|
c. 1560
Birth
|
Reported as 1559 and 1561. These seem to be inspired guesses
rather than based on any extant record, but we can probably settle on c. 1560
as a fairly realistic date.
|
|
Father
|
Sir John Spencer (d. 1586) of Wormleighton, Warwickshire and Althorp,
Northamptonshire (from the family tree at Althorp). The family was regarded
at the time as "nouveaux riches”,
having made their fortune from sheep rearing. At the top of their family tree
(at Althorp) is William Spencer of Delford, Worcs. (fl. c. 1330), with Sir
John”s grandfather Sir William Spencer (d.
1532) as the first at Althorp.
Intriguingly, intervening generations were in Snitterfield, near Stratford in
Warwickshire, home of Richard Shakespeare/ Shakestaff, alleged grandfather of
William Shakespeare in the “conventional
story” of Shakespeare”s
biography. This version of the early history gives no hint at their
connections with the Lancashire Spencers, but poet Edmund Spenser (with
alleged Lancashire roots) was later to claim
kinship with Countess Alice, and they shared the same coat of arms.
|
|
Mother
|
Catherine, daughter of Sir Thomas Kitson of Hengrove, Suffolk.
|
|
Place in family
|
Youngest (?) of three (surviving) daughters. (She is
reported on occasion as the eldest and one of six daughters.) She certainly had two sisters who made
notable marriages in Shakespeare circles, and a brother, another Sir John
Spencer, who had a house in London
in 1596 in the same parish as Shakespeare. The dramatist”s goods were valued at five shillings
and Sir John”s at three hundred pounds.
More about this when we reach this year.
|
|
1560-78/9
Youth
|
Nothing has been discovered about her life before her
first marriage. There is no portrait at Althorp, nor any detail reported
about her there.
|
|
c. 1578/9 Marriage, when Alice became Lady
Strange.
|
To Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, son and heir of
Henry, 4th Earl of Derby and Margaret Clifford, daughter of the 2nd
Earl of Cumberland. It was through his mother that he had a claim to the
throne. She was a granddaughter of Mary Tudor, younger sister of Henry VIII,
and therefore first cousin of another granddaughter, Lady Jane Grey (executed
in 1554 after being “Queen for nine days”). Most previous accounts in Derby literature converge on Ferdinando”s
birth in 1558/9 and the marriage was therefore probably when he was about 20
and Alice a year or two younger. They must have been very well aware of
Ferdinando”s ancestry and all his “dangerous”
relatives. At the time of their marriage, the main “dangerous” relative still alive was Mary, Queen
of Scots (1542-87),
with many of Ferdinando”s kinsmen attempting to
further her cause.
He had spent some of his youth at court, being groomed in
the manners and life-style appropriate to his future role as Earl of Derby,
virtual “king”
of Lancashire, Cheshire and the Isle of Man, and Queen Elizabeth”s bulwark in these areas. He had been
matriculated at Oxford
University in 1572 (at
the ripe young age of about 13, along with his younger brothers William and
Francis), but with no details about his (their) success at studies (or not).
Any date given previously for their marriage seems to be guesswork, but was
presumably at the latest around mid-1579, because of the birth of a daughter
the following year. The Strange title was the hereditary title of the son and
heir of the Earl of Derby since a marriage with a Strange heiress of Shropshire. This marriage (Ferdinando-Alice) raised a
few eyebrows at the time, because the Earls of Derby were long established as
a prominent family in Tudor times, whereas the Spencers were still regarded
as relative upstarts. Maybe their wealth and the beauty of their daughters
were two main attractions?
|
|
1580 May.
Birth of daughter Ann, and some of her very interesting
relatives.
|
This date is reported by Seacome, from the age of the
three daughters still surviving and named in Ferdinando”s will of 1594. It is uncertain who
she was named after, but certainly neither of her grandmothers (Catherine and
Margaret) or her mother Alice.
The closest Ann to Alice in 1580 was her sister, married
at the time to another Lancashire
Stanley Lord, William, 3rd Baron Mounteagle (as his
second[?] wife, and he died in 1581 Ð
according to the Spencer family tree at Althorp). This fact alone brings the
Mounteagles into Alice”s story. The 1st Lord
Mounteagle was Sir Edward Stanley, younger brother of Sir Thomas, 1st
Earl of Derby and victor at Bosworth in 1485 (rewarded by his step-son Henry
VII), with Sir Edward the victor at Flodden in 1513, which earned for him
(from Henry VIII) the Mounteagle title, Hornby Castle near Lancaster and
rather large estates in many counties, although mainly centred around
Lancaster. William Stanley, 3rd Baron/ Lord Mounteagle, living in
1580, was Sir Edward”s grandson, and his grandson
William Parker (son of the sole daughter and heiress, married to Lord Morley)
was later to become 4th Lord Mounteagle and achieve fame as the Òsaviour of the nationÓ (quote from Ben Jonson) when he “uncovered”
the Gunpowder Plot. This still lay way in the future, but seems of relevance
to be mentioned here, given how many other plots various Stanleys were
involved in during Elizabeth”s and
James”s reigns, which obviously affected
Countess Alice in one way or the other.
