THE MANNERS FAMILY of Belvoir Castle were one of the richest and most distinguished noble dynasties in England.1 They had risen to prominence under the Tudors, when they had acquired the earldom of Rutland and made substantial profits from the lands of the dissolved monasteries. As well as Belvoir, they also held estates in Yorkshire, Northamptonshire and at Haddon in Derbyshire. The family had been at the heart of court affairs for many years, and during the latter part of Elizabeth I’s reign they had begun to cultivate the future king, James VI of Scotland. The 3rd earl had acted as guarantor of the Treaty of Berwick in 1586, greatly impressing the young Scots king. Although the earl took part shortly afterwards in the trial of James’s mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, his successor, John Manners, was chief mourner at her funeral the following year, thereby helping to safeguard his family’s burgeoning popularity with their future sovereign.
John Manners seemed to have secured the future of the Belvoir estates when he fathered four sons. The eldest, Roger, inherited these upon his father’s death in 1588, becoming 5th Earl of Rutland. He was high in favour with the future king, and was sent on an embassy to Denmark during the year of James’s accession.
Francis Manners, the second eldest son, was born in 1578, and like his three brothers was educated at Cambridge. At the age of 20, he travelled widely throughout the courts of Europe, possibly accompanied by the celebrated architect Inigo Jones, and was honourably entertained by princes and emperors in France, Italy and Germany. The ‘Grand Tour’, as it became known, was intended to improve the linguistic, architectural and cultural knowledge of young gentlemen. So far, Francis’s upbringing was entirely commensurate with that of any son of a noble family. But soon after his return from Europe, he fell into dangerous company, becoming part of the Earl of Southampton’s circle. As such, he befriended the celebrated playwright William Shakespeare, who was so impressed by the young nobleman that he created an impresa (a device to be painted on a shield for a tournament) for him, and persuaded the actor and theatre manager Richard Burbage to paint it.
A short while later, Francis became embroiled – along with his elder and younger brothers, Roger and George – in the Earl of Essex’s rebellion and was imprisoned in the Poultry Counter at Elizabeth I’s orders.2 Francis pleaded his innocence in a letter to Robert Cecil, by then the most powerful man at court, assuring him that he had only been seeking out his brother Roger when he had joined the conspirators at Essex House, and was thereafter ‘carried with this sway into London’.3 It was an unlikely tale and worked little effect upon the authorities. Only the payment of a hefty fine secured the brothers’ release, and Francis was committed to the custody of his uncle Roger at Enfield.4
Francis’s involvement in the Essex rebellion may have been due to more than the hotheadedness of youth, as one family member claimed.5 Although he was later praised as ‘discreet in his words, prudent and just in all his actions . . . faithful to his countrie’, there was a darker side to Francis’s character.6 Lamenting his involvement in the affair, Francis confided to his uncle: ‘I take it as a punishment from God for the wicked life I have spent, hopinge hereafter he will give me more grace to leade a better life and to serve him duly and truly, for I see without him no man shall prosper in this world.’7
Perhaps as part of this resolve, in May 1602 Francis married Frances Knyvett, widow of Sir William Beville of Kilkhampton, Cornwall, and one of the daughters and co-heirs of the wealthy Sir Henry Knyvett of Charlton in Wiltshire. The couple had a daughter, Katherine, in 1603.8 This year also saw the passing of the mighty Tudor dynasty and the dawn of the Jacobean age in England. The glory days of the Virgin Queen had long since passed, and by the time of her death, as Bishop Goodman observed, ‘the people were very weary of an old woman’s government’.9 Elizabeth died in the early hours of 24 March. By the end of the day, James VI of Scotland had been proclaimed King of England. Although trouble had been feared, it was a remarkably peaceful transition from one royal house to another.
Frances Knyvett died of smallpox in 1605, having given birth to no further children. On 26 October 1608, her widower married Cecilia, daughter of Sir John Tufton of Hothfield in Kent, sister of Nicholas, first Earl of Thanet, and widow of the aged Sir Edward Hungerford.
