Bess was an intelligent and powerful woman. She's one of my favorite women in history--she did what she had to do for herself yes, but for her family too. She started off poor and didn't want to end up that way for the rest of her life. Awesome.
It was my stomping ground when I was a child, forever going fishing in the lakes at the bottom, then the walk back up sheperds lane past my grandfathers farms, Stanley Grange and shepherd's Lane farm where my father was born, back to woodland avenue & strawberry Bank, the highest place in Nottinghamshire where we lived, its quite emotional to see the childhood memories again.x
Interesting story. Bess of Hardwick was born into a minor gentry family with aristocratic ancestry although they had little money. Her great granddaughter Jane Lowe and her husband Henry Sewall came to the colony of Maryland in the 1600’s and they have many thousands of descendants today in the United States including Daniel Carroll who was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Two of my friends are descended from Jane and therefore from Bess. My own Virginia ancestor Col. Thomas Ligon was an aristocrat and descended from Eleanor Aylesbury, Lady Stafford, whose sister Isabel was the great-great grandmother of Bess of Hardwick.
Four times the nuptial bed she warm'd, And every time so well perform'd, That when death spoil'd each husband's billing, He left the widow every shilling. Fond was the dame, but not dejected; Five stately mansions she erected With more than royal pomp, to vary The prison of her captive When Hardwicke's towers shall bow their head, Nor mass be more in Worksop said; When Bolsover's fair fame shall tend, Like Olcotes, to its mouldering end; When Chatsworth tastes no Can'dish bounties, Let fame forget this costly countess.
