To Elizabeth, Shrewsbury had played the part which she assigned to one of her lovers, the Duke of Anjou, to whom she wrote apropos of his persistency that she should never cease to love and esteem him as the dog which, being often chastised, returns to its master: “comme le chien qui estant souvent batu retourne a son maitre.” To her lovers she could say such things with impunity, to her servants she only implied them. Her beaten yet steadfast hound, Shrewsbury, true to his family’s emblem of the faithful “Talbot dog,” lay chiefly in these days at his small manor of Handsworth pouring out his soul in letters. There seem to be none available from his wife during his last years, though she was to the end truly anxious to be on happier terms with him, and made every possible effort to achieve this. Once more Elizabeth used her good offices with the honest intent to restore him to happiness. In what was practically the last private letter she ever wrote him, despatched in December, 1589, she addressed him as “her very good old man,” was anxious for news of his health, particularly at this inclement season, sympathised with his gout, and begged him to permit his wife sometimes to have access to him according to her long-cherished wish. He seems to have brooded heavily, as of yore—to a conscience so tender the brooding nature is often a sorry twin brother—and to have discussed the matter without any happy result. About this time he wrote to his intimate friend the Bishop of Lichfield on the subject. The Bishop’s views are set forth in his reply. His view of the married estate is a highly morose one. Yet he begs the Earl, for decency’s sake, to patch up the quarrel finally.

“I am bold according to my promise, to put you in remembrance of some matters already passed between us in talk. It is an old saying, and as true as old, a thing well begun is half ended. It pleased your good Lordship, at my late being with you, to confer with me about divers points touching the good estate of this our shire, whereof yourself, next under her Majesty, is the chief governor; and I hope, as you then begun them in good time, so very shortly they will be brought to very good perfection.... Thus much for those common affairs we had in conference; now the chief and last matter that we talked of, and a matter indeed both in conscience chiefly to be regarded of you, and in duty still to be urged and called upon by me, was the good and godly reconciliation of you together, I mean my Lordship and my Lady your wife. I humbly thank your good Lordship you were content then to take my motion in good part, and to account it for a good piece of mine office and charge to travel in such cases, as indeed it is, and therefore, I trust you will be as willing now to see me write as you were then to hear me speak in that matter; and the more, because I speak and write as well of mere love and goodwill to yourself, as for any respect also of discharging my duty unto God; and yet, also, you must think chiefly and principally that I speak and write to discharge my duty to God, and must take all that I do to proceed, not as from a common friend and hanger-on, but as from a special ghostly father, stirred up of God purposely, as I hope, to do good unto you both by my ghostly advice. My honourable good Lord, I cannot see but that it must needs rest as a great clog to your conscience, if you consider the matter as it is, and will weigh the case according to the rule of God’s word: I say I cannot see but that it must needs rest and remain a great clog and burthen to your conscience to live asunder from the Countess your wife, without her own good liking and consent thereto; for, as I have told you heretofore, it is the plain doctrine of Saint Paul that the one should not defraud the other of due benevolence nor of mutual comfort and company, but with the agreement of both parties, and that also but for a time, and only to give yourselves to fasting and prayer. This is the doctrine of Saint Paul, and this doctrine Christ Himself confirmed in the Gospel when He forbiddeth all men to put away their wives unless for adultery, a thing never suspected in my Lady your wife. I could bring forth many authorities and examples both of the Holy Scriptures and other, profane writers, to prove that such kind of separations have always been holden unlawful and ungodly, not only among the people of God, but also among the heathen themselves that never knew God; and I could likewise show what fearful judgments of God have followed such unlawful separations, and what great plagues have fallen upon not only the offenders themselves, but also upon their houses and children, and all their posterity after them; but I shall not need to use any such discourse to your Lordship, because so wise, so grave, so well disposed as indeed you are of yourself if other evil counsellors did not draw you to the contrary; who also shall not want their part in the play, for, as the proverb saith, so experience proveth the same to be true, consilium malum consultori pessimum, evil counsel falleth out worst to the counsel giver.

