Tea at Trianon: The Many Marriages of Bess of Hardwick

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, March 3, 2026

The Many Marriages of Bess of Hardwick

From History...the Interesting Bits:

Bess was born around 1527, one of four daughters and a son born to John Hardwick of Hardwick, Derbyshire. It was a moderately prosperous gentry family. When her father died in 1528, When her father died in 1528, most of the family lands were taken into royal wardship until her brother James came of age. Bess’s mother, Elizabeth Leeke, remarried around 1529, to Ralph Leche of nearby Chatsworth, and had three more children, stretching the family finances even tighter. Leche’s constant problems with money meant that Leche spent the years from 1538 to 1544 in the Fleet Prison for debt and in 1545 he was committed to the debtors’ prison in Derby

With no dowry to attract a husband, 11-year-old Bess was sent into service in the household of Sir George and Lady Anne Zouche of Codnor Castle, a neighbouring family. Lady Zouche was a distant cousin of both of Bess’s parents and a friend and lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne Boleyn; following the queen’s downfall, she served her successor, Jane Seymour. Sir George was a gentleman pensioner to the king. It was in this household that Bess would have learned the ways of the aristocracy, whilst acting as a lady-in-waiting. Bess would have also made connections with various families through the other young people of the household.
It was while she was living in the Zouche’s household that Bess met her first husband, Robert Barlow. The Barlows were acquainted with Bess’s stepfather, who was owed money on a land deal by Robert’s father, Arthur Barlow. It may well be that Arthur offered his oldest son and heir in marriage to Bess, with the amount owing from the court case written off in lieu of Bess’s dowry. Bess and Robert were married in the spring of 1543, with Bess being about fifteen and Robert a couple of months short of his fourteenth birthday.

The marriage was short-lived and possibly unconsummated, given their ages. Robert fell ill and died within eighteen months of their wedding day, on Christmas Eve 1544. When Bess applied to the Barlows for her widow’s dower, one-third of the income in rents and revenues from her husband’s estates, she was refused and a lengthy court battle ensued. A settlement was finally in 1546. It did not make her rich, but the annual income of £30 gave Bess a measure of independence when she was only 17 years of age. (Read more.)