bess in show
Or, the life, husbands, and home renovations of stone-cold legend Bess of Hardwick.
Hello friends!
Before we get into this week’s story, a question for you all. I’ve been touched and flattered by the number of Dirtbag Nation members who have pledged to support DTTA if I turn on paid subscriptions. If that’s you, thank you, it’s wild and wonderful to me that you looked at a free thing and said “what if it cost me money?”
I’ve been watching those pledge numbers tick up, and I’m curious. If I did turn on paid subscriptions, what would you most like to receive as exclusive content?
BIG CAVEAT, which is the reason I’m asking in the first place: I physically cannot write more than two full-length dirtbags per month right now. I would love to promise weekly dirtbags for paid subscribers, but y’all would have to pay my health insurance and also my rent for that to be realistic. And I don’t want to give free subscribers anything less than the current two posts per month.
So! If you have a wish list of items you’d like to receive for being a paid subscriber that will not make me burn out like the Globe Theater in 1613, let me know in the comments? I’d love to design a tier that makes you all happy if there’s interest. Ideas I’m toying with currently:
Exclusive access to Dirtbag Madness, an elimination bracket each March where we rank the past year’s dirtbags by sheer audacity
Access to new dirtbags three days before the general public
Deeply irregular bonus content of dubious quality, like “Allison’s Favorite Drawings of Saint Bernard Drinking From The Virgin Mary’s Tit, Ranked In Order Of Logistical Difficulty”
Thank you in advance for any thoughts! Allrighty then. Moving along.
This week’s dirtbag is sort of the spiritual successor to last week’s feature of Eleanor of Aquitaine, in that she is a prime example of the “Head Bitch In Charge Who Gave Zero Fucks And Outlived Everyone Who Ever Annoyed Her” genre. It’s your girl and mine:
Bess of Hardwick, AKA What Would Happen if the Property Brothers and Elizabeth Taylor Had A Baby In Tudor Times
Now, when we’ve talked about Tudor-era men in this newsletter before, it’s usually been because they were shitty man-children who got their houses blown up or started a rebellion out of sexual frustration or threw eggs at pedestrians.
The Tudor-era women I’m interested in, on the other hand, were just out here kicking ass and taking names. And Bess is one of those dirtbags.
Barley Better Have My Money
Elizabeth “Bess” Hardwick was born in 1527-ish to a family of minor nobility in Derbyshire, England. Not much is known about her until her first marriage, which took place when she was roughly 15 to a 13-year-old boy named Robert Barley.
Before you get nervous about the child-marriage of it all, let me tell you upfront: they probably never even lived in the same house, and Robert died within the year. As far as I can tell, the cause of death was “it was 1544, people be dying.” RIP, Robert. We hardly knew ye.
What’s important about this brief first-husband situation, though, is that it was the first time Bess demonstrated her stone-cold audacity. As Robert’s widow, she was entitled to a portion of the Barley estate, but there were legal arguments about it—probably another member of the family being like “I would prefer not to give my ancestral lands to a literal teenage stranger.”
However, did Bess take that lying down? The fuck she did. Sixteen-year-old Bess got her ass to court and sued the Barley family over a period of years until she got the money they owed her.
When I was 16, I apologized profusely for bumping into a stranger in a Blockbuster Video, only to discover it was a cardboard cutout of Aragorn put out to promote The Return of the King. All I’m saying is, Bess of Hardwick was built different.
Come For the Queen, You Bess Not Miss
This left Bess, as Jane Austen would say, a single woman in possession of a good fortune who must be in want of a husband. So she made what I consider a very smart move in that direction: she got hired as a lady-in-waiting in the household of Lady Frances Grey, who was rich and important. This meant she was constantly surrounded by people connected to royal court. Rich guys, specifically. With lots of land and big houses.
And one of those guys was Sir William Cavendish, the Treasurer of the King’s Chamber.
Sure, he was more than twice Bess’s age. But Bess of Hardwick was in her early 20s by now. She’d already sued the pants off her preteen ex-husband’s family once. She looked around and said “this nice middle-aged man fucking adores me, and his job title is Guy With Money, and more importantly he owns some incredibly nice houses.” As far as I can tell, William Cavendish was also a pretty nice guy, so no shade on this choice.
Bess and William were married in 1547—in secret, at two in the morning, somewhere in Lady Frances Grey’s house. I don’t know why Bess needed the wedding to be secret, except that she loved dramatics, so probably she had a whole set design for a Secret 2AM Wedding and showed up wearing a fur coat and diamonds or something.
This Olde House
Conveniently, 1547 was about the time Henry VIII was doing his whole “close down all the monasteries because I’m horny for Anne Boleyn” thing. And with all that formerly monk-owned land now available, it was a great time for the king’s advisors to start asking for favors. Bess pressured William into asking Henry VIII for Chatsworth, a big ol’ parcel of land in Derbyshire right near where she grew up. And the king said yes, because even though Henry sucks, he knew as well as I do that you do not say no to Bess of Hardwick.
So Bess and William moved out to the country and started decorating.
William, obviously, had to be at court a bunch to do his job. But Bess got to spend all her time at Chatsworth House, and she loved it. If she lived today, she would have her own show on HGTV. All of her letters to William from this time in her life were like “Yes, dear, I love and miss you too, but can you please write a sternly worded letter to the glassmaker from Brussels because he’s fucking up the windows and I need the new glass in now please.”
