The tea towel concerned lived in the kitchen of my mate Charlie. Charlie’s folks had a lovely old house, so going there was a bit of a treat, and he was in the family textile manufacturing business, which Loughborough used to have once upon a time. A lot of that has gone sadly, though it does have a stonking university, and the world’s largest operating Bell Foundry in Taylors. But look, you don’t come here to discuss the future prospects of a small Midlands town, and the point was that Tea Towel.
The Tea towel always caught my eye, because it had a picture of a big imposing house, and the big words ‘Hardwick Hall: More Glass than Wall’. It’s a catchy little slogan – be careful. You’ll find yourself repeating it every time someone says Hall.
Anywho, in the words of the Saw Doctors, time passed by and we moved on, the Loughborough days are long since gone, and once Pat managed to get access to his sister’s wheels in the form of the her venerable but magnificent mini, powered by a hair drier engine, we’d nip up to England’s most magnificent county to walk and camp & stuff – I speak of Derbyshire, of course. And on the way up on the M1 there she was – All Glass and Wall, in the distance, high on a scarp above the motorway. Hardwick Hall.
I’ve been to the grounds a few times in my life, but never inside until this year’s history tour and it was wildly magnificent – unusually, the same layout and much decoration it was born with. So I’m here partly to tell the story of this stunning Elizabethan prodigy house, but the person who created it is also fascinating – Bess of Hardwick is her name, though I don’t think I’d have been so familiar to her face, very grand she was. So here’s what I have done. What follows is a mash up; of the story of Bess of Hardwick, who lived from 1527 to 1608, and is a remarkable figure in Elizabethan history. Honestly that takes about 2/3rds of the episode, until I get to Hardwick hall – which has more glass than wall by the way – and talk about why it was made in the way it was, both the cultural fashions of the time and the way it was designed to support the way of life of the Elizbaethan aristocracy, and the household that sustained them. And then I’ll return to finish off Bess’s life. I hope that sounds OK, and here goes!
A story starting off with Loughborough anecdotes from my youth can truly be said to have got off to a rocky start, but I am sorry to say it’s going to get rockier, with peaks and rocks. Our story starts in the manor of Stainsby in North East Derbyshire. Derbyshire is a county of 4 regions; you have the northern horseshoe of the Black Peaks, high and covered with Peat on the top, lying on Gritstones and shales. Then the gentler White Peaks, made of Limestone. And then south towards Leicestershire much more low lying agricultural land, sandstone mainly. And finally then on the North east side, there’s low lying and hilly country, which sits on Coal Measure – carboniferous stone made when coal was being formed. All these rocks will play a part in our story.
Stainsby sits in that Coal measure sandstone area, in the north east, and it was owned by the Savage family in the 13th century – the Savages being a big Yorkshire family who, in a few hundred years’ time, savage by name savage by nature, will slug it out with the Wentworths, the earl of Strafford of civil War fame. A lawyer from Sussex, Joscelin, bought some land from them in 1253 and they worked the land with his hall at a place called Hardwick, which means ‘sheep farm’ – and in fact Hardwick is a breed of sheep. They gave their feudal allegiance to the Savages, their lord of the Manor. A couple of hundred years later, they were more than Yeoman farmers, they were gentleman farmers, squires, you might say, owning 300 acres, with a coat of arms by 1450. A family on the up, in a gentle way.
Which brings us to Joscelin’s descendant John, who’d acquired the surname Hardwick by this time, as you do, a good old traditional honest to goodness toponymic. John was born around 1487, and married Elizabeth Leache from a nearby manor, and they started having children – Elizabeth, or Bess as we will call her from now on, was born in 1521, and she acquired a brother in 1525, James, and all was set fair – until her Dad died in 1528 when Bess was only 7 – so leaving two minors as heirs. James would inherit the Hardwick estate, or what was left of it; Bess would most likely received little or nowt.
Well her mother married again, a bloke call Ralph Leche, spelled differently, who became Bess’s stepfather, and brought Bess and James three half-sisters. He didn’t bring much else – he owned a few leases and a bit of land at a nearby place called Chatsworth. In fact he struggled with the finances so much that he spent years in a Debtors prison between 1538 and 1544. And unfortunately the Crown had already seized those 300 Hardwick acres, and put them into wardship until James, the heir, came of age, which he wouldn’t do until 1546. So they might have the pretensions of the middle rank – but they no longer had the income, and had to watch as the owners of the wardship did their best to strip their assets for their own benefit. Basically, Bess might in theory have been born into a comfortable life; but in fact money was tight, and times were hard. So you can chalk up two lessons learned by young Bess which she will carry to her grave; letting land go into wardship can seriously damage your wealth; and being poor was not fun.
