 1527–1608)’, in Women and Politics in Early Modern England, 1450–1700, edited by James Daybell (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 114–31. Biographies include David N. Durant, Bess of Hardwick: Portrait of an Elizabethan Dynast (New York: Atheneum, 1978); David N. Durant, Arbella Stuart: A Rival to the Queen (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978); and Sarah Gristwood, Arbella: England’s Lost Queen (London: Bantam Press, 2003). Arbella held the estate of Smallwood (see Gristwood, Arbella, p. 29) until she sold it in 1608 (University of Nottingham MSS, Middleton Collection, Mi 5/169b/7). Gristwood, Arbella, p. 30; Bess’s 17 March 1577/8 letter to the queen urges the pensions (Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 120). Durant, Bess of Hardwick, p. 111. Harris, English Aristocratic Women, pp. 29 and 99–126; and James Daybell, ‘Social negotiations in correspondence between mothers and daughters in Tudor and early Stuart England’, Women’s History Review, 24:4 (2015), pp. 502–27. 28 January 1581/2, British Library, Lansdowne MS 34, fols 4–5; Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 162. Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 144. 6 May 1582, The National Archives, State Papers Domestic, Eliz I, 12/153, fol. 84; Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 145. Alison Wiggins, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Language, Materiality and Early Modern Epistolary Culture (London: Routledge, 2017), p. 65. Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, 11. Durant, Arbella Stuart, pp. 77–9. P. M. Handover, Arbella Stuart: Royal Lady of Hardwick and Cousin to King James (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1957), p. 67. In her 9 January 1602/3 letter, Bess recognises the queen’s rights (Hatfield House, Cecil Papers, 135, fol. 112; Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 128). 13 January 1600/1, Folger Shakespeare Library, Cavendish-Talbot MSS, X.d.428 (120); Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 091. James Daybell, ‘Interpreting letters and reading script: evidence for female education and literacy in Tudor England’, History of Education, 34:6 (2005), p. 701; 15 July 1582, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 175.

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18 6 May 1582, The National Archives, State Papers Domestic, Eliz I, 12/153, fol. 84; Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 145. 19 Durham Chapter Library, B.III.31. A cleric later wrote of Arbella’s ‘singular knowledge in both the Hebrew and greek tongue’. 20 Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, 56 and 84. 21 A Tract on the Succession to the Crown [A.D. 1602], edited by Clements R. Markham (London: J. B. Nichols, 1880), p. 45. 22 On 5 November 1588, Nicholas Kinnersley, household officer at Wingfield, urged Bess to return, in part because Arbella had not been to stool or school in six days (Folger Shakespeare Library, Cavendish-Talbot MSS, X.d.428 (44); Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 037). On the reading of stool versus school, see Felicity Lyn Maxwell, ‘Household words: textualising social relations in the correspondence of Bess of Hardwick’s servants, c. 1550–1590’ PhD dissertation, University of Glasgow, 2014, pp. 37, 55 and 230–44. 23 Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, for the list of thirty letters to the Talbots, see pp. 295–6. See also Sara Jayne Steen, ‘The Cavendish-Talbot women: playing a highstakes game’, in Women and Politics in Early Modern England, 1450–1700, edited by James Daybell (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 147–63. 24 Handover, Arbella Stuart, p. 75. 25 Durant, Arbella Stuart, pp. 41–3. 26 Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 209. 27 Handover, Arbella Stuart, p. 77. 28 Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, 1, edited to reflect that I now believe the location from which Arbella was writing was ‘Pims’ rather than ‘Fims’; Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 106. 29 On conventions, see Sara Jayne Steen, ‘Reading beyond the words: material letters and the process of interpretation’, Quidditas 22 (2001), pp. 55–69; and Daybell, ‘Social negotiations’. 30 Wiggins, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Language, Materiality and Early Modern Epistolary Culture, p. 176. 31 Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, 16. 32 Gilbert and Mary Talbot to Bess, 1 July 1589, Folger Shakespeare Library, Cavendish-Talbot MSS, X.d.428 (115); Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 088. 33 The attention paid to Arbella alarmed James; he wrote to her about beginning a correspondence (Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, B1 and B2). 34 Gristwood, Arbella, p. 113. 35 See Lisa Hopkins, Drama and the Succession to the Crown, 1561–1633 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011). 36 1 September 1599, Longleat House, Talbot MS 3470, fols 210–11. 37 21 September 1592, British Library, Lansdowne MS 71, fol. 3; Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 163.