William and Bess had eight children together, six of whom survived infancy. Their oldest son, a guy named Henry, really sucked and Bess hated him, but he did later grow up to inherit the incredible title of Baron Waterpark, which is the only reason I’m bringing him up.
Maybe She’s Born With It. Maybe It’s Poison.
Sir William Cavendish died in 1557, the cause of death this time being “it’s 1557, people still be dying.” Bess appears to have genuinely mourned him, and she considered him her true love for the rest of her life. However! Bess also mourned the convenient source of disposable income William had provided, because those windows weren’t going to mullion themselves.
So back on the prowl for Husband Number Three it was.
In 1559, Bess married Sir William St. Loe, who was a) a real catch, as the new Queen Elizabeth’s Captain of the Guard, and b) proof that apparently Bess had a thing for guys named Sir William. With St. Loe’s incredible job title and tons of money, Bess was rich again, and she continued to use her husband’s money to flip houses and pay for interior decorating.
But! Then St. Loe died…
Did Bess of Hardwick poison Sir William St. Loe in 1564 to inherit all his money and spend it on elaborate home renovations???? Historians don’t think so. Historians assume the poisoner was St. Loe’s brother, who was a real piece of shit and had a history of poisoning people, and they’re probably right. But St. Loe did die of poison in 1564, and Bess of Hardwick did inherit $21 million in modern-day dollars that she spent on elaborate home renovations, so I am going to believe what I believe.
If You Give a Noblewoman Eight Million Houses
If you’re keeping track at home, Bess of Hardwick is now about 37 years old, mother of six, a multi-millionaire, and has inherited all the money and land and houses of not one but three husbands. So what does she do next?
If your guess was “find another man who has a bunch of nice houses and marry him for real estate reasons,” you’re right.
Bess married House—I mean Husband—Number Four, George Talbot, in 1568. George Talbot was the Earl of Shrewsbury, one of the most important men in the country, so Bess literally couldn’t aim any higher without marrying like the Ghost of Edward VI or something. Shrewsbury also had seven children from a previous marriage, which when combined with Bess’s six kids seems like a great setup for a Tudor edition of Cheaper by the Dozen.
Now, about this time, Queen Elizabeth had a real problem, and that problem was her schemey cousin Mary Queen of Scots. Mary had just arrived in England, and Elizabeth was worried that if she let Mary roam around the country, she would do something inconvenient like amass an army, assassinate the queen, and name herself ruler of England, Scotland, and maybe also France. (Elizabeth was probably right about this.)
So Elizabeth was looking around for a house in which to imprison Mary. And do you know who had a fucking ton of houses at this point in Tudor history?
That’s right: Bess of Hardwick.
In 1569, Bess and George were tasked with being Mary’s jailers at one of their many houses, Tutbury Castle. Unfortunately, Bess hadn’t quite finished Windy City Rehabbing Tutbury Castle, which was inconveniently located on a goddamn swamp. Bess spent the next few years whining about living in Swamp Castle, until Elizabeth eventually relented and let Bess oversee Mary’s house arrest in the luxurious Chatsworth House instead.
Window(s) of Opportunity
This all went on for almost 20 years. Bess found ways to keep herself occupied while on Treason Prison Duty. She embroidered shit-tons of tapestries. She bought more windows. She schemed to marry her daughter to Mary Queen of Scots’s first cousin, even though it was maybe treason to do so. She fought with her husband, because being under house arrest for 20 years for someone else’s hypothetical attempted regicide is gonna put a strain on anyone’s marriage.
Then Mary Stuart was executed in 1587 for treason reasons, and George finally flounced out of the marriage and refused to speak to Bess anymore. He died of old-timey reasons in 1590.
It seems insane that I am alone in finding this suspicious.
Did Bess poison George Talbot for being a shitty husband so she could inherit the entire Earldom of Shrewsbury and build the biggest, most elaborate house of her life? Historians say no. But once again, I must point out to historians that shortly after their marriage fell apart, George Talbot died, and Bess of Hardwick became Dowager Countess of Shrewsbury and built the legendary Hardwick Hall.
I hope she did murder him for real estate. You go, Bess.
Like, look at this house, you guys.
It has Bess’s initials literally built into the stonework. Bess of Hardwick said “Yo dawg I heard you like windows so we put windows on your windows so you can window while you window.” This is the house of a woman who poisoned her husbands to build a spite mansion and you cannot convince me otherwise.
Bess spent the next 20 years or so adding on to Hardwick Hall, making it still more elaborate and ridiculous. One assumes she had an entire staff of people whose job was just to wash the windows. When she died in 1608 at the age of 81, she was one of the richest women in England. She was buried in Derbyshire under a statue of herself in a crown and a poem about how great she was, which she wrote herself.
Rest in peace, you absolute legend.
That’s all for this week, my friends. Happy December. I hope you’re finding some time to rest and relax amid all the madness of being alive in the world today. Until we meet again, be well, and please approach this holiday season with the same “I Deserve This Because I Am A Queen” energy Bess of Hardwick would,
-Allison
With all the dirtbags in the world, how is it possible to narrow down possible subjects to a manageable lot? And I suspect your pool of candidates doesn’t even include any used car salesmen.
Bess of Hardwick is an absolute 🐐! She’s been one of my favorite dirtbags for years now and I’m so glad you featured her. This was amazing! So many good historical fiction/steamy romance novels have been written about her too