Countess of Derby

“ But ere Charles had reached the lower end of the apartment in his progress to the anteroom, the usher surprised the assembly by announcing a name which had not for many a year been heard in these courtly halls—“the Countess of Derby!”
Stately and tall, and still, at an advanced period of life, having a person unbroken by years, the noble lady advanced towards her Sovereign, with a step resembling that with which she might have met an equal. ”

“ Lord Derby had scarcely set foot in the Isle of Man when a message reached the Countess at Lathom House from Lord Holland, the Parliamentary governor of Manchester, requiring her to accede to the conditions which he offered her, or to surrender Lathom House. ”

“ Whether the Countess desired to inspire the ambassadors with respect and awe, or whether she feared a sudden attack, she was there to meet the Parliamentarian deputies in formidable battle array. They were conducted to the mistress of the mansion between lines of armed men drawn up on each side, from the gates of the outer court to her presence in the Great Hall, each company ranged under its lieutenant. At the upper end of the hall, her two little daughters at each side, and her women round her, stood the Countess. ”

“ For thy fate, William Dhône, sickens our soul.” Audi alteram bartem. The Christians and those they represented of the Manx people had had grievances against certain high-handed doings of the late Earl, but, the tale all told, sympathy for fair-haired William’s fate is not easy to muster; and if it be true that the Countess of Derby had a share in hastening his end, it is not necessary to be blind to the fact that she would, if she could have compassed it, have visited similar lynch-law justice on those “court-martial” judges who condemned her husband to the block. ”

“ One must live economically, and make the best of what one has.”
There seems to have been no false sentiment about Lady Derby’s nature. And if the theories of Lavater are in any way correct, it is easiest to recall her living personality through the portrait of Vandyke, who, mighty portrayer that he was, gives Charlotte de la Trémoille on his canvas the frank and happy face of a good wife and a good mother, if not as specially beautiful or striking, as Scott has depicted the widowed Countess of Derby and “Queen in Man” in his Peveril of the Peak. ”

“ Meantime, Lord Derby had returned from the Isle of Man, and the Countess contrived to send him a dispatch, which found him at Chester, occupied in an endeavour to muster troops to march to her assistance; but as yet the Earl had a mere handful of men only, and three thousand soldiers surrounded Lathom. ”

“ On the contrary, Churchmen, Romanists, and Puritans were alike the dupes of the loathsome impostors who roamed the country, though each in turn was ready to upbraid the others with being [167] believers in the generally prevailing error, and not unfrequently with being participators in the frauds that were practised. The great and munificent Edward, Earl of Derby, “kept a conjuror in his house secretly;” and his daughter-in-law, Margaret Clifford, Countess of Derby, lost the favour of Queen Elizabeth for a womanish curiosity in “consulting with wizards or cunning men.” ”

“ It is only a short time before she becomes Countess of Derby that she begins to live in history. Till then, she passed the ordinary existence of a highborn lady of her time—those ladies notably who affected home life more than Court life. Her provincial rearing at Thonars, coupled with her simple Huguenot education, no doubt conduced 115to this preference. Another reason which made a country lady of Charlotte de la Trémoille was probably the remoteness of Lathom from the capital. ”

“ That the Countess of Derby shall have the time she desires, and then liberty to transport her arms and goods to the Isle of Man, except the cannon, which shall continue there for the defence of the house. ”

“ The Independents and the Presbyterians had little in common sympathy. The Independents formed the majority in the army, and the Presbyterians, jealous of their power, were now anxious to disband the army. In this difference the Independents, gaining the day, formed a military Parliament, 155and took possession of the King; but the hope that this raised in the minds of the Royalists, and among them the hopes of the Earl and Countess of Derby, was doomed to be disappointed. The King in the hands of the Independents was merely a puppet to play off against the Presbyterians. ”