The date of Cecilia’s birth is not recorded, but it is likely to have been in around 1587, which would have made her nine years younger than her second husband – an improvement upon her first.10 We know little of her life before her marriage to Francis, although the patchy evidence that does exist suggests that she was a strong and feisty woman, not content to play the conventional role of the dutiful wife. Raised as part of a large family, she had been given a rudimentary education and was barely literate by the time she reached adulthood. This was by no means unusual: only between 5 and 10 per cent of women could read or write during the period 1580–1640. Even in privileged families, the education of girls was seen as superfluous, provided they were instructed in household management, needlework, and other accomplishments necessary for their future as wife and mother. Women were not admitted to the universities, the function of which was to prepare future statesmen or clergymen. ‘Books are part of a man’s prerogative,’ opined the ill-fated Jacobean courtier Sir Thomas Overbury, who added that too much learning made women mentally unstable.11 The records suggest that most women did not think to question this situation, having few ambitions beyond the domestic sphere. A well-born seventeenth-century lady Elizabeth Jocelyn wrote detailed instructions for the education of her child, should she fail to survive the birth. While she was clear that a son ought to be prepared for a career in the church, if the child was a girl, she stipulated: ‘I desire her bringing up to be learning the Bible, as my sisters do, good housewifery, writing, and good works; other learning a woman needs not.’12
Cecilia’s first marriage, to Sir Edward Hungerford, had not been a happy one. Sir Edward was many years her senior – old enough to be her grandfather – but he was in desperate need of an heir. Cecilia could not have welcomed this unsavoury prospect, and despite her husband’s best efforts, no child resulted from the union. Sir Edward was not a kind husband. He came from a family which would be called dysfunctional in modern parlance. His father had been executed for sodomy, and there had been rumours of involvement in witchcraft. This could have helped foster a fear and hatred of witches in Edward’s young wife, which would later find full expression.
Unhappy though it was, the marriage was also mercifully brief. Sir Edward died shortly afterwards – exhausted, perhaps, by his efforts to beget an heir. Cecilia no doubt rejoiced in her freedom, but she had a tremendous battle to secure her jointure of £2,000. Without it, she knew that she could offer only a paltry dowry to a future husband, given that she came from such a large family. Her doggedness in pursuing what was hers by right hints at a ruthless, ambitious side to her nature. She was determined that, having suffered a miserable first marriage, she would secure a much greater one second time around.
Like any man of breeding, Francis Manners was expected to marry not for love but for financial or political gain. With only a daughter from his previous marriage, he needed a son to secure the future of his estate. Sons had proved hard to come by in the Manners family in recent times, the title having passed from brother to brother rather than from father to son. The Puritan writer Daniel Rogers condemned those who were motivated by passion in choosing a wife as ‘poor greenheads’. He even argued that marriages based upon passion rather than politics might result in contaminated offspring: ‘What a cursed posterity such are likely to hatch . . . what woeful imps proceeded from such a mixture.’13 Although Francis and Cecilia’s marriage was not primarily founded upon love, these words would prove prophetic.
That there was attraction between them is evident from the family papers, which provide some tantalising details about their courtship. Thomas Screven, agent to Francis’s elder brother Roger, wrote from London in late October 1608: ‘This woing of Sr Francis Manners goeth exceedingly well forward and he applies yt like a good woer.’ The Lord Chamberlain visited Sir John and his daughter to enquire how negotiations for the betrothal were proceeding, and he remarked that he ‘fyndes all well and her affection strong’.14 Theirs was more than merely a physical attraction, though: they had a crucial – and controversial – interest in common, for they were devout Catholics – and, it was whispered, secret Papists.
