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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 June 2012
In a letter dated St. Petersburg, the 15th of March last, which I have received from Prince Alexander Labanoff, the accomplished editor of the “Correspondence of Queen Mary of Scots,” he expresses anxiety to ascertain the opinion of the best English antiquaries respecting the alleged residence of that princess at Hardwick Hall, now, as is well known, the property of the Duke of Devonshire. He states, that in 1839 some doubts were expressed to him by le savant Dr. Hunter, meaning, I conclude, our esteemed brother-member of the Society of Antiquaries the Rev. Joseph Hunter, whether in reality Queen Mary had ever been at Hardwick. At the time when those doubts were expressed to him, Prince Labanoff did not concur in them; but, on a further comparison of dates and consideration of circumstances, he has become convinced that those doubts are perfectly well founded. “After long research,” says he, “I am bound to acknowledge that no trace exists of any visit of Mary Stuart to Hardwick Hall; on the contrary, her correspondence appears to prove that she never was at that place.”
page 75 note a Hallamshire, fol. 1819, p. 64.—These and other letters, the private and, as to some of them, the very confidential correspondence of Elizabeth Countess of Shrewsbury, passed, by some means and at some uuknown time, out of the archives of the Cavendish family. They lay for half a century buried in a mass of antiquarian collections made by a Yorkshire antiquary of the last century, John Wilson, of Bromhead, where they were discovered by me in 1806. The whole collection was sold by auction a few years ago.
page 75 note b This could not have been Walton, near Chesterfield, as might be supposed, that being then the chief house of the Foljambes, because Walton is beyond Chesterfield, as the Queen was then travelling. If it did not rather appear that she set out on her journey from Rotherham, the house intended would be Aldwark, one of the seats of the Foljambes, a short distance from Kotherham, but to the north. Junior branches of the family had at that period a house at Barlborough, and also Moor Hall, both not far out of what may have been the road on which she travelled; but the precise line is not at present, I apprehend, determinate.
page 79 note a It is very widely dispersed. The largest and finest portion is in the library of the College of Arms; some of it is at Lambeth; small portions in the British Museum; some among Johnston's papers at Campsall in Yorkshire; extensive copies by an early hand among Hopkinson's Collections, in the possession of Miss Currer. The Duke of Devonshire bought some early copies at the sale of Mr. Heber's MSS.; and Sir Thomas Phillipps has a few precious originals, which had fallen into the hands of Mr. Wilson.
page 80 note a This appears by his will, and the inquisition after his death before the escheator far Nottingham and Derby. Hardwick was a mesne manor held of the Savages, as of their manor of Stainesby. The Heralds traced the family to the time of Henry the Sixth. The circumstance of the Earl of Shrewsbury, George, the fourth Earl, having been nominated a supervisor by John Hardwick in his will, is worthy of remark, as shewing that there was an hereditary acquaintance between the sixth Earl of Shrewsbury and Elizabeth Hardwick, whom he married. This acquaintance had been maintained in the time of his father, Earl Francis, who was one of the sponsors at the baptism of one of her children when she was the wife of Cavendish. See the funeral certificate of Sir William Cavendish.
page 81 note a She was originally Elizabeth Leke, of Hasland, not far from Hardwick. The Hardwicks, Lekes, Leeches, and Barleys, were neighbouring families of equal rank, mesne lords of their respective inheritances, the second layer in the population of Derbyshire.
page 81 note b She was building at Hardwick late in the time of the Queen of Scots' residence with the earl. See the letter in Lodge, vol. ii. p. 168, in which the remarkable expression occurs, “Let me hear how you, your charge and love doth, and commend me, I pray you.” I have examined the clause in the original, and can bear testimony to the correctness of Mr. Lodge's reading, who has indeed performed his duties throughout the work with admirable exactness. But I cannot agree with him in placing this undated letter so early as 1577, and would refer it to the spring of 1580, when the earl, as we have seen, made application to be permitted to go to Chatsworth, and was refused. Nor do I think with Mr. Lysons that it affords the slightest presumption of the Queen having been expected at Hardwick. (Magna, Britannia, Derbyshire, p. 191.)
page 82 note a This fact, which is new to the history of Chatsworth and to the life of Lady Arbella Stuart, I have seen recorded nowhere except in a small collection of pedigrees of English and Scottish nobility, written by some unknown hand at Venice about 1590. They are now bound up with other papers in Volume 588 of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts. The Countess of Lenox, her mother, died very young, and was buried at Sheffield on the 21st of January, 1581, as appears by the parish register.