Little Bess was sent away at a young age from her family hearth to go and live in the household of a noble family – quite possible the Zouche family. That was the way it was done then; little wiggins were sent away and became one of the upper household of a grand family to learn your Ps and Qs. The Aristocracy back in those days tried to sort of emulate a royal household in miniature; they would have servants of relatively gentle birth immediately around them; and a lower household which did all the real work – scullery, pantry, stables all that sort of thing. There was none of the brutal physical separation you get later in the 18th and 19TH centuries, with staff banished to the deep out of sight; most of the lower household would eat and sleep in the main hall, often eating with the lord and lady, and sleeping on mattresses in the hall or corridors. But still, you knew who was a high status companion of the masters of the house, and you knew who were the lowly workers.
So, being sent away to live with the Zouches was the way Bess would have learned the skills she needed to operate in court life – the forms and protocols, how to play music, dance and sew, and read carefully selected books; and make social connections for the future.
Now one way out of money trouble for women was a good marriage, and this was a strategy Bess would use with some verve and skill. Her first attempt would have been arranged for her though, and was not a success; at a very young age, in 1543 at about 12 or 13, she was married to Robert Baslow, who was even younger, and may have been a Page in the Zouche household. And within a year, Robert had died “before they were bedded together” according to one account.
So, early life was proving something of a struggle for young Bess, but another household was found for her, this time much grander, and it forged a connection which would come back to haunt her. Because she moved to the household of the Grey family at Bradgate Park in Leicestershire, spookily close to Loughborough where all this started. It is not known whether or not she called it Braggie Park, but she jolly well ought to have done.
The Grey family were very grand – royalty no less. The Lady of the Household was Frances Brandon, daughter of Henry VIII’s sister Mary and her husband, who was Henry’s old drinking companion, Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk. She met their three daughters there – Jane, who’d have been about 8, Katherine and Mary. Jane is the Lady Jane Grey, who will be proper Queen of England until the evil Usurper Bloody Mary Tudor stole it. Jane’s younger sister Katherine Grey will come back into our story later, but the point to be remembered at all times is that the Greys were in line to the throne.
At this very grand court at Braggie Park, in 1547, the 20 year old Bess met the up and coming courtier, the 39 year old William Cavendish. Cavendish came from a gentry family from Suffolk, and had made their money by being clever at court and becoming royal administrators – and doing a good job, to be fair. Ooh, plus, William’s financial expertise was very helpful to Thomas Cromwell when dissolving those pesky monasteries. And in those days insider trading was not so much a crime as a requirement to getting paid, so he picked up a few sweet deals. Anyway, the Greys and Brandons thought Bess & Bill made a lovely couple, and before you know it, they were married at Bradgate Hall, Bess of Hardwick, Bess the hard up, Bess was now Lady Cavendish and moving in pretty exalted circles.
The marriage was almost certainly one of the head rather than the heart, but it was a good match. Bess would give birth to 8 little Cavendishes, 6 of whom would make it into adulthood, and would start a Cavendish clan which is still with us today. We’ll come across the children again en passant no doubt, but it is just worth noting here that among all her other achievements, Bess of Hardwick was the founder of two aristocratic dynasties; her second lad, William Cavendish would the Duke oof Devonshire, and we are still blessed, if that’s the right word, still bless with their presence, dear. They remain not short of a bob or two, not given to worrying about their grocery bill, and we are on Peregrine I believe, the 12th edition. The Dukes of Newcastle would be descended from her youngest son, Charles, and we’ll meet one of his descendant legging it away from Marston Moor in 1644.
The Bess-William team was a strong and successful one. Part of the reason for that was that William and Bess were social climbers, and hard, aggressive and relentlessly acquisitive landowners. Right from the start Bess had an eye for a good buy – and she persuaded William to sell those little parcels of Monastic land he’d got hold of and put all the proceeds into buying a big estate. She knew one that would go for a good price, and might also help out the family – because the estate she suggested was none other than Chatsworth, owned by her step father Ralph Leche, now finally out of Debtor’s prison but still short of a few quid. And so that’s what they did in 1549; the local girl had done OK for herself, returned to Derbyshire in some glory; which is a theme. Making good in the county of her birth would be important to her, she would not forget her impoverishment there. That land brought status and financial security, was a lesson which had come hard and burned deep, and she would thoroughly enjoy returning in ever greater grandeur later.
And presumably at the same time she saw her Mum’s life improve too for a while; and since Chatsworth was less than 20 miles away from Hardwick, daughter and mum would be able to visit. Ralph would live another year, and die in 1550, and his son James then inherited the family estate of Hardwick. Meanwhile Bess was learning to love the thrill of building grand houses; she and William transformed the house of Chatsworth with a massive building project that would keep Bess going until the 1560s, though it’s not the one you see now, should you go for a visit.
She’d learned another lesson as we mentioned; that Wardship was a scourge, a plague of locusts, which brought even a wealthy family into penury. So when they bought Chatsworth the estate was not bought in William’s name as would have been normal; it was bought in both their names, so that if William died first, the land would not go into wardship if their eldest was still a minor, but to Bess.