38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

62 63 64 65

A difficult and volatile alliance

197

Bess had seventy-four servants on the payroll (Gristwood, Arbella, p. 114). Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, 16. From his January 1603 confession (Hatfield House, Cecil Papers, 135, fol. 175/2). There had been some exploration several years earlier, perhaps by the earl’s son. Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, 7. Their letter to Bess, January 1602/3, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 136. Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, 11. Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, 3. Brounker to the queen, 9/10 January 1602/3, Hatfield House, Cecil Papers, 135, fol. 114. Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, 4. Bess to the queen, 9 January 1602/3, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 128. Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, 6. January 1602/3, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 136. Bess to the queen, 29 January 1602/3, Hatfield House, Cecil Papers, 135, fol. 127; Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 129. Bess to Cecil and Stanhope, 2 February 1602/3; Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 130. 21 February 1602/3, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 133. 29 January 1602/3, Hatfield House, Cecil Papers, 135, fol. 127; Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 129. Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, 7. Bess to the queen, 29 January 1602/3, Hatfield House, Cecil Papers, 135, fol. 127; Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 129. Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, 10 and 11. 21 February 1602/3, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 132. Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, pp. 98–100. Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, 12. 21 February 1602/3, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 132. Bess to the queen, 29 January 1602/3, Hatfield House, Cecil Papers, 135, fol. 127; Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 129. Bess to Cecil and Stanhope, 2 February 1602/3, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 130. Bess to Cecil and Stanhope, 3 March 1602/3, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 134. Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, 11, 12, and 16. Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, 16. 10 March 1602/3, Bess to Sir Henry Brounker, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 135. 14 March 1602/3, Lords of the Council to Bess, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 137.

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66 Brounker to the Council, 19 March 1602/3, Hatfield House, Cecil Papers, 135, fol. 174. 67 Gristwood, Arbella, p. 202. 68 Durant, Arbella Stuart, p. 117. 69 6 November 1603, in Rachel Lloyd’s handwritten ‘Memoirs of Elizabeth Hardwick Countess of Shrewsbury and, of her Descendants’, British Library, Althorp Papers, F172, p. 117. 70 Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, 42. 71 Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Complete Correspondence, ID 140 and 207. 72 Cited in Elizabeth Cooper, The Life and Letters of Lady Arabella Stuart (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1866), vol. 2, pp. 48–9. 73 Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, 64. 74 Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, B15. 75 Gristwood, Arbella, p. 35. 76 The legends are discussed in Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, pp. 1–3, 94–6 and 102–5. 77 Durant, Bess of Hardwick, pp. 209–11, and Arbella Stuart, p. 16. 78 Mary S. Lovell, Bess of Hardwick: Empire Builder (NewYork:W.W. Norton & Company, 2005), pp. 394 and 477. 79 Durant, Bess of Hardwick, p. 201; Gristwood, Arbella, p. 368.

Conclusion Lisa Hopkins

Over the course of her long life, Bess of Hardwick established a dynasty, changed the landscape of Derbyshire, and might even have seen her granddaughter become queen of England. She was the gaoler of Mary, Queen of Scots and the friend of Elizabeth I, and though she never left England herself, her son travelled to Constantinople and her correspondents kept her informed of events all over Europe. The essays in this collection have also shown that she was a vigorous and prolific letter-writer, an accomplished arranger of interiors, and even to some degree a designer of buildings. They have helped turn the spotlight away from London, on which it is so often trained, to the north Midlands, reminding us that power was not always centralised and that the regions could also be important sites of political, social and cultural activity. Attending to Bess similarly alerts us to the fact that while the queen was of course important, courtiers and the aristocracy also had a role to play, while the radical design of Hardwick New Hall shows that architectural innovation was not confined to the capital. In a groundbreaking essay published in 1977, Joan Kelly famously asked ‘Did women have a Renaissance?’;1 as these essays show, Bess of Hardwick certainly did. Collectively, the chapters in this book also speak to another seminal trope of twentieth-century Renaissance studies, Stephen Greenblatt’s idea of self-fashioning:2 through her needlework, her houses and her clothes and jewellery, Bess consistently fashioned an image of herself that grew in stature and resonance as her life progressed. Bess is most often remembered for her four marriages, or sometimes for her connections with two queens, Mary and Elizabeth, and one potential queen, Arbella (though this is less often noted, she was also close to Lady Jane Grey, the nine days’ queen, and to two granddaughters of kings, Jane