If any reader is confused already, this is merely an echo
of my confusion as I tried to sort out all the Sir Thomas, Sir Edward and Sir
William Stanleys in the 16th and 17th centuries. These names were repeated in so many
generations, and their lives overlapped so often, that I fear that some might
well have been (con)fused. Ultimately, genealogical charts for all of
these will be produced, but for the moment I can only direct any interested
reader to all the charts and reports of the Stanleys in previous publications. Seacome
(1741) seems to have been pretty sound on the main Stanley descents; George
Ormerod, justly praised as the main historian of Cheshire, seems to have been
very sound in his research on the Cheshire Stanleys in his publications
between 1819 and the middle of the 19th century; William Farrer,
who wrote most of the Victoria County History of Lancashire (published in eight volumes c. 1900) was
exemplary in his abstracts and references to all Stanleys all over
Lancashire; Coward (1983) and Bagley
(1985) provided valuable extra details and references about various
Stanleys, Earls of Derby. I stand on their shoulders in trying to understand
the history of the Stanleys, yet despite having read all these scrutinously,
I was still confused about various Sir Edward, Sir Thomas and Sir William
Stanleys contemporary with Countess Alice.
Some of these gradually emerged from a comparison of
details in the publications above with other sources. Ferdinando”s uncles Sir Thomas and Sir Edward
Stanley of Winwick (younger brothers of 4th Earl Henry) had both
been instrumental in planning to rescue Mary, Queen of Scots in 1570 and
spirit her away to the Isle of Man. This “plot” was never put into action (and
perhaps was never given a name because of this) but they were both imprisoned
and fined. Both Sir Thomas and Sir Edward were named as ÒTraitorsÓ by
Seacome (one can only assume because of the “plotting”). Plots, by their very nature, seem
to have been surrounded by secrecy and the official version afterwards often
contained falsifications. No wonder they still cause controversy today. Sir
Edward went to fight in The Netherlands (in the war that saw the first
English contingent arriving there in 1585) and seems to have died in exile
there (1609). It is not at all certain which side he fought on, but as he
died in exile, it seems likely that he joined the English Catholics in exile
in Flanders. If so, he would have been in
close contact with a “cousin”
Sir William Stanley of Hooton, who became the leader of the English troops
fighting alongside the Spanish after his surrender of Deventer in 1587. This Sir William”s story is fairly clear, with a
biography in the DNB.
Sir Thomas of Winwick stayed in England
and later moved to Tong Castle in Shropshire,
where he seems to have done a bit more plotting. His main importance lies in
his many links to “Shakespeare in Lancashire”. He
married Margaret Vernon, a family located at that time mainly in Derbyshire
and Shropshire, which produced brides for many relevant families, including Elizabeth
Vernon, a lady at Elizabeth”s
court, who married (1598) Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of
Southampton and the dedicatee of Shakespeare”s two
long poems in 1593 and 1594. (She has been proposed several times as a
candidate for the Dark Lady of Shakespeare”s Sonnets,
which I find impossible to believe for several reasons, but have at the same
time no doubt that Shakespeare and Countess Alice would have met her on many
occasions.)
Sir Thomas”s son
and heir was another Sir Edward Stanley (1562-1632), and these two bear the
distinction of having the only completely authenticated epitaphs written for
them by Shakespeare, later chiselled in stone on their tomb in Tong Parish
Church and still there today. This is another ongoing story as a background
to Countess Alice and her newly acquired Stanley relatives after her marriage to
Ferdinando.
This particular story started with the recording of the
text of the epitaphs in Tong Parish Church by poet and antiquarian John
Weever (from Preston, with a biography in the DNB) and historian,
antiquarian and King of Arms Sir William Dugdale (whose father was from
Lancashire, and also with a biography in the DNB). Both of these
recordings of epitaphs were in the 17th century, not too long
after Shakespeare”s death in 1616, by people
who were fairly close to many involved in the “Shakespeare
in Lancashire” story
at the time.
