There is a portrait of Bess of Hardwick in the collection of the Duke of
Devonshire at Chatsworth. When Mary was in the custody of her husband
Bess first fawned upon her royal prisoner; but a new matrimonial scheme
filled her mind which led her to change her conduct into one of hatred.
Bess had a grandchild, Lady Arabella Stuart, for whom she planned an
alliance hostile to the Queen's interests, hence her smiles were turned
to frowns.
_En passant_ it may be said that the Manor went by marriage to the Dukes
of Norfolk, who held it for generations and then sold it. Of Bess of
Hardwick's building enterprises it may be added that she built Hardwick
Hall, "more glass than wall" (according to an old rhyme), in 1587. The
Earl died in 1590, and the Countess had another long widowhood of 17
years. Her second son, William Cavendish, was created Baron Cavendish
and his great-grandson Duke of Devonshire.
Charles Cavendish was another son of this extraordinary woman, and he
bought the Welbeck estate, towards the end of the sixteenth century,
from two or three men of obscurity to whom it had passed, after Henry
the Eighth had ordered the monastic establishment at the Abbey to be
dissolved.
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