Which is exactly what happened, when William died in 1557 after 10 years of marriage, and their Eldest, Henry Cavendish, was a minor. Now Bess was now very wealthy; in addition to their 320 acres at Chatsworth, they’d bought 8,000 acres at Ashford manor in Derbyshire. But when William died, he left debts of over £5,000, something like £1 ½ million in today’s money. Asset rich but cash poor, She took action. She lobbied parliament to have the debt cancelled; and found herself a rich husband.
If Cavendish had been a step up from her first husband, her third was out of the top drawer. To go back a step. Choosing Godparents for children was an important decisions back then – not necessarily only so your little poppet got Godly advice, but an essential part of the business of social climbing. Who you chose said something about you, and your contacts and influence. So William and Bess chose protestant members of the landed classes, except in one instance – when they chose Mary Tudor.
That connection to the royal family would give Bess her next husband. In 1558, Bloody Mary was dying, and Bess travelled to London; and on the way, she probably dropped into Hatfield house, where Mary’s sister and heir Elizabeth had her court in waiting at the time. One of Elizabeth’s courtiers was one William St Loe, about 7 years older than Bess, and of an old family, an Anglo Norman family, still living off the fat of the conquest 500 years before, with lots of land in the west county and a family seat at Chew Magna. William and Bess hit it off. And in 1559 they were married.
The marriage with St Loe seems to have been happy if the tone of his letters are to be believed;
‘My own, dearer to me than I am to myself’
But the marriage was spent mainly apart, Bess with her family at Chatsworth, William at Elizabeth’s Court. Bess carried on her building projects and the business of the great Elizabethan lady – managing the estates and the day to day finances for which Bess had a talent. Her husband referred to her as ‘chief overseer of my works’.
St Loe died quite soon after they were married, in London, without much warning, in the winter of 1565. He had no children; so ordinarily his heir would have been his younger brother Edward. But there’s a thing. You see, Bess was already acquiring a bit of a reputation for her acquisitiveness – I mean not quite to the level of an Agatha Christie novel yet, but Edward did not like the cut of the Bess of Hardwick jib. He suspected her of having a spade hidden behind her back, all ready to start digging for gold, and if they had children of course Edward would be out on his ear anyway.
So relationships were frosty, and their were suspicions about Edward’s behaviour – to the point where even Margaret St Loe, Edward’s Mum, seems to have suspected her younger son of trying to poison Bess, which is quite a thing to say about your own flesh and blood. Whatever the truth of it, the proof of the pudding would not be in the eating, but in the will; Bess’s husband left the vast majority of his estate not to Edward as would normally have been his heir, but to Bess. Bess of Hardwick was now massively rich.
The other gift from William, though, was to propel Bess into the royal court of Queen Elizabeth, and into the world of high politics. Because Bess became a gentlewoman of the Queen’s privy chamber. At the age of 31 she would have been pretty old compared to most of those around her, but she was now in the room with the font of all power in Tudor England, the person of the monarch, Elizabeth I.
Bess would have a tricky relationship with the Queen. There’s a very strong desire to build a story of an alliance between two women who both succeeded in overcoming the disadvantages of a man’s world, to see a deal of mutual respect and recognition between them. That may be true, but Bess was ambitious, and that would get her into trouble, with a Queen who was determined to protect her position, and her dynasty and its succession, and did not suffer opposition lightly from anyone.
Which brings us back to Bradgate Park and the Greys. At court, Bess met her old friends the Greys again, in the form particularly of Lady Katherine Grey. In 1561, Katherine was just 21 years old, 13 years younger than Bess, who she probably looked up to a bit and trusted. The last few years had not been kind to the Grey family; in 1554, Katherine’s older sister, Lady Jane Grey, had rightfully succeeded to the throne of England, according to Edward VI’s wishes. As you know, Mary Tudor had usurped the throne, and taken revenge on the Grey family. I admit to being slightly snarky in that presentation of history, courtesy of Eric Ives, but either way Katherine had seen her father and her sister executed, and her mother impoverished and kept close by the side of an unforgiving Queen Mary.
None of this seems to have taught young Katherine any good sense, or build an understanding that you mess around with Princes at your peril. She was still in line to the throne, royal blood still flowed in her veins and this meant her life was not her own, she was certainly not free to choose her own marriage partner, since she might be used to challenge the Tudor dynasty’s rule. This is sad, but a fact of life, and there were compensations, in a life of plenty and comfort and all that.
But Katherine chose to ignore these brutal facts of life, of which she would have been well aware, and she started a secret affair with Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford and compounded the felony of marrying him – without the Queens permission.
Well, with her husband posted abroad, it turned out that Katherine was pregnant. The clock was ticking – the evidence would soon become clear for all to see, including the Queen. So Katherine needed to confide in someone, someone with influence with the Queen, who could maybe lessen the royal fury. Katherine chose to confide in our Bess, and late one night snuck over to her bedroom and poured her heart out to her old companion, her old mucker, her surrogate older sister.