The middle of this story leaps a few centuries later when
various scholars and academics in the 20th century perceived some
of these details of the Shakespeare epitaphs in Tong. My main hero in this
area is Professor E. A. J. Honigmann.
His main contributions about the epitaphs in Tong Parish
Church have been in two
of his publications. Shakespeare: the “lost
years”, Chapter VII, “The
Shakespeare Epitaphs and the Stanleys” and
Weever, 1987.
Ferdinando and Alice”s
daughter Ann was to play a role in national history when she was proposed by
Jesuit Robert Parsons in 1595 as a strong candidate for the throne after
Elizabeth I”s death. This was because of
Ferdinando”s descent from Henry VII via
his mother, Margaret Clifford, half-sister of George Clifford, 3rd
Earl of Cumberland and grand-daughter of Mary Tudor, Henry VIII”s sister and Charles Brandon, Duke of
Suffolk. By this time Margaret”s
marriage to Earl Henry had collapsed irrevocably, although they still must
have had some contact when both were at court. Margaret had produced four
sons: Ferdinando, William, Francis and Edward, only the first two surviving
to adulthood and marriage. Earl Henry had meanwhile had two sons and two
daughters by his mistress Jane Halsall of Knowsley, and the two daughters in
particular, Ursula and Dorothy, have been linked to Shakespeare circles.
|
|
1581 Aug
|
William Shakeshafte was named in Alexander Hoghton”s will. If this was young William
Shakespeare, the terms of the will would have seen him moving to Sir Thomas
Hesketh”s household at Rufford Old Hall for a
short time (according to Hesketh family tradition) and perhaps moving on to
Strange”s Players in late 1581 or early 1582 Ð or joining them later in this decade.
No records have survived, so any suggestion in this area is pure speculation.
However, the recorded later association of Strange”s
Players performing some of Shakespeare”s early
plays (in the early 1590s) indicates some previous link. If young Will, aged
17 in 1581, had already shown a few glimpses of his future dramatic and
poetic genius, then he might well have come to the attention of Earl Henry
and son Ferdinando, both theatre lovers and patrons of a troupe of players.
Whatever the “truth”,
and purely speculatively, this year (and one or two years previously) would
have provided the first opportunity for Shakespeare to have met Ferdinando
and Alice.
|
|
1582 Aug
|
Earl Henry attended Preston Guild with sons Ferdinando,
William and Francis and most of the local Lancashire
gentry. This event took place every twenty years and provided one the social
highlights of the North West,
as well as serving to regulate borough affairs. All surviving documentation
was transcribed and published by W. A. Abram, Preston
Guild Rolls.
|
|
1583 Jan
Birth of daughter Frances.
|
Date reported by Seacome. The gap of nearly three years
since the first daughter leads one to suspect that there might have been
another child in between, who did not survive.
|
|
1587
Birth of daughter Elizabeth.
|
Date reported by Seacome. The gap of four years again
suggests another possible child. All accounts agree that these three
daughters (Ann, Frances and Elizabeth) were the
only ones to survive. The only other child recorded was one still- born after
Ferdinando”s death in 1594.
|
|
1587-90
|
These three years are those covered by the Derby Household Books, a record of purchases, servants
and visitors to the Derby
households when Earl Henry was in residence. This is invaluable in that it
allows us to track many of the movements of the family up and down the
country, and establish who were the most frequent visitors.
William popped up to Lancashire between his travels, Earl Henry”s mission to the Netherlands in an attempt to abort the Armada
is recorded, and the names of many who must have been well known to Alice appear.
|
|
1589 Nov 28
|
The “affray at Lea”. (For an account of this, see
Alexander Standish”s biography.) This involved
several people close to the Derbys and
Ferdinando and his father attended the court at Lancaster to try to sort it out.
|
|
1593 Sep 25
Earl Henry died. Some more illustrious relatives.
|
Ferdinando automatically became 5th Earl of
Derby and Alice
became Countess of Derby, a title she was to use all her life, even though
she acquired a few more titles from her second husband Baron Ellesmere. Her
sisters had made prestigious marriages, Elizabeth to George Carey, 2nd
Baron Hunsdon, who succeeded his father Henry, 1st Baron Hunsdon,
as Lord Chamberlain and patron of the Chamberlain”s
Men, Shakespeare”s company. He died in 1603.
