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Home / People / Bess of Hardwick

Historical person

Bess of Hardwick

1527–1608

Bess of Hardwick was an English noblewoman who rose from the gentry to become one of the wealthiest women of Elizabethan England. Through marriage, estate management and court connections, she became a major figure in aristocratic politics and building culture.

Four marriages steadily increased Bess’s wealth and influence, particularly those to Sir William Cavendish and George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury. She invested heavily in land and building, creating Chatsworth and Hardwick Hall, and spent years involved in the custody of Mary, Queen of Scots. Her granddaughter Arbella Stuart’s royal blood also placed the family close to the unsettled succession of Elizabeth I.

Sarah Gristwood’s Arbella follows her upbringing under the formidable Bess of Hardwick, the schemes that gathered around the unsettled succession, and the hopes invested in a woman descended from both Tudor and Stuart lines. In Philippa Gregory’s The Other Queen, after fleeing Scotland in 1568, Mary Stuart is placed in the custody of George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, and his wife Bess of Hardwick.

Periods

Periods linked to Bess of Hardwick

Captivity of Mary, Queen of Scots in England1568–1587 CE

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Bess of Hardwick (1 series)

The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels in Order

by Philippa Gregory 16 books 4.4(140,052)

The Plantagenet and Tudor novels form a chronological sequence of connected but independently readable stories about women near the English throne. They move from the Lancastrian court and the Wars of the Roses through the rise of the Tudors, Henry VIII’s marriages, the mid-Tudor religious crisis and the…

All books in this series

Non Fiction

Non Fiction featuring Bess of Hardwick (1 book)

Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.