200

Bess of Hardwick: new perspectives

Grey’s mother Lady Frances Brandon and Arbella’s other grandmother Lady Margaret Douglas). She is also often acknowledged as an important figure in the history of needlework, and anyone who drives between London and the north is likely to have seen Hardwick New and Old Halls from the M1 motorway. There is, though, one image of Bess which I think speaks louder than any of these. In 1603, Bess’s ‘bad son’ Henry arrived at Hardwick Hall, planning to remove Arbella Stuart from the premises. Hardwick, ‘more glass than wall’, is the most indefensible of houses; Arbella was desperate and determined; and Henry had armed men at his back. Bess, already a very old lady by the standards of the time (indeed by any standards), outfaced them both, stopping Henry from coming in and Arbella from going out by sheer force of personality. Edmund Lodge may have called her ‘proud, furious, selfish and unfeeling’, but perhaps a more appropriate set of adjectives would be ‘brave, resourceful, determined and indomitable’. Notes 1 Joan Kelly, ‘Did women have a Renaissance?’, in Becoming Visible:Women in European History, edited by Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1977), pp. 137–64. 2 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).

Selected bibliography

Manuscript sources Chatsworth House, Derbyshire Devonshire Collection, Hardwick MS 1, ‘Account Book of Sir William and Lady Cavendish, 1 November 1551–23 June 1553’. Devonshire Collection, Hardwick MS 3. Folger Shakespeare Library,Washington DC Papers of the Cavendish-Talbot family, Folger MS X.d.428, letters and ‘Account Book of Sir William and Lady Cavendish of Chatsworth, 1548 Michaelmas-1550’. The National Archives: Public Record Office, Kew, London PROB 11/111, fols 188–93, Will of Elizabeth, dowager countess of Shrewsbury.

Editions, calendars and reference sources Adams, Simon (ed.), Household Accounts and Disbursement Books of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 1558–1561, 1584–1586, Royal Historical Society Camden 5th ser., 6 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Collins, Arthur C., Historical Collections of the Noble Families of Cavendish,Vere, Harley, and Ogle (London: n. pub., 1752). Cusack, Bridget, Everyday English, 1500–1700 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998). Folger Shakespeare Library, ‘Finding aid: guide to the papers of the Cavendish-Talbot family, Folger MS X.d.428 (1–203)’, http://findingaids.folger.edu/dfocavendish.xml (accessed 10 July 2018). Folger Shakespeare Library, HAMNET Library Catalogue, ‘Account book of Sir William and Lady Cavendish’, MS X.d.486, https://hamnet.folger.edu (accessed 10 July 2018).

202

Selected bibliography

Jack, Sybil M., ‘Cavendish, Sir William (1508–1557)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Merry, Mark and Catherine Richardson, The Household Account Book of Sir Thomas Puckering, 1620, Dugdale Society, Vol. 45 (Bristol: Dugdale Society, 2012). Sotheby’s, Sale Catalogue, 26 June 1967, lot 734, p. 86; Catalogue of the Celebrated Collection of Manuscripts formed by Sir Thomas Phillipps Bt., Monday 26 June 1967 at 11am. Spicksley, Judith M., The Business and Household Accounts of Joyce Jeffreys Spinster of Hereford 1638–48 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Steen, Sara Jayne (ed.), The Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). Wiggins, Alison, Alan Bryson, Daniel Starza Smith, Anke Timmermann and Graham Williams (eds), Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: The Complete Correspondence, c.1550–1608, University of Glasgow, web development by Katherine Rogers, University of Sheffield Humanities Research Institute (University of Glasgow, 2013), www. bessofhardwick.org (accessed 10 July 2018).

Secondary sources Archer, Dawn, Questions and Answers in the English Courtroom (1640–1760): A Sociopragmatic Analysis, Pragmatics and Beyond New Series (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2005). Ashelford, Jane, The Art of Dress: Clothes and Society, 1500–1914 (London: National Trust, 1996). Brotton, Jerry, This Orient Isle (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2017). Cooper, Tarnya, Elizabeth I and Her People (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2014). Cusack, Bridget, Everyday English, 1500–1700: A Reader (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998). Daybell, James, ‘Gendered archival practices and the future lives of letters’, in Cultures of Correspondence in Early Modern Britain, edited by James Daybell and Andrew Gordon (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), pp. 210–36. Daybell, James, Women Letter-Writers in Tudor England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). Derrida, Jacques, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). Dingman, Paul, ‘Unlocking the early modern account book’, blog post, 3 May 2016, http://collation.folger.edu/2016/05/early-modern-account-book (accessed 10 July 2018). Duffy, Eamon, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an EnglishVillage (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001). Durant, David N., Bess of Hardwick: Portrait of an Elizabethan Dynast (London and Chester Springs: Peter Owen, 1977).



