sures
to revel over! The horseman Duke's manege is converted into a lofty
stable, and there is still a grove or two of magnificent oaks that have
escaped all these great families, though the last Lord Oxford cut down
above an hundred thousand pounds' worth. The place is little pretty,
distinct from all these reverend circumstances." Twenty-one years later
he writes: "Welbeck is a devastation. The house is a delight of my eyes,
for it is a hospital of old portraits." One is inclined to believe that
something in the order of his reception had stung him into lasting
pique.

The great ancestress of the owner of Welbeck, and of the other nobility
in the Dukeries, was Bess of Hardwick, who built a magnificent country
house on the "edge" overlooking the Vale of Scarsdale, some miles
distant from the border of Sherwood Forest. This singular woman, as
striking a personality as her contemporary and sometime friend Queen
Elizabeth, occasionally passed in state along the "ridings".

Her life-story is a marvellous instance of genius devoted to the
attainment of a high position. The daughter of a well-to-do squire, she
was married at fifteen to a wealthy young gentleman whose estate lay ten
miles away, and who, dying very soon, left her mistress of the greater
part of his fortune. Her first house at Barlow, near Chesterfield, has
entirely disappeared, save for a piece of old wall. She remained a widow
for many years, then married Sir William Cavendish, by whom she had six
children. After his death she chose Sir William St. Loe, inherited his
extensive estates, then, well past her prime, accepted the offer of the
widowed George, Earl of Shrewsbury; but before the marriage insisted
that two of her young Cavendishes should be married to two of his young
Talbots. For a few years her fourth venture proved satisfactory enough;
but the custody of Mary Queen of Scots apparently became too much of a
nerve-strain for both man and wife; and their wrangles finally became
common property in high circles. She embroiled herself with Queen
Elizabeth; she persecuted her husband for his so-called
meanness--although she was exceedingly rich in her own right; and, worst
of all, she sowed dissension between him and his own offspring. The poor
earl's condition was melancholy enough; one has no doubt that he was
thankful to the heart when they separated for the last time.

In the portrait at Hardwick Hall she is represented as a comely,
roguish-looking