Her surrogate older sister was not best pleased by this confidence. Owning a royal secret was not a safe thing to have in your possession. So she was not sympathetic. In fact Bess sent Katherine away with a flea in her ear, saying
She was sorry therefore that Katherine had not made the queen’s majesty privy thereunto
Bit late now Katherine might have pointed out. Katherine went next to Dudley, as the person best able to intercede with the Queen, telling him in his bedroom which was right next to Elizabeth’s. She received another flea, and the next day Dudley spilled his guts to the Queen. Whose head exploded.
Elizabeth feared a plot. Katherine was immediately imprisoned, and she, her child, and another later child would spend the next seven years in prison, until her death. Her marriage would be eventually annulled, making Hertford and Katherine’s children illegitimate. Quite remarkably one of her descendants, William Seymour, would do something pretty similar, also involving Bess. Of which more later.
When she gave that firm and brutal face palm to her young family friend, Bess knew what she was about; but her attempt to avoid personal disaster and guilt by association failed. The Queen saw plots everywhere, with some justification. She looked at Bess’s case and declared
“It is certain that there hath been great practices and purposes and… she hath been most privy”
So Bess joined Ketherine Grey in the Tower of London. There she stayed for 3 months, until at last the Queen was persuaded to release her; but it was not yet a rehabilitation. Bess was banished from court, although surely to be banished from London to Derbyshire is no great hardship.
Now, marriage than been a successful strategy for Bess, and in 1569, two years after the death of William St Loe, she tied a new knot. And the 4th, and last marriage was the grandest.
George Talbot was the 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, and he was one of the richest men in the country. He was Lord Lieutenant of three counties – Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire – he was on the Council of the North and a privy Councillor. He had castles, halls and estates coming out of his ears. This would have been the marriage of the century – the marriage of two loving bank balances…sorry, the marriage of two loving people.
There’s a certain amount of cynical shade cast upon Bess’ last choice of a husband, that she only fell in love after talking to George’s bank manager. And it seems this was very much an arrangement accompanied by some hard bargaining, a pre-nup if you will. As part of the deal, Bess insisted on two other marriages, between their respective children – Gilbert Talbot, George’s heir, married Bess’s daughter Mary, and Bess’s eldest son, Henry Cavendish, was hitched to Shrewsbury’s daughter Grace. The Hardwick future was well and truly hitched to the Shrewsbury gravy train.
But regardless of the cynicism – regardless, as I say, not irregardless because irregardless isn’t a word – the marriage seemed to go pretty well for a number of years, until a slow poison was added to the recipe of the Shrewsbury marriage. The poison had a name – Mary Stuart, Mary I, Queen of Scots.
Mary’s arrival in England in 1567 will be well known to all of you, so we won’t go over all of that again. After a bit of dithering, in 1568 she was appointed a gaoler – none other than Georgie and Bess.
George was probably chosen because he had so many places he could put Mary up in; I think she was moved over 40 times until she finally stopped moving for ever at Fotheringhay. Also because George was a moderate type of protestant, who might provide the right kind of person as a go-between with catholic Mary. But most of all because he was stonkingly well off. And looking after a queen is not cheap. Elizabeth starts off, for example promising to pay him £2700 a year, which is about £700,000 in today’s money; he complains it’s not enough, and before long Elizabeth stops paying anyway. Shrewsbury complains relentlessly for years, that he is being financially ruined. Modern Historians lack sympathy; George, and Bess in fact, don’t just own farms, they have interests in coal, lead, iron, steel, and shipping. They did not have to worry too much about the Bills. But now doubt it was costing them, a fortune.
Being gaoler for Mary put Bess back into a relationship with the Queen, and for a good while she made the most of it, and a relationship of trust was re-established – with both Queens. Bess sat for hour after hour with Mary, sewing, embroidering, eating, playing – and cards reported back regularly to Elizabeth, and even placed a spy in Mary’s household. Meanwhile as well as hunting with the hounds, she ran with the hare, and got on famously with a while with Mary. But that changed. Maybe Mary found out about Bess’ other face.
Once she found out, Mary also knew how to fight dirty. She wrote to the Queen and claimed Bess had nothing but contempt for her monarch, and had told Mary she’d have done better if she’d been Queen rather than Elizabeth. Apparently Bess had mocked the very idea that Elizabeth was a virgin queen; she spread the dirt, claiming that Elizabeth was insatiable and had seduced loads of men. Not content with that, Mary may well have suggested to Bess that her husband George was also unfaithful to her. When this came out, Bess fought back, claiming it was Mary that had slept with her husband, and as the gossip spread, Mary blew her top, accusing Bess of ‘foul slanders’ and the ‘insolence of this vulgar-minded woman’.
