SHREWSBURY, ELIZABETH TALBOT, COUNTESS OF (1518-1608), better known as "Bess of Hardwicke," was the daughter and co-heiress of John Hardwicke of Hardwicke, Derby shire. She was four times married—to John Barlow, Sir William Cavendish, Sir William St. Lo (or St. Loe), and finally, in 1568, to George Talbot, 6th earl of Shrewsbury. With each marriage she made a good settlement, and before she married Shrewsbury was accounted the wealthiest woman in England. She now ar ranged a marriage between her daughter Elizabeth and Charles Stuart, brother of Lord Darnley, without consulting her husband. Since the Lennox family were of royal blood, Elizabeth thought the countess over-ambitious, and sent her to the Tower for a short time. The child of the Stuart marriage was the unfortunate Arabella, a claimant to the throne.
By this time the earl of Shrewsbury and his wife were on very bad terms with one another, and the former tried to obtain a divorce. The countess revenged herself by accusing him of a love intrigue with the queen of Scots, a charge which she was forced to retract before the council. In the meantime she re
peated scandal about Elizabeth to Queen Mary, who made use of it in the extraordinary letter she wrote some time in 1584. In 1583 the countess of Shrewsbury went to live apart from her husband, with whom she was afterwards reconciled formally by the queen. After his death, in 1590, she lived mostly at Hard wicke, where she built the noble mansion which still stands. She was, indeed, one of the greatest builders of her time at Hardwicke, Chatsworth and Oldcoates. It is said that she believed she would not die so long as she was building. Her death came on Feb. 13, 1608, during a frost which put a stop to her building operations. She was buried in All Saints' church, Derby, under a fine monu ment with a laudatory inscription which she took care to put up in her lifetime.
See White Kennett, Memoirs of the Cavendish Family (London, 1708) ; and Mrs. Murray Smith (Miss E. T. Bradley), Life of Ara bella Stuart (London, 1889) ; Mrs. Stepney Rawson, Bess of Hard wicke (Iwo).