two girl wards, and wrote thus to Burghley in the March of 1589: "May it please your lordship, hearing that God hath taken to his mercy my Lord Rich, who hath left to his heir a very proper gentleman and one in years very fit for my lady Penelope Devereux, if with the favour and liking of Her Majesty the matter might be brought to pass. And because I know your Lordship's good affection to their father gone, and also your favour to his children, I am bold to pray your furtherance now in this matter, which may I trust, by your good means, be brought to such pass as I desire. Her Majesty was pleased the last year to give me leave at times convenient to put her highness in mind of these young ladies (Penelope and her sister), and therefore I am by this occasion of my Lord's death the bolder to move your Lordship in this matter. I have also written to Mr. Secretary Walsingham herein. And so, hoping of your Lordship's favour, I do commit you to the tuition of the Almighty." This desirable parti was the son of that very Lord Rich, who preferred fleshpots to military service under the late Earl of Essex, and had been, as Devereux calls him, "the first of the deserters" in the Ulster campaign. If you will glance back at that second letter quoted from Languet, you will see how fateful is that warning at the close. Philip's fine tribute to him in the third book of the Arcadia, beginning: "The song I sang old Languet had me taught. would ring more truly if he had really in this point trusted his "skilless youth" to so keen-sighted a craftsman and combined his friend's counsel with the dying wishes of Penelope's father, whom the boy really worshipped. Languet certainly taught him how to "sing," enforced the beauty, depth, and spirituality of his nature. But Languet never wished him to endure those fires of love and passion which later rent his pupil. CHAPTER IV THE FATEFUL MARRIAGE THE thing was done before any one could prevent it. Nobody need be troubled over such a matter. Here was a poor orphan who must somehow be disposed of. Here, on the other hand, was a gentleman who must simply have spelt "money" from crown to heel. He was of an excellent age for Penelope; he had his elbow well into Court matters, and though not specially favoured or famous, he was the figurehead of success. Robert Rich-do not the alliteration and the names together tickle the ear nicely? If Lord Leicester and Lord Huntingdon had begun their chase after fortune by way of a joke, they really could not have hit upon a more grotesquely satisfactory combination. The very patronymic must have inflamed the business instincts. of his progenitors. Here is his origin: Midway in the Tudor period there rose to civic eminence in London, as sheriff, one Richard Rich, a mercer. He was a wise and thrifty tradesman, and left his business and his fortune to his son of the same name. The fortune certainly increased, while the second Rich doubtless carried out his father's precepts, and, though he did not become a sheriff, succeeded in being elected deputy of his ward. It was in the third generation that the family broke new ground. The first mercer's grandson, called after him Richard Rich, was not minded to spend his energies over bales of silk, woollen, and cotton. His aspirations were in the direction of the Bar. This meant a tolerably idle life at the outset as regards sheer fortune getting, but a busy one so far as social expansion and opportunities for selfadvancement were concerned. Incidentally, he became a shrewd lawyer, and played his cards so well that in 1533 he was made Solicitor-General. He has been described as "an unprincipled roysterer among the city taverns." This knowledge of life and experience of men were exactly suited to develop his powers. He was not troubled with a tender conscience, and was invaluable to Henry VIII in many a high-handed and illegal transaction. Not the least of these was the manner in which he assisted the King to seize the goods of his first wife, Katherine of Arragon, after her death at Kimbolton Castle. Richard Rich the younger always played a double game, and played it successfully, till the moment came when the contest for political power between Protector Somerset and the Earl Warwick, from both of whom he had received marked favours, seemed likely to engulf him, when he adroitly retired-still a great man in the eyes of the world, with all the dignity of an ex-Lord Chancellor and a baron-to live the life of a country gentleman at his country house of Leighs, in Essex. The next member of importance to us in this family is Penelope's husband-elect, grandson again of the famous, infamous ex-Lord Chancellor. Penelope's lord was known as "the rich Lord Rich." He does not seem to have been celebrated in any other capacity. He appears to have been a leech-like individual without the initiative or assertiveness of his forefathers, but with the family talent for using the right people. Captain Walter Devereux describes him as "rough and uncourtly in manners and conversation, dull and uneducated, proper in nothing but his wealth."1 The marriage was arranged, had the royal approval, and was celebrated many miles from Penshurst, Wilton, or the Court before Philip could realise what it meant to him. Penelope seems to have drifted helplessly up to the moment of the marriage ceremony. It is on record that she now openly expressed her unwillingness. But her environment was too strong for her. Hereafter the first experiences of marriage and the business of a newly wedded titled lady may be said to extinguish her for some years. We have no record of her early life at Leighs. She was certainly engulfed, engrossed, overpowered by the calls upon her time, her physique, her intelligence. It is impossible that she could fully realise the tragic mistake into which her relatives had forced her, of the unholy power of what Gifford calls "the accursed Court of Wards" and its interference in marriages, which "eternally troubled the current of true love." But her eyes were gradually being opened to the shortcomings of her Robert. This well-belaboured gentleman does not appear to have laid claim to much polish. Let this at least count for a virtue in him. We have it on his own confession that he had little culture and was no linguist. That is to say, his experience in foreign Courts, always so essential to the gentleman of any eminence of his day-was nil. He did not lay himself out for personal attendance on Elizabeth, nor had he the gracious qualities which would have caused the eye of Burghley to single him out for special service to State or Queen. In the fol 1 Lives of the Earls of Devereux, by Walter Devereux, Vol. I. |