“ The Earl of Derby, the representative of one 17of the most illustrious families of the English nobility, was lord paramount of the counties of Cheshire and Lancashire, and hereditary sovereign of the Isle of Man.
His eldest son, who took the title of Lord Strange, was only twenty years of age at the time of his marriage. Handsome, high-minded, brave, intellectual, he was worthy of the wife who shared so faithfully in the fortunes of his troubled existence. A marriage less of choice than of convenience, it was to prove a union that could put to shame many a love match ”

“ Courage and initiative were not limited to the women on one side of the contest, as is well illustrated by the conduct of the Countess of Derby, who, in 1643, made a remarkable defence of Latham House ”

“ Lord Derby further promulgated an announcement to similar effect, “inviting all his allies, friends, and acquaintance, all his tenantry in Lancashire, and Cheshire, and other places, as well as all his Majesty’s faithful and loyal subjects,” to repair to the Isle of Man, as a refuge and a rallying-place. No menaces or dangers, added the Earl in the proclamation, could trouble him, nor dangers deter him. A 165letter written by Lady Derby, the year of the King’s death, bitterly complains of the duplicity of Parliament dealings in respect of the disposal of their property. ”

“ Scott claims his rights as a romancer to give us the famous 159Countess of Derby as it suited his great novel to depict her. The Wizard has indeed drawn a curiously different personality from the real wife of James Stanley. On the other hand, her wifehood was almost past before Julian Peveril of the Peak was born. It is the woman advancing in years, with the memory of dead joys and loves and countless bitter wrongs heavy upon her, whom Scott characterises. When Charles II. was king, Charlotte de la Trémoille must have been greatly changed ”

“ Sir Thomas Fairfax, who from the beginning had never been heartily with his task, discovered towards the end of April that his presence was indispensable at York; and he delegated the command of the siege of Lathom House to Colonel Rigby. With the departure of Fairfax, the entire face of matters was changed. Lady Derby had no longer to do with “a gentleman, a sincere patriot, but a well-reared man, with a noble heart, and of pure hands. Her chief assailant now was an old attorney, a wretched lawyer, a pilferer, a thief, a hypocrite, determined not to be beaten by a woman.” ”

“ Colonel Rigby burned to wipe off the score of some insult which he fancied he had once received from the Earl, and both the deputies saw from the first strong determination in the eyes of the Countess. All the same, they did not care to allow themselves to be conquered by a woman, 128and both sought to represent to her the error of her ways, and to reproach her with the evils visited on the country by her party, and by her own friends and adherents. ”

“ A noble patience which, in such a high heart as Lady Derby’s, called for more courage than even that which she exercised in the midst of the fray itself; the courage of a woman and of a general, which knew how to endure all, while waiting to see how to dare all. ”

“ For two years the two daughters, Catherine and Amelia, had been left in peace at Knowsley. “Now,” writes Lady Derby, 8th June 1650, “one Birch, governor of a little town called Liverpool, has taken them prisoners, and carried them there, where they are under guard.”
The Countess attributes this treatment to the pressure Parliament intends putting upon the Earl. “That is all, dear sister, which I can tell you of this pitiable story,” she concludes. “I pray God to protect them, and do not fear that He will do so. It is said that they endure bravely. ”

“ For since every good whatever naturally and of right requires another good in return, the King of his especial grace freely pardons the said John." Plac. Cor. in Cast. Oxon. (back)
Footnote 10: Thus, in a warrant, dated 6th March 1381, an order is given by the Duke for payment to a Goldsmith in London, of 10l. 18s. for a present made by our dear daughter Philippa, to our very dear daughter Mary, Countess of Derby, on the day of her marriage; and also "40 shillings for as many pence put upon the book on the day of the espousals of our much beloved son, the Earl of Derby." ”

“ The Duke was not able to sell his acres of arable and pasture land, and consequently could not send his sister the money which was hers by right. The Earl of Derby was likewise impoverished by the loss of certain moneys which, hitherto appertaining to the male heirs of his family, had now become alienated and divided: yet upon these reduced incomings the Earl was expected still to maintain all the old state and magnificence of the house of Stanley.
The Isle of Man was, moreover, a possession of exceedingly doubtful value to its suzerain lords. ”