Sister Anne married (1) William Stanley, 3rd Lord Mounteagle (of Lancashire, as his second wife; he died in 1581 and was
succeeded as 4th Lord Mounteagle by his grandson William Parker,
the one who later “saved the nation” by “exposing” the Gunpowder Plot); (2) Sir John
Goodwin (died 1597) of Wincrington, Bucks. and (3)
Robert Sackville, 2nd Earl of Dorset (1561-1609), Elizabeth and
James”s Lord Treasurer, who was to prove a
very useful brother-in-law for Alice
during her later battles in court. She was to become even more closely tied
to the latter family in 1609 when Richard Sackville, Robert”s son and heir and 3rd Earl
of Dorset, married Lady Anne Clifford (1590-1676), Ferdinando”s first cousin as daughter of his
swashbuckling uncle George, 3rd Earl of Cumberland. Her mother was
Margaret Russell, daughter of the Earl of Bedford, and all these ladies were
rather prominent at court. Lady Anne has received several biographies,
including Proud Northern Lady by Martin
Holmes, Phillimore, 1975, 1984, paperback 2000, which draws largely on her
diaries. Those that have survived, rather frustratingly, are from 1617
onwards, the year after Shakespeare”s
death. However, enough details remain to tie her into Countess Alice”s and Ben Jonson”s circles, and therefore, one might
reasonably presume, William Shakespeare”s
circle.
|
|
1593
|
By this date Ferdinando had been the patron of Strange”s Players for at least a few years.
They were a touring company, which played several times at court. They
changed their name briefly to Derby”s
Players after his becoming Earl of Derby in late 1593, but it is not at all
clear whether he was the patron of these, or whether his wife/ widow Alice
was their patroness after Ferdinando”s death
the following year. (Might brother William Stanley, 6th Earl, have
taken them over for a short period?) The only known portrait of Alice,
hanging today on the wall of the Dining Room at Knowsley Hall, seems to
present her in her thirties, therefore painted around 1593 (give or take a
few years previously). This was reproduced in black and white in Bagley, The
Derbys
(1985) and Honigmann, Shakespeare: the “lost
years” (1985). It was perhaps
painted at the same time as the one of Ferdinando, also at Knowsley. One
other portrait of him survived at Worden Hall, presumably a gift to William
Farington, the long-serving “Comptroller” of the Derby household, who also owned portraits
of Earl Henry and his father Earl Edward. They are now in a private
collection.
|
|
1593 Sep Ð Nov
The Hesketh Plot
|
The most recent account is in Edwards, Plots and
Plotters. He is impeccable on documentary sources and such 'facts' that
we know, but I query some of his interpretations on motives by various
characters involved. The basic story is that Richard Hesketh of Aughton
(half-brother of Alexander Hoghton”s
second wife Elizabeth nŽe Hesketh of Aughton Ð named in the 1581 will) travelled
from Flanders to Lancashire with a letter that offered the support of English
Catholics in exile for Ferdinando as the successor to Elizabeth I”s throne, with the promise of military
support from Spain (another Armada?). Everyone seems to have been in rather a
tizzy at the time, the case was never explained satisfactorily and this has
provided rich ground for much speculation, conspiracy theories, etc. (There
undoubtedly was a conspiracy, but no one at the time or ever since has been
able to establish who exactly was involved, how and why.) Two important
recorded facts of deaths emerge: Richard Hesketh was tortured and
subsequently executed in London in November
and Ferdinando died an agonising death in Lancashire
a few months later. Countess Alice was obviously deeply affected by these
events, as she was left a widow, aged c. 33, with three young daughters and
pregnant again.
|
|
1594 April
Ferdinando died.
|
The story of his agonising death after eleven days of
suffering is told in all Derby
literature and presents a real “whodunnit”. There was discussion at the time in
the highest circles whether it was witchcraft (complete with a little doll in
the corner of his room poked with needles, and the requisite old Dame) or
poisoning (with one report of Ferdinando”s
horse-master disappearing in a hurry [on horse] as soon as the poison [?] had
started to take effect). Many people were hauled in for questioning by the
highest authorities in London, most interestingly Sir Thomas Langton, Baron
of Newton and Walton-le-Dale, the main perpetrator of the “affray at Lea”
in 1589 and Bartholomew Hesketh, Richard”s
brother, and a former alleged host of Edmund Campion during his mission to
Lancashire in 1581. In the middle of
his agonies Ferdinando was compus mentis enough to dictate (?) two documents,
with the intention of leaving all his estates to widow Alice and their three
daughters, thus excluding his younger brother William from the inheritance of
these. Ferdinando just forgot (?) to sign these documents. One can only begin to guess at the
relationship between brothers Ferdinando and William. Ferdinando had stayed
in England, done his duty by marrying early and making every attempt to
produce a son and heir, while his brother William was gallivanting all over
Europe and the Middle East, foot and fancy free, and getting into many
scrapes. William”s story will be told
elsewhere. (To repeat [ad nauseam, perhaps] the first dedicated
biography of William Stanley, 5th Earl of Derby, by Professor Leo
Daugherty will appear in 2004 in the New DNB, now renamed the Oxford
DNB. Professor Daugherty and I have exchanged many details, grappled with
several problems, and both of us have a rather sympathetic view of William
and a somewhat jaundiced view of Ferdinando.