Selected bibliography

203

Hackel, Heidi Brayman, ‘ “Boasting of silence”: women readers in a patriarchal state’, in Reading, Society and Politics, edited by Kevin Sharp and Steven N. Zwicker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) pp. 101–21. Hamling, Tara, and Catherine Richardson (eds), Everyday Objects: Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture and its Meanings (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010). Harris, Barbara J., English Aristocratic Women 1450–1550: Marriage and Family, Property and Careers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Jones, Ann Rosalind, and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory, Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Jucker, Andreas H., and Irma Taavitsainen, English Historical Pragmatics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013). Levey, Santina M., The Embroideries at Hardwick Hall: A Catalogue (London: National Trust, 2007). Lovell, Mary S., Bess of Hardwick: First Lady of Chatsworth (London: Little, Brown, 2005). Magnusson, Lynne, Shakespeare and Social Dialogue: Dramatic Language and Elizabethan Letters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Mantel, Hilary, Bring up the Bodies (London: HarperCollins, 2012). Maxwell, Felicity, ‘Enacting mistress and steward roles in a letter of household management: Bess of Hardwick to Francis Whitfield, 14 November 1552’, Lives & Letters: A Journal for Early Modern Archival Research, 4:1 (2012), pp. 75–92. Mertes, K., The English Noble Household, 1250–1600: Good Governance and Politic Rule (New York: Blackwell, 1988). Navala, Minna, Address in Early English Correspondence: Its Forms and Socio-Pragmatic Functions (Helsinki: Société Néophilologique, 2004). Nevalainen, Terttu, and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, ‘Constraints on politeness: the pragmatics of address formulae in early English correspondence’, in Historical Pragmatics, edited by A. H. Jucker (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1995), pp. 541– 601. Ostovich, Helen, and Elizabeth Sauer (eds), Reading Early Modern Women: An Anthology of Texts in Manuscript and Print, 1550–1700 (New York: Routledge, 2004). Pahl, J., Money and Marriage (New York: Palgrave, 1989). Pollock, Linda, ‘ “Teach her how to live under obedience”: the making of women in the upper ranks of early modern England’, Continuity and Change, 4 (1989), pp. 231–58. Richardson, Catherine, ‘Written texts and the performance of materiality’, in Writing Material Culture History, edited by Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2015), pp. 59–66. Riden, Philip, ‘Sir William Cavendish: Tudor civil servant and founder of a dynasty’, Derbyshire Archaeological Journal, 129 (2009), pp. 238–57.

204

Selected bibliography

Scott-Warren, Jason, ‘Early modern bookkeeping and life-writing revisited: accounting for Richard Stonley’, Past and Present, supplement 11 (2016), pp. 151–70. Sherman, William H., Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). Smyth, Adam, Autobiography in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Smyth, Adam, ‘Money, accounting, and life-writing, 1600–1700: balancing a life’, in A History of English Autobiography, edited by Adam Smyth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 86–100. Thomas, Keith, ‘Numeracy in early modern England: the Prothero Lecture’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 37 (1987), pp. 103–32. Vickery, A., ‘His and hers: gender, consumption and household accounting in eighteenthcentury England’, Past and Present, supplement 1 (2006), pp. 12–38. White, Gillian, ‘ “That whyche ys nedefoulle and nesesary”: the nature and purpose of the original furnishing and decoration of Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire’, PhD thesis 2 vols, University of Warwick, 2005. Whittle, Jane, and Elizabeth Griffiths, Consumption and Gender in the Early Seventeenth Century Household: The World of Alice Le Strange (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Wiggins, Alison, Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: Language, Materiality and Early Modern Epistolary Culture, Material Readings in Early Modern Culture (London: Routledge, 2017). Zemon Davis, Natalie, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987).