Well, Elizabeth was well able to deal with this kind of slanging match, and without due cause, kept faith. But then Bess put her foot in the it, and gave Elizabeth due cause. And it was again dynasty and ambition again that did the damage. To explain I need to give a bit of background.
In 1574, Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, came to visit Mary QoS. Lennox was another with royal blood; she was the niece of Henry VIII, from another of his sisters Margaret Queen of Scotland. She had a son, Charles Stuart, and people said he had a better claim to the throne than James Stuart, the future James VI of Scotland and Ist of England. So royal blood again – and Bess knew from bitter personal experience not to mess about with royal blood.
Except ambition was stronger than caution. Because she did mess about with royal blood. She secretly married her daughter – yet another Elizabeth – she married her own daughter to said Charles Stuart, this time against the Queen’s specific instruction. Her husband Shrewsbury and the Queen both went ballistic. Bess presumably looked apologetic, but was secretly hugging herself. Because although the Countess of Lennox was thrown in the Tower, and Bess placed under armed guard – the deed was done. And a year later in 1575, nature followed its course, and a child was born, Arbella Stuart, and when her Dad Charles Stuart died the following year, this was then a girl with a claim to the throne. Albeit a rather distant one. And that’s a social distinction bar none.
Arbella’s royal status was very, very important to Bess. According to Mary QoS, she harboured secret, wild dreams; Mary wrote to the French ambassador:
I would wish you to mention privately to the queen that nothing has alienated the Countess of Shrewsbury from me more but the vain hope which she has conceived of setting the crown of England on the head of her little girl, Arbella.”
Now, Mary is not a reliable witness in this. But there are some historians who think that it did remain a dream for Bess, which she fondly believes has a future, and that it would influence her design of the iconic Hall she would one day build.
All this destroyed the relationship between Bess and her husband. Once the relationship lay in ruins, Bess encouraged the rumours that George had an affair with Mary, and he would suffer from it – he never quite had the trust and position his status should have afforded him at court anyway, and the mud of suspicion that he was a secret supporter of Mary’s cause stuck. As the rift between husband and wife deepened, there were more words; by the late 1570s, George was describing Bess as ‘my wyked and malysyous wyfe’ and ‘so bad and wicked a woman’.
Despite her irritation with Bess, the Queen played marriage counsellor, and got them together. She dismissed George’s complaint that Bess tried to
“make me the wife and her the husband”.
The pair were apparently reconciled. But they weren’t really; they now lived largely separate lives, since George declared that he would share
“neither bed with her nor board with her”
By 1584, they were formally separated, and in an act of pique, George tried to exclude her from Chatsworth and its income. Bess was having none of that, went to law, and – won. In 1587, Mary QoS was executed, and three years later George was also dead, and in line with the court judgement, Bess inherited one third of all his lands and interests. But by that time, Bess had moved on. To new building projects which would outdo even her works at Chatsworth.
Bess would carry out those building projects back where she had grown up, in those hard and difficult circumstances – back at home, at Hardwick. This of course had not been inherited not by her but by her brother James. But James did not have his sister’s head for business, and had not done well. In trying to win big, by risky purchases of Church lands on high-interest loans, he had lost everything, and died bankrupt in the Fleet Prison. Over the years, Bess seems to have tried to help her brother; because when he died, Bess was a major creditor of the estate, having given loans to her brother over the years, mortgaged on the Hardwick estate. After James’ death, in 1583, she bought Hardwick in her son William’s name, and she was back home, in pomp, she had comprehensively made good, and the neighbours of her struggling parents 60 years ago could only watch in awe as she constructed a massive modern house that demonstrated in absolutely unmissable style, just how high she had risen.
If you manage to get to Hardwick, and you really should if you get the chance, then high on the hills above the south Derbyshire plains, you can actually see two halls; one of them is now a ruin, but both were built at quite similar times, remarkably so if you think about the vast expense of building them. Hardwick Old Hall was probably built on the same area as the old manor house, and it is itself a very interesting place to visit, although ruined; there’s a lot still standing – and actually you get possibly the best view from the Hill in its Great Chamber. It was built from 1585 and finished in 1591. Almost immediately, Bess started on a new, even greater hall, which was not finished until 1597, 6 years later. The Old hall was then used by Bess’ favourite son, William, and in the 17th century Thomas Hobbes, would live there, since the philosopher was a client of the Cavendish family. But by the end of the 18th century it had fallen into ruin, and I am going to concentrate on the new hall here.
So, I am now going to talk then, about Hardwick Hall, and how it relates to the changes in the design and way of life in great houses of the time, and how fashions were changing in Elizabethan England. We’ll then come back at the end to the last few years of Bess’ life.
The new house was probably largely designed by Bess herself; we know that she had some connection and made some smallish payments to a well known architect, Robert Smythson, but his influence seems limited; basically, she brought all her experience to bear from Chatsworth, and Hardwick Old hall.