“But some will say in your Lordship’s behalf that the Countess is a sharp and bitter shrew, and therefore like enough to shorten your life if she should keep you company. Indeed, my good Lord, I have heard some say so, but if shrewdness or sharpness may be a just cause of separation between a man and wife, I think few men in England would keep their wives long; for it is a common jest, yet true in some sense, that there is but one shrew in all the world and every man hath her; and so every man might be rid of his wife that would be rid of a shrew. My honourable good Lord, I doubt not but your great wisdom and experience hath taught you to bear some time with the woman as with the weaker vessel; and yet, for the speeches I have had with her Ladyship in that behalf, I durst pawn all my credit unto your Lordship (and, if need be, also bind myself in any great bond), she will so bridle herself that way, beyond the course of other women, that she will rather bear with your Lordship, than look to be borne withal; and yet to be borne withal sometimes is not amiss for the best and wisest and patientest of us all. But peradventure some of your friends will object greater matter against her; as that she hath sought to overthrow your whole house; but those that say so I think are not your Lordship’s friends, but rather her Ladyship’s enemies, and their speech carrieth no resemblance of truth; for how can it be likely that she should seek or wish the overthrow of you or your house, when not only, being your wife, your prosperity must needs profit her very much, but also, having joined her house with your house in marriage, your long life and honourable state must needs glad her heart to the uttermost; if not for your own sake, yet for the issue of both your bodies, whom she loveth, I dare say, as her own life, and would not see by her goodwill to fall into any decay, either of honour or any other good state of life or livings; although, also, I dare say she wisheth all good unto you for your own sake, as well as theirs, or else she would not be so desirous of your life and company as she is. And therefore, I beseech your Lordship remove all such conceits far from you as are beaten into your head by evil counsellors, and rather think this unlawful separation to be a stain to your house, and a danger to your life; for that God, indeed, is not well pleased with it, Who will visit with death or sickness all that live not after His laws, as of late yourself had some little touch or taste given you of it by those or the nearest friends of those whom you most trusted about you. For my own part, I wish your Lordship all good, even from my heart; both long life and honourable state, with all increase of honour, and joy and comfort in the Lord to your own heart’s desire; but yet both I and you, and all of us that are God’s children, must think that such visitations are sent us of God to call us home, and if we despise them when they are sent, He will lay greater upon us. Thus I am bold, my good Lord, both in the fear of God and in goodwill towards yourself, to discharge the duty of your well-willing ghostly father, and if your Lordship accept it well, as I hope you will, I beseech you let me understand it by a line or two, that I may give God thanks for it; if not, I have done my part; the success I leave to God; and rest yours, notwithstanding, in what I may, and so I humbly take my leave of your good Lordship.

“From Eccleshall, the 12th of October, 1590.

It is not necessary to lay stress on the sheer fatuity and unwisdom of three-fourths of such a letter. But the gross injustice of it has never been fully appreciated by historians. In the first place, Bess of Hardwick was not a mere shrew—as has been amply set forth. She was a woman of great capabilities, and superabundant driving power which, insufficiently controlled, ended in a blindness to any point of view but her own, and so caused her to utter under provocation, stress, and disappointment hard and foolish things which the Earl could not forget. The estrangement had certainly gone too far for peace. The time for such things as a renewal of trust and love between the two was past. Within a month or two—in the January of 1591—the Earl died. Gossip—wise after the event—declared that with his last breath he groaned over the possibilities of disaster which would descend upon his family through his wife’s schemes for Arabella.

In the previous year the great Walsingham, worn out by stress of affairs and labour, succumbed also—to his “tympany and carnosity.”

And, since the world and his wife must be amused, and the Queen needed distraction from heavy cares of State, she went forth to be entertained at a public fête a day after the death of her much-enduring “good old man.”

To the last he could not forget the great slander. Even his tomb witnesses, in his own words, to his virtue. He must have brooded carefully over this epitaph and the memorial which bears it in Sheffield Church. All allusion to his second wife is omitted, and in regard to the scandal he urges the fact of his official presence at the execution of Mary as the surest proof of the innocence of his relations with her. All he asked of his posterity was that upon his death the date should be added to the tomb. This they omitted to do.