Index

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. Anna, queen (wife of James I) 185 Anna Catherine of Denmark, queen 185 Arendt, Hannah 143 Arthemesia 159, 168–71, 173 Asgard, Thomas 148 Austen, Jane 2 Pride and Prejudice 2 Bachelard, Gaston 143, 154–5 Baldi, Bernardino 170 Balechouse, John 130, 136, 147, 154, 172 Bandinelli, Baccio 171 Barber, Charles 88 Barlow/Barley, Arthur 19 Barlow/Barley, Robert 2, 4, 19–21 Barry, Lording Ram Alley 6 Battell, Frances 106–7, 115–16 Bellini, Gentile The Procession to St Mark’s 175–6 Beresford, Henry 109–10, 115 Bess’s accounts and finances 3, 36–77, 50–2, 122, 147 Bess’s last will and testament (and inventory) 29–30, 38, 61–2, 144–55, 193 Bess’s lawsuits 4–5, 19–20, 24, 109–10, 112–13 Bess’s needlework, tapestries and embroidery 10, 14, 21, 25, 62, 154, 159–80, 199–200

‘Noble Women of the Ancient World’ hangings 160, 167–72 ‘Virtues and Their Contrary Vices’ hangings 160, 172–6 Bess’s tomb 9, 30, 121 Boccaccio, Giovanni 170 Concerning Famous Women 168 Bolsover 24 Booth, Nicholas 103–5, 108–9, 111–12, 115 Boughton, Elizabeth (second wife of William Cavendish, first earl of Devonshire) 153 Bourdieu, Pierre 156n.13 Bowden, Caroline 81 Boynton, Lindsay 142 Brandon, Catherine, duchess of Suffolk 7, 21 Britton, Eleanor 111–12 Broshere, Florens 167 Brotton, Jerry 14 Brouncker, Sir Henry 29, 89, 189–92 Brown, Bill 143–5, 149, 152, 155 Bryson, Alan 2, 15, 18–35, 100 Burghley, Mildred Cecil, Lady 80–1 Burghley, William Cecil, Lord 11, 25, 89–90, 93, 101, 107, 122–3, 125, 129, 132, 160, 165, 183, 186–8 Buxton, John Elizabethan Taste 142

206 Index Castiglione, Baldassare 170 The Book of the Courtier 173 Cavendish, Alice 20 Cavendish, Ann 40, 55, 59 Cavendish, Charles 1, 2, 10–11, 21, 26, 28–30, 104–5, 109–10, 112, 115, 130–2, 185 Cavendish (later Lennox), Elizabeth 7–12, 14, 21, 25, 26, 29, 130, 182–3, 185, 187–8 Cavendish, Frances 10, 21, 29, 42, 59, 61–2, 130 Cavendish, Henry 1, 5, 7, 10–11, 14, 21–2, 25, 26, 28, 30, 111, 125, 130, 137, 152, 165–6, 176, 192–3, 200 Cavendish, Lady Jane 1–2, 4–5, 10–11, 13, 15 ‘On my honourable Grandmother Elizabeth Countess of Shrewsbury’ 1–2, 4–5 Cavendish, Katherine 21, 40, 55, 59 Cavendish, Lucrece 10, 13 Cavendish, Margaret, duchess of Newcastle 19 Cavendish, Mary (Bess’s stepdaughter) 40 Cavendish, Mary see Talbot (née Cavendish), Mary, countess of Shrewsbury Cavendish, Temperance 10, 21, 41–3, 49, 59, 66n.16, 173 Cavendish, Sir Thomas 20 Cavendish, Sir William (Bess’s second husband) 5, 10, 13, 19–23, 26, 37–49, 50–1, 53–5, 58–62, 95, 138, 148–9, 160, 166, 172 Cavendish, William, first earl of Devonshire (Bess’s son) 1, 2, 10–11, 21, 26–8, 30, 62, 103–5, 109–10, 115, 121, 129–30, 135, 137, 150, 153–4, 192 Cavendish, William, second earl of Devonshire (Bess’s grandson) 153–4 Cavendish, William, third earl of Devonshire (Bess’s great-grandson) 154