It’s probably worth just saying a couple of words about the origins of the aristocratic great house from Medieval times, because those traditions continue to influence the design of stately homes well beyond the middle ages, and would have formed some of the assumptions Bess took into her thoughts.
In brief, then, the great house in medieval time was the working centre of the whole estate, designed not just to be where the lord and Lady lived, but to support all the people who worked in the household and estate, it was a business centre, people came and went all day in addition to the permanent household. At the centre of this society, composed of a large number of people of several social classes, was the Great Hall. There, everyday, the great family would sit in state at the head of their household, tenants and estate workers, in rambling buildings which often owed their origin in castle or fortified manor house. As such, they would usually still have security in mind, and were based around a central, internal courtyard, with kitchens were physically removed from the house for fear of fire.
By Bess of Hardwick’s time many things had changed, as she sat down to design her new house. One of those things was the arrival of the Compact house. Security was no longer a big problem, warfare seemed to have left England, and there were few hordes of armed bandidos roaming around. Households were becoming smaller as less of the estate work was focussed in the house itself. And meanwhile, proclaiming the trendy modernity of the owners of the house, up to date with the latest fashions and innovations, became more and more important as it was less of a working head office. Plus – indeed plus plus – proclaiming the august magnificence and dynasty of the owners was essential. Bess does that in spades – there are ES’s all over the place, massive great ones in stone at the top of the towers – ES for Elizabeth Shrewsbury. Bess might not like her husband’s personality, but she adored the social status he bought. Hardwick Hall has many fine features and characteristics – modesty is categorically not one of them.
Hardwick is all built from local materials; the main ingredient is the local Sandstone, Hardwick stone as it is called, carved into ashlar blocks. It looks lovely, a gorgeous warm colour, but it’s soft – so it’s easy to work and carve, but subject to erosion and a conservation headache therefore. There’s Limestone quarried locally also. There is an acre of glass of course – Hardwick Hall more glass than wall remember – which is made in Bess’s very own glass works, and lead mined from her estates two; she also possessed coal mines. Almost everything eaten in the house also would come from the estates; the whole place was pretty much self sufficient.
Hardwick Hall has three floors, arranged in order of granditude, just to coin a word that really should, but does not, exist. The Top, the second floor, as we will hear, is where all the public, grandest rooms were. The first and middle floor is for family, and the ground floor is where all the hard work happens, where the servants of the Lower Household mainly work and live. And very interestingly, when you look at the front of Hardwick hall, the relatively levels of social granditude is reflected in the height of the floors. The top floor has the highest ceilings and tallest windows; the first less high but still grand, and the ground floor is beginning to drift towards pokitude. That is really spelling social hierarchy out, just in case you’d manage to miss it all your life.
Bess was also in the latest tradition of the age, then, when she dispensed with that internal courtyard, and instead built Hardwick new Hall on one condensed floor plan. And although you look at Hardwick hall and think wow, that is a big house the heating bills must be terrifying, actually it’s a little deceptive; I mean it’s not a 2 up 2 down, obviously, but it’s a only two rooms deep. Its design maxmises the initial ‘front-on’ impact, it is wildly beautiful, and impressive; and disguises the fact that it is not as deep or big as you might imagine.
Interestingly, images from the time of such houses were often created full frontal, to show off another of the most valued properties of your modern up to date building; the symmetry. Hardwick hall is rigorously symmetrical; two towers at the back each two windows wide three stories high, two towers at the side 2 windows wide three stories high, two towers at the front two windows wide three stories high, 6 windows across the front split into 3 even segments. There’s none of the bish bash bosh of your medieval castle, this is strictly bish, bish, bish. Bess had to cheat a bit to achieve it; some of those famous windows are just glass over stone wall. They are fake to maintain the external symmetry. Interestingly, in later centuries design of great houses goes back to being more informal and rambly – and in accordance with that, paintings of them are often taken from a sideways on perspective.
That’s not all Elizabethan’s liked in their houses though. They liked a clever device you had to guess and work out. The crowning glory of this clever clever approach to architecture is the Triangular Lodge, which the Treshams built in Northamptonshire; I remember taking the Old Trout there once; everything – its shape and All the carvings – are in threes – because the Treshams were catholic, and the Trinity was their sign of that. So the secret device in Hardwick is in the towers. Each end section with the three towers forms a Greek Cross. As you walk round the outside, the three towers seem to change their combined shape in mysterious ways.
And to maintain the symmetry – the two Greek cross sections are then joined in the middle by a central, two story hall which runs from front to back, at right angles to the broad width of the house – and this is new. Previously halls would run along the length of the house because the Hall was the heart of the house and needed as much space as possible. The new approach of the central hall cutting straight from front to back, exactly in the centre, maintained the symmetry, and as visitors came in, it gave them an immediate impact – before they went on to state rooms.