Our interpretations are open to question in future and will probably
never be resolved satisfactorily, but at least we have tried.) One definite
fact emerges: Countess Alice battled on for well over a decade to prove her
right to inheritance of at least half of the Derby estates. She enlisted all her
high-ranking friends and relatives at Elizabeth”s and James”s
courts and finally received satisfaction (many estates and huge sums of money
for herself and her three daughters). One of these high-ranking officials was
Sir Thomas Egerton (from Cheshire), meanwhile
in Elizabeth”s Privy Council and later to become
James”s Chancellor until his death in 1617.
Countess Alice married him in 1600 as her second husband. Francis Edwards,
Plots and Plotters, sees “poor” Alice as a victim being manipulated
into this marriage by the Cecils; I see it as an astute move on Alice”s part: she was now married to one of
the most powerful and richest men in England, and along with her own wealth
and family connections, she could do pretty well whatever she wanted. (Maybe one could feel a
certain sympathy for Sir Thomas as someone who had pulled himself up
in life by his own bootstraps and ended up married to a countess. He was an
illegitimate Ð but fully recognised - son
of Egerton of Ridley, Cheshire,
and his brilliance and prodigious assiduity as a student led to his later
meteoric career. He is well documented in standard Cheshire histories and has a biography in
the DNB and the EB.)
|
|
1594-1607
Alice”s battle in courts with brother-in-law
William.
|
Coward, The Stanleys (1983) gives the most complete
account of all the land transactions. William, 6th Earl of Derby,
had to sell many estates to pay the required compensation to Countess Alice
and her daughters. The dispute over the Isle of Man left William rather
bitter when he had to buy it from Alice.
There appears to have been little love lost between them.
|
|
1595 Jan
William married Elizabeth de Vere at Greenwich in the presence of Queen Elizabeth.
|
From now on there were two contemporary Countesses of
Derby, which makes any references between 1595 and 1627 suspect; Countess
Elizabeth died in 1627, which removed her from the picture in this year,
leaving just Countess Alice until her death in 1639. William and Elizabeth”s son and heir James (born 1607) had
married in 1625, but until he became 7th Earl of Derby after his
father”s death in 1642, he and his wife were
always known as Lord and Lady Strange.
This marriage (William Stanley Ð
Elizabeth de Vere) also brought about another confusion
in the in-law relationship of two earls proposed as Alternative Shakespeare
Authorship Candidates: William and his father-in-law Edward de Vere, 17th
Earl of Oxford. The only conclusion I draw from this is that they (along with
other candidates) were all so intimately related, and so obviously moved in
Shakespeare circles (or he in theirs), that there was every opportunity for a
regular exchange of ideas, maybe even plots for plays and maybe even some
lines of poems. Edward de Vere is on contemporary record as a poet and
playwright in the 1590s and William Stanley as a playwright in the 1599s (and
perhaps poet in the 1580s). Neither of them was Shakespeare, but they must
have known him, which perhaps explains some of the confusion, although not
the acrimony poured out on thousands of pages in the 20th
century. For anyone still confused
about this confusion, I recommend Who Wrote Shakespeare? by John Michell,
Thames and Hudson,
1996, paperback 1999. This is a dispassionate
account of the claims for the main candidates, but also importantly in the
context of Countess Alice, it gives the most accessible biography of her
brother-in-law William Stanley on many library shelves until Professor
Daugherty”s version appears in the New
DNB later in 2004 (now apparently renamed the Oxford DNB), which
will be instantly available electronically for anyone with the odd £6,500 to spare while locating which of
the sixty volumes he appears in. He will presumably be under S for Stanley
rather than D for Derby,
and therefore towards the end, but you never know. I await
with bated breath to see whether Countess Alice has achieved a place in the Oxford
DNB, and if so, whether she appears under S for Spencer and Stanley or elsewhere. (She
could appear under B as wife of the 1st Viscount Brackley and the
mother-in-law of the 1st Earl of Bridgewater; or under E as the wife of the 1st Baron Ellesmere, whose surname was also
conveniently E, for Egerton. Full sympathies for the little army of editors
at Oxford University Press, who have had to decide on such issues.) For me,
she is just Countess Alice, to whom we will return after a little side-step
to her brother-in-law William Stanley.
