Was She The Shrewdest Woman In Tudor England?

Bess of Hardwick

Born around 1527 at Hardwick in Derbyshire, Elizabeth Hardwick was the daughter of John Hardwick, a minor country gentleman. When her father died before she reached her second year, the estate was plunged into legal disputes over wardship and debt, leaving her mother to raise a large family on modest means. Around age fifteen, Bess entered her first marriage with a sickly teenage neighbor, Robert Barlow. The marriage was brief; Barlow died in 1544, leaving his young widow a small financial dower that gave her a vital first taste of financial independence.

In August 1547, Bess entered a transformative second union with Sir William Cavendish, Treasurer of the King's Chamber and a key official in the dissolution of the monasteries. It was a partnership of genuine affection and shared ambition. At Bess's persuasion, Cavendish sold his lands in southern England to purchase the manor of Chatsworth in Derbyshire in 1549, where they began construction on the first Chatsworth House. The marriage produced eight children, six of whom survived to adulthood. When Cavendish died in 1557, leaving behind substantial debts to the Crown, Bess fought Tenaciously in the courts to protect her children's inheritance and secure the estate.

Her social standing rose further in 1559 with her third marriage to Sir William St. Loe, Captain of the Guard to Queen Elizabeth I and a wealthy landowner. St. Loe became deeply devoted to his capable wife. When he died in 1565, he bypassed his own daughters and brother to leave his vast properties in Gloucestershire and Somerset entirely to Bess. At thirty-eight, she had become one of the wealthiest widows in the kingdom and a respected lady of the royal court.

Her ultimate social elevation arrived in 1567 when she married George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, the premier earl of England. The union began with immense promise and shared wealth, but in 1569 Queen Elizabeth placed a grueling political burden upon the couple: the custody of the deposed Mary, Queen of Scots. For fifteen years, the Shrewsburys served as Mary's jailers, moving the captive monarch between their various estates. Bess and Queen Mary spent long hours together working on elaborate needlework panels, creating the famous Oxburgh Hangings that survive today. However, the relentless financial costs and political paranoia destroyed the Shrewsbury marriage. The couple entered a bitter, public separation marked by vicious accusations and lawsuits, during which the Earl notoriously nicknamed his estranged wife his "sharp and bitter shrike."

Bess was also a daring dynastic conspirator. In 1574, she arranged the clandestine marriage of her daughter, Elizabeth Cavendish, to Charles Stuart, 1st Earl of Lennox, the brother of the murdered Lord Darnley. The union yielded a daughter, Lady Arbella Stuart, who possessed a strong claim to both the English and Scottish thrones. Furious at this unsanctioned match, Queen Elizabeth briefly imprisoned Bess in the Tower of London, but Bess had succeeded in placing her bloodline directly beside the crown.

Following Shrewsbury's death in 1590, Bess gained full control over an enormous combined fortune. She channeled her vast resources into architecture, creating Hardwick Hall, one of the supreme masterpieces of Elizabethan Renaissance design.

Designed by Robert Smythson, the prodigy house featured so many expansive glass windows that it gave rise to the popular rhyme, "Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall." Above its soaring towers, she boldly set her initials, "ES" for Elizabeth of Shrewsbury, carved in monumental stone against the sky. Bess died in February 1608 in her eighties, having founded the powerful dynasty that carried her blood into the ducal houses of Devonshire and Newcastle.