Thus Leicester, the splendid lover, was dead—of a fever caught on his way home to Kenilworth. Elizabeth still danced, still had zest and appetite for masque and ceremonial. But Shrewsbury and Burghley, after they had written their stately condolences to the Queen, corresponded with one another about health matters. In 1589 the former sends a pathetic old man’s gift to his friend of ointment for his joints and “a small rug” to wrap about his legs “at times convenient,” while a flask of fine “oyle of roses” was in these days more necessary than ale to the once stalwart Earl Marshal of England.
From time to time Burghley sends to his friend the State news, with suppressed allusions here and there to his illnesses and sorrows. Lady Burghley was dead, and though her husband was able to write in his old dignified fashion of affairs at Court, he avoids all its recreations. “The Queen is at Barn Elms, but this night I will attend her at Westminster, for I am no man meet for feastings,” runs a pathetic postscript from him.
_Photo by Richard Keene, Ltd., Derby, from the painting by Zucchero at Hardwick Hall_ _By permission of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire_
To Elizabeth, Shrewsbury had played the part which she assigned to one of her lovers, the Duke of Anjou, to whom she wrote apropos of his persistency that she should never cease to love and esteem him as the dog which, being often chastised, returns to its master: “comme le chien qui estant souvent batu retourne a son maitre.” To her lovers she could say such things with impunity, to her servants she only implied them. Her beaten yet steadfast hound, Shrewsbury, true to his family’s emblem of the faithful “Talbot dog,” lay chiefly in these days at his small manor of Handsworth pouring out his soul in letters. There seem to be none available from his wife during his last years, though she was to the end truly anxious to be on happier terms with him, and made every possible effort to achieve this. Once more Elizabeth used her good offices with the honest intent to restore him to happiness. In what was practically the last private letter she ever wrote him, despatched in December, 1589, she addressed him as “her very good old man,” was anxious for news of his health, particularly at this inclement season, sympathised with his gout, and begged him to permit his wife sometimes to have access to him according to her long-cherished wish. He seems to have brooded heavily, as of yore—to a conscience so tender the brooding nature is often a sorry twin brother—and to have discussed the matter without any happy result. About this time he wrote to his intimate friend the Bishop of Lichfield on the subject. The Bishop’s views are set forth in his reply. His view of the married estate is a highly morose one. Yet he begs the Earl, for decency’s sake, to patch up the quarrel finally.