Edward de Vere”s wife
was Ann Cecil, daughter of Sir William, Lord Burghley, and sister of Sir
Robert, later Earl of Salisbury, which presumably brought the Cecils into the
Derby family
picture more on the side of William than his sister-in-law Countess Alice. It
is sometimes difficult to perceive this, however, as both Elizabeth
and Alice
seem to have appealed for Sir Robert”s help
on various occasions. A thorough re-examination of all references to the
Countess of Derby from 1595 to 1527 is needed, in an attempt to separate
which might have referred to Elizabeth and which to Alice. This also applies
to the later appearance of the ÒCountess
of DerbyÓ in many masques at James”s court, particularly those created by
Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones.
During the years after his marriage William is recorded on
occasion in Lancashire and London, where in
1599 he was reported by George Fenners, a Jesuit visiting England, as Òbusy only in penning commodyes for the
commoun playersÓ. It was the discovery of
this at the end of the 19th century that led to his proposal as a
Shakespeare Authorship Candidate. None of his ÒcommodyesÓ have survived, unless some were
perhaps among those in the Shakespeare Apocrypha signed ÒW.S.Ó. Apart
from battling away with sister-in-law Alice until 1607, he had a few jealous
scenes with his wife, who was accused of having had an affair with the Earl
of Essex, which she denied, but the very suspicion seems to prove that
various earls and their countesses all met frequently in London. In 1598 Henry Wriothesley, 3rd
Earl of Southampton and the dedicatee of Shakespeare”s
two long poems in 1 593 and 1594, had an affair with Elizabeth Vernon,
daughter of the branch in Shropshire, with their origins in Derbyshire, just
over the border from Cheshire, and closely affiliated by many marriages to
the Earls of Derby and the Ardernes of Cheshire (the family of Mary,
Shakespeare”s [step-]mother).
Henry Wriothesley married Elizabeth Vernon secretly when she was several
months pregnant, which resulted in them both being sent to the Tower. The
child was Penelope Wriothesley, who later married William, 2nd
Baron Spencer of Althorp (1591-1636), grandson of Countess Alice”s brother Sir John Spencer. If one can
assume that Countess Alice kept in touch with her Spencer family and court
gossip, she must have been aware of all these events. More than that is
difficult to say at the moment, until the published biographies of all
concerned have been scoured Ð yet
again Ð or written for the first time.
Meanwhile, William, 6th of Derby, needed to establish his credentials
with Queen Elizabeth as presenting no threat to the question of her
successor. One might presume that he had no desire to suffer the same fate as
his brother Ferdinando, as indeed he did not, living on to the ripe old age
of 81, when he died in September 1642, just after his son and heir James,
Lord Strange, who became 7th Earl of Derby on the death of his
father, had contributed to the beginning of the Civil War with his Siege of
Manchester, attempting (unsuccessfully) to claim this for the Royalist cause.
This involved at least three Standishes of
Duxbury: Captain Thomas, in Lord Strange”s
besieging army, who was killed in Salford
by a sniper while he was washing his hands in a trough; his father
Thomas, M.P., a Òzealous ParliamentarianÓ, who rushed back to Lancashire from London to bury his
son and heir and try to sort out the whole mess in his will, after which he
suddenly dropped down dead (for no recorded reason, but his burial was duly recorded in Chorley Parish
Register); and their “cousin”
Richard, living in Manchester at the time of the siege and later a Colonel of
infantry in the Civil War alongside Oliver Cromwell. Thomas Standish of Duxbury Sr (the M.P,
lived 1593-1642) was son and heir of Alexander Standish of Duxbury
(1570/1-1622) and Captain Thomas Jr (killed by a bullet in Salford in
September 1642) was Alexander”s
grandson, son and heir of Thomas Sr (the M.P.), These stories and documented
facts were revealed by assiduous reading over several years of many unpublished
Standish of Duxbury MSS in the Lancashire Record Office. It was only after
reading these and absorbing all the details that the Tudor story of the
Standishes of Duxbury emerged.