At the time of Francis’s marriage to Cecilia, Catholics constituted a small percentage of the population, most of whom (officially, at least) adhered to the Protestant religion espoused by their king. The ‘old religion’ had become a seigneurial movement, with small groups of Catholics centred upon a local gentleman’s house. The recusant gentry tended to intermarry with their co-religionists, as Francis chose to do, which led to an ‘inbred cousinage’ of landed families.15
Cecilia’s sister, Ann, had married the notorious Roman Catholic Francis Tresham, who had taken part in both the Essex rebellion and the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. The fact that Francis Manners was eager to associate himself with the Tufton family is one of several indications that he was of the same faith. Meanwhile, Sir John Tufton heartily approved of the match, the Manners family being one of the most distinguished in England. He suspected, though, that the couple had already agreed to marry before his consent was formally sought.16 That Cecilia was considered a great prize in the marriage market is suggested by the fact that as negotiations were drawing to a close, another candidate suddenly entered the frame. Screven wrote with all haste to his master, urging him to settle the required sums in order to bring the alliance to a swift conclusion.17
Cecilia soon proved that she had been worth her new husband’s efforts. Seventeenth-century society prescribed a strict set of conventions for the behaviour and status of wives, and Cecilia seemed to be a textbook example. Gervase Markham’s influential book The English Hus-wife, which first appeared in 1615, provided a detailed description of an ideal wife. ‘She ought, above all things, to be of an upright and sincere religion, and in the same both zealous and constant; giving by her example an incitement and spur unto all her family to pursue the same steps, and to utter forth by the instruction of her life those virtuous fruits of good living, which shall be pleasing both to God and his creatures.’ As well as pious, a woman should be ‘of great modesty and temperance . . . appearing ever unto him [her husband] pleasant, amiable, and delightful’, and her virtue should be beyond question. ‘Our English housewife must be of chaste thought, stout courage, patient, untired, watchful, diligent, witty, pleasant, constant in friendship, full of good neighbourhood, wise in discourse, but not frequent therein, sharp and quick of speech, but not bitter or talkative, secret in her affairs, comfortable in her counsels, and generally skilful in all the worthy knowledges which do belong to her vocation.’18
But Cecilia was an ideal wife in a more important way than merely her behaviour and piety. Soon after her wedding to Francis, she fulfilled that most basic – and essential – of wifely duties by producing a son and heir to inherit the Belvoir fortune. The boy was christened Henry, possibly as a compliment to the new king, who had chosen that name for his own eldest son and heir. The date of Henry Manners’s birth is not known, and neither is that of his younger brother, Francis, but the evidence proves that they must both have been born within the first five years of the marriage.
By the time of his marriage to Cecilia, Francis had already started to make a name for himself at court. He would enjoy greater favour in James’s reign than he had in the time of Elizabeth. His first recorded meeting with the new king was on 22 April 1603, when James chose to rest at Belvoir overnight on his long journey south to claim his crown. A contemporary account of the visit described how ‘His Highnesse was not only Royally and most plentifully received, but with such exceeding joy of the good Earle [Roger] and his honourable Lady [Elizabeth Sidney], that he tooke therein exceeding pleasure.’19 After breakfast the following morning, James conferred a number of knighthoods upon the local dignitaries in attendance, including the youngest of the Manners brothers, Oliver. But it was Francis who seems to have made the greatest impression upon the new king, for he soon after became a prominent member of the royal court. He was created Knight of the Bath in January 1605, at the same time as the king’s son and heir.
Francis became 6th Earl of Rutland and inherited the Belvoir estates upon the death of his elder brother Roger, who had no children, on 26 June 1612. More titles soon followed. In July the same year, he was made lord lieutenant of Lincolnshire, and soon after he became constable of Nottingham Castle and keeper of Sherwood Forest. An indication of how close he now was to the king was the fact that when, in 1613, he picked a fight with the Earl of Montgomery and Lord Davers in quick succession, James – far from reprimanding him – stepped in to prevent further trouble.20 In April 1616, Francis was made Knight of the Garter, and Lord Baron Ros of Hamlake three months later, the latter in compensation for unsuccessfully claiming the barony of De Ros of Helmsley – the most ancient baronial title in England – which had been bestowed upon his cousin, William Cecil.21 An even clearer indication of Francis’s growing prestige at court came the following year when he was appointed a privy councillor and soon afterwards accompanied James to Scotland.