Cavendish, William, first duke of Devonshire (Bess’s great-greatgrandson) 154 Cavendish, William, earl and later duke of Newcastle 1, 2, 10 Cecil, Sir Robert 89, 94, 187, 189–93 Chambers, J. K. 84–5 Chapman, George 6 Charles V 147 Charles IX of France 165 Chatsworth 3, 10–13, 14, 15, 21–4, 26, 30, 38, 45–6, 48, 53, 57, 61, 107, 121–3, 125, 129, 132–3, 136–7, 147–9, 153–4, 159–62, 164–77 Chaucer, Geoffrey 170 Christian IV of Denmark 193 Clarke, Susanna 2 The Ladies of Grace Adieu 2 Claye, Hercules 109–10, 115 Cleopatra 159, 169–71 Clifford, Lady Anne 6, 16n.26, 151–2, 161 Clouet, François 164 Collaert, Hans 172–3, 175 Cook, Olive 3 Coornhert, Dirck 134 Cornwallis, Sir Thomas 184 Corpus of Early English Correspondence 79, 82, 86, 93–4 Coxie, Michael 131, 147 Cressy, David 80 Cromwell, Sir Thomas 36, 40 Davis, Norman, Richard Beadle and Colin Richmond (eds) Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, Part I 85–6 Daybell, James 3–4, 78, 81 de Condé, Servais 166 De Grazia, Margreta, Maureen Quilligan and Peter Stallybrass 143 de Medici, Catherine 162 Denbigh, Robert Dudley, baron (Leicester’s son) 4, 184 de Passe, Crispijn 131

Index 207 de Pizan, Christine 168–70 Citie of Ladies 168 de Thevet, André Cosmographie de Levant 164, 176 de Vos, Maarten 131 de Vries, Vredeman 125, 129 Doddridge, John 11, 188–9 Dodmere, Sir Ralph 19 Drayton, Michael Poly-Olbion 162–3 du Cerceau, Jacques Androuet 123 Dudley, John, duke of Northumberland 21 Dudley, Robert see Leicester, Robert Dudley, first earl of Durant, David N. 5, 11, 14, 194 Dürer, Albrecht 175 Edward VI 10, 22, 137, 147 Elizabeth I 2, 3, 4, 6–7, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 80–1, 89, 100–1, 103, 105–9, 113, 116, 121, 123–4, 128–9, 131, 133, 135–7, 146–7, 152, 159, 160, 161–5, 167, 169, 172–7, 182–4, 186–94, 199 Ellis, Margaret 167 Essex, Robert Devereux, second earl of 187, 191 Eworth, Hans, the circle of 62 Falvey, Heather 109, 116 Farnese, Rainutio 185 Favoriti, Agostino 170 Fitzwilliam, Hugh 164–5 Fox, Alfred Mr Harrie Cavendish: His Journey to and from Constantinople 176 French, Sara L. 10, 15, 121–41 Friedman, Alice 123–5 ‘Architecture, authority and the female gaze: planning and representation in the early modern country house’ 123 House and Household in Elizabethan England:Wollaton Hall and the Willoughby Family 123 Frye, Susan 10, 14, 15, 159–80 Fumerton, Patricia 133

Galle, Philips 132, 147 Gamage, Barbara, countess of Leicester 8–9 Garnier, Robert Antonie 170 Girouard, Mark 9, 27, 122–3 Goltzius, Hendrick 130 Gorges, Sir Arthur Eglantine of Meryfleur 129 Greenblatt, Stephen 199 Grey, Lady Catherine 10, 187–8 Grey (née Talbot), Elizabeth, countess of Kent 187 Grey (née Brandon), Lady Frances, marchioness of Dorset and duchess of Suffolk 10, 20–1, 199–200 Grey, Henry, third marquess of Dorset 10, 20–1 Grey, Lady Jane 10, 21, 137, 187, 199 Grey, Lady Mary 10 Gristwood, Sarah 8, 11–12, 187, 194 gynocracy 162–5 Hacker, John 190 Haddon Hall 111, 128 Hardwick, Alice see Leche (née Hardwick), Alice Hardwick, Elizabeth 18–19 Hardwick, James 3, 18, 26–7, 125, 135, 149 Hardwick, John 18–19, 135, 149 Hardwick New Hall 3, 8–15, 27–8, 30, 61–2, 121–41, 142–3, 145–58, 167, 170, 172, 183, 188–92, 199–200 Hardwick Old Hall 11, 27–8, 121–3, 125, 131–2, 134–5, 137–8, 142, 147, 149, 154, 200 Harington, Sir John 185 Harris, Barbara J. 182–3 Harris, Jonathan Gil 161, 172 Henderson, Paula 122 Henry VII 148, 163, 182 Henry VIII 133, 147–8, 163 Hepburn, James, fourth earl of Bothwell 166

