Seeing that my Lady of Shrewsbury had triumphantly surmounted one of the greatest dangers she had ever drawn upon herself and hers, one can safely assume that after the foregoing letter she was in a tolerably prancing and jovial temper. Socially she really was for the moment a much more important item to be reckoned with than Mary Queen of Scots herself. All the difficulties of the past two years had only served to bring her into closer touch with both queens. Meantime she was a rich and honoured lady with a great many irons in the fire, and her wants and requirements were legion. She still wanted ale and wood and stone, she could not spend all her valuable time dancing attendance upon Mary, or sharing the dull semi-military routine of Sheffield Castle and Sheffield Lodge. She went to her beloved Chatsworth, and husband and wife exchanged letters. Here is a wistful appreciation from him:—
“My Sweetheart,—Your true and faithful zeal you bear me is more comfortable to me than anything I can think upon, and I give God thanks daily for his benefits he hath bestowed on me, and greatest cause I have to give him thanks that he hath sent me you in my old years to comfort me withal. Your coming I shall think long for, and shall send on Friday your litter horses and on Saturday morning I will send my folks, because Friday they will be desirous to be at Rotherham Fair.
“It appears by my sister Wingfield’s letter there is bruit of this Queen’s going from me. I thank you for sending it me, which I return again, and will not show it till you may speak it yourself what you hear; and I have sent you John Knifton’s letter, that Lord brought me, that you may perceive what is [? bruited] of the young King. I thank you for your fat capon and it shall be baked, and kept cold and untouched until my sweetheart come; guess you who it is. I have sent you a cock that was given to me, which is all the dainties I have here.
“I have written to Sellars to send every week a quarter of rye for this ten weeks, which will be as much as I know will be had there, and ten quarters of barley, which will be all that I can spare you. Farewell, my sweet true none and faithful wife.
Here is a letter from her to him, brisk, tart, affectionate all at once:—
“I have sent your letters again and thank you for them; they require no answer; but when you write remember to thank him for them. If you cannot get my timber carried I must be without it though I greatly want it; but if it would please you to command Hebert or any other, to move your tenants to bring it, I ken they will not deny to do it. I pray you let me know if I shall have the ton of iron. If you cannot spare it I must make shift to get it elsewhere, for I may not now want it. You promised to send me money afore this time to buy oxen, but I see, out of sight out of mind with you.
“My son Gilbert has been very ill in his bed ever since he came from Sheffield: I think it is his old disease; he is now, I thank God, somewhat better and she very well. I will send you the bill of my wood stuff: I pray you let it be sent to Joseph, that he may be sure to receive all. I thank you for taking order for the carriage of it in Hardwick; if you would command, your waggoner might bring it thither: I think it would be safest carried. Here is neither malt nor hops. The malt come last is so very ill and stinking, as Hawkes thinks none of my workmen will drink it. Show this letter to my friend and then return it. I think you will take no discharge at Zouch’s hands nor the rest. You may work still in despite of them; the law is on your side.[48] It cannot be but that you shall have the Queen’s consent to remove hither; therefore if you would have things in readiness for your provision, you might the sooner come. Come either before Midsummer or not this year; for any provision you have yet you might have come as well as at Easter as at this day. Here is yet no manner of provision more than a little drink, which makes me to think you mind not to come. God send my jewel health.
“I have sent you lettuce for that you love them; and every second day some is sent to your charge and you. I have nothing else to send. Let me hear how you, your charge and love do, and commend me I pray you. It were well you sent four or five pieces of the great hangings that they might be put up; and some carpets. I wish you would have things in that readiness that you might come either three or four days after you hear from Court. Write to Baldwin to call on my Lord Treasurer for answer of your letters.”
The expression in the postscript “your charge and love” has been variously interpreted by historians. It is utterly inconceivable that, as suggested, Lady Shrewsbury should have indicated Mary Queen of Scots by the last word. Had she wished to bring an accusation of this kind against her husband she would not immediately add her desire that he should join her as soon as possible. It is not unlikely that this perplexing sentence should run, “Let me hear how you, your charge, and (our) love do,” the “love” probably signifying a child or grandchild then with the Earl. Similarly the words “God send my jewel health” may apply to the same child, for in after years she uses this term of endearment almost exclusively in speaking of her precious grandchild, Arabella Stuart. Her peremptory request for “great hangings and carpets” is rather interesting, because a previous family letter, not yet included, gives a picture of the Earl’s parsimony in these details. This occurs as early as two years before the date of the above letters; and two long epistles from Gilbert to his stepmother show, first, how the long strain of his duties was telling upon the Earl, and, secondly, the unfavourable contrast produced on the minds of their children by the manner in which they were treated respectively by father and mother.
Gilbert, at Sheffield in 1575, describes the atmosphere of the house as utterly uncongenial. He is longing to be away and to have his own home. Lady Shrewsbury was away, probably at Chatsworth.[49]
“My L. is continually pestered with his wonted business, and is very often in exceeding choler of slight occasion; a great grief to them that loves him to see him hurt himself so much. He now speaketh nothing of my going to house, and I fear would be contented with silence to pass it over; but I have great hope in your La. at your coming, and in all my life I never longed for anything so much as to be from hence; truly, Madame, I rather wish myself a ploughman than here to continue.”
Her Ladyship came and went, but does not seem to have had much effect in softening her lord. Soon afterwards Gilbert writes again, oppressed by his father’s lack of lavishness in regard to the fitting out of his son’s home—an attitude which he compares unfavourably with the generous methods of the stepmother.[50]
“Madame, where it hath pleased your La. to bestow on us a great deal of furniture towards house we can but by our prayers for your La. show ourselves dutiful as well for this as all other your La. continual benefits towards us, whereof we can never fail so long as it shall please God to continue His grace towards us. Presently after your La., departure from hence my Lord appointed him of the wardrobe to deliver us the tester and curtains of the old green and red bed of velvet and satin that your La. did see; and the cloth bed tester and curtains we now lie in, and two very old counterpanes of tapestry; and forbad him to deliver the bed of cloth of gold and tawny velvet that your La. saw. That which your La. hath given us is more worth than all that is at Goodrich,[51] or here of my Lord’s bestowing. On Wednesday my Lord went hence. Cooks brought in a piece of housewife’s cloth nothing dearer than twelve pence the yard, and so was holden; which Cooks told my Lord would very well serve my wife to make sheets, bore cloths and such like: which my L. at the very first yielded unto, and bade him carry it to Stele to measure, into the outer chamber, and he said he thought it very dear of that price, and thereupon my L. refused to buy it.... Thus I beseech your La. most humbly of your blessing to your little fellow[52] and myself who is very well, thanks be to God....
“Sheffield, this Friday, 13th of October, 1575.”
Here for the first time is the beginning of real dissension in the family. The Earl’s own son murmurs against him, and the wife, being the daughter of her husband’s stepmother, would naturally share his resentment towards the soldierly official towards whom she stood in such a very delicate double relationship. The young couple are placed in a very difficult position henceforth between Earl and Countess, and their letters show the growing jealousy of her absence and her independence in the Earl’s mind. The postscript strikes a tenderer note in the allusion to the childish days of the “lyttell fellow”—George, son and heir of Gilbert and Mary Talbot—and his awe of his “Lady Danmode” (Grandmother).