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| | | From: Greensleeves (Original Message) | Sent: 5/8/2008 12:14 PM |
Bess of Hardwick: Empire Builder by Anne S. Lovell is a fascinating portrait of Tudor nobility, nice & fat at 500+ pages so more bang for your Tudor buck. Man I wish I could play with all the primary documents these authors manage to lay their hands on!  She said some of the Shrewsbury account books have somehow ended up in Washington DC in the Folger Shakespeare Library  I got to thinking about how much one can reconstruct what's gone on in an historical personage's life by reviewing such things & wondering how future generations of historians are going to find out anything about US with all this online banking & such .....nobody keeps account books or balances their checkbook anymore, if they even use checks when everything can be paid online with a debit card. Start keeping records, peeps! History depends on it. Anyways, I enjoyed this accounting of Bess's life. The author apparently stumbled upon a treasure trove of stuff as regards her third husband, Sir William St Loe, in her own HOUSE The author's husband's peeps is from the same place in England & he had stuff & didn't even know it! That's pretty cool, dontcha think? He was the Captain of Elizabeth's personal guard so a fairly important tho hitherto obscure dude in Elizabethan history. There was a nice section of pictures & I was intrigued as there was one the author insisted was ID'd as Lady Jane Grey, & no, it wasn't the portrait they're now saying is Catherine Parr. Whomever this peep is, there IS a resemblance between this portrait & one of Catherine Grey done after her disastrous "not marriage" to Hertford, so you tell me. Speaking of which, apparently Frances Brandon was nice to somebody Yesm shocking isn't it? Bess served in Frances's household at Westhorpe as one of her ladies between her first & second marriages, & apparently enjoyed a lifelong friendship with Frances & exchanged pressies regularly & everything. Bess kept a miniature of Jane on her bedside table till she died (Bess not Jane died, as we all know how that went), so they must've been tight. Bess also got in big time trouble with the Catherine Grey debacle as well. The author opines that Catherine died so young as a result of anorexia It was interesting to see how much faith & trust Bess managed to coax out of Tudor-era men, not noted for their generosity to females, & how this started her on her path to fame & fortune. She counted peeps like Robert Dudley, the Cecils pere et fils, & William Parr, Marquess of Northampton, & his wife among her best buds. In fact, there's a whole series of letters from when Shrewsbury was having a lil nervous breakdown after being stuck with MQOS for so many years, where Dudley, Burghley, & even Elizabeth herself are getting involved in what should've been private family quarrels....apparently Shrewsbury complained A LOT LOL & the MQOS captivity details were interesting. Bess was not acknowledged to be any great beauty, but she must've had great personal charm, charisma, & the smarts not to show the men just how smart she was in order to get along as well as she did & be able to make money hand over fist like she did. She had so much property upon her death just from moneylending alone, twas amazing. The whole thing with Elizabeth Cavendish's (Bess's daughter) secret marriage to Darnley's lil brother was a connivance between Bess & Margaret Douglas, allegedly, & Elizabeth was not amused as you wouldn't be to have heirs presumptive running amuck like that. The child of that short union, whose name drives me nuts as for years she was Arabella but now she seems to be revised to Arbella , was sort of in Mary Tudor's shoes as Elizabeth refused to allow her to marry & then so did James later, as she was a threat to their positions. See what happens when you allow royal peeps to marry commoners? Nuffin but trouble LOL The author thinks she was a fruitcake along the lines of Henry VI or George III, as Arbella suddenly in her 20s became totally irrational in behavior & it ran in cycles. She was never catatonic like they were, but the author thinks she may have had a form of porphyria nonetheless, so methinks I am pulling the Arbella book from the TBR pile to tackle next & see what develops. I also failed to make the connection, until reading this, between Bess & the Cavendish Dukes of Devonshire (into which family Kathleen Kennedy, JFKs sister, was briefly married during WWII to Billy Cavendish, named in a long tradition of naming the heir after Sir William Cavendish, Bess's second husband), so her blood still runs in the British aristocracy today  & they still own Chatsworth, although some misguided 17th century duke pulled down the house that Bess built. Hardwick Hall, contemporarily known as "Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall", is still there, tho, which is splendid. Good book, go read it Recommended to Terrilee for the MQOS bits  |
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Yesm, his brother Edward was ticked off that he married Bess, as William was a widower with 2 daughters & he was worried Bess would produce a male heir & cut him out. There was actually an attempt made to poison Bess as well, several years before her husbands sudden demise. Both times Edward St Loe was suspected, but nothing could be proven. He was apparently actually with William when he took ill & died. I KNEW I read a fiction book on Bess once, & that was it, the Jan Westcott I was thinking this woman's life would make a great novel LOL |
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Must've been dwelling on Anne Boleyn's demise subconsciously ....the author's name is actually Mary, not Anne, sorry  |
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The first book I ever read that hooked me into my own "all my Tudors" addiction was "The Tower and the Dream" by Jan Westcott. It was the story of Bess of Hardwick and was a great read. I highly recommend it. She is an absolutely fascinating character. What a strong woman she was, especially for her times. I can understand why she and Elizabeth I would not have gotten along...too much alike in personality. What a year for me. The Six Wives of Henry VIII on PBS, a trip to England and this book all when I was 10. No wonder I became so fascinated. |
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This author thinks Bess & Elizabeth got on like houses. Certainly Bess was one of the few contemporaries who didn't predecease Elizabeth, & there's gotta be some comfort in that when you're old & most of your peeps have passed on. Plus there was that whole Arbella thing, with Bess's granddaughter being Elizabeth's cousin & a potential heir to the throne. |
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I read a book by Virginia Henley some years ago about Bess, who she referred to as "Building Bess". The timeline was off a bit, as she had her very close to Elizabeth's age. As well, Edward St. Loe being the love of her life out of all her husbands. Can't remember the name of the book, but after looking up some of the details, finding out what events and ages were true as we know them to be, enjoyed the story a lot.  |
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Have any of you seen the series which was on English TV, about Elizabeth 1st ? It was fantastic, she was played by Glenda Jackson and it ran for quite a while, I taped all of them but sadly they have been lost in the move to Spain, I would dearly love to see them again I used to love sitting on my own without interuption and watching them. Sheer Bliss. |
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