We have moved far away from Countess Alice”s biography, but somehow her shadow,
and certainly the shadow of her friend Alexander Standish of Duxbury and her
brother-in-law William, 6th Earl of Derby, seem to be
relevant for various later stories. Alexander died in 1622, and so disappears
from Countess Alice”s immediate story after the
following year, but his sons and grandsons lived on in Duxbury and became
tangled up in the Civil War; Countess Alice died in 1637 and was so spared
the knowledge of how her descendants would also become tangled up in the
Civil War; Rev. William Leigh, Rector of Standish (from 1586) died in 1639,
and was thus spared the knowledge of so many of his parishioners and friends
fighting against each other; William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby
died in September 1642, and was thus
spared the knowledge that his son and heir James was later beheaded in 1651
in Bolton. I have read widely in many published accounts of contemporary
stories, and have come to the interim conclusion that we still have a lot to
learn and sort out about events from Tudor through Stuart times, including
various “Catholic Plots” and the Civil War. This interim
conclusion was not difficult to arrive at, given the dissent in academic
circles.
|
|
1600
Alice
married Sir Thomas Egerton.
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Their marriage seems to have been rather stormy. Sir
Thomas certainly complained about her sharp tongue on one occasion. At this
point Alice”s biography by Lancashire
historians starts to dry up, and we need to turn to London and Middlesex records, with many
reports given in full below.
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1601
Bought Harefield in Middlesex.
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It seems (from the evidence given below) that this was a
joint purchase by Countess Alice and her second husband or a gift from him to
her.
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1602
Entertained Queen Elizabeth.
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At Harefield (with all dates and details given below).
Soon after this he became Baron Ellesmere, taking his name from an estate in Shropshire purchased from William, 6th Earl
of Derby.
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1607
Act of Parliament.
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Final settlement of the Derby
estates by Act of Parliament between Countess Alice and William, 6th
Earl of Derby
(main details in Coward, The Stanleys).
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1609
Lady Anne Clifford and others
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The marriage in this year of Lady Anne Clifford
(Ferdinando and William”s first cousin) to Richard
Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset, presents many intriguing
(potential) relationships of relevance to Countess Alice. On record is the
fact that Samuel Daniel (poet, historian, an admirer of and inspiration for
Shakespeare with their respective sonnets and dramas in the 1590s apparently
cross-fertilising each other) was her tutor. This is proved, among many
records, by his portrait and biography appearing on the magnificent Lady Anne
tryptich in Kendal
Art Gallery,
for which she obligingly commissioned and included portraits of her parents
and various Countess aunts, plus the titles of many books in her library.
Although born a generation apart (Countess Alice c. 1560 and Lady Anne 1590),
they very obviously knew each other and each other”s
history well during their meetings in James”s
reign. Indeed, Lady Anne”s
battle for her inheritance of the estates of the earldom of Cumberland is in
many ways a mirror image of Countess Alice”s
battle to retain as many Derby estates as possible for herself and her
daughters. ÒLady DerbyÓ makes only one appearance in Proud
Northern Lady (p. 76) when she explained the predicament of Lady Anne to
Queen Anne of Denmark, prior to taking the case for James I”s judgement. As we have seen, there
were two Ladies/ Countesses Derby until 1627 (widow Countess Alice and wife
Countess Elizabeth), but whichever it was, it seems to prove that Lady Anne
was very well aware and on intimate terms with one or the other, and if one,
then presumably the other. Other highly relevant details from Lady Anne”s biography are that
her husband Richard was a bit of a rogue, although charming all the way.
Either he (or some assume his brother), but Aubrey”s
entry [John Aubrey”s Brief
Lives, any edition] on Richard seems to make it clear enough that it was
he who maintained Venetia Stanley as his mistress while he was married to
Lady Anne. Venetia was yet another ravishing Jacobean lady, daughter of yet
another first cousin of Ferdinando and William, Sir Edward Stanley of Winwick
in Lancashire and Tong in Shropshire, son and heir of Sir Thomas Stanley of
Winwick, younger brother of Henry 4th Earl of Derby. The story of all of these and their
relevance for Countess Alice will be told elsewhere. A good starter to try to
understand the importance of Venetia
(1600-33) and her father Sir Edward Stanley (1562-1632) is in Honigmann,
Shakespeare: the “lost
years”, Chapter VII, “The Shakespeare Epitaphs and the
Stanleys”. In this he gives the texts
of two epitaphs chiselled in stone in Tong Church,
recorded in the 17th century by Sir William Dugdale as written by
William Shakespeare and still there today, with a simple family tree of most
involved. This was where I started, which ultimately took me to recent
correspondence with relevant folk in Tong. This story is still ongoing. The
main relevance for Countess Alice is that she must have known about all these
events and characters, most of whom she outlived.
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1617
2nd husband died.
Alice
joined in with celebrations for King James at Althorp.