In common with other prominent families, the Manners leased a home in London – Bedford House, an impressive mansion on the north side of the Strand. Built in 1586, it boasted at least 45 rooms and was lavishly decorated. An inventory taken in 1643 describes tapestry hangings adorning the walls in the family’s apartments, luxurious Turkish carpets in many of the rooms, chairs covered with crimson or green velvet, gilt candlesticks and silver-lined glassware. The most attractive feature of the house from the earl’s perspective, though, was the fact that it afforded him easy access to the court. Although she rarely left Belvoir, the countess was very fond of the London house, and when there was a threat of losing it, the earl wrote anxiously to his fellow courtier and politician Sir Edward Conway that his ‘Countess will hardly part with Bedford House’.22
As well as his official duties, Francis also played a full part in the entertainments of the court, and was often listed as a participant in the increasingly lavish masques that were held there. The earl threw himself into court life with great enthusiasm, lavishing huge sums in order to enhance his prestige with the king. He is recorded as being present at most of the major court occasions, including more official engagements such as the investiture of the king’s eldest son, Henry, as Prince of Wales in 1610.23 The latter occasion was described by King James’s well-informed ambassador to the Netherlands, Dudley Carleton, who was enraptured by the glittering spectacle: ‘In the Tilt-yeard, there were divers Earles, Barons, and others, being in rich and glorious armoure, and having costly caparisons [a decorative cloth for a horse], wondrous curiously imbroydered with pearls, gould, and silver, the like rich habiliaments for horses were never seene before.’24
In contrast to her husband’s close contact with the king, Cecilia rarely ventured far from Belvoir. There is no record of her attending the court, although the fact that she knew Bedford House makes this a strong possibility. Mostly, however, she only encountered James and his court when they visited her husband’s estate. Neither is there any mention of particular friends or acquaintances: the usual social niceties of a lady of the manor did not seem to interest her. Rather, life at her husband’s castle seemed to be all-consuming. She thrived upon the organisation and discipline necessary to maintain a well-ordered household. This was not the case with all aristocratic wives. The surviving diaries of seventeenth-century noblewomen are littered with complaints about their miserable lives. Writing in the middle of the century, the Duchess of Newcastle, who was herself childless, reflected on women’s lot: ‘All the time of their lives is ensnared with troubles, what in breeding and bearing children, what in taking and turning away servants, directing and ordering their family . . . and if they have children, what troubles and griefs do ensue? Troubled with their forwardnesse and untowardnesse, the care for their well being, the fear for their ill doing, their grief for their sicknesse, and their unsufferable sorrow for their death.’25
The new countess would soon know the truth of this statement all too well. But for the moment, the image of her that emerges from the records is of a brusque, highly organised, controlling woman who kept a strict rein on the household at Belvoir. She also closely superintended her sons’ upbringing, and took a keen interest in that of her stepdaughter. Given that Katherine was very close to her father and had been indulged by him since her infancy, it is possible that she resented the interference of her new stepmother. Relations between them certainly soured when Katherine reached adulthood, and the two women would become estranged after the earl’s death. This gives the lie to the adulatory account written by the family’s private chaplain, Richard Broughton, in 1633, which refers to ‘a mutuall and long Affection euen from the yonge yeares of the one betwixt Mother and Daughter, as also the united hearts of Wife and Daughter’.26
By the seventeenth century, it was customary for children of noble families to be educated at home by a private tutor up to the age of 14. More attention tended to be paid to the education of boys, and they would enjoy (or endure) a strict regime in which there was very little room for playing or other relaxed pastimes. As well as concentrating on religious and classical studies, and the study of Latin, some households would hire an expert in more specialised subjects such as French. Given the importance of the two Manners boys to the future of their father’s estate, it is likely that no expense was spared on their education. By contrast, the fact that Katherine grew up to be barely literate suggests that, like Cecilia’s own, very little attention was paid to her education.
The Earl and Countess of Rutland lived a life of luxury at Belvoir, which was one of the most magnificent estates in England. Standing on top of ‘a very lofty hill’, the castle commanded ‘a most delicious and pleasing prospect, being accounted one of the best prospects in the land’, according to the early-seventeenth-century antiquary William Burton.27 It dated back to the time of William the Conqueror – whose standard-bearer, Robert de Todeni, founded the castle – and remained a royal stronghold until 1527, when it was granted to Robert, 1st Baron de Roos. It eventually passed into the hands of the earls of Rutland, and was rebuilt by the 5th earl in splendid Gothic style with a central tower that is reminiscent of Windsor Castle.
Much of the castle that Francis and Cecilia Manners would have known was destroyed during the English Civil War. Belvoir was one of the most notable strongholds of Charles I’s supporters, and in 1649 the republican Council of State ordered its demolition. The contemporary account books and other papers give some sense of the scale and luxury of the original castle, however. As well as the public rooms, family and guest chambers, nurseries, library and chapel, there was an extensive network of kitchens, cellars, pantries, a buttery and a laundry room.
