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“Sir,—I have received your letter, thinking myself beholden unto you for your friendly care over me. I hear to my grief that suspicion is had of over much goodwill borne by my wife to this Queen and of untrue dealing by my men. For my wife thus must I say, she hath not otherwise dealt with that Queen than I have been privy unto and that I have had liking of, and by my appointment hath so dealt that I have been the more able to discharge the trust committed unto me. And if she for her dutiful dealing to her Majesty and true meaning to me should be suspected that I am sure hath so well deserved, she and I might think ourselves fortunate. And where I perceive her Majesty is let to understand that by my wife’s persuasion I am the more desirous to continue this charge, I speak it afore God she hath been in hand with me as far as she durst and more than I thought well of since my sickness to procure my discharge. I am not to...^[16] by her otherwise than I think well of.”

From the close of this year till the execution of the Duke of Norfolk in 1572 the history of George Talbot and Bess Hardwick is bound up with the story of the tissue of conspiracies which wound itself about Mary. The Norfolk plot, with which Mary was to be drawn out of prison, was a stout rope woven of many strands; the net which Cecil constructed for his prey was close-meshed and wide-spreading. There were constant alarums and excursions for the Earl and his people. He succeeded in getting rid of Huntingdon, but he was incessantly in fear of a rising of the northern nobles to whom Norfolk had appealed for their armed support; and when this fear was realised and the armed Earls arrived within fifty odd miles of Tutbury a hasty removal was necessary. Coventry was the only place which suggested itself until the hostile demonstration fizzled out and Tutbury could be regained.