Читать книгу Bess of Hardwick and Her Circle онлайн

33 страница из 82

There was certainly nothing whatever in this marriage to upset Elizabeth’s plans. Indeed, it really paved the way for her schemes and made it easier for her to utilise not only the Earl’s wealth, his authority and position, but all his country seats in turn for the greater security of her life and throne.

My Lady Shrewsbury was forty-eight, my Lord had been but eight years an Earl. Time had not yet marked on his face the lines of anxiety and care which the next twenty-three years were to bring him. He was at the zenith of his career, and the Queen hinted mysteriously that ere long she would show him still more emphatic proofs of her trust and affection in so splendid a servitor. It is in a very happy and devoted vein that he writes love letters from Court just after marriage to his second bride, in which he addresses her as “sweet none.”^[10]

It is regrettable that these letters to his “none” are not more numerous. Otherwise the Earl’s correspondence all his life was enormous, and the masses of letters which mirror contemporary history and his duties in connection with them are nearly all comprised in that rich heritage of manuscript known as the Talbot Papers. Cecil is his constant correspondent. As Lord-Lieutenant of three such great counties he would naturally be kept au courant of great happenings. Is there fear of French invasion? Immediately the Lords of the Privy Council send him instructions. He is to organise companies of demi-lances, to find horses for them—“a good strong and well-set gelding and a man on his back meet to wear a corselet and shoot a dagge” runs the specification. Did her Majesty receive “letters out of Spain”? Copies of the same were sent to the Earl “to the intent that you may thereby see what the humour and disposition of those parties [i.e. the King of Spain and his emissary] tend unto.” Did France goad Mary of Scotland into that unforgettable offence—the adoption of the English royal arms? Then also must his lordship be acquainted with the fact and its immense possibilities. Presently active Scottish hostility seemed imminent, and the letter which travelled to my Lord from Berwick to bid him have all his men in readiness to move to the Border is cumbrously and theatrically endorsed “Haste, haste, haste, haste, post haste with all possible haste.”