The Life and Letters of Lady Arabella Stuart

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE LAST BAYS OF BESS OF HARDWICK. I HE year 1608 was ushered in by an extravagant Masque of Beauty, written for Twelfth Night, but deferred till the following Sunday. Plays had been acted all the holidays, which, being thinly attended by strangers, we may suppose the courtiers to have been...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE LAST BAYS OF BESS OF HARDWICK. I HE year 1608 was ushered in by an extravagant Masque of Beauty, written for Twelfth Night, but deferred till the following Sunday. Plays had been acted all the holidays, which, being thinly attended by strangers, we may suppose the courtiers to have been more in request, to the great detriment of their purses. On Twelfth Night there was a great golden play at Court. No gamester was allowed to play for less than 300. At the Masque of Beauty, Arabella appeared in jewels and robes worth more than 100,000. She personated one of the characters at this Masque, which, says Rowland Whyte, was as well performed as ever any was. The Spanish ambassador was so delighted with it that he invited the fifteen ladies who performed to dinner, bringing with them who they pleased. But this festivity was soon renounced for a moresolemn occasion, and Arabella was summoned to her relations in the North by a long-expected, and, sad to say, long hoped-for event. Chamberlajne's Letters. On the 13th of February, 1608, the great and aged Countess of Shrewsbury, Bess of Hard- wick, died at the age of ninety, at Hardwick Hall, where she had passed the years of her fourth widowhood in abundant wealth and splendour, feared by many, beloved by none, nattered by some, and courted by a numerous train of children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. For some time she had been failing and growing gradually weaker, losing appetite and becoming unable to leave her bedroom. Her restless and selfish spirit remained to the last. With all her talents for business, for success in the world, match-making, and pushing herself forward in society, she had been unable to secure a single friend. It is true that after her death a bishop a...