Now that was important as well – your visitors had to be impressed right from the start. Once they’d been impressed by the two story high central hall, Bess then designed them a processional route through the house. The destination for visitors was on the top, second floor, where Bess had her great chamber, and she would sit in state, under a canopy, in a grand chair – just for all the world like royalty; because generally, the top nobility were trying to copy many aspects of the royal court – household, grand houses, chambers to receive visitors.
So, the top floor Great Chamber was where special visitors came to great parties and feasts, and this also was a very new development. Remember previously the tradition had been the lord and lady in the great hall with everyone now. But by the end of Elizabeth’s reign people like Bess ate in the Hall with everyone on the estate only on special occasions, on feasts and holy days, when largess would be delivered to all the estate workers, all the tenants, and everyone would have a hooley just like before. It has to be said Bess loved these occasions too; a letter from her son talked of
All the old holidays with their mirth and rites…May games, Morris dances, the Lord and Lady of May, the Fool and the Hobby Horse…carols and wassails at Christmas with good plum porridge and pies…
But for most of the time, for day to day living, aristocracy now ate in their own private chambers, and in Hardwick Hall that was on the first floor, the middle floor – in a second chamber, called the Lower Great Chamber. There usually Bess would eat with her family and Upper household, or even in her withdrawing chamber just off the lower Great Chamber. Rooms were often used for multiple reasons; her private chamber might well be where she worked, received people on business and so on.
So the visitors all traipsed up the top floor in a processional route, as I say, and this was also new. It meant they had to go through the house and see how magnificent it was, and up the big staircase, up to the very top with a growing sense of expectation to enter the Great High Chamber, with its views and Bess sitting in state. It also, incidentally meant that eating at parties and with guests was a piece of grand theatre. When it was time, the lower Household staff would bring everything up together in a great procession, all the way up the main staircase, with all the silver trays, steaming with fresh food the delicious smells filling the stairwell, and anyone they passed would salute it. It would have been most grand. The long walk must also must have meant that no-one on the top floor ever ate their food when it was hot.
Dinner was the grandest meal and served generally around 11 in the morning, and there might be up to a dozen courses. Supper was the other main meal, but less grand, and held at 5 or 6 pm. After eating guests had a choice of activities. Firstly, while Dinner in the Great High Chamber was all cleared away, and made ready for the afternoon entertainment, of cards, or music, or dancing, they might have a banquet.
A Banquet means something different now a big grand meal, but back then it was a sort of sweet course; things like quince cakes, jelly, gingerbreads, marmalade, biscuit bread, spice cakes. And to eat it they would go to a banqueting room. These were small rooms, to get them out of the Great High Chamber of course while the workers did their thing; there was one in a turret at Hardwick, and two in the grounds.
Alternatively guests might walk in the Long Gallery, on the top floor, or, best of all, walk on the leads. That was a real thing – you’d go out onto the roof, walk about the flat parts on the lead roof, and see the view right from the top.
Since she had moved all the grand rooms up to the second floor, all the private family rooms were on the first floor – bed chambers, low Great Hall, withdrawing rooms; the upper gallery of the chapel was there, where the family and Upper household went, while the lower household went to some chapel but on the ground floor.
Finally then, we come to the ground floor. This would have been where all the hustle and bustle was. There were kitchens, the ‘pastry’ or bakery, the pantry for the food, and the Scullery for crockery and cutlery, and laundry. There were cellars below for the beer and wine. Bess’s household was not that large by contemporary standards and tiny by medieval standards – she had about 30 staff. The day has not yet come when servants are banished to other parts of the house or lodges in the grounds, to work quietly behind the scenes on back stairs and so on; that doesn’t really happen until the later 18th century and Victorian times. The Lower Household were everywhere; when not on duty, they spent their time in the Great central Hall, which was have been constantly full of Hub Hub, lots of chin wagging, card playing, people rushing around. When visitors arrived to pass through to the staircase and up, the Usher would sush everyone, striding forward into the hall and calling out
Pray Silence, My Masters
And the blue liveried servants would cluster together to watch the grand visitors start their progress towards Bess’ Great High Chamber.
Well, I think I have pretty much finished on Hardwick hall, except for one thing which will take us back into the last chapters of Bess’s life. The Top floor was very grand in other ways. The long gallery was unusually grand, a real show-off room to impress and wow visitors and it is stunning and enormous. And then according to the book I read by the father of this subject, Mark Girouard, although this was not the National trust guides I met by the way, Arbella Stuart, Bess’s Granddaughter with royal blood in her veins, she had her own suite of rooms right on the top floor, not on the measley old first floor like everyone else. And she had her own little household. So what was that all about?
Mary QoS seems to have been absolutely on the money when she said Bess had hopes that Arbella could be as future contender for the English throne; after all, famously, Elizabeth had no children, wasn’t getting any younger, and resolutely refused to name her heir for fear of becoming a lame duck Queen. So – why not Arbella?