208 Index Herbert (née Talbot), Mary, countess of Pembroke 187 Herbert, William, first earl of Pembroke 21 Hilliard, Nicholas 129 Holmes, Janet 78 Holmes, Martin 16n.26 Hopkins, Lisa 1–17, 183, 199–200 Howard (née Talbot), Aletheia, countess of Arundel 187 Howard (née Leyburne), Elizabeth, duchess of Norfolk 7 Howard, Thomas, fourth duke of Norfolk 7 Insatiate Countess, The 12–13 Jackson, Henry 13 James I 29, 152, 161, 163, 182, 186–7, 192–3 James, Susan E. 157–8n.41 James, William 149 Johnson, Sabine 93 Jonson, Ben ‘To Penshurst’ 8 Julius II, pope 170 Kelly, Joan 199 Kershaw, Stephen E. 101, 103 Kilburn, Terry 5 Kingsford, Charles Lethbridge Kingsford’s Stonor Letters and Papers 1290–1483 92 Kniveton (née Leche), Jane 46–8, 59, 103, 111, 145–8 Kniveton, John 102–4, 106, 115 Kniveton, Thomas 103, 111–12, 145 Knole 161 Knollys, Lettice, countess of Leicester 9 Kynnersley, Nicholas 112–14 Labov, William 78, 94 Latour, Bruno 144–5, 147, 151–2, 155 Leche (née Hardwick), Alice 13, 18, 148 Leche, Francis 148 Leche, Ralph 18–19

Leicester, Robert Dudley, first earl of 4, 14, 26, 122–3, 129, 133, 160, 184 Leigh, William 19 Levey, Santina 165, 167–8, 170–3 The Embroideries of Hardwick Hall 165 Linacre, Aunt Marcella 42, 46–8, 59 Lodge, Edmund 2, 193–4, 200 Lovell, Mary S. 3–6, 10, 151, 194 Lucrecia 13, 134, 138, 159, 167, 169–71, 173 MacCulloch, Diarmaid 32n.21 McDonagh, Briony 115–16 Magnusson, Lynne 117n.4 Malay, Jessica L. 15, 142–58 Mallory, Richard 176 Manners, John 111–12 Mantel, Hilary 36 Marcus, Imogen Julia 15, 78–99 Margaret Tudor, princess 163 Maria, infanta of Portugal 185 Marlowe, Christopher 11–12 Marmyon, William 105–6, 115–16 Marston, John 12 Mary, Queen of Scots 2–3, 4, 7, 12–15, 25–6, 29, 100–1, 105–8, 117, 121, 123, 159–64, 166–8, 172–3, 182, 185, 187, 190, 199 Mary Tudor 6, 21–2, 62, 147, 163–4 Mason, Sir John 22 Massey, Doreen 148–9 Maxwell, Felicity Lyn 15, 100–20 Melville, Sir James 133 Merry, Mark and Catherine Richardson 54 Mohammed (‘Mohamet’) 174–7 Montague, James 193 Nevalainen, Terttu 82, 84 Nevalainen, Terttu and Helena RaumolinBrunberg 78–9, 82, 86–7, 89–90, 93–4 Nicholl, Charles 12 Northaw 40, 57, 148 Northern English 88, 93 Nurmi, Arja 90

Index 209 Oldcotes 11, 28, 30, 121, 138, 149–50, 191 O’Mara, Veronica 81 Orton, Richard and John Marker 131 Ottoman Empire 164, 165, 174–6 Oudrey, Pierre 167 Overton, William, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield 13 Oxford English Dictionary 82 Paget, Thomas 89 Palladio, Andrea 28, 123, 126 Paulet, Sir Amias 108 Paulet, Lady Elizabeth 106–7 Paulet, William, first marquess of Winchester 7 Penelope 13, 134, 138, 154, 159, 167, 171–3 Philip II of Spain 164 Pierrepont, Sir Henry 10, 130 Pius V, pope 165 Plutarch 170 portraits in textiles 165, 172–7 Pusey, Timothy 190, 192 Quilligan, Maureen 169–70 Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik 90 Ralegh, Sir Walter 186 ‘Guiana is a Countrey that hath yet her Maydenhead’ 12 Riden, Philip 2, 6, 27 Rogers, Thomas Leicester’s Ghost 4 Royle, Nicholas 160–1, 165 Rydén, Mats 82 Ryrie, Alec 32n.21 Sackville, Richard, third earl of Dorset 161 Sadler, Sir Ralph, chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster 108 St Loe, Edward 6, 23–4 St Loe, Sir John 23 St Loe, Lady Margaret 19, 23–4