“ The Earl treats these calumnies with the contempt they merited. It suffices that his son knows and understands him. “As to the others,” he writes, “it matters little to me whether they understand or not.”
Lord Derby delayed only long enough to return to Lathom, where he mustered all the men, and got together all the money and ammunition possible “to defend and protect my wife and children against the insolence of the enemy.” Then he embarked for the Isle of Man. ”

“ Whither, the majority of the men were far from being certain. The attachment of the Northerners of Derby, Cheshire, and Lancashire was very strong for the ancient race of Stanley. To go against an Earl of Derby was hardly less than actual laying of rough hands on their anointed King, and to that pass only the fiercest malignants had as yet desired; thus for a while the soldiers were permitted to suppose that they were bound for Westmoreland. ”

“ They presently fix thee to them, and drive the other out of thy thoughts. They always receive thee with the same kindness.”
With many other noblemen and gentlemen of that time, the Earl of Derby fell in with this sound advice. “His life,” says Walpole, [9] “was one of virtue, accomplishments, and humanity.” 72Neither firebrand, busybody, nor time-server—too high of rank to desire to be higher—James, seventh Earl of Derby, nearing on to middle life at the time of his father’s death, lived chiefly on his own estates, and these preferably at Lathom House. ”

“ There only remains for us our last and best refuge, the Almighty, to whose will we must submit; and when we see how it has pleased Him to dispose of this nation and of its Government, there is nothing for us to do, but to put our finger on our lips, and bring ourselves to confess 175that our sins, with those of others, have drawn these misfortunes upon us, and with tears implore Him to have pity on us.”
Having given up their beloved little last stronghold to Duckenfield, the Earl advises the Countess to retire to some peaceful spot ”

“ No word in her correspondence makes the slightest allusion to her brave actions and heroic endurance. Home and her children once more engrossed her thoughts.
“Take good care of them,” said Prince Rupert, ere he bid his hostess farewell; “the children of such a father and such a mother will one day do their King such service as their parents have done theirs.” And indeed “Faithful unto death” 148would have been the only motto for that seventh Earl of Derby and his wife, Charlotte de la Trémoille, had they ever needed to replace the one graved on their unsullied shield of “Sans changer.” ”

“ The Earl of Derby of the earlier years of Charles’s reign presented Lathom House to his eldest son and heir, James, Lord Strange, the Earl himself making his home at Chester. Concerning her father-in-law, Lady Strange writes to her mother in the following terms—after premising that her epistle is merely the replica of one previously written, but which had gone astray in transit ”

“ Scarcely had he arrived with his soldiers before the place over which he anticipated an easy victory, than the King summoned him to join his army at Shrewsbury, since the Parliamentarians were marching upon them under Lord Essex. Full of regret at being called off, Lord Derby obeyed this mandate, to find himself once more the object of mistrust and of jealousy. Directly he arrived his command was taken from him, the King telling him that he was now wanted in Lancashire to keep watch there upon the rebels.
“Worms will turn.” The Earl was a man, though one of very equable temperament ”

“ He had some time before deprived Edward Christian of authority in favour of one Captain Greenhaigh; 183 (though he had not withdrawn his countenance from the family of Christian) , who, in the meantime, had died. When Lord Derby left Man to go to the assistance of Charles II. he confided the forces of the island to William Christian, this unfaithful Edward’s son. Never was confidence more misplaced. William Christian allowed himself to be corrupted; he admitted the Parliamentary troops into the island at dead of night, and daybreak found Lady Derby and her children prisoners in Castle Rushen. ”

“ He had now travelled into the county of Flint, from whence he hoped to gain a passage to the isle of Man, when he received intelligence that, during his confinement, the Earl of Derby had signed an order for its surrender, together with all his castles, with which his intrepid Countess immediately complied; vainly hoping a sacrifice of the hereditary possessions of the family might be received as a commutation for her husband's life. Mold and Hope were already garrisoned by the Parliament ”