Bess groomed her for the role. She gave her a good education, including Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, Greek, and Hebrew. She seems to have been clever, and Bess was delighted, writing that she was
very apt to learn, and able to conceive what shall be taught her
It all went to Arbella’s head a bit; the Venetian ambassador, Scaramelli, observed that Arbella
“has very exalted ideas, having been brought up in the firm belief that she would succeed to the crown”.
All sorts of grand marriages were proposed; but continually and frustratingly – didn’t come off. And it was Elizabeth’s fault. She was just as jealous of any potential competition as she’d been back in her youth and the Katherine Grey incident. She was nixing marriages. And although outwardly she was most encouraging to Arbella, one day at court Arbella was seen chatting in a friendly way to the Queen’s favourite of the time, the Earl of Essex. The Queen flipped her lid and Arbella was rusticated, sent home.
Everything got very difficult. Bess kept a very tight rein on such a valuable commodity; Scaramelli again wrote that she
“was under very strict custody of her grandmother, Lady Shrewsbury, and was never allowed to be alone or in any way mistress of her actions”.
Bit by bit the frustration got to Arbella, and she and Bess fell out with increasingly bitter arguments. Until in 1602 Arbella’s head exploded and she hatched a plot to run away with a member of the Seymour family – this is the William Seymoure aforementioned – an utterly daft idea, since the Seymours also had a dash of royal blood and brought Elizabeth out in rivalry generated spots as well. The plot was discovered, Elizabeth did her nut as per her idiom, and once more Bess was suspected of involvement. Just to finish the Arbella story, after Queen Elizabeth died, although James was more sympathetic, he didn’t want any royal rivals either, and Arbella remained unmarried. Until at the age of 35 she again tried to elope, and was captured at sea trying to flee to France. She died in the Tower in 1615.
Back in Hardwick, although Bess had fallen under suspicion in 1602, I reckon that Good Queen Bess and Good Hardwick Bess really had come to see each other as old friends, fellow travellers in a man’s world. So rather than carpeting the 75 year of Bess for her latest indiscretion, the Queen wrote to her to reassure her, affectionately confessing that
There is no lady in this land that I better love and like”.
After the death of Elizabeth in 1603, Bess prepared for the inevitable which could not be too far away, and wrote and re-wrote her will. She does not appear to be one for forgiveness though, taking revenge on those family members who had not come up to scratch. Arbella was one of those – disinherited, struck off. The other was her eldest son Henry. He was also sent into the outer darkness – and inherited nothing from Mum. His crime, and I can see it would be considerable in Bess’ eyes, his crime was to side with Dad in the divorce.
From whom, after Bess’s death, he would inherit Chatsworth. But he was not a long term winner, which would be Bess’s favourite son, and neighbour in Hardwick Old Hall, William Cavendish. Henry had multiple debts, and would sell Chatsworth to William to try and escape them. In 1618, William spent the enormous sum of £10,000, or about £1 ½ million in today’s money, and therefore be made the first Duke of Devonshire. From whom that line descends to this day.
Bess outlasted Elizabeth by about 5 years, and died on 13th February 1608 at the age of 80. She was one of the grandest of all the aristocracy, and she knew it, had lived accordingly, and died accordingly. Her body lay in great state at Hardwick until her funeral three months later.
And there you have it the story of Bess of Hardwick of whom much has been written, and the magnificent work of art her talent and wealth had created on the hills of Derbyshire, a glory to us for so long.
She’s not always had the best press. William Camden and Horace Walpole both diss’ed her comprehensively as a rapacious, aggressive, social- climber. And Horace, who was a famous cultural commentator was thoroughly unimpressed by Hardwick Hall too when he visited:
Never was I less charmed in my life. The house is not Gothic, but of that betweenery, that intervened when Gothic declined and Palladian was creeping in – rather this is totally naked of either …the gallery is 60 yards long, covered with bad tapestry and wretched pictures
Rude. But Horace lived at a time when it was very, very important to have the right opinions.
Either way, I personally think Elizabethan and Jacabean inbetweenery is the very pinnacle of English architecture before Palladian and its derivative neo classical pomposity so nerks to Horace.
And while Bess does not come across as a particularly loving, sympathetic character, she is surely undeniably impressive, the sort of career and attitudes that would go without remark among her male contemporaries; who had enormous acumen in business and politics, and lived a life of courage, confidence and boldness. And not only had the vision and wealth to commission such impressive building; but in the case of Hardwick, what you see is probably most of her design work. And as far as Hardwick is concerned, I’d go for the view of another commentator around Horace’s time, who was also, like me, blown away:
Like a great castle of romance…such lofty magnificence! One of the proudest piles I ever beheld.
There we go, that is my mash up of the life of Bess of Hardwick, and my description of Hardwick as an exemplar of the Elizabethan Prodigy house and something of the life within it. I hope you enjoyed it, and thank you for listening if you made it to the end. Thank you also for being members, and as a reward for your perseverance in making it to the end, may I wish you the very best of luck and happiness for the week ahead.