Francis had inherited a staggeringly large household from his elder brother Roger, who had retained 212 servants and 9 clergy. An extravagant spender to the end, Roger had lavished huge sums on everything from feasts to finery. He had also been a prodigious gambler, and had frittered away between £1,000 and £1,500 a year on this vice. Spending an average of £1,000 or more a year on his clothes, he thought nothing of laying out £64 for the embroidery of sumpter cloths (used to cover goods during transport) with the peacocks of the Manners crest, or £84 on the embroidery of a masque costume in the year of his death.28 His funeral feast had been prepared by no fewer than 27 cooks.29 By then, the Manners family was one of the most prestigious in England, with extraordinarily extensive estates which spanned Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland, Warwickshire and Yorkshire, as well as Leicestershire and Lincolnshire. But they had a long history of consistently living beyond their means, and Francis – although a little more careful than the rest – was no exception.
The contemporary records attest to the generosity and benevolence of the new earl, describing him as ‘charitable to the poor’ and ‘affable to all’.30 It was said that he ‘proceeded so honourably in the course of his life, as neither displacing Tenants, discharging servants, denying the accesse of the poore, welcoming of strangers, and performing all the duties of a noble Lord’. Little wonder that he was known as a popular lord and master, who ‘fastened as it were unto himself the love and good opinion of the Country’ and was revered by ‘great and small’ alike.31 Cecilia equalled him in kindness and good humour, and was said to ‘beare as free a mind’.32
By all accounts, the earl and countess enjoyed a ‘cheerful’ marriage. The earl later said that ‘there was never man had a more loving and vertuous wife then she hath beene to mee’.33 Described as ‘an amiable couple’, they were generous hosts to servants and guests alike, ‘so that Beaver Castle was a continuall Pallace of entertainment, and a daily reception for all sorts both rich and poore’.34 Another contemporary source concurs that the castle was ‘a place, that gives welcome to all’, and a later account tells of the Manners’s ‘magnificent hospitality’.35
They and their guests enjoyed many luxuries. Their diet, even on ordinary days, included such rarities as ‘straweburies and raspeses’, apricots, artichokes, fresh salmon and trout, swan, capon, peacock and partridge.36 There were numerous fish ponds at Belvoir and the family’s other estates which kept them supplied with fresh fish, and beehives so that they might sweeten their dishes with honey.37 They drank wine from Venetian glass, ate their meals off silver dishes and plates, and their silver cutlery was engraved with peacocks and coronets.38The couple also exchanged lavish New Year gifts with the king each January, as tradition dictated for the nobility.39
A later account describes the family’s sumptuous jewels, which included a gold chain set with 138 small diamonds, a diamond hatband, a ‘valentine’ in gold, a ‘great diamond jewel’, and a gold ‘moddell’ (medal) with a picture of the King of France.40 The earl even had a pair of gold stirrups made, while a green velvet saddle and scarlet riding coat were commissioned for his daughter Katherine, also a keen horsewoman.41 There were also numerous payments made for sumptuous new gowns, including ‘crymosin velvet for a robe of honour’ which was trimmed with ermine, ash-coloured taffeta silk for a new dress, and a pair of nightcaps – one made from gold and silver thread, the other from black silk.42 Meanwhile, their rooms were furnished with embroidered beds, Flemish tapestries and ‘Turkie carpetes’.43
The family were regularly entertained by troupes of musicians and actors, including on occasion the queen’s own players.44 The account books include payments for lute strings for Lady Katherine, and repairs to the younger son’s ‘citron’ (cittern, a stringed instrument).45 The earl was also an avid reader, judging from the number of histories and other books that were purchased for the castle.46 Rather less refined was the pastime of bear-baiting, which took place at Belvoir on at least one occasion.47 Like his late brother, Francis was a betting man (although thankfully less voracious), and there were payments for money lost at cards and the horses.48
Francis and Cecilia’s efforts to establish Belvoir as a ‘pallace of entertainment’ were intended for more than their own amusement. It brought them to the attention of their pleasure-loving king, who decided to make a return visit to the castle in August 1612. The visit would have profound repercussions for the Manners family. In cultivating James, the earl and countess were not merely enhancing their political standing; they were allying themselves with the most notorious royal witch hunter in Europe.