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Baron Ellesmere, meanwhile Viscount Brackley, refused an
earldom on his deathbed, but his son Sir John Egerton went on to perform
great services and be rewarded accordingly as the 1st Earl of
Bridgewater. All three daughters had meanwhile married and produced families.
Ann married Grey Bridges, 5th Lord Chandos; Frances married Sir
John Egerton (so mother Alice and daughter Frances were married to father Sir
Thomas and son Sir John, the latter meanwhile 1st Earl of
Bridgewater; and Elizabeth married the 5th Earl of Huntingdon.
(These marriages appear on the pedigree chart in Coward, The Stanleys, entitled ÒSimplified pedigree of the Stanleys of
Knowsley c. 1385-1672Ó. They are confirmed by all
other Derby
literature.) A juxtaposition of all
recorded dates in this year might establish a few more details. King James”s progression through the country in
this year has received much attention, but has received most attention in the
histories of individual families where he stayed. It seems that the time
might have come for at least a list of all families with whom he stayed. 1617
was the year after Shakespeare”s
death, so to a large extent is irrelevant for him. And yet King James had
been his patron since 1603 in the King”s
Players, and James”s stays in 1617 were so often
with people associated with Shakespeare, that it eerily presents a list of
places associated with Shakespeare during his lifetime.
Let us start with his reception at Preston
(which is proposed elsewhere as the potential origin of Shakespeare”s ancestry in the Shakeshaftes of
Preston). This was followed by his three-day visit to Hoghton Tower
as the guest of Sir Richard Hoghton (main dedicatee of John Weever”s Epigrammes in 1599, who also
dedicated an epigram Òad Gulielmum ShakespeareÓ). From there he meandered south to
the Earl of Derby (with so many recorded links to Shakespeare), and on to Sir
John Done of Utkington in Cheshire
(whose daughter and heiress was about to marry an Arderne of Cheshire, the
family and ancestors of Mary Arderne, William Shakespeare”s step-mother). A little later he stayed at Althorp in
Nottinghamshire, where Countess Alice was in attendance, with all her
connections to Shakespeare. This paragraph can be dismissed as fantasy, but I
believe these details require further research, and that at the end of the
day we might come a little closer to the “truth” about
Shakespeare and Countess Alice.
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1617-22
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This period is so far a total blank about Countess Alice.
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1622-23
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Countess Alice was living in Anglezarke, a manor purchased
by Alexander Standish of Duxbury from William, 6th Early of Derby,
via intermediaries, some time after c. 1600. His family had owned various
lands there previously, but he only became Lord of the Manor in the early
1600s. Alexander died in 1622, having been a widower since 1604. (All known
details about him appear under his own biography.) It is not known when Alice moved to
Anglezarke under the auspices of Alexander, nor how long she stayed or how often
she visited afterwards. She must have had a lot of friends in the area from
her days at Lathom and Knowsley, when married to Ferdinando (c. 1588/9-94).
Three relevant recorded facts remain, which provide a case
for some ponderings: (1) Alexander Standish (born 1570/I) never remarried
after the death of his wife Alice nŽe
Assheton in 1604, although Alexander was aged only in his mid-thirties at
this time; (2) Alice, Countess of Derby, went through two marriages, but on
the death of her second husband in 1617, when she was in her late fifties,
did not marry again; (3) Alexander (born 1570/1) and Alice (born c. 1560)
fairly obviously had an intimate enough relationship for Alexander to install
Alice at Anglezarke. Beyond these facts, the mind can only boggle and ask
questions. What led Alexander, in his mid-thirties in 1604, not to seek a new
bride among the many eligible local daughters and widows? What led Countess
Alice not to seek a third husband in the higher echelons of society after
1617? One tentative answer might be that they had found each other.
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1636
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By this date (shortly before her death) Alice
had been living at Harefield again for some years and visited Ludlow for the first
performance of Comus by John Milton.
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1637
Countess Alice died.
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The location of her will, and a full transcription of
this, lies in the future. Maybe an examination of this will reveal a few more
relevant details.
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1639
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She was mentioned in the will of Rev. William Leigh, Rector
of Standish 1586-1639, Chaplain to the Earls of Derby, tutor to Prince Henry,
etc. (His biography is in the
Old DNB, many more details in Porteus, History of the Parish of
Standish (1927), and other details scattered over other Lancashire
literature. He deserves a new biography and will receive one some time in the
future.)
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c. 1640
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We have no idea of the date of the construction of her
tomb in Harefield
Parish Church,
but it is still there today. All details below from the Harefield area need
to be incorporated into the above.
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