The Hardwick wages-book between New Year, 1576, and the close of December, 1580, with the list of her men—stone-breakers, gardeners, moss-gatherers, thatchers, wall-builders, ditchers—was made up by her once a fortnight and signed. Inside the house too are her initials, with the arms of her father, the stags and the roses of the Hardwicks, and into a famous inlaid table (brought, it is said, by her son Henry from the East) is woven the cryptic poetical motto of her father’s family:—
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS BED, NOW AT HARDWICK HALL
“The redolent smell of aeglantyne We stagges exault to the deveyne.”
This legend is to be faintly traced in the interior of the ruined old hall. With the exception of the Shrewsbury coronet and the initials, you find very little suggestion of the Talbots. Everywhere the arms of Hardwick predominate in panel, fireplace, and lock. They strike the eye the instant you enter the house by the great entrance-hall. Large and magnificent, they are set forth on the right wall: in heraldic language, “a saltire engrailed _azure_; on a chief of the second three cinquefoils of the field,” set in a lozenge-shaped shield and bearing the aforesaid coronet. The supporters are two “stags _proper_, each gorged with a chaplet of roses, _argent_, between two bars _azure_.” To these supporters the lady had no right because her family had none. But she assumed them, turning to account the stag of her family crest. Her son William adopted a variation of this, and in the Devonshire arms of to-day we again find the wreathed stags _proper_, while the shield bears three harts’ heads. In the Mary Queen of Scots bedroom you will find in plaster work again the Hardwick arms, but also those of Cavendish and of the Countess’s mother, Elizabeth Leake. Needless to say, the house is built in the grand manner. The great entrance-hall runs to the height of two stories, and besides its panelling and old furniture has screens of tapestry. Just off the stairway on the left is the curious little chapel shut off from the landing by an open-work oak screen. Close by is a state bedroom, and adjoining it is a fine dining-room, whence a minstrels’ gallery leads to the wainscoted and tapestried drawing-room. The splendid presence-chamber, sixty-five feet long, thirty-three wide, and twenty-six high, is another remarkable feature, and besides its pictures and tapestry has the famous ancient frieze, already mentioned, in coloured plaster relief representing the Court of Diana. The choice of theme was, no doubt, out of compliment to the Queen, for her initials and arms are in this room substituted for those of the Countess, who, in spite of her dreams, never had the delight of receiving Elizabeth here.