St Loe, Sir William 4–6, 11, 13, 22–4, 160, 164, 166, 172, 176, 181 Schoen, Erhard Two Turks with a Servant 176 Selden, John 162–3 Serlio, Sebastiano 123 Five Books of Architecture 129–31 Seymour, Edward, first earl of Hertford 11, 29, 188–9 Seymour, Edward (grandson of Hertford) 188, 193 Seymour, William (Arbella’s husband) 193 Shakespeare, William 161 Hamlet 12 Henry IV Part 2 92 The Winter’s Tale 88 Sheffield 12, 15, 24–5, 105–8, 111–12 Sherland, Bridget 190 Shrewsbury, Francis Talbot, fifth earl of 21, 24 Shrewsbury, George Talbot, sixth earl of 2–3, 5–7, 9–10, 12–14, 21, 24–8, 90, 92, 100–17, 123, 125, 128, 131, 136–8, 160–1, 165–6, 172, 181, 185, 187 Shrewsbury, Gilbert Talbot, seventh earl of 3–4, 7, 10, 12, 25–7, 29–30, 111–12, 185–7, 192 Sidney, Mary, countess of Pembroke 8, 170 Sidney, Philip 162 Arcadia 162 Smith, Abraham 130 Smythson, Robert 27–8, 30, 121–5, 147 Snakenborg, Helena, dowager marchioness of Northampton 7 Southern English 88 sovereignty, female 163–77 Spenser, Edmund The Faerie Queene 129 Stafford, Lady Dorothy 184 Stanhope, Sir John 94, 189–91 Stapleton, Henry 192 Starkey, James 188 Steen, Sara Jayne 14–15, 181–98 Stewart, Sir William 192

210 Index Stradanus, Johannes 132, 147 Stringer, Thomas 107–8, 115 Stuart, Lady Arbella 4, 7–8, 10–12, 14–15, 25, 29–30, 89, 113–14, 126–7, 129, 137, 152, 163, 181–98, 199–200 Stuart, Charles, earl of Lennox 9, 14, 130, 182 Stuart, Henry, Lord Darnley 14, 166, 182 Stuart (née Douglas), Margaret, countess of Lennox 7–8, 14, 25, 163, 182, 200 Summerson, John 27 Sutton Court 23–4 Swain, Margaret 166 Talbot, Francis see Shrewsbury, Francis Talbot, fifth earl of Talbot, George see Shrewsbury, George Talbot, sixth earl of Talbot, Gilbert see Shrewsbury, Gilbert Talbot, seventh earl of Talbot (later Cavendish), Grace 5, 7, 25, 28, 125, 130, 192 Talbot, Mary, countess of Shrewsbury (wife of the fifth earl) 24 Talbot (née Cavendish), Mary, countess of Shrewsbury 7–8, 10, 12, 21, 25, 29–30, 130, 185–7, 190, 192 Thynne, Sir John 22–3, 95, 121–2 Truelove, Alison 78 Tutbury Castle 12, 24, 108

van den Broeck, Crispijn 172 Veneziano, Agostino 171 Vere, Susan, countess of Montgomery 8 von Heemskerck, Martin 134 Walpole, Horace 5 Walsingham, Sir Francis 86, 89, 108, 183 Wardhaugh, Ronald and Janet M. Fuller 78 Webster, John Duchess of Malfi, The 194 Wells-Cole, Anthony 122, 131, 134–5 White, Gillian 8–9, 148 Whitfield, Francis 37, 41–2, 46–8, 58 Wiggins, Alison 4–5, 10, 13, 15, 36–77, 101, 183, 186 Wiggins, Alison, Alan Bryson, Daniel Starza Smith, Anke Timmermann and Graham Williams (eds) Bess of Hardwick’s Letters: The Complete Correspondence, c.1550–1608 80 Willoughby, Sir Francis 105–6, 121–3 Wilson, Thomas 147 Wingfield, Elizabeth 6, 59, 107 Wingfield Manor 24, 108, 112–14 Wollaton Hall 27, 106, 121–3, 129, 137 Wood, Andy 101, 103 Wyld, Henry 80 Zenobia 13, 159, 167, 169–73