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 realm, George [Talbot, sixth] Earl of Shrewsbury [q. v.], whom she brought to terms of the greatest honour and advantage to herself and children; for he not only yielded to a considerable jointure, but to an union of families, by taking Mary [Cavendish], her youngest daughter, to wife of Gilbert [Talbot], his [second] son, and afterwards his heir; and giving the Lady Grace [Talbot], his youngest daughter, to Henry [Cavendish], her eldest son.’ The double nuptials for which she thus stipulated before she would give her hand to Shrewsbury were solemnised at Sheffield on 9 Feb. 1567–8, and it is probable that her own marriage took place shortly afterwards. The queen heartily approved the match, and it was in the following December (1568) that she decided to confide to Shrewsbury the custody of Mary Queen of Scots. The countess assisted her husband in the reception of Mary at Tutbury on 2 Feb. 1569. Five years later, in October 1574, while Margaret, countess of Lennox, and her son Charles (the younger brother of Darnley) were on their way from London to Scotland, the Countess of Shrewsbury entertained them at Rufford. During their five days' sojourn a match was rapidly arranged by the wily hostess between young Charles and her daughter, Elizabeth Cavendish, and the pair were actually married next month, much to the indignation of the queen. Shrewsbury, in an exculpatory letter to Burghley, with more truth than gallantry, threw the blame exclusively upon his countess. ‘There are few noblemans sons in England,’ he wrote, ‘that she hath not praid me to dele forre at one tyme or other; so I did for my lord Rutland, with my lord Sussex, for my lord Wharton, and sundry others; and now this comes unlooked for without thankes to me’ (cf., Collection of Letters, 1753, pp. 235–7; Cotton MS. Caligula, C. iv. f. 252). In order to cool this ambition, Elizabeth sent the countess to the Tower after Christmas, but she was allowed to join her husband three months later. In 1575 her daughter became mother of Arabella, afterwards well known as Arabella Stuart [see ]. Early in 1582, upon the death of her daughter, Elizabeth Stuart, the countess wrote several letters on behalf of her orphaned granddaughter Arabella to Burghley and Walsingham, being specially anxious to get her maintenance raised from 200l. to 600l. a year. She was at first genuinely attached to her grandchild, but she had completely alienated her by her tyranny before March 1603, when Arabella was removed from Hardwick to the care of Henry Grey, sixth earl of Kent, and was disinherited by a codicil to her grandmother's will. Shrewsbury was relieved of his charge of the Scottish queen in 1584, not before he had been taunted by his wife with making love to his captive. Fuller records that at court upon one occasion, when the queen demanded how the Queen of Scots did, the countess said, ‘Madam, she cannot do ill while she is with my husband, and I begin to grow jealous, they are so great together.’ It is most probable that the countess simulated a jealousy which she did not feel in order to prejudice the queen against her husband (for the animosity thus displayed between 1580 and 1586, see, sixth ). A more genuine cause for conjugal discord was the injurious ascendency which the earl allowed a female domestic, named Eleanor Britton, to obtain over him during his later years (cf. Harl. MS. 6853). But the countess allowed no vexations of this sort to interfere with the vigorous administration of her vast estates, estimated as worth 60,000l. a year (in modern currency). Her extraordinary zeal as a builder was attributed, says Walpole, to a prediction that she should not die as long as she was building. In addition to the fine Elizabethan mansion at Chatsworth (replaced by the well-known Palladian structure of the late seventeenth century), she built the seats of Oldcotes, Worksop, and Bolsover, and, after the Earl of Shrewsbury's death in 1590, she set to work upon a new Hardwick Hall, within a few hundred yards of the ancient seat of her family, which remained standing. Over the chimneypiece in the dining-room are still to be seen her arms and initials dated 1597 (the year of the completion of the work); while the letters ‘E.S.’ appear in most of the rooms with the triple badge of Shrewsbury, Cavendish, and Hardwick (cf. Antiquary, 10 May 1873).

At Hardwick she spent the days of her fourth widowhood in abundant wealth and splendour, feared by many, and courted by a numerous train of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. She was very ill in April 1605, when her granddaughter Arabella ventured down to Hardwick to see her, armed with a letter from the king, on the strength of which ‘Bess grudgingly bestowed a gold cup and three hundred guineas’ upon her former favourite (, Life of Arabella, ii. 48). ‘A woman of masculine understanding and conduct,’ concludes Lodge; ‘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 these employments she intrigued alternately with Elizabeth and Mary,